NOVEL NEXT 93: In Between Past and Future
This was when I kick her away, tell her to piss off and head to Kristi's cabin. Except time isn't correct. It should be late evening. The blood pact didn't happen exactly like this…
My thoughts crawled over each other like an entire kicked anthill.
Wrong. Far too many things have gone off course today. But why was there a course at all?
"Alec, come on," Nessy panted, holding me down. "Come on, come on. Tell me you love me. I love you. So much. So very very much." She repeated, her breath hot against my face. "This is the part where you say it back."
"Ness, I…" I stared at her. "This isn't…"
"Isn't what?"
"Something's wrong. This isn't—this isn't how it's supposed to happen!"
She laughed, but it came out fractured, almost like two voices overlapping. "Obviously not. I derailed the past by binding it to the future."
"You… what?"
"The mall didn't want to let us go," she grinned. "So I'm not going to let it go either."
"The mall?"
"The Nameless Mall, Alec," she huffed. "Do try to keep up."
"I don't…"
"This memory," She let one of my hands go waving at the cave and the rain. "This doomed world that got overwritten by your wish but also didn't. This moment in space and time. It's ours. Yours and mine. The pivotal moment when I bound myself to you using the rune from that book."
She pointed at the 'Holofractals' book on the floor, the dog-eared page flipped to the Dagaz rune.
I stared at her, then the book, then at the spiderweb above us filled with hundreds of black spiders. The spiders looked down at us with beady, black eyes.
"Think, Alec, think!" She declared, looking manic.
There was something off about her expression. Something… A bit… foxy? A bit… loopy?
I choked, my mind snapping sideways, the name blooming to the forefront of my thoughts.
"Candace… what the fuck have you done?" I sputtered.
"I bound the past to the future, Alec!" she revealed, "I bound entropy-chewed up namelessness that sought to consume us and leave only hollow husks behind… to Clashridge Peak! I didn't just give that damned dungeon mall a name… I gave it… ALL of Clashridge! I gave it the concept of Pradavarian Earth in 2018 without magic! I filled an empty space with a very particular time and place. I bound a very heavy, very syntropic idea of something into a dimensional hole, sheared that entire damned mall's death trap to smithereens!"
Mad giggles escaped the husky's throat.
I opened my mouth and closed. "I don't understand. You bound the past to the future? Why?"
"Because we need to get back to the present. The Nameless Mall fucked us."
"Huh?"
"Do you know how black holes work? They bend time Alec. Our time got shafted by that mall as soon as we entered it and the deeper we went in the worse it got! Want a more magical metaphor? It's like… Like a fae circle where time runs faster! We basically lost a few centuries while we walked around it."
"Oh."
"Yes. That's not acceptable! I want to go back to Cascade the moment when we left it, not a thousand years after everyone's dead and the dragons are all gone. I owe Kristi one date on the beach! You think I want her to be pissed at me because I fucked up her date with you? It's my fault as a Binder that Denver sent us to Eureka and then to your human Earth devoured by Systemfall."
The spider web above us swayed in the wind from the storm, and for a second I could have sworn I saw movement of dozens, hundreds, thousands of wriggling spiders there.
"The movie," I choked out, my mind bubbling with more memories. "We're still in the movie? The Nameless Mall! That's Murdoch's web above us, right?"
"Yes and also no. Because it was never a movie. It was a trap. A binding loop."
"A trap?"
"Yeah," Nessy nodded. "A dimensional funnel. Like the kind an Antlion makes for dumb prey, except less sand and more space-time. The spiders and the First Person Hunters planned to devour our paralyzed bodies in the future while our minds were trapped in our whimsical past. So, I reverse Uno-ed the fuck out of their Antlion time-hole. The Movie Theater tree made a rookie mistake. Nobody fucks with a concept Binder using Dimensional Binding magic!"
"Um. Okay. What about making the chalk? What about getting the ingredients, to open a door back to Cascade?" I tried to wrap my wobbly thoughts around her words.
"Alec, it's like I'm talking but you're not listening."
"Fine, I'm… listening." I forced myself to relax. "Go on."
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"The mall causes massive time dilation," she explained. "Once you get in, that's it. You're screwed. If we went on to assemble all of those ingredients and blended it and made the chalk in a linear way… then we'd just open the door to future Ferguson. Maybe a Ferguson in 2444 or something. Not Ferguson in 2020 where we want to go. By binding our past to the future, I've created a new loop. A local dimensional loop, something in between the dimensionally-fucked Nameless Mall and 2018 magic-less Clashridge."
She let go of me. My bitten hand was still stinging, bleeding heavily. Nessy dug into my backpack and produced a Thomas the Dank Engine themed shirt, ripping it apart and quickly licking and binding my bleeding hand.
"I don't get it." I said.
"You don't need to get it," she said, "just trust me. This is fine. We're on the right path now."
