The cart rolled over the streets. Apexus could feel every bump, every depression and even every slant in the road in his liquid form. With eyes and ears basically useless, little managed to get through the layers of corn sacks that had been heaved on top of their confinement, his tremor sense was working to compensate.

Which only made the entire experience even more unpleasant.

Not a single word was spoken. They weren’t supposed to move nor do anything else that could make any sound whatsoever. Apexus hadn’t expected that getting out unseen was going to be pleasant, but being stuck inside this box for some indiscriminate amount of time was almost akin to torture.

It was simply monotonous, the time dripped along like counting waterdrops falling from a stalagmite. They came to a halt, Apexus hoping they had arrived at the gate, but apparently it was just some sort of traffic jam as they soon moved again. After what felt like an eternity, and many stops later, something did finally change.

There was talking outside. More footsteps around the cart. Without the constant bumps, Apexus could feel at least a bit. Not how many people were approaching, but the dull vibrations in the wood when men spoke in their deep voices. Somebody knocking on the driver’s seat from the side. Laughter about an unknown joke.

As they had been warned, stuff on the cart was moved around. Sacks around the outer rim, for the most part, were lifted and then thrown back once their content had been confirmed. There was rumbling right above them, Aclysia and Reysha tensed. Whoever the guard above them was, they only lifted one sack, looked inside, and dropped it again.

Not only did they not reveal the box, with how flat it was, it was almost impossible to make out its existence without hitting the very edge of it. More words were exchanged, more laughter, then they moved again. Aclysia and Reysha were about to relax when they came to another halt.

Loud voices reverberated in the wood. A dull one, a firm one and a zealous one. Three new voices and massive complaints by Trebby. “You… just…” Apexus actually made out in the shouts.

‘Curses,’ the slime thought as all three of them got ready again. Someone massive and heavy climbed on the cart and began plucking the cargo of the vehicle and tossing it to the ground at the side. Stealth was unneeded at that point, so Apexus whispered, “Get ready, I’ll attack first.”

Berholdth grabbed another sack of corn and tossed it aside. His reinforced boots drummed on the wood when he had finally unearthed himself a place to stand firmly. Barely listening to the two women continuously haggling with the owner of the cart, he continued his work.

“You have no right to do this!” the smuggler complained.

“We have every right,” Evmeria snapped back, her leather armour radiating some level of cold despite the charred appearance, illuminated by the endless summer sun. “And every reason. I can see the lies hanging around you like a veil of flowing gold.” The Inquisitor’s hand stretched out towards him, grabbing something invisible, then extending her index finger to point directly at Trebby. “In my mission, such clarity can only be granted to me towards those guilty of hiding the suspect. My faith undoes your corruption, traitor on divinity.”

The smuggler swallowed his answer and suddenly, and very loudly, changed his approach. “Thank you, holy men of the Church!” he exclaimed for everyone to hear, while Berholdth uncovered something beneath the corn. Some sort of chest. “You are my only hope!” The Warrior grabbed the lid and ripped it open.

Apexus bounced outwards as quick as slimely possibly. Which was more than quick enough to surprise a less experienced Warrior off balance. Pulled together slime hastily extended and latched onto his face, causing him to scream as the left half of his face suddenly experienced acid burns.

“Berholdth!” Mehily shouted, but didn’t have time to do much more when Reysha hastily moved out of the cart. While the Priest was still busy pulling magic inside her, a throwing knife penetrated her shoulder.

Reysha jumped right after her weapon, on top of Mehily. The impact and weight of the tiger girl forced her to the ground. “Ya just can’t stop chasing my tail, can you?” Reysha hissed into her former comrade’s ear. The words may have been playful, but the tone was as sharp as glass.

“You keep sinning,” Mehily hissed back, then screamed in pain herself as a stiletto was rammed through her other shoulder and into the ground below.

“Shut up and stay right here,” Reysha returned, not feeling like killing her here after having kept the Priest alive for so long.

Trebby was running for safety in the arms of the guards. Not exactly accidentally, he tripped and fell into the city defender actually out to do his job. His partner, the smuggler’s contact, walked towards the danger, but at a pace at which he would never arrive in time. No reinforcement came for the Inquisition, at least not for now.

Aclysia had already flown upwards, engaging in a duel of spells with the Inquisitor. A duel defined by the metal fairy’s attempt to throw several Sunlight Bolts at Evmeria, who somehow unravelled them with a wave of her hand. Divine spells would do no good towards an agent of the gods.

