Stupid Sexy Cryptids [156-158]

156: The Feast

One second I was wrapped in the group hug, squished by the warmth of my many girlfriends hugging me and Laika. Then something grabbed my consciousness and yanked it in two directions at once, like a piece of taffy being stretched by enthusiastic children at a carnival.

Part of me tumbled downward into some distant depths…

The rest of me remained in the Soviet café, watching as Shady exploded.

Yes, exploded.

Her blonde form detonated outward like a piñata filled with spiders. Dark feathers erupted in all directions. Her skull elongated, split, multiplied. Antlers burst forth like twisted tree branches. One Wendigo became two. Two became four. Four became a writhing mass of silver-eyed horrors spreading across the café like ink spilled into a gold fish aquarium.

The prad bulldog waiter who tried to kick Laika out earlier managed exactly one terrified yelp before a set of blade-claws bisected him at the waist, spraying the walls and ceiling in blood.

A feline patron screamed, scrambling for the exit.

She made it three steps before a living blender of shadow and starlight caught her.

The café became an abattoir. Tables overturned. The samovar crashed to the floor, hot tea spilling. The brass bell above the door chimed with each new victim trying to escape. They didn’t make it very far. 

Shadies caught humans and prads right outside the café decorating the show with their bisected bodies and arterial blood. One of the patrons attempted to strike Shady with a magic sword and was thrown through a side window, sending blood splattered glass shards twinkling all around.

One hundred and thirteen Wendigos feasted.

"So," Nexxali said conversationally, drawing my attention away from my eldritch best friend's dinner. "How was your day without our lovely company, Emperor?"

I stared at her. Behind the Serval, a Wendigo-shard pinned a howling bear patron to the ceiling by his throat and then snapped his neck with a twist.

"I..." I let out. "I, hrmmm, let's see… I went on a date with Teya, and accidentally met a nice Skinwalker family while staging a fake vampire... Hostage situation. Met Sage… Almost accidentally froze Cascade because I pissed Teya off with too many plots that didn't involve her. Sage helped calm Teya… then both of them hunted me through a forest with… paintballs.”

“And when they caught you, you three had a nice sex, yes?”

“Yep,” I affirmed. “Then we went back to Sage's place. Found out about the Sixth Fleet, Stabalists and Saint Nikky’s Sleigh. Then I got Commander Wattica to defect and captured and interrogated a festive wolf in Seattle with my Emperor gun unit body."

"Sounds like quite the productive evening," Nexxali commented. 

A spray of arterial blood painted the window behind her. “And how was it with dragon-babe and the Skin-fox?”

"PLEASE! MERCY!" A man wept in Russian crawling toward the kitchen on all fours.

Three Wendigo-shards descended on him like a pack of wolves on a wounded deer. The begging cut off with a wet crunch.

"The, uh, sex was... nice," I tried very hard to focus on Nexxali's cute, feline face and ignore the horrid carnage all around. "The shack we were in grew flowers. And vines. Galateya made it rain."

"Mmmmm… romantic," Nexxali agreed. A severed arm flew past her head, close enough to ruffle her striped black and orange ears. "Too bad I missed it. Did the dragon enjoy herself?"

"I think so? She grew wings at one point. Big prismatic energy wings."

"Lovely." Nexxali yawned and stretched languidly.

The Wendigo-shards slowed, the feeding frenzy settling down as most of the patrons had been reduced to abstract modern art. 

One of the Shadies stepped back to where we were sitting. The blood covering her skull-face rapidly melted into dark feathers.

"Are you feeling better, Princess?" Nexxali asked.

"Getting there." Shady's tail swished contentedly. 

She bent down and wrapped both of us in her embrace, smooshing and petting me and Nexxali. We relocated onto a leather couch by the window. The Shadies moved on from the cafe into other establishments, decimating more citizens of Moscow. Sounds of distant gunfire and flashes of spells flared in the distant gloom.

“Feh. They’re fighting back,” Shady tisked.

“Dreams can fight back?” I wondered. “I do hope all this murder isn’t causing horrific, unrecoverable damage to Laika’s psyche.”

“Why do you even care so much about the dog?” Shady squeezed me harder.

“She’s a poor innocent pup, Shady,” I said. “She got fucked by the Soviets and then was blood-bound by Saint Nikky.”

“Fret not, Ashy,” Nexxali said. “Everything alive here, as far as I can taste through Shades, is part of the Astral parasite tormenting Laika and feasting on her soul. This is actually a pretty neat use of a Wendigo. I didn’t realize that Shady could be such an effective Pact chewer! Then again this is mostly due to Skinwalker’s Astral diving skills getting us this deep in. I should have Sage and Shades go through my own psyche, flay whatever nasties my songs didn’t take out.”

“I’ll nom your deepest terrors with pleasure,” Shady agreed, mussing up Nexxali’s ginger mane.

The Serval bit Shady’s finger with a cheeky expression. They played rough pets and feline bites for a minute, then the Wendigo turned her attention to my person.

“Ashy,” she said.

“Shady,” I fired back.

“You got a Skinwalker girlfriend.”

“And? You got Wendigo girlfriend,” I said with the same blunt tone. “Sillicia.”

“Ah.” Shady blushed with smears of sparkling silver stars on her cheeks. “I… totally forgot about that.”

“You forgot?” I arched an eyebrow.

