Where the Predators Prowl [106, 107, 108]

106: Home Sweet Dimensional Anchor

The increasingly jagged-looking, labyrinthine crystal roots and branches parted as we approached, melting away like ice under hot water. Swarms of bulbees fluttered around us, humming dangerously, evaluating us with crystalline eyes, then flashing away.

Everything bent around the Leviathan's presence, excessive entropy making local reality dance and twist in a wild waltz.

Soon enough, I reached for the RV's door handle, feeling the old grain and pulled.

The door swung open with a creak of unnerving familiarity.

I stepped inside, and stared. The interior was... bigger. Not huge, but definitely not the cramped single-floor layout I remembered leaving behind.

The shiny, metal ceiling stretched up a good twenty feet, and a spiral staircase wound up to a second level. The Bulwichu tree hung its branches in the middle, extending through the roof hole, a multitude of branches bearing fruit.

Beside me, the Leviathan's body began to flicker and fracture. Silver-green-violet-blue light erupted from her chest as she imploded inward, the shimmers around us collapsing like a dying star. 

Then, the unified goddess-girl exploded with a whoosh of displaced air into four distinct shapes that hit the RV floor with varying levels of grace.

Nessy landed on all fours, immediately flopping onto her side. "Ughhhh. Out of juice. Wah. Bein’ a cosmic horror takes too much mana.”

Kristi managed to land on her feet and staggered to the nearest wall, leaning against it. "Everything hurts. My feathers hurt. My scales hurt. Places I didn't know existed hurt. Bleh."

Candace materialized sitting cross-legged, wobbling slightly. "Wheeeee. Reality is spinny. Hey Alec, there's like forty four of you right now. Which one is real?"

Adelle simply collapsed face-first onto the worn carpet with a muffled "Fuck."

I looked at my hands. They were warped, twisted and covered in eyes and flesh flowers. I let my body reconstitute, folding in and obliterating the freakish effects of excessive entropy of hanging out with the Leviathan.

"Hum," I said, commenting on the RV’s finite-looking, two-floor interior. "I expected it to be bigger after a bazillion years of being abandoned in an infinite dungeon."

"Abandoned, yes," Candace affirmed. "She was abandoned. Domains don't grow correctly after being abandoned. Especially dimensional anchors like this baby." She patted the floor affectionately. “She tried to stay the same, waiting for us. Cus’ she cares.”

"And the giant tree?" I asked, gesturing vaguely toward the crystal overgrowth outside and above us.

Candace's eyes tried to focus on me, giving up halfway through. "Looks like a side effect of Bulwichu trying to defend herself from endless Superstore shit trying to eat her from the outside. Like... an immune system made of crystal tree. Very pretty. Very in the way." She made a weak chopping motion with her hand. "Gotta chop it off. Take RV out of here. Drive her home. Cascade. Dragons. Beach. Chillage. Nice noms..."

"Can we... chop it?" I asked. “It’s pretty big.”

All four pradavarians made various sounds of protest.

"No choppy today," Nessy whined from the floor. "Choppy requires standing. Standing is effort."

"I could maybe... in like six hours... lift one arm," Kristi offered weakly.

"Fuck doin’ stuff," Adelle contributed eloquently.

"Mmmyeah, choppy later. Gotta recover from being liminal-bae," Candace agreed. “M’bod is all wobbly.”

I began walking around the RV, investigating the changes. It was about 60% RV that I remembered and 40% crystal tree. I spotted Nessy’s phone buried deep inside Bulwichu, still playing the Pawsome Playlist, mostly muffled by layers upon layers of crystalline growth forming a sphere around it. The blurry screen flashed with a slideshow of me, Nessy and Kristi making silly faces covered in marker-drawn flowers.

Eventually, Candace raised one arm with obvious effort, fingers twitching. "Unbind laurel.”

The dragonheart laurel materialized on her head. She relaxed, eyes closed. I resumed my nook and cranny exploration.

“Unbind bags from nullspace," Candace let out after a few minutes of absorbing mana from the dragonheart.

Four dimensional bags materialized and dropped onto the floor with heavy thumps. Candace crawled over to the nearest one and started rooting through it.

"Yass. Protein bars," she announced triumphantly, pulling out a handful of wrapped bars. "And..." She dug deeper. "Mana wine! The good stuff! Thank you, past-Candace, you gorgeous disaster."

She tossed the bars to everyone, most of which hit their targets in the face since nobody had the energy to catch them. Then she took a few long pulls of wine before passing it to Nessy. 

Nessy sipped a bit and then stated that she’s not a fan of getting drunk, passing the bottle to the raptor.

