NOVEL NEXT 68: Aelianne Rhinehart
"Bondery," Candace replied with a feral grin to her mother's demand. "Elopery."
"A LEVEL FOUR human? You've bound yourself to a human?!" The older-copy of my fox girlfriend snarled.
"And a raptor, a husky, and a cheetah," Candace added. "As you can see n' sniff."
Barely concealed shock, disgust, and then fury boiled beneath Mrs. Rhinehart's pristine features. "This is unacceptable! Absolutely unacceptable. You will unbind yourself from these prads and… human at once! I did not raise you to—"
"You didn't raise me at all," Candace fired back. "The nannies did. And the tutors. Sometimes security like Miss Anatolia's shark pack sisters. And sometimes Goobs. Mostly Goobs. Sup, dawg?"
The shark bodyguard shifted her weight, muscles rolling under the suit. Goebel pursed his lips offering the fox a small nod.
"How dare you?" Mrs. Rhinehart hissed. "After everything we've done for you? The opportunities we provided? This is how you repay us? By binding yourself to some… some commoners?"
"First of all, one of them isn't a commoner. Kristi is a Prima of the Strand Estate. But, yes," Candace stated, tail bristling, ears drawn back. "The bindery has happened. It's irreversible and liminal, reinforced with Infinity I stole from the Superstore. Too bad, so sad."
"You WHAT?!" Her mother's glare intensified to nuclear levels.
"TOO BAD. SO SAD." Candace rose from her seat, hackles going into the stratosphere.
"Excuse me," Rex said, getting to his feet, seemingly choosing to be a shield between the two increasingly hostile arctic foxes before they started tearing out each other's throats. "I'm Rex Whitepaw. I don't believe we've been introduced."
"Aelianne Rhinehart," the elder vixen answered automatically, looking down at the shorter male prad. She glanced at the Scrutimancer.
"Rex Borrik Whitepaw is a proprietor of the Whitepaw Mini-Mart and car wash on 764 Main Street," Goebel clarified for his mistress.
"That I am," Rex confirmed. "And this is my wife, Natalie, and our younger children, Miles and Roxy."
"Quaint," Aelianne nodded to Nessy's family. "Mr. Whitepaw, my apologies. Your husky daughter appears to have been ensnared in my daughter's... experiment. I assure you this binding will be dissolved immediately."
"Actually," Natalie spoke up, "from what I understand, the binding was mutual and consensual."
"Why thank you, mom," Candace beamed at Nessy's mother. "See, Aelianne? Even Mrs. Whitepaw gets it, and she just met us like an hour ago."
"I don't care if it was mutual, consensual, or blessed by the Pradavarian Senate itself!" Aelianne snapped, "It's not happening!" She turned to Goebel. "Get out your nullifier."
The Scrutimancer sighed with an uncomfortable look. "Ma'am, I'm not entirely certain a nullifier would work on this particular binding. If it's reinforced by a Superstore artifact aligned to infinity, it cannot be nullified."
The elder-fox's eye twitched. "Just do it! I'm not paying you to stand around like an idiot!"
"What about…?" The Scrutimancer glanced at the other cafe patrons.
"Secure the perimeter," Aelianne growled.
The shark pulled out some kind of a sphere artifact and pressed a button on it. A view and sound-muting barrier shield manifested around our group engulfing about six meters of the restaurant and three nearby empty booths.
"Now Goebel," the fox barked.
With a metaphorical thousand-ton weight of unwieldy work, the dog stepped closer to our booth and pulled a large magitek weapon out of his long coat. The black, sleek railgun was far too big to fit into the pocket. I saw the letters E.V.A. burned into its hexagon-textured surface. The weapon made the husky family tense up.
"Bringing out Eva, are we? You're gonna regret it, Goobie," Candace commented.
The Scrutimancer dog stared at her from his dark, round glasses. "I have to do my job."
"Go on then G'," Candace said with a feral grin. "Do it. Witness me!"
Goebel pointed the gun up and pressed the trigger and the entire booth and a section of the restaurant around him suddenly turned black and white.
