Where the Predators Prowl: [54, 55]

54: Noms and Plans

The arrival of our takeout feast was a welcome, greasy punctuation mark in a day of high-stakes drama. Or perhaps just a comma, since we still had a quest to do tonight.

We descended on the food like a pack of starving… prads and one human, the earlier tension dissolving into the simple, satisfying act of enjoying noms.

"I could get used to this," Adelle mumbled around a mouthful of deluxe pizza. "Good food, good fights, good naps. Good Alphage!" She reached out and mussed up my hair.

“Don’t ya mean best Alphage?” Candace corrected. She snatched a garlic breadstick from the box. She held the breadstick out to me “Open wide!”

“Oi, don’t just stuff him full of bread, ya dum fox,” Adelle grabbed Candace’s hand, pushing it aside to offer me a very raw looking steak piece held between her claws. “Look how thin he is! He clearly needs protein to grow more muscle mass.”

“A human needs actual nutrients, not just… grease or undercooked meat, you two knobfolds,” Kristi interjected, spearing a piece of grilled chicken from her caesar salad and holding it up on a metal form with the authority of a disapproving mother. 

Nessy didn’t join in on the Alec-feeding frenzy, simply giggling to herself as she chewed on a T-bone.

I glanced from the breadstick to the raw steak to the chicken skewer, all being brandished at me like offerings to a particularly indecisive god. Then my eyes darted across the room to the two professors, cheeks burning.

Marlena let out another one of her booming, bark-like laughs. “Ah, the look of a Captain drowning in pack affection! Say, how long have you five known each other?”

“Slightly over two days,” I said, taking a bite of the breadstick, then steak and then the chicken.

“What?!” Marlena chortled. “Come on, you’re pulling my tail! Slayer, I’ve seen delving teams that have been together for a decade with less… mutual mojo. Nobody’s at each other’s throats! What’s going on?”

“An astute assessment, Ms. Shashorth,” Ignis commented. “I too am witnessing an unusual degree of pack cooperation formed in such a short period of time.”

“It’s… just mutual friendship!” Nessy voiced with a smile from my right side, fluffy tail wagging.

“Nah, it’s raw passion!” Adelle declared. “The best kind of attraction.”

“Trust built over mutual suffering,” Kristi stated bluntly.

“Effective management,” I said, chewing thoughtfully. “I gave them a competition to reach second place in the pack hierarchy through showing affection to each other.”

“Hmmm, nah,” Marlena tapped her chin. “Something else is going on. Something funky. I’m not sniffing even a bit of murderous intent! Even the best Captains constantly get derailed by that sorta thing. Where’s the teeth and claws? A perfectly stable four to one relationship made in two days is unheard of!”

“Don’t listen to these knobs, we’re cosmically entwined,” Candace said. 

"Like four shoes in a magical tumble dryer," Adelle added with a snort.

“Hang on. Did you bind them to the concept of Trust or something?” the TA speculated.

“Naw,” Candace grabbed a steak from Adelle’s plate. “A Dagaz Rune.”

“WHAT?!” Ignis barked. “How long have you been holding it? Even with the dragonheart I gave you, the mana use would be…”

“I haven’t been holding anything, Instructor,” Candace shook her head. “That’s the thing. The effect was already there, I just reminded it to exist.”

“I don’t understand,” Professor Fern frowned. 

“I discovered the effect between me and Addie years ago when I bound us together as Captain and Lieutenant,” Candace said. “A Dagaz that sticks.”

“Spells don’t stick,” Ignis pointed out. “Prad and human magic is entropically aligned and dissolves into the Astral given enough time. The more mana is used the longer the spell lasts. A perfectly stable Syntropic spell requires a dragonheart engine to run it and even then there would be a lot of wasted magic constantly pouring out into the physical, bending reality in some visible way.”

“I know! I thought that it was a fluke of some kind,” Candace bobbed. “A cosmic error. But then I found Alec and bound him to us and that worked too. Same for Kristi and Nessy. It just stuck. Crazy, right? Here, want to test binding you to our pack, Marlena?”

