White Wood 11

“Hello! Hello! Help me! Hello! Hello! Help me! Hello! Hello!” an oddly high-pitched, immensely annoying version of the Archwood Maggot’s voice distracted Reysha and stayed her hand. Then a streak of white hair entered her vision.

Stemming her hands into her hips, the metal fairy shook her head in a disapproving manner. The moth-like wings behind her back reduced to a grey blur, as the black pattern melded with the white base from the sheer speed of the flaps. “You ignored my advice,” Aclysia stated, “thank Hashahin that I already anticipated this and we begun moving in search of you!”

“I just had a tiny lick of blood!” Reysha defended herself, gesturing towards the divine creation with a dagger about half her total body size. “And then some more flesh and everything else! I would have made it in time if it weren’t for Captain Blueball, Saint Nagging, and Rouge the Rogue over here!”

Aclysia looked over to the Priestess, who was visibly relaxed now that the knife was no longer on her throat. Too relaxed, as the smell of ammonia filled the pretty tight space. Disgusted and with mocking cackling, Reysha shoved Mehily away from herself. The dirty blonde woman hit the floor and quickly and quiveringly crawled away, terrorized by how close she just had been to the afterlife. “Sorry, Piss Priest is obviously the more accurate nickname,” the tiger girl announced, taking one of the simple pieces of clothes out of her bag and beginning to clean her dagger of the blood.

Although the Warrior now had no reason to delay his attacks further, the wall of a man simply stood there, frozen. He barely even had the presence of mind to help up his fearful comrade, unbothered by her soiled state. This was because, although the obvious connection between Aclysia and the thing eluded him, he was able to see the creature peeling out of the darkness behind the appearing fairy.

Apexus arrived on four legs growing out of his sides, each of them as thin as a young tree-branch and splitting into two lightly movable hooks at the end. They carried the slime forwards with steady steps, his light green wings folded on his back, the feathers thick to function as a shield. The gap between them allowed a look at the dark, fist sized nucleus that lay within the ellipsis shaped monster. At the front, two blue fox ears peeked out above a pair of light blue, cat eyes. Between those two sets sat a wooden plate, the same that adorned the head of the Archwood Maggots. Below were three sets of mandibles from the same creature, stacked one over the other, clicking as they opened and closed in unison.

The Warrior paled at the sight of this chimeric nightmare. His comrade, the Rogue, put it in perfect words. “What the fuck is THAT?!” his voice sounded like he was on the edge of breaking down in a panic attack. Understandable, given the recent ten minutes had started their count with his view of Reysha pressing hot blood out of a heart into her mouth and concluded with whatever Apexus was, with a middle part of groin-kicking and hand-penetration.

Rather than answer, Reysha ripped her stiletto out of her replacement’s hand and began cleaning that as well. Her blue eyes were coldly mustering all of them, not letting them out of sight as her previously white washcloth turned crimson. With Apexus around, she didn’t think any of them would dare to move, but it was better to have an eye on these things. At least that was her current opinion.

“My awakener, Apexus,” Aclysia stated in a matter of fact tone, it wouldn’t matter anyhow. Nobody was dense enough to think there were two slimes (as adjusted as he was, that core was still plainly visible) with a black and white fairy around. Once they calmed down, they would easily realize this. Rather than shed tears over this, Aclysia flew down to the Priestess and begun weaving together some healing magic. Rather than just improvising the intensity, she used her gained aptitude to cast the proper basic healing spell that her class shared with Priests, Mend by Light.

Slowly, the golden aura that encapsulated her hands closed the wound in the Priest’s throat. Nobody dared to stop Aclysia, as they recognized the spell. “Oh, don’t bother healing her,” Reysha pointed out, sheathing her dagger and then juggling her stiletto in one hand. “Now that these guys have seen you two we need to murder them anyhow.”

“We are not killing anybody!” Aclysia spread her arms protectively in front of the Priestess. “The sin you were about to commit was the sole reason I intervened!”

“I don’t even know if I was about to commit it,” Reysha laughed, the stiletto falling blade first between index and middle finger, coming to a rest with its guard on them.

“You weren’t sure if you were going to kill her?” the Rogue croaked, holding his wrist tightly to hinder bloodflow toward the hole in his hand.

The tiger girl grinned ear to ear, her sharp teeth glistening dangerously in the weak light of the nearby sap. “I was just going to move my hand, no idea if it was going to cut her throat or just widened the wound a bit.”

At one end of the corridor, the Warrior found his voice again to comment, in a very high pitch for such a giant, “You are insane!”

“Duh!” Reysha answered and begun juggling again. “Seriously, Apexus, let’s murder them, you can eat them, then you can fuck me with an actual dick, sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

“You…” the Priestess couldn’t believe what she was seeing and hearing. That Reysha managed to get herself some barely known… disease was one thing. That she chose to deal and copulate with monsters a whole other. At the idea, Mehily finally failed at keeping the contents of her stomach within and vomited after rolling towards the corned of the corridor. “By all of Jersoja’s teachings… you are in league with that THING?!”

