“Find anything?” Dovik asks.
Samissa creeps back into the amethyst light that Adrius projects from his crystal. I stare past the Scout, trying to discern anything in the darkness beyond the circular chamber we stand in. Samissa was gone for all of three minutes, scouting out the room ahead of us that we planned to enter, returning quickly.
“No monsters or traps,” Samissa says. She points a thumb back into the dark hallway she crept from. “The passage continues on for thirty feet before turning right, just one room at the end of it. It really is a kitchen.”
Dovik quirks a brow. “Anything interesting there, or should we go another direction?”
“Oh,” Samissa smirks. “Yes, there was something interesting all right. There is treasure to be had.”
“And you said there were no traps?” I ask.
Samissa looks my way and smirks. “None that I could find, and I did look pretty hard. Maybe you will be able to see what I missed, but it just looked like a fairly standard kitchen to me.”
“Lead on then,” Dovik says.
Samissa turns and walks back into the darkness of the hallway, Macille on her heels, his sword in hand. As the woman said, the trip to the kitchen is short, just a walk down a single hallway and then a shorter one once we have turned the corner. When the darkness fades from in front of us, it is a sudden thing, completely unnatural. One moment, we are walking through a dark corridor, guided by the soft light that Adrius conjures, and in the next we are standing in the doorway of the most extravagant kitchen that I have ever seen. Looking back through the doorway from inside the kitchen, all I can see is inky shadow in the passageway.
The first thing that strikes me is the smell, clean air mixed with a tinge of spice and bread. The room itself is a rectangle, ten feet wide and forty feet long. An island, made from white and polished marble runs almost the entire length of the room, atop which are utensils and supplies made from oiled and polished iron: colanders, bowls, pans, and pots. A row of six ovens line the left wall of the kitchen, the right side made of a single, incredibly long countertop constructed from the same marble. At the far end of the room are two more doorways, one a simple wooden door that stands ajar, leading into a well-stocked pantry, while the other has no door, a transparent wall of yellow magic separating it from the rest of the room.
It shocks my mind, finding this modern looking kitchen in the center of this dungeon that for all appearances looks as if it was built more than a thousand years ago.
“Just a kitchen,” Samissa says, shrugging as she walks into the room. She points out a few lamps tucked into the walls of the room that require someone–me–to light.
“Just a kitchen,” I repeat, my mouth hanging open as I follow the woman into the room, absently lighting the first of the lamps. “You call this just a kitchen!” I look around at the rest of the group, but they stare back at me, a bit confused about what I’m getting at. “I forgot. I’m surrounded by nobles.”
“I’m not a noble,” Dovik says, but he can’t help but smile.
“Neither am I,” Macille speaks up.
I look between the two of them while I move ahead and light another lamp. “How big was your kitchen back home? Did it have six ovens?”
“No,” Macille defends. “We only had three,” he says, a little quieter.
Dovik shrugs at me. “I never bothered to visit the kitchens.”
“Kitchens,” I say. “Plural?”
“It’s a figure of speech,” Dovik says. “At least I think it is.”
I shake my head, tossing the smallest Dragonfire Bolt I can manage across the room, managing to light the last lamp. I am actually pretty proud of myself for that. “Then what’s the difference?”
“Aren’t you all being a little too flippant?” Adrius asks. He runs his hand along the marbled island in the center of the room as he walks toward the opposite side. He points at the sheen of magic over the right doorway at the far end of the kitchen. “There is obviously magic going on. We should be more on alert.”
“Sorry,” I say, sighing.
We all gather around the transparent screen of magic at the end of the kitchen, and I can immediately see the treasure that Samissa mentioned. On the other side of the barrier, a small stone room stands, another passageway on the opposite side of that small room leading to darkness. I see three trunks sitting in the small room, looking almost exactly like the chests filled with treasure that Macille and I found in the mud-forest yesterday. The fact that there are chests on the opposite side of this barrier is incredible, but more than that, my eye is drawn toward a white-stone pedestal standing in the center of the treasure room. Sitting atop the pedestal is a stone encircled by inscribed magical calligraphy that glows a soft blue powerful enough to not have its color distorted by the yellow of the barrier between us. It is a rune of attunement.
I attempt to use my eye to tell me about the rune, but a lance of burning pain races back through my eye and into my brain. I step away from the barrier, holding my hand over my left eye, gasping.