“Sure,” The TA nodded, offering Candace her large hand.

“Bind Absolute Dagaz!” Candace declared, grabbing the seal’s finger with her right and me with her left hand. The infinity rune flashed across the fox into Marlena’s hand and then simply came apart into dancing sparks. “See? It’s not even sticking. It just dissolves. But between us five, it… exists. Permanently. Without spending any mana from either of us.”

“But that should be impossible,” Ignis said with a frown. “Not unless… something is enforcing it from the other end.”

“That’s the thing,” Candace said. “There’s no other end. There’s no Outsider hovering over us, cus I would absolutely see that. There’s liminality. Alec’s soul is liminal. The relationship between us four and him is liminal too.”

“How can a relationship be liminal?” the seal blinked.

Candace, wiggling slightly my lap, took another deep sip of mana-restoring wine before answering. "Most relationships are linear," she began, tracing a line down my arm with her white claw. "You meet, you fall in love, you bond, you grow, you die, you end. It's a straight path. But us?" She tapped my chest. "We're not a line. We're a... a shape. A pattern. It’s like we’re five puzzle pieces that don’t fit any other puzzle, but when you put us together, we don’t just make a picture. We make a door."

"A door to where?" Ignis asked.

"Everywhere," Candace whispered, a hint of that familiar, concerning, lunacy creeping into her voice. "The connection between us... it doesn't just exist in this physical reality. It echoes. Sideways. Through possibilities. That's why the Dagaz sticks. It's not just holding us together here; it's holding us together everywhere at the same time. Between time, between space, since neither concepts are linear in the Astral Ocean. The bond isn't being enforced by one source; it's being reinforced by a liminal number of parallel bonds across nullspace!”

Adelle snorted again, orange tail swatting me. "So what you're saying is, we're all just really, really into each other, on a cosmic scale? Cool. Pass the pizza."

Kristi sighed. "Candace, are you sure that's not just the wine and the Topaz-withdrawal talking?"

“I mean yeah,” Candace scratched her eblow, twitching. “I would murder for some Topaz right now, but no. Definitely not. Urghh.”

"It's not," Nessy agreed softly. "I feel it too. Like a song I forgot I knew the words to, but my heart still remembers the melody. When I’m one with Candace… I can almost remember my past life with Alec."

“One with Candace? Past life? What?” Marlena asked.

"Loops?" Adelle asked, eyeing the increasingly twitching fox. "You good?"

"Peachy," Candace replied, sounding a tad strained. She squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the edge of the bed. "Just... a little headache. Okay no, I’m lying, it's a big headache. Want to claw out my eyes."

“T-dust withdrawal,” Adelle sighed.

“Let's dance,” Nessy offered Candace her hand.

“M’kay,” Candace let out. 

Without another word, Nessy pulled Candace to the side of the bed. The fox didn’t resist.

“Bind soul!” both of them said at the same time, reaching out towards each other, hands entwining.

The process seemed faster this time. Brilliant rainbowy fractals ignited across both of their bodies, breaking up into constellations of blue and violet stars. The silver light of dancing fractals flared, and when it faded, Candace’s eyes closed, her breath steadying out.

"That takes care of that," Nessy chirped, grabbing Candace and tucking her into bed and relocating back to my side. “Am good now.”

The casual way she went through the soul-fusion, as if she'd just switched a channel on the TV, sent the Instructor and her TA into slack-jaw silence.

"What was that?" Martela breathed, her eyes lighting up with a magical scan. "Is one of your eyes silver? You just... you two just… become one?! Ignis, is this a thing anyone can just do?!”

"Identify," Ignis stated, sending a spell at Nessy. "Hum. Looks like… Symbiotic Soul-Binding. I've read theoretical papers on it, but they were dismissed as fantastical fiction, akin to dividing something by zero and figuring out the specific number. The mana requirements, the risk of soul-degradation, the potential for permanent psychic fracturing... It shouldn't be possible at all, nor this cleanly or quickly performed.”

"It's not symbiosis," Nessy corrected. "It's… musical harmony."

