Somebody Stop Them. Chapter 52: Dinner

After a flurry of quick illusionary adjustments, we emerged from room 818 as a group of six male Omnids. Cinder, back in her bulky masculine form, took the lead, her gait deliberately swaggering as we headed back towards the elevator.

Vespera, also disguised as a broad-shouldered Thunderlander, bounced at my side, occasionally sending out controlled sparks that crackled against the silver walls scanning the wards. Lilith and Magdaline adopted more stoic, reserved male personas, while Ioan simply shrunk further into his robes, making himself as inconspicuous as possible. I, in my fox form reinforced with fluffy cosplay bits and makeup from my bag, marched merrily beside Vee, looking around.

In about a minute of observation, I noticed that the silver-white fox was following us across a multitude of paintings. I elbowed Vespera and she too squinted at the fox.

Argentiss dove behind a rock, her ears flickering behind it cutely.

“We can still see ya ears,” Vee commented with a chortle.

The fox made a huffing noise and vanished completely behind the rock.

We passed by the Keeper knight without issues, him nodding at us.

“Ugh,” Cinder commented. “Running outta mana. Shifting this many people is hard.”

Her masculine illusion flickered, the edges of her form shimmering and wavering, as did the rest of our disguises.

“Poor Ci needs a steak nom to refuel,” Vespera chuckled, her own male illusion dissolving, revealing her curvy frame again. She grabbed onto my elbow with a smile.

Cinder glared at her, but didn’t retort, simply shaking her head, her silver feathers slightly ruffled. “Let’s just… get to dinner.”

We descended in the crystalline elevator, emerging into the bustling ground floor corridors and then emerged into the Grand Refectory. 

The dining hall was even more impressive than the Central Hall, a vast, high-ceilinged space echoing with the clatter of cutlery and the murmur of a hundred conversations. Hexagon-shaped tables stood across the hall, each adorned with an Ignix Kitlix lantern, some already laden with steaming platters of food. Banners of the five Houses hung from the rafters, their colors vibrant against the stone walls. 

The Refectory was segregated by House. Silverfox tables were towards the right, a sea of silver and argent robes filling the designated section. To the left, Pyroclast roared in crimson and gold, their section noticeably louder and more boisterous. Further down, Hexacomb hummed in their gold and black, Wormwood’s green and brown section was quieter, more contemplative, and at the very far end, in the dimmest corner of the hall, sat Gorefield in their muted blood-red and blacks.

My eyes immediately scanned the Gorefield tables, searching for that familiar glacial blue shimmer. And there she was. Katherine sat alone at a hexagonal table, her blue scales catching the light, her posture rigid, almost defensive. She was sketching again, her head bent over a large leather-bound book, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings.

“Um, Silverfox section is over there,” Vespera gestured towards the tables of our house, but I was already moving, my feet carrying me and her towards the Gorefield section before she could finish her sentence.

“Alex, wait!” Cinder called out, but I was already weaving through the tables, ignoring the curious glances and muttered whispers that followed in my wake.

Katherine didn’t look up as I approached, engrossed in her art. I stopped in front of her hexagon table. 

“Katherine?” I said.

Her head snapped up, her green eyes widening slightly, then narrowing with a weary, almost guarded expression. She took in our group trailing behind me like colorful, slightly confused ducklings. Her gaze flickered over each of my companions, lingering for a moment on Ioan before returning to me.

“Can I… help you?” she asked, her voice cool, polite, but distant.

“It’s me, Alex,” I said.

“Alex?”

“Alexander Stratos-Kilborne. We… we know each other. Well, knew each other.”

Her brow furrowed further. “I don’t think so,” she replied, her voice flat. “I don’t recall meeting you before, Mystagogue… Stratos-Kilborne.” She emphasized my name with a slight inflection, as if it were a foreign word.

“Ah,” I said. “Anyways, we were friends. Before the Celestorm.”

