I opened and closed my hands, staring at my fingers suspiciously, half-expecting to see fleshy flower eyes once again blossoming across my skin. My nerves tingled with the phantom sensation of endlessly expanding branches and roots, the echo of my desire to spread, bloom and multiply suppressed but still there, bubbling beneath the surface.

I looked at Candace, pushing down my body's inexplicable desire to propagate.

"Sup?" She asked.

"You fused to get me back?" I asked, already knowing the answer on the account of the three prad bodies sprawled on the ground between questionable strawberry-sized bush blooms that were growing toothbrushes and floss fully in their plastic and cardboard packaging.

"Yepperoni," she nodded. "You were turning into a flesh tree with eyes. Couldn't exactly let that slide. I hope you know that that batshit scared me. I basically shoved everyone into me as fast as I could."

"Sorry," I let out. "I really didn't mean to… become an actual tree."

"S'okay," she got off me and started to collect prad bodies, shoving them into Kristi's large backpack.

"Are you… staying in Candace's body?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "I am. I have the best Astral-sight as Candace. Gotta be extra diligent, in case you decide to have another existential crisis and attempt to become a permanent fixture of the local flora."

"Yeah," I said. "Umm… I didn't know that you could set me on fire like that." I recalled the horrific pain of fractal emerald flames obliterating my branches with a shudder.

"You know… I didn't know that I could do that either," she said, "It's like the flames freaking bloomed on their own. Sorry. I was pretty freaked out and didn't know what else to do… I don't think that I've ever done anything that destructive as a Binder before. It's VERY strange. None of that should have… Wait a minute."

She stared down at the dental bushes, her mouth falling open. Then, her head snapped at Calvin. "You! Farmer-man! This is your fault!"

The Mini-Mart Archmage rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. I guess that it is."

"What?" I turned to Calvin.

"Explain," Candace growled.

"My apologies," he said. "This land, my current domain. It's modded in a specific way with Depictomancy focus notes to help concepts bloom. That's my whole farming gig. Your man here is technically a liminal entity masquerading as human. The garden took advantage of his true nature, amplified it in a way that was… a bit iffy."

"A bit iffy?!" Candace barked. "He turned into a freaking flesh tree!"

"Urm, right," I said. "I'll just… go over there."

I quickly rushed out of the garden, past more freaky bushes, conceptual fusion trees and other questionable growing things. As I stepped onto the cracked, gray concrete, the gnawing, flowery feeling in my bones, muscles and nerves became reduced and then was gone completely.

The air tasted like ashes and dry dust, but at least the unnerving urge to bloom was gone.

"Phew," I let out. "Much better."

Candace shoved the five mannequins into the dimensional bag and fluttered to my side, sending glares at Calvin. "You didn't think to mention this earlier?"

"I didn't think it would affect him so quickly," Calvin said, walking to the edge of his domain with Manny in tow. "Most concepts take weeks of exposure before responding to the soil. His low Level, plus incredibly high soul Liminality, plus the garden Omnicode turned out to be a rather unfortunate combination. Next time you visit, I'll have to design some kind of jewelry for you to wear that'll keep you from blooming." He offered me.

"Omnicode?" I asked.

"Drawn Omnicode," Calvin nodded. "The language of System Wizards, the dungeon installers."

He reached down and unearthed a sticky note with a drawing of a blooming tree on it. The drawing moved, rapidly shifting from a seed to a sprout to a bush to a tree like an animated .gif.

"Can I have that?" I asked.

Canvin nodded, offering me the sticky note. As I accepted the drawing, the fingers holding it started to chafe and throb, desiring to bloom.

"Alec!" Candace spun to me. "I just freaking got you back into a human shape."

"It's fine," I said. "It's just one drawing. He's probably got like a million of them buried in his garden. Right?"

"Yep," Calvin nodded.

Candace opened her mouth to possibly reprimand me some more.

"I can manage just one," I told her, relocating the note from one hand to the other like a hot potato. "I want to understand whatever the fuck it does to me, figure out how to fight it."

"Aight," Candace said, pulling out the Nemesis glider from the bag. "You're lucky I'm not Kristi. She deffo' wouldn't allow this kind of knobfold experimentation."

"Yeah, but you've got Kristi in you now, no?" I commented, pinning the note to my right wrist.

"I do." She nodded. "In the soul backend. The frontend of my consciousness is a lotta Candace."

She stared at the note.

"Frontend? What are you, a computer?" I asked.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Beep boop," Candace fired back. "Kinda. As a Binder, I've got some soul excel going over here, can bring specific skills or even emotions to the front."

"Neat," I commented.

"Aight. Catch ya two lovebirds on the flipside of yesterday," Candace waved at Calvin and Manny. "Thanks for the lovely lessons and chalk procurement list."

"Come visit us again!" Manny displayed a waving emoji on her monitor.

"We'll definitely be more ready for you next time," Calvin said. "Again, sorry 'bout the whole blooming thing, Sir Alecai."

"No worries," I said, although on the inside I was still feeling a tad frazzled by the whole experience.

Candace took Kristi's Decimator rifle out of the bag and handed it to me. "Gun."

I opened my mouth.

"I'll fly, you can sit behind me n' shoot baddies," she explained, "You're on gun duty, tree boyo."

"Think there's gonna be things to shoot?" I slung the rifle across my back, the heavy magisteel weight settling between my shoulder blades.

"Most likely," she nodded, climbing onto the flying armored bike. "I'm sensing trouble ahead."

"Trouble like?"

"Don't know. Something paralegal. Whatevs it be, it's hiding from direct Astral sight. Get yo dragon bag ready too, just in case."