"But what happens when the music stops, little songbirds?" Ignis asked. "When the binding wears off? The snap-back from a fusion of this magnitude could cause irreparable damage to both psyches!"

"Nah. It doesn't hurt when we're together or apart," Nessy stated. "Because we were the same soul before. Pretty sure he cut us apart, the cheeky butt.” She pointed a claw at me with a smile.

“What?” I blinked. “I didn’t…”

“You did,” Nessy stated firmly.

The endless, liminal tree inside me seemed to disagree with my words. 

For a brief instance I saw myself as an emaciated figure, coming apart into ashes and reconstituting with each breath, holding a strange black, hexagon-textured, two-dimensional knife. 

I faced an eldritch thing made from endlessly entwined bodies, the apex of which was the smiling face of Nessy, her arms spread out towards me, entwined with a billion other arms, billowing out into endless wings. My dark blade coming down on the crystalline heart unfolding out of her chest. Reality catching fire.

I blinked.

“Fucking hell,” I let out. “Okay, maybe I did do that in another life. Damn it.”

“Hrmmm,” the seal mused. “Those Krishna monks reject the cycle of reincarnation, but it seems like you… somehow took advantage of it?”

“I might have done just that,” Nessy said slyly, hugging me, “to keep Alec around forever.” 

“What?” I eyed her.

“Just making an educated guess,” she grinned. “I don’t have my memories yet. Maybe raiding the Well of Severance will fix that problem.”

"Soul-fusion, even temporary, is a breach of every known law of thaumaturgical safety. It's like trying to run two operating systems on the same hardware without a proper partition. The risk of psychic resonance feedback, mana bleed, soul-fracturing... it's astronomical." Ignis said.

“Ah, but do you observe any resonance feedback, professor?” Nessy arched an eyebrow. “You’d certainly see it in the Astral, a wobbling around the edges of our souls, the excess mana bleed and burning away as one soul begins to devour the other, turning the body into a ghoul.”

“I’m not an expert Binder,” Ignis replied, eyes flaring silver. “But no… I don’t seem to notice any Astral bleeding.”

“Exactly,” Nessy pointed out, taking the laurel from Candace’s head and putting it on her own. “With this artifact on, I can stay as me pretty much forever. No us. Me. Nessy Whitepaw. Anyways, we’re getting off track with this soul-merging discussion business. We have a heist to plan to rescue my dreams! Alec, what traumatic event are we using to get in?”

“A wyvern attack, maybe?” I suggested.

“That’ll work,” Adelle nodded. “I did punch one out recently.”

“It needs more detail than that,” Nessy said. "Ah, got it! Operation: Traumatized Students Seeking Spiritual Guidance! TSSG! Marlena will be our distraught, but caring instructor. Addie, Alec and I," she gestured to our trio, "will play the role of poor, traumatized students who witnessed a horrific event outside of town. What event, you ask?" She paused for dramatic effect. "A wild Ceramic Wyvern swooped down and devoured Alec's beloved grandfather right before our very eyes at his farm! Horrifying! So much blood and guts! We'll be seeking the Well to erase this terrible, terrible memory so that it doesn’t derail our Advanced Delving educational experience!"

"You think that will work?” I asked, smiling at her dramatization.

"Yep. It's perfect!" Nessy insisted, relocating to my lap and licking my face. "A wyvern did almost munch us recently and nobody knows if your grandfather is alive or not. Plus, it explains why we'd be seeking out the Well specifically as a group."

"Hrm. What about the rest of us?" Fern asked.

“You’ll be our nuclear option, Ignis,” I said. “You'll wait in the forest just outside the temple grounds with the Elementals. If—and only if—I give the signal, you unleash your army and create the biggest, loudest, most attention-grabbing distraction you can imagine."

“I could do more by your side,” she said.

“No,” I shook my head. “If you get knocked out, we lose control of elementals.”

“Mhmm,” Marlena nodded. “Seal head-bonks are your weakness, Prof.”

"If we lose you, Instructor Fern, we're all screwed," Nessy agreed. "Which is why you gotta stay hidden until we’re ready to use big guns.”

