"Yep," the heterochromatic Nessy nodded. "Better than okay. I'm great!"

She stepped to me and hugged me tightly. "Alec, I… Hi."

"Hi," I said, not sure how else to reply.

"Hrmm," Adelle commented, cradling Candace's unconscious body. "What should we call you? Nandy? Cessy?"

"Nessy is fine," Nessy shrugged. She returned to sniffing me. "You know, I missed you more than anything in the world, Alec. Heh. You're just as cute as a wolf."

"How do you feel?" I asked.

"I feel... Lighter. More... bouncy? Happier. Almost… complete."

"Almost?" I asked.

"Just gotta get my stolen songs and dreams back from the Krishna temple," she said, flexing her knuckles. "Those monks took what doesn't belong to them. Don't look at me like that—I'm fine, see?"

As if to demonstrate this newfound energy, Nessy suddenly began hopping from one foot to the other, her tail wagging with almost comical enthusiasm. She circled me rapidly, heterochromatic eyes sparkling with mischief.

"I feel like I could run for days! Everything's so bright and clear and... alive!" she exclaimed, her voice carrying Nessy's warmth with undertones of Candace's playfulness. She spun in a circle, arms outstretched, then flashed away from me before suddenly pouncing right toward me.

I barely had time to brace myself before she collided with my wolf self, sending us both tumbling backward. I managed to catch her, finding myself suddenly with an armful of overly-enthusiastic husky.

"Whoa there," I laughed. "Easy."

"Sorry!" Nessy giggled, but made no move to extract herself from my arms. Instead, she nuzzled against my neck with uncharacteristic boldness. "You smell so good behind the wolf. Like... like a memory I lost and found. Like home. Like our tree. Like our… RV."

"Um, thanks?" I replied, acutely aware of Kristi and Adelle watching us. "What RV?"

"One we parked in the Superstore." She replied with a soft, heartstopping smile, her face leaning close to mine.

"Guys, we should probably focus on the mission," Kristi pointed out, her feathers ruffling slightly as she watched Nessy practically drape herself across me.

"Right," Nessy agreed, reluctantly pulling away but not before giving my cheek a quick lick. "Mission! Treasure! Adventure!"

She bounced on her toes, acting more like an excited puppy than the previously reserved, shy husky I'd come to know.

"Is this... normal?" I whispered to Adelle, glancing at Nessy, who was now sniffing the air with exaggerated movements, her tail wagging so vigorously it was practically a blur.

"I dunno," Adelle shrugged, shifting Candace's unconscious body in her arms. "Never seen her do a soul fusion before. But if I had to guess, I'd say we're seeing Nessy without… inhibitions. Candy is a rather uninhibited critter."

"Great," Kristi muttered. "Just what we needed, a friggin' disinhibited, hyperactive husky with the impulse control of a dumb fox."

"I heard that!" Nessy called out cheerfully, not sounding offended in the slightest. She laughed. "You two are much too square." She quickly grabbed the knocked out wolfgirl from the ground and stuffed her into the bag. "Gimme my fox bod," She grabbed Candace's body from Addie's hands and stuffed it into the other backpack.

She twirled again, inhaling deep. "Everything is so clear now! I can smell and see the connections between things—like little silver threads tying everything together! Terrible things and good things. Let's ignore the terrible things though. Yep."

She seemed to agree with herself, tail wagging. She approached Addie with a swagger.

"I could fuse me to you, you know, Ads," she offered. "Three pawsome souls in one body. Thrice the power and skills."

"Hard pass," Adelle said quickly, taking a step back. "I prefer having just one soul per body, thanks."

"Your loss," Nessy singsonged.

"Come on, Ness, we should keep moving," I interjected.

"Right, right," Nessy nodded, her ears perking up. She looked down at herself. "Hum. I will need a disguise. Hold on."

She suddenly stopped fluttering around us, her ears perking up as she tilted her head, sniffing and listening to something none of us could hear. Her expression shifted through a series of micro-emotions—surprise, confusion, delight, determination—before settling into a mischievous grin that was pure Candace.

"Oh. Oh! That's brilliant!" she exclaimed to herself.

"What is?" I asked warily.

Instead of answering, Nessy climbed into the bag standing beside the unconscious wolf girl. She pried a few armor bits from Yura, strapping them to herself and then placed her paws on Yura temples, her fingers igniting with silver fractals.

"What are you doing?" Adelle asked.

"Borrowing a look," Nessy replied cryptically.

"You can do that? Borrow someone's appearance?" Kristi asked skeptically.

