NOVEL NEXT 67: Family, Upgraded
Nessy's hand suddenly squeezed mine hard and linear physicality reasserted itself.
"Oi," Candace snapped her fingers in front of my face. "Let sleeping gods lie!"
I blinked, not sure if the fox was talking to me or Nessy's father. The strange sensation of seeing beyond the walls, of perceiving Ferguson as a thin veneer over some greater, horrific cosmic truth, gradually faded away.
"What?" I asked, my voice momentarily sounding very distant to my own ears.
Candace just smiled enigmatically and patted my hand. "Nothing for you to worry about, tree-boy. Just keep those roots firmly planted in this reality, 'kay? No floating off into the Abyss or whatever."
"Uh, okay," I said, blinking at her.
Rex was still staring at me, glasses glowing with silver hexagrams. "I've never seen an Astral signature like yours."
"That's just my rare skill," I shrugged. "I can't die."
"Alec has a verrrrrry pretty liminal soul," Candace confirmed. "I could totally stare at it forever. So handsome. Mmmmmmrrrr."
"Dad," Nessy stated firmly, "Alec is human. He's just... more."
"More what?" Natalie asked, her nose twitching at me as she tried to process what her husband was seeing with her Scrutiosmia.
"More everything," Candace replied with a shrug. "He's our anchor point. The reason we can simultaneously and paradoxically exist as separate entities and one soul when fused together. Without Alec we'd still be one girl."
"I don't understand any of this," Natalie admitted, looking mentally drained by our revelations.
"I kind of do," Rex said. "Infinite things do exist, they're just impossible to examine fully. The Institute of Dungeon Research has been fiddling with edges of things like the Infinite Superstore. If this boy has an infinite soul and an infinity-aligned skill, then… it can break linear reality in peculiar, mind-boggling ways."
Miles suddenly piped up. "So I have… five sisters?"
"Yes and no," Candace ruffled the teen husky's mane. "The four of us are soul sisters, but physically we're much too different to be genetic siblings."
"Still pretty neat," the husky boy admitted, smiling at the fox. "I like you, you're funny."
"Thanks darling," Candace smiled back.
"But that still doesn't explain..." Rex began, then stopped, turning off his magitek glasses and rubbing the bridge of his snout. "No, you know what? I don't need to understand everything right now. What I really need to know is whether my daughter is safe."
"I am, Dad," Nessy assured him, reaching across the table to take his paw. "Safer than I've been in years. The temple was... it was killing me slowly. Taking pieces of me away. I didn't even realize how much I'd lost until I got it back. If it wasn't for Alec and my soul-sisters I'd end up as just a shell of myself, another body infected and piloted by an Astral Phantom."
Candace, Kristi and Adelle nodded in confirmation.
"There was no actual spiritual path that the temple offered, only the death of love, of passion, and end to everything. My Syn-pack mates saved me from the Abyss, isn't that enough?" Nessy insisted.
Her parents considered her words.
"They didn't just help," Nessy's eyes sparked with tears at the edges. "They fought for me. Risked their lives. Alec literally got stabbed through the heart, died to retrieve my memories!"
"That does sound... Heroic," Rex admitted reluctantly.
"Welcome to our world," Adelle muttered, "every day with these whack knobs is like this."
"There's no need to be rude, Adelle," Kristi chided.
"Not rude," the cheetah defended. "Accurate! My life's been extra-fucking wild since I claimed Alec. Might as well be honest about it."
"Language," Natalie admonished automatically.
"Sorry, ma'am," Adelle replied, not really sounding sorry at all.
The waitress approached our table again. "Um, would the new guests like to order something?"
"Yes, please," Nessy answered. "My parents will have the Atomic Sunrise Specials, and my siblings would like..." She looked at Miles and Roxy.
"Chocolate chip and bacon-infused crepes!" they chorused.
"Coming right up," the waitress said, flitting away on her glider skates.
"We didn't agree to—" Natalie began.
"Mom," Nessy interrupted softly, "please. Let's just have breakfast together. As a family. An... expanded family. This here is my pack, my new family and there's nothing either of you can say or do to make me leave them. I love them all!"
Her words felt like a warm, cozy blanket to my ears.
Family. Something I hadn't had in any meaningful way since my parents sent me off to Ferguson. Something that had been nothing but a source of pain and misery for most of my life.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
When I arrived in Ferguson, I had assumed this mountain Citadel was a human-hating magitek fortress full of rude speciest, human-owning jerks. But, over the past few days, this town and its prad inhabitants were once again starting to grow on me.
"Alright," Rex finally conceded. "Breakfast was why we came here after all."
"Great," I smiled. "We'll be happy to answer any questions you have."
"Within reason," Candace added with a wink. "Some things are private, you know. Unless you bribe me with hugs. Then I'll reveal all my secrets. My kingdom for a hug from parents who love me! Anyways, feel free to think of me as your daughter, but if she was taken from you at birth and raised by rich, uncaring, fox snobs," she added.
. . .
Candace's exaggerated tale of her fox-kit upbringing seemed to obliterate the remnants of tension at the table. Her description of the Rhinehart Estate as a "soul-crushing dungeon where hugs cost extra life" sent Miles and Roxy into fits of giggles and made Nessy's parents frown.
Breakfast arrived carried by the waitress and a pill droid.
Time passed quickly in a blur of food and conversation. Nessy's father questioned me about my background growing up in human territory, my grandfather's farm condition, where we were currently staying at, and my rare skill.
Afterwards, Rex put the raptor, the fox and cheetah through rounds of grilling interrogation.
