Bloom 2, Where the Predators Prowl: [Ch 20-28] (Patreon)

20: Advanced Dungeoneering

I spotted Kristi immediately as we entered the imposing auditorium—she sat right near the entrance, alone at the edge of the white Gothic revival seating area, her emerald and violet feathers drooping. There was a lot of tension in her shoulders, the way she held herself like someone expecting another blow.

Spotting me, she smiled and then frowned at the sight of my companions, especially when she saw that Candace was posessively holding onto my elbow.

I made my way over to Kristi, settling into the seat beside her without a word. 

Adelle and Candace followed, with Candace practically draping herself over the back of my chair, her chin resting on my shoulder.

"Morning," I said to Kristi.

Her gold eyes brightened for another moment before her gaze darted to my companions.

"Alec," she hissed under her breath, leaning closer, "what the fuck are those two doing here?"

"Those two have names," Adelle said coldly from behind me.

"I know exactly who you are," Kristi snarled, her feathers bristling as she twisted in her seat to glare at the pair of ex-bikers. "Candace Rhinehart and Adler Silvertail. What I don't know is why Alec is letting you anywhere near him after what your gang did to him."

"We're not a gang," Candace said with exaggerated sweetness, absently playing with a lock of my hair. "We're Alec's delving team. His pack."

Kristi's eyes went wide. "His delving…? Alec, tell me you aren’t seriously—"

"I am,” I said. “I took responsibility for them.”

"What?!" Her voice rose slightly before she caught herself, glancing around the filling auditorium. "Alec, these two have serious problems. Rhinehart's a topaz addict, and Silvertail is prone to violent outbursts! How the shit is she even here?!”

Candace's fluffy, white tail bristled. "So what if I take a little t’ now and then to chill out? I'm not addicted because I can just unbind the addiction whenever I want. If you saw the tenth of the freaky shit I see in my dreams in the Astral, you’d snap like a little knobby twig by now."

"I'm not Silvertail, ya dum’ beerch," Adelle added with a dangerous edge to her voice. "I’m… uuuhhh…”

“This is why I didn’t fractalize this dummy sooner,” Candace sighed. “She’s a potato with names. You’re Adelle Sylvia Dallia, dude. Gimme your paws. I’ma write it on your claws all pretty-like before you embarrass yourself any further.”

“Yeah, what she said,” Addie sent a feline glare at the raptor offering her left hand to the fox. “Keep talking shit about my pack, and I'll cut you a new breathing hole, feather duster."

Kristi's claws extended reflexively. "Look! They’re literally proving my point right now! This is exactly the kind of behavior I'm talking about!"

“Oi, you wanna take it outside?” The redhead cheetah threatened.

The raptor looked like she was going to strangle the cheetah, feathers sticking up threateningly.

"Kris, please chill," I said firmly, placing a hand on Kristi's arm. "All three of you, dial it back. We're in public."

"Alec," Kristi's voice dropped to an urgent whisper as Candace began binding white, fancy, decorative, repeating name pattern onto the cheetah’s claws while making bits of white paint vanish from the seat’s handle, "you don't understand whom you're dealing with! I get that you helped them when they were bleeding out in the wilds, but why the fuck are they here? You can’t control these two prads, it’s a horrible idea to bring them here! Rhinehart flipped her shit and disappeared at the end of last school year without a trace. And Silvertail was expelled for setting fires and attacking students and teachers!"

"One teacher. Who was hitting on me," Adelle growled. “He deserved a punch to the noggin’. Also I’m not Silvertail! My tail's clearly orange! See?” She waggled her orange-black striped tail.

"New fur color doesn't change the rot of what's underneath, Adler. You can’t fool me, I know you way too damn well." Kristi shot back. 

“Maybe if I smack you hard enough you’ll forget you know me,” Addie’s right hand came up, claws out.

“Addie, down,” I growled. 

The cheetah stared at me and then lowered her fist, grumbling under her breath about annoying raptor beerches.

The auditorium's heavy doors slammed shut with a resounding boom that echoed through the vaulted space. The temperature seemed to drop several degrees as footsteps echoed from the rear entrance—slow, measured, deliberate.

Professor Ignis L. Fern emerged from the shadows like something out of a fever dream.

She was tall—easily seven feet—with the lean, predatory build of a raptor, but there was something fundamentally wrong with her proportions. Her arms were too long, her fingers extending into claws that gleamed like polished obsidian. Her feathers, what few remained visible beneath her perfectly tailored charcoal gray suit, were the color of burnt copper with edges that seemed to shimmer between orange and deep crimson.

But it was her face that made my blood run cold. Half of it was covered by an ornate metal mask that looked like it had been forged from blackened steel and set with tiny rubies that pulsed like heartbeats. The visible half showed scarred, mottled flesh marked by what looked like acid burns or extreme heat damage. Her single exposed eye burned with an inner fire—not metaphorically, but literally. Illusory flames seem to dance in her pupil. Similar flames danced across her damaged feathery mane, drawing all eyes to her. 

She moved to the bone-white podium at the front of the auditorium with the preternatural grace of a high level delver, her claws clicking against the stone floor with each step. When she reached the microphone, she didn't need to adjust it—she was exactly the right height, as if the entire room had been designed around her presence.

"Good morning, aspiring delvers," she said, her voice carrying perfectly through the auditorium without amplification. It had a strange quality—like the sound of distant thunder mixed with the whisper of flames. "I am Professor Ignis L. Fern, and for the entirety of this year, I will be responsible for determining whether you live or die in the depths."

She paused, letting that sink in as her burning gaze swept across the assembled students.

"Some of you are here because you believe dungeon delving is glamorous. Some because your families expect it. Some because you think it will make you rich or famous." Her head tilted slightly, and I could swear that flaming eye lingered on our little group. "You are all wrong."

Adelle shifted uncomfortably behind me. Even Candace had stopped playing with my hair.

"Dungeon delving," Professor Fern continued, "is the art of controlled dying. Of sacrifice. Of yourself and your packmates. Every time you enter a dungeon, you are volunteering to experience every possible unexpected way that unreality can kill you, in the hope that you might stumble upon a magic reward and the one path that lets you return home with your sanity, soul and body intact."

She raised one clawed hand, and flames danced between her fingers—not the warm, orange flames of a campfire, but something that hurt to look at directly—magefire, possibly a variation of dragonfire.

"This semester, you will learn to embrace death as a constant companion. You will learn to make friends with pain, to court disaster, to parlay with eldritch forces that view your existence as an amusing interruption to their eternal slumber."

The flames in her hand suddenly extinguished, leaving the auditorium feeling colder than before.

"Let us begin with a reminder of a fundamental truth of dungeon ecology," Professor Fern continued, beginning to pace across the front of the auditorium with predatory grace. "Dungeons are not places. They are entities. Living, breathing, thinking organisms that exist partially in our reality and partially in dimensions we cannot fully comprehend. Dimensions with different rules than our linear reality, featuring environments, objects and entities aligned to Entropy, Syntropy or Infinity."

She gestured, and the air above her head shimmered, forming a three-dimensional projection of what looked like a massive, pulsing network made of crystalline structures and flowing energy.

"Each dungeon has its own personality, its own preferred methods of dissecting and digesting those who enter its domain. The Labyrinth of Mirrors in the Eastern Reaches feeds on vanity and self-doubt—it shows you perfected versions of yourself to distract you until it produces a copy of you, a doppelganger capable of tricking even your packmates. The Still Depths beneath New Chicago gradually consumes sound itself, stealing your voice, your heartbeat, even the whisper of air through your lungs until you die in perfect, absolute silence."

I found myself leaning forward despite my better judgment, captivated by her words. Around the auditorium, other students were having similar reactions—some looked terrified, others excited, but everyone was paying attention.

The Instructor snapped her fingers and the diagram changed to an impossible structure that twisted into itself like a mobius loop, staring at which made my brain sputter and slide sideways.

"The Superstore dungeon," Professor Fern said, and I felt a chill run down my spine, "is particularly insidious. It presents itself as a familiar environment—a mundane shopping center. But it is also limitless, feeds on consumerism, on desire, on the desperate human need to acquire and possess. It will offer you everything you've ever wanted, and the price will always be more than you can afford to pay. Worst of all it is lawful—taking stuff from it without paying at the checkout will result in it sucking out your soul and trapping you within its aisles forevermore."

She paused, her burning gaze sweeping across the students.

"Which brings me to an essential survival principle: pack dynamics. In a dungeon, your relationships with your packmates are not just social constructs. Elder dungeons can sense the bonds between delvers, the trust, the love, the hate, the fear. And they will exploit every weakness in those bonds."

Her claws clicked against the podium as she leaned forward.

"Human-pradavarian delving teams face unique challenges. Humans are fragile but incredibly adaptable. Pradavarians are powerful but often overconfident. The most successful mixed teams are those where the human serves as the pack's conscience and strategic mind, while the pradavarians provide physical protection and magical support."

Kristi shot me a look of some kind, which I pretended not to notice. Candace’s silver hands gradually slid around my shoulders wrapping themselves around me. Kristi’s glare in my direction intensified.

"The most common cause of team fatalities is the corruption of these relationships by dungeon influence," Professor Fern continued, "A clever dungeon will try to turn packmates against each other, to create jealousy, suspicion, betrayal. It can and will make you question whether your teammates truly care about you or are simply using you for their own advancement. A pack without absolute trust will come apart quickly in the dungeon."

I glanced around the auditorium, taking in the faces of the other students. Most were pradavarians—raptors, dogs, wolves, foxes, a few cats. There were maybe a dozen humans scattered throughout, with protective, taller pradavarian teammates flanking them.

It was then that I spotted her.

Nessy sat about ten rows ahead and to the left, her distinctive black and white fur patterns impossible to miss even from behind. She was flanked by her two companions from the quad—the gray owl with the large wizard hat and the orange fox with the gun. They formed a tight group with nobody sitting next to them for some reason.

“Mr. Parrin,” the Instructor called out, making a human boy in the front row flinch. “Can you tell me how a human-prad delving team succeeds in a dungeon?”

"Through… mutual respect?" The human body guessed somewhat nervously. "By recognizing that each species brings different strengths to the team. By understanding that in a dungeon, we all face the same dangers regardless of our level or species."

"Adequate," Professor Fern said after a moment. "Though naive. Sit down, Mr. Parrin.”

"Mr. Foster," Professor Fern's voice cut through my thoughts like a blade, distracting me from my Nessy-gazing. "Since you seem more interested in your fellow students than my lecture, perhaps you'd like to share your thoughts on human-pradavarian pack dynamics?"

Every head in the auditorium turned to look at me. Candace’s hands possessively slid off my shoulders moving to wrap themselves around my waist as I stood up, her silver tail swishing behind me.

21: Predators and Dungeons

I could feel heat rising in my cheeks, acutely aware of the hundreds of eyes now focused on my face.

"I... uhh..." I uttered, trying to gather my thoughts. "I think trust is the most important factor?"

"Trust," Professor Fern repeated, her tone suggesting she found my answer inadequate. "And how does one build trust with beings whose very nature compels them to hunt someone like you?"

I attempted to reorganize my thoughts, momentarily glancing at Candace who stuck her tongue out at me.

“I read about it somewhere a long time ago…” I began, my voice sharpening as I tried to lean back on my sense of tree-self, to immerse myself in the depths of my psyche as I spun the question in my head trying to produce an optimal answer based on everything I read about prads and experienced firsthand yesterday. “All pradavarians are predators bound by their cycle to breed, form packs and act on the desire to hunt. Humans, on the other hand, have no innate desire for the hunt, and can spend their entire life on a couch eating potato chips watching tv.”

This drew a few laughs from the students.

“To build trust with a prad packmate… a human must not back down… encourage a prad to chase them, play the predator and prey game.”

“So…  as a human you should run away?” Professor Fern arched an eyebrow. “To show your back to a prad?”

“Kinda. Hitting hard and running is part of the game,” I said, again glancing at Candace who nodded encouragingly. “Unlike prads, we humans don’t tire as easily. We do not give up, even if we are knocked down. Even if a prad takes us down once, we pretend to be weak only to figure out a way to outsmart them later.”

“And how exactly does outsmarting a prad lead to… mutual trust?” the raptor Instructor asked.

"When a human runs from a pradavarian, it's not submission, not escape—it's an invitation," I said, thinking back to my fight with the five delvers at the Mini-mart and my chase through school hallways with Kristi. "The prad gets to experience the thrill of the hunt, while the human gets to demonstrate that they aren’t easy prey and won't break under pressure. That they can take a hit, fall down and keep moving, get hurt, but don’t give up."

Several pradavarian students, including Nessy, were now staring at me.

"Continue," Professor Fern commanded, her burning eye fixed on me with what might have been approval.

I took a deep breath, letting more thoughts flow through that deeper place, that tree-consciousness that seemed to understand things my surface mind couldn't fully grasp.

"The human-pradavarian bond isn't built on equality," I said, my voice growing stronger. "It's built on complementary opposites. Pradavarians are creatures of instinct and often immediate action. They see a threat, they attack. They want something—they take it.” Candace squeezed my sides as if agreeing with me. “If a prad girl likes a human and is shown strength, she will attempt to claim them often in extremely violent ways. For a human such behaviour is… unpleasant, but for a prad… it’s pure, honest, direct action, the second step of the ritual of trust."

Around the auditorium, pradavarian heads who had human partners were nodding. Even some of the human students were curiously contemplating my words.

"Humans..." I continued, "We're the species that looks at fire and thinks 'how can I control this?' We see a mountain and plan how to tunnel through it. We're builders, creators, problem-solvers. Where prads have instinct, we have persistence. Where pradavarians have immediate power, we have long-term strategy. We conceptualize, we compartmentalize, we multitask, understand and utilize. Not to say that some prads also don’t do this, but in general—humans think while prads act. Basically, we humans contemplate how to reach the stars while pradavarian girls lift weights or run laps."

More sprinkles of laughter.

Professor Fern's scarred face remained impassive, but I caught a flicker of something in her burning eye, an edge of a smile on her lips.

"So when a pradavarian chases a human, when they take them down, when they... claim and embrace them," I said, my gaze inadvertently flicking to Nessy, who was now turned completely around in her seat, "what they're really doing is testing. Can this fragile, smaller creature handle the intensity of what I am? Can they survive my nature without breaking, without rejecting me?"

I thought about my encounter with the bikers, about Addie's behavior when I kept fighting back, about Candace's declaration of submission as I stood up to the Magnetic Lynx and simply spoke without fear to the unstoppable butcher of delvers.

"And when the human gets back up, when they keep moving forward despite the pain, despite being knocked down, despite facing death—that's when real trust begins. Because the pradavarian realizes they've found something rare. Not another predator to compete with, but a partner who can endure their wild, fiery intensity and still choose to stay… and not just to stay, but to playfully participate in the chase, to tame and to wield the ever-burning fire of the pradavarian heart!"