"With Candace's binding abilities combined with my Riffweld? Absolutely," Nessy confirmed, continuing to work her magic over the unconscious wolf. "It's not a full possession like what Alec's doing with Pire, just a surface-level glamour. A song, an idea of a specific person bound to my soul. No actual change, more like the invisibility thing I did on ya."

"And that's… better?" Adelle asked.

"It's worse in terms of tricking clever prads," Nessy shrugged. "But it's better for me. I can focus much better with twice the soul. I was definitely going insane, losing myself to the Abyss in a wolf body. Let's not do that again."

The silver light intensified as she started humming a tune, fractals flowing from her paws to envelop her entire body. For a moment, she seemed to shimmer, her form becoming indistinct, wavering like a mirage in desert heat. Then the light faded, and where Nessy had stood was now a duplicate of Yura—a female gray wolf with a white streak in her fur in gray and black armor.

"Ta-da!" she announced, climbing out of the bag and doing a little twirl. "What do you think? Convincing?"

"Kinda," Kristi said. "If I focus really hard on you and sniff ya, I can tell that something is off."

"I'm pretty convinced," I said.

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"You're a low level human," Kristi huffed. "This ain't gonna trick higher level prads if they get close."

I glanced at the husky disguised as a wolf again. The only giveaway for me was her eyes, a mismatched pair of blue and silver and the unmistakable cheeky and positive personality shining through her expression.

"It's good enough for a glance, I ain't planning to come near anyone," Nessy-Candace-as-Yura winked. "I can smell prads like two clicks away now. N'ways, we need to hide the rest of you. Back into the bags, you two!"

"What?" Adelle protested. "Again?"

"Do you have a better plan for sneaking past many hostile students, Fern and a bazillion Elementals, Ads?" Nessy challenged, hands on her hips in a Candace-like pose.

Adelle opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Fine," she grumbled. "But this is the last time. Next dungeon sim, I'm staying out and punching things."

"Sure, sure," Nessy agreed. "In you go too, Kris."

Kristi hesitated, looking between us. "Are you sure about this? You're… okay?"

"Absolutely, Kristikins," Nessy nodded confidently. "Don't fret. Two wolves wandering the maze together is much less suspicious than our whole pack."

After a few seconds of feather-fluttering consideration, Kristi reluctantly climbed into the bag. Nessy closed the flap and I picked up the second bag.

As our packmates were concealed and stowed, Nessy turned to me with a wide, wolfish grin.

"Ready for our date to resume?" she asked, extending her paw toward me.

I stared at her.

"What could be more romantic than us kicking ass and taking names?" she added, grabbing my paw without waiting for me to offer it.

With her fingers entwined with mine, we set off deeper into the maze. Nessy lead us through the twisting passages with near-absolute confidence, occasionally sniffing the air at intersections.

"So where's the treasure?" I asked.

Nessy inhaled deep and closed her eyes for a moment, her head tilting as if listening to an internal conversation. "That way," she finally said, pointing down a narrow path to our left. "About... mmm, half a mile. Through the heart of the maze."

"And Fern?"

"Is waiting at the center. I can smell her fire signature. It's... impressive. Dangerous." She shivered slightly. "She's got about thirty eight students with her and a hundred Elementals. Follow, follow." She bobbed.

"So," I asked quietly as we navigated another narrow passage, "how exactly does this fusion thing work? Can you... hear each other's thoughts?"

"Nah," Nessy replied. "Just me. Me and my many various clever and nice thoughts. Being together as one seems to... buffer the Astral madness. I mean it's still there, but it's fine. A problem for a future me. The current me is just happy."

"Happy about what?"

She looked at me.

"Happy to make devious plots of how to trap you in a relationship with me," Nessy giggled.

I opened my mouth and had no reply to her.

"You know what's funny?" Nessy continued. "I've never felt this... free before as either Candace or Nessy. It's like there's been this invisible weight pressing down on me for nearly two decades, this gnawing emptiness and suddenly it's gone, all gone!"

"The Well of Severance?"

"That too!" Nessy nodded enthusiastically. "All this time, like an idiot, I was listening to Sage and Viv, thought it was helping me—purifying my desires, making me more spiritual or whatever. But it was just... Grinding me down. Making me forget important things. Making me forget who I am. Same with Topaz. Candace took it to forget the bad things. Unfortunately without the bad things, one cannot understand the whole picture."

"Which is?"

"Which is... that you and I belong together."

"Why?"

"Cus I'm me and you're you."

"And who are you?"

"Your bestie," she grinned. "Your Heart Shield. Your Song. Always and forever."

"I see."

"Uh-huh."

"So," I said after a few more minutes of walking, "about what you were saying earlier—about past lives and cosmic loops..."

