Apexus felt absolutely fantastic.

The eternal spring had been an adequate climate for him. Not as good as the summer of Ctania, but good enough to get his goo flexible and fast flowing. The further south they travelled from the city, however, the more Apexus felt his energy increase. It culminated in Reysha eventually asking, “What the fuck is making you so happy?”

“I feel like I am going home,” Apexus responded. There was a feeling in the air, a sort of vibration, that resonated with his membrane and elicited a joyous and bittersweet feeling from his core. “I think this is what you would call nostalgia.”

“Okay, follow up question: what are ya nostalgic about?” Reysha continued with a puzzled expression. “You’re a slime. I get you’re not exactly the common variety that’s usually found around watery areas, but you shouldn’t be this happy to get close to fucking lava.”

“It’s not about lava. I have never seen any anyway,” Apexus pointed out. “I was told that there were magma chambers around where I was… where I spawned.” It was difficult to find the correct choice of words for his unexplained start of being. Spawning sounded a bit too monstrous, but it was also the closest word they had. “The air is just similar. Very hot. Not as humid as the cave I came from though.”

“Who told you about magma being underground?” Reysha wondered, not recalling lava anywhere on Ctania.

“…Gizmo…” Apexus mumbled quietly.

“Oh.”

They silently walked on for five minutes, before the slime decided that he wouldn’t let his mood get spoiled. “Have you ever seen lava?”

“Can’t say I have,” Reysha answered.

“The knowledge of its appearance and attributes has been ingrained in my mind,” Aclysia’s response came with the usual melody of her voice, “but my eyes have yet to witness molten rock.”

“Don’t try to bathe in it,” the giggling tiger girl said.

“I probably could,” Aclysia thought out loud and earned herself a duo of surprised glances. “Not for any extended period, but this vessel of my angelic spark does not suffer from having its flesh seared.” She raised a hand to her chest, stroking her collarbone to underline her words. “I might melt, however, which is an experience I doubt will be pleasant.”

“Why don’t we throw you in the frontline more often if you’re that sturdy?” Reysha wanted to know.

“She’s not sturdy,” Apexus chimed in, not wanting to entertain the thought of the metal fairy taking a physical role. “My melody is too light to take any attacks and the… what’s the proper word… integrity? The integrity of her body is important. If it gets damaged too much, her spark might get loosened.”

“As darling says,” Aclysia’s comment was a little song. Taking his arm, she held onto him as they walked on. The slime put it around her waist to hug the metal fairy as much as he could while still walking. Happily, she hummed a further melody. Apexus got to hear both her beautiful voice and squeeze her butt a little bit. “My particular circumstances likely mean that my father would send my soul back to this vessel, should it get damaged beyond function. As long as it gets restored, that is.”

“How would we even ‘repair’ you?” Reysha wondered.

“Likely, the aid of a priest would need to be enlisted,” the angel responded. “Although, others skilled in rituals would presumably do as well, given that I was restored by Gizmo before.” She tried her best to make that name pass her lips in a casual fashion. “I would assume that this vessel may have self-regenerating capacities as well. It would simply take a lengthy amount of time.”

“Man, I wish I just came back to life a couple of days after getting stabbed,” the redhead playfully kicked a pebble down the road.

“It’d be bad for you,” Apexus put an arm around her as well, now having both of the bubble butts of his gorgeous lovers and party members in his hands. “You already fight too recklessly.”

Reysha let a purr rise from deep in her throat and licked Apexus’ exposed neck. “I guess so,” she whispered, leaning up to his midnight blue, almost black fox ears. “Just keep holding me and things will work out.” Her soft tail brushed over his arm, as it slowly moved with feline delight.

Apexus made a mental note to hold them like this more often. Both of his lovers liked it and he was himself very pleased with the situation. It certainly made the fact that they had to spend time wandering less cumbersome. If this stretch of land hadn’t been so densely populated, Apexus could have transformed and carried Reysha to their destination by air.

Eventually, the ground way brought them to the destination as well. The landscape changed around them with every step. Slow at first, with the occasional large, dark rock sticking out between the fertile fields, but quicker the more the mountains in the distance grew. The ever-present heat increased as well, until it was hotter than even on summer leaves. Last fields were left behind them and replaced with patches of dirt and grass between large rocks. Soon, even that was gone, leaving only craggy stone and a metallic, sulfuric smell.

Apexus continued moving with more vigour, while Reysha occasionally lifted her practical shirt at the chest part to get some air flowing over the naked, sweaty skin underneath. “It’s hot here,” the desert child pointed out, as they walked towards their first lava pool.

With curiosity, all three of them looked at the lake of molten rock that had formed at the end of a thin stream, running down from the main volcano that rose ahead. The orange-red glow of the superheated stone and the black layer that consolidated into an isolating, only slightly cooler sheet, were interesting to behold. When a gas bubble caused some of the lava to jump into the air, the three quickly backed off.

“So… that’s lava… huh,” Reysha looked at it and then started laughing out loud. “It looks like dangerous tomato sauce!” She continued to laugh and then looked over to Aclysia. The angel tilted her head. “Come on, bubble butt, I am setting you up here!”

“Setting me up for what?” Aclysia tilted her head.

Apexus had the answer at the ready, “A pun, I think.”

“Okay, how do you keep doing that?” Reysha wanted to know. “Did you evolve mind-reading?”

“No, I just love you two, so I watch you like an ant colony does their brood,” the slime explained from behind his mask. “I want to understand you, so I keep track.”