Her gaze sharpened. “Before the Celestorm?” she repeated, her voice laced with skepticism. 

I nodded with a smile.

“Jan, is this your attempt at Silverfox trickery or something?” Katherine asked her brother. “Cus I heard you have to fuck with someone to get into your tower or something.”

“Nah,” Io shook his head. “Not a trick. All of these guys knew you before the Celestorm rearranged reality. Haven’t you read about the worldwide shift on the Net?”

“Ain’t got time for news,” Katherine said. “Go bug someone else, I’m busy.”

I ignored her words and sat next to her. “Nah.”

Katherine made a deep rumbling noise. 

“You’re sitting alone,” I said. “Don't you want company?”

“I am sitting as I prefer,” she fired back. “Please piss off before…”

I waved my friends on encouragingly. 

Io sat beside Katherine. The others followed, filling the hexagonal table. Vespera stole a chair from another empty table and squeezed herself beside me. We were a spot of bright, clashing silver amidst the darkness of the Gorefield. Other Gorefield house Mystagogues were giving us bothered looks.

I slipped my phone over to Katherine. “Look, Kat, this is us delving on Arx as a team. This is Katsburg, the city I made for you.”

Katherine squinted at the slideshow of us on Arx. “Hrm? Did you AI-generate these to mess with me? Amusing. Now buzz off.”

I sighed. Kat was a stubborn loner before the shift and now she wasn’t any better off personality-wise.

“Where do you think that dress you’re wearing came from?” I asked her. 

"My parents got it for me." Katherine said, her tone dismissive.

"Did they?" I asked, leaning closer.  "Did you actually talk to them? Or did you just find it in your room?"

She paused, her gaze flickering away from me for a moment, considering.

"I… found it in my room," she admitted, her voice sounding a little less sure now. 

"And you think your parents," I pressed on. "Could afford a dress like this?" I gestured to the intricate beast core studs that shimmered within the dark leather fabric. "An outfit that’s practically glowing with beast cores?"

Katherine frowned. She glanced down at the dress, really looking at it this time, as if seeing it for the first time. She ran her fingers over the embedded gemstone spheres, her touch lingering on the smooth, cool surfaces. The silence stretched, filled only with the surrounding Refectory din.

"They… they work hard," she finally said, still trying to justify her line of logic. "Maybe… maybe they got a bonus? Or… saved up?"

"Katherine, darlin’, look at this thing. This ain't no 'bonus' dress. This is top-tier artificery. We're talking Arx leather, studded with like twenty million O-bux worth of beast cores. This dress screams 'mind-meltingly expensive', not 'saved-up'." Vespera pointed out.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Katherine lifted her head, her green eyes locking onto mine again. This time, the guardedness was still there, but something else had crept in, a flicker of… doubt? Confusion? Maybe, just maybe, a nascent spark of recognition. She opened her mouth and closed it again.

“Our parents wouldn’t be able to afford an outfit like that for you, Kat,” Io commented. “You know that, right?”

“Fine,” Katherine huffed. “I don’t know where it came from. If this is really twenty million o-bux, why the fuck would you spend that much on me? What are you, my secret admirer or something?”

“Nah,” I said. “Already got a Quetzi and Thunder waifu. I got it for you because we’re besties.”

“Besties?” She chewed on the word as if it was a foreign object. “Doubtful.”

“You taught me how to dive into the deep,” I said, nodding towards her sketchbook. “Remember? Echoes? Centipede-people?”

Katherine’s green eyes flickered down at the open sketchbook in her lap. She was sketching a stylized centipede-like creature with multiple eyes and sharp claws. She snapped the sketchbook closed and squinted at me with a look of deep suspicion.

Just then, a Kitsune waitress approached our table. “Good Evening, Mystagogues,” she said with a polite bow, her blue eyes flickering over our mismatched group. “Here are your menus. What would you prefer for drinks?”

Everyone ordered various herbal teas and mana-wine. 

