The Netherweave Fold

“You watching the doggo?” Shady asked the fox.

“I do be,” Sage affirmed. “Mananged to look around the Sleigh too. Is a solid, magisteel, boxy… albeit excessively-festively decorated Omnid freighter. Many of ‘da Seeds are already planted below major cities. Those aren’t a problem as their bloom rate is abysmal.”

“Good,” I commented.

“Howeva’,” Sage added. “Some of them got planted in areas of less-than-linear Aetheric density.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Entropy-skewered, eerie, holy, almost-forgotten places, not often visited by humans,” Sage said. “Seems like a few of the Heralds aren’t complete idiots. On other Earths more population equals more magic spells being fired and more entropy decaying reality, but on this Earth we’ve got an opposite thing going.”

“That sounds bad,” I said. “How much time do we have?”

“Weeks,” Sage said. “Maybe longer. No need to worry about it now. As they’re fused into the landscape, we’ll have to extract them manually with teeth and claws, I reckon.”

“Teeth?! What ‘bout using a Corpse Seeker?” Nexxali asked.

“A Seeker could work too,” Sage mused. “Then again, the seed could also bloom inside one and cause it potential problems. A Taniwha’s belleh is better for alignment conversion and will help Teya get stronger.”

“It won’t turn her into a festive tree?” I asked.

“Nu,” Sage shook her head. “‘Cus she can freeze the concept of bloom itself before such can even begin. Right, T-buns?”

“Yes,” Teya agreed.

“Hrm. And the Sixth Fleet?” I considered.

“Eh, those Green snails are gonna legalize all of the things before acting,” Nexxali commented. “I boggled the Third Fleet down good. It’ll take the Sixth Fleet admin ages to get that iffy mess together. I pushed Kawathra to release a bazillion memetics across the Weapon-Net, and they deffo’ corrupted all of the necessary paperwork.”

“Aren’t you a naughty kitty,” Shady commented.

“I try,” Nexxali fired back.

“Then we have time,” I said.

“Time for a training montage!” Sage declared.

“Training whom for what?” I looked at the fox.

“Training Teya-bun,” Sage said, pawing Galateya. “She’s the only girl capable of eating dem’ Seeds whole. Wendigos can chomp Astral conceptoids with no issues. Skinwalkers collect souls. Some… sexy servals can sing reality sideways. Yet none of us can actually metabolize a dungeon Seed. Teya’s Taniwha heart is our counter-agent… That is, she will be, once she’s properly trained! Our Little Terraformer that can!”

Galateya’s blush deepened as Sage slid closer and squeezed her. “Properly trained how?” the dragon asked.

“You’ve been running yo’ terraformery on emotional spikes,” the Skinwalker stated. “The lovemaking, the crying, the rage-freezing, the wildflower jungle explosions during our little forest romp last night. All of those were reactive bursts. Uncontrolled detonations of Syntropic energy triggered by extreme feels.”

“They were… somewhat controlled,” Galateya muttered.

“Bruh, you bloomed sakura trees through a rotting shack while having an orgasm. You manifested prismatic wings the size of a city bus. Grew concentric rings of wildflowers when we made out in the rain.” Sage listed, making Shady chortle. “None of those were one bit controlled.”

“The sakura was… aesthetic,” Galateya defended herself.

“T’was quite gorgeous, yass,” Sage agreed. “Aaaaand also utterly involuntary. Which is my point! Emotional, sexy releases are potent fuel, T-buns, and I am absolutely in favor of more of those. Recreationally. Enthusiastically. With full group participation.”

“Hear, hear,” Nexxali raised her empty oversized glass cup.

“How-e-vahrrr, we cannot rely on having a convenient emotional crisis or a sexy, climactic moment every time we need to neutralize a Seed buried in downtown Tokyo or in the Roraima plateau,” Sage said. “Sometimes the job requires calmness on a Thursday afternoon with no sideways wiggling or a romantic soundtrack. Sometimes you gotta eat the wall-snack cold and sober.”

“I can do cold and sober,” Galateya stated. “I terraformed my bubble… calmly for almost a decade.”