“Charlene,” Macille says, laying a hand on my arm. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I manage through gritted teeth. I feel something leaking from the corner of my eye, finding blood on my finger when I touch the wetness. “Something hit me when I tried to look at the rune.”
“Don’t touch the barrier,” Samissa says. She pulls a pebble out of her pocket and tosses it against the yellow magic. The pebble sticks to the screen of yellow when it touches, the distinct sound of sizzling cracks on the air, before it falls to the ground two seconds later, smoking.
“Or try to use an ability on it,” Adrius says. “Apparently.”
“Adrius, can you…” Dovik says, motioning at me.
“Of course.” A tingling cold spreads down my spine as Adrius’ magic washes over me, making me shiver. The touch of his magic lingers for a moment, but then it is gone. I use a rag to clean the blood off my face. There is no chance that I am going to try and investigate the things on the other side of the barrier again.
“Good.” Dovik points at the right wall of the kitchen. Blocked from view by a tall cabinet there–I can see rows of spices sitting neatly arranged inside the cabinet through the incredibly expensive glass that covers the doors–there is a strange sculpture set into the wall. The sculpture looks like the face of a demon, its head at least twice as big as a man’s, its mouth hanging open. Two stone hands protrude from the wall beneath the face, cupped together. Just to the left of the bizarre sculpture is a line of text written in the elvish script. Actually, the elvish writing is only the top-most bit of text. Engraved into the wall beneath the elven writing is a block of text in Castinian–which I can actually read–and beneath that is more text in three different languages I cannot even begin to place. “It looks like we found a puzzle room.”
“A puzzle room?” I ask
Adrius groans behind me and kicks the counter. “So, it is just a bloody kitchen.”
“You want to fight more monsters?” Samissa asks her cousin.
“You don’t get soul reinforcements from solving puzzles,” Adrius says. He lets out a heavy breath and finds a seat on the marble island running the length of the kitchen.
“Anyways,” Dovik says, continuing. “A puzzle room is something you find in dungeons on occasion. Instead of having to kill monsters to progress, a group needs to simply solve a puzzle or riddle to overcome their obstacles.”
“That sounds dumb,” I agree with Adrius.
“Thank you,” the healer says from his seat on the island.
“How does that even work with natural dungeons?” I ask. “Does the world just decide to make puzzles for people?”
“What?” Dovik asks back at me, shaking his head. He crouches, inspecting the writing on the wall. “They are only in artificial dungeons, obviously. Dungeon designers put them in to give groups breaks when trying to clear a dungeon or to change things up.”
I roll my eyes at the explanation. I would rather kill a monster and get levels.
Dovik motions for Macille to join him at the wall. The two spend a few minutes talking in hushed voices and reading the script while Samissa and I inspect the pantry. There is a mountain of produce inside that looks as if it was picked just the day before, as well as entire loaves of bread, a full pail of milk, rare ingredients like sugar, and exotic spices like cinnamon. I only recognize a scant few of the spices.
“I am going to venture a guess and say that they want us to cook something,” I say, summoning all my sass and looking around the pantry.
“Looks like it,” Dovik calls from the wall. Samissa and I rejoin him and Macille as Dovik begins to explain the text. “Macille confirmed what the elvish text says; I expect all the lines are essentially identical, written in all the major languages. Well, except for Karno, fuck them I guess.” He points to the Castinian line. “I’m just going to explain the answer to this riddle. They want us to make a dessert and place it into the hands of the sculpture. I’m pretty sure that will open the barrier for us and allow us to continue on in the dungeon.”
I squint at the line written in Castinian. It mentions something about fire, sweetness, and satiating the demon. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it wants us to bake something.
“So,” I say, looking at the group. “What do you all know how to make?”
“Like…cook?” Dovik asks back at me.
I look around the group, only getting blank stares back. I pinch the bridge of my nose, sighing. For a moment, I had forgotten that I was speaking to a bunch of rich scions of powerful families. “Of course. Just to be clear, none of you know how to make anything?”
I receive a chorus of “No” from the group.
“How hard could it be,” Adrius says. When I look to him, I find the man using a knife to get the grime out from beneath his nails. “If servant girls can do it, then I am certain that it can’t be that hard.”
“Exeter save me,” I mutter, stalking back to the pantry. I start picking through the ingredients. “I am going to make a pie then.”