“You do know that this is the Gorefield House section, right? You’re Silverfoxes,” Katherine bluntly pointed out as the waitress departed. “You’re supposed to be at the other end of the hall.”

“Nobody said it’s a crime to eat at a Gorefield table,” I shrugged, leaning back in my chair. “Besides, we’re here with our friend.”

Katherine snorted. “Friend. Right.”

Suddenly, a tall figure approached our table. I looked up. It was a wolf-man upperclassman with piercing amber eyes, and a confident, almost predatory air. He wore Gorefield robes, but his bearing was far more… assertive than most of the practical-minded Gorefield students I’d observed around us so far.

He stopped beside Cinder, a wide, toothy smile spreading across his lupine features. “Songbird! Fancy meeting you here, so far from the silver den. Did you come here to see me?” His voice was deep, smooth, almost… too smooth, like polished obsidian. His figure began melting toward an excessively handsome human.

“Eh?” Cinder turned towards the wolf-man. Her silver feathers ruffled slightly. 

“Uxtish?” she said, her voice a little hesitant.

“The one and only,” the wolf-man chuckled with a bow. “Scion Uxtish of the House of Legon, at your service.”

There was something unnervingly familiar about his voice, about his smile. He wasn’t in Yulia’s slideshow. I breathed in deep, trying to determine whether Uxtish was my enemy on pre-shift Earth.

Something pricked at my senses, a faint, unsettling resonance that tugged at the edges of my Scrutimancy. I focused, inhaling deeply, reaching out with my Astral senses, and then… recognition slammed into me like a physical blow.

Those eyes… that smile… that predatory charm… the Phase-shift. 

A Skinwalker.

I tried very hard to stay calm even though I was freaking out on the inside, my heart hammering into the stratosphere. An electric zap rushed up my hand.

[What’s going on?] Vespera’s mental static-voice asked.

[Enemy,] I thought back through the Resonance between us. [Dangerous enemy.]

“No, I didn’t come here to see you, Ux,” Cinder said. “I… ummm…”

Uxtish, oblivious to the silent alarm bells ringing in my head, turned his charming smile to Cinder, his amber eyes gleaming with what could pass as affection, but to me, screamed calculation. “You know, I didn’t take you for a fox,” the Skinwalker said. “Thought you’d go to the dragon house or join me here.”

“Cinder bristled, her silver feathers ruffling defensively. “I can eat wherever I damn well please, Ux,” she retorted, her voice sharper than intended. “And these are my… friends.” She emphasized the word ‘friends’ with a pointed glance at our mismatched group, a possessive edge creeping into her tone.

“Friends, of course,” Uxtish chuckled, his smile widening, not quite reaching his eyes. He fixed his amber gaze on me, a slow, deliberate scan that felt like a physical probe. “And who is this… charmingly diminutive creature?” His gaze lingered on my fox-makeup face, a flicker of something unreadable in his amber depths. 

“My kobold,” Cinder replied.

“A new… acquisition, Songbird? A rather… unimpressive specimen, even for a pet.”

My hackles rose. I slammed my fight or flight instinct down. The monster didn't recognize me under my makeup. Or maybe he did and wasn't showing it.

“Pleased to meet you, Scion Uxtish,” I said. “I am… Cinder’s… kobold servant.”

Uxtish’s smile tightened, a subtle shift that only I, attuned to the nuances of his predatory charm, could detect. “Servant, is it?” He tilted his head, his amber eyes narrowing slightly, still fixed on me.

“Yes. He’s mine,” Cinder interjected, her voice hardening, a protective growl rumbling in her chest. She placed a possessive clawed hand on my shoulder, sending a reassuring warmth through me. “Don’t you worry about my ‘bold’, Uxtish. He’s perfectly… trained.” Her blue eyes flashed a warning at the wolf-man.

“Are you a well trained, obedient ‘bold? Why don’t you fetch me a mana wine and clear this seat for me?”