“You try cleaving your soul with brain spiders, erasing your mind and then chewing off your arm and dying one hundred and thirteen times,” she huffed. “Also I didn't have sex with Sillicia, we just made out once. She's a politically useful ally not someone I want to fuck daily.”

“Touche,” I said. “You’re right. Why don’t we both take it easy on each other… bestie?”

“Fine.” Shady sighed. She wrapped her lanky fingers around me, petting me vigorously. 

“Be honest with our Ashy,” Nexxali suggested.

“I…” Shady let out, making a shy face.

“Yes?” I looked at her.

“I’m… scared,” she admitted after a minute of silence.

“Of?”

“Of you finding an Omnid girl who’s better than me at everything,” she let out after another pregnant pause. “Of you deciding to spend all of your time with Sage, especially when I… when I’m this fucked by my own stupid ass plots.”

“And you think that, what,” I said, processing her words, “Sage is better than you at everything?”

“She’s a local girl next door,” the Wendigo let out, burying her skull-head in my side. “She’s… very pretty. The prettiest girl I’ve seen.”

Nexxali swatted Shady.

"Ow," the Wendigo complained, "What was that for?"

"For being a big dummy," the Serval replied. "You think Sage is prettier than you? Have you looked in a mirror lately?"

"Local mirrors show me as a big, black dog," Shady mumbled into my shoulder snarkily. "A very scary dog."

“And?” Nexxali asked.

“And I don’t know,” Shady said. “I’m… more scary than pretty.”

“Everyone’s pretty in their own way.” Nexxali shrugged. “I’m a sexy ginger cat. You’re a sexy Wendigo. Right Ashy?”

“Right,” I agreed.

"Sage is warm and fluffy," Shady protested weakly. "She… She’s a Skinwalker, and can turn into anything she wants. She has thousands of souls backing her up. I have... holes. Entropy holes… In my soul. Very unattractive holes."

"Those holes are temporary," I said. “Sage is scary too when she goes full bone-flesh mode. I'd say you're doing pretty well for someone who died over a hundred times yesterday."

Shady made a small, pleased sound and burrowed deeper into my side.

“Sanguine’s prettiness is just a suit she wears,” I said. “Magical attraction. A natural mechanism that draws prey to her. Beneath her Phase-shift she’s a lonely Skinwalker who is struggling to keep way too many fox souls alive. Also, she’s not going to steal me away from you, she’s got Teya to paw at.”

"Ah. And… Teya?" Shady asked.

"What about her?" I asked.

"You... like her too. A lot more than yesterday.”

"I do," I admitted. "She's brave. She stood up to you earlier, which took guts. She's also incredibly lonely and just wants to be included. I… told her everything. She and Sage are exactly the kind of Omnids we need in our circle to resist the Frontenachii invasion.”

Shady made a grumbly noise.

"Our dragon-bae called you out because she cares about you, Shades," Nexxali added. "She could judge how much you were hurting. The freezing threat was her trying to protect Ashy, sure, but also to snap you out of your bully-everyone in sight mode.” The Serval grinned. “It seems to me that someone needs more educational spanking.”

Shady made a “Burrr” noise into my side, wiggling beside me. I laughed as she licked my neck.

A distant explosion lit up the Moscow skyline. The Shady-shards had apparently found something particularly resistant. Green magical fire arced into the gray sky, followed by the sounds of collapsing masonry.

"Your hooks are having fun," Nexxali observed.

“Are you two getting any information from this parasite feast?” I wondered.

“Yes,” Nexxali said. “The Astral parasite bits are masquarading as particular things with particular thoughts. I am processing them with Shady now.”

“Anything useful?” 

“This Earth was packed to the brim with magitek,” the Serval said. “It had… Seers. According to Laika, it had high level Archmages protecting it.”

“And?”

“And something is off about this whole planet-eating business. We need to feed Shady more. Evely told me that Saint Nikky takes payments of O-bux from the Frontenachii, and does freelance jobs for her,” Nexxali said. “A true god-tier entity controlling a planet-eating dungeon wouldn’t need Omnithornian money.”

“Agreed,” Shady said. “Shady things are afoot here. I’m ‘bout done with this locale. Nexxy can you wind this place forward?”

“Yep,” Nexxali said. “Let me put on the mantle of the echo of Laika's pain so we can get this entire place cleaned out.”

“You can do that?” I asked her. 

“I can,” Nexali said. “Taking on her pain and blood-collar will probably hurt a lot, but I don’t want the cute doggo to suffer in this nightmare anymore. I’m… strong enough to carry the weight of her suffering with Shades and you at my side.”

The Serval stood up and opened her mouth, inhaling deep. Her claws tapped against a chunk of glass on the floor, producing a twinkling noise. 

She let out a sad, soft exhale. Her claws tapped against her nagan. A thrumming heartbeat began pulsing in my head.

“Ignition spark, gravity’s bite
I chase the glory into the night.
A Moscow stray to a star-bound queen,
The bravest girl the world has seen.

Vladimir stroked my mane and said,
‘Just one quick flight, then you will share my bed.’
I hold the line, I watch the gauge,
A living mark for Soviet history's page,”

The feline sang. 

Her limbs shortened, posture hunched, and patches of brown, white, and black fur sprouted across her face and paws. The confident Serval Commissar melted away, replaced by a perfect replica of young Laika, complete with the oversized ragged jacket. Only her glowing, gold eyes gave her away.