I grabbed one of the protein bars and unwrapped it. It tasted like nuts and old cardboard, but food was food.

Kristi accepted the bottle next, taking a more measured sip. She made a face but didn't complain, passing it to Adelle who chugged the whole thing like she was in a college drinking competition.

"Pace yourself," Kristi warned.

"Fuck pacing," Adelle replied, wiping her mouth with the back of her paw. "We just became a dimensional horror, murdered like a thousand consciousness-eating parasites, and claimed an entire dungeon. I've earned aggressive drinking. Dungeon conquering rewards, dude!"

I settled onto the unfolded couch-bed at the end of the RV. It was still the same worn, brown leather texture. From it, I watched my extra-exhausted prad girlfriends try to move about.

"How long until you can actually function?" I asked, helping Nessy-slug to the couch.

"Mmmmf," Nessy offered, draping herself across me, tail wagging weakly.

"At least a day," Kristi translated. "Maybe two. The drain from that fusion is... seriously fucked. Never doing that again. EVER."

"Worth it," Candace said dreamily, struggling to reach the bed, giving up at my feet and staring at the ceiling. "Did you see how pretty we were? So many dimensions. So many eyes. I had eyes in places I didn't know could have eyes! Eyes inside eyes!"

“Slayer! Stop reminding me!” Kristi blanched.

Adelle acquired another mana bottle and began chugging it, clearly set on dealing with Leviathan-state memories by drowning them away.

"Shush. I was beautiful," Candace corrected. "You just don't appreciate the aesthetic of extradimensional eldritch entities."

"I appreciated NOT being one,” Kristi insisted.

Candace took another pull from a newly exhumed mana wine bottle. "T’was… Amazing. Different. Beyond. Did you know reality tastes different when you can perceive it from multiple dimensions simultaneously? It's like... spicy but also purple!” She wrapped her tail around my legs.

Kristi made an annoyed raptor face.

Nessy wormed her way around me tighter. "Alec?"

"Yeah?"

"Your grandfather had good taste in RVs. I'm glad she's still here.”

"It looks hella abandoned and warped." Adelle commented.

“A crystalline-tree fused mess,” Kristi added her critique.

"Guys stop being mean to Bul! She’s OUR lovely, slightly corrupted domain," Nessy corrected, nuzzling against my shin. "Our dimensional anchor. Our home base. Our... tree-cramped but also two-story mobile fortress of questionable structural integrity!"

"Magical and whimsical," Candace commented, eyeing the many glass fruits hanging from the branches. "Very TARDIS. Very cool. Gotta chop much of it though."

"In like six hours," Kristi reminded her.

"Or eight," Nessy suggested optimistically.

"Or never, and we just camp in the Superstore forever," Adelle offered. “Killing shit and…”

"No," all three other girls said simultaneously.

“No,” I agreed. “The… everything here is fucked. I watched Viv get turned into floor tiles. I’d hate for something like that to happen to one of you.”

“Yeh,” Candace agreed. “The Superstore is too Syntropic. It’s not safe for linear peeps to be here forever. And before you ask, Bulwichu isn’t a person. She’s… more like a scarf a customer left behind.”

"Fine, fine." Adelle rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. "But for the record, I vote we take a very long nap first."

I had to agree with that plan. The endless dying and regenerating in the Leviathan's Cradle had taken its toll, even if my Reconstitution handled the physical damage. I pulled a few glass fruits off the nearest branch and consumed them, restoring my Reconstitution back to 100%. Thankfully the fruits still worked as before.

"Group nap!" Nessy declared, also chewing on a glass fruit. "Right here. On Alec. Mmmm."

"Seconded," Candace mumbled.

Kristi slowly crawled over to the couch and then flopped beside me and Nessy.

Freeing the RV from the Superstore seemed like a problem for future-Alec. As present-Alec I closed my eyes and let the exhaustion claim me, enjoying the warmth of my pack.

. . .

I dreamed.

Not of the Cascade carnival or Ferguson the Leviathan's Cradle, but of crystalline branches reaching through endless aisles. Of a tree that wasn't quite a tree, growing in a place that deconstructed and devoured everything living.

In the dream, I walked through the Superstore alone. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting shadows that moved wrong.

Eventually, I saw… her.

She sat at the base of the crystal tree—a pradavarian girl made of fractured light and dimensional echoes. She had dark silver and white fur and silver eyes and was somehow... Wrong. Sheared. Fragmented. Like looking at Nessy through a kaleidoscope that had been dropped and reassembled incorrectly, sideways.

