The next morning, I found the kids still asleep in the living room. Red was snooring loudly while sprawled on her back. Orglina was sleeping on top of her, with Chip and the hoary marmot cuddling on either side.

  Alpha, in their manifested form, had a pillow leaning against them where Dean was soundly sleeping. A rat, which looked larger than I remembered it, was asleep next to him. Both of them looked much better fed than we had first found them.

  I quietly made my way past them to the kitchen before pulling up the soul chat. I just didn’t have the supplies on hand to cook them a big breakfast anymore, but I knew who did.

  Today, the soul knots would finally be gone as a threat. That was something to celebrate. Luckily, we already had a festival coming up that we could add onto. I had a feeling Connie would want to have a big performance with her new liberation from the jesters.

  While I waited for Gorpila, I made myself a cup of instant coffee and settled into a kitchen chair. Long gone were the days of eggs and toast alone in the mornings. It was an interesting feeling to know I didn’t miss it either. All it had taken was a near apocalypse to finally bring me back out of my shell.

  The sound of the door opening alerted me to her arrival. The commotion in the living room told me I wasn’t the only one. Considering I could smell the food from in here, I didn’t blame them.

  “I see everyone is awake then?” I asked as I returned to the living room.

  Orglina and Dean were helping Gorpila lay out the food on the table. Red was stretching each of her legs, slowly shaking after each extension. The hoary marmot and rat were both staring at the food longingly. It looked like he was ready to eat again after all.

  “Did you order breakfast?” Red asked, giving one last big stretch of her back as she spoke.

  “I did, oh, and Gorpila, you’re stuck with us for the meal, Rabyn’s orders,” I replied.

  “What? Really? I’ve got stuff I need to prepare.” While she sounded unhappy, she still took a seat next to her sister anyway.

  “Yeah, but you need to have more fun. You need to come to the next sleepover!” Orglina scolded her older sister moments before biting into a bagel.

  “Yes, next sleepover! Gorpila joins!” Alpha said, joining in the excitement.

  Dean made a plate of food for both the rat and the hoary marmot before joining us at the table. “Um, I’ve never really got a chance to say this, but thank you for finding Bitey and me out there, Dave.”

  “I’m sorry we didn’t get there sooner, but I’m glad you’re doing well here,” I replied in between bites of an egg sandwich I had made with a bagel and some cheese.

  “Dean friend!” Alpha said, now hovering above the table in their mallet.

  The breakfast continued on for the next half an hour with various small talk as Alpha flew around the room, clearly enjoying themselves. About halfway into it, the hoary marmot vanished, likely back to his den, tired of all the people for a while. This had been the most I had ever seen the little guy, so I wasn’t too surprised.

  The sound of the door opening again was followed by Karlinovo, the Twinoges, and Connie joining us in the room.

  “So I hear I finally get this damn knot out of me?” Connie asked with a hint of trepidation in her voice.

  “Yep, sorry it’s taken so long. Wish I could have done something sooner,” I replied. Hopefully, she wasn’t upset at being last, but someone had to be. Though my worry about how much it had grown during that wait was still heavy in my mind.

  “I may not like it, but I get it. There’s only so much you can do at one time. So how do we start this?” she asked.

  “First, I soul bond you, then we head to the soul realm and see about removing the thing inside of you. Hopefully, it’s not as hard as it was for these two. But even if it is, I’m bringing extra help this time,” I answered.

  “Not sure I like the idea of that, but I’m guessing no real choice,” she replied.

  “No, but it will get you access to our soul chat, so there is that benefit.” We still didn’t know the full details of exactly what soul bonds did, and I wasn’t sure when we’d figure it out. Otis hadn’t returned to give us any clues yet.

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  “Wonder how Gramps is gonna feel when he finds out I’m soul-bonded. Bet he knows all about it too, just to make it even more annoying.” Despite her words, she made her way over to me.

  Just as I had done before, I triggered soul detection and took a look at her soul before doing the full bond. I didn’t like what I saw at all. There were lines of blackness infecting some of her channels, similar to what had tried to attack back into me when I destroyed the knots. Her infection had progressed as I had been worried about. What was going to happen when we bonded?

  “Let’s all head down to the workshop to do this. Don’t want to risk anything in front of the kids,” I said as I pulled up a soul chat at the same time.

  Once the door closed behind us, I looked at Connie with some real worry in my eyes. “Connie, the infection inside of you is worse than the others. I don’t entirely know what that means, and we are still going to do everything to destroy the knot, but this may get much harder. I assume you don’t want to back out?”

  “Damn right I don’t. How bad is it, though? Am I in real danger?” she asked. She had managed to cover most of the fear in her question, but not all of it.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t have a good answer here. This is still all real new. Elody should be on her way. She may know more, but it’s unlikely. We are all learning as we go,” I rambled off the words, wishing I had a better answer.

  “Can I ask one favor if this does go wrong, then?” Her voice had lost much of its usual mirth.

  “Of course.” I’d do my best to do whatever she needed, but I was also determined to make sure this didn’t go south.

  “Make sure my Gramps finds out about everything. It will be important.”

  “We can do that, but we’re going to make sure you’re fine. Just because you’ve got a worse case doesn’t mean we will fail. The things in those two almost killed me. But we got through,” I replied, nodding at the brothers.