"This looks like the past." I looked around the dark cave.
"It does, yes."
"And there's no magic here."
"Mhmmm. Technically, yes, but mostly no. There is magic in you, Mr. Liminal tree. Check yo Stats."
"Stats," I said.
A menu flashed woven from silver letters across the view.
| Name: Alec Benoit Foster
| Species: Human
| Level: 4
| Core Affinity: Reconstitution
| Health: 78/100%
| Reconstitution: 88/100%
| Depictomancy: 100/100%
| Syntropic Fusion: 100/100%
| Alpha Authority: 97/100%
| Strength: 20 (+8)
| Agility: 10 (+12)
| Dexterity: 14 (+6)
| Vitality: 44 (+15)
| Charisma: 13 (+8)
| Foresight: 6 (+5)
| Intelligence: 44 (+5)
| Wisdom: 36 (+5)
| Skills: [Reconstitution], [Depictomancy], [Syntropic Fusion], [Pack Leader]
| Bonuses: Bound Armor (additional bonuses), Alpha (+5 Charisma)
| Dagaz-bound Pack: Candace Rhinehart, Adelle Dallia, Nessy Whitepaw, Krysanthea Strand
I blinked the stats away, feeling perturbed. Another message flashed across my eyes.
[Congratulations, punk! You've somehow managed to get temporally displaced, dimensionally fractured, AND soul-bound creating a local space-time paradox all in one afternoon and also not afternoon. Most delvers just die in the ex-Nameless Mall locale due to excessive entropy. You're really overachieving here!]
[Quest Update: "Reality Mixer Shopping List" Status: Incomplete. Time Remaining: ∞ (System Error: Local linear time not found.)
Quest Items Obtained:
✓ Starscape Crossview Spectacles (5/5)
✓ Dimensionally-Sheared Movie Tickets (5/5)
✓ Conceptual Contradictions (∞/5) (You overachieving bastard, way to break everything)
Items Unobtained (no longer existing):
✗ Nostalgia Gems (0/5 gems)
✗ Paradox Markers (0/5 markers)
✗ Time Zest (0/5 ounces)
✗ Forgotten Music (0/5 records)
✗ REALITY MIXER
✗ Dollarstore Chalk Molds
Your 'genius' fox packmate has decided to solve time dilation by BINDING A CONCEPT OF AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT EARTH TO A CARNIVOROUS MALL. This is definitely not going to have any horrible consequences whatsoever. Nope. None at all.]
[New Achievement Unlocked: "Temporal Pretzel"] [New Achievement Unlocked: "Why Make Chalk When You Can Just Break Reality?"]
[Congrats for breaking my best, hungriest dungeon. You now have enough XP to evolve to Level 5! I'd take away experience from you, but alas, I gotta pretend to be polite and lawful. Enjoy your temporal victory!]
"Oh good," I muttered, mentally plowing through the sarcastic system messages. "Systemfall's hella mad at me."
"Pfffff. She'll get over it." Nessy dug in the backpack and pulled out the pink chalk, admiring it.
I stared at the chalk. "Hang on. Is that…?"
"Dimensional chalk, yes."
"But we haven't made it yet."
"Correct. We haven't made it and yet it already mostly, sorta exists. It's a paradox. This is what happens when you bind a nameless place to a memory of another time that no longer exists while wanting stuff."
"I'm starting to get a migraine trying to process all of this shit. Can we use the chalk then?"
"It's not made yet, my dude. We still have to get the other ingredients."
"But it's right there."
"Yeah and it's not finished yet. Calm your tits."
"I don't have…"
"Bloom some then, then calm them. Slayer, stop nitpicking my idioms!"
"How are we supposed to find shit like… Time Zest or Nostalgia gems in 2018 Clashridge?"
"I'll find a clock, wind it backwards and bind the idea of such to it and snip off the arrow. Find a shiny gem and bind a nostalgic memory to it. You've Syntropic fusion too. We can fuse shit to shit till we get the needed result."
"And that's going to work?"
"Probably," she shrugged. "I broke this whole place. Local reality is a bit like jello now. Poke it hard enough and it will attempt to correct its shape. Like the soul stats you see. Is System and manual corrections."
"Are we going to 'correct' Murdoch?" I eyed the spiders overhead.
"Nah," Nessy said. "They were going to eat us. Let them be regular, dumb spiders. If they are conceptually strong enough they'll eventually break outta my binding and become more aware. Maybe even bloom their shop back into existence somewhere on this mountainside. If not, then whatever."
"I… okay." I sighed. "You know what bothers me?"
"My devastating adowkable-ness?" Nessy-Candace waggled her eyebrows. "My wise foxxitude?"
"No. You keep binding shit to shit without telling me. First the lawsuit in Denver and now you've bound an entire mall to our past. A heads up would be nice, Candace!"