"Alec," she said. Her voice was Nessy's but also... odd, off. Like a recording of a recording played through broken speakers, then recorded again and played through a tin can.

I saw that her body gradually turned into crystalline roots entwined with the gargantuan tree overhead, the branches chiming to produce her words and then realized who she was.

"Bulwichu?" I asked.

She nodded, and the motion sent surreal ripples dancing through her form and the twinkling branches.

"Hi Alec" she said. "I've been waiting for you. Have been for... I don't know how long anymore. Centuries? Millennia? Aeons? Time isn't exactly fictional here in the corpse of Number Two. I'm in… pain. I need you…”

“I'm here,” I offered, “I'm back. We all are. Sorry it took so long, Bul.”

“It hurts…” She let out. “Number Two’s concept… pressing against me like an ocean, trying to convert me into floor tiles, shelf brackets, items, price tags.” The tree above us shuddered, branches cracking as products tried to bloom from them.

"You're fighting it," I said.

"Barely." Another shudder ran through her form. "I'm an echo, Alec. A memory of your love, your vibes preserved in songs. Nessy's voice… her music kept me alive, constant."

"We're here now."

“Then free me.”

[Quest Received: Liberate Bulwichu] [Objective: Free your Domain from the Superstore corruption] [Difficulty: ???] [Reward: Receive a mobile domain] [Time Limit: Before total domain corruption]

"What do I need to do?" I asked.

Her form momentarily shattered into fragments, each piece showing a different memory. Nessy laughing. Nessy crying. Nessy standing in this exact spot. Nessy bleeding her essence into the foundation to create something that would last. Nessy singing.

Bulwichu's form wavered, reassembling itself. "The tree... it's me and not-me. My defense and my prison. You need to..." She gasped as another wave of corruption hit, trying to transform her arm into a shopping cart handle. "Need to sever it. All of it. But not just with force. With..." She struggled to focus. "With recognition. With more of your love. I’m a freaking mess, have been for a long time without you and Nessy. I’ve made a mess of things too… tried to get them all back for you. I sorta succeeded, but they’re wrong, broken and I can’t—"

The dream suddenly collapsed into itself, and I was falling through an ocean of crystalline branches that grabbed at me with desperate, cracking fingers—

I jerked awake to find a cold gun barrel pressed against my forehead.

"Don't move," a muffled female voice said from behind a military-grade gas mask. "Don't breathe funny. Don't even think about using any skills."

My vision swam as I tried to focus. Something jumped off my face and skittered away across the RV floor, eight metal legs clicking.

I discovered that I was tied up, unable to move. Silver threads were wrapped around my body like a cocoon, my limbs tingling and failing to respond. Only my head could move freely. 

Through the haze, I could make out shapes. Six figures in tactical gear, all pradavarian-sized, all female judging by their silhouettes. Gas masks obscured their faces. Military vests, weapons holsters, guns, faded patches.

To my left, Nessy was bound on the couch-bed with silver thread. A silver-metal spider sat clamped over her muzzle, its legs digging into her cheeks. Her blue eyes were wide with panic, but she couldn't move, couldn't speak. Her chest rose and fell rapidly.

Kristi was similarly restrained against the opposite side, talons splayed and locked in place by more spider-artifacts. Her amber eyes blazed with fury and the spider on her beak kept her silent.

Candace and Adelle were both on the floor, wrapped so tightly in silver thread they looked like mummies.

"Who are you?" I asked, my mouth feeling like it was filled with cotton.

"No." The voice of my captor was flat, emotionless. "I ask. You answer. Who are you and what are you doing in my domain?”

107: Sentinels

She leaned closer, and I could see her better now. An orange tactical vest sat atop several layers of raggedy, rotting clothing concealed her body.

“What?” I blinked.

"This is my domain," she stated sharply. "Has been for..." She paused, head tilting. "...A long time. Very long time. And you don't belong here. Now. How did you find this place? How did you bypass the wards and bulbees and slimes? How did you navigate the Superstore's influence without being infected? How are you still..." Another head tilt. "So human, so...whole?"

"We used a gate to get here from another dungeon,” I explained slowly, focusing on blooming more eyes from within. “I’m Alec Foster. This tree, this RV… it’s MY domain. I left it here a long time ago. Nessy, my… packmate,” I glanced at the paralysed husky. “Her music helped it grow into what it is now.”

"Left it here," the delver repeated, voice hollow. "You expect me to believe a low level human like you... owned her?" A rasping laugh escaped the mask. "This tree has been here for millennia! It is an ancient domain, one that belongs to me!"