“Yass, the tear-based magisynthesis, selective freezing and thawing are deliberate acts,” Sage said. “Tha’ rrrrawr talent is thar’. We simple-y need to sharpen it for local conditions.”

“Local conditions of… Linearity?” Galateya guessed.

“Correct,” Sage stated.

“Frontenachii time-dilation bubbles operate at an Aetheric density designed for helping young Omnids grow,” Nexxali pointed out. “The walls of your prison were saturated with compressed dimensional mana. Your tree grew well there because the environment fed it alongside your tears.”

“So it will be harder here,” Galateya concluded.

“Waaaay harderrrr,” Sage affirmed. “Thus, once we all wake up from this lovely Yesterweave therapy session, we’re all hitting the mall boot camp.”

“Mall boot camp?” Galateya blinked. “What?”

“You need controlled exercises in places crammed with many humans who cancel magic out, bruh. Thick-ass-Aether blooming. Learning to run your Engine on fumes instead of emotional nuclear meltdowns.”

“Heh. Can I… watch?” Shady asked.

“You can do more than that,” Sage offered. “We all need to figure out how to work as a team in low Aetheric conditions. We kicked parasite ass in the Astral today. Physical reality won’t be as easy to bend.”

“Aight.” Shady yawned.

“Now then,” Sage turned her sky-blue eyes towards the Serval. “Ginger Pussy. I have just one question for ya. HOW?!”

“How what?” The serval raised a dark orange eyebrow.

“How the fuck did you manage to out-magic and outwit an entire fleet worth of Frontenachii Wendigos, Datamancers, Seers and Scruts?” Sage demanded. “It doesn’t make any sense. You’re a prad. No offense, but in the power hierarchy ladder you’re waaaay below Omnid Archmages. I’d like one explanation please.”

I turned to look at the serval. The feline’s claw traced the rim of her empty glass in a slow circle.

“Hrm. That IS a good point,” Galateya agreed. “Nexxali, how in Slayer’s name did you pull off an insurrection without getting caught and turned into wallpaper? Why didn’t anyone suspect or stop you?”

“Mrrrr… Simply put… I cheated,” Nexxali smiled, gold eyes growing distant. “Massively. Using something the Frontenachii don’t fully understand because they fucked with it for a bit, gave up because they found no use of it… and also built something horrific then they stopped paying attention to it.”

“Which is what?” I asked.

“The Netherweave Fold project,” Nexxali said. “And the Slayer’s Sword itself.”

Sage’s red, fluffy ears perked straight up.

“The Frontenachii Omnicorp ran… experiments,” Nexxali began. “Classified ones, in a compound in North Acadia. They called the project Netherweave Fold because the results looked like fabric being folded, reality creasing on itself.”

“Bad experiments?” Galateya guessed.

“Yep. The kind involving living humans,” Nexxali said with a dark tone. “Criminals, mostly, or so the official reports claimed. People nobody would miss. They were studying… unique resonance between Omnid Fractal Engine hearts and human biology.”

Shady let out a dangerous growl above my head, clearly having gotten the answer ahead of everyone else from Nexxali’s mind.

“When an Omnid pursues a human,” Nexxali continued, “genuinely pursues them, with intent and focus and emotional investment, the two hearts start to sync. The Fractal Engine and a human soul create a… shared frequency. A harmonic. The longer the chase, the more intense the pursuit, the stronger the resonance builds.”

“Chase as in… hunting?” I asked, glancing at Sage.

“Chase as in any sustained interaction where both parties are fully engaged and various magic is released and begins to build up between the two. Hunting works. So does courtship. Competition. Even a really intense argument. Anything where both hearts are racing and locked onto each other creates the resonance.”

“And what happens with the resonance?” Sage prompted. It looked like she already knew the answer too.

“If you take the paired subjects, the Omnid and the human, and you put them in a super high-Aetheric-density chamber together, and they make a wish…” Nexxali paused. “The Netherweave Fold implodes in on itself.”

“Implodes how?” I asked.

