The Omniverse stirred.
Giant silver Branches moved along the sky, contrasting it like metal veins in an obsidian cave. Although obsidian was still rather bright compared to the unfathomable darkness that lay past the Branches. Even the most accurate eyes couldn't spy anything in it. Yet, one knew there was movement. Like swirls in the mist, there was distant awareness of something invisibly writhing. A myriad of creatures and consciousnesses, laying beyond the reasonable world. They were suffering at the light and they hated it.
Inside that reasonable world, where the sense could discern what lay ahead, swayed giant Leaves. Even though their size was already incomprehensible, their insides were larger still. Those Leaves served as portals, entrances to worlds, all connected to the Branches through Stems of solid light. Paths glittering like the stars in the skies of the worlds, inspired by those very Stems.
It was too large to be properly perceived. Every last life, every divine spark, every mortal, every angel, every demon and every god walked, crawled and flew in the confines of the Omniverse. The majority concentrated on those Leaves. Of the demons, most were confined to the Roots. Of all categories, the fewest, at any given time, were those who walked the Branches.
And one, one single thing, unique in all of this endless, ever-growing expanse, doomed to one day collapse under its own weight, walked on one of those very Branches at that moment. Walked on all fours, having expanded his mass as much as his energy reserves allowed him to. He was carrying a redhaired tiger girl on his back, with a white-haired, moth-winged angel at his side.
Apexus, Aclysia and Reysha, the three of them had been walking for a long time. It wasn't clear for how long. There was no way to tell the time, no sun or other mark in the sky that they could have read the passage from. From where they were, not much above could be seen anyway. They were following a trench in the bark, perhaps calling it a valley would be more accurate.
They couldn't even use the times they had slept to make a rough estimate of how many days had passed. Aclysia didn't need sleep, although even she sometimes insisted they sat down for a moment so she could rest her consciousness. Apexus and Reysha, on the other hand, sometimes passed out. Especially the Ragressian Rogue spent much of her time in some variation of sleep. When she was awake, she usually wept. She had stopped asking for forgiveness.
Few words had been exchanged. The images of Ctania were still burned into their minds, leaving their thoughts as tattered as the clothes they still wore. All that was clear, between the three of them, was that they needed to move far away. Getting one leaf further wouldn't be enough. Although they weren't aware quite how, they knew that Apotho had been important in some way. The Church would search for them and the trio was sure of just one thing for now. They wanted to survive. Given how mixed their experiences with the Church were, they weren't willing to bet on it for their future chances.
The person they were more afraid of, Apotho and his grudge, they couldn't escape. The Warlock had said he could find them wherever they went. They believed him, for various reasons. Regardless, it was best to go somewhere nobody knew who they were and where nobody could find it out by chance either.
Although their choice in this regard would soon be made for them.
"We need water," Apexus spoke up. That was the one reliable measure of time they had, thirst. More pressing than hunger even, it was the countdown. They had stopped shortly on some Leaves to alleviate those problems for a few days at a time. Time that was now, once more coming to an end. "How much longer, Aclysia?"
"I don't know," Aclysia responded, her tone was tired, drained of emotions. That same lack of energy made her rationality cold and mechanical. Not her usual self, but exactly what they needed at the current time to reach a point at which survival was no longer a question of the next week. "I want to change Branches, at least. The more splits we cross, the less likely it will be someone can stumble over us." She looked up, pondering for a moment. "If you could fly, you could perhaps see where the next split is."
Apexus adjusted his wings a little bit to let Reysha slump into a more comfortable position. Her arms were dangling past his shoulders. The distorted, humanoid skeleton was barely fit for walking on four legs, but it worked well enough. Were it not for the fact that his ears still picked up her soft breathing and the warmth of a living being on his back, Apexus would have thought she was dead.
Carrying her like this wasn't too cumbersome. In a slightly lucky stroke of fate, it actually helped him tremendously. The space around the branches was of a mild temperature which, to a cold-liquid creature like the slime, who had only known summer and underground heat for the few years of his life, was uncharacteristically cold. It limited his energy supply by a bit. Reysha's body heat did quite a bit to counteract that.
Apexus was about to ask why she didn't fly herself, when he noticed a black spot on the bark in front of him. He had to blink, make sure he wasn't hallucinating. Everything around them had been shades of silver for days now. All differences had been in the texture of the bark.
At the floor of a valley like this, the ground was as smooth as a well-trodden dirt path. The walls surrounding them were more like the bark of an oak, with the ridges of its craggy appearance radiating that steady, silver glow, while the depths only had the colour, but spent no light of their own. This smaller design was true for the larger appearance of the Branch as well. At the bottom of the valley, less light shone from the bark than it did from the plateaus above. What was true on the level of the person translated to the level of the cosmos, in this case.
This was why the pitch-black dot was so unusual. Apexus leaned in and inspected it closer, wondering what it was purely because it was something different in this beautiful, monotone landscape.
It had legs. Ten tiny legs, thin like an ant's. The main body was round, the size of a button. The carapace of its back opened and closed, parting into many smaller pieces like a rose made of shark teeth. Those teeth weren't black, not really, but the extremely dark purple could easily be mistaken as simple black.
Apexus, curious, hungry and thirsty, opened his mouth. It had been a while since he had eaten something new. Whenever they visited a new leaf, it was just the basic prey animals or just plain grass that he got to eat.
