The Progenitor wept.

Veins of silver shifted in the sky. Layers upon layers of Branches that swayed against the writhing mass of nothingness that inhabited the darkness between the worlds. Wherever the Omniverse wasn’t, there they were. Parasytes and that which was not yet defined to be a Parasyte. The unnamed, unreasonable, unsensible darkness that just was. They contrasted against the light of the Omniverse and suffered and hated it.

Leaves of many colours hung from the Branches, attached by Stems of hardened light. The silver glitter was the very inspiration of the stars. Every firmament on the Leaves invoked that imagery, of flashes of powerful silver, like the roots of each world in the distance.

A Stem had been cut.

Apexus and his party stood among a crowd of twenty travellers and traders, atop a part of the road that saw it rise to a ridge of valleys in the bark. Many of those that stood there now wished the road had kept them at the bottom of the trench. At least there, they would have travelled in blissful ignorance of what was unfolding before them.

A Leaf tumbled. The wish to reclaim in which the Branches swayed caused the world to sink slowly towards the bottom of the Omniverse. It looked every bit like a dead leaf tumbling in gentle winds. It looked so wrong. Between its sickly grey veins, peeks at the world that had been were still visible. The shape of the Leaf frayed around the edge. Gnaw for terrible gnaw, it was torn away by the darkness.

And the cut Stem screamed. Screamed into the darkness with the deadly hiss of escaping energies. It was like a bushfire hitting a gas pocket. Like a mountain erupting. Like a tsunami breaking the dam. It was all of those and none of those things. For all of those things were only possible on worlds pulsing with that very energy that the Roots of the Omniverse had defined out of the primordial darkness. Energy that now returned to it.

The Progenitor wept with one eye and coldly continued its work.

Apexus and his party stared at the tragedy of a million souls. At the Leaf too titanic to be considered such. Raising one hand, Apexus compared the size of the Leaf against it. It was three times his hand, at a distance he couldn’t even fathom. Yet a distance that he felt entitled to cross. The draconic magic cortex pulsed inside him. He put it to rest. Magic was a terrible tool where the beings that had caused this tragedy wandered.

The audible grinding of her teeth caused three of the party members to look upon the last. Aclysia stared with hatred at the floor and squashed under her heel a black dot that stained the silver. Her eyes wandered around, finding the tic-sized Parasytes aimlessly skittering around everywhere, like ants waiting to pick up the right scent to act.

“You cannot hunt them all,” Apexus told her. “It would be like trying to suffocate a fish in water.”

“I can make an attempt.” Aclysia’s jaw kept grinding, until she forcefully closed her eyes and averted her senses from the dying Leaf. The moment she ceased to see it, she ceased to hear the screaming. It was not air the sound travelled through.

In an ever-expanding sprawl, there was an ever-expanding number of losses. Such was the sad truth of the Omniverse, that there was too much creation to guard it all and that there always would be. Unless or until they lost it all, that was. A state that then would only last until a new Tree rose.

Apexus put an arm around his metal fairy and guided her further down the road. His steps were what stirred everyone back to movement. The entrancing catastrophe unfolding a great distance away, they did their best to leave it behind. The cosmic insignificance they felt even after the sight disappeared behind a silver ridge gnawed at their innards. No wonder one of the traders attempted to distract herself by steering her cart towards the party.

“You seem quite shaken by what just happened.” The brunette woman was specifically gesturing towards Aclysia, whose hate had made room for tired resignation. “You got experience with Leafcutters?”

The party left it to the Guardian Angel to respond or to shush the trader away. After contemplating what she wanted, she responded. “No, we have only encountered an Infestation from afar before,” she responded truthfully. She hesitated for a few more moments, then she gave the entire truth. “My visceral reaction is due to my angelic origin.”

The trader’s eyebrows shot up. “By the 33, really?” she tilted her head, gave the angel the best once-over she could from her elevated position atop the cart. “Always imagined you’d be of the more radiant sort.”

“I’m in wished-for exile, to spend time with my darling.” Aclysia lightened up a little at the use of that word and nuzzled deeper into Apexus’ embrace.

“Oh, that sounds like a story I’d like to hear!” the trader said. The party exchanged easily caught, doubtful glances. “Come on, not like we’ve got anything better to do out here!”

The road ahead was clear. Generations of travel had left minor marks in the bark of the Omniverse, which in turn pointed the way towards the next Leaf. Not that finding the next world over was typically difficult. From a highpoint on the bark, one could typically spot the intense colours of the next Leaf at a distance. It was like seeing a mountain in the distance, several days on foot away, but as long as one had enough food and water, the trek could be made.

“If we tell you, I would like some information in return,” Apexus stated.

The brunette woman looked at the stoic giant of a Monk. “What kind of information?” she asked, not entirely sure what to make of his stone-faced stare. She felt like she was a field animal getting observed by a researcher.

“If you make this track often, you must know what is in this direction.” Apexus gestured in the generality of the Branch before them. “We do not. That kind of information.”

“Also what the fuck you’re transporting,” Reysha blurted out, much too curious not to ask.

“Well, I can answer that readily,” the brunette stated. “Name’s Vilma, by the way.”

“Apexus,” the leader of the party introduced himself, the other three followed. There was a moment of silence, where they did not know where to start or who should tell the story. In the end, Aclysia was the one to do it.

She omitted the details of what Apexus was. In this version, he was an orphan, out in the world trying to find a place in it. An approximation of the truth close enough to serve for the purposes of being understood as it let them dodge some questions. The trader was a bit confused why Apexus would be hunted down for being an orphan, so Reysha had to jump in and supply a lie about him being, in truth, the bastard of an important noble whose wife was intensely displeased with the existence of a proof of his cheating.

