Where the Dead Things Bloom [Romantically Apocalyptic Systemfall Litrpg]

"We're going to the Superstore tomorrow," Krysanthea declared, her decision clearly final. "All of us—our pack and yours. We'll find these soul fragments and break the connection."

"And father?" Kaledoniya asked quietly. "What do we tell him?"

"Nothing," Krysanthea replied firmly. "Not until we've resolved this. If he learns about your... condition... before we've fixed it, the consequences could be severe."

The other sisters nodded.

"We leave at dawn," Krysanthea continued. "Meet in our cruisers at the gate out of town. Bring whatever weapons and supplies you can carry."

"Great," I deadpanned. "Looking forward to another death-defying adventure so soon after the last one."

[Achievement Unlocked: "Family Drama Manager" - Successfully navigated raptor sister politics without getting your face clawed off. Your diplomatic skills are questionable, but your survival instinct is impressive!]

"Let's go," Krysanthea said, moving toward the door. "We all need to rest and prepare. Tomorrow will test all of us."

"What if we don't find all the soul fragments n' stuff in one trip?" Kirra asked.

"Then we will go a few times," Krysanthea finished with a weary sigh.

As we left the conference room, I couldn't help but notice how the three sisters watched us—especially Nessy. The contempt for the human and husky was still there, particularly in Katerina's gaze, but it was now tinged with something new: Uncertainty, perhaps even grudging respect for us somehow succeeding in the slime-stopping mission. If nothing else, they'd learned that there were forces at play beyond their understanding, and that sometimes even enemies had to work together.

As we walked back through the ranger station, something bothered me. I stopped, prompting Krysanthea and Nessy to pause as well.

"Why is the leveling up manual this time?" I asked. "Why doesn't it just happen automatically?"

[System Advisory: Manual level adjustments prevent inconvenient moments of unconsciousness. You see, when the System upgrades your soul-meat amalgamation to higher levels, there's occasionally a teensy risk of existential feedback causing temporary nervous system shutdown. Would you like to level up and pass out in the middle of, say, fleeing from acid slimes? No? Then consider the manual option a feature, not a bug.]

"Oh. That's... concerning."

Kristi's feathers ruffled in alarm. "Wait, what? Passing out? Nobody mentioned anything about that."

"Don't worry, it's probably fine," Nessy said cheerfully, waving her slime-tree branch about. "I mean, what's the worst that could happen? We nap for a bit, wake up feeling twice as fabulous? Sounds like a good deal to me!"

"You have a very relaxed attitude toward potential blackouts," Krysanthea muttered as we headed out to her ranger cruiser.

"Planned blackouts!" Nessy declared. "We ask it to level us up before we go to bed, duh!"

"And if something eats us at night while we're passed out?"

"That would be a tragic ending to our tragic tale," Nessy shrugged. "Would prolly happen if we didn't have Bulwichu. She's watching over us and can send the bees."

"Send the bees?" The raptor blinked.

"Probably!" Nessy said. "A domain protects its pack! It's how it works."

"Right then," Kristi sighed. "This better not add apiophobia to my apeirophobia."

"Ha!" Nessy barked a laugh. "Was that a linguistic joke?"

The raptor simply smiled tiredly at us from the rearview mirror.

The rest of the drive back to the campground was quiet, each of us lost in our own thoughts, Nessy nuzzling into my side. Once we arrived, Nessy hopped out of the car and flitted into the RV. Having duct taped the slime-tree branch to Bulwichu tree she emerged outside and set about building a fire, her energy seemingly limitless despite our dungeon-conquering morning.

"Food time!" she declared, holding a pack of bacon she had pulled from the RV fridge. "Nothing fixes existential dread like crunchy lunch meat!"

Krysanthea slumped into one of the camping chairs, watching Nessy arrange the bacon strips on an iron grill mesh over the fire.

"This bacon," she said slowly. "It's from the Superstore, isn't it?"

Nessy nodded without looking up from her cooking. "Yup! Smells normal. Totally fine! No entropy. Might be from another dimension though. Read the tiny text if you wanna know more. Here!"

The husky thrust the empty package at the raptor and pranced back to the grill.

Krysanthea turned the bacon package squinting at tiny warnings printed on the back. "'Kirindale Farms is the best farm of Eastern Acadia, a subsidiary of Omnithornia! Buy more bacon and get a 7% discount for returning customers. May contain trace elements of Bolshakoff Quasar. Consuming more than 922 strips per day may result in spontaneous cartwheel syndrome.' 'Not recommended for sentient beings currently experiencing dimensional bifurcation.'"

She tossed the package aside with a frustrated growl, sinking deeper into her chair. "Great! Even our food is corrupted now. Can't even trust my own family!"

While the bacon sizzled, Nessy found an old tennis ball in the RV.

She tossed it to me with a grin. "Play!"

I caught it reflexively. "What?"

"Play!" Nessy hopped in one spot excitedly, tail wagging.

"Dogs are like children that never grow up," Krysanthea observed my confused expression from her chair. "She wants you to throw the ball to her."

"Ah," I said, throwing the ball in the general direction of Nessy.

