Guidance 22 – Centre

Apexus wanted to count the seconds.

It was bright outside. Light shone through the tiny gaps between the roof and the walls that let air drift into the heart of the temple. Green mats woven from plant matter covered the ground in a soft yet flexible layer. The walls were white plaster interrupted by the red wood from which the framework of the temple had been fashioned. A massive statue opposite the large, double-winged door was the sole decoration, and the sole object of true opulence in the entire temple.

It depicted a lotus flower with exceedingly pointy leaves. Each of them was forged from gold, the rims made with sharpened steel, and some kind of liquid metal had been pooled in the many basins between the petals. The central concentration transitioned through various alloys to a pure silver at the centre.

Apexus stared at the lotus flower. Legs crossed, spine straight, he sat alone in the central room of the temple at the heart of the training facility. He heard the shouts of the other pupils outside, going through their morning training. The slime could imagine every pose they went through. How they trained their bodies. Muscles and minds, purified of anything unwanted through steady self-improvement. Admirable. Nourishing. Ample flesh that could be torn off bones. Swallowed whole, dissolved in his stomach, while he cracked what remained. Every bone would be snapped, then enveloped by acidic slime, dissolved in properly-sized bits. Blood and meat would fuel the slime for another day.

There was no word to the imagination, only the act and the satisfaction. Words were long gone. All that the humanoid chimera could consider now was the fading memory of taste. All that was around him was inedible. Even the floor mats were too far gone from proper biological material to be considered food to the spawn of unknown origin.

The door was locked. Apexus knew he could break out if he meant to. All he had to do was stand up and throw his entire weight against the door. It would break. The people would be stunned. In a flurry of motion, he could descend on whoever was closest.

Apexus would have blinked if he still could. Instead, he had to focus his mind on something. He wanted to count the seconds. There was no hope of achieving it. Words were too difficult to think about. Subsequently, numbers were an impossible task. Apexus couldn’t count the seconds, the minutes, the hours, not even the days. One indulgence in the thought of liquefying someone’s entire body and all track of time had gone. All that provided a clue were outside stimuli.

It was morning. Which morning, Apexus had no way of knowing. There was only him, the vast room, and the lotus flower. He did not move. Energy needed to be preserved. The lack of water made his slime feel like gel. A random onlooker would have wondered whether that unbreathing thing in the middle of the room was a living being at all.

Underneath the motionless exterior was suffering. Suffering so pure, it resummoned and rewrote entire memories. That horrid day, when instincts had taken over and Apexus ate a man inside out – a cause for jubilation. Ripping chunks out of the walls of his throat with teeth that grew larger with the very biomass he stole, what else could that have been but a predator’s right? Did a young wolf apologize to a sheep for devouring it so it could grow? Certainly not. The weak nourished the strong, the wheat was separated from the chaff, the circle of life continued, and those who did not improve perished.

What wrong had Apotho done, really, when he murdered to restore his life? Each animal devoured was another day won for the slime. Eating, feasting, gorging himself on all he came across, fuelling his own perpetuation no matter the cost. Apotho had only acted to sustain himself and sustenance could never be wrong. The only wrong the warlock had made was to threaten the slime.

Each second of suffering summoned another memory and whispered to the starving predator intuitions of how warped Apexus had it. Acting in pure self-interest was the only virtue there was. Forcing onto others one’s desires was good. It purified the world of lacklustre elements. It fed those that hunted. Those that stayed hungry. Those that devoured. Each bite taken out of the world was justified. It felt good. It had to be justified.

The intuitions and emotions swirled, impressing themselves on Apexus’ core. The slime urged to move, yet the humanoid body remained still, the legs crossed. Suffering continued unabated. Uncounted time flowed on, each second as long as the one before. The outside went silent. The door opened and closed.

Maltos looked at his unmoving pupil. Although Apexus sat exactly as and where he had when the old Monk had left the room the night before, some things had changed. The mild tan of the chimera was spotty, unsteady, showing brighter and even translucent patches. Through them, glimpses of the skeleton and the stomach could be caught. Hair was falling out of the thinning membrane on top of the head. Feathers shared that fate.