"You want to know if it's real or if I'm just completely bonkers," she finished for me, glancing sideways with a smirk.

"Something like that," I admitted.

She was quiet for a moment, seeming to consult with herself.

"It's…" She smiled.

"Shhh…" she whispered suddenly, pulling me behind a large root that protruded from one of the maze walls. "Someone's coming."

We pressed ourselves against the earthen wall, barely breathing as footsteps approached. From our hiding spot, I could see a patrol of three pradavarians. A dog and two cats were walking past us, their eyes scanning the maze warily.

"Any sign of Team Foster?" one of the cats asked.

"Nothing yet," the dog replied. "But Kirra reported that the wolfpack captured the human and the husky, so that just leaves the fox, the cheetah, and the raptor about."

"The fox is the dangerous one," the second cat commented. "Effin' Binder. Could be anywhere, disguised as anyone or anythin'. Even a tree."

"Let's just hope we find them before Fern gets impatient and burns the whole maze down," the first cat said with a nervous laugh.

"We will," the dog said. "Binder or not, she doesn't have infinite mana."

Once they had passed, Nessy tugged me out of the root alcove.

"That was close," I whispered.

"Useful though," she grinned. "The ruse with Kirra worked great. They think they're looking for the rest of the team, not us."

We continued our careful progress through the maze, occasionally ducking into hiding spots when patrols passed nearby. There was something exhilarating about it all—the shared adrenaline, her paw in mine, the thrill of outwitting our pursuers together.

"You know," Nessy said during one of our brief rest stops, "this is actually the best date I've had in... well, ever."

"What, really?" I laughed softly. "Being stuck in a magical maze with hostile pradavarians hunting us down is your idea of a good time?"

"When it's with you? Absolutely! Adventure, danger, outsmarting everyone together... It's perfect!"

"You're setting the bar pretty low for future dates," I teased.

"Oh? So there will be future dates?" she countered with a grin.

I felt warmth spreading through my face. "I'd... like that."

"Good," she said simply, squeezing my paw harder. "Because once we get out of here... I'm going to take you on a proper date. No borrowed bods, no dungeon sims, no panic attacks. Just you and me."

"Just you and me," I repeated. "But you're…"

"I'm me," she fired back. "The friendly and playful me. The cheeky and supportive me. The me that binds and the me that sings."

"And when the binding runs outta mana?" I asked. "It's not a permanent thing, right?"

"Yeah," she admitted. "This is a temporary fusion that burns up mana. I can't hold Candy n' Ness together forever, maybe an hour or two tops."

"So what happens when you split back into two?"

Nessy considered my question.

"When I split..." she began thoughtfully, "we'll figure it out. Maybe we go out in Candace's body on Tuesdays and in mine on Thursdays." She grinned mischievously. "Or as a triangle trio—dinner, movie, ice cream. It's all good. It's all nice."

"You make it sound so simple," I said, shaking my wolf head. "Earlier… the fox was having a complete breakdown about cosmic loops and being divided. Now you're talking about scheduling date nights like it's the most natural thing in the world."

"Because it is natural," she replied. "Being together feels right, regardless of what form it takes. The details are just... details."

"And the time loops or whatever?" I asked.

"That doesn't bother me anymore." She smiled. "Because I'm with you, dummy. The loops, the cycles, the resets—they're only scary when we're apart." She shrugged, as if the concept was self-evident. "When I am by your side, everything just makes sense. Like puzzle pieces clicking into place. The here and now matters more than the fact that everyone dies in the end. Hell, maybe this time we'll get over that bump! Maybe this time there are enough of me to protect you. Enough of your branches to shield me. Enough binding loops so that I won't lose sight of you in the Astral ever again."

"You think so, huh?"

"I do," she nodded.

Before I could respond, she suddenly froze, nose twitching. "We're close to the goal," she whispered. "Verrrrry close."

We crept forward more cautiously now, following a path that wound around a particularly dense section of roots and earth. The passage opened into a vast clearing. It was easily the largest open space we'd encountered in the maze so far.

At its center stood Professor Fern, tall and imposing in her charcoal suit, dragonfire flames dancing across her scruffy mane casting eerie shadows. Behind her, on an elevated platform of packed earth, sat a gold treasure chest. Surrounding her and the chest were at least thirty "monster" students, arranged in a defensive formation. Hovering above the pradavarians were dozens of Elementals shaped like wisps of fire, sun flares and twisting columns of air. Earth mounds were concealing Earth elementals in irregular intervals around the treasure chest.

"Well, shit," I muttered. "That's a lot of opposition."

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