Drip-Fed Pt. 10

Apexus could see the lines connect, even if it wasn't easy. "So, you hunt and you give some of the meat to someone else, so you can buy meat later on? And If I sell more than I buy I can eventually buy stuff that's worth more than any individual transaction because you have saved up the value of numerous." He didn't need to see Aclysia nod to know he was right. Humanoids were clearly a thousand time scarier than ant colonies, if they used a system that complicated and ingenious to exchange value.

Every time the slime heard about this 'economy' thing; he felt a bit smaller.

"And all that on the fact that people just believe that round pieces of metal are worth something," the slime mumbled, while Reysha continued to giggle. Then her stomach growled, reminding Apexus that he, with all of the transforming he had recently done, was also quite hungry.

Reysha alleviated her hunger by reaching into her bag and retrieving some edible monster remains. "Want some?" she offered Apexus, who shook his head. She didn't offer enough to sate him. She couldn't. If she did, they would be out of suitable rations for her in one day and she would have to subsist off things she found disgusting. Since Apexus did not suffer from that problem, and he was also capable of eating just about anything organic, he instead clawed off whatever plants or bugs he found around him and shoved them into his mouth. After having to keep on that robe for so long, he had gotten used to eating all but the largest things through that opening. It wasn't the most efficient way, but it was the easiest.

Once they were both filled up, Apexus was handed his usual clothes. Slipping into the robe was a bit complicated, courtesy of his wings. There were slits at the back for them to squeeze through, but because the robe was tailored for people with wings in general, they didn't exactly fit him. The slits were a bit too tight. It helped with preventing people from looking past the base of his wings and see his skin, or proper lack thereof, but actually pushing through there was a neck breaking endeavour. Quite literally, as Apexus usually turned his head around to see what exactly he was doing.

"That looks freaky no matter how often I see it," Reysha commented, when Apexus' head turned back forwards and lodged into the proper position for humans. Since the slime had just the skeleton without all the cartilage or nervous systems, he could do such things with just some manipulation of the structure. It was rarely useful, but it was a thing regardless.

"I am the most flexible vertebrate you will ever see," Apexus declared, while binding the robe close at the waist, collar and at the height of his knees. One mask later and he was as hidden as he could be. He went with a light brown skin tone today, about the same as Reysha's. As much as he loved Aclysia, her pale complexion wasn't pleasant in overly sunny environments. Somewhat ironic, given that she was an angel of a summer god.

"That hurts my pride!" Reysha playfully complained.

"Why?" Aclysia wondered as she gestured in the direction they had to take.

"As a feline person, I'm supposed to be the most flexible thing in the room!" she declared. "Ya know how many guys I got salivating just by showing that I could tuck my legs under my shoulders?"

"It's a very sexy position," Apexus commented. "Delicious butt showcase."

"Case in point," Reysha stated.

"I can do the same, albeit I admit that you're still more flexible than I," Aclysia commented.

"Which reminds me how weird it is that you have bones," Reysha got a little bit side tracked. Squeezing Aclysia's upper arm, she felt the outer and inner layer of the angel's body. All of it was metal, but it wasn't all equally structured. Otherwise, she wouldn't have had areas that were so much like flesh, particularly her big bubble butt, that it would have been impossible to tell her apart from normal people.

"I am as my father created me. This is beside the point. What makes you think that races partially related or inspired by felines are supposed to be the most flexible?"

"You know what they say, cats are liquid."

"Who says that?"

"You know, the people."

"The people are not a reliable source of information."

"Fact is," Apexus got involved. "I am liquid, so, at worst, we should be equally flexible. You can dislocate your joints at will, so we're basically equal."

"Not my neck though."

"Yet."

"I guess? I won't try."

"Didn't plan to ask you. I love you being alive. You're gorgeous."

"So many compliments today," Reysha purred. "Don't feed my ego too much, it might bubble over into being horny." She glanced at the trees. The closer they got to the outskirts of the jungle, the quieter it became, but it never went silent. "I kind of like the idea of screaming against that cacophony."

"We will be travelling for a little while. That opportunity might present itself," Aclysia dared to suggest and got herself a grin from Reysha. "What is it?"