"Kay." I adjusted my dragon-filled backpack to my left side and got on the Nemesis behind her, wrapping my left hand around her waist. She was shorter than Kristi and ached her back, leaning forward so I could actually see over her shoulders. The engine hummed to life beneath us and we slowly rose from the ground. Her fluffy, white tail swatted my chest as she wiggled her butt in front of me on the seat.

As we rapidly gained altitude Calvin and Manny grew smaller, waving at us from below, looking like caring parents sending their kids off to university.

. . .

The gray sky rapidly swallowed us whole, an ashen curtain stretching in all directions.

"You know the way?" I asked Candace.

"Yeh." She nodded, showing me a phone that she'd mounted on the dashboard. The Pawgle GPS app there was flickering with colorful static, showing a flight path. "Just downloaded a local map."

"And you trust that?" I arched an eyebrow.

"I trust my eight-eyed Astral sight," she replied. "Which tells me that using the GPS is the way to go."

The Nemesis turned, following the ruins of a toppled highway. Buildings covered in questionable growths jutted from the sides at uneven angles like the rotting teeth of a giant's skull.

"How's the tree-note feeling?" She wondered.

"It wants to grow," I admitted. "There's this pull, like gravity but inside my body. It's hard to explain."

"Try me."

I searched for words that could capture the sensation. "It's like... hearing music in your head that makes you want to dance, but the dance is becoming a tree, blossoming, seeing, being more. It's annoying but also it's something that my body really wants to do, to… to finally liberate myself from linear, mortal coil."

"You weirdo." Candace snorted.

"Says the concept-binding fox with four souls."

"Fair point, my tree-tastic pal," She laughed. "Still, do tell me more."

"About?"

"About yo tree urges."

"Why?"

"The better I understand them and you, the better I can unbind 'em, duh. Or help you bind 'em to our advantages by throwing ideas at your tree butt."

"What advantages?"

"Oh, I dunno. Maybe you can bloom in a direction that's not specifically healing."

"What."

"Like, reconstituting yourself some digitigrade legs to run faster or a bone sword to poke out eyes like… uhh… in Terminator Two. Extra muscles? Extra eyes to see things behind you?"

"I feel like you are encouraging me to be less human."

"Just a little. Don't go all out as a freaking tree. Release some liminality in some specific, smol ways through that note. That's why you got it from Calvin, right?"

"You are too good at guessing my deepest intentions." I laughed.

"Foxes are experts at sniffing things under the snow." Her tail swatted my face.

"Let's say I grow a bone knife in my arm for a fight," I speculated. "What would I do with it after?"

"Reconstitute yourself back to a human shape."

"And if I can't?"

"Then I'll burn it off with Fractalizer fire." She offered.

"That stuff hurts like hell."

"Then you better figure out how to reconstitute back on your own."

Below us, the highway ruins gave way to a bewildering patchwork landscape featuring sections of random dead cities, forests, deserts, mountains, rivers and ocean stitched together without logic or reason at odd angles.

"Calvin told me that every world is a dungeon," I said.

"Am aware, ye."

"You don't think that it's concerning?"

"Eh." She shrugged. "It's only concerning when excessive Entropy gets in and breaks something horribly. Like this doomed Earth. See that patchwork nonsense? Das Entropy chewing on Space and Space trying hard and failing to reassert herself. The lines between dimensions are thin as fuck here. Are you worried that something like this is gonna happen to our Earth or smthin?"

"Yes. What exactly prevents our Earth from getting this screwy?"

"Constant vigilance n' maintenance. Most high-level Archmage Binders are preoccupied with patching our world when it gets too buggy due to other dungeon spillage. Omnids too. Like when Denver infested our Earth, Omnids didn't allow everything to become Denver, put a lake-shaped patch on the problem."

Her tail swatted my face again. I grabbed and pushed it off to the side. The fox arched her butt out even more, drawing my eyes to her curves.

"You doing this on purpose?" I asked.

"You know I am." She laughed.

I considered smacking the wiggling behind.

Something caught my eye distracting me from that fun thought, dark shapes, fluttering movement to our right. "Candace..."

"I see them," she growled. "Bastards interrupting my fun time. Get that dragon bag ready."

More dark, fluttering shapes emerged from the clouds. They resembled an entire flock of paper airplanes.

"Paper birds?" I asked as one of the paper airplanes pinged off the glider's magitek shield.

"Smells like legal paperwork," Candace hissed. "The edge of Denver must be nearby, they prolly have a functional office building or two near the mall! Das' her scouts."

More and more paper airplanes struck the shield, making it ripple with radiant colors.

"Release the dragons!" Candace barked. "Bike's shield gonna run outta mana if they keep at it."

I fumbled with the backpack, fighting to keep my balance as the Nemesis swerved through the air. My fingers found the zipper and yanked it open.

"Go!" I shouted into the bag. "Fry the paperwork!"

The dragons didn't need to be told twice. They poured out from the innards of the bag, wings spreading in the air. In seconds they reached the paper birds, lighting up the sky with brilliant lines of dragonfire.

The legal paperwork bird flock disintegrated rapidly, having no defenses against the little dragons.

For a moment, I thought we were winning. Then a new sound reached us, a deep, deafening howl that vibrated the air. It sounded… like the horn of an incoming train.

Through the thinning cloud of paper birds and dragons emerged… a locomotive. Not on tracks, but flying through the air, its metal body gleaming dully.

Steam billowed from its stack, and its cowcatcher featured a logo of the Scales of Justice.

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