Where the Predators Prowl [Ch 81, 82, 83]

81. Smol Bindery

“You know what?” Candace huffed. “No. I’m not gonna bow to the damned Omnids nor bind myself to their fat ass floating Justice construct.”

“So then…” Manny began.

“Unbind Candace, bind Loops,” Candace grabbed her temples, silver fractals flaring from her paws. “Aight, scan me now babes.”

Manny tapped Candace’s wrist with her plastic fingers. “Huh.”

A confused emoji appeared on her monitor: 

(☉_ ☉)

“How?” Manny tapped Candace’s white hand again. “You… you’re Donutz Loops, a delver born in the wild Western Reaches?”

She pulled out another folder from the desk and flipped through the pages. A new expression flashed on her face:

(●__● )

“Not bound, nor owned by anyone. No pending lawsuits. Hum. Well then. That’s… rather unexpected. I’m guessing that you’ve somehow fractalized your conceptual identity?”

“Yep.”

“Impressive. The Lawsuit attached to Candace Rhineheart doesn’t affect you.”

“Yep.”

Nessy’s phone buzzed. She dug into her pocket and started typing on it.

“How do you have a phone network in this place?” Adelle wondered, glancing at the husky.

“Systemfall-net connects to all sorts of places,” Calvin commented. “I’ve a router that amplifies the signal in the back, I get news from all sorts of quirky dimensions. Manny and I enjoy interdimensional cable shows.”

“Yep,” Nessy said. “Just my folks asking where we are on the account that we’ve missed dinner with them. I texted to let them know we’ll come… over another day as soon as we get back home.”

“Hold up,” Candace sniffed Calvin and Manny. “You two are… together?”

“We’re… friends,” Calvin said a bit too quickly.

Manny nodded.

“Just friends, eh?” Candace prodded. “Why not more?”

“Excessive entropy washes all away,” Calvin said, “Manny is a conceptoid born in one of my drones from my love for my farm. Unfortunately, her level isn't high enough to survive the next wave. Unlike me, she is destined to come apart when entropy flood hits this place. Thus, our relationship is… strictly professional. It's just how things are.”

Manny's monitor added an emoji to Mini-Mart Achmage’s statement:

(╥﹏╥)

"So you’ve got no way to save her, hum?” Candace asked.

“Unfortunately, not really,” Calvin said.

“Das’ a shame," Candace tilted her head. "You two seem to get along well."

Calvin sighed. "When you've watched everything crumble around you a dozen times over, you learn not to get too attached."

"Nonsense!" Candace stated firmly. "The greatest weapon against excessive entropy or syntropy isn't tinfoil hats or sticky note eyes—it's love! Trust me, I've seen the end of time, and love's the only thing that cuts through it all. It’s a conceptual idea persisting stronger than anything else."

Calvin considered her words. “What are you suggesting, Miss fox?”

“I could bind you two together,” Candace offered. “Soul to soul. That way, when the entropy wave hits, her body will decay, but she will reconstitute as something else by your side. Perhaps something less fragile, more human-ish. Also, she will gradually remember you.”

“Just like us, huh?” Kristi asked.

“Yep, yep,” Candace bobbed. “Calvin helped Alec and Ness ages ago, I'm just returning the favor.”

"You could do that for us?” Manny's monitor flickered to a hopeful face. 

(◕‿◕) 

"Sure!" Candace said. "It's just conceptual permanence reinforcement in the Astral. Fairly basic stuff for a Binder of my caliber, really."

"Yo Foxy," Adelle fired, "didn't you just get your butt kicked by interdimensional lawyers? Maybe chill on the binding stuff for like five minutes?"

"Nu. That was because I stole a Lawyer identity and sued an omnipotent conceptual entity," Candace argued. "This is just a… Dagaz pact between two willing participants who care for each other very much."

“Yo binding didn’t do shit for adding Marlena to our… relationship star,” Adelle pointed out.

“Cus the patterns have to match perfectly,” Candace huffed. “Marlena didn’t really love Alec nor the rest of us for the Dagaz to latch on properly. These two, a man and a conceptoid match great. Their love is real. I can see it in the Astral. The connection is already there, just waiting to be reinforced more by me.”

