7. Ursa
URSA
The lodging unit’s wall display casts the room in shifting bands of red, amber, and bone-white as another archived Blood Feast recording loops from the beginning.
I sit cross-legged on the narrow bed with my hair twisted into a knot, three compads open around me, and a half-eaten ration bowl cooling beside my knee.
The room is barely large enough to deserve the word room, more a metal drawer with a mattress, a fold-down desk, a hygiene alcove, and one pressure-sealed viewport that looks toward an inner maintenance shaft instead of the stars.
Pale utility lights flicker through the small window every few seconds as service drones pass outside, their shadows sliding across the walls like blunt little ghosts.
The floor vibrates with the steady work of Guyver Station’s engines, a low mechanical pulse that travels through my bare feet and settles in my bones until it feels less like noise than weather.
My eyes burn from too many hours of reading, but I keep watching the feast footage anyway.
On-screen, a younger Reaper captain tears the head from something eel-shaped while a line of guests from three species look as if they have discovered every bad decision they have ever made has led them to that table.
The Reapers around them cheer, not because the act is elegant, but because the captain performs it without hesitation.
The meaning matters more than the gore. That is the first rule I write down in my notes.
Blood Feast: not merely intimidation. Public demonstration of courage, appetite, status, hospitality, and willingness to meet Reaper culture without flinching.
I pause the recording and add another note beneath it.
Outsider mistake: treating the meal as barbarism rather than language.
The compad on my left chirps with an incoming response from Professor Yven Lorr, the Kiphian anthropologist who once published a nearly banned monograph titled Ishani Memory and Reaper Ritual Degradation: Violence as Archive.
The title sounded pretentious enough that I almost skipped it, but Lorr’s work contains more useful insight than every glossy diplomatic briefing combined.
She agreed to a call after I sent my credentials, my questions, and a promise not to reduce her life’s research to “spike pirates eat scary dinner.”
Her face appears above the compad in blue-tinted holo, scaled, narrow, and deeply irritated in the manner of academics interrupted during either research or sleep.
“Ms. Ramone,” she says. “I received your seventh question set.”
“I tried to keep it concise.”
“You asked whether ceremonial blood-sharing among Reapers constitutes hospitality, dominance display, courtship-adjacent ritual, battlefield commemoration, or political theater.”
“Yes.”
“That is not concise. That is a dissertation proposal wearing boots.”
I lean back against the wall and rub the heel of my hand over one eye. “Can it be all of those things?”
Her expression shifts, annoyance making room for interest. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“Unfortunately?”
“Cultures are inconvenient to people who prefer clean boxes. Reaper rituals are especially inconvenient because much of their original Ishani context is fractured, half-remembered, or expressed through practices that appear monstrous when removed from survival history.” Lorr adjusts something off-screen, and a stack of old glyph images appears beside her.
“The Blood Feast is one of their most revealing traditions precisely because outsiders misunderstand it so thoroughly.”
I pick up my stylus. “I’m listening.”
“You had better be. I am supposed to be reviewing student submissions, and at least three of them will use the phrase liminal violence.”
Despite myself, I smile. “My condolences.”
“Accepted. Now, the feast. Among Reapers, eating publicly is not a passive social act. Appetite has moral dimension. Strength has communal dimension. Refusing food without cause can be read as refusing the host’s protection, refusing the host’s world, or declaring yourself too delicate to share risk. ”
“That explains why diplomats keep inventing medical excuses.”
“Cowardice often arrives with paperwork.”
I write that down because I like it.
Lorr continues, “However, there is an important distinction. Reapers do not necessarily expect outsiders to behave as Reapers. They do expect outsiders to acknowledge that Reaper customs have meaning. A guest who gags but tries may be mocked and then respected. A guest who sneers will be remembered.”
“What about asking for human utensils?”
“That depends on context. Asking quietly because your anatomy differs is practical. Asking loudly because you wish to distance yourself from the ritual is insult. Making a servant fetch delicate tools while implying the meal is beneath you is a fine way to discover how many people at the table can imagine you seasoned.”
I glance toward the frozen recording, where an ambassador from some League world is refusing a dish with both hands raised. A Reaper beside him laughs so hard he nearly falls off the bench.
“What matters most?” I ask.
