A creature like a worm, shaped entire from tailbone. It slithered around the party at constant speed, burrowing into and blending with the white, jagged walls. Fused ligaments and skeletal segments formed a coral-esque formation. Even the ground was riddled with holes.

The worm creature surfaced between Reysha’s legs. Swift as she was, she only managed to dodge through the use of Shadowstep. The redheaded Rogue was breathing heavily. This had only been the latest in a chain of uses of the Martial Art.

Her retaliation attempt was swift. Swinging one of the swords they had taken off the Dalara fighters, she attempted to lop the head off the creature. It curved out of the way, clacking four pointy mandibles in mockery, before retreating back down the hole at rapid speed.

“Guys?!” she shouted, eyes constantly darting around, trying to anticipate the next attack.

Aclysia was in a similar state, bowed over Korith. A hole had been punched through her armour, right where her heart was. The wound underneath was deep and only the healing magic flowing from the metal fairy’s hands kept the kobold from bleeding out. The cause of the injury, a creature of protruding bone spikes and acidic secretions, was facing off against Apexus.

The humanoid chimera felt every movement strain his depleting reserves. Heat radiated from his skin. Steadily, the biomass burned in the organic furnace of upping his capabilities. “Is she stable?!” he asked out loud.

“Stable enough!” Aclysia shouted back.

Immediately, the humanoid chimera turned tail. A smack of the additional limb to the side of the nightmarish urchin's body left it unbalanced for enough of a moment for Apexus to scoop up the kobold and start sprinting in the opposite direction. Reysha threw the sword as an additional distraction. The tempered steel bent when it slammed into the bones.

Cursing, Reysha noticed the skeletal worm only when its bone-mandibles gripped her by the back of her head. The redhead screamed, crushing pressure sending a cracking sound reverberating through her entire skull. The true set of jaws behind delivered a testing stab, ready to pierce through her shattered skull to feast on the squishy contents.

The worm began to pull, to force its grabbed prey to the ground. Reysha barely resisted, the grinding and etching sound of the mandibles digging into the back of her head a constant presence along with the all-encompassing sound of her pumping blood. Her struggle was long enough for a Solar Lance to slam into the long body of the worm.

The impact tore the creature apart, two segments of its body separating with deceiving ease. Reysha immediately rushed forwards. The pain at the back of her head remained intense. Adrenaline kept her moving. Apexus passed her with a worried glance, but that was all they could afford. The new end of the worm turned liquid, new mandibles and jaws forming. They ran, as fast as they could, towards the distant light.

The staccato of ribs filled the air behind them. The bone urchin hooked into the gaps in the wall and pulled itself forwards with surprising speed. A wall of death followed them, gradually closing in.

Apexus felt a grip on his tail and forced himself forwards with no regard for his bodily integrity. The limb of pure muscle frayed, freeing the humanoid chimera, and letting him continue his sprint.

Sunlight covered them a moment later. Apexus threw himself the last few metres of the dungeon, narrowly escaping a closing grip of curved ribs. With his body as his cushion, he landed under the daystar’s warm embrace in the grass. Reysha made a similar escape, hitting the ground hard, while Aclysia overshot the target in her panicked flight.

Apexus only got to take half a second, staring at the monster as it slowly lurched back into the shadow of the dungeon. Then he immediately turned to Reysha. The redhead had gone from motionless to spasming.

With no hesitation or time for surgical precision, Apexus gripped the head of the still attached worm and tore. Steam rose from his skin, light grey covered the skin of his hand, and he ripped at the creature with every last ounce of strength he had to muster. He put his knee on Reysha’s back, his other hand on her neck. Skin sizzled under the heat of his touch. He growled angrily and pulled. The mandibles finally lost their grip. A long, disgusting tongue followed, getting gradually removed from the brain of the redhead. Once it lost all connection, the puncturing tendril waved disgustingly in the air.

Apexus got off Reysha and smashed the worm into the ground. Again and again, red dominating his vision, until the creature was nothing but bone shards and paste. “Fuck,” he cursed, for the first time in his life, then immediately turned back to Reysha.

The redhead was laughing. Her legs were pulled against her chest, and she was laughing. The back of her head showed deep trenches. Bushels of hair had been removed by the grip of the feeding monster. Fresh skin was growing under the light of their guardian angel. Cracks in the skull were mended, until only hairless spots betrayed the injury sustained. Still, Reysha was laughing. The crazed little laugh that flowed in the face of lethal absurdity.

