Drip-Fed Pt. 07

As they had been warned, stuff on the cart was moved around. Sacks around the outer rim, for the most part, were lifted and then thrown back once their content had been confirmed. There was rumbling right above them, Aclysia and Reysha tensed. Whoever the guard above them was, they only lifted one sack, looked inside, and dropped it again.

Not only did they not reveal the box, with how flat it was, it was almost impossible to make out its existence without hitting the very edge of it. More words were exchanged, more laughter, then they moved again. Aclysia and Reysha were about to relax when they came to another halt.

Loud voices reverberated in the wood. A dull one, a firm one and a zealous one. Three new voices and massive complaints by Trebby. "You... just..." Apexus actually made out in the shouts.

'Curses,' the slime thought as all three of them got ready again. Someone massive and heavy climbed on the cart and began plucking the cargo of the vehicle and tossing it to the ground at the side. Stealth was unneeded at that point, so Apexus whispered, "Get ready, I'll attack first."

Berholdth grabbed another sack of corn and tossed it aside. His reinforced boots drummed on the wood when he had finally unearthed himself a place to stand firmly. Barely listening to the two women continuously haggling with the owner of the cart, he continued his work.

"You have no right to do this!" the smuggler complained.

"We have every right," Evmeria snapped back, her leather armour radiating some level of cold despite the charred appearance, illuminated by the endless summer sun. "And every reason. I can see the lies hanging around you like a veil of flowing gold." The Inquisitor's hand stretched out towards him, grabbing something invisible, then extending her index finger to point directly at Trebby. "In my mission, such clarity can only be granted to me towards those guilty of hiding the suspect. My faith undoes your corruption, traitor on divinity."

The smuggler swallowed his answer and suddenly, and very loudly, changed his approach. "Thank you, holy men of the Church!" he exclaimed for everyone to hear, while Berholdth uncovered something beneath the corn. Some sort of chest. "You are my only hope!" The Warrior grabbed the lid and ripped it open.

Apexus bounced outwards as quick as slimely possibly. Which was more than quick enough to surprise a less experienced Warrior off balance. Pulled together slime hastily extended and latched onto his face, causing him to scream as the left half of his face suddenly experienced acid burns.

"Berholdth!" Mehily shouted, but didn't have time to do much more when Reysha hastily moved out of the cart. While the Priest was still busy pulling magic inside her, a throwing knife penetrated her shoulder.

Reysha jumped right after her weapon, on top of Mehily. The impact and weight of the tiger girl forced her to the ground. "Ya just can't stop chasing my tail, can you?" Reysha hissed into her former comrade's ear. The words may have been playful, but the tone was as sharp as glass.

"You keep sinning," Mehily hissed back, then screamed in pain herself as a stiletto was rammed through her other shoulder and into the ground below.

"Shut up and stay right here," Reysha returned, not feeling like killing her here after having kept the Priest alive for so long.

Trebby was running for safety in the arms of the guards. Not exactly accidentally, he tripped and fell into the city defender actually out to do his job. His partner, the smuggler's contact, walked towards the danger, but at a pace at which he would never arrive in time. No reinforcement came for the Inquisition, at least not for now.

Aclysia had already flown upwards, engaging in a duel of spells with the Inquisitor. A duel defined by the metal fairy's attempt to throw several Sunlight Bolts at Evmeria, who somehow unravelled them with a wave of her hand. Divine spells would do no good towards an agent of the gods.

Even when Reysha came to help her friend, the Noir Rogue was met with largely neutralizing hand gestures. Every stab of her dagger, towards vital areas or not, was met with expert defensive maneuvers that pushed her arm to the side. In a display of ambidextrous mastery, Evmeria continued to dismiss both physical and magical attacks with one hand each, while her blind eyes looked for something else than both of them.

Apexus pulled off the blinded Warrior, afraid his thrashing may accomplish something eventually, and turned towards the Stem. They were already partly past the gate, the massive stone construct that oversaw whoever came into the leaf. There was no ground underneath them, just an ever-shifting assortment of silver lines that interwove like a floor made from twigs.