My eyes struck Nessy’s as I resumed my heartfelt speech, if I was speaking to just one person in the room.

"The magic happens in the space between. The pradavarian learns they don't have to hold back. They can be fully themselves—fierce, possessive, overwhelming—and their human partner won't give up on them, no matter what. And the human learns that being outright claimed... isn't about losing who you are. It's about being wanted so completely that someone will fight reality itself, sacrifice themselves to protect you."

The husky seemed to snap along some invisible line, her eyes lighting up, her tail wagging as she stared at me.

"It's not about dominance or submission," I continued, my thoughts turning to the alien memories of a crystal tree and the sense of a music that I had long forgotten, but somehow kept alive in the depths of my soul. "It's about becoming something neither species can achieve alone. The prad becomes a weapon—a sword, a shield, a magic staff and the human becomes the mind that directs it. Together, they're not just a delving team. They're..."

Nessy’s blue eyes were wide open now, and for just a moment, I could have sworn I saw recognition there, as if my words were awakening something she'd forgotten.

"They're almost like two halves of the same soul," I elucidated. "Different species, different strengths, but bound by something deeper than mere survival. Bound by the choice to trust completely, even when everything in their nature says they shouldn't, even when reality decays around you due to Entropy, becomes too aligned to a particular idea due to Syntropy, or has no limits due to Infinity. A human and a prad are an engine of positive and negative… of pure passion and sharp logic, of magic and reason, of strength and intelligence, of brilliant fire and cold persistence… a yin and yang that push against each other constantly, without which there can be no path forward, no success… only death… the death of everything at the end of time.”

I concluded my spiel, feeling oddly content as if these words needed to be said, as if I had somehow endured this personally… Long, long ago in another lifetime.

“Wowza,” Candace whispered. “Didn’t know you had that in ya, darling.”

The silence of the hall stretched for several heartbeats as I sat down. Then Professor Fern began to clap—a slow, deliberate sound that echoed through the auditorium.

"Well spoken, Mr. Foster," she said, and there was something like genuine warmth in her voice. "You've just described the theoretical foundation for every successful human-pradavarian delving team in recorded history. The concept of complementary bonding—predator and endurer, instinct and strategy, fire and steel gears."

“And what if we ain't got a weakling human in our team?” One of the raptors, who sounded like… Katherine asked from the middle row.

“On their own, pradavarians quickly establish a clear hierarchical order within their delving team,” the Instructor said. “Where might makes right and everyone in a pack follows the toughest Alpha. Prad-only delver teams experience great, rapid levelling success until they encounter an enemy which they cannot overcome with brute strength or magical prowess alone. At such time, they either escape with their tails between their legs or perish together… blindly rushing headfirst into death.”

“So,” Kat said. “Teams with humans level up slower?”

“Yes,” Professor Fern nodded. “Level up slower, but also live longer. The Dungeon Analytics Bureau produced a report that confirms that some high level dungeon Sentinels specifically target pradavarian-only delving teams while completely ignoring ones with a human.”

Katherine's emerald-violet feathers bristled as she rose from her seat. "With all due respect, Professor Fern, that's complete bullshit! In fact, everything that poured out of that beat up human’s mouth is complete and utter Romanticism-era shite. One can spout statistics about survivability, but often such general statistics don’t account for reality and are instead survivor bias!”

“Oh?” Professor Fern tilted her head. “Do outline your reasoning for us, Miss Strand.”

“Sure,” Katherine nodded. “It’s like… World War Two planes returning from missions often had bullet holes concentrated in certain areas like wings and tail sections. The foolish human engineers considered reinforcing these frequently hit areas. However, statistician prad Abraham Wald pointed out their fatal error—planes returning safely could survive hits in these areas, implying these sections were less critical. Likewise, anyone dumb enough to put a human into their pack only makes their delving experience worse, not better."

The teams with humans on them grumbled. Those without seemed to agree with the raptor. Professor Fern's burning eye fixed on the raptor girl. Katherine pressed on.

"Humans are weak," Katherine declared, her voice carrying across the auditorium. "They're slow, fragile, and their mana reload rates are often pathetic in comparison to prad mages. The only reason anyone bothers with them is because of outdated traditions and Nazarite Slayer-tale nonsense that's been romanticized beyond all reason. In fact, some prads tend to obsess with humans to an unhealthy degree."

Several of her fellow raptors nodded in agreement, emboldened by Katherine's words. I could see Nessy shrinking in her seat, her ears flattened against her head as the criticism against humans mounted.

"Ferguson Firestorm is the premier delving team in the region at our age bracket," Katherine continued, gesturing toward her packmates. "All raptor pradavarians, no dead weight. We've won five consecutive regional championships precisely because we don't handicap ourselves with human members who need constant protection and babysitting."

"Hear, hear!" called out one of her teammates. "Why should we slow ourselves down for creatures who can barely survive their first dungeon encounter?"

More voices joined in, a chorus of agreement from the pradavarian students. "Humans are dungeon bait," someone called out. "They're only good for triggering traps so the real delvers can get through safely!"

The criticism stung, but what bothered me more was watching how the collared human students in the auditorium seemed to shrink into themselves, their shoulders hunching as if trying to become invisible.

Professor Fern listened to the growing tide of anti-human sentiment with that same predatory smile, her claws clicking against the podium in a rhythm that somehow reminded me of a countdown timer.

"The statistics are clear," Katherine pressed on, taking the professor's silence for agreement. "Human-prad teams have lower level advancement rates and require significantly more resources to maintain. They're a delving liability! The only use of a human is to be a good house husband or a maid devoted to cooking, cleaning and child-rearing! They are good for dealing with baby prad tantrums, not meant for dungeoneering!"

“Hear, hear!” A few prad-only teams shouted and laughed in agreement with the raptor girl.

"Fascinating perspective," Professor Fern said when the voices finally died down, her tone mild. "Tell me, Miss Strand, how many legendary-tier dungeons has the Ferguson Firestorm successfully traversed?"

Katherine's confident expression faltered slightly. "None, since we’re supposed to be permitted entry into such this year and—"

“Thirteen trips to the Superstore,” Addie commented from behind me snarkily.

“Pffff. Katherine Strand thinks she’s hot shit just ‘cus she beat some basic-ass dungeon sims and been to the first few levels of Birchwood,” Candace whisper-grinned into my left ear, her silver whiskers tickling my cheek.

"Why don’t we put your words to the test, Miss Strand?" Professor Fern's smile turned genuinely predatory. "I do believe it's time to move on to some practical application, since you're so eager to demonstrate your team’s superiority."

The ominous quality in her voice made every survival instinct I possessed start screaming warnings. Before anyone could say anything else, the Instructor was striding toward the rear doors of the auditorium.

"Everyone up!" she commanded. "Follow me."

22: Obstacle Course

“But… the delving survival practical is supposed to be the last class today!” Kat complained, joining the teacher down at the base of the auditorium. “I don’t have my gear on…”

“No gear. We’ll be testing your body’s base abilities,” Professor Fern commented without looking back at the raptor girl. “The time to show off your magic gear will come later today, don’t fret, Miss Strand.”

The double doors at the back of the auditorium opened onto a long corridor, leading toward what appeared to be the rear of the school grounds. As we departed from our seats and filed out behind Professor Fern, I caught Candace and Adelle exchanging glances.

"This is new," Candace murmured from my left side. “I don’t recall practical happening this early in the day, it’s not on the schedule.”

“Dis’ new Instructor smells sus,” Adelle agreed, glancing at Kristi who was walking on my right. “Super high level delver. She’s up to something. Whatever, maybe I will get to punch someone earlier.” She stared at Kristi.

Kristi, for her part, gave me an exasperated look that clearly begged me to stop hanging out with the fox and the cheetah for the good of my high school experience. I ignored her.

The corridor opened onto Ferguson High's athletic complex—but this wasn't the manicured park areas I'd seen from the parking lot and inside the campus quad.

This was something far more elaborate, like the set of the Wipeout game show.

The running track field had been transformed into what could only be described as a military-grade obstacle course. Towering climbing walls bristled with what looked like actual spikes. Rope bridges stretched across pits filled with murky water and mud that twisted and bubbled—most likely populated with mud and water Elementals. Mechanical barriers and spinning baton assemblies dotted the course at regular intervals, twirling on their own, featuring overhead sails pushed by wind Elementals.

"Welcome to your first practical assessment," Professor Fern announced, her voice carrying easily across the assembled students. "A simple test of your prowess as a team. You will go through this obstacle course as many times as you are capable of, as quickly as your heart desires. A very special reward awaits you at the end."

She paused, that predatory smile never leaving her scarred face.

"The rules are simple: no killing, no destruction of course obstacles, and no leaving the designated track boundaries. Everything else is fair game."

Katherine and her Firestorm teammates were practically vibrating with anticipation, their predatory instincts clearly triggered by the promise of competition. Around us, other pradavarian students were stretching, their eyes already calculating the fastest route through the obstacles.

Something about Professor Fern's expression was setting off every alarm bell in my head. This wasn't just a simple physical challenge—it was a trap of some kind, and I had the sinking feeling that the students most eager to prove their dominance were walking straight into it.

“Oi, Kristi, get yo ass over here!” Kat yelled.

Kristi twitched. She glanced at me.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Go to your teammates. I got Addie and Candy backing me up.”

“But I… they…” Kristi let out.

“Kristi!” Kat yelled even louder.

With a twitch of emerald feathers Krysanthea rapidly took off, feathered tail swaying as she joining the Firestorm team at the start line.

"Begin!" Professor Fern called out snapping her fingers to produce a gunshot-like detonation flashbang.

The pradavarian students exploded into motion, their speed and agility immediately apparent as they launched themselves at the obstacle course. The Firestorm team took an early lead, their coordinated movements and raw power allowing them to tear through the initial barriers with impressive efficiency.

"Come on!" Adelle snarled, her competitive instincts fully engaged. "We can take them!"

"Yeah!" Candace agreed, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Let's show these stuck-up raptors what real teamwork looks like!"

I grabbed both of their arms before they could charge off.

"No," I said firmly. "We go at my pace. Slow and steady."

"What?" Adelle spun to face me, her eyes wide with disbelief. "Are you fucking kidding me right now? We could demolish those cunts! I'm fast, Candace is smart, and together we could—"

"We stick together," I interrupted. "At my pace. No one gets ahead."

"But I could get to the end much fasterrrrr, show those dum raptors who’s boss. Ugh, man, I wanna runnnnn," Adelle whined. "Starting to regret making a human tater my Alphaaaa."

"Well, you did," I said sharply. "And I'm telling you to obey me. We go through together, slowly."

Something in my tone must have finally penetrated their competitive haze, because both girls slowly nodded, though Adelle was clearly struggling with every cheetah instinct to take off and obliterate everyone.

"Trust me," I added, "Fern isn't testing our ability to win a race. She's testing something else entirely."

“What?” Addie demanded. “Huh?”

“Do you even remember what the lecture was about?” I asked.

“Something about humans, prads and dungeons?” The cheetah asked. “I dunno, I wasn’t paying attention. Between Candy rubbing herself all over you and Kristi ready to pounce at me to claw out my eyes, I kinda spaced out on whatever the fuck you were ranting about.”

Candace laughed. 

“Fern’s testing our endurance, you knob,” I said. 

“Ah,” Addie said. “So it’s not a speed race then?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“And if it is?” the cheetah pressed on.

“Then we don’t win,” I shrugged. “Do you really give that many fucks about winning a dumb school track speed-evaluation competition?”

“Not really,” she shrugged. “It’s just the principle of the thing. I don’t like losing to the feather brigade.”

“Learn to lose while winning,” I said, repeating the words in Nessy's song.

“That's dum,” the cheetah huffed.

As we jogged away from the starting line at a deliberately moderate pace, it gave me time to observe the chaos unfolding ahead of us, evaluating our competition. The pradavarian students had spread out across the course, each team or individual pushing themselves to their absolute limits in pursuit of that coveted first-place position.

Katherine, Kristi and the rest of the Ferguson Firestorm were maintaining their lead through sheer brute force, leaving claw marks in their wake. Behind them, other teams were employing various strategies—some focused on speed, others on coordination, and a few were already starting to show signs of the territorial aggression that seemed to be hardwired into pradavarian DNA, smacking or kicking each other off the course platforms and bridges.

Professor Fern stood at the sidelines with her arms crossed, watching the proceedings with a devious expression that a feline researcher might wear while observing mice in a maze. 

I kept our pace deliberately slow, slowly climbing up and allowing myself to fall behind even the teams with human members. This gave me a perfect vantage point to observe what was really happening on the course.

The first odd thing I noticed were the signs.

They were everywhere—bright, colorful banners stretched across obstacles, painted messages on climbing walls, even holographic text that seemed to float in the air. "FIRST PLACE GLORY!" proclaimed one banner spanning a rope bridge. "WINNERS ONLY!" flashed in neon letters above a mud pit. "BE THE BEST!" was carved into the wooden planks of a climbing wall in letters that seemed to glow with their own inner light.

The second thing I noticed was how the pradavarian students' behavior changed the moment they saw these signs. Their pupils dilated. Their movements became more frantic, more aggressive. What had started as friendly competition was rapidly devolving into something uglier.

"GET OUT OF MY WAY!" Katherine snarled at a wolf student who'd had the audacity to try passing her team on a narrow balance beam. She violently shoved him off the beam, sending him plummeting into the mud pit below.

"This is my course!" Kristi roared at a fox who'd gotten ahead of her on the climbing wall, her claws extending as she literally climbed over the smaller pradavarian to maintain her position.

But the most curious thing I noted in the shadows and corners of the course itself. Hidden among the obstacles, barely visible unless you slowed down enough to pay attention, were Elementals—living plants, wooden beams, steel wires, metal supports, wind gusts, and what looked like barely visible earth mounds. They moved with subtle, deliberate purpose, occasionally extending a branch to trip a running student, or creating a sudden gust of wind that would blow someone off balance directly into the path of another competitor.

Every time an Elemental "accidentally" caused a collision, fights broke out. Claws flashed, fangs bared, and what little teamwork had existed completely dissolved as prads turned on each other with feral intensity.

"Sheet," Candace murmured beside me, her gray eyes tracking the nearly invisible Elementals as they orchestrated chaos. “There’s Elementals hidden everywhere!”

"Yep. The signs are doing something to them too," I observed, feeling a growing pressure in my own head as my gaze lingered on the bright, encouraging text. There was something hypnotic about those messages, a pull that made part of me want to sprint ahead, to push past the slower teams, to prove I could be first—

"Charmchain magic," Candace nodded grimly. "Visual compulsion spells embedded in the signage. The longer you look, the stronger the effect becomes. Classic Charisma-aligned Sentinel dungeon psychology tactic."

