Killed Killers (NaNoWriMo 2015)

Chapter Thirteen

    Cara guided Ere down the stairs, and Ere again had to find a way to get down the stairs in a long dress without breaking her neck. She followed Cara past the now empty ball room, and into another room just beyond. It was a huge marble room, the ceiling vaulted high above their heads, and a circular table made of a beautiful dark wood sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by beautifully detailed chairs, all in the same wood as the table. There were place settings at intervals around the table, and just by the sheer number of them, Ere assumed that this was no small organization. Cara led her over to the place settings closest to them, and Ere noticed little name tags above each of the place settings

"Geez, do they make it this fancy every day?" Ere asked, walking around the table and scanning the name cards to find her name.

"Yep. For dinner, that is. Breakfast is a little less formal, because there isn't a set wake up time for everyone, so we don't all eat at the same time. It's more of a buffet style and they allow us to be a little bit less dressed up for that one. You don't have to wear a full on dress, but a skirt is required." Cara responded, circling the table the other way to find their names.  

"What about lunch?" She asked, still scanning name tags.

"Oh, you're over here." Cara called out, pointing to a place setting across the table. "Lunch is really not a thing here. You can eat it if you want, but there are really only two recognized meals. The only thing we really have to eat for lunch anyways is leftovers from breakfast that morning and dinner the previous night." She had taken the seat to the left of the one that she had pointed out to Ere.

She sat down next to Cara, noticing for the first time that she was as dressed up as Ere herself. She has wearing a beautiful single strap red evening gown, a pattern of sequins bursting out from her stomach. The strap went over her left shoulder, but instead of being attached to the garment in the back, it continued down so that it looked like an odd sort of train, but it fit Cara really well.

Soon, other people that Ere didn't recognize began filing in and taking their respective seats, some chattering with friends and all of them dressed to the nines. She was gazing at her plate when she felt someone take a seat on the side of her that Cara wasn't sitting on. She looked up to find Rew from her first night in the castle staring back at her.

"Hi." Ere had a difficult time distinguishing his 'hi' from a grunt. He didn't seem all that enthusiastic about sitting next her.  

"Hi." Ere mumbled at her lap, unhappy to be sitting by him and his attitude.

Ere looked up at the door just in time to notice Gem enter, alone. He walked around the table, finding that his seat was on the other side of Rew's. Soon after, Rian entered, his sandy hair dripping wet. His seat was on the other side of Cara's, and no matter how many times Ere tried to catch his gaze, he seemed to always be looking away. He was completely ignoring her.

A few more people scurried in, looking worried, like they were expecting to be late, but quickly slowed when they saw that dinner hadn't started with out them. Ere glanced around the table, finding to her surprise that almost every single one of the table spots were filled, which meant that the people who were attending dinner totaled to around two hundred, by her count. She shrugged inwardly, not really sure what to make of the pure number.

"Do Monica and Cayde eat with the rest of us?" She leaned over to ask in Cara's ear. Things had gotten impossibly louder since they had come into the room.

"No, they eat alone. I don't think I've ever seen them out of their cave except for one time, but needless to say that wasn't exactly for dinner." Cara responded, nearly shouting in Ere's ear to be heard over the crowd.