The café around us began to shift.

The walls wobbled folding into themselves, the cozy warmth bleeding away into cold, sterile metal. The brass samovar elongated into pipes and gauges. The wooden tables flattened into instrument panels covered in Cyrillic labels. The window beside us curved into itself, becoming a small porthole that showed a blue Earth spinning slowly below, with the moon above it.

The capsule was tiny, claustrophobic, crammed with wires and monitoring equipment that beeped and clicked in irregular rhythms. 

"The engines cut, the silence falls,
I float within these metal walls.
The blue curve shines, so bright and clear,
Something’s wrong, the air's getting hot in here.
The thermal needle starts to climb,
I check the clock, I check the time…"

Nexxali-Laika sang.

The temperature in the capsule rose. I felt scorching heat, not sure where my body even was at this moment. Warning lights flickered red across instruments. The walls began to glow with trapped heat.

"Sputnik Two to Ground Control,
The heat is taking a heavy toll.
Initiate the descent phase,
I beg through static and the haze.
The cooling unit's failed to start,
There's fire beating in my heart..."

The radio crackled. A voice emerged through the static. Vladimir. The man who promised Laika the stars.

"The radio crackles, cold and low, A voice I loved, a voice I know.
‘Our Laika, hero brave and true... There is no landing path for you’."

Laika's howl of anguish filled the capsule. 

"The lie reveals its ugly face,
A sacrifice to conquer space.
The promise breaks, the panic starts,
You sold me for your charts and parts.
The temperature is rising fast,
I know this breath will be my last..."

The walls ignited cherry red. The heat became unbearably painful. Shady held onto me, wrapping me with many arms and shielding me from catching fire.

"The spring will not return for me,
The rivers will not flow for me.
The iron walls begin to glow,
I burn alive, it hurts,
I die... I know. I know.” 

Nexxali-Laika lamented, staring at the porthole. 

“The supercells spin far below,
The rain will fall, but not for me!
The summer will not bloom for me,
My ashes float in zero g."

Laika thrashed and burned. The scene repeated itself the same gut-wrenching, horrid way as before. A sleigh bell chimed in the absolute silence of space.

A massive arm tore the capsule in half.

Saint Nikky appeared, ranted about revenge and offered Laika her dark, Krampus hand.

Nexxali-Laika sang on, narrating the scene.

"The love I held has turned to hate,
Mephistopheles has come to me,
The Krampus of the ever-tree!
I sign her pact with boiling blood,
To fill your veins with pine and mud.”

Shady suddenly lunged forward and slashed the Omnid Krampus, Wendigo fist punching right through her heart. The Krampus flailed in Shady’s embrace. The monstrous Wendigo devoured her heart and shredded the remnants of her body with a villainous grin.

“I am the Hound of Saint Nikky,
The Harbinger of See-Mass, see?
I cast the seed from orbit high,
To shear the clouds and cast the die.
Its roots take hold, but not for me!"

Nexxali sang on.

The dream shifted again. 

We were suddenly standing on a frozen Moscow street.

The ground split open. Pine trees erupted from the cobblestones, roots and branches reaching out towards panic-stricken soldiers in gray coats. I watched the transformation take hold, roots bursting through flesh, needles sprouting from open mouths.

"The pine, the spruce, the festive tree,
Shall burst from your anatomy!
Inside your gut, the needles grow,
A forest from the organs sow.
The sap runs red, but not for me!"

Nexxali-Laika sang.

Vladimir Yazdovsky stumbled into view, his face twisted in terror as he saw what his little stray had become. He fell to his knees, clawing at his stomach as bark erupted through his skin.

"You claw the cobblestone in misery,
A Festivus of agony!
The Sleigh expands her reach,
It harvests souls through the breach.
You scream and beg...
But not for me!"

The Christmas trees consumed everything. Buildings. People. The entire city transformed into a forest.

Nexxali-Laika stood in the center of it all, panting, the reindeer antlers catching the light of the dying sun. She let out a sad howl.

"The branches tear your organs free,
I killed the world you stole from me!
My broken heart is cold as stone,
I breathe the void and... know that I…
Belong to her…

You die alone, but not for me!"

She concluded with a half-whisper, eyes filling with tears.
The world around us became still and silent.

157: Bait

Shady once again came apart into hundreds of separate Shadies. 

I watched as the Wendigo-shards tore through the transformed landscape, feasting on the corpses blooming into X-Mass trees.

Nexxali stood beside me. 

Her form rippled and stretched, gradually shedding Laika's appearance. The festive sweater and antlers dissolved into her Frontenachii hexasuit. The canine fur smoothed into sleek ginger. She rolled her shoulders, cracking her neck with a satisfied sound and then wiped her tears.

"Fuck… that was a lot more brutal than I expected. Being a traumatized dog is exhausting," she commented, "Muchly painful despair. Muchly awful betrayal."

"That song was... Pretty intense." I agreed. 

"Had to be," she replied. "Blood pacts are stubborn things. You have to relive the original wound to unravel them. Sing the pain back to its source. It's quite nice to work as a diver-team with Shady and Sage. It took me ages to dismantle my own blood pact.”

We waited in companionable silence as the Shadies finished their work. I had no idea what Shady was even eating here as the city around us looked like a massive graveyard. The hundreds of lanky, monstrous Wendigos tearing remnants of bodies from beneath pine trees only added to overall horror film vibes.