“Fine,” Ignis sighed.

“Let me know your phone number,” I said. “I'll call you when we're ready for you to attack the temple.”

Ignis dictated her number to me, I added her to my contacts and sent her a text and then added her on Pawstagram. Then, I traded numbers with the TA.

“Marlena, you're with us,” I turned to the seal girl. “You're hard to take down and your friendly demeanor is the perfect cover for a concerned teacher."

“Arf! I do love a good bit of roleplay!” The seal TA saluted me.

“What about me?” Kristi asked, pawing at my side.

“You’ll be our ace in the hole—our surprise airborne assault. Marlena will carry you inside the bag.” I explained. “Nessy, go upsize our dimensional bag enough to fit Kristi and her Nemesis glider.”

“Mkay,” Kristi nodded.

Nessy jumped off the bed and began binding the dimensional bag to make its interiors bigger.

55: Operation TSSG

"Alright," I said, doing a final mental headcount. "Kristi and the glider are in the bag carried by Marlena. Me, Marlena, Addie and Nessy are the 'traumatized' group. Fern and the Elementals are on standby… I think that’s everyone that I…" I paused, a sudden realization dousing my strategic enthusiasm. "...wait. Shit.”

"Forget something or think of some other contingency, Alpha?" Adelle asked, tilting her head at me.

"TurboFluff," I let out. "I completely forgot about her. She could have probably helped us too."

Instantly, I could see the same realization dawn on Nessy and Addie. In the unending whirlwind where every step seemed heavier starting with the dungeon sim, the Omnids and the infected monks… I managed to completely overlook the scrappy lynx who'd lost her bike and declared her loyalty to me at the edge of Highway 69.

“Ah,” Adelle bit her lower lip. “Right. Turbo. Yep. I spaced out too, don’t look at me, I’m not Captain anymore. Lots of whack shit went down recently.”

“I didn't even think to check if she was okay,” I sighed. 

"It's not your fault," Nessy said, emphatically placing a paw on my arm.. "We've all been running on adrenaline. But a good pack doesn't leave anyone behind. We should call her."

“My phone got fried with my bike,” Addie shrugged. “No idea what her number is. Candace?”

"I... I remember her number," Nessy-Candace nodded. She pulled out her sleek Ipaws, tapping out a number. "There. Putting her on speaker."

The phone rang three times before it was answered with a gruff, slurred, "Who-aree-ya-n-whad-daya want?"

"Turbo! Hey! It's... Candace," she began. "And also Nessy. We're sort of... sharing a body right now. It's a long story."

There was a pause on the other end, followed by a dry, humorless chuckle. "Sharin'... a body? The fuck? How much Topaz are you on, Loops? And who the hell is Nessy?"

"Nessy is the husky Bard girl from school," Addie cut in. “Our age. Loops bound their souls together and now they’re like twice as Bard and Binder.”

"That husky? With a fox and bird chums? Right-o." There was the sound of a bottle clinking against something hard. "So what? You called to rub it in? 'O-la-la, we're all having a grand old French time sharin’ souls n’ sheet while your bike is a pile of slag!'"

"No," I said, taking the phone. "Turbo, it's Alec. I... I'm sorry I didn't call sooner. Things have been crazy."

"Crazy," she scoffed. "Yeah. Tell me about it. My bike's gone, man. Every credit, every night shift... gone. Just like that. Faster than I could blink. Fucking Highway Sixtiee Ninine maaan. Pretty sure I have Lynx PTSD now and I’m a fucking lynx. Can’t look at myself in the mirro without flinching."

The raw misery in her voice had a lot of weight to it.

"I know," I said quietly. "Sorry, I didn’t contact you sooner. I promise you, we'll get you a new bike. A better one. That's an Alpha's word."

"Pffffsh." She huff-laughed. "What're you gonna do, build me one out of junk from your grandpa's farm, dawg?"

"If I have to," I said. "I will.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever,” she slurred. “Anything else?”

“Turbs, how drunk are you?” Adelle asked.