Manny's screen rapid-cycled through emojis: (°ロ°) → (♡‿♡) → (⊙_⊙) 

"Would you... want that, Manny?" Calvin asked.

The monitor emoji changed to:

(≧◡≦) 

“Yes,” she voiced.

"And you, Calvin?" Candace asked.

Calvin rubbed his hands with a contemplative look. "I've been alone in this wasteland for ages. Having a permanent companion would be... nice."

"Then it's settled!" Candace clapped her paws together. "Let me do this one binding and then we can go home."

"Are you sure this one won’t backfire horribly?” Kristi asked.

"Totally! Just look at these two! Technically, they're already partially bound through Calvin's sticky note art. I'm just gonna make their connection last when most of local reality gets wobbly,” Candace assured. “Wobblier. Entropy-er.”

She moved to stand between Calvin and Manny, placing one paw on Calvin's arm and the other on Manny's plastic shoulder. Silver fractals danced around her claws, swirling outward to encircle the pair.

"Bind souls in the name of Infinity Paradox Proxima!" Candace chanted. “Maximum bond! Limitless Dagaz!”

The fractals detonated across her figure rushing over the couple. Calvin's tinfoil hat glinted as light refracted off it, and Manny's monitor cycled through colors rapidly. 

When the light of the binding faded, Calvin and Manny slowly turned to face each other.

"How do you feel?" Candace asked.

"Hrm," Calvin murmured. "Not much different. A bit… warmer, perhaps?"

“What bout you, girl?” 

Manny's screen showed: (❁´◡`❁) "I can feel you," her electronic voice sounded cosy and warm as she grabbed Calvin’s hand. "Even when I'm not looking at you!"

"The binding worked!" Candace clapped her paws. "Now you'll always reconstitute by his side, no matter what comes! Yay!"

Calvin turned to Candace, a smile crossing his face. "Thank you."

He hugged the foxgirl.

(♥ω♥) flashed on Manny's screen as she slid closer to Calvin, wrapping her plastic hand around the beardly man.

Nessy's phone buzzed again. She glanced at the screen and let out a squee. "Eeee! Guys! Bulwichu just added me on Pradstagram! She’s found us!"

“What?” Adelle asked.

"Look!" The husky girl showed all of us the screen. There it was, a profile picture of a crystalline tree with a friend request notification.

"How the fuck does a tree have a Pradstagram account?" Adelle sputtered.

“Lots of things have internet access,” Calvin commented. 

“This is great,” Candace smiled. “I can bind us to her network signal and open a door straight to our tree!” She made cheeky eyes at Calvin and Mannie. “So, guys… Can I has a door-making chalk as my reward for yo’ soul-bindery-engagement?”

“Sure,” Calvin dug into his pocket. What he pulled out was a pile of white dust, not pink chalk as I expected.

“Shoot,” he said, digging through his pocket and producing more dust that fluttered around the office.

“What's up?” Candace asked.

“Chalk’s decayed away,” Calvin sighed. “Entropy’s got it. I thought it would last a bit longer.”

"But—" Candace choked indignantly, the giddy grin sliding off her fox snout. “Feh. Das inconvenient. What do?”

"I can give you instructions so you can make another chalk," Calvin said. "The components to make another chalk exist in the nameless city at the edge of Eureka."

"The edge of Eureka?" Kristi barked. "The place we just effin’ escaped from? The thing that almost dragged us to court?!"

Calvin nodded grimly. "Yes. The materials needed for dimensional chalk require a certain resonance that only exists where two realities bleed together."

“Details, my dude,” Candace said. “Gib details, we’ll handle it.”

"The dimensional chalk components exist in a Nameless Mall guarded by incredibly deadly conceptual predators," Calvin explained. "First person hunters."

"The… what now?" Kristi frowned.

"Entities that feed on first person observers," Calvin elaborated. "They detect and consume anything perceiving reality through a first person perspective. Since their nest is quite large, I didn’t bother making more gateway chalk recently and focused on concept farming instead."

