"Rudy!"

  Laika snapped awake with a zap of electric fire coursing through her mind.

  She gasped. A red light blinked rhythmically on the console in front of her. A warning alarm.

  “Rudy!” The musical, female voice repeated.

  “What?” Laika snarled.

  “You were stuck in the liminal edge, your mind hanging between the Physical and Astral,” the Sleigh’s Avatar said in its overly cheerful, festive voice. “I had to pull you out manually.”

  Laika tiredly rubbed her face. She had a blossoming migraine.

  “You have to focus, Rudy,” the warship’s Avatar insisted. “Focus. Don’t get stuck again. Our Saint expects results.”

  “I… know,” Laika stretched. “I won’t fail our Saint.”

  "How was the deep Astral Dive overall, Stratonavigator?" the ship’s Avatar sang its question, sounding like a festive carol. “Have you found her?”

  “Her?” Laika blinked, struggling to recollect herself.

  “The Wizard of Darkfall. The Fox-Archmage of Cascade? The Astral diver of the Emperor of Earth who assisted in his broadcast that reached Omnithornia?”

  “I… messed up,” Laika rubbed her aching temples. “I couldn’t focus. I saw her eyes… I think? Eyes in the stars. That’s all. I… I need more time to sniff her out. I got too close to the damned Lunar tree spire and then I…”

  “You lost control,” the Sleigh chided her, “again.”

  “I’ll be more careful next time,” Laika insisted.

  Laika had dived deep into the Astral, using the lingering resonance of the Emperor's broadcast to hunt the signal source. She failed to locate it. All she saw was her own death and rebirth. Over and over.

  This was her 7th dive. She found... nothing.

  Fog. Mirrors. Thousands of fox-eye stars blinking like fairy lights in a blizzard across the human-populated Earth, opening and closing, undulating all over the place. Every time she thought she had a lock on the mage's soul, it wiggled and vanished, leaving her drowning in the infinite folds of the Astral. It was like trying to catch smoke with a net.

  The fox was clever. She was good at hiding. Every time Laika’s scrying got too close to the Lunar spire, she got tangled up, folded in on herself like a pretzel, seeing her worst memories.

  The memory of her own past pulled her down into the gravity well of her trauma. A weakness. Saint Nikky would not be pleased if she knew her Stratonavigator kept dreaming about her doomed homeworld instead of catching the local Emperor’s Archmage.

  Laika shook her head, the stick-on, velvet antlers swaying. She decided to check the status of the ground team while her soul recovered from the recurring nightmare.

  Eight life signs ignited on the hologram of the Earth projected from the control panel. Eight Reindeer deployed to the surface. Her sisters. Eight Seeders who would cleanse this doomed planet of its unbelievers, liberate the NPCs.

  Her finger tapped Comet’s icon. The maned wolf was drinking in a population center tagged as [Seattle].

  "Status report: Comet," Laika barked at the screen.

  [OPERATIVE COMET: Status update - Infiltration successful. Potential target acquired. Currently engaged in... Festive diplomacy.] Comet responded via her Neural Interface.

  "Festive diplomacy, hum? Chugging buckets of Ambrosia, I bet."

  [Nothing wrong with enjoying some See-Mass Ambrosia, Rudy. Lighten up! You know that we can’t get pass-out-drunk, right? Festivus powers!]

  Laika sighed. “What angle are you working at exactly?”

  [Found a cute astrophysicist,] Comet replied. [Serrr-gey. Going to fuck him tonight and get all of his contacts. Then turn him into tinsel. Did you sniff out the fox?]

  “Not yet,” Laika replied.

  [Keep at it then and let me do the thing I do best, aight?]

  “Very well,” Laika said.

  Comet was good at getting results. In the expanded report, the Maned Wolf clarified how she quickly embedded herself with the locals, or at least a group that was assuredly connected to the Emperor according to the [Naughty and Nice] Scrying Ledger artifact they all shared.

  That was good. The Fox mage might be elusive in the Astral, but Comet was a predator on the ground. She would sniff them all out given enough time.

  Laika switched the view to the planetary scan.

  The Seed Protocol was blinking with red runes. Something was wrong.

