“Of course, I would love to attend,” Darius answered coolly. The time was around 17:55, and the session had only just ended. “I’d love to bring the wife, though she has always told me not to get her involved in my work. You understand, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Kreig replied, removing his jacket from the coat hangers in Darius’ hall. “You may choose to bring or exclude whomever you please.”

Darius smiled. “Good. Will you be making the dinner?”

“Of course.” He couldn’t imagine leaving anybody else to it.

“Then I will have nothing to complain about. I can’t say I’ve received too many reports from the surveillance team, but from what I hear you’ve got a real knack for cooking. You haven’t thought about becoming a professional cook?”

“It’s all in the skill. I couldn’t imagine lying to someone like that.”

Darius’ smile faltered slightly as Kreig realized his fault. “Kreig, we’ve talked about it, haven’t we? Just having a system isn’t enough to become a master at anything. All it does is allow Fighters to overcome the natural limit of human ability. But to get that point, you need tenacity, hard work, creativity… Anything becoming a master typically requires.” He paused briefly. “But I’ve told you all that before.”

“I know,” Kreig replied sadly. “It’s hard to… To reconsider, I suppose.”

Slowly, Darius’ face softened into a smile once more. “Don’t worry too much about it. You’ll get there in due time.”

Kreig rubbed the back of his neck. “Thank you. For… for everything.”

“You say it as though I’m about to die,” Darius said with a chuckle. “Well, you’d better be off. Wouldn’t want your siblings to wait too long. We all have schedules to keep.”

“Of course. See you next wee-, on Friday. See you on Friday.”

“I’ll see you there. And don’t forget I’m lactose intolerant!”

Kreig waved as he left, slowly closing the door behind him.

For a few seconds, he just stood there outside the door. He brought one of his hands to his chest. There, his heart beat slowly and softly, just beneath the skin and flesh and bone and white roots. Kreig could remember dismantling creatures that had been heavily influenced by the roots. Creatures where their heart were hidden in twining roots thicker than the largest arteries.

Roots aren’t edible or even tasty for that part. According to his beliefs, the only thing Kreig could do upon finding roots in an animal he had killed was to set that body aflame. If he intended to eat it, he first had to remove the roots - every single one of them - and burn them separately. That was the only way to purify the body and to return the roots to the earth.

His breath grew heavy and quick. Kreig shook his head, hoping to rid it of his intrusive thoughts.

But as he stood there unwillingly reliving his past, he remembered that there was someone more. A person he had promised a dinner. He had almost forgotten her in the hubbub of his exciting, mundane life.

He deftly fished his phone out of his pocket. It was an interesting little thing that worked not through magic but instead through technology.

Now, if he could only get it to work…

He turned it on by pressing a button on the side. That much he knew. Then, with uncertainty rivalled only by children and people of his own age range, he navigated to the “phone” part, just like how his siblings had shown him. There, a small list of names shone up at him. He pressed “George.”

The phone in his hand beeped a few times until, finally, it blipped and the screen changed. A voice rang out from the phone.

“Hello? Kreig, is everything alright?” George said from inside the phone.

Kreig turned the phone in his hand a few times, looking at it with no little amount of trepidation. “George, I will be coming home late. I aim to-,”

“I can’t really hear you, are you-, Kreig, try holding the phone up to your ear.”

Kreig blinked a few times. Then, slowly, he brought the phone to his ear.

“Can you hear me? Try saying something,” the phone blasted in his ear.

Kreig held it at a small distance from his ear. “George, I will be coming home late. I aim to invite yet another friend to the party.”

“Is that so? Great!” There was a short pause where Kreig could faintly hear George talking to someone else away from the phone. “One question though, when will you be home? Should we eat without you?”

“I shouldn’t be gone too long.”

“Well… Alright. We’ll wait for you, then. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.” Kreig stared at the phone for a few seconds. Then, abruptly, the phone blipped and the screen shut down. Kreig shrugged to himself and placed the phone in his pocket again. Now then. He’d better get going.

Biking there was a bit different than when Kreig usually biked. It was dark and the cars streaked past anxious to get home, people stumbled about, mostly just interested in getting wherever they were going, and hopefully a little faster than those who weren’t going anywhere. Kreig, by comparison, was neither in a hurry nor lackadaisical. He simply went where he was going, remembering the streets only barely.

