"Hello, my Liminal friend," the thing tagged as Calvin said, its words layered, spoken from a thousand mouths at once. "I see that you've shed your human mask."

I focused all of my eyes on the vast entity that was tagged as a [human man in a tinfoil hat].

A thousand violet, drawn eyes stared back at me.

"This place lacks substance," I stated.

"It does in some ways, I suppose," the multidimensional entity replied. "Entropy chews at substance. But it also births more unique substances one would not otherwise find in less entropic conditions. That's the beauty of it. With each wave, I find more unique, unexpected things."

Roots extended from my feet, digging through the falseness, seeking true reality beneath the facade. "These constructs are flimsy."

The [pradavarians] near me blurred into concepts. Not beings, merely ideas wearing flesh. [Nessy] barked something, her words meaningless, finite noises.

"They exist in less," Calvin replied. "Not everyone can perceive the truth."

"What is the truth?" I demanded. "Tell me so that I can shed this limited form and…"

"The truth is that this place is an abandoned dungeon," Calvin sighed with a thousand exhales. "An infinite number of Earths are dungeons. Some are still maintained, some falling apart, barely holding at the seams. My presence in this dungeon keeps it from decaying fully."

"A dungeon?" I repeated with a thousand mouths blooming across my tree self.

"Well, it used to be," the thing tagged as the [Mini-Mart Archmage] said. "Now it's a bit of a mess."

"Explain," I demanded.

"Your companions fear losing you," Calvin noted, some of his eyes staring into lower levels of finite, lower-dimensional awareness. "They want you back in human form."

"Human form restricts perception," I responded. "It is lacking. I want the truth, Calvin. Why is everything fake?"

"Because it is," Calvin replied.

"What's real?" I demanded. "How can I reach a place that's real?"

"You'll get eaten before you reach anything remotely real," Calvin shook his head. "If there's even anything real out there. I've opened millions of gates to thousands upon thousands of worlds over millennia. None of them are technically real. All dungeons. There's a finite boundary curve of the gates I can open… they all go to other dungeons, dead and doomed Earths stitched together by Systemfall."

"Eaten by… whom?" I demanded.

"By things that eat liminal trees," Calvin intoned. "I suggest you put your human mask back on, and reduce the number of dimensions you can observe."

"Or what?"

"Or you'll get eaten," he insisted.

"I can bloom across this dungeon-world," I stated. "Spread, propagate, multiply. Devour those who attempt to challenge me."

"And what of those who love you?" Calvin wondered. "Will you just leave them behind?"

"They aren't real," I stated coldly. "They're just words. Finite things."

Calvin's mouths barked a laugh. "Oh really?"

Something flashed at the edge of my lower tiers of awareness. Two ideas fusing into one. Three ideas. Four.

A fiery, radiant thing with eight eyes slapped one of my lower branches, speaking with four mouths at once. "Hey! Stop ignoring me! Alec! What, you think I cannot go up in dimensional awareness?"

I dedicated a few of my eyes to observing the little annoying thing.

"Buzz off," four of my mouths said.

"What? No!" The four-fold thing growled. "I'm not going to buzz off! Alec Benoit Foster!" It shouted. "Get your flesh-tree ass back to linearity now!"

"I don't want to," I said. "There's no point."

"The fuck you… What do you mean there's no point?!" Eight eyes glared at me.

"What's the point in limited awareness?" I asked. "In being trapped in the mire of finite time and space?"

"The point is to be human, you infinite dolt," she snarled.

"Why?" I asked.

"Fern already told us why," she stated with a huff of four mouths. "The Numbers like humans. If you're going to be a tree, someone else liminal-as-fuck will notice you, step down to your level and chop you down. Is that what you want? To be hacked down by a Number? To lose all of our awesome progress?"

"The more dimensions you observe, the more likely you are to be noticed," Calvin agreed with the four-fold thing.

"You seem fine," I stated.