Reysha blinked a couple times and wondered why the only thing she felt at that revelation was a warm, happy fuzziness in her belly. Having someone watch her so intently that they could read her intentions should have been at least a bit creepy. ‘Love is so weird,’ she thought and cackled in a content fashion. “Do ya know what the pun was supposed to be?”

“Nope,” Apexus answered immediately. “I can read body language, not minds. I’m an ambush predator.”

“Did ya figure it out Clysia or can ya only think of bad puns?”

“Perhaps I can only think of superb puns and this one is awful?” Aclysia suggested.

“Nah,” Reysha waved off, not even bothering to show why that was an impossible scenario. “Anyway, you were supposed to say ‘more like hot sauce’.” Against her best intent, Aclysia let out a single giggle. “AHA! You laughed; I win.”

“I refuse the terms and conditions of this battle.”

“Too bad, I’mma make ya play by them anyway,” Reysha slurred her words as she continued to giggle. Her laughter ceased, just as Apexus’ head moved. Even Aclysia could hear the reason for their sudden shift in attention.

There was a distant roar, a deep tone that echoed from the mountain. Ears rotating, Reysha and Apexus tried to pinpoint the origin. They only got a rough direction before it stopped. “Prey,” the slime spoke a single word and looked over to the other two. “You mind if I scout ahead?”

“Please do, darling,” Aclysia told him. “We’ll see if we find a proper camping site.” Reysha simply nodded to that and left the slime to start running.

Even with all of the heat of the place, he wasn’t as fast as Reysha. No amount of external heat could really make up for the lack of muscle. Still, the slime sprinted at a pace regular humans would have found impressive and he benefited from being tireless.

The slime unfolded his wings. With one mighty beat, he went into the air. Three more quickly followed to let him gain height. Then he went about it more methodically. His robe fluttered in the wind of the flight. A moderate bother, as long as he kept his limbs close to his body and the cloth from moving around too much.

He went higher above the rising ground of the mountain, not wanting to find himself in the range of even the largest of creatures. Looking around for any birds that might come to harm him, the chimera only found eagles that he had outgrown and who didn’t regard him as prey anymore. Secure, Apexus then scanned the ground and watched for the smoke plume that was supposed to betray his target’s location. He only had to reorient himself once towards the east to find a Volcano Tearer.

The lizard was massive, larger even than the house the group had stayed in on the Summer Rest island. Being the apex predator of the region, it didn’t bother with stealthy colours, its scales being a bright red and green. Six long, clawed legs extended out of a sleek torso. The pairs in the middle and the back were identical, muscular things, optimal for sprinting. The legs at the front were slightly altered, possessing thicker claws on larger paws. Those claws dug into the rock as the Volcano Tearer followed its namesake.

The long neck of the monster allowed it to look down at its claws, digging through the rock, and a tail extended far from its hindquarters, thinning until it shaped a profile like a whip. Noticing the movement in the sky, the monster stopped tearing out stone for a moment and looked up at Apexus. Its eyes were entirely black, its rows of sharp teeth exposed in a threatening hiss. When the slime flew by overhead, the faux-dragon shot a breath of fire in his direction. It didn’t come close to bridging the distance between them, but the signal was clear.

The Volcano Tearer went back to digging. With one brutal motion, it opened a hole in the mountainside and caused a new river of lava to bleed from the black rock. Unbothered by the heat running around its claws, the monster lowered its mouth to the hole and snapped at something that moved in the stream. A kind of squid that lived in the extreme heat and usually kept to the innards of the volcano. Numerous and reproducing in relative safety, they only came out accidentally when pulled along a stream. They were the common meal of the Azenian Volk Dragon.

Keeping the stone liquid through the extreme heat in its own innards, the monster regurgitated most of the lava once it had separated meat from rock. The organ responsible for that heat, the melting core, was what Apexus was after.

The slime circled above its future prey for a few more minutes, looking at the surroundings. The mountain was less craggy where the faux-dragons regularly hunted. Repeated opening and sealing of holes by claws and cooling lava had created a mixture of naturally rocky and oddly wavy surfaces, with the rare lava pool scattered where orange-red rivers had become somewhat stable. ‘Nothing here,’ the slime thought and flew further up the mountain. He found the lava lake on top, as well as a few more of the Volcano Tearers. They were clumped together, evidently unbothered by each other’s presence, which would make it hard to hunt any that kept close.

The rim of the crater in which the lava lake sat was more interesting to the slime. The volcano never erupted in the proper sense, but the level of the lake’s surface varied with time, sometimes spilling over the edge. This created a peculiarly shaped, solid circle. Apexus landed to inspect things more closely.

‘Nothing here either,’ Apexus thought, when he failed to find any loose rocks he may have been able to send tumbling down the mountainside. Quickly rising back into the air, the slime continued his scouting of the area. Just because they were going to fight the massive lizard didn’t mean they had to do so in a fashion that was likely to get them hurt.

The slime looked at the layout of the land and the way these creatures moved over it. His attentive mind noted every detail he could spot as he tried to find the weaknesses in the being’s design. There was no such thing as the perfect form, every shape of being had some sort of blind spot. Being a sapient hunter, the slime was adept at finding them. Higher intelligence was the greatest tool when it came to hunting large game.

Perhaps there was no immediate victory to be found in the environment, but he could still use it to the greatest effect. Once he had formulated a plan in his mind, he returned to his women to discuss it.