With no time to question any of this, Apexus flowed off the cart as quickly as he could. He was already upsizing his wings again, but for the moment he was earthbound. As he dropped of the cart, a triumphant shout could be heard.

"I have found you!" Evmeria declared, unbothered by the wounds the other two had suffered, not even aware of them. All she could see was the slime. For her vision, he was a multi-coloured frame with an empty core. The sight of a being without a divine spark was revolting and she finally saw the end of her mission before her.

Icey blue energy gathered between her hands and exploded outwards in a nova. It passed through Aclysia without doing any harm, even Reysha was little more than inconvenienced by a momentary bit of pain. However, when it touched Apexus, the spell unfolded its full tormenting power.

A high-pitched sound involuntarily reverberated from the slimes downsized speaking plates as pain actively ravaged every part of its being. Slime that had barely pulled into its intended elliptic shape writhed and moved like the surface of boiling water. Yet, what Apexus felt wasn't heat, but unrelenting cold. Thin as a sheet of paper, the spell wave moved through him. What it touched at any given moment was as frozen. The touch of the winter god by his Inquisition's target was doubly effective against the slime.

Evmeria seemed rather pleased with herself until Aclysia drop-kicked her right in the face and Reysha kicked her in the side a moment after. An Inquisitor's spells were only truly effective against their hunted targets. Kicking the woman while she was down, knocking all wind from her chest, Reysha ensured no such spell would come their way again. In her zealotry, the Inquisitor had tunnel-visioned on her objective and now paid the price for it. Flying over, Aclysia quickly checked on her darling.

"Can you move?" the white-haired angel asked and Apexus answered by beginning to crawl as quickly as he could, his form still unsteady and overy liquid from remaining crackles of pain. While tremendously painful, the spell had done no real damage. Evmeria had taken her order to get the slime alive seriously and as such went with an incapacitating part of her arsenal.

The element of surprise had been on their side, then numbers, but the former was spent and the later would soon change. Bells rung, alarming the guards, who streamed out of the border fortress in pairs of two. It wasn't an army, barely even a dozen, but more than enough to overwhelm three adventurers.

Reluctantly, not wanting to harm anyone but well aware that reason was out of the picture, Aclysia threw one bolt after another. Without his wings, Apexus was simply slower on the move than running humans. This was the reality of a crawling body.

It was to their advantage that the Stem was a slowly upwards curving path, that narrowed towards its end in the sky. A sky which slowly faded, turned darker, blacker, with silver branches announcing their presence from behind the blue firmament. The pull of the leaf weakened, they were almost gone.

"What about Trebby's payment?" Apexus asked, feeling like that had forgotten that.

"Oh, right!" Reysha suddenly, stopped and turned on her heels. In the rotation, she grabbed her adventurer's bag and then tossed it back towards the city as strongly as she could. It landed miraculously right in the face of a random guardsmen, who then tumbled and hit the back of his head on the cart they had just inhabited.

Sure, it wasn't the stealthiest payment transferal, but Trebby just appeared and quickly put the bag away. Whatever explanation he would muster really wasn't the trio's problem.

Allowing herself to stand there for a moment, since Apexus was dragging down their maximum speed anyway, Reysha grinned and cracked a joke. "I said I trusted him as far as I could throw th...at..." her voice petered out as she stared at something in the distance. Looking from their heightened position on the Stem, over the stretched fortress, onto the main plaza and down the street leading up to it, she spotted something.

A dot fast approaching, much faster than any other thing on this leaf rightfully could. A dot that soon gained the outline of a person. A person insanely fast on his feet, with a tricorne on their head and a bow on their back. "RUN!" she screamed when she realized who was about to beset them.

The Hunter himself had arrived.

Everything became much more imminent. It flashed through Apexus' mind that they had already lost just by the over-levelled sniper's appearance. Even if they got off the leaf, wouldn't he just chase them that little bit onto wherever the Stem led them?