“Very,” the lynx replied. “Absolutely sloshed. Can’t move. Been awake two days. About to pass out. Just need to tequila it up.”

"She sounds... really down," Nessy sighed. "Her voice... smells like hopelessness. We need to do more than just buy her a bike. She needs pack management. Maybe an intervention."

“I don’t need no invervesnhhh, buzz off, whoever uuu are,” Turbo replied. 

"Turbo," I said into the phone, "We're about to go on a mission right now. But after it's done, tomorrow, we're going to hang out. All of us."

There was a long silence. "Why?" she finally asked.

"Because I’m your Alpha," I replied. "You're part of this pack. And we don't leave our packmates behind to drink themselves into a stupor."

"Hmph," she grunted, though it sounded less angry now. "Aight. Have fun... with your thing. I'm gonna go... find wherrr my tequila rolled under. And there it is! Mkay. Peace."

The line went dead. I stared at the phone, my chest feeling heavy. I had another person to save, another broken prad to try and pull back from the edge.

"She just needs a good smack or two.” Adelle said. “Looks like our to-do list just got longer." 

"We can worry about Turbo after we deal with the soul-sucking well," Kristi said. "Clock's ticking."

She was right. I took a deep breath, pushing down the guilt and worry, mentally focusing on the immediate threat. This mission wasn't just about Nessy's memories. It was about proving that this pack, this strange, dysfunctional family I'd somehow assembled, could actually do great things. That we could save each other, staring with the husky girl. 

"Alright," I said. "Let's move out."

. . . 

Our team of four departed from the flying tugboat and arrived at the serene, white-stone medieval facade of the Krishna temple. 

The sun started setting, and the temple was bathed in the soft glow of magitek lanterns, the air thick with the scent of incense and blooming night flowers.

From the outside, it was a picture of tranquility.

We approached the main entrance, where a lone male wolf monk stood guard. He smiled serenely as we drew near. 

"Namaste, friends. The temple will soon be closing for the evening, but if you seek urgent spiritual counsel—"

Marlena, channeling the energy of a deeply concerned but slightly frazzled teacher, rushed forward, her hands waving with dramatic anxiety. "Oh, thank goodness! Please, you have to help us! My students... they've witnessed something just awful!"

She launched into the fabricated story with a performance worthy of an award, about the untimely demise of my grandfather via ceramic wyvern consumption. 

Adelle, Nessy-Candace and I played our parts, looking suitably shell-shocked and traumatized, although I could tell that Adelle was trying very hard not to break out into snickers. Nessy had to step hard on her foot so that the cheetah would let out an appropriate sob-noise at the right time.

The monk's serene expression shifted to one of deep sympathy after he absorbed our TA’s tale. "The poor dears. Of course. Come in, come in! The Well can offer your students solace tonight. We will guide you."

“Ah! Novitiate Whitepaw,” He spotted Nessy. “How did the book sale go today?”

“As good as always,” Nesys said, keeping a serious face on. “I left early because I ran out of mana, but the others are still there, doing their part, helping take down the booths. I… also would like the use of the well tonight, as I am struggling to mentally deal with my friend's grandfather's death. Old Daniel really should have taken better care of his farm’s monster-repelling barrier.”

“Of course novitiate,” the monk nodded. “I understand.”

We were led through the quiet temple, our footsteps echoing on the polished stone floors. As we passed below the main prayer hall, I could feel the low thrum of the ward magic, a palpable sense of arcane power held in reserve. The monk led us to a small, windowless waiting room beneath the hall.

"Please, make yourselves comfortable," he said. "You must change into temple robes to enter the sacred space. And please, leave your bags and phones here. No worldly possessions are permitted in the presence of the Well of Severance."

He gestured to a row of lockers. We complied, undressing and changing into the simple orange robes. Marlena placed the oversized dimensional bag—containing Kristi, a submachine gun, and a high-tech assault glider—beside a locker with a soft thud. Nessy grabbed my phone and whispered something softly. My phone vanished out of existence. I guessed that she dipped it into the Astral like Candace did with her long hair.

