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 and held it 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.

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

"Hang on. Did you bind your packmates 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 girlfriends and then 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. A pretzel, a loop. 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."

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"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 elbow, 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-Candace chirped, grabbing Candace and tucking her into bed and relocating back to my side. "Am good now."

The casual way the two girls 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… 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, especially not 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 dark 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 across eternity. 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, magic 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! TSSSG! 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 offered.

"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 Pradstagram. 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.

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