“Psshhhh, level 20 to 30.” Reysha barely managed to roll onto her back. The burn on her neck remained and Apexus’ palm was slightly seared into the leather of her shoulder. Aclysia did not have the energy to heal more, not when Korith still required attention for more pressing injuries. “Who the fuck scouted that?! That’s like 60 to 90!”

“25 to 30, probably,” Apexus corrected her with a half-hearted mutter. He was still struggling to reclaim his balance. He hadn’t felt so much anger in his core since Apotho’s betrayal. The entirety of this Leaf was weighing down on his mind, from its oppressions to its disappointments. Watching his partners take such immense damage was the final link in a chain of negative events.

They had entered the dungeon this morning after a little more travel. The first worm they had encountered, just a few metres in, they had dispatched with relative ease. It had given them a sense of confidence, but that had been quickly shattered when the bone urchin revealed itself. Korith had been gripped mid-air by the second worm and consequently skewered by the larger monster. Aclysia had rushed to heal her, Apexus had created space, Reysha had distracted the worm, but the message was immediately clear: if Korith could be hurt this easily, none of them were safe.

That they had gotten this message this early in the dungeon was a lucky break.

“I will finalize the healing in a little bit,” Aclysia promised.

“Thanks…” Korith responded, forcing herself to sit up while the guardian angel plopped down on the grass. “Seriously though: what the fuck?”

“Time compromises all information,” Aclysia responded in the tone of exhausted neutrality. “Dungeons on this Leaf haven’t been scouted in generations. A 0 and a 5 can look similar, if the paper is degraded enough.”

“That’s supposed to be a 5-level difference?” Reysha asked.

“We have a variety of disadvantages accrued.” Aclysia swallowed, bringing a bit more life into her voice. “Our training is above average for our level, but our equipment is not. We are approximately at level 22, maybe 23. Thus, our strength and speed is not enough either. Noir and darling’s nature may counteract this somewhat, but I doubt both the worm and the rib creature were just level 25. It is a spread, after all.” Aclysia shook her head. “We could overcome this hurdle, perhaps, if we had more power or better equipment, but with both lacking…”

Aclysia trailed off, leaving unsaid what they all thought.

They made a unanimous decision.

__________________________________________________________________________

Herm scuttled along his field, picking up stones.

The older he got, the less he appreciated this part of fieldwork. Swinging a plough let him imagine he was training for a sword fight, drawing a cart made him wonder about distant lands, even paying his tributes to the Orassa enabled a fantasy of something greater. Picking stones out of the tilled soil, there was nothing even somewhat heroic about it. The only purpose to it was to make the next harvest a little easier and to remove obstacles for the roots of the plants.

Additionally, it gave him terrible backpain.

Standing up, the eccentric stretched. His spine produced a few satisfying pops, bringing about an immediate relief. He gazed out to the distant ocean, wondering whether the foolish dream to join the pirates was still possible at his age. ‘Late fifties isn’t terribly old…’

“Herm!” the excited voice of his nephew pulled his attention aside immediately. It was rare to hear the boy shout. Elma and Alurn, who had been helping him with the fieldwork, also looked up. Tempi stopped chopping wood to look around the corner. “Herm, they’re back!”

The announcement was slightly confusing, until the old man noted the four figures following behind his excited nephew. The adventurers struck as much an interesting figure as the first time. They were not as imposing, however. They just seemed more… worldly, to the local.

That was until their leader stopped in front of them. Herm glanced towards the nearby door of his house, then back to the giant of a man. Distinctly, he remembered the fox ears just barely missing the doorframe. Now the question was if he could even pass through standing. Herm wasn’t sure what to make out of that.

Their two groups stood opposite each other, the young ones looking to their older role model and the little harem of the man looking to their party leader. Uncomfortable silence hung between them. The redheaded woman with the stripes around her unnerving, blue-on-black eyes jabbed the much bigger man with her elbow. Still, he said nothing.

“Ehem,” Herm cleared his throat for effect. “How were your travels?”

“Loathsome,” Apexus responded immediately, the single word having come to summarize his experiences on this Leaf. “We achieved little,” he looked at his wrist, and the Growth hidden there, “and found much we cannot answer. I wanted to help a little, but I was naïve and incapable. We elected to leave.”

The final sentence came suddenly and yet unsurprisingly. “Of course, you did,” Herm said with a tired smile. “Then I suppose you’re here out of nostalgia?”

“No. I have considered and I offer what I did not back then,” Apexus let his eyes wander from one to the next. “You’re all here. That is good. If you wish to leave this Leaf, we will escort you.”

Herm blinked. The words sunk in ever so slowly, filling his being with shudders of excitement. The other four reacted similarly, shifting from one leg to another. “Seriously?” the leader of the little group of eccentrics asked. “You’re sure?”