"What?!" Nessy exclaimed, diving dramatically to catch my throw with her teeth. She rolled to her feet and relocated the ball to her hands. "Why would you want to grow up? Adults just sit in chairs and complain about spoopy bacon warnings!"

"Some of us have responsibilities," Krysanthea countered.

Nessy ran to me and dropped the ball in my lap and then ran back towards the forest, paws pounding the ground.

"What? I'm responsible! I lived by myself for four years! Some of us know how to have fun while being responsible!" Nessy retorted, launching herself into the air to snag a particularly high throw from me. "'Sides, you're smiling. I can tell!"

"I am not," Krysanthea insisted.

"Liar."

"Fine," the raptor confessed, the side of her mouth twitching. "I'm smiling at how ridiculous you look chasing a ball. Do you even know where that ball's been?"

"I dunno," the husky shrugged. "My saliva kills most germs."

"Most, but not all," Kristi pointed out.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Wa wa wa," Nessy wagged her tail with a sly expression. "I'm a lazy raptor-tater. I bet you can't even catch a ball."

Krysanthea's feathers bristled. "I could catch a tennis ball blindfolded with one claw tied behind my back."

"Then prove it, scale-face!" Nessy taunted. She tossed the ball high into the air, caught it in her muzzle, then chucked it right at Krysanthea's face with a mischievous grin.

The raptor snatched it from the air with lightning-fast reflexes. "You were saying?"

She threw the ball back at Nessy, making it thrum in the air. Nessy barely caught it, flashing from one spot to the other in a black and white blur.

"Good throw," she panted. "Right. So you can catch a ball… but can you catch me or have you grown fat n' slow over the years?"

"Oh you did not just call me fat," Krysanthea said, rising from her chair like a coiled spring. Her feathers bristled, and I could practically feel the predatory instincts awakening.

"Nessy," I warned, "I don't think poking the raptor is—"

"ZOOM-zoom!" Nessy howled, and took off around the clearing like a black and white missile.

Krysanthea's professionalism evaporated. With a snarl that was entirely primal, she launched after the husky, her powerful legs propelling her forward with startling speed.

"Guys, the bacon—" I called out, but they were already gone, a blur of white-black fur and colorful feathers circling the campground.

Nessy zigged and zagged, tongue lolling out as she led Krysanthea on a merry chase. The raptor's initial advantage in raw speed was countered by Nessy's ridiculous agility—she could change direction on a dime, leaving Krysanthea scrambling to adjust.

"Stand still!" Krysanthea roared, almost clipping Nessy's tail as they rounded a tree.

"Nu-huh!" Nessy barked back, making an impossible hairpin turn that had the raptor skidding on loose gravel.

I scrambled to take over bacon duty, saving it from becoming charcoal. The sounds of their pursuit echoed through the clearing: Nessy's gleeful yips, Krysanthea's frustrated growls, and the thunder of their feet.

They burst back into view rounding the RV, Nessy now just barely ahead. Krysanthea looked dishevelled, her usually immaculate feathers in disarray, but her amber eyes burned with fiery determination.

"Had... enough... yet?" Nessy panted, her speed flagging ever so slightly.

That was all the opening Krysanthea needed. With a burst of adrenaline, she pounced, tackling the husky in a display of predatory leap that would have made her dinosaur ancestors proud.

They rolled across the grass in a tangle of limbs, finally coming to rest with Krysanthea pinning Nessy to the ground.

"Got you!" the raptor declared triumphantly, her chest heaving.

"Clever girl," Nessy's response was to twist her head up and deliver a massive, wet lick across Krysanthea's snout.

"GAH!" Krysanthea sputtered, releasing her grip on the husky. "Why?!"

"Victory lick! You did good!" Nessy praised, squirming out from under her. "I knew you still had the zoomies in you!"

I caught Krysanthea failing to suppress a sharp-toothed grin as they staggered back to the campfire, both panting furiously. Their mutual exhaustion had melted the tension between them, if only temporarily.

"Bacon's done!" I announced, smooshing the crispy strips onto paper towels to get the fat out.

They collapsed into the camping chairs, still breathing heavily, fur and feathers equally ruffled.

"You're... way faster than before," Nessy conceded between bites.

"So are you. And more elusive than I expected," Krysanthea admitted grudgingly.

Nessy grinned, her tail thumping against the chair in contentment.

I brought over the bacon on paper plates. "Anyone hungry after all that cardio?"

Both immediately sat up, their breathing still ragged but eyes bright with appetite.

"See?" Nessy said between bites, nudging Krysanthea. "Everything's better with a bit of fun! Even impending doom tastes less doomy!"

"Just when I try not to think about our doom, you remind me of it," Krysanthea rolled her eyes, accepting the bacon I offered. For a moment, picking at her food while sitting on the camping chair next to a thoroughly disheveled husky, she looked younger, less burdened.

"Hrm. This tastes surprisingly normal," she admitted after a few bites. "My senses are detecting nothing weird."

"A praise from the chief ranger," Nessy teased, wiggling contentedly. "Tomorrow you can chase me through the Superstore aisles!"