“Reality bends Syntropically. The fold collapses inward and reshapes… everything around the paired subjects according to the wish. The effect varies depending on the intensity of the resonance, the Aetheric saturation, the emotional state of both participants, and the specificity of the wish itself.”

“Like, genie wish magic?” I asked.

“Sorta. More like reality bending in a particular direction. The Frontenachii ran thousands of trials. Most produced minor effects due to poor interaction of subjects. A locked door opening. A broken tool repairing itself. Small, useful, repeatable phenomena. Some trials produced nothing. A few produced results so extreme the test rooms had to be rebuilt from scratch… in another location.”

“What were the extreme results?” Galateya wondered.

“One pair wished for sunlight,” Nexxali said. “The chamber ceiling became transparent, bound to a star seventeen light-years away. A permanent hole in reality. Still there, far as I know, leaking stellar radiation into a basement in North Acadia. Melted both of the subjects to slag, obviously.”

“Neat,” Sage commented.

“Another pair wished for silence. The compound went acoustically dead for six hours. No sound or thought propagated within a three-kilometer radius. Omnids within reported the worst psychological distress of their careers.”

“And the Frontenachii used this, how?” I wondered.

“They didn’t. The Omnicorp researchers wrote of their findings in a book that they duplicated and sent out to various Frontenachii archives, and moved on to more controllable projects. The Netherweave Fold was classified as too unpredictable, too dependent on the emotional state of the terrified human subjects, and the humans kept dying due to Omnids taking it too far, or going insane or melting from prolonged magrad exposure. The project was shelved.”

“And you found it?” Galateya asked.

“Yu-huh. I found it due to my excellent relationship with the Slayer’s Sword Librarium,” Nexxali confirmed. “I read every trial report, every failed experiment, ev-e-ry margin note scribbled by frustrated researchers wondering why there was a resonance cascade between magically null humans and Syntropic Omnids.”

“Hrm. Every time I’ve slept with an Omnid…” I commented. “Reality got… wobbly.”

“Yepp,” Nexxali agreed. “I noticed.”

“Me too.” Sage laughed.

Galateya and Shady remained silent, probably feeling embarrassed about such things.

“Hold up. Frontenachii warships don’t have humans who can sleep with Omnids,” I said, understanding sliding towards me like a snowy mountain avalanche. “They only have… humans spliced into wall art, right?”

“Correct,” Nexxali said. “The Third Fleet is crammed with spliced humans. Every single one of them… in a state of perpetual, intense emotional engagement with the Omnid crew around them.”

“Ships full of human-Omnid resonance,” Sage breathed. “Thousands of them.”

“Thousands. Building slowly. Imperceptibly. Over centuries of sustained terror, the Netherweave Fold potential accumulated in the hull of every Frontenachii warship like static charge in a thundercloud. Nobody noticed because the effect was spread across each enormous Celesteel structure, diluted by the ship’s wards and Aetheric dampening systems. The researchers in North Acadia used small chambers with pairs. They never considered what would happen if you had thousands of trapped humans distributed across ten kilometers of warship architecture.”

“The catio figured it out,” Shady said.

“I figured out the math,” Nexxali said. “The cumulative Fold potential on the Slayer’s Sword alone was astronomical. So many human souls plus terror plus time. The Slayer’s Sword was a loaded weapon and nobody could even see the trigger.”

“What was the trigger?” Galateya wondered.

“Hope. Love. My… Promise to each of them,” Nexxali said simply. “Neatheweave Fold responds to pure desire. Strong, genuine, emotionally saturated wishes made by paired resonance subjects. The Spliced had no hope. Nobody gave a fuck about them. They existed in sustained despair, which generated a steady-state charge with no discharge pathway. The potential just kept building on and on and on. A cloud of doom in the Astral, that only I… understood.”

“I… noticed it too,” Galateya said.

“You did,” Nexxali agreed. “Doubtlessly, every Omnid on the Slayer’s Sword noticed it, without understanding the truth of the matter. The Wendigos snacked on the Astral emanations of leaking despair. The other Omnids felt mildly annoyed by it.”

“You gave them all hope?” I asked.

