"Mark?"
The kangaroo-leather-glove designer prodded her husband.
...
While his wife called to him outside, inside, he'd been transported with her to a beachside bungalow in New Caledonia. It was a balmy, tropical night during their honeymoon, and they were lying together in a hammock. The sea outside their window lapping against the shore sounded like the breath of a goddess of fertility. He was staring at his wife's hand, at the soft flesh that seemed to be radiating the sunlight it'd captured over the day.
They’d been dating since university, but they hadn't tied the knot until recently, late in their 30s. The many conversations they'd had about the matter had always ended in derision. Unlike those other couples, they hadn’t needed to validate their love with antiquated traditions or a flimsy piece of paper.
Then, when his wife's design business took off and their finances improved, they immediately signed up for a traditional wedding ceremony, along with this cliché honeymoon package on a pacific island.
Staring at the fingers that'd sewn this miracle, at the golden glimmer of the moonlight sparkling in the diamond of her ring, at this extravagant proof of their hypocrisy, he'd been sinking deep into a pool of comforting happiness. Afraid that it might be gone when he awoke, he'd resisted the urge to sleep.
Strange, he thought now, reliving this memory. Had his wife's skin been so golden back then? Had her body felt so soft and warm? Had her hair smelt as mouth-wateringly sweet?
It'd been around now in this memory that'd he'd wondered whether his wife was also awake. He'd given her hand a squeeze, and she'd rolled over onto his stomach, and they'd made love.
His heart beating faster than it had on the night itself, he squeezed.
As she rolled onto him, blanketing him in herself, he gasped.
The face that stared back at him lovingly was no longer his wife's.
It’d been replaced by a chocolate chip cookie.
My god, thought the husband, how could she have become even more gorgeous?
...
"Mark, you're embarrassing me. Please!"
At table 48, the kangaroo-leather designer shrank back in disgust as her husband tongued the crumbs on his palm with the hungry, over-explorative passion of a teen in their first make-out session.
Third to challenge the cookie was the rapper mother with the atrocious accent, who'd been confused by her toddler's behaviour.
"Ay yo, what's good, young blud? Why you treatin' that thang like yo mutha?"
When he didn't reply, she tried it herself.
...
A warm puff of air struck her face as she stepped out of the snow-strewn streets of the Bronx into her record label's heated studio. "Allow me, my queen!" An assistant helped her slip out of the parka jacket in which she'd been bundled. Her producer and engineers had arrived before her to set up the sound equipment in advance. In their greetings, there was no trace of the usual condescension; instead, their smiles radiated the welcome of a fire in a snowstorm. The ghostwriter, snarkiest of them all, gifted her a mocha that was tinged with a berry flavour delicious beyond imagination. "Go right on in," he crooned, "Slay the hell out of my lyrics!"
Entering the sound booth, unburdened by nerves, she was struck by its cosiness. With the lack of external windows and the sound insulation blocking the cacophony of the city, it was a magical, timeless bubble separated from the world. Here, the rules didn’t apply to her voice; she could do with it as she pleased, making it soar, bounce, slap, slam, and murder.
The pop filter of the microphone was a cookie.
...
The rapper mother, taking another bite, heard the beginnings of a retro Comfycore backtrack. "Yeah, yeah, 718, represent," she mumbled, covering her mouth to avoid losing crumbs. "That’s the beat, Murda Daddy, bake it sweeter than this treat. Ugh! Ariana Banks said I wasted all my shots. I re-aim this gat to her temple, change her mind, POP! Cookie in my mouth, gun peekin' round my blind spots, huntin' jealous..."
Victim numero four was the food traveller, whose audience spamming the chat brought his attention to the others surrendering to the cookie. At their request, he picked his up and inspected it.
A tooltip appeared describing these 'Granny Moran's Supreme Chocolate-Chip Cookies' as Legendary.
The chat exploded.
The food traveller bit.
...
He was on the couch, a boy sitting in his grandfather's lap, each of them holding a Playstation 7 controller. His head was sluggish from a fever that had caused him to miss school and be sent to his grandparents' for the day. Here, he'd played video games, wolfed-down junk, and made himself sicker.