"Can you—" I started to ask.

"Already on it," she said, raising her silver-white hands to frame her own face. "Unbind desire to compete." Her hands glowed briefly with fractal silver patterns, and I saw her pupils return to normal size. She repeated the gesture over Adelle, who had been staring at a "SPEED IS EVERYTHING!" banner with increasing fascination.

"Wha—?" Adelle blinked in confusion as Candace's magic took effect. “Why don’t I want to run really fast now?”

“You got charmchained, my dude,” Candace explained.

“Argh,” the cheetah let out. “Das’ fooking bullshit. Why didn’t you unbind me sooner?”

“Usually Fluff spots that stuff for us,” Candace sighed. “I’m not the best at sensing Charmchain.”

“Bleh,” the cheetah licked her paw and then pushed her red hair locks out of her eyes.  “Hate this mental shit, it always gets me.”

"You want me to unbind it from you too?" Candace offered, turning to me.

I shook my head, straining against the alien pressure that was trying to rewrite my thoughts. "No. I want to understand how it works. How to fight it myself."

“Okkay boss,” Candy nodded.

The compulsion was insidious—not a crude mental hammer trying to bash its way into my consciousness, but something more subtle. It felt like whispered suggestions, like my own thoughts being slowly twisted until the desire to win felt completely natural and justified.

I reached deeper into that tree-consciousness I'd been discovering, those strange roots and branches of thought that seemed to exist in a different layer of my mind. The pressure pushed against me like wind against bark, trying to bend me, but trees were designed to flex without breaking.

Let the wind blow, I thought. Feel it, acknowledge it, but remain rooted.

The compulsion slid past me like water around stone.

Looking ahead, I could see that even the teams that were more level-headed were succumbing to the effect. Nessy's trio—the husky, the owl, and the fox—were now snarling at other students, their usual coordination replaced by a desperate scramble to push ahead of the competition.

The owl had actually drawn what looked like a black, crystalline staff out of his book and was using it to trip other climbers on the rope ladders. The fox had her pistol out, though she wasn't pointing it at anyone—yet. And Nessy... Nessy was using her voice, but not for inspiring music. She was projecting some kind of song-attack that disoriented nearby students, causing them to lose their grip on obstacles. It sounded like she was darkly humming something under her breath that seems to make the others slip or become confused as they tried to move past her.

"This is getting ugly," Candace observed as we watched a full-scale brawl break out on one of the balance beams. A team of wolves and a group of cats were going at each other with claws and fangs, completely ignoring the obstacle course in favor of trying to knock each other into the mud pits below.

The signs were getting bigger too, I noticed. And more elaborate. What had started as simple banners were now towering holographic displays that dominated entire sections of the course. "VICTORY AT ALL COSTS!" blazed across the sky in letters that hurt to look at directly. "CRUSH THE WEAK!" pulsed with hypnotic intensity above the final climbing wall.

This wasn't just a test of the compulsion effects—it was showing us exactly how dungeon psychology worked in terms of devious escalating mental pressure. How even the strongest, most disciplined pradavarian teams could be torn apart by playing on their deepest instincts.

23: The Infinite Class

The pradavarian teams were beginning to fracture. The stronger, faster members were pushing ahead and abandoning their human teammates entirely. I watched as a cheetah from one of the mixed teams literally kicked her human partner off a rope bridge because the human was "slowing her down."

Katherine and her pure-raptor team were completely consumed by the need to maintain their lead, clawing at anyone who came within ten feet of them. Kristi had broken away from the Firestorm entirely, trying to establish her own, personal dominance through sheer aggressive violence.

"The humans are getting left behind," Candace pointed out with a tongue click.

She was right. Every human student on the course had been abandoned by their pradavarian teammates, left behind as deadweight. They were clustering together in small, defensive groups, but they were clearly confused and had no idea what was happening to their partners.

The compulsion pressed against my mind again, stronger now. Part of me wanted to sprint ahead, to show all these pradavarians that a human could be first, could be the winner—

"Alec," Candace said urgently. "Your pupils are dilating. You sure you don't want me to unbind it?"

The pressure was incredible now, like having someone scream directly into my brain about how important it was to WIN, to be FIRST, to prove my SUPERIORITY—

"Do it," I gasped out. “This thing is giving me a migraine now.”

Candace's hands framed my face. "Unbind desire to compete," she murmured, and suddenly I could think clearly again as blessed relief flooded through my consciousness as the compulsion dissolved.

We were the only team still proceeding calmly through the course. Every other group was either fighting amongst themselves, racing ahead with manic intensity, or had already completed the circuit and started a second loop, driven by the compulsive need to keep winning, to be faster, to be better.

I walked steadily toward the finish line, ignoring the rest of the students who all went for a second loop.

Professor Fern stood at the end of the track with that same predatory smile, watching the mayhem she'd created with obvious satisfaction.

"I'm done," I announced, stepping across the finish line banner that encouraged “KEEP GOING! ANOTHER LOOP AND VICTORY WILL BE YOURS!”

Professor Fern's burning eye fixed on me. "Are you, Mr. Foster? Truly done?"

"We're done," I confirmed, gesturing to Candace and Adelle beside me. "All three of us."

"Interesting." She tilted her head, studying our little group. "And you feel no desire to complete another circuit? To improve your time? To prove your superiority over your classmates?"

"Nah," I replied. "We came through the course. We reached the end. Mission accomplished."

Professor Fern was quiet for a long moment, her gaze shifting between the three of us and the madness still unfolding on the track behind us. Finally, she gestured to a maintenance shed beside the finish area.

"Have a seat and rest then," she said, snapping her fingers. Three magitek, folding chairs suddenly emerged out of the sandbar.

I settled into the metal chair, Candace curling up in hers with her fluffy tail wrapped around her feet, while Adelle sprawled across her seat like a large, lazy cat, striped tail wagging. From this vantage point, we had a perfect view of the ongoing, escalating disaster.

The other teams were trapped in an endless loop, completing circuit after circuit with increasing desperation and violence. Katherine's team had now turned on each other, with Katherine and Kristi engaged in what looked like a genuine attempt to claw each other's eyes out. The mixed teams had completely collapsed, with pradavarians racing ahead while their human partners remained far, far behind.

Nessy's team was on their fourth lap, and all three of them looked genuinely unhinged. The owl was now using his staff to attack other students directly, while the fox had started firing warning shots to clear obstacles. Nessy herself was projecting continuous sonic howls and barks that were causing visible distress to anyone who got too close.

"You see it now, yes?" Professor Fern said. "The fundamental weakness of pradavarian nature. The desire to compete, to dominate. In a dungeon environment, these instincts can be exploited and turned against the delvers."

She gestured at the carnage. "Every one of these students is now trapped in a compulsion loop. They cannot stop competing because stopping feels like losing, and losing feels like death. The magic will keep them running until they collapse from exhaustion or injure each other severely enough that I'm forced to intervene."

"So this was all a setup," Adelle said, though she didn't sound angry about it—more like professionally impressed.

"A demonstration," Professor Fern corrected. "The Superstore uses similar techniques. It presents you with sales, with limited-time offers, with the promise that you could have everything you want if you just keep shopping, keep spending, keep consuming, keep going deeper and deeper in, keep coming back.”

"And the humans?" I asked, watching the abandoned students.

"Are collateral damage," Professor Fern said bluntly. "In a real dungeon situation, they would now be trapped without their pradavarian protection, easy prey for whatever monsters inhabit the space. This is why mixed often teams fail, Mr. Foster. Not because humans are weak, but because pradavarians cannot resist the urge to abandon their packmates when their competitive instincts are triggered. Because without the human coordinator as its leader, the pack comes apart."

She turned that burning gaze on our little group. "Which makes your team rather unique. You resisted the compulsion through force of will, Miss Rhinehart neutralized it through her Binding skill, and Miss Dallia followed orders despite her natural instincts. That level of coordination and trust is... rare. Have you already been in a legendary dungeon, perhaps?"

“We have,” Adler grinned. “Multiple times.”

Candace frowned at the boasting cheetah and nodded.

“Not me,” I said, but for some reason some deep part of me felt that it was a lie.

The sounds of fighting from the track were getting louder. Someone was screaming—whether from pain or rage, I couldn't tell.

"How long are you going to let this go on?" I asked, watching Kristi and Katherine wrestling each other on the rope bridge.

"Until they learn," Professor Fern replied coldly. 

A thunderous crash echoed across the field as the owl student brought his staff down on someone's head with enough force to crack stone. Blood sprayed across the obstacles.

"I think we're at 'seriously injured,'" I commented.

“Prad skulls are tougher than human, Mr. Foster,” Professor Fern commented. “She will live.”

I frowned as the downed lion girl came up with a roar and attacked the owl boy, tearing his staff from his hands and kicking the boy into a muddy mire where a mud elemental got hold of him, nearly suffocating him.

“If you let them keep going we’re going to end up missing next period and lunch,” I commented.

“I have absolute authority from the Principal to go overtime,” Professor Fern said. “Other classes will be pushed back to tomorrow. Dungeon scenarios like Highway Sixty Nine do not end just because you’re hungry, Mr. Foster.”

I sighed.

She stared at me, sparks falling from her burning mane and then snapped her fingers. Tables emerged out of the sand. Human attendants in butler and maid uniforms brought out lavish food on plates. 

“Woo! Food!” Adler declared, instanly stuffing her mouth full of raw steaks.

Candace reached out towards the plates. I watched Professor Fern. Her eye burned bright, the functional half of her face was spreading in that malicious grin again.

“DON’T EAT IT!” I smacked a chicken leg from Candace’s hand. 

“Wha..?” the silver fox blinked at me.

“You cheeky bastard!” I addressed the Instructor. “The food’s poisoned isn’t it?”

Professor Fern laughed. 

Candace dropped the chicken. Adler stuffed food into her mouth without stopping, chugging offered drinks, her stomach filling rapidly, the silver dress she was wearing nearly ripping at the seams.

Candace and I watched the cheetah going at it like she was starving to death.

“No, not poison,” I muttered. “Another… compulsion. Eating this food causes you to get hungrier? Right?”

“Maybe,” Professor Fern smiled.

“Fucking hell,” Candace walked over to Addie and grabbed her head from behind. “Unbind hunger!”

“Whaaa…” Adler frothed at the mouth. “Oh god. Why…” She grabbed her stomach and her eyes filled with tears. “So full. Ughhhh. Candyyyy… save me… send the foods outta my stomach into the Astral!”

“No,” Candace said.

“Candyyyyy, come on, I’m going to explodeeeee,” Addie cried. “Help me!”

“Are you going to stop jumping into obvious traps like a moron?” Candace asked.

“Ughhhh, whatever screw you, miss bossy fox,” the cheetah returned to her seat, and burped. She closed her eyes and immediately fell asleep.

I jumped off the chair, realising that I was feeling unnaturally drowsy. “What the fuck. The chairs are magically sabotaged too?!”

Professor Fern’s villainous smile persisted.

“Unbind tiredness,” Candace grabbed herself and me, glaring at Fern. “You know, I can do this all day, right?”

“You already lost one team mate,” Professor Fern simply shrugged. “I just need you to make a mistake and it’ll be all over for your human captain.”

The sandbar slowly grew hot, sunshine beating down. I wiped my forehead and looked up. The sun overhead blazed far too brightly for early September. 

“You feel that?” I elbowed Candace.

“Yes,” she growled, her eyes igniting. “Beerch got a massive Sun elemental pointed right at us from high up. Actually no… it’s pointed at everyone on this damned track!” 

“How does this class end?” I asked Professor Fern.

“Infinite dungeons don’t end, Mr. Foster,” she said simply. “They grind you down until you are dead.” 

She licked her lips with a look of malicious superiority, cooling runework flashing on her gray suit.

“Some of the students have guns,” I said, watching as the panting fox pointed her gun at another student. “What if someone gets shot in the head?”

“Magnetic Elementals,” the Instructor said. 

I watched as the fox girl’s gun was suddenly ripped out of her hand and flew off into a muddy pit. 

“Noo! My pistol!” she cried out and dove into the mud where a mud elemental trapped her, making her thrash about and dragging her under.

Wiping sweat from my brow, feeling like I was in a sauna slowly being boiled alive, I pulled out the folded paper with the class schedule on it from my pocket. 

The letters have rearranged themselves to state:

Period 1: Advanced Dungeoneering - Prof. Ignis L. Fern
Period 2: Advanced Dungeoneering - Prof. Ignis L. Fern
Period 3: Advanced Dungeoneering - Prof. Ignis L. Fern
Period 4: Lunch courtesy of Prof. Ignis L. Fern
Period 5: Advanced Dungeoneering - Prof. Ignis L. Fern
Period 6: Advanced Dungeoneering - Prof. Ignis L. Fern
Period 7: Advanced Dungeoneering - Prof. Ignis L. Fern
Period ∞: Advanced Dungeoneering - Prof. Ignis L. Fern

Candace stared at the schedule, panting. “Fuck, how do we get out of Advanced Dungeoneering?!”

“One does not simply leave Advanced Dungeoneering,” I deadpanned.

“Alec, I’m fucking melting,” she panted. “This isn’t funny! What do we do?! She's just fucking with us at this point!”

“Can’t you unbind heat from your fur?” I asked.

“I can’t unbind fucking sunlight quickly or easily!” She growled. “It’s a physical attack, not a magical compulsion! The Elemental is about a few thousand meters above us. It’s not simply projecting heat, it’s blasting us with ultraviolet radiation, acting like a gargantuan magnifying lens! We have to run inside, get out from under the solar lens!”

I looked at the struggling, exhausted human students on the obstacle course—their skin already turning red from the intensified sunlight. Many of them were pradavarian property, collared, claimed, but they were also fellow humans being literally cooked alive while their pradavarian "protectors" were trapped in magical compulsion loop.

"Fuck this," I growled, watching a particularly young human boy stumble and fall, his skin already blistering. "Candace, wake up Adelle."

The fox blinked at me, paralysed by indecision.

"NOW!" I yelled.

Candace rushed to the sleeping cheetah. "Unbind sleep!"

The cheetah's silver eyes snapped open, still unfocused but responsive. "Wha... so effing full... want to rest… five more minutes plezz..."

"You're going to melt if you don't move," I said, hauling her to her feet. "We're rescuing the humans before they get third-degree burns."

"Rescuing...?" Adelle blinked in confusion, but her predatory instincts kicked in when she saw the distressed, deep-fried humans on the course. "Oh shit, they're getting roasted alive."

"Exactly. Candace, I need you to unbind every compulsion you can find on these humans. Adelle, you're our muscle—grab anyone who can't move on their own."

“M'kay, kinda too full to run fast though,” she whines.

“Can you not throw up or something?” I asked.