One by one, the dark Wendigos gradually began converging back toward our position. They merged as they approached, until a single, naked, sexy Wendigo stood before us, panting furiously.

Shady looked... better.

The tension in her shoulders had eased. Her silver eyes held steadier, the feverish hunger dimmed, the skull less twitchy. She stretched her blade-claws, then retracted them with a satisfied click.

"Full," she announced, patting her stomach. "Very full. Stuffed, even. I should do this more often.”

"Feeling less murdery toward the fox and doggo?" I asked.

"Marginally," Shady admitted. She flopped down onto the snow beside me and pulled me onto her lap. “Are you planning to add Laika to your ever-expanding harem?”

Nexxali settled on my other side. 

“Shady,” I said with a sigh, looking at her skull-face. “You can read my mind, yes?”

“I can,” she tisked at me. “But I don’t wanna. Why don’t you tell me how you feel instead.”

“I feel like I…” I began. “Like I didn’t ask for any of this. Like what I must do is already way too much mental stress for my person. But… I have to do it. I’m like a hamster in an ever-spinning wheel.”

“You have to collect Omnids and prads girls?" She leered at me with silver eyes.

“I have to save my Earth, Shades,” I said. “Just because we’re freeing Laika from Saint Nikky it doesn’t mean that I’m going to sleep with her or date her. This week, I also helped Kawathra and Keiy, plus many… many others. Do note that they aren’t dating me. I seriously have my fill of girlfriends. You would have been enough if the Frontenachii didn’t drop the fucking moon on us.” I gesticulated at the cloudy sky above us. “I’m helping as many people as I can and my relationship cup overfloweth as it is. Seriously. I don’t see Laika as anything but a prad girl that we need to help, because if we don’t free her we’re all fucked. As fucked as this place is.”

“Well ranted,” Nexxali purred, rubbing her orange head against my right side.

“Fine.” Shady huffed from my left.

We sat in silence for a bit, watching as fat snowflakes drifted down onto the silent, dead city.

"So," I said. "What did we learn?"

"Many things," Nexxali replied. 

“Things that Laika missed, I presume,” I said.

"Yes. This Moscow was a stage," Shady said, resting her dark skull-head on my left shoulder. "A set piece. The citizens here weren't living their lives. They were… convicted prisoners playing roles. Very specific roles with very specific lines. The Red Stars above the Kremlin directed them with Charmchain magic.”

"They followed the System Wizard's narrative," I murmured, “Right?”

"Yes." Nexxali nodded. 

“All good stories need conflict in their heart,” I chewed on Laika’s words. “They need sacrifice."

"The GIGA KHRUSH elevators," Nexxali added. "Laika mentioned 'Relocation to new magical districts.' Nobody came back."

"Because they weren't being relocated," I said, the pieces clicking together. "They were evacuating.”

“The Wizard was moving her real population somewhere else while leaving behind..." Shady began.

"Sacrifices," Nexxali finished. "Prisoners. Traitors. Kindling… to feed the Coniferous Conversion when it arrived. 

I stared out at the pine forest stretching to every horizon. Trees that had once been people. A world transformed into an ornament.

"Saint Nikky thought she was conquering a world," I said. "Harvesting souls for her Workshop. Expanding her festive domain. Wizard Revolution was orchestrating a collapse then... A controlled demolition of her own civilization?"

"That’s what it tastes like, yes. Saint Nikky got an empty husk," Shady said. "A skeleton crew of sacrificial pawns. The real prize slipped away through dimensional gates long before the first dungeon Seed was even planted."

"Laika's whole tragic backstory... Vladimir's betrayal, the capsule, the burning... It was all choreographed. The System Wizard fed the doggo to Saint Nikky as a lure." Nexxali said. "Laika's genuine pain, her genuine hatred... It made her the perfect Herald, perfect bait. Completely committed to the cause. Loyal to her new Saint. And completely unaware that she'd been sold twice over."

“Right,” I agreed, leaning against Shady’s warm, fuzzy chest. “But how is that useful for us?”

“It shows that Saint Nikky can be baited, tricked, manipulated,” Nexxali said. “That she’s not an infallible being. That she operates on Astral currents more than anything.”

“So can we trick her by faking stuff in the Astral?” I wondered.

“I’m not an Astral diver,” the Serval replied. “I can only bend things in dreams with my music, but I’m not a pro at it like the resident Skinwalker. Do come out and tell us what you think, Sanguine. Contribute to the discussion.”

A few snowflakes froze in the air, suddenly forming fox eyes. 

“Haiiii. Yeppeoni. I can trick her, bait Nikky and her Sleigh to do a bigly dum’,” the fox-eye snowflakes replied with Sage’s voice. “From what I learned from my Omnithornian bestie, dungeons are generally not that smart, rely on Sentinels to bring prey inside to chew up or plant expansion Seeds to claim greater domain. This only confirms it.”

Shady jolted slightly, letting out a small growl in the direction of the floating fox-eyes. The wind blew from the newborn pine forest, creating a fox figure sitting in front of us from more flurries.

“That’s good,” I smiled, enjoying Shady’s warm hug. “Prey to chew up? Could we pretend to be prey, go inside the Sleign, fuck it up from within with a nuke or something?”

“What, like, Independence Day style?” the ghostly snowflake fox asked, “you want to nuke a bazillion kobolds that are livin’ there accordion’ to Laika?”

