'He has guns AND creation magic?' Zac thought, hugging the box to his chest like a baby. 'That is so cheating. He's a walking cheat code. I love him.'
"You would ruin the market if you copied my treasures," Nock said, blowing his nose loudly into the napkin. "If Purson or Marbas learned of my regimen, they would copy it in a heartbeat! The exclusivity is half the value!"
"No one cares about how you brush adrenochrome into your facial fur for thirty minutes every morning," Andras muttered around a mouthful of grubs.
"It's for wrinkles!" Nock defended hotly, his anger toward the owl momentarily breaking through his waterworks. "Stress lines are the enemy of beauty!"
"Or how you soak your paws in angel blood every week," Bune sighed, looking pained. "Do you know how hard that is to source? And it stains the basins terribly."
"It keeps my pads soft!" Nock declared, holding up a paw to inspect the beans. "A knight must have a firm grip but a gentle touch!"
"Your furniture was quite extensive, Nock," Marchosias rumbled from the head of the table, cutting in. "We had to clear three storerooms just for your wardrobe."
Nock turned to the wolf, his expression wounded. "You said 'only the necessities,' Captain! And on such short notice, too! I'm sure there are many vital things I forgot. My exfoliating salts! My velvet capes!" He turned his gaze to Zac, his eyes softening. "But… our new charge is so fragile. I understand why you want to keep him… kenneled for now. A prize must be guarded."
Zac looked up. A frozen waffle was slowly disappearing into his mouth as he chewed, unheated and unrelenting. He locked eyes with the lion. "Kennel me please," he mumbled around a mouthful of blueberry cardboard.
"Yeah," Skarg laughed loudly, spraying more meat. "And you look like a total queermo with all those dresses, Nock. 'Necessities,' my ass."
"They are post-battle garments!" Nock spat at Skarg, bristling. "Not that you'd understand the difficulties of creating a proper silhouette. Or the strain of besieging a fortress for months on end!"
Skarg scoffed, tearing another strip of flesh from the bone. "Months?... ... Slow bitch."
"Ah!" Nock hissed in outrage, rising from his seat. "You uncultured-"
"Shut up, you ingrates!" Marchosias growled, the vibration rattling the silverware. "We are here to watch the battle. Now eat. Bune won't start the broadcast until the table is clear."
"Ooh, a show after a meal?" Zac grinned, waving his waffle. "Y'all classy A F, really know how to romance a guy."
His words trailed off as a giddy chill ran up his spine. The Captain was looking at him. It was a look of profound, weary disapproval, the kind a parent gives a child who just tried to eat a battery. It was confusingly hot.
"Did you not procure a high chair yet, Bune?" Marchosias asked, finally tearing his gaze away from the radiantly pure yet somehow diabolically thirsty human. "The Avatar is… surprisingly mobile. At least restraining him would be easier than the other imbeciles..."
"I was a bit preoccupied!" Bune wailed from his spot near the door, where he was trying to supervise the zombie waiters. "The fire! The loss of inventory! The eagle crying! The caribou crying! The multiple ceiling collapses! The bug infestation! Multiple dead! Blood everywhere! Architectural instability! The lion crying! The stains! The horrible, horrible stains!"
"I didn't ask for an itinerary of your failures," Marchosias growled. "I asked if you got a high chair. Or at least… maybe a gag."
Zac's eyes went wide.
"YES! GAG ME, WOLF DADDY!"
Before his brain could catch up with his mouth, Zac found himself standing on his chair and attempting to crawl across the table toward the Captain, scattering Nock's gold-leafed grapes.
"Hey!"
Skarg's massive hand shot out, grabbing Zac by the back of his robes and hauling him backward. He spun Zac around until they were face-to-face, the wendigo's icy breath washing over him.
"You don't want that total stick in the mud!" Skarg snarled, his eyes wild with jealousy. "He fucking irons his clothes! He probably schedules his morning wood!" Skarg's eyes hardened, a dangerous, primal light igniting in them. "Don't you want a guy who's gonna keep plowing your hole even when you're crying? Huh?!"