“Cherry pie please,” Adrius calls after me.
“We don’t have cherries,” I yell back to him as I pick through ingredients. I might be a bit frustrated at the rich scions outside, but internally, I am a bit excited to be able to cook with so many ingredients I have never had access to before. The sugar is a miracle by itself; I can count on one hand the number of times that my mother was able to procure sugar at market to bake with. Those were always the best pies, though this pantry is distinctly lacking pears to use in the pie.
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“You know how to make pies?” Macille asks me, peeking into the pantry.
I hand the man a sack of flour and the small container of sugar that I found before going back to digging through the well-stocked pantry. Looks like we will have to settle for apple pie. I go ahead and toss him the bound sticks of cinnamon that I found. “I grew up on a pear orchard,” I say to him. “Of course I can make pies.”
“Wait,” Dovik says from back in the kitchen. “You are actually a farm girl?”
I ignore him, taking everything over to one of the counters and begin to make the dough. “Feel free to keep exploring the dungeon while I do this,” I say. “It is going to take a while.”
“I think we should stay nearby,” Dovik comments. “We will watch your back.”
I shrug and continue working. Honestly, once I start getting into the process of preparing the pie, the minutes seem to fly by. Macille parks himself near the door leading into the kitchen, while Dovik and Adrius spark up a conversation. I am so engrossed in the process of separating my ingredients, ordering everything, and eyeballing the measurements of what I will use, that I don’t notice Samissa standing at my side until she taps me on the shoulder.
“Thank you,” she says.
I look her way, rolling out the dough to be smooth enough to use. “For what?”
“For sticking up for me back there,” she says. I see a blush on the woman’s face but don’t call attention to it. “I was really surprised that Dovik wanted me to just try and run through the trap. I kind of froze up.”
Shaking my head, I continue my work. “That was ridiculous. Trying to make you put your life on the line like that.”
“I think that I could have beat it,” Samissa says in a quiet voice. “Maybe.”
“Still.”
“I know,” Samissa looks back over her shoulder to where Dovik and Adrius are speaking. “He has been acting strangely since we came down here.”
“You noticed it too then. Will you grab me that pan?”
“Yes. I have never known him to be like this,” she says, handing me the pan. I start to fill it with the dough, kneading it into the proper shape.
“Have you known Dovik long?”
“I wouldn’t say that I really know him all that well,” she admits. “He is more Adrius’ friend than mine. I met him a few times before the competition, and he always seemed like the most proper gentleman. When I was separated from my cousin at the parade grounds, I thought for sure that I was going to fail this competition. Now that we all have a big group together; I am hoping that won’t be the case.”
“I hope so too,” I say. I give the woman a smile and am satisfied to see that she returns it. “You are welcome by the way. Try not to let him push you around in the future. I don’t know what he is dealing with right now that is making him act strangely, but I know that it isn’t an excuse to endanger beautiful young ladies.”
She laughs and leans in to whisper in my ear. “I do actually know how to cook a little,” she says. “They would make fun of me if I admitted that though. Proper ladies aren’t expected to know how to do those things.”
“I guess I’ll keep choosing not to be a proper lady then,” I say. My own words catch me a bit off guard. Thinking back just a few months, isn’t that all that I wanted in the world?
“Let me know if there is anything you need my help with,” Samissa says.
“The prep work is done,” I say after putting the filling in and working at closing the top of the pie. “I just need to bake.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Samissa says, shaking her head. I look at her a bit puzzled, but she just moves away to go stand with Macille at the entrance to the kitchen.
Moving to the other wall of the room lined with ovens, I am initially excited, before finding that there is no fuel to keep them lit inside. I groan again, putting the uncooked pie inside.
“Samissa said you needed my help,” Macille says, standing over me as I crouch and look inside the oven.
Looking back along the wall, I see her standing there, at the kitchen entrance, throwing a coy look in my direction.
“Yes, actually.” I say, motioning to the oven. “Can you rip the door off this thing?”
“What?”
“Just pull the door off,” I say again, slapping the door of the oven that hangs open. “You are a big strong man, right. You can do it.”
“I can do it,” he says slowly. “I just don’t understand why you want me to.”
“There isn’t any fuel to keep the oven lit, so I am guessing that I will have to do that myself. Lucky for all of you, you have a fire mage in your group.”