“Okay, fine, I am not that genocidal,” I chortled, “but how about an incursion into the Sleigh to understand and to sabotage it from within?”

“Das’ certainly possible,” Sage agreed. “We’d have to bamboozle the Sleigh tho’. I don’t think it accepts undigested prey.” The floating snowflake fox pointed a paw at a Shady-chewed corpse of a Soviet man in a gray coat at the base of the nearest pine tree. “Basically, we’d have to get converted. On purpose.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Shady growled. “Nobody’s murdering and converting my Ashy.”

“Not all of him,” the fox suggested. “Maybe just half of him?”

“That would leave him defenceless,” Nexxali pointed out. “Ripe for any Charmchainer to manipulate or for a Scrut to sniff.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I kind of need to be in two places at once as it is.”

“Tru, tru,” Sage mused. “Mayhaps you could chop him up some more, Shades? Make a third A-man?”

“I’m not chopping shit,” Shady rebutted. “Frig off. I… am not even entirely sure how I did it to begin with, I was a dumb kid when I tore his soul in half.”

“Just an idea,” the snow-drift fox shrugged. “Don’t need ta roll ya barrel on me, Wendigaw Kong.”

“Why do you talk like that?” Shady’s tail whipped across the ghostly fox, momentarily disrupting the cohesiveness of Sage’s avatar.

“Like wat?” the snowflakes reformed back into a fox-ghost sitting in front of us.

“Like that,” Shady said. “It’s like you’re chewing up a quarter of your words. It bothers me on a personal level.”

“Sorrikins princess.” The fox shrugged. “Is just how I roll. It's not that I'm dumb or lazy with my words. The Truth is that I'm protecting myself from memetics."

"Particular speech patterns protect you from… Memetics?" I asked.

"Uh-huh. You ever notice how the Frontenachii and their prads talk?" Sage asked. "The way they say 'kobold' and 'knobfold'? The way certain phrases keep popping up in their speech patterns like verbal tics?"

“Yes.” I said. “Are those not normal memetics?”

"Naw. Those words are memetic anchors," Sage continued. "Linguistic hooks that burrow into your psyche and align your thinking with Omnithornian conceptual frameworks. Every time an Omnid says 'kobold' to describe a servant, they're reinforcing the social hierarchy in their own mind, the magic of social rulershippery. The words carry weight, carry meaning, carry invisible infection. There’s magic in speech.”

"So you deliberately mangle your speech?" I said.

"Bingo, A-man." The snow-fox grinned with ice crystal flurries. "I've got a few hundred foxes constantly skewering my mental patterns, slanting my vocabulary, scraping memetics off, scrambling any infectious linguistic structures before they can take root. It often makes me sound like a valley girl who huffed too much paint thinner, but it keeps me… sparkly-clean.”

"Clean from what?" Shady asked.

"From getting my brain hijacked by conceptual parasites," Sage replied. "Which is a bigly problem for deep Astral divers like me. You go deep enough, you brush against things that want to live in your head. Things that spread through language and thought patterns. The Sleigh warship, for example, is a massive memetic infection engine wrapped in festive packaging. Moving by it in the Astral contaminates edges of thoughts with festivus-adjacent conceptoids. Very brrrrrr. Very do not want.”

“I… don’t have this problem,” Shady said.

“You are a Wendigo, bruh,” Sage pointed out. “You eat that shit for breakfast. You are aligned with Void, a natural void predator. Wendigos can gradually, naturally recover from all sorts of damage, including memetic infections.”

“Aren’t Skinwalkers supposed to eat souls?” Shady arched a dark eyebrow. “What the fuck kind of jank Skinwalker are you?”

“The kind that collects very particular souls for very particular reasons,” Sage’s snowflake avatar huffed. “I do not digest souls nor conceptoids. I either collect or avoid them.”

“You’re fucked in the head is what you’re saying?” Shady grinned.

“Yes,” Sage said. “I’m fucked in the head. As a Skinwalker I’m a deviation. I REALLY, really don’t want to get on the soul-chewing and soul-digesting bus because once you get on it there’s no way off. Skinwalkers who don’t control themselves get addicted to eating souls… become dangerous monsters. From what my bestie Vespera told me, there was a Skinwalker incursion in Skyfall Academy recently, right? An Outsider… Skinwalker who almost devoured the soul of Justice Nova’s daughter?” 

“Yeah.” Shady said thoughtfully. “The Stabalists arrested him. Took him to the yellow house in null-handcuffs. Happened a few days before I peaced out from Skyfall.”

“Exactly,” Sage said. “I don’t want to turn into an Outsider. I keep my skulk conceptually squeaky clean.”

Nexxali made a thoughtful noise, choosing not to butt into the Wendigo-Skinwalker discussion. She reached out and plucked a loose pine branch with a small, cracked ornament, bringing it to her nose. She inhaled deeply, whiskers twitching.

"The bloom smells different from the cafe locale," she observed. "The cafe had this… gross entropic edge to it. Decay, flaws, cracks hidden under the surface. This..." She gestured at the converted forest around us. "This smells clean. Fresh… Healthy."

"Lemme sniff." Shady snatched the branch and took her own deep breath through her dark dog-ish skull-nostrils. "Huh. Yeah. The pine is weirdly perfect. Like someone took the concept of 'Christmas tree' and removed all the messy… imperfections."