"Keep on going!" Aclysia nevertheless shouted out. She knew things that Apexus didn't about the space they needed to reach and thusly her voice was hopeful. That tone was enough for the slime to continue its effort to crawl as quickly as he could. Ignoring the hunger, he continued to grow out his wings, flapping them desperately.

They were still too small to lift him off the ground, but at least they provided a bit of a boost.

Near to the gate, a medic of the city guard was helping Mehily and Berholdt recover. They extended their offer to help to Evmeria, but the Inquisitor was ignoring all of them, already back on her feet, if swaying, and stumbling after the trio.

Reysha grabbed her last throwing knife and just blindly tossed it in the direction of the approaching guard. It bounced off a raised shield without any meaningful result. Desperate, the tiger girl threw any and all remaining weaponry she had at their pursuers, just to give Apexus more time.

The sky had turned into a dark blue at this point. The world behind the trio seemed less and less like a place they were at and more like at a cut-out of a landscape viewed through a looking glass. Indeed, it slowly seemed to shatter, individual fragments showing different parts of the world, all separated by silver veins. The name leaf hadn't just been chosen because of the branching nature of the Omniverse, it seemed.

Apexus had no time to marvel at any of this as the Hunter broke the border fortress' arching gateway. The speed at which he moved caused nearby guards to almost fall when he cut closely by them. In one fluid motion, the Sharpshooter stopped his run, readied his bow and pulled an arrow from his quiver.

From previous encounters, Apexus knew very well that he was in the range of the Hunter's strikes. He was also a much slower and less defended target than ever before. This constant checking of what was behind him caused the slime to get slightly off course. A shocking revelation hit him in time: there was no border barrier to this narrowing path. He was hanging a slight bit above the nothing and retracted in time.

Under other circumstances, a tactical fall may have been possible, but Apexus would need at least another minute before his wings reached flying size. There was no telling where he could fall in that time.

While he recovered from that shock, he realized that not a single arrow had flown his direction yet. Instead, the Hunter had gotten to running, with the arrow ready and the bow lowered. While this bought them more time, it wasn't exactly a reason to relax.

The guards formed a corridor and just let the Hunter pass. Even if it was their official duty to act here, none of them was foolish enough to make a stand where they could be catapulted into the Abyss. Same could not be said for Evmeria, who shouted something unintelligible when the Hunter passed her.

Gabrame, just slowed down for a moment to give her a toothy grin. "This is my prize, Inquisitor," he mocked, then eyed the slime in the distance again. Sure, it was ever shrinking, but he really shouldn't stop to boast like this. Once they were off the leaf, he would have to try to drag that thing back by purely physical means or risk something else showing up and complicating the entire ordeal. Possible, but unneeded and difficult.

The slime occasionally leapt with his wings beating at this point, so Gabrame knew he had to hurry. "...Fine!" there was a sudden outcry from behind him. "Better your prize than escaped!" An ice blue energy bolt suddenly flew by Gabrame, quicker even than he could run.

Apexus saw it coming as well, its straight trajectory was bound to hit him. The sky was basically black at this point, the world behind him nothing more than a leaf-shaped assortment of landscape images. The path was at its narrowest point now, broadening in front of him again. Connected to something massive, silver like the veins and the Stem, but with many shades to it. It's fissured appearance seemed to be massive bark and powers of all colours pulsated under the semi-translucent surface.

A branch of the Omniverse, it was right in front of Apexus and his allies.

"We are upon freedom, my darling!" Aclysia exclaimed with a huge smile on her face, spending as much of her magic as she could dare without falling into a passive state in order to obstruct the Hunter's path.

"Finally, off this awful fucking place!" Reysha exclaimed with insane enthusiasm.

Indeed, all Apexus had to do was leap one more time. Dodge that spell and jump into freedom at the same time. The three of them would escape, side by side. His wings raised, then moved down with immense force. It propelled him up and forwards. The spell would sail right under him.

It would have. Were he not the target of the Inquisition.