“What? No way. It’s free food!” the cheetah snarled. “I can manage.” Adelle let out another loud burp, which seemed to help her. “Aight, off I go. Ughhh…”

We rushed onto the superheated obstacle course, the artificial sun beating down like a furnace. The human students were in various states of distress—some had collapsed from heat exhaustion, those with higher levels persisted on slowly moving through the course with severe sunburns.

"Over here!" I called to a girl who was stumbling blindly near a mud pit, her exposed arms angry red. "This way!"

Adelle rushed forward, scooping up two unconscious human boys and carrying them over her shoulders. "Where do we put them?"

"The shed!" I pointed. "It's the only shelter."

When we reached the building, we found the door was locked. Heavy steel, no windows, clearly built to withstand pradavarian strength.

"Stand back," Adelle growled, her fury finally finding a useful outlet. She reared back, roared and kicked the door with enough force to send it flying off its hinges entirely, the metal crumpling inward like tinfoil.

"Holy shit," one of the rescued humans gasped as we hustled them inside the blessed coolness of the shed.

The interior was larger than expected, clearly designed as some kind of equipment storage area. But what caught my attention immediately were the weapons mounted on the back wall—dozens of sleek, gun-like devices arranged in perfect rows.

"Candace," I called. "Scan those weapons."

The fox's eyes flashed silver as she used her Identify ability. "Pacifier guns," she announced. "Four shots each. Non-lethal subdual weapons designed for magical suppression."

"How many?"

"Exactly as many as there are human students," she said grimly.

“Heh,” Adler tried to grab a gun but then yelped, jumping back. “What the fuck?” She rubbed her burned fingers.

“Ah,” Candace said. “They’re magically aligned so that only a human can pick one up.”

“Gee, thanks,” Adler growled. “Could have warned me ahead of time.”

“Fuck off, Ads, I’m tired,” Candace spat. “You try to unbind so much stupid shit in less than an hour!”

The implications hit me like a cold slap. This had all been planned. Professor Fern had orchestrated this entire scenario, knowing exactly how it would play out—the pradavarians would be trapped in compulsion loops while their human partners were slowly cooked alive, forcing the humans to take action.

"Everyone grab a gun," I ordered the assembled human students. "We're going to save our teammates."

"But they'll kill us if we try to stop em," protested the boy with the worst sunburns. "You don't understand—when Sasha gets angry, she—"

"They're not angry," I interrupted. "They're magically compelled. The guns will put restraints on them so we can drag them to safety. But they'll still be affected by the banners—we'll need to get them away from the course entirely."

“And what if they fight back?” One of the students voiced.

“I think they’ll be too exhausted to fight at this point,” I said.

The human students looked at each other uncertainly, then began grabbing the weapons. I took one myself, checking the simple trigger mechanism.

We rushed back onto the course as a coordinated unit. The pradavarian students were still racing through their endless loops, but many were showing signs of exhaustion and overheating. Even their superior physiology had limits.

I headed straight for Nessy first—she was stumbling through her ‘n-th lap, her black and white fur matted with sweat. She wasn’t making Riffweld noises anymore, panting hard. Her blue eyes were completely unfocused.

I raised the pacifier gun and fired.

The dart hit her in the shoulder, and magical restraints materialized around her wrists—ornate silver handcuffs that glowed with subdual enchantments. But her eyes were still dilated, still locked on the course.

"No, no, please don't, I have to..." she panted, moving through the obstacles despite the restraints. "Have to finish... have to win... almost there..."

"Nessy, stop," I said, grabbing her arm. The handcuffs made her movements sluggish, but the compulsion was still driving her.

"Let me go, you jerk!" she struggled weakly, her voice desperate. "I'm so close to victory... just one more lap… Please! I can win!”

I had to physically drag her toward the shed, her feet shuffling reluctantly, head constantly turning back toward the glowing banners that still pulsed with their hypnotic messages.

My skin felt like it was badly sunbuned now, chafing all over. I left Nessy in the shed, binding her cuffs to the wall hook and rushed out once again.

Around the course, other human students were having similar struggles. The pacifier guns created the magical restraints as advertised, but the pradavarians were still fighting to return to the course.

I went back for Kristi next, finding her and Katherine locked in what looked like a death match on one of the rope bridges. Both raptors were bleeding from claw marks, their feathers disheveled, eyes wild with artificial competitive fury.

My first shot somehow missed Katherine, as she moved aside with some magic skill. Growling, I came closer and aimed for center mass, firing again. The magical handcuffs appeared around her wrists, but she didn't seem to care, swatting at Kristi with her feet.

Kristi spun toward me, panting hard. "Alec? Thanks for slowing my asshat… sister! Now I can… win… show them all that I’m… the best."

"You are the best," I said, raising the pacifier gun. "You're the best at knowing when to stop."

The dart hit her in the chest. The restraints appeared, binding her arms behind her. She stared at me with a look of betrayal.

"What?! Why?!" she panted, her voice filled with manic urgency. "I was so close... I just need to finish this loop and then I win everything..."

With Addie and Candy's help, we grabbed both raptors and physically hauled them off the bridge, their feet dragging as they tiredly strained against our hands and their magical restraints.

As we secured the two raptor girls in the shed, Candace and Adelle rushed off, systematically working their way through the remaining trapped students, assisting other humans per my orders. 

Each subdued pradavarian had to be physically carried or dragged to safety, fighting every step of the way despite the magical handcuffs slowing their movements.

"I need to go back!" gasped a wolf as three human students struggled to carry him to the shed. "The course is calling me! I can hear it singing! Just one more victory!"

"Please," whimpered a fox girl as her human partner tried to lead her away, "Just let me run one more lap… I can win this!"

I stayed in the shed, panting, feeling badly burned and too exhausted to keep going.

The last pacifier shot rang out—another human student restraining his lion packmate who was clawing at the ground, trying to crawl back toward the obstacles. 

Professor Fern suddenly clapped her hands together with a thunderous sound that echoed across the entire course.

Immediately, the sun above us dimmed to normal levels. The compulsion signs flickered and went dark, fading away, banners rolling up. The elementals released their holds on the trapped students.

The moment the signs went dark, every pradavarian student suddenly stopped struggling, blinking in confusion as if waking from a dream.

"What... where am I?" Nessy mumbled, looking around the shed

"Slayer," Kristi whispered, her gold eyes focusing on me with recognition and horror. "I couldn't stop. What the fuck. I wanted to stop but I couldn't..."

Clouds appeared overhead as if summoned, and gentle rain began to fall. 

I tiredly noted that this wasn't ordinary rain—each droplet that touched exposed skin provided immediate cooling relief and seemed to accelerate healing of the burns and heat exhaustion.

"A job well done," Professor Fern called out. “Get those burns healed up by the rain!”

The few badly burned human students in the shed, immediately rushed outside to let the healing rain wash over them, laughing with relief as their burns faded and their strength returned. The handcuffed pradavarian students followed, still shaking off the lingering effects of the compulsion.

But I didn't move. I stood in the doorway of the shed, arms crossed, glaring at Professor Fern with undisguised suspicion.

"Alec?" Candace said. "The rain's interspersed with healing magic. Don't you want to get those burns—"

"No," I said firmly. “I don’t trust her.”

“But…”

"This isn't over," I said grimly, watching Professor Fern's satisfied expression as the other students celebrated their apparent freedom. "No fucking way. This is just another test. Another layer of the trap."

Candace snapped her mouth shut. She shrugged and walked over to me and hugged me, making me wince. “Thanks, Alpha. If it wasn't for you, I'd totally fall for her shit.”

I stared at Professor Fern who looked back at me. I lifted a hand and showed her the middle finger. 

The ‘healing rain’ fell around the Instructor in a perfect circle and she winked at me with a smirk.

24: Death or Submission

As the healing rain continued to fall, I watched as glowing symbols began to manifest above everyone who had stepped outside. Blue circles with letters—A, B, C, D, and so on—appeared hovering above the heads of all the human students and the handcuffed pradavarians we'd rescued. 

Red triangles materialized above the heads of the pradavarians who hadn't been subdued by the handcuff-manifesting guns.

"Candace," I said. "What are those?"

Her gray eyes lit up from within with violet and silver flashes as she took in the magical markings floating above everyone's heads. "Classification markers. Nothing bad… just high level magic tags."

Professor Fern snapped her fingers with another thunderclap, and the rain clouds parted instantly, returning the sky to normal afternoon sunshine. 

“Clever use of water Elementals,” Candace commented. “Dang, she’s a big time league gal—I’ve no idea how she’s controlling this many Elementals. I’m def’ jelly.”

The healing rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun, leaving the rescued students standing in puddles, looking confused and slightly disoriented, staring at their red and blue tags.

"Good try, everyone," Professor Fern announced, her voice carrying easily across the obstacle course. "The first phase of today's practical examination is over."

“Or is it?” I muttered under my breath.

The Instructor gestured toward the students marked with red triangles—those pradavarians who had avoided the fate of being subdued during our rescue operation, since they had no human mates who cared to rescue them.

"Those of you bearing red markers have failed my first test," she declared. "You allowed yourselves to be consumed by dungeon psychology and died from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Congratulations–you all get an F!"

Shocked murmurs rippled through the red-marked group.

"However," Professor Fern continued, "death in a dungeon scenario merely means rebirth as Sentinels. You will play the role of dungeon monsters for the remainder of today's practical examination. Consider it your opportunity to redeem your failing grade."

“Wait, what about our next period?” Someone asked. “Weren't we supposed to…”

“Today’s schedule was a ruse,” the Instructor revealed what I had already discovered. “A dungeon delver must always be ready for unexpected twists and traps! Today all of you will be enjoying a day with me.”

The students groaned.

One of the wolves with a red triangle raised his paw tentatively. "So, um, if we do well as... monsters, we can get a passing grade?”

"Yes. If you show prowess as Sentinels, your second mark can help you pass the first practical with a C or a B grade instead of an F, depending on how well you defend the dungeon treasure against delvers," Professor Fern replied. "Anyone with a red triangle tag is free to head to lunch and prepare for your new roles as undead Sentinels, put on your delving armor, etc. You are dismissed."

The red-marked students began filing away, some looking relieved to be out of whatever was coming next, others looking very frustrated by their ‘deaths’. I noticed that several of them kept glancing back at the blue-marked group with murderous glares.

Some red-marked students stayed to see what the fate of their handcuffed friends or packmates would be.

Katherine, still struggling against her magical handcuffs, snarled up at Professor Fern. "What about us? How do I get these cuffs off?"

"Ah yes, the rescued," Professor Fern's grin widened, showing far too many teeth. "You have been subdued, captured, and saved from certain death. In dungeon terms, this means your old delving teams are now dissolved by your failure to maintain pack cohesion under pressure."

"That's bullshit!" Katherine spat, her feathers bristling despite her restraints. "We were magically compelled! It wasn't our fault!"

"Oh?" Professor Fern tilted her head. "Did the magic force you to abandon your teammates? Did it compel you to fight amongst yourselves like fools? Or did it simply amplify what was already present in your nature? As it stands, only three students managed to defeat the compulsion, step out of my Charmchain loop dungeon sim—Alec Forest, Candace Rhinehart and Adelle Dallia. Their current grade, unlike yours, Miss Strand, is A+. Also, anyone who managed to rescue more than three delvers, gets an A. Two delvers saved is a B. Rescue of a single delver is a C.”

The raptor fell silent, her gold eyes burning with frustrated rage.

"Your old teams are hereby dissolved," Professor Fern repeated with finality. "Those of you in handcuffs have been given a second chance at life by your rescuers. You now have a choice to make."

She gestured toward the human students who had wielded the pacifier guns.

"You can pledge loyalty to your rescuers—accept them as your new pack Alphas and get a D instead of the F—or you can join the red-marked group as dungeon monsters and keep the F. Know this: if you choose to become monsters, you will be hunting your former teammates. There will be no mercy, no holding back, no 'it's just a simulation.' You will attempt to kill them as if this were a real dungeon scenario using provided weapons."

"What new Alphas?!" Katherine snarled, her voice cracking with indignation. "I am Scion of the Strand family! I don't bow to anyone!"

“In your case, Miss Katherine Strand,” Professor Fern's grin became absolutely predatory. "The human who saved your life while you were lost in magical compulsion. By dungeon law—by the law of survival itself—Alec Foster now has the right to claim dominion over you!”

The silence that followed was deafening. Every handcuffed pradavarian was staring at Professor Fern in shock, while the human students looked equally stunned at this unexpected development.

"This is ridiculous!" Kristi choked. "You can't just... reassign pack hierarchies based on a training exercise."

"Can't I?" Professor Fern's burning eye fixed on the raptor. "Tell me, Miss Krysanthea Strand, what would have happened if this had been a real dungeon scenario? If the heat hadn't been artificial, if the compulsions had been genuine dungeon psychology that feeds on your soul, and this human hadn't been there to save you, to pull you by force from the dungeon loop?"

Kristi's mouth opened and closed several times before she managed to croak out, "I would have died."

"Exactly. And who saved you?"

Kristi's gaze found mine, her gold eyes filled with a warm tea of gratitude sprinkled with embarrassment. "Alec did."

"Then by right of rescue, by the ancient laws that govern dungeon delving, he has earned the right to your loyalty." Professor Fern stated. "The same applies to all of you. Your rescuers saved your lives when your own packmates abandoned you to attain an unattainable victory. The question now is: Will you acknowledge this debt, or do you choose death and a failing grade?"

“You’re screwing with pre-established packs, breaking up delving teams, giving humans a leg up with those guns!” Katherine howled. “You can’t do that! No instructor did this sort of shit on our first day! I’m going to tell Lord Marshal that…”

“Oh? Who do you think hired me for this job, Miss Katherine Strand?” The Instructor asked, her tail lashing through the air like a whip.

“Wait… Dad hired you?” Kristi guessed.

“No,” Professor Fern shook her head. “High Administrator of the Western Reaches, Archmage Amadeus Strand hired me.”

“Grandfather,” Kristi’s violet-blue face grew pale as did her sister’s. Their grandfather was clearly a legendary figurehead of some sort.

“Correct,” Professor Fern said, eyeing the shocked-looking Katherine. “Archmage Amadeus wishes to make sure that his grandchildren survive your first Superstore trip. Your performance and arrogance thus far has been… disappointing.”

"You're trying to force people into artificial pack bonds based on a training exercise. These aren't real life-debts," one of the human students voiced, looking at his very annoyed prad partners.

Professor Fern's attention snapped to the boy with laser focus. "Aren't they, Mr. Sid?”

Sid seemed far too scared to go against his packmates, but even more scared to go against the teacher.

“So?” Professor Fern asked “What would you call it when someone risks their own safety to save another's life?"

"Basic decency," I commented without hesitation. "Human or pradavarian, you don't let people die when you can help them. That doesn't create some kind of magical ownership."