The snow-fox avatar drifted closer, fox-nose twitching at the branch. "Syntropic alignment," Sage confirmed. "The Coniferous Conversion takes entropic, dying matter and forces it into a stable, self-reinforcing pattern."

"The Sleigh eats entropy?" I guessed. "It converts chaotic, magic-fucked, dying worlds into orderly, crystallized husks?”

Shady sniffed the branch again. “Not husks. Syntropic life. This forest is alive… clean. Incredibly so.”

“Which means what?” I asked.

"Think about it," Sage’s snow-avatar said. "Laika and Comet said their worlds were basically drowning in entropy. Gray Echos. Magic failing. People becoming husks. Conceptoids infesting everything. Gates opening on their own. Classic signs of a dimension approaching Systemfall."

"And Saint Nikky swooped in… was tricked into harvesting the dying world," I said.

"Except Revolution already evacuated everyone who mattered to her," Nexxali added. "She left behind her the kindling and possibly her Yankee enemies too. She… She let the Sleigh do the dirty work of… cleaning up a worldwide entropic infection!”

"Heh. The local System Wizard used a dungeon as a janitor," Shady chortled. "Fed it the rotting corpse of her own world to keep the rot from spreading. Clever beerch. I guess that's one way to restart things without wasting mana.”

"More than clever," Sage said. "She tricked Saint Nikky into thinking she'd won a prize, when really Nikky just did Revolution's housekeeping for free. Ate all the entropy, converted all the magic chaos into nice orderly festive decorations, and probably has no idea she got played."

“So what’s the fate of this world?” I wondered, looking at the forest-covered Red Square.

“The trees are alive but the decorations aren’t,” Sage said. “The Festivus infection Seeds exist in the decorations and presents below the trees. Ah! I see. It’s all very uniform, very… defenceless-looking to a single, self-propagating spell. Once the decorations rot, and they will absolutely rot… if wobbled correctly in the Astral, you get a fresh, clean… linear-ish world to… recolonize! Christ, that’s devious as fuck!”

“USSRA will rise again through the GIGA KHRUS elevators?” I guessed.

“Presumably,” Sage shrugged. “S’ what I would do if I had no other options left. N’ways, we done unravelling the fate of this no-longer doomed Earth, ya?”

Nexxali and Shady nodded.

“Down we go then,” Sage declared and the Red Square wobbled, detonating, coming apart into falling stars.

158: Astral Gifts

I felt my cheeks heat up. Sheeet. A cute cosplayer was flirting with me. This never happened. Usually, I just awkwardly shuffled past booths, too shy about making IRL friends to make eye contact.

"I... uh..." I let out eloquently.

“A soul seems like a costly price for a photograph of you,” Laika commented, pulling me back defensively.

"It’s a joke, bruh. Oh! Is that a doggo PLUSHIE? Did HE buy you a PLUSHIE?" The cubehead girl pointed at me accusingly.

"Yes?" I said.

"ADORABLE! Ten out of ten. Full marks. A plus plus!" She pumped her fist. "You have PASSED the first test!"

"There's a test?" I asked.

"There's ALWAYS a test! Life is a series of tests! This one you passed by being nice to a stranger! Most people fail that one!"

I wasn't sure how to respond to her chattering. The cube headed vendor was a lot. 

Capital L Lot.

"I'm... glad I passed?" I ventured.

"You should be! The reward is Eternal Fwen-ship!" She reached under the table and produced a paper crown, sliding it across the table towards me. It was made from bright orange construction paper, covered in glitter, with "MY HERO" written on it in colorful markers. Over a hundred fox stickers decorated the edges. "Here! This is for you! I made it myself as a reward for the cutest cosplayah."

"I am absolutely wearing that." I chortled.

"You will ABSOLUTELY... wait, you said yes?"

"Yeah. It looks stupid. I want it."

The cube-head made a sound like a deflating balloon. "You're not supposed to... you're supposed to RESIST and then I CONVINCE you and there's a whole THING… I’ve planned. A THING! Stop derailing my script, bro."

"Nope." I took the crown and put it on. “Derailing scripts is fun.” It sat lopsidedly on my head.

When did I get this good at derailing scripts? Maybe Laika’s company had something to do with being more brave than usual.

"I... okay! This works too! You’re now the regalest sun-knight of all!” The cosplayer declared, spreading her arms wide. “A glowing beacon of hope!"

Laika giggled softly. I turned to look at her and she quickly covered her mouth with her hands, as if embarrassed.

"You look silly," she said through her fingers.

"I look MAGNIFICENT," I corrected. "Magnificently silly. There's a difference."

She giggled again. Louder this time. Her tail began wagging like helicopter blades.

The cubehead cosplayer leaned across the table. "See? SEE?! This is what today is all about! LAUGHTER! Merriment! Good feels!”

"You're… very intense," Laika observed.

"Thank you! I cultivate intensity like a garden! I water it with excessive enthusiasm and fertilize it with Red Bull!"

"That seems unhealthy," I said, observing the selfie garden on the display wall behind her.

"It is unhealthy! Alas, my passionnnnn has no limits! Also, I’m Sage… if you forgot." Sage reached under the table again and produced two more items. A bracelet made of braided orange and silver thread with a small fox charm dangling from it, which she handed to me. And a small, star-shaped pendant on a simple leather cord, which she offered to Laika. "Gifts! From my emporium! For my favorite customers!"