Something clicked in my head. Her voice. It sounded oddly familiar. Almost like…

"It was my grandfather's RV," I added. "Daniel Foster. He—died or left to Manchester, I'm not really sure. I inherited it, planted a little crystal tree here, drove it into the superstore with Nessy, Kristi, her sisters and Ranger Vivianne… in another lifetime. I lost them all here… then I left the Superstore… and…”

"Liar." The word came flat and certain. She pressed the barrel harder against my forehead. “You… lie!”

She stopped mid-sentence, mask turning toward Nessy. Then to Kristi. Then slowly back to me.

“I'm not lying, Bulwichu is my doma—”

The gun cracked across my face. Pain exploded through my jaw as my head snapped sideways. Blood filled my mouth.

"No more lies," she hissed. "The Store doesn't let people leave. The exits loop back. The doors lead nowhere. The—"

She cut herself off again, but I heard something in her voice. Something broken and desperate underneath her bravado.

I let my awareness expand just slightly, carefully. Blooming ten Astral eyes deep within myself.

Once they were open, I looked at my assailant, past the physical outfit, past the mask. 

She wasn't alive. 

She was made from black and white tiles, entwined with crystalline roots.

Where there should have been a living, breathing pradavarian, I saw fragments. Pieces of something… held together by Bulwich's roots. Her body moved, yes, but it moved wrong—like a puppet filled with strings that was pulling itself. 

A fox made from cracked, black and white tiles.

Behind her, the other five delvers featured similar wrongness. Four raptors. A husky with a familiar face.

I choked.

All of them… dead. All of them held together by... Bulwichu.

"I think that… You're not asking the right questions," I exhaled. 

The gun barrel pressed harder. "What?"

"You want to know how we got here. But I think what you really want to know is how we're going to get out."

A long silence. Then: "There is no out."

"There is."

"Liar." Her voice cracked on the word.

I met her gray eyes through the gas mask's visor. "My name is Alec Foster. This is my domain. And I'm going to ask you once: let my pack go, and we can talk. Or—"

"Or what, human?" She laughed harshly.

"Or," I interrupted, my voice hardening, "I'll show you what happens when you threaten a liminal human in his own domain."

For a moment, she didn't move. 

Then she pulled the trigger without remorse.

The bullet entered my skull, and everything went white with pain. My Reconstitution kicked in immediately, but I didn't let it simply repair the hole in my skull.

Instead, I pulled on the power of Bulwichu permeating the air around me and bloomed… forward.

My consciousness expanded outward like branches. Not just awareness, but physical manifestation—bone and flesh, Alec-ness spearing out from where my dead body lay on the couch.

The fox-woman pulled back, but she was slow. Too slow.

A lance of bone and flesh erupted from my head-wound punching through her torso. She made a sound—not pain, because she likely couldn't feel pain anymore, but surprise. Confusion.

"What?!"

More branches. More spears. My form exploded outward in a corona of fleshy growth, each tendril seeking, finding, piercing through the undead pradavarians threatening my pack.

One dead raptor tried to raise her weapon. A branch caught her wrist, then her shoulder, then her skull, punching through the gas mask in a spray of dust.

The husky fired her weapon. The bullet passed harmlessly through my branches. A branch punched through her too, lifting her off the ground.

The fox woman dangled from the branch through her chest, legs kicking. Behind the cracked gas mask, I could see her face quite clearly now.

Vivianne.

"Let me go," she rasped, clawing at the thickening flesh branch. "Let me—"

“Look at yourself, Vivianne,” I said from my mouth somewhere far down my expanded tree-body. “You don't even have blood in you. You're a shell filled with ashes and dust, held together, animated by crystalline roots. You don't own this RV, I do. You…” The answer became apparent to me as I stared at her. “You are a Dungeon Sentinel, an echo of a girl I buried in this damned store long, long time ago. You are the consequence of my actions here, a friend who I lost… an echo left behind.” I was on a rant. “Everything blooms when it dies here. Not just me with my damned reconstitution—everything touched by Systemfall. I lost Nessy and Kristi and you here, buried your remains in the garden section. And what happens when you cut a tree? New branches grow from the wound. Candace and Adelle—they bloomed from that loss… Different iterations, different aspects of the same souls I lost."

Vivianne choked in my grasp.

"There's another you out there," I continued. "A Vivianne who's eighteen in Ferguson! Who didn't become a ranger yet. Who never got stuck in this hell. Your Ferguson died too, consumed by entropy, and then bloomed again when I reached the Leviathan and made my wish. A reset. A new narrative… where things could be better. You know Officer Lavros… I thought that everything reset, but things just keep slipping through the cracks… ghosts coming back to haunt me.”