A bit on the fantastical side, but among all the other details of the tale, it blended into the background. The trader had no way to verify. They were several Leaves and a one-way teleportation away from Ctania.

“Wow,” the trader said at the end. “So you’re the reason all the Church guys are swarming Stemfield now, huh?”

“Indirectly,” Apexus confirmed.

“Wow,” she repeated. “Well, I’ve been entertained… to answer the easiest question first…” Vilma raised the tarp from her cart and showed the dozen large vases underneath. They were all sealed with wood and wax. “Elomerian vinegar,” she reported. “Sells for a ton in Tenour.”

“That sounds familiar…” Reysha mumbled.

“Tenour? Capital of the Sleeping Empire?”

“…Nope, doesn’t ring a bell,” Reysha shook her head. “Who the fuck calls their country the ‘Sleeping Empire’?”

“Dark elves have interesting tastes.” Vilma shrugged. “There’s a Hub Leaf about two weeks from here. It connects to the capital. You heading there?”

Apexus shook his head. “We’re following a compass.”

“Oh, then we can compare!” Vilma reached for the Adventurer’s Bag at her waist. Passive magic like that was typically too minor to attract the attention of Parasytes, even when she reached inside. The enchantment reacted to her intent and let her grab the item she searched for, instead of the piles of food and water she kept in there.

She produced a basic wooden casing, at the middle of which was a compass whose needle pointed forwards and slightly off to the left. Apexus pulled out the equivalent that Maltos had given him. It had a sturdier metal case around the glass dome and was all around better made, despite the age. Apexus placed it next to Vilma’s on the flat of her cart’s seat, but always kept a hand on it.

The vibrations of the two horses’ steps did not bother the Leaf Finders. Put next to each other, their needles described two parallel lines. “Seems like we’re heading to the same place,” she stated.

“Or the same in-between,” Apexus stated and put his compass away. The Leaf Finders always pointed towards the path to that Leaf, not where that Leaf actually was. In the latter case, they would have been borderline useless. The Branches were a three-dimensional maze unnavigable, both in scale and in finding the path between them. “What else is before us?”

“Well, first we’re going to come across… I don’t even know what it is called.” Vilma scratched the back of her head. “That’s off the beaten path anyway. After that is Regurdia, then Veltund. I’ll make a stop there and get my supplies stocked up.”

“Why do you not know the Leaf’s name?” Apexus inquired.

“Never visited it, never known anyone that did either,” the inter-Leaf trader replied. “Nothing valuable there, I suppose.” She smirked at the party. “I’m not the adventuring type. Vinegar trade is profitable, so I do it during the winter. Lack of weather out here is boring, but it sure beats freezing.”

“Winter is bad,” Apexus stated in agreement.

The conversation stopped after a few more questions about the two Leaves she had named. Vilma tried to pick the conversation up a couple of times beyond that, but the ‘day’ was late and they were getting tired. The party eventually huddled up in a niche of the bark. The trader kept rolling on. Either they would catch up with her tomorrow or they wouldn’t. That was the simple binary of their existence.

“You should try out the key,” Reysha stated.

“To utilize magic on the Branches is a dangerous task,” Aclysia reminded, only to put a hand on her chin. “Albeit, the spirit within does not respond in dangerous situations. If it is the kind of overt magic that does not engage outside of worlds, it will not activate in the first place… I support Reysha’s idea.”

“Imma just… get ready to run,” Korith confessed. One could not be too cautious when it came to attracting Parasytes.

The entire party strained, ready to book it down the road, should their action cause the aimlessly scattered Parasytes to suddenly descend on them like a swarm of starving locusts. Apexus raised the key and pushed it into the air in front of him.

Nothing.

“Well, that was fucking boring,” Reysha sighed. “Guess we’re still camping outside.”

“And tomorrow?” Apexus asked. “What are we aiming for?”

“I think the unnamed Leaf sounds exciting.” Reysha’s tail flopped on her bedroll, after she sat down on it. The temperature outside the Leaves was simply ‘pleasant’, but a blanket helped many of them to sleep for reason of habit alone. “The other two are just civilized Leaves with nothing to do.”

“Dungeons exist wherever we go,” Aclysia stated.

“Yeah, so we don’t have to think about those.”

A logical answer, although not one Aclysia wanted to hear. The metal fairy sighed, “I would be pleased to remain around civilization, but I accept that I’ve gotten my wish for the past eight months. Korith, what is your opinion on the matter?”

“Uhm, we aren’t trading so… I think the unnamed one sounds most profitable?” The kobold was kneeling on a big pillow, kneading it with her claws. “Maltos wanted us to seek out difficulty and… if we’re going to try and make the Omniverse a better place, going to the Leaves that are already good won’t do much good? By Hoard, there has to be a better formulation of that.”

“I’m picking up what you’re putting down,” Reysha assured.

“What is being put down?” Apexus tilted his head. “I thought that was an euphemism for killing something that is in pain.”

“It is and it is also a metaphor for understanding what someone else means, in that context.” Aclysia scratched her beloved behind the wolf ear. The tip of his tail wagged at the tender touch. The limb taken from the Deathhound sometimes moved in manners that one would expect from a real dog, despite looking much closer to that of a salamander.

“Language remains confusing.” Apexus sighed and then made his decision. “The unnamed Leaf interests me more and it is closer. Three votes to visit it. If we find nothing of interest, we’ll leave afterwards.”