"We haven't bought anything," I pointed out. “I don’t think that we qualify as customers.”

"Irrelevant! I am giving these to you because I wanna! This is about our cosmic connection!"

Laika took the pendant carefully, examining it with wide, brown eyes. The star with a fox-eye was carved from some kind of pale wood. "It's… Beautiful. Thank you.”

"It's for YOU," the vendor said, "It'll remind you that you're not alone. That even when things seem dark and cold and scary, there are people who care about you!"

The words hung in the air, suddenly heavy with unexpected weight to them.

Laika's eyes glistened. She clutched the pendant to her chest, right next to the stuffed dog.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you… I… It’s nice. This place is nice. I really appreciate this dream… Lady fox. Is he… really… like this? This isn’t a trick right? Mr. Bond… Ash isn’t… He’s been acting like he just met me two hours ago.”

“I did say that things are wobbly,” the cube-head cosplayer replied. “I wobbled him sideways, backwards to this day about a year ago. This is a day from his and my life, a slice of it. I wanted to show you what he’s really like in real life, without masks, without worries. So, how do you judge our Alpha?”

“He’s… nice,” Laika said. “Kind… sweet.”

I stared at them both. 

Did they know each other? Was this some kind of prank? A coded conversation? I had no idea what they were talking about. Maybe they were meme-ing some obscure anime I’ve never seen?

"Group hug!" Sage announced, vaulting over the table with unexpected agility for a person wearing a cardboard cube on their head. "Mandatory hug time! Teya! Quit loafing back there and join us!”

I was suddenly engulfed in a tight embrace. Laika was pulled in too, pressed between me and the overly-enthusiastic merchant of selfies.

Laika's arms wrapped hesitantly around us both. Her grip was tentative at first, then tightened. Her tail wagged against my leg.

Something about the moment felt important. I couldn't explain why.  

Fox... Laika called Sage… Lady fox? 

Up close Laika’s costume suddenly looked and smelled far too realistic. As if she was a genuine dog-person and not a cosplayer. 

Teya? Who’s Teya?

A dark haired, tall, violet-eyed girl stepped out from the tent innards and slowly approached us. “Hi.”

She was wearing a black “PROPERTY OF FOX” shirt with the drawn fox supporting her chest making a silly face. I felt like I knew her and also didn’t. My mind wobbled further sideways.

"You smell lost, Ash," the violet-eyed girl said softly.

"I'm... at a convention," I said slowly. "How lost can I be?"

"Very," Sage laughed. "Very, very lost. Lost in time! Lost in space! Lost in the sauce!"

“What.”

"She means philosophically," the violet-eyed girl clarified. "Also literally… You're about a year behind where you should be."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I admitted.

"Good!" Sage clapped her gloved hands together. "Excellent! The wobble is holding! Teya, how's he look to you?"

"Younger," the girl called Teya said. "Softer around the edges. Fewer worry lines.”

“How many worry lines should I have?” I asked.

“Ignore the dragon! She speaks in riddles!" Sage giggled, elbowing Teya.

"Dragon?" I looked at the violet-eyed girl more closely. Her eyes seemed to glow from within ever so slightly.

“When’s he going to be… fully himself?” Teya asked.

“Soonish.” Sage shrugged. “He’s kind of thick. Linear-thick. Susceptible to magical shifts when divided. All of this says it’s August of 2024, so that’s what he thinks.”

“What?” I asked. “If it’s not 2024 what is it then?”

"Twenty twenty five!” Sage bobbed.

“Riiiight,” I said.

“What are we doing now then?” Teya wondered.

“Do you two wish to roam the con some more?” Sage asked.

"We've been walking for hours," I said. "My feet are staging a revolution."

"Feet revolutions are valid," Sage agreed. "Rest is important. Self-care is important. Taking a breather with new friends is most important. Why don’t we head outside for nice noms?”

“Don’t you have to sell stuff?” I asked.

“Eh.” She shrugged and covered everything on her table with a black cloth painted with gold fox eyes. “Friendshippery is more important. Thursdays are terrible for sales anyways.”

“Aight,” I said. 

I took a step from Sage’s booth and reality suddenly wobbled. 

No, it was me that wobbled. 

Wobbled and then snapped together catastrophically, nearly making me trip over my own feet. The frontend and backend of my mind collided back together, rejoined as one.

Shady and Nexali flashed into existence at my sides as their human shaped versions. Laika yelped, letting go of my hand.

“Ah,” Sage said. “And we’re all together. Subarashi!”

I looked at her. “You… tricked me.”

“Nu-huh. You tricked yourself, bruh,” Sage huffed from under her cube-head cosplay. “You wanted to experience today, with new friends at your side. You wanted it so bad your linear half-soul convinced your brain that you were really in twenty twenty four.”

“I…” I opened my mouth and closed it. 

She was right. I did want to attend this convention with… a friend or two, without having to worry about alien invasions.

I glanced at Laika. My brain no longer processed her as a cosplayer. She was a pradavarian dog, an actual alien at a convention.

Laika for her part looked withdrawn, clearly scared of Shady and Nexxali. Mostly Shady. Shady had that effect even when not looking like a Wendigo.

“Laika,” Shady said.

“Y-yes?” The prad dog swallowed.