"Interesting perspective," she mused. "And yet, you've already formed such bonds, haven't you Mr. Foster? Miss Rhinehart and Miss Dallia clearly see you as their Alpha and are obeying your orders, which was why only your group survived the initial loop and the other traps I set afterwards. Is your relationship with your pack mates invalid as well, Mr. Foster? Because I see respect and appreciation in the eyes of your prad packmates."

Student eyes turned toward me, Candace, and Adelle. The comparison was a tad uncomfortable because it wasn't entirely wrong—both of them had declared loyalty to me after a high-stress situation where I'd stood up to superior force.

"That was their choice," I said after a pause. "They weren't coerced by a teacher using artificial scenarios."

"All scenarios are artificial until they become real," Professor Fern shrugged. "I’m preparing you to face the Superstore dungeon. Everything we do here is preparation for that inevitably. Everyone in handcuffs can choose to get an F or a D! To become a follower or an undead monster under the direct control of the dungeon core aka me.”

“How come the humans got the guns?” Adelle asked. “Why did it zap me when I tried to pick one up?”

“Because this is exactly how the Superstore behaves, Miss Dallia,” Professor Fern said. “She tolerates humans… but she hates pradavarians with a passion. She considers us lower than roaches, an infestation, a species that must be exterminated.”

“How are you so sure of this?” Kristi asked.

“Because I’ve been to the Superstore,” Professor Fern said coldly. “I’ve spoken to its avatar, Insurance. These were her words, not mine.” She gestured broadly at the assembled students. "Thus, this is your team selection process, created through circumstance. Stick with it or… ‘die’."

“I refuse to accept this fucking human as my Alpha!” Katherine snarled. 

The blue tag above the raptor girl turned red and her handcuffs fell apart into blue sparks.

“Then you’re dead,” Professor Fern shrugged. “Get out of my sight. You get an F, Miss Katherine Strand. Your grandfather will hear of your failure today.”

Sending me and Professor Fern a glare, Katherine departed with a huff, twitching at the mention of her grandfather.

I looked at the rest of the handcuffed pradavarians, seeing the fear and uncertainty in their eyes as they struggled with pride, survival instinct, and the idea of accepting a human as their Alpha that was suddenly thrust upon them. Then I looked at my fellow human students, most of whom looked terrified at the prospect of suddenly being responsible for pradavarian lives.

"So what's it going to be?" Professor Fern asked, her voice carrying across the sudden quiet. "Loyalty or death?"

“What about us?” I asked, waving a hand at myself, Candace and Adelle. “We don’t have a blue or a red tag.”

"Ah yes, the untagged trio," she said, her voice carrying a note of approval. "You three managed something quite remarkable today. You recognized the trap, resisted the compulsion, and extracted yourselves from the scenario entirely before the looped track or classification rain could tag you."

She gestured at the empty air above our heads, where no glowing symbols floated.

"In dungeon terms, you have successfully escaped. You've beaten today's practical examination with perfect scores. You are free to leave, to skip the remainder of today's 'delving exercise' if you so choose."

"And if we do leave?" I asked, though I already suspected the answer.

"Then the two remaining blue-marked students you tagged, Mr. Foster, will automatically ‘die’," Professor Fern replied with clinical detachment. "They become dungeon Sentinels and receive an F. Their handcuffs will dissolve, their tags will turn red, and they'll join the hunt against any newly formed delver teams after lunch and tomorrow."

“Tomorrow?” Kristi blinked. “How long are you planning to keep the students as monsters?”

“For the entirety of this semester if that's what it takes to get the necessary delver cooperation skills into their thick skulls,” Professor Fern shrugged. “In fact it will take just a single F mark in any class this semester to turn you into a monster. Climbing back to “adventurer” will not be an easy path!”

More grumbles from students. 

Glancing behind me, I could see Nessy and Kristi. The husky’s blue eyes fixed on me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"So basically," Candace said, her gray eyes narrowing as she worked through the implications, "you're giving our team a choice between keeping our perfect grade, going home and abandoning the girls we just rescued, or staying to help them and risking our own scores."

"Precisely," Professor Fern confirmed. "If you choose to stay and participate in the next phase, you'll be taking on significant responsibility. As their rescuer, Alec would become pack Alpha. Their survival, their success, their grades—all of it becomes your responsibility for the duration of delving class!"

Adelle snorted. "Sounds like a raw deal. We already got perfect scores. Why risk it?"

"Because," Professor Fern's voice dropped to something almost conversational, "the real test isn't whether you can escape a trap, Miss Dallia. Any smart enough delver can walk away. The real test is whether you can return to the dungeon again to rescue someone trapped there who isn't your family or best friend."

I walked over to the raptor girl and the husky. 

“What’s it gonna be, ladies?” I asked. “Wanna die and play monster or do you want me as your new Alpha for the rest of Fern's class?”

25: Choices

Kristi's mouth opened and closed several times, her usual quick wit apparently failing her due to the exhaustion of running in endless circles.

"I don't know," she admitted quietly. "I've never... I've always been the one in control, you know? Firstborn… Prima of the Strand. But back there..." She gestured vaguely toward the obstacle course. "I couldn't stop. I just wanted to claw Kat’s eyes out, and I couldn't stop myself from wanting it."

"The compulsion magic," I nodded.

"Yeah," Kristi sighed. "Teach is right, the banners amplified what was already there. All that resentment, all that competition between us. It… turned the volume up until I couldn't hear anything else. Fuck."

She looked up at me with those gold eyes, and I could see genuine fear there.

"What if that's who I really am underneath? What if I'm just as bad as Kat, just better at hiding it?"

I considered her question seriously. "You're asking the wrong person. I've known you for exactly two days. But in those two days, you've taken me to the nurse, bought me food, tried to talk me out of making stupid decisions, and helped patch up the bikers who beat the shit out of me. If that's who you are when you're not under magical compulsion, then maybe that says something about your real nature."

Kristi was quiet for a long moment. "And if I accept you as Alpha?"

"Hrm," I pursed my lips. "I guess then you become my responsibility, like these two idiots.” I waved a hand at Candace and Addie who were swatting at each other because Candace was poking fun at Adler’s overfilled stomach making ‘beerch, y u so preggo’ comments. 

“Your responsibility, huh?”

“Yep,” I nodded. “I’ll try to keep you alive, and you'll have to learn to trust my judgment even when it goes against your instincts."

"Hrm," Kristi mused. "The judgment of someone who thought it was a good idea to take on an impossible quest from a legendary dungeon Sentinel?”

"Yeah, that judgment," I confirmed with a slight smile. "Not exactly inspiring confidence, is it?"

Despite everything, Kristi snorted with amusement. "You're an idiot, Alec Foster."

"So I've been told. Is that a yes or a no?"

Kristi studied my face for a long moment, then wiggled her handcuffs. "If I say yes, these come off?"

"That's what Fern implied,” I glanced at the Instructor who marched off to watch over other red-tagged students that were crawling out of the mud pits.

"And if I say no?"

"Then you become a dungeon monster and will have to ‘kill’ me later today,” I shrugged.

"Tempting," she said dryly. Then, more seriously: "I don't want to fail, Alec. I've been working toward Advanced Dungeoneering my whole life. I can't go home to my father and tell him I got an F on the first day because I couldn't control myself."

"Then don't," I said simply.

Kristi took a deep breath, her shoulders squaring with decision. "Fine. You're my Alpha for Advanced Delving. Just for this class though, yeah?"

“Sure,” I smiled. “This is just a pretend dungeon sim, right? If you won’t like my pack management, you’re free to go back to your Firestorm team.”

“Kay,” she said. “I accept Alec Foster as my Alpha.”

The magical handcuffs around her wrists dissolved into blue sparks. She rubbed her freed hands, flexing her claws with obvious relief as a blue circle above her head flashed with the letter (A).

"One down," I said, turning to Nessy. "What about you?"

The husky hadn't moved or spoken throughout the entire conversation. She sat perfectly still, staring at me or perhaps past me with those blue eyes that seemed to see something far beyond the confines of the shed.

"Nessy?" I said softly.

She blinked, her gaze focusing on me with obvious effort. "I know you," she said quietly.

"Yes, we met yesterday at the temple," I said.

"No." She shook her head slowly. "I know you from... before. From my dreams." Her voice took on a distant quality. "There's music in my head when I look at you. Melodies I don't remember writing. I didn’t tell you this yesterday… I thought that my curse was screwing with me, making me delusional, crazy. But I dreamt of you last night. You… It’s always been you."

I felt something twist in my chest—recognition, longing, and a deep ache I couldn't name.

"The Well of Severance," I said. "It's taken your memories, devoured your dreams."

"Maybe," she said. "Or maybe I'm just crazy. Everyone says my dreams aren't real, that the person I sing about doesn't exist. But you..." She tilted her head, studying my face with an intensity that made my heart race. "You feel real. You feel… important."

"Nessy," I said carefully, "what do you want to do? About your… grade, I mean."

She was quiet for so long I thought she might not answer. Then she spoke, her voice was quiet, measured.

“You’re… pretty burned. Why?”

I looked down at my reddened, blistered arms and hands, suddenly aware of the stinging pain I'd been ignoring in the adrenaline of the rescue operation.

"I didn't go out in the healing rain," I explained. "Professor Fern was using it as another test. So I stayed in the shed while everyone else got healed."

Nessy's blue eyes widened with horror, then her gaze snapped to Professor Fern in the distance. Her expression transformed into something I'd never seen before—pure, righteous fury that made her hackles rise and her lips pull back to reveal sharp canine teeth.

"She did this to you," Nessy snarled, her voice carrying a dangerous edge. "She cooked you alive and then offered fake healing as another trap?!"

"It wasn't fake healing," I said quickly. "It was real, I just—"

"You sacrificed your own health to avoid falling into her next manipulation," Nessy cut me off, her tail bristling with anger. "While everyone else got relief, you stayed here, in the shed… because you didn’t trust her?”

“Yep,” I nodded. “She pulled a bunch of shit on us after we got out of the loop—food with compulsion to overstuff yourself, chairs that would have made us fall asleep, then the sun elemental that burned us.”

“Why didn't you go into the rain like the others?” She wondered.

“I got a lot of nasty lessons from my brother Damien Foster,” I explained. “He ‘pranked’ me with magical shit just like this all the time without any consequences because I can eventually reconstitute from any kind of magical damage.”

“Dang. Makes sense why you’re such a paranoid critter,” Candace commented. “Now I feel even worse about smacking you around yesterday.”

“You… smacked him around?” Nessy’s head snapped to Candace with a growl. “Is that why he’s covered in bandages?!”

“I was pretty high on t’ dust at the time,” Candace said. “Wasn’t thinking straight and obeyed my Alpha. It sorta worked out for me though, cus I…”

Nessy’s growl intensified. 

“Wo-ho, chill out doggo,” Candace retreated behind me. “No need to maul me. Alec and I are cool now, right Alec?”

“We’re cool-ish,” I said. “You’ve got a lot of making up to do before I can forgive you.”

“But—during the lecture you said that—,” Candace stammered out.

“That was a spur of the moment thing,” I said. “A rant of me trying to understand prad psychology and why you did what you did. It doesn’t mean that I like getting sliced up like salami by cheetah claws while you hold my wrists.”

Nessy's expression went from fury to horror as my words sank in. Her blue eyes ignited and glistened with sparks of tears as she stared at my bandaged cuts and burns.

"They... they held you down and sliced you up?" she whispered, her voice breaking. "While you were helpless?"

Adelle shifted uncomfortably, her ears flattening. 

"Yes," Kristi snarled, her gold eyes blazing as she rounded on the ex-bikers. "I saw the aftermath before I took him to the nurse yesterday. He looked like he'd been put through a meat grinder."

Candace's silver tail and ears drooped as she stared at the ground. "We were very drunk and high... and we thought he would just heal quickly because of his skill. We didn't know he was... that he was..."

"That he was what?" Nessy demanded, rising to her feet despite the handcuffs. "A person? Someone who could feel pain?"

"Someone special," Candace finished quietly. "Someone who'd matter to us."

"Oh, how fucking noble," Kristi spat. "You tortured him because you thought he was worthless, but now that you've decided he has value, suddenly you feel bad about it?"

“I… I thought that he had value when I first saw him,” Adler said. “I just… I suck at picking up humans, especially when I’m sloshed to the tits, and he pushed me and started running around, okay? 

Before the argument could escalate further, the shed door darkened as two familiar figures stepped inside. The gray owl with the elaborate star-tipped wizard hat—stepped through the doorway, his wide spectacles glinting. Behind him came the orange fox with aquamarine eyes, her hand resting casually on her holstered pistol.

"Hey Ness!" the fox announced. "There you are! We've been looking for you."

"Sage," Nessy said, not turning around, still preoccupied with growling at Candace. "Viv. What do you need?"

The owl stepped forward, his dark tome with the embedded eyeball swaying from its chain as he moved. The eyeball itself swiveled to focus on me with unblinking intensity.

The fox crossed her arms, scanning the shed with obvious disdain. "So this is where you ended up. We've been wondering why you disappeared from the course."

"I got rescued," Nessy said simply. “By Alec.” She pointed her paw at me.

"Rescued," Sage repeated, his voice carrying the kind of intellectual condescension that made my teeth itch. "By a human? Quaint."

"More like pathetic," Viv added, her gaze settling on me with obvious hostility. "Look at the state of this one—covered in bandages and smelling like overcooked meat. That's your rescuer? What, too stupid to stand in the healing rain, human?" She sneered at me.

"Vivianne, stop! He saved my life," Nessy said, her voice growing firmer. "While I was trapped in the compulsion loop, he and the other humans pulled us out!"

“Technically your life wasn’t ever in any danger,” Sage pointed out with a soft, diplomatic tone. “This was just a sim. We did mess up though, so there’s that. But I think that the new instructor isn’t being very fair to prads, stacking the deck in favour of humans.”

“Rrraptor beerrrrrch prolly has a little human house husband,” Viv sneered. “Course she’s fucking with teams without humans on it. Come on, Ness, just tell this overbaked sausage to piss off and let's go get some lunch. I’m starving!”

She pulled Nessy off the wall chain and hook I attached her to. 

“But…” Nessy began.

"We don't need some smelly human telling us how to manage our pack dynamics," Viv added, her grip tightening on Nessy's arm. "Come on, Ness. Take the F, become a monster with us. We'll hunt these losers together and show Professor one-eye exactly what a real team can do."

Nessy pulled against Viv's grip, her ears flattening. "I don't want to hunt anyone as a monster, Viv. I just want to pass the class."

"You want to pass by groveling to a human?" Sage asked. "Nessy, you're a hell-a talented Riffweld Bard. I don’t get it, why would you debase yourself by accepting a low level human as your Alpha? Necricuss told me that he’s just level three, remember?” he tapped his book.

"Because he saved me," Nessy said firmly, though I could hear uncertainty creeping into her voice. “Because he… got hurt for me!”