They'd been split-screening an FPS, but when he looked at the screen now, the guns had been turned into bouquets of summer flowers. The petal-bullets peppering their robot enemies transformed them into billy goats with cotton ball fleeces.
"Ruff, ruff!"
His grandfather's golden retriever scrambled excitedly over the carpet towards them with a pizza box between its teeth.
It occurred to the boy that this dog wouldn't be purchased for years—the pizza had been delivered by drone—and his grandfather's home had wooden floors, but these quibbles crumbled as his grandfather chuckled at the goatification of his character due to the dog's surprise appearance.
Grandfather, patting the dog affectionately, took the pizza box with thanks.
Inside was a pizza-sized cookie.
His grandfather snapped off an edge for the boy first. The cookie-slice was connected momentarily to the cookie-pizza by thick strings of molten chocolate. When the boy received it, its warmth soaked into his fingers tips and gave him the sense of having been entrusted with something living and priceless, as though his grandfather had loaned him his very own heart.
"Eat quickly, Keith; these bloody robots won’t kill themselves!"
...
When the food traveller regained control of his senses, his hands were empty.
His chat was a wall of spam, asking him to explain his silence, inquiring into his safety, demanding that the flavour of this cookie capable of achieving Legendary status be translated into tasty words.
Where to begin?
"The..the..."
He had no idea...the taste...the Harmonies were...
Concentrating, he took a second bite with the intention of sating both their curiosity and his. Again, however, his tongue was held hostage as he threw a frisbee in a blossom-carpeted park to his grandfather's golden retriever while his mother spread out a picnic of cookies.
Again!
For a third bite instilled with every ounce of his resolve, he managed to fend off any personal memories. However, when he tried to isolate the cookie's properties, he met with another wall.
"The tones of the Sun, they're..."
No sooner did his mind’s eye touch the warmth-giving Sun Harmony, it wandered to the light bouncing off the crests of waves he'd surfed with the Duke that morning, to the sparkle in the dewdrops on the savannah grasses during the afternoon safari. Never mind that the land he'd seen had been dry and sick, now, the plains of his memories were the luscious green of spring, and the grass spread in a profusion of fertility and health across the savannah, growing taller into the hulking trees of the Parani Rainforest far to the east.
Attempting the other Harmonies, he experienced a similar mind-drift. They'd all been blended with such immaculate perfection that they refused to be separated, constantly fleeing as he chased them towards each other with the playful grace of antelopes gnawing on strawberries, wheatberries...
And so VIPs fell.
Duke Jack, the last holdout, alone amongst his cookie-enslaved guests, squinted in bewilderment.
"Crikey, mates. It's just a cookie."
What in God's soiled fucking arse-hole was going on? How could a cookie make them forsake the swordfish for which they'd forsaken the stew?
Snatching up the one that'd been laid for him, he popped it in his mouth.
...
No longer was The Duke surrounded by these VIPs needing to be impressed. He was with the friends of his youth, sitting together on a gold-roasted sand beach beside their surfboards, watching the sky turn berry-red as the sun fell into the moist waves of the Pacific. Their faces, staring back at him with unconditional acceptance, had regained a clarity long faded from his memory. There was Zara, who would leave their small town for uni and vanish from their lives, and Logan, who was about to become a teen dad.
Jack was seized by the urge never to return home. If he could lie here in the sand with his friends for the rest of eternity, it would still be too brief.
"Prepare the fine china, children! The tucker's on the way!"
The joking call came from a sunburnt youth, loping down the shore to them. It was Jake, who would not survive the revolution, and he was holding a paper-package from the fish and chip store that gave off the most tantalising aroma.
Together, they dove in, tearing open the wrapping, spilling out an avalanche of chocolate-chip treats together, together.
...
The Duke began to weep, his tears soaking the cookie he was stuffing ravenously into his mouth.
As the last of the dinner guests succumbed, Henry, sampling the Kozosseg Stew—inferior—and the swordfish—inferior—raised his sharp millennial grandma eyebrows in victory.