“Have you tried strapping cameras to yourself to observe yourself in third person?” Candace asked.

“That wouldn’t work,” Calvin said. “If you did that, you’d still mostly think of yourself in first person. The hunters don’t have eyes. They observe and are drawn to thoughts of ‘I’.”

“Thoughts of I, huh?” Candace mused. “What if I bind ourselves conceptually to observe things… differently?”

“Hrm,” Calvin rubbed his lush beard. “Yes. That would hide you from the FPH beasts.”

"Aight,” Candace turned to me. “Alec, I’ma bind you to second person."

"Second person?" I asked. “What?”

“Think of it as a computer game,” Candace clarified.

“Most games I played as a kid back on non-prad Earth were either first or third person. Second person observation seems rather confusing as a concept," I said. “Is that even a thing in games?”

"It just means experiencing yourself as 'you' rather than 'I' or 'he/she/they'." Candace stated.

“And that’s going to work?”

“Your fox is the most talented concept Binder I’ve met,” Calvin said. “I reckon that if she does it, it’ll work.”

"Worth a try," Candace shrugged. "I wanna procurrr’ da chalk n’ rescue our tree-bae RV ASAP. Calvin, can we borrow five of your drones?"

“Sure. I got plenty of extras to spare. Come on.”

Calvin led us back through his domain to a storage shed where several mannequin drones stood inactive. He selected five and brought them out.

"Here they are," he said.

“Are you going to come with us?” I asked.

“No.” Calvin shook his head. “This is your Quest to undertake, Sir Alecai. The chalk will last much longer and work best if you procure it without my aid, and win the components through a fair battle at the Nameless Mall. I didn’t help you bloom your crystal tree, remember? You planted it yourselves from your reward sandwich!"

"Mkay. What do we need to fetch to make the door-drawing chalk?" I asked.

"You'll need seven components," Calvin said. He pulled out a colorful binder from Manny’s desk and flipped it open. “Here’s the map of the mall.”

He handed Nessy a yellow piece of paper.

He then flipped through the binder and pointed to a sketch on a random page that depicted star-shaped glasses. "First, you'll need ‘Starscape Crossview Spectacles’ from the optometrist on the second floor. Particular lenses there are broken along dimensional lines. You can differentiate between those n’ regular Star spectacles by trying' em on. The Crossview ones will show a view of places that don't exist locally. You will need five pairs."

“Easy peasy.” Candace bobbed.

“The optometrist has woven a devious, invisible spider web across the glasses shop,” Calvin said. “She will not permit easy lens procurement.”

“This reality sounds extra fucked with a side of fucked,” Kristi commented. 

“Second,” Calvin flipped the binder to another page. "Five-times dimensionally-sheared Movie Tickets from the theater. You’ll need to look for the ones with dates and showtimes that shift around five times. Grab five."

“From a ticket booth?” Nessy asked. 

“Not exactly,” Calvin shook his head. “The ticket booth sank into elsewhere. What bloomed in its place is a ticket tree that will defend its ticket-leaves, especially the rare, extradimensional film ones.”

I frowned at the escalating complications.

"Third," Calvin turned the page, revealing a sketch of jewelry. "You'll need Nostalgia Gems from the jewelry store. The crystals contain emotional resonance dust. It’s a most essential ingredient for dimension-hopping which helps the chalk target the destination based on your feels.”

“What’s guarding it?” Kristi asked.

“The Jeweler. She steals nostalgic facial expressions by peeling off faces to grind them into more Nostalgia Gems."

Adelle barked a laugh.

82. Second Person

"Fourth," Calvin continued, "Paradox permanent markers from the Dollarstore. They write things backwards through time.”

Kristi stared at Calvin, clearly becoming irate with the escalating lunacy of his quest.

“You can tell Paradox markers apart from others because the words appear before you even write them. Get five markers."

"Let me guess," Adelle grinned. “The corrupted Dollarstore employees will want to snack on our livers?”

"Oh no," Calvin chuckled. "The pens will defend their marker brethren. They hunt in packs, shaped like flying fish. Each pen can accelerate fast enough to go right through a person.”