As it was, the mass of pale energy adjusted its course ever so slightly. Before either Reysha or Aclysia could react, it struck Apexus in the back. Just like the last spell of Evmeria, it dealt no damage but the terrorizing amount of pain caused Apexus wings to tense at the wrong time, ending even this little flight.

It was just a few seconds. However, the scope of the current happenings, it might as well have been several minutes. By the time Apexus came back to control over his senses. The Hunter was jumping over the trio and landing in front of them.

Against their better judgement, so close to the goal, the Reysha and Apexus prepared to attack the much higher levelled adventurer. Gabrame, with a self-assured smile, pulled on his bowstring.

Reysha was the quickest of them, but neutralized by the old Hunter without him even taking a hand off his bow. Two kicks, faster than Reysha could react to, sent the redhead flying back down the path they had come from.

While Aclysia was stunned, struck without magical power or a plan, she could only watch as Apexus rose into a wave of slime, about to crash onto their assailant and devour him whole. For a moment, it looked like that could be a winning strategy. Then Gabrame had pulled back the bow all the way and loosed the arrow in the same moment.

The arrow with the forked tip ripped a fist sized hole into Apexus body, which ceased moving immediately. Gabrame took a quick step back while he nonchalantly lowered his bow, while Aclysia felt a cold hand grip her heart and guts.

The large mass of slime slumped down. Slowly at first, then very suddenly, as slime was converted into water. Disconnected body parts were washed down into the void to the satisfied stretching of a Hunter whose retirement money was saved. "Job's done!" he exclaimed and wandered off.

"Job's...done?" Aclysia asked in a state of absolute disbelief. She landed in the puddle that had been her awakener moments ago and touched the quickly dispersing water. Grotesquely, a single wing laid on the floor, one of Apexus' blue eyes rolling past it. It looked dull and lifeless, as if the sentience behind it had never existed. "Apexus... darling... awakener?" she asked while looking for any signs of life remaining.

"You got to be fucking kidding me..." Reysha growled as she saw the scene from her position further down. "That's where it ends?! YOU COCKSUCKING PIECE O-!" she jumped at Gabrame but she was treated to the exact same treatment as last time, a shin slamming into the pit of her stomach and catapulting her even further down, right into the arms of the ready standing guard. It took three people to keep the thrashing tiger girl fixed on the floor. "WHY?!"

"Money," Gabrame answered quite easily and strolled past her. Reysha had a much longer, extensive tirade of curses for the Hunter, but he didn't listen. "It's just a monster, calm down."

"Monster...? Just A monster?" Reysha stated in a quiet tone, then began giggling. A giggle that quickly became a shrill laughter that made every last guard around here wish she would just continue struggling instead. They could deal with physical threats, but this unnatural display of amusement disturbed them deeply. It was like the redhead was scratching on their soul with her words. "I see enough monsters still here."

Mehily looked at her former comrade from a distance, with more worry than she had ever felt. A feeling she couldn't dwell on for too long, as Gabrame passed all of them. "The angel is still around," the Hunter pointed out, pointing up the stem where Aclysia was still searching for life in the escaping water. "I guess she'll be able to tell you enough of what you want to know. We all win.

"So, it seems," Evmeria agreed and walked towards the metal fairy to take her into custody. That she was still around despite her quest being fulfilled and her awakener now defeated was its own mystery they needed to crack.

Mehily wasn't quite as sure if this was a victory and she stood still, occupying herself with checking on Berholdth's healed face for the third time. Just an excuse to look after Gabrame, trying to figure out what he had even wanted out of all of this.

Stuck to the fortress wall, between stone and the three-parted tip of the arrow that had killed the slime, she found the answer. The fist sized nucleus of the unique beast, a pearl the colour of midnight and unique in all records of the Omniverse. A trophy worth a lot of money to the right person.

Gabrame gave it a greedy smile as he held it up to inspect its status. Specialized arrows, only shooting at perfect angles, he had gone through a lot of pain to make sure he got this thing without a scratch. It was good to see it all paid off.

Without any further care, he threw it into his bag. It was time to get his payment and get drunk.