Vivianne stopped struggling, her tiled body going still. 

"You're... you're saying I'm dead," she said flatly.

“I guess that Bulwichu tried to bring you back,” I sighed. “Her roots must have spread far across the store, reached your body and the bodies of Nessy, Kristi and her sisters, animated all of you. Made you into Sentinels to protect this place. To protect the domain I left behind."

"That's..." She looked down at herself, at the flesh-branch through her chest.

“That’s the truth,” I intoned, manipulating one of my flesh-branches to pull the mask off her face. “Did you forget me, Vivianne Lavros? You died in my arms.”

The sunken porcelain fox eyes stared at me, unblinking. "I... died?" Her voice wavered, the flat mechanical tone giving way to something raw and confused. "In your... arms?"

"Yes," I said, my throat tight. "The Superstore turned you into floor tiles. I held you as it happened. You made me promise to tell Sage Noon what happened to you. That he was right about this place."

Vivianne's body went rigid on the branch. "Sage..." The name came out like something precious she'd lost. Her gloved fingers twitched. "I... I know that name. Why do I know that name?"

"Because he was your best friend," I said. "You told me about him before you died. Made me swear I'd tell him you were sorry. That he'd been right to warn you."

"No." She shook her checkered head violently. "No, that's not... I've been here forever. Protecting. Surviving. We've always been—"

"You’ve been here forever because you’re not exactly alive," I gestured with one of my many branching limbs toward the crystal tree visible through the RV's windows. "Bulwichu only had your dead, calcified body to work with. She found you, animated you with her roots, gave you purpose, made you into a Sentinel to protect what I left behind."

The other sentinels agitatedly shifted on my branches. The undead husky made a low, distressed sound. One of the raptor girls, the emaciated version that looked almost like Kristi but wrong, too angular, too sharp, hissed something unintelligible.

"We're protecting our domain," Vivianne insisted. "That's what we do. That's all we've ever done. We hold the line against the corruption, against the shoppers, against—"

"Against me?" I interrupted. "Is that what Bulwichu told you to do? Defend this place from intruders?"

Vivianne's head drooped. "She... doesn't speak. She just... we just know. We feel what needs to be done!"

"Because she's not really conscious either," I said. "She's operating on instinct. To protect herself. To grow. To wait for me." I paused, studying the fox's ceramic face. "Let Candace go. The silver kitsune you tied up on the floor. She can help you. She's a Binder—she can see souls, work with them. Maybe she can help you remember who you really are. Who I am. Who Sage is. Don’t you want to see Sage again?"

"Sage?" Vivianne's voice dropped, becoming more child-like. “You’ll help me?”

"Yes, help," I said firmly. "I'm not here to hurt this place. I'm here to reclaim it, to heal it. And maybe... maybe to help you too. Please. Release Candace."

For a long moment, Vivianne hung there on my branch, suspended between past and present, between the ghost she'd become and the prad Ranger she'd been. Then, slowly, her gloved hand moved to her tactical belt.

She pulled out a small remote. Her thumb hesitated over a button.

"Just... one?" she asked. "The fox?"

"Just Candace for now," I confirmed. "Let her help you first. Then we'll free the others."

Vivianne's thumb pressed down.

The silver threads binding Candace on the floor shimmered and dissolved. The metal spider clamped over her muzzle scuttled away, retreating into the corner of the RV. Candace gasped, her chest heaving as she sucked in air.

I carefully retracted the branch impaling Vivianne, letting her down softly. She stumbled, catching herself against the RV's faded carpet.

Candace’s silver eyes blazed as she became transfixed on Vivianne. She moved forward slowly, cautiously, like approaching a wounded animal.

"Easy," Candace murmured, her hands raised. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to look at you, okay?"

Vivianne stepped back slightly. "Look at what?"

"At what's left of you," Candace said softly. "At the pieces Bulwichu is holding together."

Candace's gaze intensified, her pupils dilating as she stared past Vivianne's ceramic shell and through it, into the Astral beneath. Her expression shifted from curiosity to sorrow.

"Oh, Viv," she whispered. "You're... you're barely there. Just fragments. Sheared, faded shards of your soul caught in the roots. But there's enough."

"Enough for what?" Vivianne asked.

"Enough to make you whole-ish," Candace said. She glanced back at me. "Alec, I'm going to need to get close. She might freak out."

"Do it," I said, keeping my branching awareness ready to intervene if needed.