Good game, EZ.
When the guests were released from the cookie's clutches, he withheld any more until they produced seven 10-out-of-10 scorecards. They rushed to comply, one guest filling out The Duke's card because the sobbing man was unresponsive.
Rewarding them for their quick compliance with two more, Henry then armed himself with a basket of cookies and moved on to topple the last three judges.
The food traveller grabbed his wrist desperately.
"Your n-na-name? How did you bake? The techniques, they must be taught to—"
Henry used Jaguar Slips The Boa to free his arm. "Honey, you've already served your purpose in this episode. We're progressing to the final boss now."
"But the world of... "
Like a ninja producing a fist full of shurikens, Henry fanned out three cookies. "For whoever contains this nuisance."
The dinner guests sprang to their feet, even the toddler.
"What, no, this is—agh!"
The food traveller being dogpiled by the other VIPs, Henry, throwing the cookies behind him, moved on.
"Burnt the rice, fucked up the Frost Harmony, and it's got the consistency of zebra diarrhoea. You served me shit, madam! SHIT!"
Across the room, Karnon's mystery guest threw a bowl of porridge onto a trembling Cook.
Henry, having eaten the swordfish with ale, confirmed their identity from their rage.
That was Svanto, Zone Guardian of Murdnon, the same Heimlandian region from which came The King's Harem polearm martial art. Svanto was a Tier-11 Cook, Tier-10 Qi Master, who used a hyper-speed, hyper-aggressive style to dominate both the kitchen and the battlefield. His speciality was beer production, and he was essentially Saana's God of Cooking.
Henry'd entertained this possibility from the start, the number of Gods who could cook better than Karnon being limited. He'd been doubtful, however, that the trickster could convince Svanto, the best of them, due to the indignity of participating in a random amateur cooking competition in Suchi.
Maybe Karnon had set a wager with him, too? At least, that would explain what Karnon had meant by 'certain victory' earlier - he couldn't lose if he'd bet on both outcomes.
Regardless, God of Cooking or not, Henry would win. No one else had the spare time or perfection-drive required to min-max a lowly Tier-4 dish to the degree he had with the cookie.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He winced.
Svanto would be super mad when he lost to a cookie...
Glancing around, he realised that both Karnon and Nerin had already ditched to avoid the fallout.
The Thai-Indian guy happened to be departing from their kitchen balancing a two-metre-wide serving tray with his stew for the judges.
Henry caught up to him and slipped the cookie basket onto the edge of his tray. "How kind of you to carry my submission up for me while I feed my furbabies! Table 48, Jen Moran! That stew was brilliant, by the way!"
Without waiting for a reply, he power-walked off. As he exited the scene, he messaged Rose, lying that he needed to take an IRL pee and asking her to contact him if the Thai-Indian guy ate the cookies before they were delivered.
Ampoland watched the old woman scooting off with the disinterest that Villagers gave to every other absurdity of Slumlife.
He then joined the line for the judges' table. It was short because most of the other competitors were intimated by the 11-year-old prodigy who'd set up station there.
Aside from the prodigy, the other judges were Queen Suhita, leader of this kingdom; a Count from California who’d won several Empire-wide competitions; and a celebrity chef from Hanoi, invited as the guest of honour. All of them had been judging the dishes impartially—the Queen having obtained her position not through politicking but because she was a generous moneybag who'd funded The Empire, the Count his through genuine merit—and all three had chosen the swordfish.
Ampoland's stew, no matter how much it'd been refined with the most advanced Molecular Mechanogastronomy, was unable to sway their opinion.
"Still," the retired celebrity chef mopped up the stew with a ball of millet cake, "it's a marvellous dish in its own right. If you want a spot at our Thai branch, it’s yours.”
"Screw that!" said the Queen. "I’ll open you your own restaurant!"
"Star of Shanaya over Arboreal 72 to accentuate the savouriness of the Maranyan Plantains," said the Californian Count. "An inspired choice, one which could enter the tradition to replace the standard. Good job, Ampoland."
"Thanks," replied Ampoland, accepting the praise with a dignified nod.