"Did he though?" Viv's aquamarine eyes gleamed with malicious intelligence. “You think that a human is behind this pack? I have doubts.”

“Doubts?” Nessy blinked. “What are you talking ‘bout Vivianne?”

“You do know who this is, right?” Vivianne pointed a dark claw at Candace. “You saw her clinging to this human during the lecture, yes?”

Nessy nodded warily. 

"That's Candace Rhinehart," Viv continued, her voice dripping with contempt, "the spoiled mining heiress who threw a tantrum last year and disappeared when mommy and daddy wouldn't buy her a unicorn or whatever. You really think that a rich beerch like her is really following orders from a level three human? Come on, Ness. Use your brain."

Sage nodded, adjusting his spectacles as the gray eyeball in his tome swiveled to focus on Candace. "Candace Rhinehart specializes in incredibly rare conceptual binding magic. Vivianne raises an excellent point—what if the human isn't actually the Alpha here? What if he's been... influenced, mentally bound?"

"That's ridiculous," Kristi snapped, her feathers bristling. "I've seen them interact. Alec gives orders, they follow them. It's pretty straightforward pack dynamics."

"Is it though?" Sage asked. "Binding magic, especially from a talented user like Candace can be incredibly subtle. She could have him convinced that his own thoughts are his own while she pulls the strings from behind. Classic dark cardinal manipulation."

Candlace's silver tail bristled as she stepped forward. "That's a serious accusation, Necromage. You want to back that shit up with evidence, or are you just talking out your ass?"

"Evidence?" Viv laughed, a sharp sound that echoed in the shed. "How about the fact that you disappeared for months, then suddenly reappear with a human who's somehow managed to 'tame' not just you, but also..." She gestured at Adelle. "Wait, who the hell is the orange, fat cheetah? I don't recognize her."

She stared at Adelle. “Who are you?”

"Adelle Dallia," Adelle said with a yawn, kneading her overfilled stomach with her left hand. "Transfer student. And I ain't been tamed by nobody, fox beerch. I chose my Alpha because he's got balls!"

"Riiiight," Viv drawled sarcastically. "Another transfer student who just happens to fall in line with whatever this human says. How… convenient!"

Sage cleared his throat, his tome's eyeball now fixated on me. "The statistical probability of a level three human successfully subjugating and coordinating two higher level pradavarians is... essentially zero. Unless, of course, external magical influence was involved, like this training exercise clearly designed to give humans an advantage.”

“Three pradavarians,” Kristi said, feathers bristling. “He’s going to be my Alpha for this semester’s Advanced Delving.”

“That only makes it more improbable,” Sage pointed out.

"You calling me a liar, four-eyes?" Adelle's claws extended as she took a step toward the owl. “You questioning my Alpha?!”

"I'm suggesting," Sage said, nervously backing away from the tall, muscular cheetah. "that you may not be aware of the influence being exerted upon you. Sophisticated binding magic operates below the threshold of conscious awareness!”

“Hrm,” Vivianne huffed. “Rhinehart obviously has something on your both… or she's paying you off or she managed to magically bind you before classes even began.”

“One more word and you're going to be missing some teeth,” the cheetah growled.

"Oh, this is rich," Kristi snarled, her gold eyes blazing as she rounded on the duo. "You two are obviously trying to gaslight everyone in this damn shed because you can't handle the fact that your precious Nessy might choose someone other than you."

"Gaslight?" Viv's voice rose dangerously. "We're trying to save our friend from making a stupid decision based on magical manipulation!"

"What if it's not manipulation?" Nessy said quietly, but her voice carried clearly in the heated space. "What if I just... want to trust him?"

"Want to?" Vivianne barked. "Nessy, that's exactly what binding magic does. It makes you want things that aren't in your best interest!"

26: Pushback

“How about you let me make my own decision for once!” Nessy snapped, pushing the fox away.

The temperature in the shed seemed to drop several degrees. 

"Ness..." Viv's voice took on a wounded tone. "We're just trying to protect you. We've been your pack for years!"

"Have you?" Nessy asked, her handcuffs rattling as she gestured. "Or have you just been... managing me? Deciding what's real and what isn't? Telling me my dreams are mere delusions?"

"Because they are!" Viv exploded. "You're obsessed with some imaginary person who doesn't exist! We've been trying our best to help you get over this unhealthy fixation!"

"What if he does exist though?" Nessy's gaze found mine across the shed. "What if everything I've been dreaming, everything I've been singing about... what if it's real?"

Sage made a frustrated noise. "Nessy, we’ve talking about this a million times, the statistical probability—"

"Screw your statistics!" Nessy snarled. "I'm tired of having my feelings explained away or invalidated by your book’s mathematics!"

Sage frowned at that.

Candace had been watching the exchange with growing interest, her gray eyes flicking between Nessy and her friends. Now she spoke up, her voice deceptively sweet.

"You know what I find interesting about you two?" she said, addressing Viv and Sage. "You're so concerned about magical influence, but you've never once asked Nessy what she actually wants."

"We know what she wants," Viv said defensively. "She wants to pass the class and also not get manipulated by some—"

"No," Candace interrupted. "You presume what you think she should want. There's a difference."

Adelle nodded emphatically, letting out a burp as she rubbed her overstuffed belly. "Yeah, you two are like... Her fucking helicopter parents or something. Hovering around, making decisions for her."

"We are not—" Sage began.

"You are though," Kristi cut in. "I've known your trio for four years. Nessy clearly can't make a move without you two 'protecting' her from her own choices!"

The argument was escalating rapidly, pradavarian voices rising as accusations flew back and forth. I was feeling too sunburned and exhausted from dragging compulsion-bound prads to safety so I simply groaned and sat down, leaning against the cold concrete, my head spinning.

Nessy looked like she was about to cry.

“Nessy, you can go be with your friends,” I said. “I don’t want to force anything or distress you. Nobody’s bound me. I just somehow ended up with three prad packmates because of my excessive stubbornness and paranoia.”

I slumped further against the concrete, feeling every burn, every cut, every bruise from the past two days catching up with me at once. The adrenaline that had kept me moving was finally wearing off, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion that made my limbs feel like lead.

Nessy's gaze again traveled over my blistered arms, my bandaged face, the way I was unconsciously favoring my left side where the worst of the burns were.

"Slayer, Alec," she whispered, her voice breaking as she inhaled deep. "Look at you. You're... you're really hurt."

"I'm fine," I mumbled automatically, though even I could hear how unconvincing it sounded.

"No, you're not," Nessy said, pulling against her handcuffs as she tried to move closer. "Your skin is literally peeling off your arms. Your lips are cracked and bleeding. You can barely keep your eyes open."

Viv glanced at me dismissively. "He's just trying to get sympathy. Classic human manipulation tactic."

Sage nodded sagely. "Humans often exaggerate their injuries to gain emotional leverage over—"

"SHUT UP!" Nessy roared, her voice carrying a sonic force of Riffweld that made everyone in the shed flinch. "Just... shut up for five minutes and look at him! Actually look!"

The sudden silence that followed was broken only by my labored breathing and the distant sounds of other students outside making their choices.

Kristi, Candace and Adler stared at me with growing alarm too. 

Nessy inhaled deep, staring at them. “Fuck. You’re… you all smell and look like you're genuinely worried about him… so much. This can’t be a deception!”

“No fucking really,” Kristi bent down to me. “Alec, you need the nurse. Now.”

“S’fine,” I mumbled. “I can’t die.”

"Don't care," she said firmly, crouching down beside me. "You're swaying, sitting down like you're going to pass out at any moment. Come on, arms around my neck."

Before I could protest further, she had her arms under my knees and behind my back, lifting me with far too much ease. 

"Kristi," I said weakly, "quit manhandling me, this is embarrassing."

"Shut up," she replied, though her tone was gentle. "You saved my life. Let me return the favor."

“When did this happen?” I asked blearily as my head spun, making me feel drunk. “Pretty sure I let you die, pretty bird. The Lynx got you good. Right through the heart…”

I reached out and poked her in the middle of her chest. “Right there.”

“Fucking hell, he’s burning up,” Kristi growled. “You all can keep arguing like knobs in here, I’m taking him to the nurse!”

“Wait,” Nessy was straining against her handcuffs, tears streaming down her black and white cheeks. "I want to help," she said desperately. "Please, I want to help him! He… he’s…"

“You can help by fucking out of my way faster,” Kristi tried to step around Nessy and her friends blocking the exit.

“I… I accept Alec Foster as my Alpha!” Nessy barked. The handcuffs around her hands detonated into silver sparks. She jumped out of Kristi’s way.

The exit from the shed became a messy bottleneck as Kristi tried to maneuver through the doorway while carrying me. Sage and Viv were still blocking the path, seemingly stunned into immobility by Nessy's sudden Alpha-declaration.

"Move!" Candace snarled, her silver form blurring as she shoved past the owl with enough force to send him stumbling backward. His elaborate wizard hat went flying, and the tome chained to his side swung wildly as he fought to keep his balance.

"Hey!" Sage protested, scrambling to retrieve his hat, gray feathers bristling. "You can't just—"

Adelle solved the fox problem more directly, grabbing Viv by the shoulders and physically lifting her out of the way.

"Put me down, you oversized furball!" Viv struggled against the cheetah's grip, her hand instinctively moving toward her holstered pistol.

"Point that party popper at me and I'll stuff it up where the sun don’t shine," Adelle growled, setting the fox down roughly outside the shed before following Kristi out into the afternoon sunlight.

"Sage, Viv, I'm sorry!" Nessy called over her shoulder as she rushed after us, her voice thick with emotion. "I have to... I need to... I'll explain later, okay? Just please understand!"

The last thing I heard before the world started spinning was Viv's wounded voice calling back: "Ness, wait! Don't do this! You're making a mistake!"

The journey to the nurse's office passed in a blur of concerned voices and swaying motion. Kristi's strong arms kept me steady, but my vision kept sliding in and out of focus. The burns on my arms felt like they were actively on fire, and my head was pounding with a rhythm that matched my heartbeat.

"Stay with us, Alec," Candace's voice came from somewhere to my left. "We're almost there."

"Fucking hell, why didn't anyone notice that he's passin’ out earlier?" Adelle's voice was thick with guilt.

"Because he's too damn stubborn to admit when he's hurt and exhausted," Kristi replied, her arms tightening protectively around me. "Probably learned it from dealing with that psycho brother of his."

"Is he gonna be okay?" Nessy's voice was close by, worried. "He looks so pale..."

"He'll be fine," Kristi said firmly, though I could hear the uncertainty underneath. "He has to be fine. We're almost there!"

The last thing I remembered was the sound of doors swinging open and Nurse Redstriss's sharp intake of breath before everything went black.

...

I woke up to the familiar antiseptic smell of the nurse's office and the soft hum of medical magitek equipment. My arms were wrapped in what felt like cooling and healing bandages, and there was an IV drip attached to my left hand feeding me some kind of pale blue healing solution.

"Finally," came Nurse Redstriss's crisp voice from beside the bed. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd developed a talent for medical complications along with your apparent death wish."

I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it as pain lanced through my torso. "How long was I out?"

"About thirty minutes," she replied, moving into my field of vision. Her crimson feathers were ruffled with what I was beginning to recognize as professional irritation. "Long enough for me to treat second-degree burns over thirty percent of your body, severe dehydration, and what appears to be severe heat stroke."

"But I'm fine now, right?" I asked, noting that the four girls were clustered around my bed like worried sentries. Kristi sat in a chair pulled close to the bed, Candace was perched on the windowsill with her silver tail wrapped around her feet, Adelle was sprawled in a corner chair. Nessy stood at the foot of the bed, her blue eyes red-rimmed from recent tears.

"You are decidedly not fine," Nurse Redstriss said sharply, her amber eyes blazing with medical authority. "You deliberately pushed yourself beyond your physical limits, and then, from what I've been told, had the audacity to tell your packmate that you 'can't die' as if that excuses reckless behavior."

"I mean... I technically can't die," I pointed out. "My Reconstitution skill—"

"Your Reconstitution skill," she interrupted, "is sitting at exactly two percent, Mr. Foster. Do you know what that means?"

"That I can... barely reconstitute?" I joked, smiling at the unexpected extra percent.

"It means," she said with the patience of someone explaining basic arithmetic to a particularly slow child, "that if you had died today from heat stroke or severe burns, you would have come back as essentially a living corpse. Functional, yes, but with significant brain damage, motor function impairment, and quite possibly permanent nerve damage that even magical healing couldn't fully repair."

“I’ve had worse,” I shrugged. “I got better.”

The room went very quiet. I could feel the four girls staring at me with varying degrees of horror.

“What? I didn’t die,” I huffed.

"No, you didn't," Nurse Redstriss agreed. "Because these four young ladies dragged your hide to my office before your core temperature could climb high enough to cause permanent damage. I suggest you take it easy for the rest of the day and let the bandages do their work. If I were you, I would start by thanking them for being so diligent.”

“Right,” I said, eyeing my companions as the nurse walked off. “I supposed I should start with… you.”

I turned my head to Nessy. 

"Thank you," I said softly. "For choosing to stay. For accepting me as your Alpha when you could have just walked away with your friends."

Nessy's ears twitched. "I... Erm, someone had to make sure you didn't do something even more spectacularly stupid."

"Hey," I protested with mock indignation. "My stupidity is very carefully calculated, thank you very much."

"Oh really?" she said, the corners of her mouth quirking up in what might have been the beginning of a smile. "So getting yourself cooked like a rotisserie chicken was part of some master plan?"

"Absolutely. Step one: become human jerky. Step two: profit when I smell irresistible to cute doggos.”

That got an actual snort of laughter from her, which made something warm bloom in my chest despite the IV fluids making me feel cold.

"Your plan needs work," she said, moving closer to the bed. "Most successful strategies don't involve the pack’s Alpha becoming a corpse."

"I prefer to think of it as 'adding dramatic tension,'" I replied. "Besides, it got you to finally make a decision about the whole Alpha thing, didn't it?"

Nessy's expression grew more serious. "That wasn't... I didn't choose you because you were hurt. I chose you because..." She paused, struggling for words. "Because when I look at you, something feels right."

"Even when I look like overcooked bacon?" I asked.

"Especially then," she said firmly. "Anyone can be charming when they're healthy and clean. But you... you spent your own health to save three prads you barely knew, including me. That says something about who you are."

"And you three," I continued, shifting my gaze to the other girls. "Thank you for... well, for not letting me become a head in a jar."

Kristi's feathers ruffled, and she looked away with obvious embarrassment. "Don't get all sappy about it. You're my Alpha now, remember? Can't have you dying on my watch—it would look terrible on my record."

"Right," I said with a grin. "Very pragmatic of you."

Candace bounced slightly on the windowsill, her silver tail swishing with nervous energy. "I'm just glad you're not even more dead, you know? Like, undead Alec would probably be way less fun to hang out with. All moaning and shambling and... ugh, imagine the smell!"

