The odd trio was sitting around the kitchen table, or rather the area of the one-room house down from the foot end of Gizmo’s bed where the old man cooked. A kettle was hanging on a hook above the fireplace, the water inside slowly boiling the tasteful and medical properties out of the herbs inside. The smell of lavender filled the air, that and Apexus pheromones, spreading a calming sensation.

Only somewhat sure why, the slime had the urge to keep the well-smelling up around its metal fairy companion Aclysia. It was looking rather plain these days, having lost all of its borrowed Growths over the last few months that had been spent around this house. Months spent doing very little of value.

As such, Apexus, having gorged itself on a mostly vegetarian diet, had grown very little and wasn’t as confusing to behold as usual. It was just a clear blue slime. Admittedly, it still possessed downscaled, green wings that sat atop it like feathery ears and the colourless eyes of a cat along with a surface that was ever so slightly more abrasive than the water-surface like texture of a normal slime, but generally it didn’t look that weird.

The reason why it was without head or mouth or any Growths wasn’t all around its choice. After eating something called chamomile for the first time, it had its first experience of falling asleep and during that reverted to its base form. Sleep had been odd, to say the least, and the slime was still debating whether it liked the exchange of losing consciousness for a couple of hours for that refreshed feeling it had afterwards. At the very least, it made sure to remember the taste and smell of the flower to avoid it in unwanted situations.

The slime was sitting on top of a tree trunk it had heaved into the house itself. Human chairs were unsatisfactory for its elliptic shape and even if Apexus had been fine with sitting in them, the one time it had tried Gizmo had given it a conflicted look the likes of which the slime didn’t like. Therefore, it had gone to melt its own chair.

Aclysia, on the other hand, was simply sitting on the table, and had most of Apexus attention. She was just so cute, sitting there and grooming her surprisingly flexible moth-like wings, combing the little hairs with her slender fingers.

The old man in the brown robe was sitting in the same chair as always. In the otherwise meticulously clean house, the two unused chairs were highly unusual, gathering dust. It was especially outstanding when Apexus realized that they were the first thing the old man saw every morning.

Speaking of Gizmo, he was knocking on the slimes exterior to let it know he was perfectly aware that it wasn’t listening. “You can marvel at Aclysia in your free time,” he reprimanded in the warm voice of an old man who hadn’t forgotten what young love felt like. Even if Apexus wasn’t exactly aware yet of what it was feeling, it would take a fool of the same level to miss it. “For now, we have been pushing back this lecture for months, so listen carefully! It is very important.”

With a disappointed flutter of its wings, the slime turned its gaze towards the way less pleasantly looking, wrinkly and spotty old man. It was true that it had to concentrate pretty hard to listen. While its tremor sense had advanced far enough to be used as ears when need be it was far from practical. Its range was limited, it required focus and in fine-tuning it that way the slime lost the ability to use it as the detection sense that it actually was.

“I feel complimented that you think I am worth beholding,” Aclysia stated, just as oblivious to the slime’s feelings as she played with her hair. About her own view on Apexus, it was a bit harder to figure out. On one hand, she was a divine being, so a certain amount of wisdom could be expected. On the other hand, those rarely had any experience in mortal endeavours, particularly the ones oriented towards order.

When the sound of her clear voice rung through the room, Gizmo knew he had lost the attention of the adolescent blob again and sighed. “Aclysia, why don’t you do the explaining on this one,” the old man conceded, realizing that he had no chance to keep his pupil’s attention in the presence of the pretty fairy. He unrolled a scroll on the table, layers upon layers of words were written on it, turning it into an indecipherable mess.

“As you wish,” Aclysia nodded, the old man getting up with a groan and making his way over to his pot. He reached it just as it began whistling and took it off the hook with thick mittens shielding his hands from the heat.

Meanwhile, the metal fairy touched a corner of the paper. A circle of words became highlighted by virtue of them beginning to glow in a faint silver in the ocean of black scribbles. Then the words began to fly upwards, changing shape and finally taking the form of a tree.

This wasn’t Apexus’ first experience with a Blessed Parchment. It was a special kind of paper, of which Gizmo possessed quite a lot for some reason, that could hold basic spells, divine exceptions notwithstanding. Gizmo used it to visualize most of the lectures, since the slime wasn’t the most scholarly of students and didn’t like reading a whole lot. Even though it was now passable at it and writing.

With that out of the way, Gizmo had moved on to lessons about the world around them a few weeks ago. He had started with all the boring things, how a day was measured, what a centimetre was, some math and so on. Now it seemed that the monkish exile was willing to show Apexus something more interesting.

“This is the omni-verse,” Aclysia began, gesturing at the image of the tree that was about twice as tall as herself. It was a silver trunk with leaves of a gentle green and roots that turned dark, burrowed into nothing. For Apexus, it was small, but even it could appreciate the awe that radiated from this symbol idol. “Or rather, the standard visualization of it. The tree that lays at the foundation of all trees, blossoming new dimensions like plants blossom leaves. With roots in the everlasting dark that surrounds us.