“Attention,” Lorr says immediately. “Watch before acting. Do not imitate randomly. Reaper dining contains hierarchy. You eat after the host begins or after the table leader signals. You do not reach across another guest’s kill.
You do not touch a shared blade unless offered.
If live prey is served, subduing it cleanly is preferable to panicked cruelty.
Reapers dislike wasteful suffering when it serves only fear. ”
“That seems like a subtle distinction for people outsiders call barbaric.”
“That is because outsiders are lazy, Ms. Ramone.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Good. Notice harder.” Lorr leans closer to her camera. “You are attending one of these feasts, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“On Guyver Station?”
“Yes.”
“With Gnash presiding?”
“That is the plan.”
Her eyes narrow. “The Warlord of Guyver Station is not merely hosting dinner. He is staging a room. Every seat will mean something. Every dish will mean something. Every moment of discomfort will be useful to him.”
“To intimidate guests?”
“To sort them,” Lorr says. “Intimidation is crude. Sorting is political.”
I set my stylus down slowly. “Explain.”
“A leader like Gnash needs to know who masks fear with contempt, who masks fear with anger, who masks ambition with praise, and who watches instead of performing. Reapers respect appetite, but they also respect control. Outsiders often assume the loudest Reaper in the room has the highest status, but that is not always so. Sometimes the one who laughs loudest has permission. Sometimes the one who sits quietly owns the room.”
That lands somewhere useful.
The little hairs along my arms lift.
“Professor,” I say, “if a guest wanted to show respect without pretending to be Reaper, what would you advise?”
“For most guests, I would advise humility, observation, and accepting small portions of whatever is offered without theatrical disgust. For a reporter with your history, I would advise honesty.”
“My history?”
“You did not become famous for smiling at horror, Ms. Ramone. You became famous for naming it accurately while everyone else tried to make it abstract. Do not become theatrical now. Reapers know theater. They live inside other people’s nightmares.
Respect the ritual, but do not perform courage like a child borrowing armor. ”
The words settle into the cramped room with more weight than I expect.
I look at the frozen image of the feast again, at the guests trying not to shake, at the Reapers watching them with feral joy and sharp intelligence. “What if I fail?”
“Then fail without contempt. It is surprisingly rare.”
The call ends fifteen minutes later, after Lorr sends me two restricted articles, a glossary of dining gestures, and one message that reads: If you die, I am not answering questions from your network.
By station midmorning, I take my research out of the lodging unit because the walls have started to feel too close.
The market ring is already awake, lit by shop signs, welding flashes from open repair stalls, and sunlight-colored lamps strung over breakfast vendors.
I buy a skewer of roasted fungus and something the vendor insists is safe for humans if humans have “reasonable courage and no legal complaints.” It tastes smoky, peppery, and faintly floral, with a texture like meat pretending to be a vegetable for tax purposes.
I eat it while reviewing Lorr’s notes and trying not to imagine what the Blood Feast menu might do to my dignity.
Vesk appears at my side before I reach the fountain.
“You are reading while walking,” he says.
“I am capable of doing two things at once.”
“Yesterday a merchant walked into a support pillar while reading tariff updates.”
“Was he injured?”
“Only his pride. The pillar survived.”
“I’ll try to honor its sacrifice.”
Vesk glances at the article headings floating above my compad. “Reaper dining customs?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I was invited to a Blood Feast, and I prefer not to walk in ignorant.”
His expression changes by increments, suspicion giving way to something that is not quite approval. “Most outsiders ask whether they can bring private food.”
“I considered bringing emergency crackers, but that felt like cowardice with crumbs.”
His mouth twitches. “You may still want crackers.”
“That bad?”
“That depends on the course and the cook’s mood.”
“Is Rikka cooking?”
He looks genuinely startled. “Who told you about Rikka?”
“Three dockworkers, one medic, a merchant, and a child named Griv who tried to sell me information for dessert money.”
“Griv is a criminal.”
“Griv is six.”
“He can be both.”
I tuck the compad under one arm. “Is Rikka good?”
“She has fed warriors after battle, mothers after birth, captains after victory, and prisoners before judgment. She is good enough that people forgive her personality.”
“That sounds like a yes.”
“That sounds like a warning. Rikka believes food should either nourish, test, or teach regret.”