Chapter 120: New World, Old Problems 1 – No more road to roam

Flying above a Branch of the Omniverse was a weird experience. The Branch, large as it was, could be conceivably flown around. Its curvature was something Apexus had been distantly aware of on the ground. Now in the air, he could properly see it. Combining this with the continuous gravitational pull towards the centre of the Branch made for a confusing first flight.

It was also tremendously dangerous.

Because the Branch looked equally silvery just about everywhere, once Apexus lost sight of where the two girls were, finding them again in the deep, deep trenches of the bark would be really difficult. He couldn’t orient himself by the angle because, no matter where he went, the Branch was always exactly down.

The other Branches in the sheer endless distance, clearly outlined against the absolute black, could have served as alternative landmarks. They could have. If Apexus would have taken the time to study them for as long as navigators studied the stars that filled the skies of most worlds. Even then, the branches were constantly moving, each of them at individual speeds, influenced by the divine within and the eldritch outside. Nebulas of drifting colours that wafted through the Branches like cosmic mist only worsened all of this.

Apexus did his best to only fly in small circles and look down often. While Aclysia almost melded with the background, silvery-white hair and pale skin doing her no good, Reysha stood out well. The intensely red hair was a slowly decreasing dot. Thankfully, the slime’s acquired eyes were good at spotting things at a distance. Not the greatest, but pretty good.

Once he was high above the bark, he took a closer look at what lay in the Omniverse around their current position. The direction they came from, Apexus only managed to identify by the two Leaves in the distance. One had a red trim to its fractured, dimension-revealing surface, the other green. Veins of energy that separated the showing of images of what was on the Leaf. They were a summer and a spring Leaf, respectively. The last two they had visited.

The distance looked almost unimpressive. The Leaves were enormous and a lack of reference point made Apexus feel like an ant on the branch of a regular tree. An ant could cross the distance between the base of a branch and the tip of it in less than a minute. Perhaps, on a relative scale, the minute it took the ant was accurate to however many days it had taken the trio to stumble their way this far.

Slanting his centre of gravity, Apexus turned and looked in the direction before him. A Leaf with colours of all four seasons came into view. Then, his wings skipped a beat in shock, causing him to drop for a moment, before he hastily caught himself.

A vile black garden had sprouted on the pristine silver of the Branch. Twitching legs of giant, half-molten insect reached out of the maze of flowers. Petals of flat, serrated teeth, ribs and other bones, they spread and closed in a steady, breathing rhythm. Each pulse siphoned the light from the nearby tree, dulling the brilliance of the Omniverse. Closest to the mountain of eldritch plant, bone, and chitin, the ground was pulled to a dark, sickly purple colour. Further out, it became a defangingly safe, sweet pink. The least affected area only lost its light for the duration of the pulse, taking a plain grey colour.

Shambling, some of the flowers rose. A pair of fly-like eyes rose, writhing tentacles wiping them off like malformed lids. They spied Apexus and the entire thing rose up even higher. A gargantuan maw opened, stretching across the entirety of the visible Branch’s width. Where the flowers were made of teeth, the actual inside of the thing’s jaws were filled with spider-like fangs. Always in a pair, they stretched towards Apexus.

Several dozens, if not hundreds, of kilometres separated Apexus from that thing, but he dived down in a panic regardless. The vile mountain’s presence echoed the pain he felt from tasting the Parasyte earlier. Something that he had no doubt was related.

Apexus landed with no grace whatsoever. His four limbs bent on impact, making him look like he was prostrating himself for several moments. Worried, Aclysia and Reysha hurried over. “What did you see?” the angel wanted to know, following her first instinct and taking him into her arms. Not because he looked miserable, Apexus was recovering from the shock quickly, just because she was happy he was still there. She always was.

“There is a giant Parasyte,” Apexus answered as clearly as he could. Both of the girls tensed upon hearing that, only relaxing slightly when he continued. “Its stuck to the Omniverse. Seems to stretch across the entirety of this half. It saw me. Is that bad?” He felt like ‘bad’ wasn’t the right word here, but the slime couldn’t find a better one.

“No,” Aclysia eased him and looked to Reysha. The tiger girl returned the gaze in a dull fashion. Outside of basic and immediate impulses, it seemed she couldn’t muster the strength to partake in the conversation. “Not if you are certain it was stuck to the tree, darling.” She caressed a few of Apexus feathers.

The slime sat down as properly as he could. With human bones stretched to resemble that of a quadrupedal animal, a wolf was the closest equivalent, something between a frog crouch and laying was the most comfortable. “I am,” Apexus answered with a nod, his chin brushing over Aclysia’s shoulder. At least her skin was as soft as ever. In this world that was so much larger, so much more dangerous, than what he could have initially thought, that was a nice constant.

Having a predator that could kill him one day was much less intimidating than the multi-faceted things he learned were out there. Sociopaths who slaughtered mercilessly. The Parasytes, eating the smallest of which had been the most painful thing he had ever, physically, experienced. Normal people, who had more goals in mind than minds to think them, and an endless range of paths they could take to achieve them.