Through it, I learned about Kristi's struggle with her family who constantly expected too much from her as the firstborn Prima.
The raptor girl told us about the constant pressure exerted upon her from every side of her life. From her father—to excel, to be the best at everything, particularly politics, leadership and cleverness. From her siblings—to be the most violent, fastest, strongest, fittest. From her mother—to present herself as the most beautiful person in the room, to constantly look perfect from every angle.
She complained of the said pressure being enforced by cameras, security and butlers monitoring her at every turn within the Strand Estate, compiling reports about her behaviour and rating her constantly.
She snarled that all of her hobbies and passions had been crushed thoroughly, from her appreciation for carving wooden art, to her passion for aviation and of her parents 'not giving a fuck about what she wanted'.
From that, the interrogative conversation shifted to Adelle, who reluctantly admitted that her family is 'piss poor trailer trash with far too many siblings for her to even bother naming'. I learned that the cheetah grew up babysitting her younger sisters while her father got pass-out drunk or vanished on hunting raids and that her mother constantly left to gamble at the Strand casino.
Adelle revealed that the mantle of 'babysitter' had been passed to her younger sister when she ran away from home to create her delving gang, otherwise there would be a pretty high chance of her murdering both of her parents in a fit of feline rage.
When Adelle fell silent, having run out of the few words she was able to push out of herself, Candace filled in the conversation gap.
The fox admitted to running away from her home four months ago. She revealed she had been unable to take the pressure of social dinners where she was constantly shown off to corporate CEOs, Senators, Administrators and misc wealthy prads as a 'wonderful business asset' by her mother.
Unlike Kristi's sharp diction and Adelle's angry muttering, Candace chatted on like falling rain, explaining how her parents threw overpriced Binding, Seer and misc other magic tutors at her, focused on 'maximizing her market value' rather than nurturing her as a person.
Nessy's mother became visibly distraught upon hearing the stories of our teenage misfortunes and rebellions, her maternal instincts gradually extending from Nessy to me and our packmates. Rex seemed to soften too, initial hostility replaced by concern.
The twins, for their part, peppered us with endless questions about our adventures, particularly fascinated by the temple raid. Roxy declared about five times that she wanted to be a delver when she grew up, causing her mother to send concerned glances her way.
The husky twins also pestered Adelle, Candace and Kristi about their combat abilities, begging for demonstrations. The raptor refused to show off her skills at the breakfast table. The cheetah performed a mini-shadowstep cast, sending food from her hands across the table into Candace's mouth, who snapped it out of the air. Candace fused a fork to a spoon to show off her skill, laughing as the twins tried and failed to pry the cutlery apart.
By the time we finished eating, something truly remarkable had happened. The Whitepaw parents no longer looked at us as corrupting influences but as troubled young adults who had found each other through unusual circumstances and became each other's support.
I felt a sense of appreciation that at least one of us had loving parents.
Nessy too practically glowed, her family's acceptance warming her from the inside out. Her tail thumped a steady, happy rhythm against my back.
"You must all come to dinner," Natalie announced. "Tonight. I want to get to know my daughter's… Syn-pack… properly. Without making a spectacle of ourselves in public."
We voiced our noises of agreement.
"Excellent! I'll make my famous pot roast," Natalie smiled.
"Mom's pot roast is legendary," Miles whispered to me. "She only breaks it out for special occasions."
"Seven o'clock," Rex stated.
"Can do," Candace licked syrup from her claws.
Of course, the universe just had to roll a cloud over our moment of sunshine.
Nessy's and Candace's heads snapped to the diner's front door before it even opened, sensing the arrival of doom with their future-smelling and seeing skills.
A tall, silver-white vixen, resembling Candace in a multitude of ways, in a tailored silver business suit entered first. Behind her came a massive, gray-skinned shark pradavarian woman in a black suit and sunglasses. Scrutimancer Goebel Sartre shuffled in last, looking like he didn't want to be here.
Candace's fork dropped to her empty plate with a clatter, her spine straightening out, lips curling up in an ice-cold, half-smirk, half-snarl.
"W-aah-fuck," Adelle's eyes snapped to the trio. She attempted to hide her furry orange bulk behind Kristi, which worked poorly.
"Language," Natalie chided on autopilot, oblivious to the approaching storm.
The elegant vixen's eyes slashed across the room and landed on us. Silver eyes, exactly the same as Candace's, narrowed. She gracefully glided through the diner with her security detail and Scrutimancer in tow.
"Candace Ian Rhinehart!" she declared, voice undulating between TV-announcer diction and mercurial poison.
"Sup Mom?" Candace fired back, the mask of Donutz the rebel sliding onto her face with an invisible snap. "Fancy meeting you here. Love the suit. New Arcane Couture?"
"Don't you 'sup' me, young lady," Mrs. Rhinehart snapped. "Your father is beside himself. We had to postpone the board meeting today because he couldn't focus. And I had no choice but to track you to this diner."
"Uh-huh," Candace rolled her eyes.
"And now I see you having breakfast with—"
She stopped, gray eyes flashing with radiant flares from within and rolling over in the rest of us like a tank with no brakes. Her nostrils flared as she caught our scents. With that, the perfect composure she wore cracked, her entire face twitching.
"Mother, these are my lovely packmates," Candace stated. "This is Alec, our Alpha, and—"
"Your what?" Mrs. Rhinehart cut her daughter off, her voice jumping an octave. Her stare zeroed in on me, hot and intense like a laser. "Candace, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"