Sillicia watched the exchange, trying to process the concept. Humans voluntarily paid currency to experience fear? Without any actual danger? Without being ordered to go in by blood contract chains?

  “Who in their right mind would want to pay to be… terrorized?” The serval demanded, echoing what Sillicia was thinking.

  "Says the alien cat girl," the Emperor pointed out to Nexxali with a chortle.

  Sillicia smiled. "Our Marshal's never been anywhere except military postings. She's quite the uptight ‘bold. I'm surprised you coaxed her out here somehow.”

  "Says the girl raised in a time bubble." Nexxali huffed.

  Sillicia sighed.

  "Then this," Aquillianne gestured at the warehouse, "is probably the most freedom either of you has ever experienced."

  The words struck Sillicia like a railgun blast. Freedom. Was this strange date really freedom? When was the last time she'd done anything that wasn't dictated by orders, duty, or the crushing pressure to be the best?

  The group of humans started moving toward the entrance, and Sillicia found herself following. The cat-eared female human fell into step beside them. "I'm Princess Jasmine, this is my crew—we're from UW. You guys in college too?"

  "Recent grads," the Emperor said. “Trying to find work in the post alien invasion economy, ha ha.”

  The students laughed. They reached the entrance, where an attendant scanned their tickets which the Emperor presented on his tablet.

  "Rules," the attendant droned. "No touching the actors. No flash photography. No weapons. If you need to leave, say 'mercy' and an usher will guide you out. Don't be a dick. Have fun."

  "Hrmmm. Comprehensive safety briefing," Nexxali muttered.

  They entered.

  The first room was dark, filled with the sound of dripping water and distant screams. The students ahead shrieked with delight as a figure lunged from the shadows.

  Sillicia's combat training kicked in—assess threat with mind hooks, calculate response time, identify exit routes—before she remembered where she was.

  "It's okay," Aquillianne whispered, taking her hand. The touch was unexpected, and Sillicia's heart pulsed wildly. "They're actors. This is entertainment."

  "They're... pretending to be monsters?" Sillicia asked, utterly baffled.

  "Yes," the Emperor confirmed. “Like your entertainment deck except the monsters are all pretend.”

  "It's like... controlled fear?” Nexxali giggled. “Without actual danger?"

  "That really makes no sense," Sillicia commented.

  Another actor jumped out of the gloom—a human in zombie makeup, groaning dramatically. Jasmine and her friends screamed and laughed, running to the next room.

  And Sillicia felt it.

  Fear. Genuine human fear, spiking bright and sharp, flooding the Astral around her like a wave. Her hooks extended automatically, drinking it in, and—

  It tasted… very different.

  On the fleet's Entertainment Decks, when the male kobolds were terrorized in the labyrinthine chambers, their fear was thick with desperation. Bitter with the knowledge that the pain was real, that their suffering served a purpose, that they were fuel for their masters' power. That they could actually die or get horribly maimed if they made a single mistake and then would have to get broken bones and cuts fixed up by rude, uncaring healers. Or die and lose days or weeks to mental restoration.

  This fear was... light. Effervescent, almost. Like carbonated water compared to blood. It had no weight of true danger behind it, just the thrill of adrenaline, the excitement of being startled, and underneath it all—joy. Actual joy!

  The humans were enjoying this!

  Aquillianne, holding her hand tightly, grinned widely. "Oh, I've missed this. Earth does fear better than anywhere else."

  "You've been to one of these before?" Sillicia asked.

  "A few times, long ago. Different forms though—ghost tours, séances and stuff." She pulled Sillicia forward. "Come on! The best part is coming up!"

  They moved through a series of rooms, each very dim and more elaborate than the last. A surgical theater with what her hooks defined as human [doctors] wielding fake scalpels. A forest scene with creatures lurking in artificial trees. An asylum with [patients] rattling cages.

  Sillicia's hooks remained extended, drinking in the constant waves of playful terror. It was... intoxicating in a way she'd never experienced. Fear without guilt. Fear without the knowledge that she was the cause of real suffering. Fear without the bitter taste of pain. Screams without suffering.