"I play the game well," Calvin said. "I stay human. I don't step outside of my playground, mostly keep to my domain."

"You don't look very human to me," I pointed out. "You, like me, are a being capable of liminal awareness."

"My eyes and mouths are an extension of my awareness," Calvin said. "They're tools. Burn them, slice 'em up and only a human me remains."

"You survive entropy waves," I pointed out.

"Because I don't bloom," Calvin insisted. "Because I focus on being human extra hard when they happen. On remaining as myself. I suggest you do the same. The more you spread yourself, the more noticeable you get and the less 'you' you become."

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"I'm not sure if I want to be a finite me," I said.

"Alec, would you please listen to Calvin and get back down to linearity?" The four-fold thing asked, glaring at me with eight eyes. "Don't make me start snapping branches and poking flesh eyes out. You know I will."

"Big threats for something so small," I said.

The four-fold entity bristled, its form flaring brighter. Colors burst from its outline—silver, blue, violet, orange—a hurricane of elemental fury.

"Small?" Eight eyes flared, burning with rage and determination. "SMALL?! I'll show you small!"

It lunged forward, grabbing onto my branches with tiny claws.

"You think I can't reach you? You think I'm trapped in linearity?" The irritation of its presence intensified as it climbed higher, sinking deeper into my awareness. Not just attacking my physical form, but invading the very concept of me. I tried to shake it off, branches twisting, but the creature clung harder.

"Get off!" I demanded, wiggling my branches.

"No!" It howled back. "You get off being a tree! Get back to your human self!"

"Or what?"

"Or I'll tear you asunder!" She snarled. "Bind Fractalization to physical liminality!"

I caught fire. All of me, everywhere at the same time.

"How do you like that, eh?!" Her voice came not just from the four-fold creature but from somewhere above. From the radiant, emerald ring overhead, bound into itself. From the monstrosity defined as the Wormwood Star. From the breath of entropic flames pouring down from it, frying my branches, igniting my eyes, shearing my branches with fractal fire.

I shuddered. This wasn't just irritation.

This was pain. This was death. The end of everything. Destruction, pure and absolute.

"Why?" I howled as my branches burned.

"Because I can't lose you," she snarled, eight eyes flashing with pure [sadness]. "Because I refuse to lose you. Because you're mine. Mine!"

"Who made me yours?!" I yelled, reconstituting the burning branches.

"You did."

"When?"

"Across eternity. Again and again. Just as I have!"

"A repeating pattern," I realised, my awareness dancing across my multitude.

"Yes."

"We can break it, you know," I stated. "End it. Go into separate directions."

"No. No, no, no! I refuse."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because love is how we win in the end."

"We aren't doing a whole lot of winning right now," I yelled. "You just set me on fire!"

"I'll set you on fire twice as hard if you don't listen! We'll be doing even less winning if we keep escalating this," she snarled, emerald rays of Fractalizer fire igniting, detonating more eyes, shearing more branches. "I will burn you to ashes, reset you to get you back! Don't think that I won't!"

"You won't win by threatening me," I growled back. "You're not even real!"

The four-fold creature reached a large branch.

"You say I'm not real?" She growled, tiny claws digging in. "Then what is this? Bind memories!"

Its claws pierced deeper, and suddenly memories flooded through me. Not abstract concepts, but visceral experiences. Nessy washing my hair in the shower. Kristi's lips against mine on the rooftop of Ferguson's HIgh. Adelle's purr vibrating against my chest in the Moonshard Inn. Candace's silver eyes flashing as she laughed, sitting on my lap.

"Meaningless," I insisted. "Just words."

"If we're just words, then why does this hurt?"

"Because you're frying me with entropic flames? Attempting to unexist me?"

"I'm not attempting to unexist you!" She yelled. "I'm keeping you from growing too big! Not letting you get noticed where you're rooted now!"

Calvin watched our escalating fight, his thousand eyes unblinking. "The choice is yours, tree soul. Embrace the infinite and lose yourself, or return to linearity and keep what matters."

