A reconnaissance flight revealed nothing. To the south was more grass and woodlands. North and east a mountain chain blocked Apexus’ view. Presented with this lack of intel, Apexus decided they should go north, following the coastline. South they knew what awaited them and more of the same was not what they were looking for.

It was difficult terrain to traverse. The grass was interrupted by the edges of the mountains, transforming it into steep cliffs and craggy stretches at times. Along the shore, the rock formations formed basins during low tide, which made for easy foraging.

“I thought you hated shells?” Reysha asked, while watching Apexus eat. The humanoid chimera pulled clam after clam out of a cluster of them. It was the easiest meal he had eaten in a long, long time. One after the other, he swallowed them whole, adding them to a growing pile that his stomach was quickly turning into biomass.

“I do not hate shells. I do not appreciate their dull taste,” Apexus responded. “Hate is an emotion I reserve for few objects and people.”

“Eh, you should hate more things. Makes life more fun,” the redhead joked. “Anyway, you could just do what they’re doing,” she pointed over to Aclysia and Korith, who were prying the shells open to toss their contents into a cauldron. Clam soup was on the menu today. “You’re probably the only animal that eats the clam with the shell.”

“To be the only one to act in a certain manner does not make the act nor the manner wrong.”

“…Ya truly sound like a Monk there, big guy.” Reysha shook her head and giggled. Her eyes dashed over to a colourful creature in a nearby pond. Immediately her demeanour switched to hunting.

In nature, there were few animals that could afford being colourful. To stand out from the background was to be a target for predators and easily spotted by prey alike. The few survival strategies that did involve being colourful typically involved poison, intimidation, or a form of absurd deterrent.

Reysha learned the painful way which one it was for her current target.

It was an odd creature. Segmented like an insect, with a tailfin and two bulbous eyes on stalks that shone in many colours. A selection of feelers extended from what could vaguely be called a head, although there was no discernible neck to differentiate it from its body. The animal moved by flapping its tail and waving many thin legs in unison, skittering along on the surfaces in the water whenever it caught any. A pair of claws were carefully tucked away under its head segment.

Reysha had caught two of these blue and red beings previously. The first one out of curiosity and the second because they were edible to her. The taste of magic had filled her being with a surge of ecstatic relief that would’ve sent her into a wild lovemaking frenzy, had she not still been hungry. One urge could only truly manifest when the other was satisfied.

Ever being a high-functioning nymphomaniac, Reysha desperately wanted to fill her stomach so she could move on to more fun activities. Too bad that each of these critters was only about the size of her hand, much of that being carapace.

Every bite counted.

Naked, the tiger girl stalked along the rim of the pool. For as long as she was outside the water, she was largely unnoticed. She observed the water bug for a long while. Then, she jumped.

Nimble as the being was, it did not manage to fully escape the claws of the redhead. Her right hand closed around her prey. Triumphantly, she swam back up to the surface. A sharp pain exploded in her right thumb, just as a clicking sound hit her still submerged ears. Reysha had been through worse pains, but few of them were this unexpected.

She heard the click a second time, after emerging from the water. She barely even felt her thumb anymore at that point. It was all dull pulses. With a slam against a nearby rock, she killed the water bug. Then she inspected her injured digit.

It was swelling quickly, growing deeper in colour by the second. Two tiny streak marks showed where exactly she had been hit. Carefully, she poked herself and inhaled sharply at the stinging pain. “This fucking thing broke my thumb!” she exclaimed.

That caught both Apexus’ and Aclysia’s attention. The humanoid chimera had put this magical critter aside as a fancy version of the average shrimp and inspected it more closely, while the angel fixed up the tiger girl’s injury.

“Get your own!” Reysha hissed at Apexus and snatched her prey from the curious slime.

He spared them the verbal reminder that he would have to anyway. Carrion and the prey of other hunters did not allow him to replicate what was part of it. It needed to be his kill, by the arbitrary judgement of his genome.

Apexus patrolled the nearby ponds and soon held his own shrimp in his hands. The way the arms were tucked away underneath its head segment vaguely reminded him of a praying mantis. He was careful to only swallow it after it was confirmed dead.

To the slime’s surprise, the punch that had broken Reysha’s thumb was not actually the product of magic. This mantis shrimp’s structure was specialized to a ludicrous degree. Its claws were so intricately constructed that they could produce a thumb-splitting punch with pure physical force. Apexus could not make out what exactly about these beings was magical from his analysis alone.

He formed one of the animal’s claws underneath his wrist. Without the attached arm, it was little more than a densely folded, red bump of chitin, located next to the base of his thumb. He put his palm against a rock and let the smasher snap forwards. An audible click could be heard for metres around. Apexus drew his hand back and inspected the depression he had left in the solid rock. It had not created an outright crack. Instead, it had turned the surface of the impact area into a rough powder. Apexus dusted it off and rubbed the coarse substance between his fingers.

‘Could be useful,’ he thought and looked at the small Growth. Its size was unobstructive and the kickback had been diminished to non-consideration by the way the appendage was constructed. Running a finger along the surface, Apexus noticed no damage on the carapace either. ‘A fascinating evolution.’

Out of interest, Apexus cycled through what else the biology of the being had to offer. Most of its body followed a standard marine life template, resembling crabs much more than shrimps. Apexus was beginning to believe this was a variety of lobster instead. The eyes of the mantis shrimp were interesting – a little too interesting. Apexus had experienced sensory overload before and the capacity of seeing entirely new sets of colours definitely triggered it.