  The students were having the time of their lives, screaming and laughing in equal measure.

  "This is really what humans do for enjoyment?" Sillicia whispered, watching a particularly enthusiastic actor chase Jasmine's group with a fake chainsaw. "They simulate danger?"

  "They don't have real danger anymore," Aquillianne explained. "Not like they used to. No predators in their cities. No wars on their doorstep for most of them. So they create artificial fear to experience that adrenaline rush safely."

  “Clever,” Nexxali grinned.

  Sillicia again thought about the Entertainment Decks. About the kobolds who screamed in genuine terror as they were hunted by various hellish abominations and their Commanders through maze-like corridors. About how the Commanders fed on that fear, grew stronger from it, bonded over the shared feast.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  This was... nothing like that.

  This was consensual. Mutual. The humans chose to be here, even paid for the privilege, and walked away completely uninjured from each ‘scary’ room!

  They entered a room themed like an alien spacecraft featuring metallic walls, flickering lights and weird sounds.

  An actor in an alien costume burst from a side panel, and Nexxali jumped back and hissed, prad instincts kicking in.

  The actor, seeing her reaction, seemed to take it as encouragement and leaned closer, making strange clicking sounds.

  "This is so weird," Nexxali muttered. "I'm being fake-hunted by a human pretending to be a fake alien while I'm a real alien pretending to be human in an alien consume."

  The Emperor laughed, and Sillicia smiled at the absurdity of the serval’s statement.

  Jasmine ran back to them, breathless and grinning. "You guys are so chill! Most people are screaming their heads off by now!"

  "Eh, we've seen worse," Aquillianne said casually.

  "Oh yeah? Like what?"

  "Uh..." Aquillianne paused. "Many bad horror movies?”

  "Fair!" Jasmine laughed. "Oh man, come on, let's get to the finale room. It's insane!"

  They followed the group into the last chamber—a massive stage designed like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Multiple actors emerged wearing gas masks and holding guns, creating a scene of mock terror.

  Sillicia stopped watching the actors.

  She watched the humans instead—Jasmine and her friends, screaming and laughing, holding onto each other, experiencing fear together and then immediately cracking jokes about it. Bonding through shared experience.

  "They're bonding," Sillicia declared, the realization hitting her like a revelation. "I can taste their bonds!”

  "Yeah," Aquillianne said softly. "That's kind of the point. Shared experiences, even scary ones, especially scary ones, bring people together."

  "On the Entertainment Decks... the kobolds aren't laughing afterward. They're just... broken. Huddling, hurt… bonding yea, but… not like this. The humans aren't just bonding together… the bonds are reaching out towards me! I don't have to pull the fear out of them!”

  The finale ended with a dramatic explosion effect—harmless and loud—and the students emerged into a gift shop, buzzing with excitement.

  "That was fantastic!" Jasmine gushed. "You guys want to grab pizza with us? There's a place down the street that's still open."

  "We—" the Emperor began.

  "Yes," Sillicia interrupted. "We should do that. The pizza thing."

  "Really?" Nexxali asked with a sly smile.

  "Yes." Sillicia's expression was determined. She didn't fully understand why, but something about tonight—about the laughter, the consensual fear, the humans bonding over shared joy—made her want more. "I want to understand this better."

  Aquillianne squeezed her hand, silver eyes warm. "Then pizza it is."

  As they followed Jasmine's group out into the Seattle night, Sillicia's hooks remained extended, gently touching the emotional landscape around her. The students radiated contentment, excitement, the pleasant exhaustion of adrenaline wearing off. The fear was still there as memory, a light sprinkling of it, an entirely new, wonderful flavor.

  It felt like something she'd been missing her entire life without knowing it had a name.

  Sillicia wondered if this was what Lissander Fox had meant. About stepping off the path. About seeing the world with eyes unclouded by what she'd been taught to expect.