Candace stepped forward, her hands reaching out toward Vivianne's ceramic face. "This might feel weird," she warned. "But I promise it won't hurt."

Her fingers touched the cracked face, and silver light erupted from the point of contact.

"Bind soul shards! Reconstitute identity!"

The words rang with power, with the power of a Master Binder working her craft. The silver light spread across Vivianne's body like liquid mercury, seeping into the cracks, following the paths of Bulwichu's roots that animated her.

Vivianne gasped, shuddering.

"Sage," she let out, ceramic eyes wide. "Sage Noon. My best friend. He... he told me not to go. Told me the Superstore was too dangerous. But I didn't listen. I wanted to prove I could be a ranger. I wanted to show I was brave enough and—" She let out a sob as she stared at me. "Alec. You're Alec Foster. You tried to save me. You held me while I... while I..."

She stepped towards me.

108: And Then There Were Six

"I died," Vivianne let out. "I died in your arms… but also didn’t because this damned place doesn’t ever let anyone go. And then... and then I woke up here. But not entirely myself. Just... protecting. Forever protecting our RV. Damn it all."

I smiled, releasing my branching form and reconstituting back into my human shape. The flesh-branches retracted, the extra eyes closing, until I stood on two legs again.

Vivianne tapped the remote again and the binding thread released me. She rushed to me and hugged me. She felt cold. 

Officer Lavros sobbed into my shoulder. “Sorry for shooting you Alec… Alec… It’s good to see you again!” Then she released me slightly. “Nessy! Kristy! You’re all back! You’re… alive! I’m so sorry!”

She twiddled her remote. The silver spiders skittered away from Kristi, Nessy, and Adelle. The three pradavarians gasped simultaneously, moving about and pulling in desperate breaths through their freed muzzles.

Kristi was up first, talons scraping against the floor as she pushed herself upright. "What the actual fuck?!" 

“Bind soul!” Candace flashed from one zombie-prad to the other. “What?”

“They’re us…” Kristi said. “Us that died here.”

“Uh-huh,” Candace nodded. “And? Bind soul fragments!”

“What the fuck do you mean AND?!” Kristi growled. “That’s me and my sisters!”

Adelle chortled.

The soul-rebound zombie-Nessy stepped forward. She pulled off her gas mask, revealing an emaciated version of Nessy calcified into concrete and metal bits. She stared at the living husky with visible curiosity. Then at me. “Hi Alec.”

“Nessy,” I uttered.

“There’s… two of me now?” the living Nessy spoke beside me.

“Slayer!” Both Nessies declared at the same time.

"Oh," zombie-Nessy said, her voice like wind chimes made of ceramic. "There's... two of me?"

They rushed towards each other, sniffing each other. 

"Hi! I'm Nessy! You're... also Nessy?" The husky smiled, tail wagging like a helicopter.

"I think so?" The undead version tilted her head, tail made from metal threads swaying. "I remember... getting a nail through the head. Turning into floor tiles. But also... protecting our lovely RV. For a very long time. Too long. At least we had nice music." She smiled softly.

"That's so cool!" Living Nessy circled her doppelganger with fascination. "You're like... concrete-metal-me! Do you remember our songs?"

"Some of them," zombie-Nessy replied, a smile forming on her concrete face. "The ones about... about Alec. Our Summer Promise… Running for Love…”

“One Hundred Thousand Miles,” they spoke together and then hugged each other fiercely.

Kristi, meanwhile, was backing away slowly from her own undead counterpart.

Four zombie-raptors stood in formation staring at her. The undead Kristi stepped forward. 

"No," Kristi said firmly. "Absolutely not. I refuse to—"

"Hello, living me," the dead Kristi spoke, sounding hollow. "You look... intact."

"I AM intact," Kristi hissed, feathers bristling up. "You're... you're just tiles! You're not real!"

"We're real enough," zombie-Katherine replied. "We've been protecting the domain. We've been loyal. We've been—"

"Dead," Kristi interrupted, her voice cracking slightly. "You've been dead. For Slayer knows how long! And now you're... what? Ceramic knockoffs animated by tree roots?"

“Kristikins!” Both Nessies yelled. “Don’t be mean to your Sentinel-self!”

"That is... technically accurate," zombie-Katerina stated. “Hey Alec.”

Sentinel-Kaledonya rushed to my side and also hugged me fiercely. “Thanks for coming back for us, Alec! I missed you, Alpha!”

“Hey, Kris. Guess you have four extra sisters now.” the undead-Kirra offered, pulling her mask off and offering a grin made from yellow and black warning bars and stairwell parts. “Neat, right?”