All reserves of biomass the slime had accumulated since entering the Leaf of Tacuitos were depleted. They had been gradually diminished through the longer and longer fasts and this prolonged starvation had seen them fully consumed. Anything was done to survive and so Apexus and his instincts were gradually dismantling his own body.

Circling around, Maltos cast his eyes on the monstrous remains of Apexus’ once gorgeous face. Much of the membrane had entirely retreated, leaving only strips of dark-blue tinted slime providing fresh moisture to the nose and eyes. The lips had been one of the first pieces of his body to go. Instincts dictated that it was cumbersome to have a layer between his bare teeth and a throat that could be torn open.

The inhumanely sharp teeth parted just a bit, when Maltos sat down across the slime. All of the memories of him were raw bile. Before the slime sat a vile creature, out only to inflict unnecessary suffering. A Monk, a mockery of nature, insisting to forego what was pleasurable. What felt bad must have been immoral. Therefore, those that took charge of their own desires and told others to do the same must have been the ultimate evil. Assuming mastery over nature – absolute arrogance.

“How are you?” Maltos asked.

The pitiful remains of the wooden plates under the roof of the slime’s mouth created a series of inhuman clicking sounds. Even if they had been intact, there would have been no words, only bestial noises.

“I understand,” the Monk answered calmly regardless and put down before him a single glass of water that he had brought with him. It was large for a glass, yet still smaller than the mugs they used to serve beer in. “Drink,” Maltos offered. Food was out, that was the test, but without any water the slime would have died.

Apexus reached out to the water. His hand was as spotty as the rest of him. His little finger was a skinless piece of rigid bone. Unnecessary muscles and membrane were eliminated. The slime’s hand stayed. His lidless eyes stared at the glass and at the open palm that pointed at it.

Predation was justice.

Measurement was arrogance.

Self-indulgence was strength of character.

Grabbing the Monk’s hand and taking a bite out of his arm, that would have been proper to the slime. Each gulp of blood would hydrate and nourish. The meat, old and chewy as it would be, seeped in the taste of magic. Power would return to the slime, the power to take a second bite, then a third.

Was it decency that prevented Apexus from following that path? Was it self-preservation that kept the slime from assaulting the powerful old human? The humanoid chimera did not know, as he grabbed the glass and poured its crystal-clear contents down his throat.

The surge of vitality only worsened the suffering.

All too aware of the possibility of life and the fluidity his vital muscles now regained, the arguments of his instincts gained validity in Apexus’ mind. The rush to find more – more water and then something solid. He could already hear it: the wet smacking sound of bloody flesh being pulled apart.

“You’ll be here another day,” Maltos said.

Day.

The true scale of that word hadn’t resonated with Apexus for a long, long time. When witnessing his first cycle of sun and moon, it had felt so long. So much could be accomplished in a day, if one put their mind to it. So many texts could be read. So much knowledge acquired. So much distance crossed. So much prey pinned down on the ground, eyes clawed out, bodies immobilized by the slime’s sheer weight, as the same biomass theirs would join enveloped them and drowned them while their skin and muscles dissolved into a sludge.

Another day.

Apexus placed the glass down.

“Once upon a time, I was an adventurer,” Maltos randomly began to tell his mute pupil. “A greatly successful one at that. People all around me tended to tell me that I had a natural gift to do the right thing, even when the situation could have been warped to our benefit. I toppled tyrants, slew dragons, was rewarded many Divine Fruits, and led a Chapter of adventurers to many new Leaves. Between my expeditions, I raised a family. I never married the woman who bore my son. Time was not equal between us and could never be. I afforded her to move on at any point during the years I was sometimes away, yet she always stayed faithful to me, to the very last breath. I wasn’t there when she died. Neither was my son there when I returned. All that was left for me was a letter, professing his hatred for me. I, who had never been there for the two of them. How could I, who couldn’t care for the woman who gave her all to me and the son who never knew me, possibly become a god?”