“Yeah, he saved my life, shared some meals, he is pretty sympathetic and I sucked his tentacle-cock. All that while being a mute.”

“Thank you!” the wooden plate on Apexus’ equivalent of a forehead reverberated in the high-pitched tone. It hurt Reysha’s ears to listen to that.

“Was mute.”

“That is heresy upon Jersoja’s teachings!”

“Fuck’im,” the tiger girl rolled her eyes that the grey inside them was plainly visible, “he isn’t MY god, he’s yours, get out of my business.”

“No… no, there are boundaries and you are crossing too many!” Mehily barely managed to raise an arm behind her and twist around to point and look accusingly at the tiger girl. Whose grin became a very impatient scowl in return. Her hand travelled down to the throwing knives.

Aclysia once more got between them. “You are not killing her!” the metal fairy announced, “I shall not - will not allow this conduct!”

“Why do you care?” Reysha groaned. “You don’t know them, do you? Right now, all their lives are are a massive roadblock. Does it matter how we remove such a risk factor?”

“It matters a whole damned lot!” Aclysia cursed, causing the redhead to raise an eyebrow and take her hand off her belt again.

“Well, you decide then, Apexus,” the tiger girl shrugged. “If Piss Priest’s reaction here doesn’t let you believe it, them getting away means I don’t get to return to Haralry again, making our eventually departure from this leaf very hard.” She looked from the slime to Aclysia, who was silently pressing her pinks lips together. “I owe you two my life, so I really don’t give a shit, but the logical thing would be to remove them and just say that they died fighting the boss or something. Apexus could even grow a mouth rather than that odd, five-lines wood plate.”

“What is correct isn’t always what is right,” Aclysia, very quietly, stated, knowing that sounded somewhat ridiculous. “Did these people commit any egregious wrongs that would justify such a swift execution?”

“Not really, no,” Reysha conceded without a care, that was not her point anyway, “they are just inconvenient is all.”

“I will not kill with such a reason…” she paused and looked to Apexus. “However, I will bend to the will of my awakener, thus is my oath as his servant.” Her whole body tensed as if the gravity of the situation came down to this moment. “I will understand a ‘I’m sorry’ for us taking action and a ‘very good’ for us letting them go.’

The slime did not sign up for heavy decisions today. This whole trip was about Reysha eating stuff and Aclysia wanting to see whether or not Apexus could speak using the Growth from the maggots. Not about a moral conundrum.

Truthfully speaking, Apexus didn’t care whatsoever about any of those three. Sounds of a chase had even allowed them to locate Reysha’s position, after spending some time eating the creatures Apexus currently borrowed parts from. There had obviously been some sort of fight and their behaviour also underlined a hostile stance towards not only Reysha but himself.

The insane tiger girl was, oddly enough, making the reasonable suggestion. One that Apexus was inclined to follow, for the advantages that it brought and the disadvantages avoided. However, and this was the crux of it all, Aclysia was looking at him with deeply concerned eyes. Although one was logical, the other was tied to what the slime truly cared about.

There was also another realization that the slime had when noticing the fear the threatened party exuded. Fear and resolution, particularly in the Warriors case. Although he was the only one who could sensibly get away, being both physically able and unwounded, it was clear from his stare and posture that he would stand his ground until the very end.

‘If I kill one of them, people will miss them, like I missed Aclysia,’ the slime thought. That was a pain he wished not upon anyone, a void in their hearts that could only and justifiably be filled with resentment for Apexus himself. He didn’t fear being hunted again, not as much as becoming a being with eyes like Apotho.

“Very good,” echoed through the room and the enemy trio relaxed visibly.

Reysha shrugged it off, not caring enough about this to get upset. Having already kicked their asses, her only annoyance with the situation was the she wouldn’t be able to return to the city she already disliked. “Okay, you can go and suck somewhere else,” she yawned like a cat that was suddenly uninterested in the mouse it had hunted down.

Aclysia looked immensely relieved, flying over to her awakener and hugging his face, whispering, “Thank you,” into his ear as the party, slowly backed away from the trio. The Priestess looked over her shoulder with unveiled disgust one last time. Although Apexus had spared them the pain of loss, a resentment of similar fervor was seemingly directed towards him and Reysha now. “Although this truthfully complicates things…” Aclysia addressed the tiger girl again, currently cleaning her claws of drying bits of flesh, “I am thoroughly disappointed in you.”

“Oh, spare me the lecture,” Reysha hissed, “unless you want me to slap a thousand ‘I told you so’ in your face when this eventually bites us in the ass – which it will. Right in our nice, round, jiggling asses.”