Where the Dead Things Bloom [Romantically Apocalyptic Systemfall Litrpg]

63: Morning chatter


I fell through a myriad of dreams etched across the infinite abyss.

They weren't a single story, but a river of lives fluctuating and intertwining, interconnecting with each other like an endlessly vast delta. I felt like a cartographer of my own forgotten lives, each one a universe unto itself, igniting, flickering and dying on the edge of my awareness.

Each was more alien, more bewildering than the last. Each left me with an unnerving, profound sense of love, sorrow, passion and loss.

Some stars in the delta of dreams were brighter than the others, burned without fading away into the endless nothing. I stayed in them the longest, trying to warm myself with their light.

. . .

I was a... virologist, an old scientist from a non-magical Earth who found his way to another world after death.

I felt the intellectual click of fractal mathematics slotting into place, a language of pure logic I spoke with my mind. I was in a sun-drenched mountain valley, a place of endless green forests, glacial mountains and crystalline air.

Beside me, her hand in mine, was a girl with white hair, my twin, her blue eyes matching mine. In this strange dream I wove spells not from words, but from elegant, self-replicating equations.

I brought a dragon from the sky with a nullifier rocket and coaxed raw mana into the shape of a girl with whom I fell in love.

I carried an ancient Astral Virus in my soul and gave her a body.

I awakened a long slumbering dryad by singing to her in a long forgotten tongue, and together, we grew a great, vast tree whose branches reached into the Astral, forged a living amplifier for the soul-songs, a liminal [Vitality] connection reaching towards every possible version of myself.

. . .

The smell of city smog replaced the pine-scented air.

I was a weary programmer, the glow of a monitor painting my face in the pre-dawn hours as I entered my office. The taste of stale coffee was on my tongue, the familiar hum of halogen office lights above me, a mundane melody of my wretched existence.

Then, a screech of tires, a flash of headlights, a gut-wrenching impact. Darkness. Suddenly, I was elsewhere.

Arx, Shandria... the city of a thousand Arxkin species, the dizzying marvel of twisted colorful towers beneath an inverted sky comprised from a billion continents.

It was on Arx that I found them again—a cheeky fox girl, a living shadow, a dungeon sentinel who refused to die and wanted to be more human.

Then, a dragon girl with scales that displayed her feelings, her eyes the color of molten gold and violet sunset, a fierce, lonely warrior bound to an old lighthouse.

. . .

The dreamscape of Arx dissolved into a view of stark, snow-dusted, tall pines. The sharp cold bit at my exposed skin.

A great mushroom cloud rose in front of me, bending the trees backwards and I laughed like a villain.

I had set their vile compound ablaze, put an end to their flesh research, freed the human souls trapped within cages and suitcases. My uncle's van was waiting for me.

Wendigo Scrutimancers, monstrous abominations capable of peeling back the layers of the human mind, were on my trail.

Fear was my constant companion, a gnawing beast in my gut, but I knew how to suppress it, relied on my four-fold soul to deceive everyone, including myself. An academy of monsters where I would pretend to be a monster greeted me.

It was there that I met them again.

A girl with feathered wings of pure, shimmering rainbows who sang of tomorrows and bent reality with her voice.

A clever bird with black, electric wings, gray eyes and a sharp tongue.

A group of best friends facing the harsh universe as Arx-delvers.

. . .

An old, creaky, gothic mansion that used to belong to my grandfather. The town of Cascade on the edge of the Pacific Rim.

Sunlight breaking through the ragged curtains.

The monstrous, skull-face smile of the Wendigo girl I loved. Black feathers fluttering up. Lanky, muscular hands engulfing me, smooshing my face. Black antlers dotted with silver sparks nearly scraping the ceiling as she got out of bed, the alien invader about to invade my shower.

My tablet within reach, thousands of human subjects to manage. An invasion fleet hanging in orbit, ripe for me to fuck with.

A yellow and black paw petting me gently. Gold eyes and a cheeky, feline grin. White whiskers.

"What's on the breakfast menu today, Emperor of Earth?"

. . .

The dream faded to another. Then another. Then another. On and on.

So many lives, so many great, terrible, beautiful stories.

