"Doesn't know what to make of him" may be the best reaction he can ask for, honestly, it's pretty weird how everyone else just assumes a person can fall neatly into a role meant for animals.

He listens politely and makes the expected comments about hoping they find the thief.

Apparently this Fouquet is infamous for only targeting nobles. Some think she is in it for the challenge, others think its a foreign plot. Someone wonders why she's called the 'weeping river', and the rumor-sharer says that the stories claim this thief can control the weather and that she leads an army of mist spirits. One of the royal guards chimes in that he heard a rumor that when Fouquet attacks, it's with an army of sirens. This starts a friendly argument.

Mist spirits? Sirens? He listens carefully; this is interesting, if not for the reason they're expecting.

Unfortunately, neither of them seem to actually know much of anything about mist spirits or sirens, or have anything like coherent reasoning backing their insistence that Fouquet uses one or the other.

Oh well. The food's delicious, at least.

That it is!

Dinner concludes with everyone satisfied.

Later, Siesta drops by Raafi's room after seeing Scyelen to bed.

And in the morning, it's pretty obvious from Scyelen's quiet smile that Henrietta sneaked into Scyelen's room again.

Good for them. Maybe he can finagle a trip to the palace sometime, so he can offer to teleport them back and forth sometimes. He doesn't comment, though, just gives her a smile and a hug.

Hug.

"So, um. The exhibition. Have you decided what you want to do?"

"I'd like to try to get by on telling stories from my world, I think I have enough that won't upset anyone, and if they want a magic show anyway I have plenty. And I did prepare a big version of that summoning spell I talked about, but I won't use it unless there's an emergency."

Scyelen shivers. "That one. Definitely too impressive..."

"Stories are good."

"Yeah." Hug. "None of my eighth-tier spells are any good for showing off, really. Stories will be fine. Do you think it matters whether I wear my gloves?"

"Um, I think everyone important already knows? You don't have to, probably."

"Will it look strange if I do?"

Scyelen shakes her head. "Shouldn't matter."

"All right. I'll see how I feel about it when I get there, then. Anything else?"

Not that Scyelen can think of.

After breakfast, the entire second-year class brings their familiars out into the east courtyard. The instructors have set up a large stage and rows of seating for attendees from the other classes. The princess gets a shaded pavilion of her own, where she and a few members of her entourage sit on fancier chairs to watch the spectacle.

They must be going in reverse alphabetical order or something, because Kirche is up first. Her salamander, Flame, prances around while breathing fire in complicated helical shapes, and finishes off by jumping through his own fiery hoop. That proves to be a hard act to follow for the perfectly ordinary corgi and the sleepy parrot who go next.

The giant floating eyeball makes more of a splash with the crowd, even though it doesn't actually do much.

Before long, it's Raafi's turn.

Well, he's no bard, but he can get by. He goes up, introduces himself, explains that he is in fact Scyelen's familiar - takes the relevant glove off for a moment to show the tattoo - and that he's from another world, where he was a sort of traveling adventurer, one of a few occupations that are common for people with magic there; he segues neatly from that into a story about a time he was asked to find someone to heal a prince's pet chimera of a mysterious ailment, and the quest he went on to find someone with the right sort of skills and convince her to leave the unicorn herd she lived with and go help.

Raafi gets a few hecklers, but his audience mostly finds his tale of adventure quite captivating and applauds when he's done.

He's followed by a couple more mundane pet animals, a suspiciously clever frog, and... oh look it's Guiche. His entire performance seems to involve posing on a bed of rose petals with his badgermole.

And then Sylphid hops up on stage and completely steals the show. Because, y'know, dragon. Tabitha takes her on a short flight of very impressive acrobatics.

Sylphid's always good. (He goes flying with her every few days; she seems to enjoy the company.)

A shadow passes in front of the sun. A cloud? No. It's still getting darker, and darker. Fog begins to obscure the sky, even as an unnatural mist begins to rise from the grass under their feet. It's as dark as twilight, the academy wrapped in a writhing gray void. Sound becomes weirdly muffled.

The confused muttering and murmuring of the crowd is just beginning to shift into concern, when the singing starts.

"Is this part of the show?" someone asks nervously.

The singing is eerie, alien, more like resonating glass than an actual voice, and yet it almost, almost has recognizable words. (The royal guard from the argument the previous night is deathly pale, shaking his head in fearful denial.)

Bad? Probably bad. "Stay with me, sweetheart," he tells Scyelen. "If we need to get out I'll take you, don't run." (Does the rest of the princess's guard look like they're going to be any use, if something happens.)

One of them is shouting something about formations in a tense voice, the rest gathering in a defensive perimeter around the princess's pavilion, sword-wands pointed outwards into the fog.

The fog is still getting thicker, visibility diminishing.

But there's something out there. Figures in the mist, movement in the corner of the eye. The singing gets louder.

The crowd is starting to get panicky, but there's a strange note to it. There's a heat in the air, the fog failing to be chilly. Clothing begins to stick uncomfortably to skin. A surge of unnatural carnal need descends on everyone like a heavy weight. Someone on the edge of the crowd screams in fright that something just touched him.

And then a burst of wind comes from Tabitha's raised staff, ripping a hole in the fog, a bubble of clear air.

Revealing a dark cloaked figure standing right behind the princess.

Oh he doesn't like any of that.

He grabs Scyelen's hand, and the cloaked figure has about four seconds before he's also right behind the princess, summoner in tow if she accepts the teleport.

Four seconds? Four seconds is an eternity.

Under the hood of the cloak, under the cloak itself, is a feminine body wrapped tightly in seafoam-green gauze, almost mummified. Beyond her figure, no distinguishing traits are visible, and the heavy cloak conceals a lot of even that.

It takes one second for the startled stares of the wider crowd to clue in the royal guards that something is wrong. It takes another second for someone to scream, "It's Fouquet!!!" and for Henrietta to spin around and recoil in shock.

By the end of the third tick of the second-hand, streamers of water have already slithered out of her cloak and struck each of the royal guards with enough force to crumple their armor and send them tumbling away.

For the final second, Fouquet merely waits, watching while Raafi completes his spell.

He's unarmed; there's a knife in his belt but he has no time to take it out, and his staff is back in his room, left behind because he worried that it would give the wrong impression. (Not that that particular one would be much good, here; it's got a defensive spell, but it's not weighted for fighting with.)

He tackles her, instead.