  "Sleigh? What’s going on here? Show me the Dungeon Seed bloom stats," she ordered.

  The holographic globe of Earth spun. Snowflake-shaped runes appeared where reindeer had planted the seeds in the sewers below most populated cities.

  They should be spreading. By now, entire cities should be enjoying their final snow days, showing signs of the Conversion, the roots of See-Mass taking root underground, gathering power, getting ready to bloom.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The dots remained small. Static. Unmoving.

  Laika tapped one of the runes, digging into the problem.

  [GROWTH RATE: 0.0042%. AETHERIC RESISTANCE: HIGH. Insufficient magrad to bloom.]

  Laika growled, flipping through the data and feeling increasingly frustrated.

  [Local linearity interfering with conversion.] The Sleigh’s data-chart reported.

  According to the Sleigh’s analysis this dimension was nothing like the other doomed worlds they’d seeded. The Aether was thick, like molasses. The magic required to fuel the Coniferous Conversion simply couldn't take root. The seeds were dormant, starving for mana. They needed a jumpstart. A massive injection of magic was required to break the reality-lock of the Numbers to let the dungeon bloom.

  Laika tapped her claws against the console.

  Think. Think of a solution. Figure out how to make See-Mass bloom here.

  She considered the local Omnids hanging in orbit around the planet like pompous lordlings.

  The Frontenachii were crippled. The Third Fleet was still mostly headless. But there were new contacts on the radar.

  Signatures of warships that only recently got into the system. A new, massive capital ship to replace the one that the Frontenachii Admiral lost to the human Emperor.

  Green and Black instead of Black and Red. Different. Maybe useful?

  “Tell me about the green ships,” she ordered the Sleigh’s Avatar.

  [THE GARDENERS]

  Laika’s red stick-on-nose artifact pulsed brighter as she tapped the holoscreen for more data that the Gardeners radiated into the Astral like brilliant, flower-shaped flares. Data that she didn’t even have to dive under to attain, as it was being broadcast openly on all channels.

  The Greens. Admiral Colette. Peace and love. Healing.

  These Frontenachii operatives used Terraforming Corpse Seekers aka Life Seeders to reshape worlds slowly, opening massive, stable Dimensional Gates to pump raw Aether into the atmosphere to support rapid plant growth.

  They brought their own atmosphere. They brought their own mana. They funneled magrad from other places to make dead planets bloom.

  Perfect.

  A smile stretched across Laika’s muzzle.

  "Yesss… Let them land," she whispered. "Let the Gardeners do the hard work. Let them set up their gates. Let them flood the atmosphere with Aether to grow their precious gardens and forests."

  Once the Sixth Fleet opened the door, the Sleigh would jam its foot in it.

  They would steal the Gardeners' mana. They would hijack the terraforming ley lines. They would use Admiral Colette's own engines to feed the See-Mass Seeds. She would simply ask her reindeer sisters to relocate the Seeds beneath the radiance cast by the Frontenachii transit gates!

  And then, even this stubborn, linear world would burn with the emerald fire of the sin-cleansing Festivus Dungeon.

  Laika looked down at the blue planet one last time, relaxing her body to dive under again. She had extra time to locate the fox. Nikky would be annoyed, yes, but this was fine.

  Everything was fine now, she had a solution to the bloom issue.

  "You will be a lovely, pretty ornament soon," she promised, smiling at the doomed world filled with fake humans. "Just wait until See-Mass morning."

  Sage’s blue and Glateya’s violet eyes snapped open. The monitors surrounding us flickered with colorful flashes.

  The image of the desolate Red Square, of 1950’s Moscow covered in blooming x-mas trees dissolved into static composed of thousands of blinking fox eyes. The feed cut. The nightmare of the prad cosmonaut ended, leaving only the soft hum of many cooling electronics in the Skinwalker’s attic abode.

  I stared at the blank screens, my heart hammering against my ribs. I read about Laika on Wikipedia. The story of the Soviet authorities murdering the dog to meet their deadline was a heavy pill to swallow. Humanity didn’t always make the best choices. The murder of a prad teenage girl was even more brutal, so much worse to see live.