A thousand different faces, a thousand different loves, a thousand different losses. The dreams converged, voices and images bleeding into one another, a symphony of forgotten selves all witnessing out a single, unifying truth.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The virologist, the reborn programmer, the hunted supervillain, the Emperor of Earth—they all lost someone special and found love while reaching for a hand in the dark.

All entwined by the endless Astral tree, all connected via the infinite divide with… weaponized love.

I woke with a gasp, the weight of a thousand lifetimes still pulling me halfway under, submerging me between the state of dreaming and being awake. For a moment, I simply lay there, trying to recall where I was and who I was in this dream.

The first thing I registered was the warmth. Not the passive warmth of blankets, but the active, living heat of breathing, snoozing bodies pressed against me. I was at the center of a warm pile, a human anchor in a sea of fur and feathers.

For a moment, my memory was fuzzy, almost as if locked behind a paywall due to how unbelievable and surreal it all was.

Then the events of last night flickered like a corrupted video file—sensations, sounds, and images that seemed too vivid, too absurd, too intense to be real. I blinked, trying to piece together the fragmented memories.

The temple. The Archangel Queen. The crystalline heart I had shattered with my bare hands. Nessy's memories taken back from the Astral parasite. Nessy-Candace helping me unlock memories of another life. My new pack, all of us returning to the Moonshard Inn. Four girls fusing together into Nessy. And then there was...

The Love. The wild sex with everyone... except for Adelle.

More memories came flooding back with embarrassing clarity—Nessy's passion, Kristi's intensity, Candace's mischief, Adelle's mauling by… Candace. The surreal, wild pleasure of it all. The soul bond Nessy performed with her blood and magic runes. The liquid mana that had soaked everything.

I glanced down at myself, relieved to find the bed dry. I also noted that I was wearing a pair of loose boxers. Someone must have dressed me after I passed out in the jacuzzi atop of Nessy.

I visually surveyed the tangle of bodies around me.

To my right Nessy wrapped herself around me, her black and white mane spilling across me and the sheets, a canine muzzle slightly open in peaceful slumber. Her arm was draped possessively across my chest, her paw curled against my heart. Even in sleep, her face held a contented smile, her tail and paws occasionally twitching as she dreamed. She was warm, warmer than a human.

To my left was Kristi, her emerald feathers and violet scales sparkling in the soft morning light filtering through the thick curtains. Her head rested on my shoulder, raptor's warm breath tickling my neck. Compared to Nessy, Kristi was much cooler, perhaps a degree cooler than my human self.

I felt a weight on my legs and spotted Candace curled into a silver-white ball of fluff, her bushy tail wrapped around her body, covering her muzzle. The effect would have been adorable if not for a single silver-gray eye staring directly at me. The eye blinked.

Behind Candace, Adelle was stretched out on the couch that had been pushed against the bed to create more space, her orange-furred body draped over the armrest in a position that would have been uncomfortable for anyone without a cheetah's flexibility. One spotted paw reached out and draped over my leg, as if ensuring I couldn't escape even in sleep.

"How long have you been awake?" I whispered to the silver eye watching me.

"Hrm. Hrm." The fox ball stirred slightly, tail unwinding just enough to reveal a smirking muzzle. "Long enough to invade your dreams," she commented.

"You can do that?"

"Mmm-hmm." Her smirk widened into a full grin, exposing sharp canines. She uncurled, displaying her lithe form and gracefully crawled over me until her nuzzle was facing me directly, silver eyes glittering above me. "Thems the benefits of being soul-bonded to a living Astral tree. You project like crazy when you sleep."

"So what do you…" I began.

"Oh! I'm there too. One of the two you or more that you usually end up with."

"Two of what?" I asked, trying to recall the fading shreds of my liminal dreams.

"The Song of Entropy and the Chorus of Syntropy," she replied.

"What does that even mean?" I asked.

Candace's eyes gleamed. "Don't know!" She giggled softly, chest alluringly shaking over me. "Still sorting out the sense from the cosmic soup."

"How are your… t-dust cravings?" I asked.

"Better," she commented. "Would still chew off someone's face for some T, but I'm managing it. Mostly thanks to you."

"Me?" I asked.