"Thanks for that mental image," I said dryly.

"Plus," she continued, warming to her theme, "if you perma-died, I'd have to find a new Alpha, and do you have any idea how much paperwork is involved in pack restructuring? The taxes alone—"

"Candy," Adelle interrupted from her corner chair, "you're rambling."

"I ramble when I'm nervous!" Candace protested. "Sue me for having feelings ya overstuffed butt!"

I turned to Adelle, who was still looking vaguely nauseous. "And thank you for the muscle, Ads. Though next time, maybe don't eat the obviously magical food?"

“Yea, yea, laugh it up,” she commented. "I haven't been this full since that time we found the all-you-can-eat buffet at the Iona truck stop and I tried to eat my own body weight in pancakes."

"Why would you do that?" Nessy asked, turning to the cheetah.

"Because I'm a dumb-ass with poor impulse control," Adelle shrugged. “And they offered free pancakes to anyone who could eat a hundred pancakes in one go. Alec, I still don’t get why you didn’t go into the healing rain. It didn’t change that much shit overall.”

"Strategic paranoia," I shrugged.

"Strategic paranoia," Nessy repeated with a smile. "I like that. It sounds much more sophisticated than 'suicidal stubbornness.'"

Her tail started wagging and she sat down, leaning her black and white head onto the side of my bed. I reached out and gave her a pet. The tail wagging intensified. She let out an exhale and pulled out her phone, opening her Pradstagram.

27: Establishing Trust

I couldn't help but notice Nessy's ears drooping lower with each sent message. Her phone screen was angled so that I could clearly see the entire conversation and the group chat name: "TRIPLE THREAT 💀🔫🎵"

She wasn't hiding the conversation from me—in fact, she seemed to want me to see the chat window as if my opinion was important to her.

[NecroMaster🧙]: Ness, are you coming to lunch? We saved you a seat at our usual table and ordered your favorite turkey sandwich!

A guilty and hungry look had come over Nessy’s face.

[Gunslinga🦊]: You better not be choosing some random human over your actual pack. Your REAL pack.

[ManyLix🐾]: guys I'm staying with Alec in the nurse's office. He almost died because of me.

[NecroMaster🧙]: Because of you? Nessy, you were magically compelled. None of this was your fault! He's probably being magically compelled too by that fox Binder!

[Gunslinga🦊]: It was that psycho instructor's fault! Not yours, not his. Why are you taking responsibility for some human's poor life choices?

[ManyLix🐾]: Because he saved me, Viv. He got hurt doing it.

[Gunslinga🦊]: OH PLEASE. He "saved" you? Out of allllll the prads on that course, somehow YOU were the special one he just HAD to rescue?

[NecroMaster🧙]: Statistically speaking, Vivianne raises a valid point. What made you specifically worthy of rescue when he had no prior pack bond or friendship with you? I heard he went for two firestorm raptor girls too and one of them was smart enough to tell him to beat it.

I watched Nessy's ears flatten completely against her head as she read the last message. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a long moment before she glanced up at me.

"Alec," she said quietly. "When we weren't even packmates. I spoke to you once at the temple and wasn't very nice. Why did you choose me?”

The other three girls in the room perked up with interest. 

"Honestly?" I said, drowning in Nessy's sky-blue, wide eyes. "I don't know the exact answer. When I saw you on that course, trapped in the compulsion loop... something in my chest just twisted. Like seeing you hurt and lost was physically painful for me. Like I know you really well… which is weird when I only met you yesterday. Like my legs walked me towards you on their own.”

"Awww," Candace cooed from the windowsill. "That's the most romantic thing I've heard in ages!"

"It's not… romantic," I protested, though I could feel heat rising in my cheeks. "It's just... I felt connected to Ness somehow. Like I'd been looking for her without knowing it my entire life."

Adelle snorted. "Boss, that's literally the definition of romantic. Next you'll be writing her poetry and picking flowers."

Nessy's tail had started wagging again as she returned to her chat.

[ManyLix🐾]: He says he felt connected to me somehow. Like he'd been looking for me without knowing it.

[Gunslinga🦊]: 🤮 Nessy, that's exactly the kind of manipulative crap guys say when they want something from you!

[NecroMaster🧙]: I have to agree with Vivianne. That response is textbook emotional manipulation designed to exploit your existing psychological vulnerabilities regarding your "dream person." He's met you at the temple right? He obviously knows about your condition and is using it as an emotional lever.

Nessy sighed deeply, looking extra frustrated.

[ManyLix🐾]: What if it's not manipulation though? What if he's telling the truth?

[Gunslinga🦊]: Then he's either delusional or lying. Probably both.

[NecroMaster🧙]: Nessy, remember what we discussed about your attachment disorder. You're projecting your fantasy onto this human because he superficially matches some imagined criteria.

I watched Nessy's shoulders slump as she read that. 

"Your friends are… really supportive," I said dryly.

"They're trying to protect me," she said, but her voice lacked conviction. "They think my dreams are unhealthy."

"Maybe they are," I admitted. "Or… Maybe sometimes dreams are just... previews of coming attractions."

"Slayer," Adelle commented with a smirk. "I'm already too full! You're going to give me diabetes on top with all this sweetness!"

[ManyLix🐾]: He says maybe dreams are previews of coming attractions.

[Gunslinga🦊]: Nessy, this is EXACTLY why I drove you to that Krishna temple four years ago! To get unhealthy obsessions out of your system before that raptor beerch could use it against you!

[ManyLix🐾]: No. You drove me there because you were worried about me. I know you care, Viv.

[Gunslinga🦊]: Of course I care! You're my best friend! That's WHY I can't stand watching you destroy yourself over some imaginary person!

[NecroMaster🧙]: Vivianne is correct. Your fixation on this "dream person" has prevented you from forming many healthy relationships. You pushed Basil Lerox away, even though he was a pretty cool Agromancer dude in my opinion. You rejected every guy who tried to date you because they weren't your imagined, perfect human.

[ManyLix🐾]: What if he IS real though? What if everything I've been dreaming about is real?

[Gunslinga🦊]: Then why didn't you recognize him immediately? If he's your magical soulmate or whatever, shouldn't there have been instant recognition? Fireworks? Dramatic music?

That one hit home. I could see Nessy's tail freeze mid-wag as she contemplated the message.

"She has a point," Nessy said quietly, looking up at me. "If you really are... if we really are... shouldn't I have known right away?"

"Maybe you did," I said gently. "You said I felt familiar when we met at the temple. And during the lecture, when I was talking about human-prad bonds... you were watching me like you recognized something."

"He's got a point," Candace said thoughtfully. "I saw your faces during his speech, Nessy. You're way too much into each other, stop flapping about it.”

Nessy pursed her lips.

"Plus," Candace added, "maybe the Well of Severance messed with your desire for love or whatever. That thing sounded sketchy as hell when I read about it online."

Nessy's fingers flew over her keyboard.

[ManyLix🐾]: Maybe the Well of Severance affected my ability to recognize him immediately?

[Gunslinga🦊]: Oh for crying out loud! Now you're blaming a meditation well for your confusion? Nessy, listen to yourself!

[NecroMaster🧙]: The Well of Severance is a legitimate spiritual tool used by the Krishna temple for centuries. It doesn't "mess with" anything—it simply helps people release unhealthy attachments.

[ManyLix🐾]: What if my attachment isn't unhealthy though? What if it's just... different?

[Gunslinga🦊]: Different how? Please explain how obsessing over someone who doesn't exist is healthy!

[ManyLix🐾]: Because maybe he did exist. Maybe he does exist. Maybe I've been dreaming about him because we're connected somehow.

[NecroMaster🧙]: Nessy, we've had this conversation so many times. Correlation is not causation. The fact that you've found someone who vaguely resembles your fantasy doesn't validate the fantasy itself.

I watched Nessy's face crumple slightly. "They think I'm delusional," she whispered.

"Hey," I said softly, reaching out to touch her hand. "Even if you are a little delusional, that doesn't make your feelings less real. And it doesn't make you less important to me."

"Heh," Candace nodded approvingly. "Very smooth recovery there, Alpha."

"I wasn't trying to be smooth," I protested.

"That's what makes it smooth," Addie added with a grin, closing her eyes.

[ManyLix🐾]: He says even if I'm delusional, my feelings are still real and I'm still important to him!

[Gunslinga🦊]: NESSY. This is textbook love-bombing! He's telling you exactly what you want to hear!

[NecroMaster🧙]: I must concur with Vivianne's assessment. The pattern of validation followed by dependency creation is a classic manipulation tactic.

[ManyLix🐾]: Or maybe he just genuinely cares about me?

[Gunslinga🦊]: After knowing you for TWO DAYS?!

[ManyLix🐾]: Sometimes connections happen quickly.

[Gunslinga🦊]: Ness, please. I'm begging you. Just come to lunch with us. Let's talk this through away from... Binder influences.

[NecroMaster🧙]: Agreed. Some distance and perspective would be beneficial right now.

I could see Nessy wavering, torn between her loyalty to her old friends and whatever she was feeling toward me. The conflict was written all over her twitching, distraught face.

"Go," I said quietly. "If you want to go to lunch with them, go. I'm not going anywhere."

"Really?" she asked, surprised.

"Really. I'm stuck here for at least another hour anyway," I gestured to the IV drip. "And they're your friends. They care about you, even if they're going about it in a... protective way."

"But what if—" she started.

"What if what? What if you decide they're right and I'm just some delusional human with a savior complex?" I shrugged. "Then you'll have learned something important, and we'll both move on."

The tree inside me wiggled a billion branches angrily. It didn't want to let her go. I ignored the ocean of flutter. This had to be Nessy’s choice, not mine.

Nessy stared at me for a long moment, her blue eyes searching my face. "You're not afraid I'll choose them?"

"A bit," I admitted. "But I'd rather you sort it out than me or my packmates pushing things."

"And THAT," Candace announced, "is why he's our Alpha. Most guys would be trying to guilt trip you into staying."

"Or getting all possessive and weird," Adelle added without opening her eyes. “Bleh.”

"Definitely weird," Kristi agreed.

[ManyLix🐾]: I'm going to come to lunch. But I need to think about things.

[Gunslinga🦊]: THANK GOD. Finally some sense! We'll be at our usual table.

[NecroMaster🧙]: Excellent decision, Nessy. Clear thinking requires clear space.

[ManyLix🐾]: I'll see you both soon.

Nessy pocketed her phone and looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite read. "I'll be back," she said finally.

"See ya later," I replied.

She leaned down and, completely unexpectedly, pressed a soft kiss to my forehead. "Thank you," she whispered. 

And then she was gone, leaving behind the faint scent of lavender and wet dog.

"Well," Nurse Redstriss said after a moment, finally abandoning her pretense of organizing supplies. "That was very mature of you."

"Thanks," I sighed, settling back against the pillows.

"Yass," Candace agreed cheerfully. "And now we know you're not a controlling psychopath! Such progress!"

"The bar for my personality really is set impressively low," I muttered.

"Don't worry, boss," Adelle grinned. "I'd keep ya even if you were a psychopath.”

“Way to lower the bar there, Ads,” Candace laughed.

Nessy suddenly flashed back into the room, her curly black and white hair flying behind her.

“Back so soon, doggy?” Candace glanced at the panting Nessy.

"Alec, do you have a phone?" Nessy asked breathlessly, her tail wagging with nervous energy. "N' Pradstagram?" 

I nodded and pulled out my ancient, battered Clawsroller J-2. The screen was a spiderweb of cracks held together by determination and a cheap, half-melted, scratched up plastic case that had seen better decades.

"Yikes," Nessy winced at the sight of my phone. "That thing looks like it survived a dungeon collapse."

"Close," I said. "It survived my brother using it for target practice."

She tapped her sleek, modern Ipaws 12 against mine with a soft clink. A notification popped up on both screens as our contact information synced.

[Contact Request from: ManyLix🐾]

I hit accept, and she did the same, her eyes lighting up as the connection confirmed.

"There," she said, pocketing her phone. "Now you can... I mean, if you want to... we can talk while I nom lunch with my... friends."

"Sounds good," I said.

She flashed me another cute smile and then rushed out of the room, her black and white curls bouncing as she disappeared around the corner, paws tapping on the floor.

"Ah," Candace said with an exaggerated sigh, relocating to my side instead of the windowsill, "now I see why I got rejected back at the hotel, even though I'm an absolutely amazing kisser."

"Modest too," Kristi commented dryly.

“Hrm?” I turned to the silver fox.

"Someone," Candace continued leaning towards me as if she was showcasing her ample chest, pointedly ignoring the raptor, "def’ has big feels for a certain fluffy-tailed doggy. And here I thought it was just my irresistible fox charm failing me."

"You’re plenty resistible when you get all loopy," Adelle mumbled from her chair with a big yawn that displayed her oversized canines. Her silver eyes were already half-closed as the food coma began to take hold.

"Rude," Candace huffed. "I'll have you know I'm a great catch."

"You're something," Kristi agreed, though her tone suggested it wasn't necessarily a compliment.

Candace's gray eyes narrowed as she studied the raptor. "You know, Kristi, you've been awfully quiet about our new packmate doggo. Usually you have opinions about everything."

"I have opinions," Kristi said carefully, her feathers ruffling slightly.

"But not about Nessy?"

"Nessy's..." Kristi paused, choosing her words with unusual care. "Tolerable. I guess."

"Tolerable?" Candace's tail swished with interest. "That's it? Just that? Come on, dish. What's your read on her?"

"She's..." Kristi said, the words coming out like she was forcing it through clenched teeth. "Overbearing like a dog, probably."

"That’s it?" Candace pressed.

"What do you want from me, fox?" Kristi's voice had taken on a sharp edge. "She's Alec's choice. If he wants to chase after some Bard mutt who dreams about imaginary boyfriends, that's his business."

"Ooh," Candace grinned wickedly. "There's some spice there. What'd she do to you, Kris?"

"Nothing," Kristi snapped, her claws extending slightly. "She didn't do anything. That's the point."

From her chair, Adelle cracked one eye open. "Drama," she mumbled. "Love drama. My favorite kind of entertainment." She settled deeper into the chair. "Wake me when someone starts crying."

"Nobody's crying," Kristi growled.

“You seem kinda fragile there,” Candace commented.

“Do you want to book a meeting between my fist and your snout, and we’ll see who’s more fragile?” the raptor growled.

“Holy sheet,” Candace grinned, narrowly avoiding a half-hearted swat from Kristi. “You’ve got it bad. You maximum fragile, my dude.”

I was about to tell them both to knock it off when my phone buzzed with a notification. Glancing at the screen, I noticed that Nessy had come online.

The contact name had changed from [ManyLix🐾] to [MaximaPawsome🐾].