Second place in these Slum events usually left him more miserable than any other, his mind swimming afterwards with thoughts of the small improvements that might've pushed him over the edge. Tonight, however, he knew that he wasn't close to the skill of the prodigy.
"Ooh, you made dessert?" The Queen reached for one of the cookies.
"Those aren't mine," corrected Ampoland. "Table 48, an Australian grandma."
"Bri-yiant!" mumbled kid Svanto, swallowing a slice of Rigan Sourdough that'd been heavily doused in the stew. "Tender, perfect crunch, a lovely balance of the Pauper's Weed and Grey Onions. Spot on! Despite the gadgets, the soul's been retained. I genuinely feel like I’m eating at Mother Kedvessen's with the kids again. Now, I’d change the wheat species selection and a few other ingredients, but, in general," The God stood up on his chair and extended a handshake to Ampoland. "You're in! You can be my appren—"
Cla-sploosh-glug-glug.
Svanto stopped as the Californian Count spilled a bowl of Kozosseg stew over his lap. Bizarrely, the accident didn't disturb the man, whose expression would be best described as nurturing his firstborn son if he weren't also devouring it.
The other two had been in a trance for a while.
The retired chef beamed. "I have dined with the greatest chefs from London, Shanghai, New York, and Lagos, and I was stunned tonight to taste a swordfish prepared by a child that surpassed them all. In the child's fish, I glimpsed a future of cooking that filled this haggard heart with hope for the next generation. In this cookie, though, there is...something...something even..." He ripped off his judge's bib. Rocketing out of his chair on legs powered by renewed youth, he grabbed the basket of cookies selfishly then marched towards nearest kitchen unit. "Don't count me out yet!"
"No!" screamed the Queen in a panic, chasing after the no-longer-retired celebrity chef. "You can't take them from me!"
The celebrity chef tried to stop her from wrestling them away. "Eat the damned swordfish!"
"I'd rather eat dirt! Mine!" Queen Suhita snatched the basket and,
Indifferent to the stares of the guests, she shoved her face in the basket and began to devour them with the wild abandon of a starved hyena in the guts of a gazelle.
"Stop, your grace!" pleaded the Californian Count who'd joined her. "We need to unlock their secret! Give me the cookies to eat so I can unlock their—AHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
"AHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
The Count and the Queen went flying, both of them being thrown with such force that their bodies punched holes in the side of the marquee tent before continuing out into the festival night.
Standing where they'd been, the 11-year-old chef floated one of the cookies from the basket that’d escaped the Queen’s ravages.
"A Legendary cookie, that’s funny. How’d you pull this one off, Karnon? Karnon?"
The trickster God was nowhere to be found.
Frowning but still curious, Svanto coated the inside of his mouth with a film of Cooking Energy that would block poison and tested the suspicious cookie.
"Oh..."
With the heightened mental fortitude of a God, he retained the use of his senses.
Not one of the 13 Harmonies escaped him. In every respect—number, Microharmonicpolyphony, Gustatory Complementation, Environmental Congruence—they had been perfected, dwarfing those of his swordfish as the sun dwarfs the moons, taking the taste of the cookie and elevating it to another level.
And the taste...on the God's divine tastebuds sang the staggeringly-complex contributions from the myriad species of chocolate and sugars and butters and wheats sourced from all corners of Suchi and Kanaru. Every few milliseconds, the exact sub-ingredients being emphasised shifted as their values were rearranged by a 10th-degree Instability Harmony, allowing every flavour to contribute but none to dominate, uniting them into a singular, impossibly-deep symphony of delectability!
"...wow..."
In sourcing every ingredient locally and merging them with such masterful care, the baker had composed a lovesong to this land he no doubt adored, a taunt to those from more renowned culinary regions who viewed Suchi with disdain. It declared that history's tastiest cookie was not raised not from Yamalai with its nourishing rains, not from Volefa where the wits of the world converged, not from Rangbit where the platinum flowed to fund all dreams, but from here, Suchi, from the arid, desiccated, inhospitable soils of the savannah!
"...insane..."