Adelle whistled.

"Fifth," he flipped to an image of a small clock. "Time Zest. Snip off the arrows counting time backwards from the central clock above the fountain. The fountain water can move out of the fountain to drown any who dare mess with the clock tower above it."

“Murder fountain, got it,” the cheetah commented, amused by the local Systemfall madness.

“Sixth, you'll need Forgotten Music. Songs of bands that nobody remembers hearing. The record store has vinyl discs that play songs wiped from collective memory. The catch? Every time you listen, you forget something important about yourself. Get five vinyls of Forgotten bands."

“What’s guarding ‘em that I can pulverize?” Adelle asked.

“Nothing,” the concept farmer said. “The music playing from the shop’s speakers is incredibly potent. It will make you do things against your will.”

“Charisma?” I asked.

Calvin nodded.

"The seventh ingredient must be collected last. Conceptual Contradiction from the food court. Order something that doesn't exist from a fast food place that never opened."

“What?” I chortled.

“Exactly that,” Calvin said. 

“How the fuck are we even supposed to find such a thing?” The raptor demanded.

“Be creative,” Calvin smiled.

Kristi’s eye twitched.

"How do we make the chalk after we get all the stuff?" Nessy asked.

"Find the kitchen supply store on the first floor," Calvin instructed. "There should be a blender there labeled 'REALITY MIXER.' Put all seven components inside, blend until smooth, then pour into chalk mold from the Dollarstore. Simple!"

"Simple," Kristi echoed sarcastically. “Riiiiiight.”

“Yeah. Real simple,” Adelle elbowed the raptor. “This is some Lewis Carroll Through the Lookin’ glass shit.”

“Is that all?” Candace asked.

“That’s all I know about current chalk procurement,” Calvin said. “My information might be slightly off though as I haven’t actually been to the Nameless Mall recently on the account of now nippy the First Person Hunters get. Their nest got rather big recently and they’re real nasty buggers, very difficult to target in First Person.”

“How long would it take for us to get all of these ingredients you think?” Candace asked.

“The entire evening, maybe more,” Calvin said. 

“Hrm,” Candace chewed her bottom lip. “I won’t be able to hold the second-person binding that long on everyone. I’ll have to activate it manually whenever the FPH buggers show up.”

"That sounds like it’s going to be hell-a disorienting," Kristi observed.

"Better than becoming FPH snacks," Candace shrugged. 

“Aight,” Adelle said. “Loops, how is this second person shit going to work exactly?”

"I’ll bind our consciousness to the mannequin drones," Candace explained. "We'll observe ourselves observing the mannequins controlling the mannequins who are observing and controlling us."

"And that sentence gave me a migraine," Adelle groaned.

“Don’t think too hard ‘bout it, Ads,” the fox giggled.

"Alright then," I said. "Let's do a basic test run. Sounds good?”

The girls nodded.

“Grab a mannequin each!” Candace drew us closer, her paws glowing with silver fractals as she traced lines between each of us and the mannequins we were facing.

"Bind perspective shift!" Candace declared. "Second person observation!"

The silver light washed over me, and suddenly the world tilted in an impossible, mind skewering, unexpected direction.

You're experiencing everything differently. You see yourself standing there, yet you're still inside your body. It's disorienting.

You remain aware of your body, but you also perceive yourself through the mannequin's monitor-head cam.

"Did it work?" you ask.

"You tell me," Candace replies. "Are you thinking in second person?"

You realize she's right. Your thoughts have shifted from awareness of self to something completely absurd. You find this incredibly annoying.

"Yes," you confirm. "This feels…”

“Fucked up,” Adelle interjects. 

“I hate this.” Kristi comments. 

“It’s fine,” Candace laughs. “Right doggo?”

“S-okay,” Nessy looks left and right. “Weird… but tolerable.”

You agree with the cheetah and raptor. This is all sorts of fucked up. You want your proper perspective back, don’t like this one bit. The branches of your liminal tree soul wiggle in irritation, trying to get you back to what you are supposed to be, to Reconstitute your awareness back to a correct mental state.