[Alecai🌲]: Did you change your name?

The response came back almost immediately.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: ye. felt right

I stared at the simple response, something warm spreading through my chest. For some reason, the name felt familiarly unnerving, like Déjà vu, like the sound of a ticking clock running out of time, like endless aisles and impossible products.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Ugh. I’m getting my ears ranted off. Can’t even enjoy sammich.

I wasn't sure what to type to that.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: They’re being all pressury. I just want

She stopped typing for a minute.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: want to understand why looking at you makes me feel like I'm drowning and being rescued at the same time. If accepting you as Alpha might help me figure that out…

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Then yes. I choose you.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: My best friens. they're good prads, but they don't understand… about the dreams, about my music. They’re angry at me. I… don’t like making my friends angry. sigh

[Alecai🌲]: I would have rescued them. The gun only had four shots and I missed one like an idiot. 

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: thanks. Sagie n Viv have been with me since freshman year

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: they've protected me, helped me manage my condition. When the dreams got too intense, when I'd end up crying about things that never happened at school, they were always there. Viv told me to join the temple back in grade seven and it helped me deal with it all. Sage has been casting ‘calmness of the dead’ on me for years.

[Alecai🌲]: That sounds like… supportive friendship

I acknowledged. 

Candace relocated herself atop of the recovery bed, somehow squeezing herself beside me, fluffy tail smacking my leg. I pushed her silver face out of my phone screen. 

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: it's so strange. I’m not sure if I know or don’t know you. Every time I look at you, I feel

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: something.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: The temple says these are delusions, symptoms of an Astral parasite feeding on my dreams. But when I'm near you… there’s this… pull, this NEED to maul you. That’s crazy… right?

“She got it so bad, dang,” Candace commented.

“Who invited you up here, fluffy space invader?” I asked her.

“I invited myself,” she said. “Whatever’s between you could be some kind of a deep magical compulsion. A binding loop.”

“Set by whom and why?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Candace said. 

[Alecai🌲]: No biggie if you a bit nuts. I’m practically drowning in crazy prad femmes at this point.

I typed to Nessy.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Yeah, I saw. My mates really don’t trust the fox. They say she’s very bad. She smells like Topaz.

Candace let out a huff from my side.

[Alecai🌲]: What exactly is Topaz?

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: A magical drug. Nobody knows where it’s made or how. I heard it makes whoever smokes, inhales or drinks it hallucinate happy, blissful things. It’s very magically potent and incredibly addictive. Turns your whiskers, skin, nails, teeth and fur rainbow-blue.

I glanced at Candace. Her teeth, nails and whiskers were pure white, fur and hair pure silver with a sprinkle of dark silver and warm pink. No rainbow-blue. Then again, she could just unbind a particular color from herself quite easily. 

28: Pack Pyramid

I looked at Candace's gray eyes, noting they seemed perfectly clear—not dilated or unfocused like I'd expect from someone under the influence of magical narcotics.

[Alecai🌲]: Candace looks fine to me. No rainbow-blue coloring.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Maybe she's good at hiding it? Binders can change their appearance easily. Sage did an Astral scan on her from across the hall this morning with his necro-book and said her aura was "fractured and unstable"

[Alecai🌲]: Could be because she’s dimensionally split herself to get away from her parents for the summer

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Hrmmm

I felt soft fingers running through my hair. Candace had positioned herself so she was practically draped across my shoulder, her silver-white paw gently stroking from my forehead back through my hair in slow, soothing motions. I glanced at her. “Yes?”

"Just taking care of my Alpha," she said simply, her voice carrying that musical fox purr. "You look stressed about the doggy drama."

From her chair across the room, Kristi's gold eyes fixed on us with laser intensity. Her feathers had started to bristle slightly, and I could hear the faint scrape of claws against the armrest of her chair.

"He doesn't need... grooming," Kristi said, her voice carefully controlled but with an edge that hadn't been there moments before.

"Everyone needs grooming," Candace replied without stopping her gentle ministrations. "It's basic pack care. Helps with bonding, reduces stress hormones, promotes healing through increased circulation—"

"He's not a pradavarian," Kristi interrupted sharply. "Human pack dynamics don't work the same way."

"Oh?" Candace's gray eyes sparkled with mischief. "And you're an expert on human bond dynamics now, are you? How many human boyfriends did you have?”

"I know enough," Kristi growled, her tail beginning to lash behind her chair.

I tried to focus on typing a response to Nessy, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the territorial tension building in the room. Candace's petting had grown more deliberate as she kneaded my head with her claws and soft pads. Meanwhile, Kristi looked like she was calculating the exact distance needed to leap across the room and separate the fox from my general vicinity. 

I considered telling Candace to get off me, but then again some part of me desperately craved this exact appreciation by a pretty prad at my side after eighteen years of being told I was worthless by my family, peers and authority figures.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Are you still there?

[Alecai🌲]: Yeah, just got distracted. Candace is

I paused, glancing at the fox whose face was now mere inches from mine as she continued her "grooming" routine.

[Alecai🌲]: being very hands-on with the whole Alpha care thing

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: -.- hands-on how?

[Alecai🌲]: petting my hair, staying by my side, generally being territorial about personal space

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Is it bothering you?

I considered the question. Candace's touch was rather soothing, but there was definitely an element of performance to it—especially given how she kept glancing at Kristi with that satisfied smirk.

[Alecai🌲]: Its relaxing but also feels like she's trying to prove a point

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: About what?

[Alecai🌲]: No idea. Could be just prad pack behaviour. I didn’t have a pack before. Or she could be hitting on me again. Hard to tell.

"You're texting an awful lot," Candace observed, her paw sliding down to rest on my shoulder. "Hope you're not telling the doggy all our secrets."

"What secrets?" I asked. "That you're the most modest, understated pradavarian I've ever met?"

Candace laughed, a bright, musical sound that somehow managed to be both genuine and calculated. "I have no idea what you mean. I'm just being a supportive friend."

From across the room came the unmistakable sound of Kristi's chair scraping against the floor as she abruptly stood up.

"Supportive friend my ass. I'm getting food," she announced curtly. “It’s lunchtime.”

“Aight,” I said.

The raptor departed quickly.

"Pfff," Adelle mumbled from her chair, one eye cracking open. "Somebody's jealous."

"Jealous of what?" Candace asked innocently, though her tail was practically vibrating with pleased energy.

"Of you marking your territory all over our Alpha," Adelle replied with a lazy grin. "Pretty sure if Kristi could breathe fire, this whole room would be ash by now."

"I'm not marking territory," Candace protested. "I'm providing necessary pack support during a medical recovery period!"

"Uh-huh," Adelle's eye drifted closed again. "And I'm the Queen of the Northern Territories."

My phone buzzed again.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Everything okay? You went quiet again

[Alecai🌲]: Kristi went to get food. Seemed annoyed about the fox situation

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: The fox or the fox touching you?

[Alecai🌲]: Probably both

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Territorial competition. Very normal for newly formed packs

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Usually it's resolved through dominance displays or actual fighting

[Alecai🌲]: Great. Looking forward to refereeing prad girl cage matches in my near future

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: lol it's not that bad. Usually.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Unless someone gets really possessive >.>

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Then it gets… interesting 

[Alecai🌲] I see

Twenty minutes later, Kristi returned carrying a cafeteria tray laden with what appeared to be enough food for three people. She'd changed out of her torn, blood-stained school clothes into fresh jeans and a Ferguson High pullover that made her look younger and less intimidating.

"Food," she announced, carefully setting the tray on the bedside table. "Soup, sandwich, fruit, and... other stuff."

"Other stuff?" I asked, noting the variety.

"I wasn't sure what you'd want exactly," she said, not quite meeting my eyes. "So I got... options."

The centerpiece of the tray was a large bowl of what looked like chicken soup, steam rising from the surface in aromatic spirals. Beside it sat a grilled cheese sandwich cut into perfect triangles, fresh fruit salad, a ciezar salad, several bags of chips, two different cookies, and what appeared to be some kind of energy drink.

"Kristi, this is way too much food," I protested.

"Shush. You need nutrients for healing," she said firmly, pulling her chair closer to the bed. “Sit up, you knob.”

I pressed a button to elevate the back of the bed and sit up. 

Kristi picked up the soup bowl and spoon. Dipping it into the broth she brought it to my mouth. “Aaaa.”

"What," I stared at the spoon.

“Open mouth, accept soup,” she said.

Candace was struggling not to explode into giggles at my side.

“I can feed myself, I'm not paralyzed,” I tried to grab at the bowl and spoon.

"Nope. Your hands are still shaky from the burns from the IV medication," Kristi replied, pulling the bowl out of my reach. "And you're still weak from overheating and blood loss. Just let me help."

"Kristi, I'm fine—"

She fixed me with those sharp amber-gold eyes, and I could see the stubborn determination that probably ran in the Strand family bloodline. "You are my Alpha for the remainder of this semester," she said with quiet intensity. "That makes your health and wellbeing my absolute responsibility. So shut up and let me take care of you."

Before I could protest further, she'd brought the spoon to my lips. The soup was perfectly warm, rich with flavor and loaded with actual chunks of chicken and vegetables.

The second spoon heading towards my face was intercepted by Candace with a sly look.

“Do you mind?” Kristi growled. 

“Mmmmm… Just making sure it’s the right temperature,” Candace licked her white lips. “Wouldn’t want you to burn our precious Alpha… some more.”

Kristi’s eye twitched. “Do you take me for a moron who cannot tell if a soup’s temperature is tolerable for a human mouth?” She growled. The metal spoon in her hand creaked slightly as her grip tightened.

"Candace," I said warningly.

"What?" the fox asked with exaggerated innocence. "I think it's lovely that Kristi wants to make sure you're properly nourished. It shows real pack loyalty."

She emphasized the word "pack" in a way that somehow managed to sound both inclusive and possessive at the same time.

A deep snore resounded from the direction of the passed out Adler. The cheetah’s head was lolled to one side, pink tongue out in an adorable blep.

Kristi's only response was to scoop up another spoonful of soup and bring it to my lips with perhaps slightly more force than necessary.

"Eat now," she commanded.

I complied, partly because the soup was actually quite good and partly because I could sense this was rapidly becoming some kind of pradavarian dominance contest with me as the unwitting prize.

As I swallowed, Candace made a soft, approving sound. "Such a good Alpha," she murmured, her claws trailing down to rest on my hand. "Taking care of himself so well."

The praise, clearly designed to provoke Kristi, had the intended effect. The raptor's feathers began to flutter as she loaded up another spoonful.

"He wouldn't need taking care of if he made better decisions," Kristi said pointedly. "Like not getting magically bound to asshole bikers."

"Hey," Candace's voice took on a slightly sharper edge, "those biker gangs turned out to be excellent packmates, thank you very much."

"One of whom is currently unconscious from overeating," Kristi observed, glancing at the snoring Adelle.

"That's just her way of celebrating victory," Candace defended.

"By eating herself into a food coma?"

"Everyone processes success differently,” the fox shrugged, snagging another spoonful of soup.

“Why do you keep doing that?” Kristi growled. 

“I’m attempting to determine if you’re willing to feed me soup or if you want me to feed you soup,” Candace said with an extra-sly expression of sparkling gray eyes. “Doggo’s right. It’s important to establish everyone’s place on the pyramid swiftly to avoid in-fighting.”

"Are you seriously establishing a hierarchy right now? Via soup?" I asked.

"Every pack needs structure," Candace said matter-of-factly. "Especially newly formed ones. I prefer being directly below the Captain. The Leader and others usually rely on my intelligence gathering skills since I’ve the highest Identify skill."

My phone buzzed with another message from Nessy.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: How's lunch going? My friends are still giving me the lecture about poor life choices and emotional manipulation tactics 😑

[Alecai🌲]: My packmates are having some kind of a dominance contest over who gets to feed whom soup

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Oh? What's the dynamic looking like?

[Alecai🌲]: Fox is being possessive, raptor is being protective, cheetah is in a food coma

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Sounds about right for a new pack. Usually takes a few weeks to sort itself out

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Unless someone makes a definitive dominance display

"A 'definitive dominance display', huh?" I muttered, reading Nessy's message.

Both Kristi and Candace froze, looking at me with expressions that suggested I'd just asked about nuclear launch codes.

"Why do you ask?" Kristi said carefully.

"Nessy was explaining pack dynamics," I said, showing them the message. "She mentioned dominance displays."

Candace's tail began swishing with interest. "Oh, she did, did she? And what exactly did our sweet little doggy tell you about dominance displays?"

"That they help resolve territorial disputes," I read from the screen.

"Technically true," Kristi said, though she looked distinctly uncomfortable. "But we definitely shouldn't—I mean this is a place of healing. Nurse ain’t gonna be pleased if we start something here."

"Oh, I think we absolutely should," Candace interrupted, her eyes lighting up with mischief. "If our Alpha wants to understand pack dynamics, we should demonstrate."

"Demonstrate what?" I asked.

The fox's grin widened. "Simple. We determine who has higher status in the pack hierarchy."

"And how exactly do we do that?" Kristi asked, though her feathers were already starting to ruffle in anticipation.

"Contest of skills," Candace said smoothly. "Winner gets to be higher on the pyramid. Loser accepts subordinate status."

I could practically see the competitive fire igniting in Kristi's gold eyes. "What are you suggesting, fox? If we’re talking about pure strength, I doubt that you…"

"No violence. Whatever our Alpha deems appropriate," Candace replied, turning to me with an expectant expression. "After all, it's his pack. His choice of what we should bring to the table."

Both pradavarians turned to look at me, waiting for my decision. In the background, Adelle continued snoring, blissfully unaware of the power struggle unfolding around my hospital bed.

“Right now?” I arched an eyebrow.

Both prad girls nodded.

My phone buzzed again.

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: If they're asking you to choose a contest, pick something that plays to cooperation rather than competition

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Dominance displays don't have to be about physically beating each other

[Alecai🌲]: What do you suggest?

[MaximaPawsome🐾]: Maybe something that shows who's better at taking care of the pack Alpha? 😉

I stared at the message, then at the two pradavarians watching me expectantly.

"Fine," I said finally. "If you absolutely must have a contest, then here it is: whoever does the best job taking care of the… entire pack for the rest of the day wins."

"Taking care of the pack?" Kristi repeated.

"All of us," I clarified. "Me, Adelle when she wakes up, Nessy and yes, even each other. No sabotage, no undermining. Just pure supportive pack behavior. I'll be the judge who performs best.”

“Huh,” Candace's ears perked up. "That's... actually kind of clever. Addie just made us punch each other to see who could endure longest. Aight. I accept.” She looked at the raptor. “You in? Also, how did Firestorm pick you as their pack leader?”

“Violence,” Kristi replied darkly. “The raptors always choose violence.” She poked Candace's face with the spoon. “Let us begin then. Fox, accept nourishment.”