With a final, compassionate smile, the monk led us through a heavy stone door and down a flight of spiraling stairs. The air grew colder, damper. As we descended, the walls slowly changed. 

The serene carvings of deities gave way to older, more primal symbols etched into the rough-hewn stone—spirals, geometric patterns, and arcane runes that pulsed with a faint, cold light.

The stairs eventually opened into a vast, circular cavern lit by blue lanterns. 

In the center, surrounded by a ring of glowing massive, jagged, blue-black crystals, was the Well of Severance. From this subterranean vantage point, it looked nothing like the peaceful garden feature I’d seen from above. It was a wide, gaping maw in the floor, a vortex of swirling, silver and dark energy.

A shimmering, transparent barrier surrounded the entire maw, humming with power. Two other monks were present, sitting in silent meditation in front of the well.

"The cleansing is performed with the Chalice of Absolution," our guide explained, gesturing to a simple obsidian chalice resting on a pedestal just outside the ward barrier. "One must drink from it to attune to the Well's energy, allowing it to draw forth the memories and attachments you wish to release."

"I see," Marlena nodded. "What a fascinating process! May I have a closer look at that lovely Chalice?"

As she waddled toward the pedestal, she "accidentally" tripped, her massive form careening toward two of the meditating monks.

"Whoopsie-doodle!" she cried out.

That was our signal.

Nessy sprang into action. She darted toward our confused-looking guide.

"Unbind Astral connection!" she commanded, her paws slapping against his back. 

I saw it again—that horrifying, split-second glimpse of something fungal and alien writhing above the monk’s head. The connection severed and the wolf swayed.

“Pow!” Adelle snarled, flashing toward the wolf with shadowstep and knocking him out with an uppercut. The wolf flew backwards and rolled across the floor, his body going slack. 

Marlena didn't just stumble. She rolled, a blur of gray-and-black hexamesh, knocking the two monks off their feet with a sound like bowling pins being scattered. "Sorry! So clumsy of me!" she chirped, slamming her fists into the monk heads.

The head-boops didn’t seem to work on the monks.

They slowly scrambled back up, their expressions looking lopsided and unnatural, movements jerky as if they were sleepwalking, eyes half lidded.

Marlena met them head on with a joyful bark, her fists raised. "Tag! You're it!"

Her tail sent the monks flying into the distant walls. Their bodies slamming into the wall seemed to have little effect, as they slid down and then stood up, wobbling.

The two invincible monks advanced with jerky motions. They were puppets, their strings pulled by something eldritch and unseen. Adelle tensed, ready to spring, but Nessy held up a paw, stopping her. "Punching them only knocks out the host body. Let me disrupt their threads first.”

She took a deep breath, and a low, resonant hum began to build in her throat. It wasn't a song, just a single, pure note of Riffweld that vibrated through the stone floor, a focused pulse that seemed to disrupt something vital within the puppeteered prads.

The advancing monks faltered, their coordination suddenly failing them. One stumbled sideways into a support pillar, the other staggered back, its head lolling as if some strings controlling it had gone slack.

That was the opening.

Nessy rushed as orange robed, black-white blur past the disoriented monks. She reached the nearest one. "Unbind Astral connection!"

Then performed the same unbinding magic on the second monk, with Adelle following right behind Nessy with knockout punches.

"Impressive!" Marlena smiled. “A+ work!"

"Thanks," Nessy winked, then turned her attention to the shimmering barrier around the Well. She approached it cautiously, her paw extended, the dragonheart laurel on her head pulsing with radial shimmers.

"Unbind Ward," she commanded, pressing her paws against the invisible wall.

The barrier did not yield. Instead, it flared with brilliant, cold light, repelling her touch with a jolt that sent her stumbling back. 

"Whoa! Okay, that's… potent. Hrmmm. An outside source? Clever, clever. Let me sniff where you are ”

She didn't try breaching the ward again. Instead, she sat cross-legged on the stone floor.

The one silver-gray iris glowed with an inner light as she began to scan the barrier, her head tilting as she traced invisible lines of power through the air.