Candace raised an eyebrow, radiating a radioactive fusion of smugness and devious malice.
Reality between us wobbled. Lines of static manifested themselves between five of us, connecting chest to chest. With each passing moment, they thrummed louder with a sound that wasn't quite a sound, buzzing without a buzz, singing without voices.
The roots of my soul sang back.
I saw it again then, beyond the gray edges of the nullifier's bubble. Endless silver-blue eyes peering down at me. A green tail devouring itself. A laugh of something vast and unending.
Goebel choked, releasing the trigger.
Colors returned to the world.
"Are you satisfied? You saw her, didn't you, Goobie?" Candace purred. "Infinity Paradox Proxima. The Wormwood Star Leviathan. That which does not desire to be nullified. That which is already divided by zero and cannot be silenced. The song of the end and the beginning and the shearer of all."
She snipped her fingers like scissors. "Choppity chop chop chops."
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The Scrutimancer stepped back, his expression going slack and then cast into an ocean of pure horror.
"Well?" Aelianne demanded, not bothering to look at the Scutimancer's aghast face. "Did the nullifier…?"
Goebel slid the railgun back into his extradimensional pocket and took another step away from our table.
"The nullifier failed, ma'am," he said. "The binding between them is... beyond the null-shard's ability to silence. It is a liminal soul-blood-pact, bound with liminality. It cannot be broken."
"Don't give me this shit, everything can be broken for the right price," Aelianne began. "Maybe an Animancer can…"
"No," Goebel shook his head. "You'd have to kill all four of them to separate them from your daughter."
Aelianne opened her mouth.
"Which cannot be done easily because this boy is immortal," Goebel pointed a dark claw at my head.
Candace's mother seemed to mentally consider how I could be killed.
I decided it was time to speak up, the cold anger boiling the surface into blossoming, blue fire engulfing my endless branches.
"Mrs. Rhinehart," I said, "Candace is safe and happy with us. She's part of our pack now. Your Scrutimancer is correct, I'm immortal. Also, if you attempt to break up our pack, or attempt to mess with me, or stop me from my Quest, everyone in Ferguson dies."
"What?!" Her grey eyes struck me.
"Everyone dies," I repeated. "The Butcher of Delvers will walk into Ferguson Citadel, tear off the magisteel blast doors and use them to smash the border guards into blood puddles."
Mrs. Rhinehart's silver eyes narrowed.
"You must have read about her, seen the articles. The Magnetic Lynx doesn't just kill. She dismantles. She will pull apart this city's defenses rune by rune," I spoke, letting all of my anger pour over the woman. "She will rip the celesteel-woven obelisks from the ground and use them as spears to impale the guards. She will compress cars into metal cubes with people still inside them, screaming as they're crushed. She will tear the limbs off anyone who tries to fight her and punch through prad hearts and heads with superheated metal travelling at supersonic speed. I know this because I faced her before."
"You… WHAT?" she barked.
"The Butcher of Delvers will shatter every storefront on Main Street. She'll demolish your corporate headquarters floor by floor. She will pull the iron struts from the Gurrwulf & Rhinehart Industries Mill silos and use them as rolling pins to flatten whatever stands in her path."
The fox woman stared at me.
"She will pull all gliders from the sky with a flick of her wrist," I resumed. "She'll use her magnetic powers to tear the fillings from people's teeth and the implants from their bodies. When she reaches your personal fortress, she'll peel it open like a tin can. The walls won't protect you. Your high level guards won't save you. She'll find you cowering in your panic room and pull you through the ventilation shafts by the metal buttons on your fancy suit, by the metal in your blood, shearing, folding, reshaping your body into a broken, twisted, half alive mess."
"You," Aelianne choked. "You're mad… you…"
"You will be snuffed out like everyone," I finished. "So don't try to mess with me."
"He's not lying," Goebel stated flatly. "The Magnetic Lynx touched him a few days ago. I can see her echo in his Astral imprint. She watches him, waits for him."
"W-WHAT?!" The fox woman spun to her Scrutimancer, her face aghast.