You force the urge down, resist the reconstitution of self back to First Person Alec. Unfortunately for you, every moment of second person existence feel like some kind of irregular mental torture. You, Alec-ness masquarading as an individual human don’t like this POV. It hurts you on a personal level.

“Christ,” you comment, rubbing your face.

“Alec, you okay?” The husky asks.

“No,” you reply. “This is awful. My… skill really doesn’t like it.”

“Want me to drop it?” Candace asks.

“No,” you shake your head. “I… I need to get used to this bullshit. We need the chalk, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Candace affirms. “We need the chalk.”

You stare at yourself through the webcam of the mannequin following you. You lift your left hand and take a few steps back and forth, trying not to trip over your feet. 

"Good!" Calvin claps his hands. “It seems to be working.”

Your pradavarian companions make various animal noises as they move around, bumping into each other. Candace seems to be handling this unusual torture best. Nessy is a close second. Adelle and Kristi are clearly suffering. You’re not sure if they’re suffering as much as you are. Possibly you’re suffering more than them. It’s hard to tell for sure.

“Remember to stay focused on your mission," Calvin comments. “Don’t let the Nameless Mall convert you into her employees or supplies.”

You follow Calvin outside. Evening sunshine beams down on your face. It would be enjoyable if you weren’t perceiving it in second person. You want to die, reconstitute, to drive a knife through your eye. You grit your teeth, assuring yourself that this is fine. 

This is NOT fine. This is the worst thing to have happened to you. Reality around you wobbles, feels less and less real. 

Are you real? Or are you just a character, just an idea of a person stuffed into a sack of flesh tagged Alec by your observers? Are you a multidimensional actor trying too hard to be someone else, liminality pretending to be a finite, three-dimensional being? 

What’s the point of all of this? Is everything just a narrative? Are you just words on a page? Do you even exist?

“Fuck,” Candace looks at you with a concerned expression and snaps her fingers. “Unbind Second Person Perspective!”

A snap skewered me sideways.

I collapsed onto all fours, head swimming, stomach heaving. The ground beneath my palms felt wrong. Not solid earth but an abstract concept of "ground," a placeholder where reality should be, a word, an idea of a thing.

"Alec!" Nessy rushed to my side, her paw on my back. "Are you okay?"

"No," I gasped. 

Everything around me still seemed unreal. The trees, the buildings, the sky… mere words arranged to simulate a world. "Nothing is real."

"Shit," Candace crouched beside me. "I didn't expect it to hit you that hard."

"His soul isn't linear," Calvin observed from a few feet away. "Second person observation must have created a significant cognitive disruption."

"You think?!" Kristi snapped, steadying herself against a mannequin. "That was fucking horrible."

I tried to stand but my legs wouldn't cooperate. My perception kept slipping, reality fragmenting around the edges. The branches of my soul-tree thrashed internally, desperate to re-anchor me properly.

My hands dug into the earth, branches spreading out, rooting myself to the spot. 

"Give me a minute," I mumbled.

"Maybe we should find another way," Nessy suggested.

“I got it,” I lied. “I’m fine.”

“Alec,” the husky said. “You don’t smell fine.”

“I’ll be fine,” I insisted. “Give me a minute damn it.”

Red flowers blossomed across my fingers. My fingernails dug into the earth, rooting, spreading out. 

“Alec!” Nessy yelped.

She wasn’t real. She was just a word. Just a title. A husky girl. Somewhere beside that word floated another. A fox girl. 

Funny. Funny how fake it all is. Funny how none of this is real.

“Alec! Focus on me!” the husky yelled. “Focus on yourself! You… you’re blooming! You’re coming undone! Please!”

More red flower eyes continued blooming across my arms, spreading up to my elbows. They saw the same, inevitable conclusion. 

Words.

Everything was just words.

"Alec!" Nessy grabbed onto me, her blue eyes wild with panic. "Come back to us!"

I stared at her. 

Husky. Dog. Pradavarian. Construct. 

Fiction.

"Nothing exists," I muttered. 