Kristi opened and closed her mouth. “No. NO! This isn’t neat!”

"Hey, it's okay. They're not trying to replace you or your fam. They're just... echoes. Fragments of souls that Bulwichu preserved," Candace offered.

"I don't WANT fragments of my dead sisters walking around!" Kristi's voice rose, her tail lashing. "It's wrong! It's—"

"It's kinda funny though," Adelle interjected, finally recovered enough to sit up. She grinned at the scene, her cheetah spots rippling as she stretched. 

"You gotta admit, Kristi—you've always wanted more help,” the Undead-Kaledoniya said. “Guess what? Now you've got four extra pairs of hands to boss around."

"That's not funny!" Kristi hissed, looking like she wanted to be anywhere but in a situation where she had to face an undead version of herself and her sisters.

"It's a little funny," Adelle insisted. "Plus, look on the bright side—Alec now has SIX girlfriends instead of five. That's gotta be some kind of record."

"What?" I sputtered.

"Let's see," Adelle started counting on her claws. "You, Nessy, Kristi, me, Candace, zombie-Nessy, and zombie-Kristi. Yep. Six."

"They're UNDEAD!" Kristi protested.

"Still counts!" Adelle shot back with a laugh.

Sentinel-Kristi cleared her throat. "For the record, I’m not exactly alive. I don’t… can’t feel, smell or taste anything. All I want is… to protect Bulwichu from fucked up shit.”

Kristi squinted at her zombie-self. “You’re lying. I know myself. I see you glancing at Alec! And I know that tone. You're deflecting."

Sentinel-Kristi's ceramic beak snout stretched into a resemblance of a smile. "Fine. You're right. I do feel... something. It's muted, distant, like experiencing the world through thick glass… I remember holding Alec’s hand here, feeling less fucked up after roaming the Infinite Highway searching for a way out."

"See?" Adelle pointed triumphantly. "Even zombie-you admits to having feelings. That's definitely girlfriend material. And then there were six!"

"Adelle, I swear to Slayer—" Kristi started.

"Can we focus?" I interrupted, rubbing my temples. "We've got bigger issues than girlfriend math."

I made my way to the dining booth and sat down. Both Nessies immediately flanked me, the living one pressing against my left side while her undead counterpart settled on my right with considerably less warmth.

"This is cozy!" Living Nessy chirped.

"Mmm, yeah," Sentinel-Nessy agreed, “It’s nice to be less lost. Nice to have my Syn-Pack mates back.”

Candace slid into the seat across from me, Adelle squeezing in beside her. Kristi stood stubbornly near the kitchenette, arms crossed, while her four undead sisters gathered around Vivianne, who pulled off her gloves and was examining her ceramic hands.

"So," I began, looking at the Sentinels. "Basic question—do you eat?"

Sentinel-Nessy rested her concrete and rebar head on my shoulder. "We kill and take apart anything with crystalline mana or dungeon cores and swallow it. Plus, during rest… Bulwichu sustains us through her roots. I guess, we're more like... extensions of her will than separate beings."

"That's deeply unsettling on every possible level," Kristi muttered from her corner, trying very hard not to stare at her undead self.

"So you sleep?" I asked.

"Sometimes," Sentinel-Kristi answered. "We go dormant when nothing threatens the domain. It's not really sleep—more like... not existing fully. It’s rare. The domain is always being attacked. It’s being attacked right now from many sides… The bulbees, slimes and roots handle it for the most part. We mainly deal with tough, clever things, or anomalies… like you five.”

Living Nessy gasped. "That sounds sadge! No dreams?"

"No dreams," her undead counterpart confirmed. "Just... nothing. Then awareness again when needed."

"Do you remember dying?" Candace asked.

The Sentinels exchanged glances.

"Fragments," Sentinel-Katherine spoke up. "I remember rushing the Magnetic Lynx. The nails. Pain. Then... roots. Growth. Purpose. An eternity of war against fucked up shit."

"I remember turning into tiles," Vivianne said. "Alec holding me. Then... roots finding me. Pulling me together."

"That's so sad!" Living Nessy threw her arms around her ceramic double over me. "You died and couldn't even rest!"

"It's not so bad," Sentinel-Nessy assured her, patting the husky's head. "We had the music. Your playlist kept playing. The selfies cycling on the phone. It sort of helped us remember... love. Connection. Why we were protecting this place."

"You could hear the phone all this time?" I asked.

"Of course," Sentinel-Vivianne nodded. "Sound travels through Bulwichu's branches. We heard every song, saw every photo when we rested in the RV’s interior. It's what kept us... us. Sort of."

