"You FUCKING WHAT?!" Kristi snarled, rounding on Candace. "I fucking knew something like this would happen because you can't keep your Binder paws to yourself!"

Candace's ears flicked back. "I got the sword's location out of her, so there's that. Our Slayer needs his sword!"

The building shook again, more violently this time. A metallic shriek pierced our ears as steel shutters rolled down from above, sealing off the broken windows.

Dragons fluttered around in panic, screeching and breathing fire at the shutters to no effect.

The building groaned again.

"We need to get the fuck out of here," Kristi muttered, pulling the Decimator rifle off her shoulder. She took aim at the nearest shutter and fired.

The blast tore through the steel and chunks of wall behind it. The explosion revealed not blue sky and lake Eerie like I expected, but a thick concrete wall.

She fired again. Another layer of concrete.

And again.

More concrete.

"FUCK MY LIFE, WHAT THE FUCK!" Kristi barked, eyes wild with panic.

"Stop wasting bullets," Candace said. "Denver twisted space to trap us inside. That's why there's no more dragons teleporting in."

Kristi grabbed the fox by her shoulders, shaking her. "Then what do we do?! This is all your fucking fault you dumb fox!"

"I don't know!" Candace yelped, eyes flashing silver. "Gimme a moment, I'm trying to See a way out!"

"One day!" Kristi yelled. "You can't go one day without fucking everything sideways! Why are you like this?!"

"Let's get on the Nemesis and head upward," Nessy suggested. "Break through the roof!"

The building groaned once more, the sound deeper and longer than before. The floor tilted slightly.

"Shit! We're sinking down!" Candace said, eyes wide.

"WHAT?! To the bottom of Lake Eerie?!" Kristi choked.

"Nope. Worse," the fox's ears tilted back. "If the lack of windows is anything to go by, we're in another dimension, one belonging entirely to her. Denver's pulling us deep into her embrace. I irritated her too much with my lawsuit. Up might not be up anymore."

"Das' not optimal," Adelle commented, grabbing onto me to keep me from falling over as the floor tilted even more.

Water began pouring down the stairwells and holes in the ceiling, flooding into the office rapidly.

"The glider!" Kristi barked, splashing around and pulling off her dimensional backpack. "Now!"

As the raptor pulled out the glider, the steps had disappeared under a cascade of murky lake water. The flow pushed against our legs, making remaining upright against the current a struggle.

"Argh water," Adelle growled. She grabbed me, Candace and Nessy. "Shadowstep!"

Darkness.

We reappeared atop a wide shelf, high above the water.

Kristi finally got the glider out and pulled her back back on. In seconds she was atop it, roaring the engines.

"Which way is freaking out?!" Kristi yelled over the roar of rushing water as the glider flew to our level.

"No idea!" Candace yelled back. "She wants to drag us to her main court by force! I can't see far enough, the dimensional structure keeps changing. We need… more… skills, more combined power. All of us in one body! Everyone except for Kris and Alec, get into the bag!"

Nessy eyes shot up to the dozens of panicked dragons fluttering in circles around the flooding room.

"We have to save these dragons too!" she cried. "We can't leave them behind! They'll die outside of Cascade!"

She opened her dimensional bag wide, singing a high, clear melody.

The dragons responded immediately, starting with Sparkles. The little dragon flashed into her back with a dimensional fiery pop. Smaller crimson ones followed, then emerald and azure ones teleported from the air. Larger dragons followed, tucking their wings as they dove into the bag's mouth.

"Help out!" Nessy barked. "We might need them!"

Candace and Adelle copied Nessy, opening their bags. Dragons streamed into all three pouches until the last one vanished through the opening.

Adelle slung her dragon-filled bag over her shoulder and climbed into Kristi's bag. Nessy followed, climbing in behind the cheetah. Candace got inside last, one hand reaching out to grab at the raptor's head.

"Kristi!" Candace called. "You're our best pilot! I need to go into your body, all three of us!"

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"What?!" Kristi yelled back over the roar of rushing water.

"We need maximum speed! I can navigate the dimensions as they shift! Four in one, pilot on the outside!"

Kristi hesitated, then nodded sharply. "Fine. Do it!"

"Bind souls!" Candace roared.

A blast of rainbow light erupted from their contact point.

Candace's eyes closed and she slumped into the bag. Kristi straightened. Her eyes flashed open, the amber drowned by other colors. She shook her head, then grabbed me and pulled me onto the glider. "Front seat, tree boy. I need to concentrate."

I settled in front of her, gripping the front section of the wheel. The glider's engines hummed beneath us as Kristi sniffed the air, looking left and right, slowly moving up as more water filled the room.

"Which way?" I asked.

"Unclear." Kristi frowned. "Denver keeps shifting the space around us, trying to bring me closer to her central hub of Law-ness. Right then. Let's see where… this goes!"

She raised the Decimator rifle and fired at the nearest doorway. The blast tore through metal and concrete, revealing a corridor beyond.

"Hold tight, Alec," she murmured.

The Nemesis surged forward, engines screaming as we shot through the opening. More corridors twisted ahead. Kristi navigated the gloomy space with ease, her four-times enhanced soul blessing her with superior manoeuvrability.

Her claws pressed on the Decimator's trigger.

We burst through another wall into a stairwell that spiraled both up and down endlessly. Kristi banked hard, following what looked like an upward path.

"Hell," she growled. "We're going deeper, not out. Whatever. Maybe if I understand things deeper in, I can find a way out."