My legs rooted into the ground. Flesh-leaves sprouted from my hair. 

The local three-dimensionality was inferior, false, wrong.

“What the shit is happening?” The cheetah barked.

"Fuck!" Candace yelped. "He's going physically liminal! Blooming. The second person perspective broke something in his perception! Bind First Person! BIND ALEC!"

I shrugged off her attempts at containing me. 

You’re not real, fox. None of this is real…

83. Tree-born

"Hello, my Liminal friend," the thing tagged as Calvin said, its words layered, spoken from a thousand mouths at once. "I see that you've shed your human mask."

I focused all of my eyes on the vast entity that was tagged as a [man in a tinfoil hat].

 A thousand violet, drawn eyes stared back at me.

"This place lacks substance," I stated. 

“It does in some ways, I suppose,” the multidimensional entity replied. “Entropy chews at substance. But it also births more unique substances one would not otherwise find in less entropic conditions.”

Roots extended from my feet, digging through the falseness, seeking true reality beneath the facade. "These constructs are flimsy."

The [pradavarians] near me blurred into concepts. Not beings, merely ideas wearing flesh. [Nessy] barked something, her words meaningless, finite noises.

"They exist in less," Calvin replied. "Not everyone can perceive the truth.”

“What is the truth?” I demanded. “Tell me so that I can shed this limited form and…”

“The truth is that this place is an abandoned dungeon,” Calvin sighed with a thousand exhales. “An infinite number of Earths are dungeons. Some are still maintained, some falling apart, barely holding at the seams. My presence in this dungeon keeps it from decaying fully.”

“A dungeon?” I repeated with a thousand mouths blooming across my tree self. 

“Well, it used to be,” the thing tagged as the [Mini-Mart Archmage] said. “Now it’s a bit of a mess.”

“Explain,” I demanded.

"Your companions fear losing you," Calvin noted, some of his eyes staring into lower levels of finite, lower-dimensional awareness. "They want you back in human form."

"Human form restricts perception," I responded. “It is lacking. I want the truth, Calvin. Why is everything fake?”

“Because it is,” Calvin replied.

“What’s real?” I demanded. “How can I reach a place that’s real?”

“You’ll get eaten before you reach anything remotely real,” Calvin shook his head. “If there’s even anything real out there. I’ve opened millions of gates to thousands of worlds over millennia. None of them are technically real. All dungeons.”

“Eaten by… whom?” I demanded.

“By things that eat liminal trees,” Calvin intoned. “I suggest you put your human mask back on, and reduce the number of dimensions you can observe.”

“Or what?” 

“Or you’ll get eaten,” he insisted. 

“I can bloom across this dungeon-world,” I stated. “Spread, propagate, multiply. Devour those who attempt to challenge me.”

“And what of those who love you?” Calvin wondered. “Will you just leave them behind?”

“They aren’t real,” I stated coldly. “They’re just words. Finite things.”

Calvin’s mouths barked a laugh. “Oh really?”

Something flashed at the edge of my lower tiers of awareness. Two ideas fusing into one. Three ideas. Four.

A fiery, radiant thing with eight eyes slapped one of my lower branches, speaking with four mouths at once. “Hey! Stop ignoring me! Alec! What, you think I cannot go up in dimensional awareness?”

I dedicated a few of my eyes to observing the little annoying thing. 

“Buzz off,” four of my mouths said.

“What? No!” The four-fold thing growled. “I’m not going to buzz off! Alec Benoit Foster!” It shouted. "Get your flesh-tree ass back to linearily now!"

“I don’t want to,” I said. “There’s no point.”

“The fuck you… What do you meant there’s no point?!” Eight eyes glared at me.

“What’s the point in limited awareness?” I asked. “In being trapped in the mire of finite time and space?”

“The point is to be human, you infinite dolt,” she snarled. 

“Why?” I asked.

“Fern already told us why,” she stated with a huff of four mouths. “The Numbers like humans. If you’re going to be a tree, someone else liminal-as-fuck will notice you, step down to your level and chop you down. Is that what you want? To be hacked down by a Number? To lose all of our awesome progress?”