“Screw off,” Vespera said. “He ain’t your ‘bold to boss, ya fleshknob. Also, I’ma give you fifteen seconds to lay off the pretty-face Phase-Shift, you’re startin’ to piss me off. Eleven.”

Her hand rose in the air, pointed at Uxtish, wings spreading wide and humming with deep Electrofractal charge building up.

“Such impoliteness,” Uxtish shook his head. “You do realise if you attack me at dinner you’ll be expelled from the hall, yes?”

“Like I give a shit,” Vespera said. “We can always order takeout from the town. ‘Sides, you’re using hostile mental magic on us. Trying to adjust your appearance to our preferences to manipulate us is just as magically potent as me frying your ass with a lightning bolt. Seven. Six.”

Uxtish stepped back, his body wolfing up, the pretty human face dissolving. 

“Such a temper, Thunderbird. It’s… almost endearing. But entirely unnecessary. I was merely testing the… dynamic here. Observing the hierarchy.” His eyes flashed to Cinder. “Are you not in charge of this group, Songbird?”

“I am,” Cinder said with a weary sigh. “Vee, please don’t zap my fiance.”

“I’ll zap whomever I wanna,” Vespera huffed, not lowering her sparking hand. “I don’t trust this Fleshface in the slightest. One wrong move, fleshfold, and you’ll be eating lightning for dessert.”

Uxtish chuckled again, a low, rumbling sound that didn’t quite reach his amber eyes. “Duly noted, Thunderbird. I wouldn’t dream of crossing you… or my darling Songbird.” He turned his attention back to the Quetzalcoatl, his smile widening again, the predatory charm turned up a notch. “Are you really slumming it with the Gorefield crowd? Don’t tell me you’ve developed a sudden appreciation for… dark practicality?” He gestured dismissively at the muted colors of the Gorefield robes around us.

Cinder shifted uncomfortably, her silver feathers bristling slightly. “We’re… just visiting,” she said, her voice a little strained.

“How… touching. Gorefield and Silverfox, fraternizing. Truly, the Celestorm has wrought wondrous changes,” Uxtish laughed.

“Just leave us alone, Uxtish,” Cinder said, her voice losing its forced politeness, hardening into a growl. “We’re eating. We can talk on Omnigram and hang out… later.”

“Of course, of course,” Uxtish raised his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “Wouldn’t dream of interrupting your… inter-house bonding session. Just wanted to check in on my fiery fiancee, make sure you haven’t forgotten about me in your rush to join the silver den.” He winked at Cinder, then his amber eyes flicked over our group one last time, lingering on me for a moment longer before he straightened up, his smile still fixed in place. “Enjoy your… meal. And do try to stay out of trouble, Songbird.” 

With a final, almost mocking bow, Uxtish turned and strode away, disappearing into the Gorefield section, leaving a palpable tension hanging in the air.

“What the shit, Vee?” Cinder growled at Vespera. “Can you not go five minutes without starting a fight?”

“That bone-knob is a creepshow! He smells like… like… fake charm and bad intentions. And Phase-Shift pheromones, ugh. I felt like I was drowning in a bucket of oily charm-juice,” Vespera growled. “How can you stand him?”

“Same way I can stand you,” Cinder crossed her arms. “You’re both at my tolerance threshold.” 

Vespera huffed. “Please. You like me. And you tolerate him because… reasons I will never understand.” She glared in the direction Uxtish had gone. 

Cinder’s face, already flushed from the encounter, darkened further. “Look, he’s my arranged Prima. It’s… family stuff and therefore none of your business.” She snapped, her voice sharper than necessary. 

Mags, who had been silently observing the exchange with wide red eyes, finally spoke. “Arranged… like a sacrifice?” Her gaze flicked between Cinder and the direction Uxtish disappeared, as if she could see something we couldn't. “Or a… binding?”

Cinder flinched. “Shut it, Mags,” Cinder hissed, her voice losing some of its bluster. “You and your… your scrutiny is not needed here.”