"Yeah, that's not happening," Kristi said.

We cleaned up our impromptu picnic and headed inside. The crystalline roots seemed to spread out slightly further across the floor, the faint glow of bulbees fused to the tree providing a gentle, ethereal illumination from above.

"It's getting... bigger," Kristi commented.

"It's a tree," Nessy said. "It's supposed to grow."

"A glass tree growing in an aluminium floor," Kristi said. "What's it eating?"

"Good vibes!" Nessy declared, flopping down near the trunk. "Pack energy. Happy thoughts. The occasional random selfie."

She pulled out a phone, made a ridiculous face in front of the tree and took a selfie. Then she started vigorously typing.

"Who are you sending that to?" Kristi asked.

"I'm sending Bulwichu the selfie and compliments on how shiny n' swell she looks today," Nessy said.

"What. To where?!"

"[email protected]," Nessy clarified.

"Did you just make that up?" The raptor sputtered. "Since when does a tree have email?"

"Didn't make it up. I, ummm… found her profile and email on Predstagram. See?"

Nessy turned her phone to us showing us Bulwhichu's personal page. "See? She registered herself there last night and added me to her friends list."

"SHE?!" The raptor barked. "Registered?! Does she write to you too?"

"No," Nessy shook her black and white curly mane. "How could she? She's a tree! Ain't got no fingers."

"Then how did…" Kristi opened her mouth. "You know what, I don't want to know!"

Nessy shrugged, resuming her vigorous typing.

Kristi took a deep breath, then turned to me.

"Alec, can we talk?" Her amber eyes flicked to Nessy. "Privately?"

"Sure," I nodded.

"Nessy," Kristi said pointedly. "Could you give us a few minutes?"

"Nope!" Nessy replied cheerfully, grabbing a book from the shelf and settling directly under Bulwichu. She promptly turned the book upside down and began pretending to read. "This is Fort Pack. I'm busy feeding good vibes to Bulwichu. You want privacy, go talk outside."

Kristi's eye twitched, but after a moment she sighed in resignation. "Fine." She gestured to the unfolded nest bed. "Let's just... sit over there then."

We settled onto the bed, Kristi's posture stiff amidst the ocean of Nessy-prepped cushions. She stared at her clawed hands for a long moment before speaking.

"I need to confess something," she began quietly. "About why I really joined your pack. About what I... what I need from you."

I waited, giving her space to find her words.

"In the time loop, on Highway 69..." Her voice dropped even lower. "I almost gave up. Multiple times. The despair was... consuming. I kept searching for my Alec, finding nothing but horrors." She swallowed hard. "Then I made that promise. To protect whatever hope remained. And finding you... even though you're not him, not exactly... it feels like hope is finally manifesting, like things are looking up after years of suffering."

Her amber eyes met mine, vulnerability swimming in their depths.

"Being in your pack, feeling that connection... it's stabilizing something in me. Something that I thought was shattered long ago." She looked away. "The truth is... I'm terrified. Terrified that if I lose you too, I'll break completely."

From across the RV, I heard the distinct sound of a page turning. Nessy was still pretending to read, but her ears were angled directly toward us.

"I assigned my sisters to fetch food from the Superstore," Kristi said. "It's my fault that they're like this… now."

She let out a deep sigh.

"I was so focused on keeping the physical dangers out of Ferguson that I didn't think... Didn't pay enough attention to my sisters," She let out a shaky breath. "I sent them out there even after I was back, didn't bother to supervise them because I was too afraid to face the outside world after what happened on Highway 69."

Her claws dug into the bed cushions, creating small tears in the fabric. "And now they're paying for my cowardice. My fears made me push them into danger instead of managing things myself."

She turned to face me more fully, and I saw tears glistening in her amber eyes. "When I look at you... I see hope that I thought I'd lost forever–someone that I could trust with my feelings. Not just because you wear his face, but because of who you've shown yourself to be." Her scaled hand hesitantly reached for mine, hovering uncertainly. "You dove off a cliff rather than let me arrest Nessy. You faced the slime core with me, distracted it while I destroyed it. You... Let me be with you, didn't give up on me when any sane person would have."

Nessy looked over her book with ocean-blue eyes.

"I know I'm supposed to be the strong one," Kristi continued. "The protector of Ferguson. The unbreakable Strand. But the truth is..." She swallowed hard. "I'm barely holding myself together. And somehow, you make me feel like maybe I don't have to be unbreakable. Like maybe... It's okay to need help. To need... someone."

Her hand finally made contact with mine, clawed fingers intertwining gently with my human ones. "I need you, Alec. Not just as a pack leader. Not just as a symbol of hope. I need you because..." She paused, gathering her courage. "Because you make me feel alive again. Like there might be a future worth fighting for, beyond just survival."

Kristi leaned forward slightly, her forehead resting against my shoulder. "I know I don't deserve this. Don't deserve you. Not after how me and my family treated Nessy all these years. Not after the mistakes I've made with my sisters. But I'm asking anyway. Please..."

She fell silent for a moment, seemingly recollecting herself.