Zac just nodded, completely mute with desire.
"Put the Avatar down, Skarg."
Marchosias put his face in his hands. He took a deep breath. When he spoke again, the gravel was gone, replaced by the terrifying, melodious resonance of the Compelling Voice.
"NO TALKING UNTIL YOU ALL FINISH YOUR MEALS."
The silence was instant and absolute.
Zac's mouth snapped shut. Skarg dropped him back into his chair with a grunt. Nock choked on a grape. Andras stopped chewing a grub mid-bite.
The only sound in the cavernous dining hall was the scraping of forks, the tearing of meat, and the frantic beating of Zac's traitorous heart. Discipline me Mr. Big Bad Wolf.
The rest of the meal went surprisingly fast without the constant side conversations and threats of violence. Zac, having finished his own surprisingly filling allotment of waffles, was now eyeing the goblet in front of him with intense curiosity. It was filled with a liquid so dark red it was almost black. It looked a little thick, viscous, but after eating eight processed breakfast food products in under five minutes, his mouth felt like a desert.
He was just about to risk it, his hand reaching for the stem of the goblet, when Bune clapped his four hands together, a sharp, echoing sound.
"Dinner is concluded!" the Left Head announced.
A zombie waiter, moving with unsettling speed, materialized at Zac's elbow and snatched the plate and goblet away just as Zac's fingers brushed the cool metal.
"Hey!" Zac protested, but the zombie was already shuffling away. He slumped in his chair, stewing in his thirst.
Marchosias coughed, a dry, pointed sound that drew all eyes. He looked around the table, a flicker of satisfaction in his amber eyes. "Good. You complete failures finally shut up for once." He gestured to the far end of the room. "Now, we are here to oversee tonight's battle, since we are not there in person to participate."
A low grumble went around the table.
"We should have gone," Skarg growled, slamming his fist on the table. "The Avatar would have seen how I'm the only one who does anything of value."
This declaration did not sit well with the other demons, they all rebutted at once.
"Ha! You do something?" Nock flipped his perfectly conditioned mane. "All you do is make the paladins cry. You corrupt their pure eyes with your disproportionate, ass-faced nudity."
"Taking care of a bunch of fodder soldiers on the front line is the simplest job," Andras sneered, lighting a fresh cigarillo. "Any of us could do it. You just enjoy simple things, like hitting rocks with other rocks."
"Someone must protect the home and hearth from incursions!" Bune's Right Head huffed. His Left Head turned to the owl. "And someone has to fix all of your 'security auditing' before the Captain impales himself on a tripwire."
"You may run out there and knock some paladins around, but you're no one-man army," Halphas squawked, puffing out his chest. "Even you'd fall with enough swords beating on you for long enough, herbivore."
"And you hold yourself back," Marchosias added, his voice cutting through the cacophony of indignation, silencing them all. He stared down Skarg until the wendigo looked away. "You don't even need to use your antlers..."
The Captain's gaze swept over all of them, a silent rebuke.
"But it does not matter. We all stay here until I can be certain the Avatar's existence has not been leaked. Is that understood?"
Zac blew a loud raspberry, slumping down in his chair. "Lame. If no one knows I'm a virgin but us, then why can't we just pretend like I'm not? The plans wouldn't have to change, and if you wanted to zip off to the battle, you could." He winked at Bune. "I'd just stay here with the butler… he's a leaker, that one."
"No!" Bune's Left Head said sharply. "When I said you made me leak, it was a purely physiological hoarding response triggered by your unique-"
"NO," Marchosias barked, cutting him off. His gaze was fixed on Zac, hard and unyielding. "Why else would Ose choose you? Out of the infinity of possible choices, out of every damned soul in every hell, why you? You were sent to be used by me for this war."
"Oh, he wants to be used, alright," Andras murmured to his cigarillo.
"Maybe he chose me because he wanted to fulfill my wishes," Zac said, puffing out his chest. "Like I was the infinity-and-first person to die while thinking about being mating-pressed by a minotaur, so… I win the grand prize?"