Act 42: First Hire of The Cabaret (II)
--- Joshua Durand ---
He considered things for a moment, both the things they needed and the fact that he’d never actually done this before, which is why he eventually decided, (it’s best to start with something that won’t slow down the Cabaret’s opening if I screw it up.)
(Now the question is: what?) He let his eyes drift around the Cabaret for a moment, starting with the bar he and everyone else always gathered before eventually falling onto the kitchen. A place that Avery had had a very strong reaction to him restoring, more so than any of the other rooms he’d worked on before it.
“How about we start with the kitchen?” He suggested, eyeing the cabaret manager cautiously.
To his surprise however Avery merely nodded, even looking a little happy as the Dream nodded. “Alright, yeah, that’s uh, that’s a good place to start.”
“Okay…” (Figured he’d react a little more strongly.) Deciding to just push that to the side for the moment, he instead asked, “And how do we start this?”
“Right, so, uh, we need to go to the kitchen first.” The Cabaret manager told him, climbing out of his seat. “There’s this whole thing about… places of power and helping form things related to it… or something like that, I think…”
“Makes sense.” He shrugged, as he got up and followed the Dream towards the kitchen. “Have to be in the kitchen to make the kitchen boss.”
“Exactly.” Avery nodded, looking a little relieved that he didn’t have to explain it further.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
(Which also makes sense given how he’s probably trying to remember stuff from decades ago that have nothing to do with his actual job.)
Stepping into the kitchen, he clapped his hands together as he turned back to the Cabaret Manager. “What now?”
“Now we gather a bunch of Madness together and…” Avery trailed off for a moment.
“And?” He prodded.
“We, uh, sort of smash it all together into an… egg?”
They both frowned in mutual confusion at that.
“An egg?” He found himself repeating.
“Um, it’ll make sense once we get started.” Avery assured him, before shaking his head. “But, uh, before we can do that we need to figure out how you uh, want the Kitchen Boss to do their job. That decides what kind of Madness this is going to cost us.”
“Because different kinds of Madness bring forth different kinds of Dreams.” He figured as he crossed his arms before going over what kind of Madness he’d gathered from his recent outings and such.
In the back of his mind some part of him was instinctively keeping track of the Madness available to him, each feeling like a pool of emotion with the depth of it being based on how much of each he actually had. (Meaning) “If I’m feeling this right, we’ve got a lot of… Excitement, Laughter, Freedom, Melancholy, and Malicious Madness?” That last one stood out being both angry and hungry at the same time. “We’ve also got a little bit of the other kinds I’ve found, but probably not enough to make much.”
“Unless we mix it all together. You don’t want to use just one type of Madness for a Boss or else they’ll come out a bit… simple.” Avery warned him before shaking his head and nodding. “But yeah, all of that, uh, all of that sounds about right by my own count.”
“Okay, so what can we do with all of… that?” He asked, still figuring out what the different kinds of Madness could do given how (there are just so many of them.)
“Well… whatever you can dream of.” Avery shrugged, with a wry grin.
He couldn’t help but snort at the pun, pretty sure it had been intentional.
With a shake of his head, he took another look around the Kitchen, seeing where his mind wandered as he let his thoughts wonder, “Whatever I can dream up, eh?”