“I think that this is exactly where it's needed,” Mags said coldly. “He’s bad news, Ci. Very, very, bad news. Gorefield is a house of Omnids aligned with darkness. And he’s… incredibly dark. Murderously… dark. Stab you with a bone knife in the heart dark.”

Cinder shuddered. “Stop that!”

“Did you knobs come here just to insult my house?” Katherine growled.

“Nah,” I said. “You’re the good kind of dark. Uxtish is a bad kind of dark.”

“You don’t know me,” Katherine said. “I’m not a good person.”

“I’m going to have to disagree with this statement,” I said.

“And you’re basing this… expert assessment on what? Your vast experience with bad kinds of dark?” Katherine asked.

“I’m not alone here in my ability to sense the overwritten past. Magdaline is a Scut too,” I waved a hand towards the shark-girl who was still radiating an aura of unease. “She can smell dangerous individuals.”

Magdaline nodded. “His scent is… wrong. Tainted. It’s not just… Gorefield darkness. It’s something else. Something… ancient and hungry.”

Cinder shivered, despite herself. “Maybe he’s a bit… intense. But he’s… he’s connected. Important. Legon family and Clan are… well off.” She trailed off. 

“Connected to stabbing you in the heart,” Magdaline said.

“Mags, seriously, stop it. You’re freaking me out,” Cinder growled.

“You should be freaked out,” Magdaline said. “It is my assessment as a Scut that you should avoid that Omnid.”

“I can’t freaking avoid him!” Cinder slammed her fist into the table. “We’re soul-bonded. He’s my fiance! I… I can manage him, okay? I’m a dragon! I just have to get stronger, that’s all.”

“A Psychopomp can carve out a soul bond,” Vespera offered.

“This bond doesn’t smell like it can be… carved away easily,” Magdaline shook her head. “And I don’t think that you’ll be able to control Uxtish, Ci. He smells… dangerously high level.”

The waitress arrived with our drinks. Cinder grabbed a bottle of mana-restoring wine and chugged half of it, glaring at us.

“There you are!” A deep voice boomed. “I was looking for you!”

“Effin Abyss,” All of Vespera’s feathers turned back. “Knobs are really askin’ for a zappin’ today!”

I turned my head, noticing a rotund frogman in gold and red robes staring down at us. He was flanked by a lanky, antlered Wendigo and a bulky, muscular Lagarfljót Worm.

“The fuck you want, Zheng?” Vespera growled. 

“Vee, Vee, my fiery blossom! There you are, hiding amidst the… gloom of Gorefield? Are you lost, my little thundercloud? Surely, you know Pyroclast tables offer far more… invigorating company,” Zheng boomed, his voice echoing across the Gorefield section, drawing the attention of nearby students. His beady froggy red eyes, fixed on Vespera, but his wide smile seemed strained, almost forced, as if he was trying too hard to project confidence.

Vespera’s wings twitched violently, sending sparks flying around  “Get lost, before I vaporize you, Frogface. I already told you that we’re done.”

“You have,” Zheng shrugged. “Repeatedly. Alas, we cannot be done. The merger of Golden Star and SimmiTech is inevitable according to our probability engines. You must accept your fate with grace, my thundercloud.”

“How about you accept my fist up yo ass if you don’t vanish within the next ten seconds,” Vespera growled, standing up and humming like a transformer about to explode. “Nine…”

“Your family will hear about this insubordination,” Zheng retreated behind the Lagarfljót Worm. “I simply wished to… check in on my fiancee. Ensure she wasn’t succumbing to the… subpar ambiance of this section.” He gestured around the Gorefield tables with a wave of his webbed hand.

“I was perfectly fine before your green ass showed up, Zheng,” Vespera snapped. “And I’m not your ‘fiancee’. We’re just… contractually betrothed. A temporary situation that’ll be resolved as soon as I fully take over SimmiTech. Now I suggest you vanish before I fry you and your Sixies! Five. Four. Three. Two…”