"Immersing myself in your liminality helps," she said. "There's a lot of liminality out there in nullspace, but your brand of liminality is particularly soothing. It's maddening endlessness, yes, but endlessness that I can trust. Plus the liquid mana…"

"What about the liquid mana?" I asked, recalling with a blush how drenched our night-time activity had left the room.

"It's permeating the local Astral like a shroud, keeping me warm," she said, offering me a snoot boop with a cold nose. "Maybe one of the girls wished for me to be less… loopy."

"Haven't you and Ads been… you know," I asked.

"Fucking?" She smiled. "Yes. We have. For years."

"And?"

"And when we… soaked each other, random nice things happened after," she shrugged.

"Nice things like?"

"Like surviving the Superstore delving without getting chopped into tiny, tiny cubes," Candace replied with a shrug. "Like living out in the wilds of the Western Reaches, always on the road. It's not like we could wish for particular things. Like I told you yesterday, liquid mana is more of a subconscious desire than anything. Pushing it in a particular direction just doesn't work. Plus, doing dangerous stuff burns it out of the Astral faster."

"I see."

"Also, two is nice, but five is better. It's mathematically superior. Four prad girls plus one human tree equals the perfect Dagaz formation." She traced the infinity symbol on my chest with one claw. "Addie and I together don't make a proper Dagaz, see? We're just two horny prad girls with complementary damage."

"What exactly is a Dagaz, anyway?" I asked, watching her claw draw invisible patterns. "I know it's a rune, but..."

"It's a symbol of transformation," she replied. "The number eight on its side—infinity twisted into itself, eating its own tail. It's the liminal space where boundaries blur. A Dagaz is where the past and future meet, where reality bends." Her voice dropped slightly. "Like the Superstore. Like Highway 69. Like the Number Eight. Like the end of time. Like you, my Slayer."

I shuddered ever so slightly at her words.

"Do you…"

"Know about the Wormwood Star Leviathan?" She guessed. "I do. I am the Leviathan."

I opened and closed my mouth, staring up at her.

"And I am not," she smiled. "Technically, we all are."

"What the shit is the leviathan exactly?" I asked.

"An entropic singularity stretching itself across a patchwork of worlds like ours," she said, kissing me. "The last wish of a renegade System Wizard. One that never ends. Love. Friendship. Companionship. Passion. A weapon created to kill a god. Me. Nessy. Kristi. Addie. Us. All of us divided by zero at the end of time, endlessly approaching infinity."

"Why?"

"To win."

Her answer stumped me. Was the universe a cosmic game of some kind? Were we all pawns of the greater something? Then, a memory hit me.

"Nessy told me that she was the Emissary of number Eight in the Superstore," I said.

"I am," Nessy's blue eyes were open now, watching us with slightly drowsy interest.

"And so are you. So are all of us. We're the Dagaz Pack. Bound to the Number eight," Candace commented.

"Not sure if I want to be bound to some unfathomable cosmic entity." I said.

"So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide," Nessy said with a smile, licking the right side of my face. "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

"The Gandalf-doggo dispenses sagely cinematic wisdoms," Candace chortled.

"Mmm, morning," Kristi murmured, her scaled arms and tail tightening around me for a moment. "What are we chattering about so early?"

"The fox here was invading my dreams," I said.

"Not invading," Candace corrected with mock offense. "Just... observing. Making notes. Getting off them. Like a cosmic… voyeur. Ke ke ke."

"Privacy exists for a reason, fox," the raptor girl clicked her beak, yawning.

"Don't acquire a fox and expect her not to nab tasty things," Candace laughed, sliding off me to paw at Adelle.

"Nobody acquired you," I commented. "You just showed up at the gas station and glued yourself to me like an invasive species."

Candace shrugged, preoccupied with licking the cheetah's nose repeatedly. "Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey, Ads!"

Adelle's response was immediate and violent—a swipe of claws that Candace dodged with ease, laughing as she danced away from the grumpy cheetah.

"I'll murder you," Adelle growled. "It's too early for your shit, Loops."

"It's never too early for foxy fun!" Candace countered cheerfully. "Besides, we need to shower n' breakfast. Don't you want a hearty breakfast, Addie?"

"Hrm," the cheetah considered the offer of breakfast. "Fine."

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