And then there was the source of this immense cosiness, this Emotion Infusion of titanic magnitude and unrivalled purity. It made the God feel as if the universe itself was descending upon him to cradle him in a blanket of fluffy stars. The warmth enveloping his soul blocked out his heart's call to rage at being defeated in an amateur cooking competition by a cookie and losing a wager that would result in him having to help Karnon in a ridiculous prank to replace Zulfikar's Skullthrone with a replica made of pudding.
"...wait."
13? No...there'd been a 14th...there'd been a Harmony unfamiliar to him...to him, whose tongue had tasted the centuries?
Svanto, entering a hyper-sensory meditative state, closed his eyes and bit again.
At once, his mouth was permeated with the full-spectrum, the entire brown rainbow of poo as he crunched down on a dried, azure-coloured dog-turd pancake.
He slammed the basket on the ground, turning the cookies into dust. "Antler-horned dick!"
The God stomped his foot in fury, and the floor of the entire venue instantly glowed with the humming runes of a Qi Master formation.
A platoon of guards who'd been charging him to avenge their Queen, along with everyone else in the room, found their feet fused magnetically to the ground.
Svanto cast his ferocious gaze across the crowd. "Reveal yourself, you blue-haired BASTARD!
A wall of wind swept out from his position, destroying every object in its path. It bowled over anyone without the resilience of a God, ripped off any clothes Karnon might have disguised himself with, crushed The Empire's kitchen appliances, exploded the string quartet's instruments, and cracked the sculpted statues. So powerful was the gust that it ripped the tent canvas from its scaffolding and sent it floating into the starlit sky.
Amidst the destroyed ruins of the once luxurious venue, with the glass of shattered fairy lightning raining down upon him, Svanto stood alone, the guests, stripped naked, cowering before his unleashed God aura.
His 11-year-old disguise had been shredded to reveal a middle-aged man wielding a 10-foot-tall halberd of pure granite. Around him, a levitating mammoth tusk patrolled in search of a target to gore, and from his neck dangled the decapitated heads of three Gods who’d underestimated his might in the past simply because his Primary Class was a Cook.
Karnon would become the fourth.
Summoning a mug of special-brew, Svanto skulled it, and his muscles, swollen with blood and rage, contracted to become more sinewy, more agile.
"LITTLE FUCK!"
With another explosion, the God blasted off, leaping three hundred metres high.
The streets outside, thundering with soul-expanding laughter.
While the enraged God flew around screaming, the festivalgoers laughed and laughed at the trickster God's latest antics. Oh that Karnon, what a madman!
The only ones with stern faces were the troops marching through the crowd, hurrying to reach the blast site to provide emergency clothing for the naked VIPs, and a solitary figure walking in their opposite direction, his skin and sex changed back through transmogrification, the ring identity for the millennial grandma deleted.
-Zhangmei33: No warning...
-Henry Flower: That's not a privilege I extend to crazy stalkers, only friends.
-Zhangmei33: You didn't warn your friends either...
-Henry Flower: There are no friends in a survival situation.
Henry continued on without any shred of remorse. The Cooking God's shouts became fainter as the surroundings transitioned from the bustling festival grounds to the dilapidated shacks of The Slums.
When a safe distance had been created, a high-pitched buzz came from his wrist. "Hihihihihihihihihihihihihiihihi..."
A snickering, azure flea poked crawled out of his sleeve and hopped onto his shoulder. "....Hihihihihihihi...I didn't think you'd actually win, but luckily I hedged my bet. That's the secret of prankcrafting, Professor T. If you diversify your prankfolio, then, even during periods of prankonomic uncertainty, you can be assured of the sweet taste of victory.”
In Karnon's flea appendages was a cookie crumb, which he threw into his mandibles, before immediately spitting it out in disgust. "Gross! Jiantanzhe 82nd! How do you humans stomach this tripe? Oh well, at least we knocked that arrogant brat down a notch. That's what he gets for refusing to invest in Operation Pudding Throne sooner." The flea cackled. "The comedic yields will be off the chart! Invest, invest, invest!"