“If I, uhm,” Shady let out, lowering and softening her voice. “If I scared you earlier, I’m sorry. I tend to do that when I’m… hungry. It’s… my thing. Just Wendigo things, I suppose.”

She offered the dog-girl her pale, lanky hand. “Friends?”

“F-frieds,” Laika reached out and shook the human-Wendigo’s hand with her paw. “A-are you not hungry anymore then?”

“Nah,” Shady replied with a toothy smirk. “I ate all of your nightmares.”

“Yep,” Nexxali agreed jovially. “They're all dead.”

Laika gulped. “So then…”

“You won’t dream of your worst day anymore,” Sage said. “You’re free.”

“Free?” Laika repeated with a concerned expression. “Really? I’m… free?”

“Uh-huh,” Sage nodded with her cardboard box head. “Free to do whatever you want to when you wake up. If you want to, say, walk away… from your mission, come down to Earth, meet us in the real… you’d be able to do that without your blood catching fire.”

“My mission?” Laika looked contemplative. “I… don't remember any missions.”

“Like Ash, you currently don't remember things that you REALLY don't want to think about,” Sage said. “This is a nice dream without dire stress. When you wake up you're going to be fully yourself again though.”

“And the… toy and pendant?” Laika looked at her gifts with a sad expression, “will they… be gone?”

“No,” Sage said, “They won't.”

“What?” Laika muttered. “How can they possibly exist outside of a dream?”

“Teya can stabilize them, suspend their echoes in the astral with me, they'll exist as ghostly objects. Visible to you alone.” Sage revealed. “When we meet I’ll give them to you as real defensive artifacts.”

“Uhrm,” Galateya let out. “I’ve never done that. But I can try.”

“Remember, these aren't binding curses, nor pacts, nor chains, they're gifts, reminders that we are out there, waiting for you,” Sage added softly. 

"How do I... how do I find you?" Laika asked. "When I wake up?"

I considered telling Laika the address of the pub in Seattle currently being secured by Wattica and Kawathra’s Corpse Seeker.

"The pendant," Sage said before I opened my mouth. "It'll show you the way, project a line to follow."

"Why can't you just tell me?" Laika asked.

"Because the devious bastards who bound you with pact chains might stop you from going to a specific place," Sage explained. "They'll be watching when you wake up. The pendant is safer as we can change the meeting spot."

Laika nodded.

Sage turned to Galateya. "T-buns, work your magic. The doggo might wake up soon, so we might as well get to it faster.”

Galateya stepped to the shy-looking dog girl. She reached out and gently touched the star pendant dangling from Laika's paw.

"I've never stabilized dream objects deliberately before," Teya admitted. 

“You froze yo gun’s contract.” Sage grinned. “You got it. I know you can do this.”

“I froze her accidentally,” Galteya pursed her lips.

"Don’t matter. You’ve got a skill from it, no? Use it. Think of it like... freezing a moment, suspendin' an idea in time,” Sage encouraged, “makin' it permanent."

Galateya closed her eyes. Frost began to spread from her fingertips, coating the wooden star in sparkling crystalline patterns. The temperature around us dropped several degrees. Her human disguise flickered, radiant scales briefly visible along her neck and hands. 

Laika shuddered, staring at the dragon girl and the pendant with wide eyes.

"Focus on the emotional weight," Sage coached, fox-eyes appearing in rings around them both. "The pendant isn't mere wood and leather. It's a promise. It's hope, a gift for Laika with deeper meaning. Freeze the concept, Teya, make it persist way longer than it should. I'm guiding, directing you, no fret."

Galateya's brow furrowed in concentration, eyes igniting brilliant violet. The frost spread, then seemed to sink into the pendant itself. The wood began to glow faintly, a soft silver-blue light pulsing from within.

"Is it working?" Laika whispered.

"Keep going," Sage urged. "The plushie too. Both gifts need to be anchored."

Galateya reached for the stuffed dog in Laika's other arm. 

"Ah, ah! I can feel it," Teya’s voice came out slightly strained. "They're… solidifying!"

"Excellente," Sage said. "Now seal it. Make it permanent."

Galateya exhaled sharply. A wave of cold then warm pulsed outward.

The glow around both objects intensified. A radiant rainbow detonated from Galateya dancing across the convention hall, momentarily suspending the nerdy and cosplayer crowds as if reality was put on pause, making the halogen lights above us flicker.

"Phew. It’s done," Teya announced, opening her eyes with a soft smile. "I think.”

“Yep.” Sage nodded, a ring of fox eyes flickering above her cube-head. “They should persist when she wakes. Visible only to Laika now, existing in the space between dreaming and waking."

Laika sniffed the plushie and pulled the pendant onto her neck. “It… smells more real.” 

"Because they are real," Sage confirmed. "As real as anything can be in the Astral ‘nways.”

"Thank you," Laika said. She looked at each of us in turn. "All of you. I still… don't... I don't understand why you're being so kind to me."

"Because you deserve kindness," I said. "Everyone does, especially if they’re hurting. Right Shades?” I glanced at the haughty looking, tall blonde.

“Right,” Shady made a face and then grinned and messed up my hair. "Don’t make me sound too sappy, Ashy. My reputation as a terrifying nightmare is at stake here."

"You literally just apologized to her, babe," Nexxali pointed out.

"Temporary weakness. Won't happen again."

"Sure, Princess."

"Shut up, cat."

Laika giggled at their banter.