He fought back the headache, just to experience it a little longer. There were waves in the air of a colour he could not describe. There were new contrasts all around, while many of those he knew previously were dragged into the background. There was utility to it, but not as a temporary Growth.

Apexus absorbed the additional eyes back into his body, but kept the claws. He would have to reshape them every time he woke up and after a month the knowledge of how to build them would fade. Until then, they could be a useful tool. The first demonstration was the help they were in cracking clam shells open for the soup.

He ate the discarded shells anyway.

They continued to travel around the mountain. Past the northernmost part of its base was a sight they had hoped for.

Rows upon rows of tilled dirt dominated the landscape. Orderly stacked up stones served as fences between delineated plots of land. Scarcely distributed throughout were houses and tamed woodlands. Most importantly, in the fields that continued all throughout the landscape, people were going after their daily work.

Excited, the party picked up the pace. Korith had to jog and leap, to keep up with the long strides of her taller compatriots. Eventually, they stepped off stone and grass and onto a simple dirt road, created through decades of regularly being travelled by carts.

They were noticed, of course. The people on the fields lowered their tools and stared from a distance. “They don’t seem keen on saying hello,” Reysha remarked.

“We are strange sights on regular occasions. A Leaf that has not seen active travel in generations would logically be sceptical,” Aclysia responded in a strained tone.

“Hopefully scepticism manifests into curiosity, not hostility,” Apexus stated, eyes on a group of people that coalesced on the road in front of them. A small cluster ahead, for everyone to see. That was the signal the farmers all around needed to do more than stay at a distance. Only a few prioritized farm work over being near for whatever was about to unfold.

The group consisted of three young men, one older man, and one young woman. The oldest one was the evident leader of them, standing half a step ahead of the young ones, who all stood in a cluster. Their clothes did not quite match the farmwear everyone else wore, with additional colours stitched on in random places lending a sense of chaos to them.

Apexus stopped two steps in front of the old man. The rest of his party stopped next to him. Reysha even took another step forwards, but stopped immediately and raised her hands when that caused nervous flinching from the farmers that followed the meeting of the two groups. The old man licked his gums and cleared his throat.

“You are not from here,” he said the expected words.

Aclysia breathed a little easier. It was rare but not entirely unheard of for Leaves that were left on their own for too long to develop a dialect so removed from the Common tongue, it turned into its own language. Although the people here had an accent, they were still clearly intelligible.

“No, we’re not,” Apexus responded and put his arm around Aclysia.

The metal fairy leaned against the shoulder of her tall beloved, which simultaneously put her just a bit ahead of him. “We have travelled here from a neighbouring Leaf. I am Aclysia, these are my… friends… Ko-”

“Friends, really?” Reysha laughed out loud. “I had my head between your legs not two days ago, the fuck do you mean friends?”

Aclysia pinched the bridge of her nose, while the people around murmured something amused and scandalized. “Reysha, could you please mind the atmosphere?” she requested.

“Ya know me.”

“…As I was saying, this is my friend Korith,” Aclysia continued their introduction. Shyly, the kobold waved. “This is my worst enemy, Reysha.” The redhead was too busy laughing at the entire situation to make any gesture. “And this is my darling, Apexus.” Stoically, the Monk’s eyes drifted over the people. “As for myself, I am Aclysia.” The white-haired woman did a curt little bow. “We come with no ill intent. Curiosity brought us upon this Leaf and we are pleased to finally come across civilization. If any of you would show us the kindness of telling us about this world, we’d be much obliged.”

The farmers muttered amongst themselves, as did the group in front of the party. Heads packed together, they did not look at all at the party. Their whispers were quiet enough to go unnoticed when it came to Aclysia and Korith. Apexus and Reysha, not so much.

“Boss, what do we do now?” one of the young men asked the elder. “They’re really from off-world!”

“There’s obviously only one thing to do.”

“B-but what if they’re dangerous?” another one of the men, the youngest by the looks of it, asked.

“Dammit, Cain, you’ll never experience anything if you don’t take a risk sometime.”

“I assure you I’m quite dangerous,” Reysha giggled.

The group of five shouted in surprise, when the presence of a tiger girl amongst them manifested suddenly. They scattered in all directions, farmers grabbed whatever tool they had on hand, and Apexus grabbed the redhead by the collar and dragged her back. “I’m disappointed.”

Reysha had a flippant response on her lips, but the blue eyes of the humanoid chimera shut her up. “Sorry… just couldn’t help myself… they look so teasable!”

Apexus shook his head and kept his fist clenched around the leather of her armour. Better to hold her than have her Stealth away from him again. “She has bad manners. I apologize.” The farmers calmed down a little bit.

“Is she a demon?” One of the farmers shouted. “Those black eyes, those red nails, those stripes, that must be devil’s work!”

“While she may be obnoxious, I assure you that she is not of infernal origin,” Aclysia spoke up. “The eyes and nails are the result of a curse, of sorts. The stripes are part of her species.”

“Ehem!” The older man stepped forwards again. He ran a hand through his mostly grey, once black hair. “If you have no nasty surprises in store for us, I’d like to invite you to my home.” Resigned mumbling came from all around at that announcement. “I’m sure you have much to tell and I can tell you all about our Leaf - Harbaemayim.”