The building's structure changed around us. Office spaces gave way to concrete hallways lined with metal doors. Numbers flashed on signs and doors as we passed.

She fired the Decimator again, blasting through another door. The corridor beyond stretched endlessly as we flew through it.

Suddenly, Kristi turned again and obliterated another door. The narrow metal-wall passage opened into a vast interior space so large I couldn't see its boundaries. Towering buildings rose from below, each one a megastructure in itself. Massive concrete and steel forms shaped like upright, sideways and upside-down wedding cakes and squares loomed all over, their surfaces punctuated by countless windows glowing with blue light.

"What is this place?" I let out. "Where are we?"

"Eureka," Kristi said grimly, eyes flashing. "This place is defined as 'Eureka' in the Astral."

Thousands of flying vehicles launched from landing pads atop the structures. Sleek, angular, plus-star shaped cruisers with flashing lights seemed to be heading for us across the vast, gloomy space without an end.

Trying to look past the rows upon rows of megastructures wrapped in gray clouds gave me a migraine. It was as if I was staring at endlessness itself and my linear, meaty brain simply refused to process the view.

"How do we get out of here ?" I asked, blinking at the surreal cityscape stretching in every direction.

"I…" Kristi replied, banking the glider sharply to avoid detection by the cruiser searchlights. "I see it now in the Astral, understand… more. Denver is just a dead shell, an echo of this place seeping into our reality! What we know as Denver is just an offshoot of Eureka. A… another fucking Number! Fuck my life."

"A Number… like the G-Supercenter?"

"Yes. The Omnids tried to stop it with Lake Eerie, but they didn't have enough power to properly contain or destroy the infestation," she continued, weaving between structures. "They just applied a bandaid to a festering wound. And now this damned thing wants me physically in her court since I successfully sued her."

A spotlight swept past us, missing narrowly.

"Can you out-lawyer her in court?" I asked.

"No," Kristi said flatly. "As clever as I am with all four of our souls combined, I'll definitely lose if I'm dragged to her court. From what the Astral Ocean tells me, Eureka is… a higher-order conceptual entity, Number Four, also known as The Law. She regards herself as the ultimate arbiter of her ever-expanding reality, the word of Goodness. She's pure Order, the Conceptual idea of a liminal city infesting countless universes."

"Where do we go?" I glanced back at the patrol cruisers closing in from all sides.

"We need to shake her Agents," Kristi frowned. "Get to a place where Entropy rules supreme. Oh, I know! Think about your doomed Earth, the one devoured by Systemfall. Focus on it. Every detail you can remember. Help me find our way there!"

I closed my eyes, picturing the empty streets of my university campus after Systemfall. The abandoned stores. The shambling Conceptoids. The nameless city where I met Nessy and Calvin. The room in his Mini-Mart Domain where Nessy and I had stayed before the Magnetic Lynx chased us to Nessy's Ferguson.

Kristi's claws pressed against my temples. Her rainbow eyes glowed brighter.

"Got it!" she said.

The Nemesis accelerated, diving between two massive structures. Patrol cruisers converged on our position, spotlights sweeping. Kristi yanked the wheel, sending us into a steep dive. We plummeted toward the blurry ground, wind screaming past us.

We obliterated a window and dove inside one of the buildings, the glider rushing past rows upon rows of endless doors.

Kristi banked the Nemesis sharply around a corner, colorful eyes scanning the liminal labyrinth of doors and hallways.

"This damned place," Kristi muttered, "Eureka isn't just another dimension. It's a hub, the central node connecting a patchwork of infinite realities to one another. Every door here leads somewhere different. Gateways to worlds beyond the stars."

"Why don't we head back to Prad Earth?" I asked her.

"Denver is there," Kristi shook her head. "Even if somewhat drowned, Eureka will find me there. I need to drop the lawsuit, lose her trail in a really Entropic place and time. Unbind Eureka! Unbind Denver! Unbind lawsuit," She growled, grabbing her own head.

"Ugh," she let out. "I don't know if I got it all out. Calvin's helped us before. He might help again."

"Could you really find the way to my Earth?" I asked.

"Yes," Kristi nodded. "I can smell the vile, choking taste of Systemfall, the place where I found you. It's faint, but..."

She inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring. "That way!"

The Nemesis surged forward, engines screaming as we hurtled down a corridor without an end. Kristi raised the Decimator and fired, the blast tearing through a door number 36-23-11. We plunged through the smoking hole into another corridor beyond.

"They're still following us," I said, the sound of sirens and metal boots resonating from far behind us.

"Not for long," Kristi growled.

She spun the glider hard, diving down a narrower passage, then fired again. Another door shattered. The Nemesis shot through the gap, sparks flying as the edges of the glider scraped against the frame.

The corridors twisted and changed as we flew deeper. The pristine, angular, metallic architecture of Eureka gradually gave way to… decay and wrongness. The walls darkened, becoming stained with mold and rust. The lights flickered, casting creepy shadows.

Kristi flew the Nemesis forward at top speed for a few more minutes, then fired again, obliterating another door. The next section of hallway was twisted like a corkscrew, gravity shifting around us weirdly and wobbling the glider.

"We're getting closer," she muttered. "The dimensional fabric is getting hella thin here. All I wanted was a nice walk on the beach with Alec… but nooo… the foxy part of me just couldn't resist breaking shit extra-hard with her grabby paws." She seemed to growl at herself.

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