The simplicity of ‘hunt or be hunted’ was a relaxed afternoon clam meal compared to the intricate web of all the sapient things out there competing for places, people and power.

“It was a pile of teeth and flowers,” Apexus put it into the best words he could. “No legs, except those that grew upwards.”

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“An Infestation,” Aclysia said, once more her words took on that unusual hardness. “An advanced one, at the sound of it, but it is nothing we have to fear. As long as we stay away from it and don’t use magic, the Parasytes surrounding it won’t find us.” She stroked the side of his face with her slender fingers. “The gods or their angels will take care of it, be it only when it makes its chrysalis.”

“What happens if they don’t?” Apexus asked, finding an echo of his old curiosity.

“Then it will grow into a stage where it can gnaw off a Stem,” Aclysia responded and shuddered at the mere imagination. “Like a tick upon the entire world, the Parasyte will take the place of the Stem and suck all magic from the world.” Raw disgust had taken hold of her voice, echoing in every word. “At that point, everyone who lives on the Leaf is lost to that vile abomination. They will either die as their world withers or the Leaf will tumble into the darkness when the Parasyte is killed. Death is certain in either case. Regardless, the Parasyte needs to be killed. If it isn’t, it might grow further. From being able to eat Leaves to eating entire Branches, until it becomes a blight to the Trunk and the Omniverse itself.”

It felt good to hear her talk that much, even if the topic gave her such great negativity. Slowly, Reysha sat down next to them, having stood until then. “How do we go on?” she asked, her almost emotionless tone making the question seem much bigger than it was meant to be.

Focused on the now, Aclysia ignored the parts of that question that she had no real answer to. “Is there another Leaf before the Infestation?” she asked Apexus, who nodded. He waited, macro decisions like this were best left to Aclysia and her analytical mind. “We could try to circumvent the Infestation…” she thought out loud, distancing herself from the embrace in order to look at Apexus, Reysha and her own hands. “…No, that’s too risky. Even at our current peak, we shouldn’t challenge Parasytes. We need new rations regardless of what we do next.” After several more seconds of thought, the moth-winged angel came to a conclusion. “We will visit that Leaf. If it is a suitable place to stay, then we wait there until the Infestation is cleared. Otherwise we head back to one of the last Leaves we stayed at. Either way, we have to wait.”

None of them liked this. They were on the run and now outside factors forced them to be stationary for a while. If there was any solace, then it was the fact that they were already several worlds away. It would take a while until any pursuer would find out what Leaf they were on and, even when they finally found the right one, where they were within it.

“Alright,” Apexus approved of the plan, only to be suddenly kissed by Aclysia. A kiss she extended to Reysha. It hit the redhead almost as unexpected.

“We can rest soon,” the angel whispered, her voice tired. “By our own volition or not, we can rest.”

With that in mind, they soon began to move. How far they had to go was impossible to say certainly, as these things always were. They marched for hours, slept once, then continued marching. Like before, Apexus spent a lot of the time carrying Reysha.

“I hate this…” the tiger girl mumbled at some point. “…I can’t feel… I need to feel guilty but its all numb… It’s all so numb…”

Protectively, Apexus crossed his wings above her. “You will be fine,” he assured her. He hadn’t more to say. Even if he had lied and said that she had nothing to feel guilty about, that nothing was her fault, it wouldn’t have solved anything. “I will be here.”

“We will be here,” Aclysia added with something approaching a smile.

Reysha cried and passed out into her depressed sleep shortly thereafter. By the time she next woke up, the path before them had started to bend. This wouldn’t be too notable if it was short-lived phenomenon, the trenches in the bark often took odd paths, but the change prolonged. Their current valley melded into a neighbouring one, in turn leading into another one, all uniting into the same direction. Patterns like this were a tell-tale sign of a Stem being nearby. When the Leaf had been created, the surrounding Branch’s bark had been altered to make the way easier to find.

On her insistence, Reysha walked the rest of the way to the Leaf. Apexus kept a close eye on her the entire time. Perhaps it had been the kiss earlier. Perhaps it was because of the crying and hugging before then. Whatever the reason, something switched and small steps in the right direction were taken. Even if such a step was merely Reysha walking on her own for a long time.

Their path eventually carried them to a gargantuan clearing. It was, by itself, larger than many cities. A kilometre-wide plain, with the Stem in its centre. Hundreds of silver strands connected, then sprawling out, creating a translucent pathway to the Leaf between them.

The new world towered over them. Until they actually stepped on the Stem, the Branch remained their floor, making the Leaf appear as if it was standing upright. Giving its cosmic size, Apexus had to lean his head back quite a lot to properly see the images dancing over the fragmented surface. He saw images of blue seas and the blue spires. They belonged to white cities and, every few images, showed white landscapes. The majority of it all, however, was green. The simple, honest green of forests. Some darker, some lighter, some with hills, some without mountains, some just oceans of leaves. On one or two occasions, Apexus spied a mountain filled with an orange, glowing lake. On another, a beach that was the size of a forest. A volcano and a desert, if he remembered his lectures and the appropriate names for biomes right.

This would be their home for the immediate future. They all hoped it would be a good one.

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