The question hovered in the room. Maltos looked down on his hands. His answer to the question lay in the fact that he was right there, old and aging further. Even without words, Apexus understood that. Reaching out, Apexus placed a hand on his teacher’s shoulder. After three seconds, he pulled it back. That was all he could do in his state.

Maltos was surprised, but didn’t show it. Telling the story had been meant to expose his weakness. Any reminder of his greatest failure made him deflate. At the very least, he expected Apexus to struggle with attacking him, not a gesture of affection.

It made what the Monk did to his pupil next harder on his soul.

Surrounded by an Edge, Maltos' hand suddenly sliced off Apexus’ left arm. Pain was a dull sensation to the slime in the first place, a sober reminder that he lost something replaceable. In his current state, the loss of a limb created nothing but a flash of panic. Flying onto his feet, the slime raised his remaining arm defensively. Instincts screaming for nourishment rose to a constant, reality-tinting pressure. Fight, flight, or feast.

“Enter!” Maltos shouted and the large door opened once again.

In the doorframe stood a small humanoid. Her head was about the height of Apexus’ waist and had four horns, two of them large, two small underneath, and all of them curved. Her hair was a golden blonde, the same colour as the outer leaves of the lotus statue and her eyes. Her skin was of a light brown complexion, her hands and feet, as well as much of her arms and legs, were covered in red scales.

Those golden eyes opened wide, when Korith laid eyes upon the creature. “…Apexus?” she asked, unable to fully believe what she had been told. The clothes he wore were the correct ones. His robe had become too loose over the thin, partly translucent torso and dangled down his waist. The brilliant green wings on his back were withered like that of a flightless bird. The fox ears atop his head were almost naked. The human ones, created only for decoration, were gone.

Clicking sounds echoed from the slime’s mouth as he turned to her fully. She was a target he could devour. Small, yet rich in fat and meat. It would be difficult, but not impossible. The desperate slime took a step towards Korith. The kobold remained where she was.

“What are you?” she whispered, her body trembling. She felt a great many things. Terror at this unknown thing before her. Disappointment that this was under the surface of the man she felt so worldly for. Disgust at the dry teeth parting and revealing the tongueless inside. Worry for the person she had come to know this past month. Concern about his condition. Anger at Maltos for pushing him to this. Confusion with herself when she closed the doors behind her and took a step towards the starving slime.

Apexus took a step back.

This encouraged Korith. The raw hunger she saw in his eyes, it shared its space with worry. She took another step.

The slime launched himself at her, toppling her over. Silently, the jaw unhinged and closed in on Korith’s shoulder. She held him back, the resistance she could put up much higher than her stature would let on. Even without that, Apexus would have snapped out of it before he could have taken a bite. He rolled off her and laid flat on the ground.

Shame surged through him.

“Please tell me he’s alive!” Korith said, grabbing Apexus’ right arm. It was completely limp, in order to preserve energy.

“Sit up,” Maltos demanded, his voice stern and reflecting the disappointment he felt himself. His pupil had made it so far, yet lapsed in judgement at that point. “Sit up, Apexus.”

Trembling, the strength of his nucleus and control over his body fading, the slime pushed himself up. The process consumed the muscles in his lower legs. Barely he managed to cross them, sitting like a proper Monk should. Still, his body trembled. He felt cold and ready to jump at Korith again. This time, without stopping himself.

“Find your centre.”

The three words made sense to Apexus. ‘Find my centre,’ he thought to himself. He could not close his eyes. He could shut out the world. The suffering of it all, its grip, like an iron claw around his core, it loosened. The hand pulled away. He stopped trembling. For a few seconds, he was at peace. Then the hunger knocked on his mind again. Weaker, yet still present, not completely ignorable.

For the reason that a piece of raw meat was being held in front of him. Maltos had brought it in while his pupil meditated. “I lied,” he confessed, ready to pull the piece of meat back the moment Apexus reached for it. “This was the last day.” Still, the slime remained in control. “Eat.”

Quickly, yet in measure, Apexus reached for the meat. It was the first of many things he devoured over the next hour.