“The more dimensions you observe, the more likely you are to be noticed,” Calvin agreed with the four-fold thing.

“You seem fine,” I stated.

“I play the game well,” Calvin said. “I stay human. I don’t step outside of my box, mostly keep to my domain.”

“You don’t look very human to me,” I pointed out. “You, like me, are a being capable of liminal awareness.”

“My eyes and mouths are an extension of my awareness,” Calvin said. “They’re tools. Burn them, slice ‘em up and only a human me remains.”

“You survive entropy waves,” I pointed out. 

“Because I don’t bloom,” Calvin insisted. “Because I focus on being human extra hard when they happen. On remaining as myself. I suggest you do the same. The more you spread yourself, the more noticeable you get and the less you you become.”

“I’m not sure if I want to be a finite me,” I said. 

“Alec, would you please listen to Calvin and get back down to linearity?” The four-fold thing asked, glaring at me with eight eyes. “Don’t make me start snapping branches and poking flesh eyes out. You know I will.”

“Big threats for something so small,” I said.

The four-fold entity bristled, its form flaring brighter. Colors burst from its outline—silver, blue, violet, orange—a hurricane of elemental fury.

"Small?" Eight eyes flared, burning with rage and determination. "SMALL?! I’ll show you small!”

It lunged forward, grabbing onto my branches with tiny claws. 

"You think I can't reach you? You think I'm trapped in linearity?" The irritation of its presence intensified as it climbed higher, sinking deeper into my awareness. Not just attacking my physical form, but invading the very concept of me. I tried to shake it off, branches twisting, but the creature clung harder.

"Get off!" I demanded, wiggling my branches.

"No!" It howled back. "You get off being a tree! Get back to your human self!”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll tear you asunder!” She snarled. “Bind Fractalization to physical liminality!”

I caught fire. All of me, everywhere at the same time.

“How do you like that, eh?!” Her voice came not just from the four-fold creature but from somewhere above. From the radiant, emerald ring overhead, bound into itself. From the monstrosity defined as the Wormwood Star. From the breath of entropic flames pouring down from it, frying my branches, igniting my eyes, shearing my branches with fractal fire.

I shuddered. This wasn’t just irritation. 

This was pain. This was death. The end of everything. Destruction, pure and absolute. 

“Why?” I howled as my branches burned.

“Because I can’t lose you,” she snarled, eight eyes flashing with pure [sadness]. “Because I refuse to lose you. Because you’re mine. Mine!”

“Who made me yours?!” I yelled, reconstituting the burning branches.

“You did.”

“When?”

“Across eternity. Again and again. As I have.”

“A repeating pattern,” I realised, my awareness dancing across my multitude.

“Yes.”

“We can break it, you know,” I stated. “End it. Go into separate directions.”

“No. No, no, no! I refuse.”

“Why?” I asked. 

“Because love is how we win in the end.”

“We aren’t doing a whole lot of winning right now,” I yelled. “You just set me on fire!”

“I’ll set you on fire twice as hard if you don’t listen! We’ll be doing even less winning if we keep escalating this,” she snarled, emerald rays of Fractalizer fire igniting, detonating more eyes, shearing more branches. “I will burn you to ashes, reset you to get you back! Don’t think that I won’t!”

“You won’t win by threatening me,” I growled back. “You’re not even real!”

The four-fold creature reached a large branch.

"You say I’m not real?" She growled, tiny claws digging in. "Then what is this? Bind memories!”

Its claws pierced deeper, and suddenly memories flooded through me. Not abstract concepts, but visceral experiences. Nessy washing my hair in the shower. Kristi's lips against mine on the rooftop of Ferguson’s HIgh. Adelle's purr vibrating against my chest in the Moonshard Inn. Candace's silver eyes flashing as she laughed, sitting on my lap.

"Meaningless," I insisted. “Just words.”

"If we're just words, then why does this hurt?"

“Because you’re frying me with entropic flames? Attempting to unexist me?”

“I’m not attempting to unexist you!” She yelled. “I’m keeping you from growing too big! Not letting you get noticed where you’re rooted now!”

