Apexus didn’t stop on his own volition. The legs he had grown were burning with exhaustion, but his mind was terrorized. Whatever abilities Apotho had displayed there, this life draining, it was a frightening display and as such the slime continued to run until it suddenly hit an uneven ditch of a Forester Dragon.

Tired hooves sinking into the upheaved soil, getting stuck in some remaining roots, Apexus was sent flying downwards as the fragile ankle broke. A few metres away, Reysha landed, carried by the suddenly ended momentum.

The pain seared the slime’s mind back into reality. What had carried it all the way here was replaced by the sudden onset of understanding as Apexus was unable to bring its legs to move again. The terror was justified, but they had fled from the imprisoned Warlock through the forest. If there was any way that ancient danger could followed them, Apotho already would have.

“Awakener, are you alright?” Aclysia asked as Apexus got rid of the deer legs. The slime nodded, it was in need of food and water, but not too urgently, and a long moment of rest would also help. They both turned towards the sprawled out tiger girl, who had suddenly begun to laugh.

“What is this shit?” she asked, raising one hand and holding it in front of the sun above. “Dungeon poisoning? So, I just survived to get into a life that’s empty of all things worth living for? What a joke.” Just as she feared her life to be, her continued giggling was bereft of all happiness. A dull sound. “And I almost ran face first into that old creeps arms there!” she looked over to the duo. “And you wanted me to meet that guy?!”

Aclysia landed, her wings hanging loosely in shame and loathing, “We were not aware of his true nature.”

At her side, Apexus wondered where Gizmo started and Apotho had begun. When the old man had previously been that sick, in the time before the metal fairy was restored, that dark side to him had not appeared. Or, perhaps, it had and something had simply prevented the life draining from affecting the slime. What that something was remained unknown.

“Well, whatever,” Reysha let her hand fall to the side again, “not like it fucking matters.”

They fell into momentary silence. The forest didn’t care about their misery. Birds were singing. The wind rustling in the canopies. Distantly, the sounds of splintering wood could be heard. A Forester Dragon was feeding. Time passed, then Apexus had a sudden thought.

In a sudden hurry, to try and snap the tiger girl out of her lethargy, he searched for a way to communicate. How he wished that he could simply write words on his own skin, but for that it lacked the tools of detailed pigmentation. He could only swap the entire colour at once, not some parts of it. Similarly, he may have been able to spell one letter at a time, but displaying whole sentences as bumps or tentacles was much to straining.

Perhaps one letter at the time was enough though. He already had both of the girls attention from the buzz he was making. Three simple letters were acted out through a stretching tentacle. “L-I-E,” Reysha followed, “Lie? About what?” She was obviously confused.

“Lie…” Aclysia muttered more quietly, then she understood what her awakener was trying to say. “Right, Gi- Apotho could have lied, Reysha,” now confronted with the idea, it was the logical conclusion. “He wanted to absorb your life force. It was in his interest to make you believe that there was no hope for you. That way it must have been easier to manipulate you.”

Both times the Warlock had manipulated them, he had told them about something they already believed anyway. Hemle’s caution had been dulled to non-existence, while Reysha’s despair had been amplified. With Apexus, that had failed. The slime had not even a lingering wish to sacrifice the tiger girl, as such the word-based spell had fallen on deaf ears.

A sparkle of hope entered Reysha’s blue eyes, “Yes, yes, absolutely. If I wanted to stab a guy, I would tell him I would put out in a dark alleyway.” A bit crude, not to mention not really fitting, a metaphor, but good enough. “What do you think then? He lied about the cure but not about the symptoms? That’s fucked up!” The genuine outrage filled the so dull looking tiger girl with conviction again. Her tail went into a bushy state as she rolled on all fours and hissed in the general direction they had come from. “If he wasn’t all powerful looking, I would stab that asshole!”

Now that was the Reysha the slime wanted to see. Reckless, sure, but wild and beautiful. “If this was a more common phenomenon, surely they would have taught you about it,” Aclysia continued on, “you did have basic adventuring training after all.”

“Incomplete, but yes,” the tiger girl nodded, inspecting her feet. She had been bootless until a couple of days ago, when she had bought a used pair in the port. “I was far enough in to have frequented a dungeon with a party,” she dangerously narrowed her eyes at that subject, her bushy tail swaying quickly. “Fuck that, whatever I have can’t be unknown. Not like being lost and running out of rations in a dungeon is a rare thing for adventurers!”

“Yes… but I am afraid I know nothing to improve your condition,” Aclysia began to carefully formulate a suggestion. “We therefore need to seek that knowledge elsewhere.”

“Well, we are obviously not going back to that scary ass hut,” Reysha growled. “Before I feed that lying ass, I will just off myself.” Moments of silence ensued. “There got to be another place.” More silence as Apexus and Aclysia waited for her to figure it out. “Oh… fuck, I don’t want to,” the tiger girl finally realized.

“You do not have to,” the metal fairy informed her, “but you will have to search on your lonesome. I am bound to this plane for as long as my quest remains incomplete and should my awakener leave, I shall go rest in dormancy once more.” That was the first time Apexus had heard of this, but it was also the first time the topic of leaving the leaf had come up outside of informal discussions.

“Gah!” Reysha plopped down on her behind and threw her hands into the air. “Fine, okay, fine, I don’t want to leave you two behind even if you guided me to a horror show… you are all I have right now…” the fur on her tail slowly settled as it fell to the floor and refused to move. Her ears turned sideways in a defeated fashion. “If there is one place on this leaf that’d know, it’d be the branch of the adventurer’s guild.”

While she now possessed the necessary capital to offset her debt, after being treated like dirt by the authorities she almost felt it as a point of principle to not pay them. However, there was absolutely no way to hide her presence when walking into the guild itself. Not only because she was a redheaded bombshell of an exotic species, but because the recent adjustment to her physique would have made her the target of rumours within hours. Very few species brandished dark sclera or reddish nails, although the latter could be explained away with paint.

To hide these things, Reysha lacked the necessary skills and magic.

“Well then, I will crawl my ass back there,” she scoffed, “maybe they’ll give me some respect when I tell them I beat the dungeon on my lonesome at least.” The widest grin she had worn in a while appeared on her face. Although the shock of the mild mind control she had been exposed to earlier was still lingering at the rim of her awareness, the state of her mind helped her churn through that rather quickly. Mild insanity came with its fair share of advantages.

Apexus wanted to point out that was a lie, but he didn’t have lips. Also, he realized that she couldn’t just tell everyone she had beaten the dungeon with him. Unless they told them that Hemle was dead and the bounty was defunct. Which had its own share of baggage and it wasn’t like nobody could potentially want to murder the slime for the same reasons.

“Okay, let’s force something edible down my throat and then go on,” Reysha declared and got off her ass. Apexus could have rested for another couple of minutes, but it felt better to keep moving. The group set out west, to the white wood city.

‘Apexus… come back… one day… come back.’ The last request of his mentor echoed in the slime’s mind as they walked in a normal pace rather than a fleeing hurry. Having words in his head felt weird, it had always been pictures and emotions he had thought in. Three more made their way into his mind, almost without him noticing.

‘I want to.’