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 snow 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 then 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 day,” Nexxali commented.

A spray of 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 our dragon babe enjoy herself?”

“I think so? She grew wings at one point. Big-ass, 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 relatively clean 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 manage to 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…” Shady protested weakly. “She… She’s a Skinwalker, and can turn into your deepest desire. 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, antlion style. 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 someone 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 people with particular memories and 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 armies of 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,” Nexxali 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 blood Pact with you and Shady 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 nagant. A thrumming heartbeat began pulsing in my head.

“Hmmmhnnnnmm uhh uhhh auuuh…” She lamented.

“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, body thinning, posture hunched, and patches of brown, white, and black dog fur sprouted across her face and paws. The confident Serval Commissar melted away, replaced by an exact replica of teenage Laika, complete with the oversized, muddy, 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.

Then, the entire room compressed, squeezing us together, turning into a claustrophobic metal capsule crammed with wires and monitoring equipment. Dials beeped and clicked all around.

“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 suddenly spiked up. I felt scorching heat. Warning lights flickered red across the measuring instruments. The beeps intensified and the walls started to glow red 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 hissed in reply. 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 whisper-lamented, desperately 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 last time around. Sleigh bells started to twinkle merrily in the absolute silence of space.

A massive Omnid 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 with her left hand, cleaving her throat. Then a Wendigo fist punched right through her heart. The Krampus flailed in Shady’s embrace. The monstrous Wendigo exhumed and devoured her heart and then began to shred and consume the remnants of Saint Nikky’s 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.

As Shady finished her Niktavia-feast, the dream shifted again.

We were suddenly standing on a frozen Moscow street.

The ground shook earth-quake style and split open with fissures. Pine trees erupted from the cobblestones, roots and branches reaching out towards panic-stricken soldiers in gray coats. I watched the conversion take hold, roots bursting through flesh, needles sprouting from open mouths, eyes turning to colorful glass balls.

“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 witnessed the eldritch, world-ending nightmare that his little stray had become. He fell to his knees, clawing at his stomach as pine-tree bark blossomed across 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 rapidly and inevitably transformed into an ocean of decorated, whimsical trees.

Nexxali-Laika stood in the center of it all, panting, felt reindeer antlers catching the light of the dying sun. She let out a lamenting wolf-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, canine eyes filling with sparkling tears, a storm of snowflakes spiraling around her. A wall of unnatural clouds curved into a ring a thousand kilometers up into the air above us. We stood in the eye of the supercell storm that engulfed and ended Laika’s Earth.

Then, the world around us became still and silent.