  While we waited on Elody and Apollyon, I examined more of the damaged channels in Connie. There were small burn marks near where the blackened pieces connected to the healthy lines. Was that her body trying to fight off the infection?

  The pacemaker was rapidly cycling as well. That could possibly explain the burn marks, though I wouldn’t expect the charge to be that strong. Perhaps connected to her own soul energy fighting back, it could be? This was a mess, and I was worried that even now we would be too late to deal with it.

  “Gamma said you needed my help,” Elody said as she entered the room, interrupting my probing of Connie’s soul.

  “The soul knot inside of Connie has grown much worse than it was in the others. I’m concerned about what it will take to remove it. And I kind of want all the help I can get. But that will require soul bonding with you. Are you okay with that?” I asked, quickly explaining the situation.

  “Of course. Whatever I can do to help,” Elody’s top set of eyes focused on Connie as she replied.

  Moving my soul detection over Elody, I took a look inside of her. She was the most similar to Rabyn so far. Her soul was a hungry inferno of energy, the sparks dancing everywhere across her channels, constantly in movement. I reached out toward her soul and triggered the soul bond.

  The need to understand everything hit me, but this was a need I understood. It was something Elody and I shared, and that made it all the easier to close this soul bond. There was no need to struggle against anything. Instead, a simple, graceful connection formed between the two of us.

  “Alright, now it’s Connie’s turn. This is where it may get dicey. I don’t know if there will be any reaction when I bond her.” Elody was at least somewhat able to detect soul energy following what had happened with the soul hunters, so she remained my best bet if anything went wrong.

  Triggering soul bond again, I reached out and touched her. There was a distinct feeling of music for a split second before it was subsumed under a deluge of sludge. It felt dirty to even touch it.

  “Dave, I can’t entirely see what you’re seeing, but I can see the reaction it’s causing in both of you. You need to quickly close whatever connection you have open. There is something trying to break into it.” Elody’s voice cut through some of the disgust I felt at the presence.

  She was right. It was the unborn jester trying to infect the soul connection itself. If I left them to do that, they’d gain access to the soul chat, and who knows what beyond that. I swallowed hard, doing my best to ignore the slimy sensation wriggling across my skin, and forced the bond closed onto her soul.

  Connie yelped in pain. And while I felt bad for causing it, I had known it would happen and couldn’t see any way around it. I had seared the bond into her soul. There was no slow-controlled channel connection as I had done before. I had instead been forced to channel pure soul energy and cauterize the junction. While I did that, I also burned away the black ichor that had tried to interfere. Considering it had hurt me to do it, I knew her pain had to be worse.

  “Connie, are you okay?” I forced the question out as I caught my breath, more from the anxiety than the labor involved.

  “I think so. Hurts like hell though.”

  Timon

  He had been examining Korl’s slow but steady regeneration when the jester had caught his attention. It was doing something different. Timon didn’t like that.

  So far, every attempt to probe the thing for information had failed. Whatever strange bond they had with each other seemed to make them immune to the normal information-gathering techniques he knew so well. And while he was growing tired of the jester’s strange sing-song requests for help and annoying promises, he still preferred them to whatever it was doing now.

  The creature was currently standing perfectly center in its cell, both of its armed raised above its head. Its eyes were closed, and it was quietly chanting something to itself. It was trying to channel, but the cell was cutting that much off, at least Timon thought it was.

  There was the problem that he still didn’t understand the connection between the jesters. If they worked more on the soul level, he wasn’t entirely sure how much his defenses would seal that type of channeling. But it wasn’t a problem he knew how to investigate, let alone solve, yet.

  Even more annoyingly, he couldn’t understand the words the jester was chanting. They sounded like some sort of gibberish. So just what was that thing doing?

  “Wanna knock it off already? I got enough to deal with, without you going completely insane,” Timon said, tired of the noise.

  “It is a sacred time. A new life is emerging. I shall celebrate it. I shall empower it. I shall be free.”

  “Doubtful on that last part at least. Guessing that first part has to do with Connie. Probably wrong there too, but I’ll let you find that out all on your own. Maybe this time it will be enough to convince you to start talking,” Timon replied.

  Despite the bravado of his words, he was concerned. Dave was due to cure Connie of the last soul knot today, and if anything was going wrong in that new soul realm of his, there was nothing Timon could do to help. In the end, he decided the best thing he could do was watch the jester, and if needed, kill it before it could make things worse.

  The Network of Neighbors was the group Roger and Lewis brought together in their defense of the Spiral. They were the first of their kind, almost a forerunner to what would be the various paladin orders that would start to pop up toward the end of the first Spiral. The group worked tireless to save planets from the soul hunters, carefully cleansing every being of the soul taint they brought with them from beyond.

  Representatives from all species came together to serve within the Network. For the first time in living memory, the people no longer lived in fear of the monsters that crept through the darkness of space. At every turn, every infection, every breach, the Network of Neighbors was there, fighting back, refusing to bend to the invasion.

  Once that war was finally over, at least as far as anyone knew at that time, the Network turned to a new goal. The uplifting of all the planets within the Spiral. It would bring them all together, overcome the differences the factions faced, and find a way to unite for a better tomorrow. Roger had somehow even convinced one of the high ones of the council to attend.

  It may have all worked had Lewis not fallen.

  The Network of Neighbors, a Beginning, and an Ending by Ernest Comb

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