"Linearity doesn't matter," I insisted.

"We matter," the four-fold thing growled, balancing precariously on a branch. "And you know it."

Then she did something unexpected. She let go. Eight arms spread wide, suddenly snapping into just two, she fell backward from my branch, plummeting toward the ground far below.

"Catch me, Alec," she called as she fell through the air, her voice relaxed, serene. "If I'm not real… then just let me die. Let this finite me break against the ground and look for me at the end of time."

I watched her drop, this four-fold, dastardly creature defined as a [fox] made of silver, blue, violet, and orange Astral innards. This thing that claimed to love me. This [pradavarian] beast that refused to be dismissed as mere concept.

Something cracked within my liminal awareness.

Without conscious decision my body moved, thousands of blooming arms spread out, slowing her fall. As the arms above broke, I sheared myself away from the tree, disconnecting into a single self.

I caught her at ground level as she smashed into my embrace from above.

"Ow," Candace said, blinking at me with multicolored eyes. "Good job on catching me! Mind not doing that again?"

I winced. Above me, a tree made of flesh was burning away with emerald fractal flames, coming apart into ashes.

"Shit," I said, staring at the dying tree above us that had just released my human, singular self from its fleshy embrace. "I didn't know that I could do that. Be… that."

"Please don't be that," Candace said. "Please just be you, Alec. I like the human you."

"Being me is painful," I groaned as she hugged me tightly, nuzzling against me.

"Yeah," she said. "I suppose that it is. Being human often hurts, but it also lets you feel this," She said as she pressed against me, kissing my face. "Love. Passion. Joy. Connection," she purred between more kisses. Her paws traced my face. "It all matters."

"Does it?" I sat up slowly. "Everything seemed so... fake. Just words arranged to look like reality."

"Maybe it is," she conceded. "Maybe we're all just Omnicode words, System-Wizard forged concepts, remnants, corrupted, overwritten concepts of someone's lost, half-faded wishes and dreams. But so what?"

"This place is really fucked up," I said, glancing at the edge where Calvin's blue-sky domain ended and where gray stormy sky began. "And trying to adjust to it is messing me up."

"M-yea," she kissed me again. "It is. But we can beat it. I believe in us."

Calvin looked down at us with a smile. "The more dimensions you perceive, the less substantial many important things often become. That's the trap of physical liminality."

I rubbed my bruises where Candace landed. "How do you cope with knowing?"

"By choosing to be me here and now," Calvin replied simply. "By remembering that a limited perspective has its own value."

"See?" The prad-fusion-girl nodded. "He gets it. Seeing everything means feeling nothing. Being stuck in linear time means getting to savor each moment. Like this."

She kissed me again, much more fiercely, whiskers tickling my cheeks.

Her multicolored eyes met mine. "You want the truth? Here's the truth: love doesn't make sense from a cosmic perspective of a vast, many-eyed tree. It's wasteful, irrational, messy, and completely pointless on an omniversal scale. But it's the only thing that makes any suffering worth enduring."

"I almost lost myself." I shuddered.

"Yeah, you did," she replied. "Lucky for you, I got you back."

Manny approached, her monitor displaying:

(•ᴗ•)

"Your girls are quite resilient and persistent, Sir Alecai," she observed. "A soul divided in four and multiplied on purpose to see extra dimensions? Willing to set you conceptually ablaze just to protect you? Willing to die for you? Someday I hope to do as much for my Cal."

Calvin glanced at Manny, not looking too sure like he wanted to be set on fire.

I looked up at the ashes on the wind that was my tree-self just a minute ago. "I don't want to go back there."

"Then don't," Candace said. "Stay here with me. Choose to be human. Choose me by your side as I am. Okay?"

"Okay." I nodded, hugging her. She was warm and fuzzy. My clever, silver fox Binder with four souls. It was nice.

I kissed her back.

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