The Whitepaws looked just as horrified.
"If you attempt to unbind Candace from me," I said. "Everyone dies. Your daughter is a brilliant Binder. She's potentially the only prad in the world who can help me stop the Butcher of Delvers. The Lynx permits groups of five to enter her domain. Five." I repeated sharply, waving a hand at our group. "She's chosen me and my pack to face her in the future. If we fail to show up, fail to get strong, she will obliterate everyone in town."
Aelianne looked at Goebel, clearly desperately wishing for him to tell her that I was just a liar, a child making up tall tales. He did not.
In that moment, something snapped within her. Wetness flashed at the edges of her eyes.
"Candace…" she let out. "You… you can't… You can't delve into that cursed place! P-please. We can move to the New New York Citadel. We can…"
"The Lynx made it pretty clear that running away won't save anyone. She stated that she will hunt every last person down, starting with those I care about and ending with anyone that I've interacted with," I said. "This now includes you, Aelianne."
The fox trembled in my gaze, white claws digging into her palms.
"Goebel," she hissed, "verify the Quest binding."
The Scrutimancer nodded. He walked over to the back of the booth and put his paw on my head, followed by everyone's eyes. I felt a gentle pressure against my consciousness, like fingers sifting through sand.
"It's genuine," he confirmed after a moment, letting go of me and stepping back. "Level: Impossible. Objective: Navigate Highway Sixty-Nine's temporal maze and reach the end. Failure: Death of all Ferguson residents."
Rex and Natalie gasped in unison. The Scrutimancer's confirmation hammered Aelianne like a truck crashing into her at top speed.
Candace raised her hand, making a finger gun. She pretended to shoot her mother.
"Boom," she mouthed, blowing invisible smoke from her finger-gun. "Checkmate."
Aelianne stared at Goebel, her body going rigid. The perfect, composed business fox came apart before our eyes like a shattering glass chandelier.
"No," she whispered, shaking her head. "No, no, no."
Her silver claws shot up to her face, digging into her cheeks hard enough to leave red marks through her white fur. Goebel stepped toward her, worry etched across his canine features, but the shark bodyguard moved faster.
"Ma'am," Anatolia said, trying to sound gentle. The shark security carefully guided Aelianne toward an empty booth within the barrier shield's effect. "Please sit down."
Aelianne allowed herself to be led, her eyes glazed over and distant. She sank into the booth, her trembling hands fumbling inside her tailored suit. After a moment of frantic searching, she pulled out a small silver flask.
Without a word, she unscrewed the cap and tilted the flask back, gulping down whatever was inside. When she lowered it, her eyes stared straight ahead at nothing, seeing something far beyond the diner walls.
Then the tears came.
They spilled silently down her cheeks, cutting glistening trails through her white fur. She made no sound at first, just sat there, her shoulders beginning to shake.
"My daughter," she finally choked out. "My only child. It can't… she can't…"
The shark bodyguard stood awkwardly beside her, looking unsure as to what to do about her boss's emotional outburst.
Candace watched her mother cry. Vindication traced itself over her features, then surprise, then perhaps… a shadow of guilt.
"Wow," she muttered. "I didn't know she could do that."
"Do what?" I asked.
"Cry," Candace replied. "I've literally never seen her cry before. Not once in eighteen years. You've actually made my mom cry. That's like… Damn. Okay yeah. I loved you as Ness before, but now I'm pretty sure that I love you as myself. Mega hard. Thanks, Alec."
She wrapped me in a hug.
Across the table, Nessy's parents and siblings exchanged troubled glances.
"Perhaps," Rex suggested, "we should give Mrs. Rhinehart some privacy."
"Good idea," Natalie agreed, gathering her purse. "Children, let's go. We'll see you all tonight and talk about… all of this Quest business. We'll pay for your breakfast too, everyone."
She sent us a serious look. Then, the Whitepaw family departed quickly, vanishing through the shield.
Aelianne's sobs grew louder, less controlled. She hunched over, one paw clutching the empty flask, the other pressed against her mouth to stifle the sounds.