"Its just that every time you say something like that, I remember that you're a kinky, submissive girl that likes outdoor sex. You really don't look the type."

Aclysia ran a hand over her hair in a shy motion. "I honestly prefer beds and caves over the open sky, but whatever inhibitions I have are usually... greatly diminished when I'm horny..."

"I kind of like the idea of being watched," Reysha purred in response. "What about you, Apexus?"

"Hmm," Apexus thought about that for a moment. "Are we safe, in this theoretic situation?"

"Absolutely safe," Reysha nodded, wondering what the answer was going to be.

"Hmmmmmmmm," Apexus thought a bit more. "I like doing it under the sky because that feels more free..."

"Right?" Reysha smirked and nodded some more. The wind on her skin, the nature around them, it just added to the wildness of the lovemaking.

"...being watched, though, I don't know. Depends on who and why, but in general I don't lean either way?"

"You don't want to show a group of people just how thoroughly you can fuck us?" Reysha wondered. "Because I think it's a shame not to at least SOMEWHAT show off what you have. Feels like a fucking waste."

"A not particularly virtuous stance," Aclysia chimed back into the discussion.

"Girl, ya know me. I got plenty of vices, even if I'm now trying to reign in the worst of them. Let's not rehash the entire 'Why is it that important for you to fuck?' discussion."

Apexus raised one hand to his chin and tilted his head in a thinking pose. "I don't know if I have anything to show off. Historically, revealing myself to people didn't work out that well."

"If you have nothing to show off? You're a sexual beast!" Reysha declared. "I haven't had any sex as good as the things you could do with your tentacles alone. All the other shit your body continued to evolve isn't even required; it just makes it better!"

Apexus noted that silently and took it as a slight ego boost. He knew that he didn't leave them dissatisfied, that much was obvious, but he didn't have any chance to compare himself to normal shaped males. "Still don't think I would find it appealing or unappealing to have sex in front of other people. All I want is for us to feel good. Everything else is optional."

"D'aww, listen to you, being all earnest and adorable," Reysha put the ending line under the topic, as the edge of the jungle came into view between the trees.

Apexus stayed in the forest. His job was to search for something edible. Something edible for Reysha, to be more exact, since he could subsist on just about anything organic. The tiger girl would accompany Aclysia in her effort to gather information about the Long Way. In order to find each other later, Apexus marked a peculiar looking formation of dead trees with his pheromones.

Although that lent some reason as to why Reysha tagged along, Aclysia still asked, "Why did you want to come with me?"

"Ya don't want me to?" the redhead returned a question of her own.

Aclysia shook her head in denial, "If such were the case, I would have raised my protests before we left. No, I simply find myself wondering about your reasoning. You're usually much happier to hunt than you are to engage in contact with civilization." Glancing over her shoulder, Aclysia took one last look at the meeting spot. "Your nose will be helpful in locating our darling but I would be able to find this spot without you. Your company isn't required."

"I guess you got me there," Reysha hummed and folded her hands behind her head as the two of them marched across the green plain. Their target was a road in the distance. Following it eastwards would lead them to their goal. Humming some more, the tiger girl suddenly started to giggle. "I've no clue," she finally responded, "I just decided I'll do it, so I did."

Aclysia sighed and then smiled, "That is just like you. Truthfully, I should tell you to head back. I'm conspicuous enough on my lonesome."

"I mean, I could make up a reason on the spot," Reysha offered. "Just so you won't feel too bad."

"If you would humour that pedantically logical part of my brain, I would be much obliged," Aclysia responded. Regardless of whether or not the reason was good, she wouldn't actually send Reysha back. Even if the two of them hadn't always seen eye to eye on issues and would certainly clash again over their differing viewpoints in the future, they did like each other. Having Reysha's company was soothing, be it only for the conversations.

"If we need to deal with some unsavoury individuals, you'll suck at talking to them," the redhead presented the made-up reason. "Your overblown way of speaking will just piss them off and you won't get the jargon. Better to have me around to reply in kind."

"Hmm," Aclysia tilted her head as she thought about it. "The insult to my choice of vocabulary aside, that is a sound reason."