  Maybe fear didn't have to taste like desperation, pain and suffering.

  Maybe it could taste like this—like joy with a bite of shocked surprise, like laughter with an edge of a thrill.

  Maybe everything she'd built her career on was just one way of doing things… and not the only way, not the best way.

  The thought terrified her more than any human Fear Factory ever could.

  For the first time in her lonely, brutal life, Sillicia found herself wanting to be terrified.

  Because on the other side of that terror might be something worth finding. Something different and… warm.

  The pizza place was exactly the sort of an establishment that Sillicia would have dismissed as beneath her notice—primitive, cramped, loud, smelling of cheese and grease, filled with intoxicated humans shouting over each other.

  Now, sitting in a booth with Jasmine's group crammed around adjacent tables, Sillicia found herself... Enjoying the experience.

  Kawathra joined them in the restaurant, summoned for dinner via a V-ring call from Shady.

  "So like, I'm telling you," Jasmine gestured wildly with a slice of pepperoni, "the best part was when that zombie grabbed Marcus Arelius and he literally screamed like a little girl—"

  "I did NOT scream like a little girl!" Marcus protested. "That was a manly yell of surprise!"

  "Dude, dogs three blocks away heard you," another student laughed.

  Sillicia watched the exchange, her hooks gently touching the emotional currents flowing between them. Affection. Teasing. The comfortable cruelty of friends who knew each other well enough to mock without malice.

  "How about a slice?" Aquillianne asked, sliding a plate toward her.

  Sillicia stared at the triangular piece of bread covered in red sauce, cheese, and various meats. "What... what am I supposed to do with it?"

  "Eat it," the Emperor said.

  "With my hands?"

  "Yes," Nexxali confirmed, already on her third slice and looking blissful. "Humans are very tactile with their food. It's weird but the pizza is actually damn good."

  Sillicia picked up the slice gingerly, trying to mimic how the humans held theirs. The cheese immediately started sliding off.

  "Fold it lengthwise," Aquillianne demonstrated with her own slice. "Creates structural integrity."

  Sillicia folded the pizza and took a cautious bite.

  The flavors hit her all at once—salt, fat, acid, umami, the char from the oven, the slight sweetness of the sauce. Her fractal engine heart did something complicated as her taste receptors, so rarely used to anything but UwUs, suddenly woke up, sang and demanded more.

  "This is..." Sillicia took another bite. "This is… incredible!"

  "Right?" Jasmine grinned at her from the next table over. "Tony's Pizza is legendary. We come here every Friday after classes."

  "Every Friday," Sillicia repeated slowly. "You have... a routine. A tradition."

  "Yeah! It's like our thing," Jasmine said. "Good food, good friends, good times. What else do you need?"

  Sillicia thought about her own routines. Morning briefings with Datamancer holos. Tactical assessments. Resource allocation oversight. Strategic planning sessions. Bossing her prads. Falling into her meditation chamber at the end of each cycle, alone, exhausted, wondering why having a warship and commanding an entire Division never felt like enough.

  She had so many kobolds and yet… none of them radiated the feelings bathing the pizza restaurant.

  She glanced at Nexxali, who was laughing at something the Emperor said, then at Kawathra, who was enthusiastically explaining pizza geometry to a bemused Marcus.

  Both of them were her ‘bolds. Part of Division 881. Nexxali was her Marshal Commandant, her most effective motivational speaker. Kawathra was her Arch-Datamancer, irreplaceable for intelligence operations.

  And somehow, without Sillicia quite understanding how it happened, Lady Aquillianne had... what? Claimed them? Recruited them? They were sitting here and behaving like they belonged to the Princess' household now, not to Division 881!

  The realization made something twist uncomfortably in Sillicia's chest.

  "My Lady..." she began, turning to the Princess.

  "Call me Shady," the Princess smiled warmly. "We're friends and my friends call me Shady."

  Friends. There was that word again.

  Sillicia's throat felt tight as she sensed honesty in the words. "Shady. I... may I ask you something? In private?"