Even when Reysha came to help her friend, the Noir Rogue was met with largely neutralizing hand gestures. Every stab of her dagger, towards vital areas or not, was met with expert defensive maneuvers that pushed her arm to the side. In a display of ambidextrous mastery, Evmeria continued to dismiss both physical and magical attacks with one hand each, while her blind eyes looked for something else than both of them.

Apexus pulled off the blinded Warrior, afraid his thrashing may accomplish something eventually, and turned towards the Stem. They were already partly past the gate, the massive stone construct that oversaw whoever came into the leaf. There was no ground underneath them, just an ever-shifting assortment of silver lines that interwove like a floor made from twigs.

With no time to question any of this, Apexus flowed off the cart as quickly as he could. He was already upsizing his wings again, but for the moment he was earthbound. As he dropped of the cart, a triumphant shout could be heard.

“I have found you!” Evmeria declared, unbothered by the wounds the other two had suffered, not even aware of them. All she could see was the slime. For her vision, he was a multi-coloured frame with an empty core. The sight of a being without a divine spark was revolting and she finally saw the end of her mission before her.

Icey blue energy gathered between her hands and exploded outwards in a nova. It passed through Aclysia without doing any harm, even Reysha was little more than inconvenienced by a momentary bit of pain. However, when it touched Apexus, the spell unfolded its full tormenting power.

A high-pitched sound involuntarily reverberated from the slimes downsized speaking plates as pain actively ravaged every part of its being. Slime that had barely pulled into its intended elliptic shape writhed and moved like the surface of boiling water. Yet, what Apexus felt wasn’t heat, but unrelenting cold. Thin as a sheet of paper, the spell wave moved through him. What it touched at any given moment was as frozen. The touch of the winter god by his Inquisition’s target was doubly effective against the slime.

Evmeria seemed rather pleased with herself until Aclysia drop-kicked her right in the face and Reysha kicked her in the side a moment after. An Inquisitor’s spells were only truly effective against their hunted targets. Kicking the woman while she was down, knocking all wind from her chest, Reysha ensured no such spell would come their way again. In her zealotry, the Inquisitor had tunnel-visioned on her objective and now paid the price for it. Flying over, Aclysia quickly checked on her darling.

“Can you move?” the white-haired angel asked and Apexus answered by beginning to crawl as quickly as he could, his form still unsteady and overy liquid from remaining crackles of pain. While tremendously painful, the spell had done no real damage. Evmeria had taken her order to get the slime alive seriously and as such went with an incapacitating part of her arsenal.

The element of surprise had been on their side, then numbers, but the former was spent and the later would soon change. Bells rung, alarming the guards, who streamed out of the border fortress in pairs of two. It wasn’t an army, barely even a dozen, but more than enough to overwhelm three adventurers.

Reluctantly, not wanting to harm anyone but well aware that reason was out of the picture, Aclysia threw one bolt after another. Without his wings, Apexus was simply slower on the move than running humans. This was the reality of a crawling body.

It was to their advantage that the Stem was a slowly upwards curving path, that narrowed towards its end in the sky. A sky which slowly faded, turned darker, blacker, with silver branches announcing their presence from behind the blue firmament. The pull of the leaf weakened, they were almost gone.

“What about Trebby’s payment?” Apexus asked, feeling like that had forgotten that.

“Oh, right!” Reysha suddenly, stopped and turned on her heels. In the rotation, she grabbed her adventurer’s bag and then tossed it back towards the city as strongly as she could. It landed miraculously right in the face of a random guardsmen, who then tumbled and hit the back of his head on the cart they had just inhabited.

Sure, it wasn’t the stealthiest payment transferal, but Trebby just appeared and quickly put the bag away. Whatever explanation he would muster really wasn’t the trio’s problem.

Allowing herself to stand there for a moment, since Apexus was dragging down their maximum speed anyway, Reysha grinned and cracked a joke. “I said I trusted him as far as I could throw th…at…” her voice petered out as she stared at something in the distance. Looking from their heightened position on the Stem, over the stretched fortress, onto the main plaza and down the street leading up to it, she spotted something.

A dot fast approaching, much faster than any other thing on this leaf rightfully could. A dot that soon gained the outline of a person. A person insanely fast on his feet, with a tricorne on their head and a bow on their back. “RUN!” she screamed when she realized who was about to beset them.

The Hunter himself had arrived.