“If there is no fuel to keep the oven lit, then I guess we are pretty lucky for that,” Dovik says from where he lounges atop the marble island.
Macille looks between me and the oven for a moment before leaning down and grabbing the door with his big hand. I might have thought he was picking up a moderate weight as a slight strain causes his muscles to bulge along his arm, rather than shattering steel with his vastly improved strength. The sound of wrenching metal is horrendous, but in just a few seconds, Macille has ripped the door off of the oven for me. “Does this make it…easier for you to use the oven? I thought that they need to stay closed.”
“It lets me stretch my legs out,” I say. I sink to my butt, stretching my legs across the aisle between the island and the row of ovens. Dragonfire starts to form over my hand. I concentrate, trying to manipulate the fire, looking down at my hand.
I have done something similar to this only once before. Back when I was using my fire to heat my bathwater, I noticed that my mana started to decrease as the temperature of the bath went up. Somehow, I was able to use my fire in a way that wasn’t throwing Dragonfire Bolts at my enemies.
Focusing on the dragonfire that coats my hand, I try to project it toward the bed of the oven, and I find that doing so is far easier to do than I initially expected. The dragonfire leaps away from my palm, a constant stream of spiraling orange diving into the bed of the oven, heating the interior immediately.
“I’ve never seen you do that before,” Macille says, taking a seat next to me with his back to the island as well.
“Me either. It’s the first time that I have tried. I am starting to think that there is a lot more to these magical abilities that I haven’t explored yet.”
Macille shakes his head. “You have really come a long way since I met you just a few months ago,” he says.
“What?” The momentary distraction of his words stops the continuous flame for a moment. I summon my focus to begin the stream into the oven once again. The open door of the oven allows the delicious aroma of baking apple and cinnamon to run through the room, entrancing. I check my mana. It is depleting at a significant rate, but I should have enough to keep the stream up until the pie is finished–should.
“I am thinking of the first time that we fought the Desert Spearman together,” he says.
“Ugh, please don’t remind me. I’ve relived that embarrassment and horror over a hundred times in my head already.”
“Yet,” he says, stopping me from going on about how awful my debut as an essentia magician had been, “you told me that you managed to kill a rank two monster by yourself yesterday.”
Adrius whistles from where he lounges opposite Dovik. After receiving a glare from me, the man turns back to his conversation with Dovik, though I don’t doubt that he is still eavesdropping.
“It wasn’t nearly as powerful as the Desert Spearman,” I say to Macille.
“That doesn’t really matter,” Macille says. “I think that Arabella might have given you the wrong expectations, making us have to beat a rank two monster before allowing us into this competition. Normally, only the true elites of the world are able to hunt monsters a full rank above themselves without a party. Being able to do that means that you are really something special.”
I can’t help but blush at Macille’s words and hope that he will think my reddening cheeks are just because of the rising heat around us. “I’m not all that special. My brother, Halford, now he was really someone special, and he never hunted something above his rank.”
“He sounds like a cautious man,” Macille says. “You speak about him a lot.”
“Do I?” I can’t look at him. All of his beauty is way too close to me at the moment.
“You really admire him don’t you.”
“What is there not to admire? He is tall, handsome, and powerful. He is nice to everyone, well, almost everyone, and he really cares about his friends. Add to that that he has basically no weaknesses and was able to beat rank two magicians in duels when he was still rank one. It is hard for me to think of a better example of what an essentia magician should be.”
“Well,” Macille says, setting his head back against the island, “now I really want to meet him. Maybe when this competition is over, we will have a chance to return home. For a little while at least.”
“Maybe.”
“I think you are wrong though,” he continues. “If he didn’t have any weaknesses, then he wouldn’t be using a party to adventure with. That is what a party is for, to compensate for the weaknesses of the individual.”
“I suppose so,” I say.
“Take me for example. I have good defense, but my offense is pretty lacking. I do have one ability that helps me kill monsters, but it requires me to spend time to prepare it, and even then, if I cannot get close to my target then it is useless.” He smirks at me. “I think that is why Arabella partnered me with you. If I have your raw power behind me, then I can focus on defense.”