Henry ignored the bait. "I want my Spelltomes. Not here, though. Too many spectators.”
"Of course! I always fulfil my end of the deal. That's the 63rd rule of prankcrafting: a prankster is only as trustworthy as his word, so never, ever, EVER lie! Unless it's for the purpose of the prank, in which case lying is justified. The details become somewhat fuzzy depending on whether you count reneging on a deal a prank, but the nuances of this are discussed in full in Chapter 85 of the upcoming treatise The Pranking of Nations, authored by me, Karnon."
"You have the attention span to write a book?"
"Certainly! Family life matures a God like that, gives him plenty of downtime to ponder. Hey, have you got any pudding recipes you want to contribute to Operation Pudding Throne? Keep in mind that they must be top-notch in their bone resemblance factor, otherwise..."
With Karnon pitching an asinine prank about turning the Zone Guardian of Nilke's Skullthrone into pudding, Henry searched for an isolated spot to complete the deal. Eventually, he found a random alleyway, and there the God coughed up the goods. The Spelltomes seemed to be functional, although Henry would need to gain a few more Scholar levels before he could test them properly.
"...and then, while he's squirming to get up, we'll all jump out of the piñata and shout, 'Oh no, bony bum, you've been pudding-throned!' Svanto and I are still open to suggestions about the punchline, but if you have any, please submit them before we begin at 11 a.m. tomorrow."
"STOP HIDING, YOU FUCKING BLUE PLAGUE!"
"Can't tomorrow," replied Henry. "The days are limited; if I don't train harder, I'll lose my own recruitment tournament."
The flea grunted in exasperation. "Professor T., how many times have we discussed this troublesome arrogance? Gone is the era of the genius lonewolf prankcrafter. To balance on the cutting edge of prankology, we must shed our egos and research collaboratively in pranktanks and pranklabs."
"Not once. We have never talked—"
"You, rambling to yourself about pranks, hand over those books!"
In a dark corner of the alleyway, a hooded figure was brandishing a dagger, the point jittering with the nerves of their first mugging.
Henry groaned. "Seriously? This is the last bet I make with you..."
Karnon raised his flea appendages innocently. "I clearly explained the prankosophy forbidding this!"
"A real mugging, then?" Henry, summoning a stat Spelltome and a spear, approached the shadows. "This trash zone, it's always one crime after another."
"Stay back!" screamed the mugger. "I'll
The mugger lunged out of the shadows for a preemptive strike.
As their body entered a beam of moonlight, though, the hood was revealed to be empty, being propped up by nothing but bubblegum-pink wind.
Princess Pateela, dropping her dagger, lurched forward and enclosed her windy fingers around her flea of a husband on Henry's shoulder.
"HIHIHIHIHIH! IDIOTS, YOU CAN NOT STOP ME!" Karnon tried to flea hop away, but his head knocked uselessly against the walls of the bubblegum-pink cage. "BETRAYED YET AGAIN!"
Henry snickered. “This is the last bet I make with you...“
"HOW DID HE CONTACT MY JAILOR WITHOUT MY AWARENESS? THE DOME OF SECRECY! I KNEW IT! BY ALL RIGHTS, I SHOULD HAVE SNUCK IN AND STOLEN THAT RECIPE OF HIS, BUT I REFRAINED OUT OF RESPECT FOR A FELLOW PROFESSOR AND HIS TOOLS OF PRANKCRAFTING AS IS RECOMMENDED IN CHAPTER 12 OF MY UPCOMING TREATISE AVAILABLE IN YOUR NEAREST BOOKSTORE SOON!"
"...because the rest of your days will be spent rotting in the jailcell of marriage."
Princess Pateela tipped two baby rattles spinning inside her in a frown. "Can you not encourage his prison metaphor? I'm actually trying to make this relationship work."
"Sorry. Next time."
"Bye!"
They began to float away, and Henry waved after them in relief.
"ALAS, DID HE EXTEND ME THE SAME COURTESY? NO, DRIVEN BY THE INSATIABLE LUST TO ACQUIRE TENURE BEFORE ME, HE SNUCK INTO MY STUDY AND DROVE A PINK DAGGER IN MY BACK WHILE CACKLING—"
Ka-boom!