"Maybe I just want to be around other people again," Reysha hummed a more personal rationale. "Not really sure. Has been so long since I went anywhere by daylight."

"As it stands, that won't change today," Aclysia asserted, with an eye on the quickly approaching sunset.

"You shouldn't stare directly at the sun, it'll give you eye problems," Reysha joked.

"I am quite certain that this doesn't apply to angels made of metal," Aclysia responded.

"You say that as if there are other angels."

"I think there are," the metal fairy responded. Their conversation came to a momentary halt when they decided to take opposite paths around a large tree. When they converged again on the other side, Aclysia noticed Reysha's questioning gaze. "The details of this have been removed from my memories, but it appears logical to me that different gods craft their ambassadors in different ways. In the end, this body," she touched her chest at the collarbone to emphasize, "is just a shell my immortal soul inhabits. A form made from flesh, wood or water is just as feasible as one made from metal. It is in the hands of the gods."

"I guess," Reysha was unable to come up with any counter-arguments. Even if she had, it would have been purely for the sake of continuing the conversation. Instead, there was a moment of silence as she kicked a pebble down the road.

"Might I ask something dark?" Aclysia asked. The silence of grass was exchanged for the crunching of dirt, as they stepped onto the basic road.

"Sure," Reysha felt the last rays of sunlight vanish off her face, as the shining star reached the end of this circle.

Even with that confirmation, it took the white-haired woman several moments to gather the words. "Do you think we have hope?" she looked down on the ground in front of her. "Our current situation appears too dire to have any good outcome. I... I try to keep myself from thinking too much about it..."

"That must be pure torture, given how much of an overthinker you are," Reysha joked and knew she had taken the situation too lightly when Aclysia shot her an annoyed glance. "Sorry, you know how I am with serious moods. Go on, I'll try to be a helpful cunt, if nothing else."

"...It simply feels as if I will get drawn into a bottomless pit if I analyse our situation within the purely pragmatic parameters," she sighed and continued to look at her feet. One after the other, they set forwards. "We have been progressing immensely these past few days. Yet, I fear it is not enough. What do you think? Do we have hope?"

"No clue," Reysha responded immediately in a chirpy tone. Before Aclysia could get angry, she put an arm around the metal fairy's shoulder. "Look, you may be totally right. Maybe we'll die tomorrow, but if we do, there is no use breaking our heads over it today. It's that simple. If I'm despairing because of what I did, I know you'll drag me back up, so, if you feel like you're reasoning yourself into a dark corner, I'll give you some basic bitch advice and we'll just keep moving. Push comes to shove; you just cuddle our slime-man for half an hour. Afterwards you'll do your best anyway."

"That would work," Aclysia mumbled and looked back to the jungle with loving eyes. "I miss my darling already."

___________________________________________________________________________

They spent the night in the open field and reached the city early the next day. Early enough that the streets weren't quite busy, but the first shops were already open. The perfect time to ask around while being seen by as few people as possible. The two of them slowly circled around the streets.

"So, how do we do this?" Reysha wondered.

"...I honestly do not know." Looking around, Aclysia was hoping for some convenient way that simply answered the questions she had, like a blackboard or such. All information she and Reysha had gathered so far had stemmed from side mentions and other such things. Snippets of conversations caught in passing. Now that they had something specific to ask about, they had to make a specific inquiry. Something that Aclysia wasn't sure how to approach. 'Perhaps we should go to the Adventurer's Guild...? No, even a one percent chance that they know of us is too high for us to take that risk. We should have asked Nudru before leaving... that would have been the best opportunity.'

While multiple ways to approach or avoid any sort of conversation went through Aclysia's head, Reysha looked at the stores that were already open. There were two kinds, from what she could see. One was the inns, taverns and bakeries of the city, providing people with the necessary stuff for their breakfast and the other were normal shops of any kind that were simply open quite early.

The former were largely within houses that had their doors open and were busy with preparations. A bad target to approach. Reysha instead picked out one of the outdoor shops and looked for the person that looked the easiest to talk to. After just a few seconds of looking around like that, she had found someone and Aclysia's train of thought came to a sudden end when she heard her partner say, "Yo."