  "Yeesh," Sage exhaled, flopping onto me from where she sat against a bunch of fox-themed pillows with Teya. "That was... fucking heavy. Like, emotional-baggage-allowance-exceeded heavy. Harsh vibes. Very harsh. Like, I want to cry into a pillow forever harsh. Jesus Christ.”

  "It was horrific," Galateya whispered. The dragon girl pulled the blanket higher around her shoulders. Her violet eyes remained fixed on the flickering monitors, slowly filling with tears. "They sent a prad girl to die in a tin can. I felt her pain, felt her death from the heat, heard every thought, every regret… Slayer…”

  “On my Earth she was just a dog,” I said. “Nobody rescued our Laika.”

  “Yepperoni,” Sage agreed. "Different dimension, same tragedy. Vladimir is a consistent dick to a poor doggo across many worlds."

  “Why do events play out so similarly even when the actors are different?” I wondered. “A prad isn’t a pet… isn’t a stray dog. Killing her seems so much worse. Not that killing a dog is nice.”

  “It’s just how dimensional variance functions.” Sage shrugged. “A Mothman-powered Sundergate reaches out to doomed worlds with vaguely similar narratives. Blame the System Wizards or the Mothman nature on such things.”

  I frowned, trying to mentally dilute the image of the boiling, screaming, betrayed cosmonaut from my mind. The hatred in Laika's eyes burned through the screens, leaving a deep, throbbing torch mark on the psyche of my Frontmind.

  "We need to figure out how to stop them." I muttered. "What can we do about Saint Nikky?”

  "She got presents of doom stashed across the Earth, I bet my tail on it," Sage mused. She rolled over, propping her chin on my chest. "We deffo got ourselves a situation. A big, festive, world-ending situation."

  "Yes. I got the gist of it from Laika’s dream," I said.

  “What else did you learn?” Teya asked. “You must have sensed more than just that poor prad’s tragedy, yes?”

  "The Sleigh ain’t a simple warship," Sage tapped Teya’s snout with a pink finger. "It is a mobile dungeon core. A Fractal Engine superweapon bound to at least two Omnids and eight prads. A parasite. It leaps from world to world bringing about the Coniferous Conversion. It eats planets and turns ‘em into permanent holiday displays in glass balls. Frozen. Silent. Decorrrrative."

  "Like the Red Square in Laika’s dream," I said. "The tanks and people blooming with x-mas trees."

  "Exactly," Sage nodded. "Biological and spiritual rewriting. The Saint feeds the souls to the Sleigh to power the jump to the next victim. She’s a very dangerous opponent. A real Grinch who takes all life away to bring about an apocalypse-mass.”

  “Sage!” Galateya growled.

  “What? Is perfectly fitting verbiage,” the redhead fox girl tapped her chin. “And it is all connected to a grudge held by a very angry space-mutt. Hrmmm. Mmmm…"

  “Connected how?” I wondered.

  “You saw the Astral echo of her innermost fears that make up Laika's psyche,” Sage said. “I think that Saint Nikky’s been collecting prads from different dimensions with a purpose.”

  “Which is?”

  “Conceptualization optimum,” Sage speculated. “I bet my fox-ass that all of the reindeer gals bound to Saint Nikky are fucked in the head, mentally broken in some horrific way. It’s easier to dungeon-up planets when your head isn't in the right place.”

  I frowned.

  Galateya sat up straighter, scales shifting to a bleak iron-gray. "This is a calamity-tier threat. We seriously need to alert the Frontenachii fleet about this or the Stabalists!"

  “The Frontenachii Fleet OR the Stabalists let them here, my lovely dragon-bun,” Sage pointed out. “Someone invited Saint Nikky to handle the Emperor. You’ve read 4CP4’s report with me, yes? Comet asked for the Emperor's address specifically to deliver a hand-basket, remember?”

  “I can let my great-grandmother know about this,” Galateya insisted. “Surely Legate Ixthia doesn’t want her Pleasure Planet vandalized with See-Mass trees, turned into a fucking dungeon! She… she wants to breed humans to look sexier, she wouldn’t want everyone down here to die!”

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