And then he was there. Standing in front of that old run-down little home housing only a single woman who looked so much older than she really was.

Mrs Willowgrove. The poor widowed mother of Peter Willowgrove.

Kreig stepped up to the door, noting curiously how the garden seemed to have been given a new life even in this late autumn. The weeds that had previously overgrown every edge of the garden seemed banished, replaced with friendly vines and blooming seasonal flowers. He turned back to the door and gave it a few knocks.

A few seconds passed before the door finally opened, showing the face of a woman Kreig only barely recognized. Her eyes were bright and blue like a freed sky, with her warm face only showing the slightest hints that she had ever had wrinkles. She looked young. And as her eyes fell on him, they lit up like stars and she beamed a smile. “Kreig! How pleasant. Do step inside and get out of the cold, won’t you?”

She opened the door for him. “Thank you,” he said, still feeling a bit numb. It felt as though it had been less than a month since he’d met her last, although he rationally knew it had been at least three.

But looking at her, it was as though she was a completely new woman. The inside of her home told the same tale.

Previously decrepit and run-down, bearing more cobwebs than care, the house now seemed to hold a shine and a lustre to it. Every visible surface was polished and clean, every nook and cranny cleared of spiderwebs. It was, in a word, clean.

“I can tell you’re surprised,” Mrs Willowgrove said with a sly smile. “But you really shouldn’t be. It’s been so long since I could just breathe out, and… Oh, Lieutenant! There you are,” she said, and just as Kreig was about to feel strangely duped, she leaned down and picked up a little thing off the ground. When she then turned around, Kreig found her arms occupied with carrying a very large and very fluffy white cat. “This here is Lieutenant Claws. When I got him from the pound he looked like a scraggly ball of webbing, but now he’s really quite handsome. Here - would you care to hold him?”

Kreig gaped at the feline thing. “No, that’s alright. I’ve never been much good with animals.”

She held up the cat towards him. Its large, blue eyes blinked at him curiously. Kreig gulped to himself. Silently, he brought out his hands and took a weak hold of the cat. Mrs Willowgrove released her hold of it, leaving Kreig alone to hold it. Noticing that it seemed a bit unhappy, he tried to hold it against his chest. It dug its paws into him. Slowly, he caressed its back. He hoped to God he was doing it right.

“Mm, I’d say you’re quite the natural,” Mrs Willowgrove teased. “It’s almost dinnertime, so I would feel guilty to bring you tea… Would you join me for dinner, perhaps?”

Kreig shook his head, still unsure whether to let the cat down or not. “No, I told my siblings I would return later this evening.”

“Is that so?” she said. “Well, that’s quite the shame. Is there nothing else I can do for you? I’d feel rather silly as a hostess if I couldn’t entertain you with anything but my cat…”

Kreig shook his head, stopping once he noticed how the cat had started batting after his hair. “I came to invite you to a dinner party. If you have time, that is.”

Her face lit up. “A dinner party? Well, why didn’t you say so? I’d be charmed to attend! When is it?”

“This Friday at eighteen.”

“This Friday…” She hummed for a second. “I’ll be sure to attend! I don’t suppose I’ll be the only guest? No, of course not. Though, I’ll have to leave the Lieutenant at home… Well, it’ll all work out in the end, won’t it?” She smiled broadly. “Now then, you shouldn’t keep your siblings waiting, and neither should I keep my dinner waiting. The Lieutenant can get quite fussy if he isn’t fed at the proper time.”

“Of course,” Kreig answered, wondering to himself why the cat seemed so intent on locking eye contact with him. It was starting to get creepy. “Then, I’ll bid you farewell,” he said, carefully putting the cat on the floor. It scampered off only after giving a final, longing look at him.

“I’ll see you there, darling. And don’t forget to say hello to your dear siblings from me,” she said.

“I won’t forget,” Kreig replied, putting another facet of the situation to mind.

As promised, once Kreig got home, he told his siblings about who would be attending and their preferences. The dinner was largely spent considering possible foods for the event including starters, main course and dessert. In the end, since Erica would be present, it would be a bad idea to dish out the best foods the other world had to offer, and instead, they would simply make do with regular Earth food. Sam wasn’t quite happy with this since she had acquired an affinity for the odd portal foods, but after ensuring that one of her favourite dishes would be on the menu, she was satiated.

Three days later, the dinner party finally loomed before them.