The casually addressed person was a young man who was barely out of the adolescent stage of his life. He had the look of a youth that didn't really care for being presentable, but at least did the bare minimum to avoid his parent's scolding. Barely kempt black hair, mostly sitting clothes and bags under his eyes that spoke of having had one sip too much last night, it all fit the stereotype. Only the pointy ears, the kind created when an elf mixed with a human, stood out.

He was a young man that would one day inherit this shop from his father. A task he was supposed to get eased into by serving at the least busy hours of the day, while the actual owner kept his energy for the hours around noon. He was a young man, half wood elf or not, with a secure social circle but limited success with the other sex. Like most young men like that, he became very self-aware of his looks when he was addressed by a gorgeous, exotic redhead.

By clearing his throat, he managed to prevent a stammer. "Hello, how may I help you?" Using the typical phrases helped suppress any sort of embarrassment. This became especially necessary once the equally good-looking Aclysia joined them at the wooden stand.

"I'd like to chat a little bit, if you don't mind," Reysha said and smirked. It was just the usual grin, but to a young man it invoked the impression of interest. Although the tiger girl wasn't aiming to come across as flirtatious, she knew exactly what kind of thoughts the young shopkeeper was having. On Ragressia, knowing how to attract the rare male was a skill engrained even into those girls that swore they would leave at the first opportunity.

"No, of course not," he was hasty to answer and very obviously looked at Reysha's butt when she leaned her side against the desk top covered with arrows and other hunting equipment. His eyes darted back up before it could get awkward and then he got stuck on her eyes. The blue held him like the brass of a mousetrap snaps on a rodent.

"Fantastic, see, we're a bit uninformed. We've been occupied for a little bit and have a little question about this dungeon... the Long Way, it's called, ever heard of it?"

The young man nodded, "Everybody born on Azenia-Ra has, pretty hard to not know all of the dungeons on a Leaf if you can count them on both hands. What about it?"

"Is it true that there is some sort of portal at the end of it?"

"I can't absolutely confirm that, I've never been there," the young half-elf tried to crack a little joke and Reysha giggled. Not because it was particularly funny but because she was easily amused like that. "Anyway, yeah, story is that, if you defeat every boss in every other dungeon on Azenia-Ra, a portal will open to allow people to jump somewhere else. It's written on the Stone of Guidance."

"That the Divine Marker of this world?" Reysha wondered and got a nod in return. A Divine Marker was a place, usually a landmark or otherwise easy to find location, that the creator god of a Leaf used to communicate what mysteries they had left on the world. Sometimes it was straightforward, other times it was a riddle and, quite often, there just was none. Much like the initial handout for Aclysia's Divine Quest, the portal had been made public knowledge by choice of the god.

Trying to get that information to spread would have been quite difficult otherwise. What group would find and step through the portal only to backtrack across many Branches of the Omniverse?

"I suppose you're adventurers looking for a way around the Infestation, then?" the young man asked, trying to keep the conversation with the dangerously beautiful woman going.

"Yes. Right, while we're on that, is that still going on?" Reysha wondered. "Or have the angels come around by now?"

"Well, if they have, news hasn't reached us yet," the shopkeered shrugged. Fundamentally, he should have been deadly afraid of the knowledge that a Parasyte was currently growing next to the world he lived on, but to the average person, such news was simply too grand to properly worry about. He had never left this world, didn't plan to, and had therefore never seen a Parasyte. The conflict between divine protectors and devoid creatures was something he only ever heard about when going to the church. "If anyone, Reverend Khaloi could have heard of it. He has a Distance Feather."

'Which means we absolutely cannot go there and ask him,' Reysha thought. A Distance Feather was a device only operable by Scribes and one of the more widespread ways to get messages across huge distances. Two feathers were synchronized and, if set up correctly, would both move whenever a Scribe used one of them. The range of the connection depended on the Scribe using them, so a pair could be made by a relatively weak person, but only a truly powerful Scribe could transcribe messages across worlds. This somewhat limited the effectiveness of this method, along with other issues such as having no way to know for certain if the feather was even set up correctly on the other side. Safe for having Scribes capable of communication on both sides, which still required a pre-agreed timetable.