“That is all I have though,” I say. “Every day it seems like my fire gets stronger, but I am still incredibly frail. I don’t think that I would survive a single hit from someone who has the same kind of offensive magic that I do. I tried to increase my speed, and that has helped a little, but when that rank two fish hit me a single time it almost took me out. That doesn’t sound like someone who is very special to me. I’ve seen you take dozens of hits from something as strong as the Desert Spearman and keep fighting. I wish I could do that.”
“You are trying to be a Mage,” Macille says. “I think you should focus on not getting hit. Leave absorbing blows to stupid brutes like me.” He sets his hand on my leg and flashes me a smile that makes my heart just about stop. “I happen to think that you are very special.”
A shriek from the doorway pulls us both out of the moment. Dovik and Adrius jump down from their lounging positions, weapons in Dovik’s hands and odd energy glowing around Adrius’. We all look to the entrance of the kitchen to see Samissa standing there with her hand on her chest, trying to calm her breathing.
“What is it!” Macille calls, worry in his voice. The man is already standing, sword in one hand and shield in the other.
“Something ran past my foot. I think it was a mouse,” Samissa explains.
A sense of disappointment comes over me, and I glare at Samissa from where I am sitting, though the woman doesn’t see it. The tension seeps out of Macille’s incredibly well-toned shoulders. He sets his shield on the countertop with a laugh. Dovik starts laughing behind me, and the magic in Adrius’ hands disappears. Samissa looks back at the rest of us with a red face caught in an expression somewhere between anger and embarrassment.
“It surprised me,” she yells at us.
I can hear a banging on the other side of the island and the sounds of a small animal moving around.
“I’ll get it,” Adrius says, jumping over the island and looking down the aisle on that side of the kitchen. “Not a mouse,” he says, walking forward and trying to corner the critter I still can’t see. Macille replaces the sword in its sheath and leans back against the island, letting out a long breath.
I cut off the mana that I am supplying to the fire and stand as well, dusting off my pantlegs. Despite the general cleanliness of the kitchen, the stone floor is still what I imagine one might find in a thousand-year-old dungeon filled with grime and dust.
“It just scared me is all,” Samissa calls to us again, trying to rub the grin off Dovik’s face with her words. “You would be startled too if something ran over your foot out of nowhere.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be a Scout,” Dovik says back to her as he walks over and looks into the oven that I have been using.
His words cause Samissa’s face to redden like a tomato.
“Got it,” Adrius says, lunging forward and hoisting a small rodent for us all to see. The man pulls the little thing in and gingerly cups it in his hands, cooing to it softly. “You’re okay little guy.” He looks around the room, showing off the rodent. “Does anyone know what it is?”
The thing in his hands looks like a strange cross between a rabbit and a chipmunk, tiny body with over-sized cheeks and ears that fall down over its face. I attempt to use my eye to identify the creature, but my ability gives me no information. I shake my head, blinking, but when I try again, I still get nothing. Weird, even if the creature isn’t a monster, my eye has always been able to identify animals in the past. Maybe there are still lingering effects from the yellow barrier slapping me earlier.
“This looks about done,” Dovik says, leaning into the stove. He takes a whiff of the pie and sighs.
“How would you know?” I ask.
Before he can say another word, the sound of a violent pop makes me spin around. I feel something wet splash against my face, a drop of red falling into my eye. Adrius stands on the other side of the island from us, looking down at his arms that end in bloody stumps halfway down his forearms. The man’s once clean robes are painted in his own gore, and the confusion on his face morphs into pure agony. Adrius screams, falling backward against the countertop, waving the stumps of his arms.
“Adrius!” Samissa screams from the doorway, her own voice drowned out by her cousin’s pained shrieking. She never sees it coming. An arrow, nothing particularly fanciful, sprouts out the side of Samissa’s neck, dragging blood and viscera behind it as it sails just past my head, exploding against the wall behind me. Samissa’s eyes roll back in her head as she slumps sideways, her temple colliding with the corner of one of the iron ovens. She is dead before she even hits the ground, blood from the wound in her neck pooling on the ground around her.
“Down!” Macille roars over Adrius’ screaming. He reaches for the shield he set on the counter, but another arrow stabs into his shoulder before he can reach it, throwing the big man back into me. We both crash to the ground, Macille’s great weight on top of me, the arrow still sticking out of his shoulder.
I see past Macille, a man walk out of the shadow of the kitchen’s entrance, stepping over Samissa’s body, two scimitars in his hands that drip black ichor.