“It’s just about the only thing we’re sure we can do on this fucking place,” Reysha responded immediately. “Protecting you from a bunch of goblins and pointing you in the right direction will be easy.”

“After careful analysis, it is the best we can do.” Aclysia’s moth-like wings hung like a loose cape from her back. “We wished to find a way to improve your situation, but found none to do so reliably without sacrificing time we do not have and dedicating ourselves to a life we do not wish to lead.”

The tiny blonde scratched the back of her head. “Yeah, so… we’re at least helping you… and hope that something good comes of it.”

“You do not have it bad here,” Apexus assured him. “You imagine great things, but the life of an Adventurer is complicated. Inconsistent. Unstable. You are eating reliably here. Know that even that much isn’t guaranteed.”

“I’ll take whatever I have to, if I can be free,” Herm said what he had dreamed to say for so many years. The conviction that he had seen no avenue to manifest now grasped onto the single lifeline offered. The young ones around him were not quite as swift to agree, thinking of their families and duties. In the end, all of them made up their minds.

It only took a day for them to gather their things. They packed their things, said or avoided their final goodbyes, for fear of the Felmer trapping them, and then met up again.

Travelling to the Stem was a matter of a few days. The party showed them what few survival tricks they did not know already. Aggrar lived off tamed land, all they truly lacked was the ability to deal with dangers. In the evenings, they sparred, learning the basics of combat. They needed to become nimbler, balance out the muscles that had formed through years of farmwork.

Four days, it took them to reach the ruined city at the Worldstem. “Wow,” Herm muttered, when he first laid eyes on the strands of silver vanishing into the sky. Wide-eyed wonder remained among all of them, as they approached, sometimes interrupted by fear when they spotted a goblin move in the ruins around them.

A single throwing knife let the greenskins know to keep their distance. Reysha pulled it out of the ground, after deliberately missing the goblin’s head, and followed the rest of the group. Soon, they ascended the Stem. The former Aggrars kept marveling at everything, from the light they walked on to the way they phased out of the world with every step – then at the immenseness of the Omniverse itself.

The party joined them.

For the first time and far from the first time, the two groups looked at the expanse of silver veins that, surprisingly close and endlessly far away, contrasted the lightless nothing beyond. Leaves of all colours sparked like small stars in the distance, their light incapable of reaching as far as the purity of the Tree they were attached to.

They turned, and looked back at Herbaemayim. Fragments of the world were visible on the segmented surface of the Leaf. There was so much blue there. “No more oceans!” Reysha reminded out loud.

Apexus snickered. It grew to a full laugh. Aclysia looked at him surprised for but a moment, before joining with an elegant giggle. Korith followed suit and finally Reysha herself began to cackle at her own statement. Next to them, the group of five began to laugh themselves.

A great many worries were washed away at that moment. All their concerns about the state of this Leaf’s cities and nations, the great injustices they could do nothing about, they were all so small and distant. All that was left was them. Them and their own ambitions. The great and impossible projects were pushed aside and they turned to make their next few steps.

Only moving on would bring them to where they wanted to be one day.

The quartet guided the group back to Tacuitos. They would help them get past the entrance control, hand them enough money to live and the three Dalara swords still in their possession as starting help. There, their ways parted again. The party was not ready to return to the Teacher’s Isle and this Leaf was safe to travel anyway.

The five would do as instructed and move to the Teacher’s Isle. There, they would learn for just six months, before setting out to apply what they had learned. Led by Herm, they did well. They had the right mix of caution and talent to make up for how late they had started their career. Climbing the levels was slow, but gradual and successful. They travelled several Leaves, finding themselves in great adventures and many difficult situations.

Eventually, however, Herm’s age did truly catch up to him. By sheer luck, they came across a Divine Seed, letting him delay the worst effects for a few more years, but they knew they wouldn’t always be granted such boons. On a quiet, sober night, they made a decision and returned to their home.

They were welcomed warmly by their relatives and with fear by their rulers. The inevitable happened and they came to blows. It was a short civil war, Herm uniting the Aggrars behind him. He assumed the title of Maya, then passed it on to Elma and Alurn. By the time he passed, the caste system had been fully abolished, the city at the Stem reclaimed, and trade pressure put on the Walled City suggested that slavery too would be a thing of the past eventually.

It wasn’t without its ups and downs. There was turmoil, there were bad years, but it was as bloodless as any major upheaval could be asked to be.

On his deathbed, Herm would dictate to the woman writing down his memoirs: “It was that second meeting I had with the Inevitable that let me make my home a better place.”

An interesting last line.