“The silver trunk is the dimension of the gods, where they rest and form new branches. In there, with them, rest the souls of beings divine. It is a plane of raw energy, to be focused into shapes of beings that have ascended from sapient, to apostle, to immortal and then to god. Those ascended are not inferior to those that came first, but they are too numerous to all be remembered. The thirty-three original gods live high up in the ever-rising crown of the first branches.” Aclysia underlined her explanations by flying around the particularly densely leaved spire of the illusion.

“On each branch hang several leaves, dimensions that exist independent from each other but are all interlinked,” she continued on. “We roughly separate leaves into four categories: safe, explored, discovered and unknown. A safe leaf is as close to utopia as humanoids can hope to live, lands of stability with bountifully resources and not particularly dangerous, as long as they don’t act like fools. The covenant of the divine prevents gods from easily fooling with the mortals in safe leaves, forcing them to announce whatever changes they may make to them. Ctania is such a safe leaf.”

“One of the more coveted ones at that,” Gizmo chimed, sitting back down on the table with an iron cup between his hands. Steam rose from the top, yet the old man held the cup as if it was lukewarm. Doubtlessly another one of the magic gadgets in the house. “The worlds of the summer gods are always more densely populated.”

“Indeed,” Aclysia nodded. “Hashahin, my creator and maker of this leaf, is one of the eight summer gods. Of the thirty-three original gods, thirty-two of them are divided into the four seasons, while the divine father, head of the gods, resides over all four of them and a fifth one seldomly seen in all the dimensions called Sorcia.”

“The season of magic,” Gizmo mumbled, staring into his cup for a long second before carefully sipping on it.

“The remaining three categories are easier explained,” Aclysia continued on, glancing at Apexus to make sure he was still listening. The slime was, if only for the fact that it found it interesting that the tree and the metal fairy shared the same colour scheme. “Explored leaves are those that are widely known, but have no protection against changes and as such become playgrounds for bored gods every so often. Generally, the adjustments made are small in scope.

Then come the discovered leaves, worlds that are known to exist and have basic information available about them, but remain a mystery to all but those who inhabit them. Most of the times, not even they know all about their worlds.

Lastly are the unknown leaves, as the name implies these dimensions haven’t been touched by any non-native species.

We call the people that explore the subtle changes in explored leaves Walkers, those that seek out to find out more about discovered leaves Climbers and those who explore the branches of the omni-verses in search of unknown leaves Branchers. In order of general difficulty,” Aclysia took a small pause to let all of that sink in.

A pause Apexus needed. The sheer scope of things was blowing its nucleus. From a drop in a pond to the idea that there was an effectively infinite number of worlds out there, hanging from a tree so big it couldn’t even fathom, the slime had been on quite a journey to even get to that idea. The sight of the illusionary tree growing and growing as branches and leaves were added to it by invisible hands helped somewhat.

“The leaves of the omni-verse have but one thing in common and that is magic,” Aclysia continued on. “For they are all made from the same, they all obey the same rules of magic, even if the gods decide that gravity is reversed in a dimension or if the world is round rather than flat, possesses moons and no suns but no tides, whatever the design of a dimension is, the rules of magic remain the same. There is only one kind of being, one that does not stem from the omni-verse and does not follow the laws of magic. We call them Parasytes.”

Aclysia’s hand gestured down to the dark roots of the tree. “They stem from the great darkness where the omni-verse is rooted, where it absorbs the power of the space that is not. Those are the root dimensions, and the closer to the darkness one gets, the more corrupted and demonic the creatures one encounters. To meet these beings of malevolence, one must either summon them or travel to the root dimensions. The Parasytes themselves, luckily, are unable to enter leaves. Instead they nest on the branches, chipping away at the great tree in an attempt to drag it and all of us back into the endless dark. That is the basis of the structure we exist in.”

The tree that had started merely twice as big as the small metal fairy had turned into a huge structure of silver and green that reached underneath the ceiling, its ephemeral roots spread all over the table. Cracks appeared on the bark as Gizmo added a last comment. “One day, so the divine father, the omni-verse will no longer be able to hold all the fruits of godly labour, or the many ascended wills contained inside its trunk. Then, it will all collapse under its own weight.” Bark and branches began to fall off, leaves tumbling into a greedy black mist that crept up from below to the cries of billions of souls.

“An age of darkness will follow. Paraytes will feast on or, at the very least, corrupt every leaf they touch,” the tree withered away completely leaving nothing but the dark mist. “However, some leaves will resist and successfully weather the assault. Even if they won’t, some gods will have prepared mighty fortresses inside the bark. Seeds of a new tree,” spots of silver light appeared, slowly blossoming into saplings. “And from the remains, new omni-verses will be born, making the name somewhat inaccurate. Whether this process has already happened before or whether this tree is the first of its kind, we do not know.”

The mist and saplings all faded away, scattered into letters and were absorbed back into the Blessed Parchment. Gizmo rolled it back together and sealed it with a simple string. “Put this back for me, would you, Apexus?” the old man asked in a coarse voice, beginning to cough heavily soon thereafter.

“We will continue with some math, once you can multiply properly, we will continue with what can be found on the leaves.”