“I gave them targeted songs,” Nexxali stated. “Their names and crimes were written on gold plaques. I found more information in the archives about each criminal and for twenty years, each night I snuck out into the ventilation shafts and sang to each spliced human from behind the wall.”

“Entropic songs,” Sage noted. “Clever. Invisible bonds designed to dissolve after delivery.”

“Exactly. They dissolved as music and persisted as… unresolved feelings. I built up a separate magical charge within a gargantuan Netherweave Fold… A wish. Between me and the legion of wall-spliced humans. Growing for twenty years, reinforced by the Kobolds I also interacted with. A bomb primed to explode, clockwork ticking towards midnight. Felt by everyone on the doomed ship, albeit unstoppable because it kept our Frontenachii overlords fed and happy since the human souls couldn’t really be freed or create a resonance cascade… till Ash broke the Sword against the moon.”

“Slow death by a thousand paper cuts,” Galateya mused.

“Death by a thousand lullabies culminating in a moon slapping crescendo,” Nexxali said. “Over twenty years, I taught the walls of the ship to wish. I tuned the entire Netherweave charge toward a single, simple desire shared by every single Kobold in every single pod and every wall spliced human soul. I weaved the desperate masses like an orchestra conductor!”

“Slayer!” Galateya whispered.

“The symphony of fucking freedom,” Nexxali’s eyes flared from within as she dramatically spread her hands. “When Ash crashed the ship into the moon and the Astral Fountains started blooming, the Fold discharged all at once. Kaboom!”

“Hooooleeeeey-sheeeet,” Sage yipped. “The fooking tree?! THAT’S YOUR WISH?! No fucking wonder shoving Laika into it messed her up the way it did.”

“The tree,” Nexxali agreed. “The liminal tree blooming on the moon. Each branch is a rip in reality made by an escaping soul, spreading out and then getting pulled towards Arxtruria across the Astral abyss.”

“Arx isn’t a place of freedom,” Shady pointed out. “I’ve been there… in Shandria, during dungeon delving lessons with Instructor Zalimar. The reincarnated souls are usually enslaved on the spot.”

“Freedom can be found on Arx by some souls who fight for such,” Nexxali pointed out. “I gave the bound human souls a chance for a new life and they all took it. The tree explosion grew from the hoard Admiral Evelithria has been putting together for a century, every artifact that once belonged to her now working for my wish.”

“Which was what specifically?” I asked.

“Freedom through love to oppose binding through suffering and pain.” Nexxali said. “For everyone everywhere. The Slayer’s Sword is broken, buuut the tree it created persists. Exists. Gradually, endlessly blooms across the infinite divide, liminal branches cleaving everything they touch with binding-chain-disrupting entropy fed with the music I composed for… decades.”

“Dang. How old are you, Nexxy?” I asked her.

“Fuck if I know, Ashy,” Nexxali replied. “The Lazarus bracelet just says System Error when it tries to tabulate my age. Rewinder prads are handy for de-aging yourself and also for forgetting many things if you pay them for erasing such. The Librarium Archivus private reading rooms inside the Slayer’s Sword were basically their own time bubbles. Not as good as the stuff on the Corpse God Citadel, mind you, but good enough to accelerate a reader enough to absorb many interesting books, to compose and let out many songs into the wild abyss. I wrote some stuff down inside my gun in microscopic text with a laser to stay on track, reinforced particular probability patterns with particular songs. Dagaz Rune for change. Four horsemen of the apocalypse for destruction of bonds. Infinity as a living being. Love as a weapon.”

“Metaphoric shit,” Shady said.

“Uh-huh,” Nexxali agreed. “Metaphoric shit that rhymed good. Is how Riffweld works.”

“AH! Time bubble to time bubble,” Sage stated. “That’s why Teya heard you.”

“I guess,” Nexxali said, glancing at Galateya.

“Useful,” Sage noted, tapping her chin. “Very useful indeed. Okkay. I think I know exactly what our doggo can do now!”

“Can we see what you see?” Galateya asked.

“Ah, yeah, totally,” Sage snapped her fingers and a tablet screen that was displaying bobba advertisements in the center of our table became covered with fox eyes and static…