No sooner had they risen above The Slums did a meteor collide against them with force of a nuclear bomb, the explosion igniting the night sky.
Within the blast, the enraged Cooking God attacked, his granite halberd and mammoth horn stabbing the trickster flea in concert.
"DIE, YOU FIRST-CLASS CUNT!"
"FUCK OFF!"
The one to shout back was The Princess. Her voice ramped up into a sonic boom, then two giant, bubblegum pink hands thunderclapped the attacking God.
Womp-Bang!
The next moment, Svanto was falling, his weapons plummeting beside him, his eyes wide in shock at how close he’d approached death. When he was about to crash-land into a shack, Nerin swooped by on her flying spear and caught him.
"Another butt-whipping!" Karnon's taunt echoed across The Slums. "Any more of those and we'll be calling you Lord Creambutt! Hihihihihihihi. Psst: Svanto, don't forget to prepare the pudding ingredients. We'll meet at your palace after I escape tomorrow."
Henry, safe from the azure menace for the evening, rejoined his pals to explore the festival in its final hours.
At an Arcaneworker exhibition, they met Walker again, who was crestfallen about Byzantium's failure to impress Artemis at the Pit Fighting event, although he did extend Henry a look of respect after finding out he was loaded. Everywhere else, they encountered Byzantines splurging the pocket money he'd bribed them with. A couple of squads of Loki's buttpained fans attempted to assassinate him, but what hope had they against one who’d been ambushed by foes in a thousand congested streets?
The event concluded with an illegal fireworks display coordinated by Villager Alchemists hidden on the roofs. As they were pursued by The Church's guards, one of them misfired a Basindi Cosmic Stormer at a Village’s Achievement Pillar, setting the wooden structure ablaze.
Finally, there was a frenzied migration when the craftsmen cleared out for new craftsmen from a Chinese Kingdom about to host its own arts and crafts festival.
At team practice afterwards, the arena was fairly empty since most of the Australians were too hammered from the festival to attend. Henry used the extra space to train Team Friendship Forever more intensely. He focused predominately on developing team communication and addressing individual problems, while steadily raising the tempo of his orders to acclimatise them to his preferred pace.
Justinian and the other Byzantines arrived an hour and a half late because the Crusader had been obliged by his code of chivalry to assist people with cleaning up their stalls. The Crusader begged again for Henry's help with strategy, and he refused.
Loki was a total no show. However, his character hadn’t been deregistered with Byzantium, and by tomorrow he should have concocted a cover story to reappear.
When Team Friendship Forever’s exhaustion began to impair their performance too much, Henry called practice early, around 1 a.m.
While his friends logged off, he stayed on a little longer, promising Alfgrim to investigate a way to return him to a wolf from the human form Karnon had left him in. Donkey Bro rejected the offer, enjoying having hands and the ability to communicate with others.
In his apartment in The Flaming Sun HQ, he ate a late dinner with Caramel, discussing the latest details of the WBAE's development, while also checking the news coverage about The Grand Cook-Off incident.
Because of Svanto attacking Karnon, the investigators had determined that the millennial grandma was the trickster God using a puppet or clone. There were interviews of some of the VIPs struggling to describe the cookie's profound taste. One station managed to track down the real Jennifer Moran - she was a kind, colourful, typical millennial grandma. That constituted about 4% of the coverage, the rest being devoted to analysing the mysterious pink tornado with the power to squash one God while apprehending another. Still, with the amount of international attention given to the cookie, Henry realised that he would have to begin a new ancient ruin expedition to acquire a less conspicuous food vector for his poison - drat.
Then, this second day in Suchi coming to its end, he tossed his tired body into bed.
His sleep that night was disturbed by a return of the recurring dream of the mountain of the dying. It had grown a little taller with the addition of the fake police patrol he'd killer earlier before meeting Abigail at the stadium.
Waking at dawn, he logged back on, did a health check with Hannes, stocked up on supplies, and returned to his cabin in The Overdream to begin a special trip he'd planned.