Calvin watched our escalating fight, his thousand eyes unblinking. "The choice is yours, tree soul. Embrace the infinite and lose yourself, or return to linearity and keep what matters."

"Linearity doesn’t matter,” I insisted.

"We matter," the four-fold thing growled, balancing precariously on a branch. "And you know it."

Then she did something unexpected. She let go. Eight arms spread wide, suddenly snapping into just two, she fell backward from my branch, plummeting toward the ground far below.

"Catch me, Alec," she called as she fell through the air, her voice relaxed, serene. "If I’m not real… then just let me die. Let this finite me break against the ground and look for me at the end of time."

I watched her drop, this four-fold, dastardly creature defined as a [fox] made of silver, blue, violet, and orange Astral innards. This thing that claimed to love me. This [pradavarian] beast that refused to be dismissed as mere concept.

Something cracked within my liminal awareness.

Without conscious decision my body moved, thousands of blooming arms spread out, slowing her fall. As the arms above broke, I sheared myself away from the tree, disconnecting into a single self. 

I caught her at ground level as she smashed into my embrace from above. 

“Ow,” Candace said, blinking at me with multicolored eyes. “Good job on catching me! Mind not doing that again?”

I winced. Above me, a tree made of flesh was burning away with emerald fractal flames, coming apart into ashes.

“Shit,” I said, staring at the dying tree above us that had just released my human, singular self from its fleshy embrace. “I didn’t know that I could do that. Be… that.”

“Please don’t be that,” Candace said. “Please just be you, Alec. I like the human you.”

“Being me is painful,” I groaned as she hugged me tightly, nuzzling against me.

“Yeah,” she said. “I suppose that it is. Being human often hurts, but it also lets you feel this," She said as she pressed against me, kissing my face. “Love. Passion. Joy. Connection," she purred between more kisses. Her paws traced my face. “It all matters.”

“Does it?” I sat up slowly. "Everything seemed so... fake. Just words arranged to look like reality."

"Maybe it is," she conceded. "Maybe we're all just Omnicode words, System-Wizard forged concepts, remnants, corrupted, overwritten concepts of someone’s lost, half-faded wishes and dreams. But so what?”

“This place is really fucked up,” I said, glancing at the edge where Calvin’s blue-sky domain ended and where gray stormy sky began. “And trying to adjust to it is messing me up.”

“M-yea,” she kissed me again. “It is. But we can beat it. I believe in us.”

Calvin looked down at us with a smile. "The more dimensions you perceive, the less substantial many important things often become. That's the trap of physical liminality."

I rubbed my bruises where Candace landed. "How do you cope with knowing?"

"By choosing to be me here and now," Calvin replied simply. "By remembering that a limited perspective has its own value."

“See?” The prad-fusion-girl nodded. "He gets it. Seeing everything means feeling nothing. Being stuck in linear time means getting to savor each moment. Like this.”

She kissed me again, much more fiercely, whiskers tickling my cheeks.

Her multicolored eyes met mine. "You want the truth? Here's the truth: love doesn't make sense from a cosmic perspective of a vast, many-eyed tree. It's wasteful, irrational, messy, and completely pointless on an omniversal scale. But it's the only thing that makes any suffering worth enduring."

"I almost lost myself." I shuddered.

"Yeah, you did," she replied. "Lucky for you, I got you back."

Manny approached, her monitor displaying: 

(•ᴗ•) 

"Your girls are quite resilient and persistent, Sir Alecai," she observed. “A soul divided in four and multiplied on purpose to see extra dimensions? Willing to set you conceptually ablaze just to protect you? Willing to die for you? Someday I hope to do as much for my Cal.”

Calvin glanced at Manny, not looking too sure like he wanted to be set on fire.

I looked up at the ashes on the wind that was my tree-self just a minute ago. "I don't want to go back there."

"Then don't," Candace said. "Stay here with me. Choose to be human. Choose me by your side as I am. Okay?”

“Okay.” I nodded, hugging her. She was warm and fuzzy. My clever, silver fox Binder with four souls. It was nice.

I kissed her back.