"How long have you been doing this tree-defence biz?" Adelle asked.

The Sentinels looked at each other uncertainly.

"No clue," Sentinel-Kaledonya admitted. 

"We don't know,” Sentinel-Kristi added. “We weren’t exactly ourselves. Also… Who are you, Miss fox and cheetah? And how did we… die and also survive?”

Candace's eyes lit up with manic glee. "Oh, this is gonna be good. Okay, so buckle up, dead girls, because you're about to get a crash course in Candace's Guide to Being Multiple Versions of Yourself Across Timelines While Also Being Dead But Not Really!"

She spread her paws wide like a carnival barker. "So! First off, reality is a dungeon, right? Like, ALL of reality. Not metaphorically—literally a dungeon. Prad Earth? Dungeon. Other dimensions? Also dungeons. The whole cosmic ball of wax? One big nested dungeon matryoshka situation! How did this happen? Systemfall carried by the Wormwood Star that crashed into like a bazillion dimensions all at once! Why? To fight Syntropy! A System Wizard did it!”

Sentinel-Kristi's ceramic brow furrowed. "What?"

"NOT DONE!" Candace interrupted, bouncing in her seat. "So Alec here—sweet, innocent, constantly-dying Alec—he's not actually human! Well, he IS, but he's also a TREE. A liminal soul-tree. An Astral tree of infinite Alec-branches spreading across all possible dimensions simultaneously!"

"An undying knight," Sentinel-Kristi repeated. “I'm remembering that… yes.”

"YES! A LIMINAL-SOUL TREE! Why? Many reasons!" Candace cackled. "And his very best friend, the cosmic horror known as the Leviathan—who is ALSO Nessy, by the way, just multiplied by infinity and existing at the end of time—she loves him SO MUCH that she keeps restarting reality! Over and over! Like the universe's most dedicated Groundhog Day director!"

“What?” Undead-Kirra snorted. "You're making this up."

"I WISH I was making this up! It would be way less complicated!" Candace gestured wildly. "So the Leviathan—future-us-god-thing—she grants Alec and Alec-adjacent-Slayers wishes! But they're like Monkey's Paw wishes, right? Because of many terrible reasons! One time, a version of him wished for companions and BOOM—pradavarians!”

“Alec… made pradavarians?” the Sentinel-Kaledonya stared at me. “What was that about… fighting Syntropy?”

“Theoretically, yes!” Candace nodded. “Syntropy rules many worlds with an iron fist. Fists! Belonging to Very Bad Omnipotent concepts called the Numbers! The Numbers are living mathematical concepts that run reality like cosmic middle managers and they do NOT appreciate entropic fuckery! The Superstore is a dead shell of Number Two for example!" Candace was practically vibrating now. "Where was I? Ah! After all of you gals died horribly, Alec went FORWARD to a new loop of Pradavarian-Earth that LOOKS like the past but is actually the future pretending to be the past!"

Sentinel-Kristi held up a ceramic hand. "And you've lost me."

"ME TOO AND I'M EXPLAINING IT!" Candace shrieked with laughter. "But here's the kicker—you died here in the Superstore, right? But Bulwichu—who is our RV-tree-domain-thing made from Alec's vibes and Nessy's music—she SAVED your corpses by turning them into dungeon Sentinels! So you're dead but also alive but also not really either because you're DOMAIN FEATURES now!"

"Domain features," Sentinel-Kirra echoed.

"Like NPCs!" Candace clarified. "You're the NPCs of our mobile base! Except you have fragments of your original souls still rattling around in there, held together by crystal roots and the power of friendship! Yay!"

Sentinel-Vivianne stared at her. "You sound… insane.”

"Oh ABSOLUTELY," Candace agreed with a mad giggle. "But I'm RIGHT! Meanwhile, the LIVING versions of you—" she gestured at Kristi and Nessy, "—exist because Alec's wish created a NEW timeline-loop where you didn't die! Same souls, different outcome, slightly different path! You're like... beta versions that didn't get deleted!"

"I'm going to need you to… stop talking forever," Sentinel-Kristi said. “Because my mind is frothing over.”

"Can't stop, won't stop! Because THEN—" Candace barreled on, "—we have ME and Adelle, who are ACTUALLY pieces of souls that got divided by Alec at the end of time from you Kristi and Nessy!”

The Sentinels stared at Candace with varying degrees of confusion and horror.

“See, we're one pawsome soul! I'm the part that binds things, Adelle's the part that punches things, Kristi's the part that represses things, and Nessy's the part that licks things!" Candace added giddily.