“Baron somebody. Are we friends now or should I start running?”

The goblin really wasn’t in the mood to deal with any bullshit, speaking so plainly that his companion looked at him with annoyance and frustration. Also concern. Humans really had an impressive emotional range.

“Please, call me Thruce. The offer extended through my associate here was quite genuine, and I doubt propriety is something you’re terribly fond or capable of.”

Were all fancy humans unnecessarily long winded, or was it just this one? Chef hoped he’d never get the opportunity to find out. He just shrugged it off and gestured towards his pan of pork.

“I made some pan-fried honey boar while I was waiting to show a little bit of my skill. I wasn’t exactly expecting you, but food should never be wasted and Nerick has no appetite today. Would you like some?”

“Chef! What do you think you’re doing?!”

Nerick seethed at him behind clenched teeth, obviously confused as to why they weren’t running. He just looked over at his companion with a completely straight face.

“What? He said we could trust him.”

He received three looks ranging from mild shock to completely flabbergasted in response to his declaration. Before his buddy could speak up again, he tried to assuage his fears a little bit more.

“Don’t worry, if things get scary, I’ll carry you out of here myself.”

The man’s face got caught somewhere between thinly restrained terror and overwhelming disgust. Chef was quite satisfied with that.

“Come on, then. The boar is best while it’s still warm, so tell me now if you don’t want any. I was serious about refusing to waste food.”

The stranger spoke briefly to Mr. Fancy Pants, offered to taste it for poison, and wandered over for some cutlets. Chef was more than happy to oblige, but there seemed to be a fundamental misunderstanding between them.

“It’s four small copper per cutlet.”

The stranger was dressed very similarly to Chef; both of them were transparently fans of oversized cloaks that hadn’t been treated very well. Said man looked at him with complete disbelief before turning back to his presumed boss. He eventually came to the conclusion that outrage was, in fact, a reasonable response to being told that goods and services weren’t free.

“The Baron of eastern Gotthaven presents you with an opportunity to impress him and you charge for it?!”

Chef met the raggedy man’s stare while Nerick’s face seemed to regain some of its color in his peripheral vision. Presumably, his unwavering companion who was only recently stopped shaking slightly knew how this would go and was looking forward to the unique brand of ‘social etiquette’ the goblin employed. So much for all their previous discussions on manners.

“I do, in fact, expect to be paid for my services. If I offered anything for free then you’d only think less of me, doubting my skill, intelligence, or motives. You can pay with recipes instead if you have any new ones.”

This was going quite well so far, at least it was according to exactly two people in these ruins. Granted, that was only true if your definition of ‘people’ was loose enough to include a race of savage monsters with obviously lacking brain power. But, giving and kind as he was, Chef was willing to count the humans as people.

“Listen here you little—"

“Pay the goblin.”

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

The baron’s words caught half of them by surprise, but the goblin just continued to smile. The cloaked man looked as dissatisfied as any human he’d seen all week but apparently knew better than to argue with his boss in front of strangers. Eight coins were handed off with far more aggression than Chef ever thought possible while being paid, but he still handled the exchange professionally. He held the pan out towards the man who just looked at him with frustration.

“What, the professional Chef doesn’t have plates?”

The stinger helped the man regain some of his cheer, even if it was a bit lame, but Chef didn’t feel like letting that last. It was far too amusing to make the man with an obviously inflated self-image play the fool for their amusement. He shrugged, looked the man in the eye, and smiled through his words.

“You’re the one who asked to meet in a ruin.”

The man’s face went stone still, apparently receding to still himself emotionally and avoid feeding into the goblins game. Pity that, Chef was just starting to have fun with the man.

But why did he show his emotions earlier if he could have hidden them all along? Were they just trying to make Chef feel like he was in charge of the situation when he wasn’t? Should he pull out some bombs just in case?

Chef’s metaphorical trigger finger, which happened to be the middle finger because he was a goblin, twitched at the prospect of more murder in ‘self-defense,’ but reason won out in the end. Life was so much simpler when he could just poison all of his problems away.

The cloaked man walked away with his pan and pulled out a hunting knife to use as cutlery. After he ate his cutlet and confirmed that it was, in fact, not a deadly poison prepared to end the barony once and for all, Mr. Fancy Pants himself had a bite. The pan was emptied shortly after, and the goon returned it to him along with another eight small pieces of copper.

“Most impressive. Your reputation truly precedes you. Let us get right to it, then. I’d like to hire you as my personal chef. It would be in secret, of course, which would restrict your freedoms considerably, but you’d have the opportunity to work with and give orders to some of the best cooks in the country. You, and your companion of course, would be well compensated and given an opportunity to expand your skills beyond anything you could do in some shack in the woods. What say you?”

Mr. Fancy Pants gave a little speech and Chef actually managed to listen to the whole thing. Those lessons on manners that Nerick had insisted on giving him must have paid off after all. Regardless, his faithful companion seemed to be desperately trying to communicate with him using nothing but his eyes. Sadly for the both of them, empathy wasn’t high on the goblin’s skill set. Somehow, killing and eating a bunch of people from a self-proclaimed church hadn’t given him a skill related to it either, probably surprising no one.

“What do you mean by ‘well compensated’ and ‘restricted freedoms’ exactly?”

He asked the most pertinent question he could think of as his buddy continued to look more and more uncomfortable with their circumstances. Chef decided not to worry about it, though; the guard would calm down eventually.

“You won’t be allowed to roam the city or even the estate freely since your employment will be a secret. However, we could easily construct a facility for you in the long run that would allow you to have some manner of freedom within. In the meantime, you will be expected to keep yourself to the kitchens and your quarters.”

That really didn’t sound appealing to the goblin.

“They are, between the two of them, larger than these ruins.”

Now that actually sounded pretty good. The ruins were, overall, bigger than the entire cave he used to live in. In fact, these ruins were about one third the size of the village that he’d been living in before, since all of its previous inhabitants mysteriously disappeared.

“Compensation comes in the form of two small gold coins a month for you and one for your companion. Your housing would be covered for you both, of course. You will be expected to learn over a hundred recipes on the job, so your pay will be docked if your performance is substandard.”

Nerick spoke up at the same time as the goblin.

“Wait—"

“Sold.”

“Chef!”

Unsurprisingly, everyone ignored the pleading guard.

“I look forward to our future partnership. My associate here will come to this location two weeks from today with a contract for signature. After you sign, he will smuggle you both to my manor for employment. Have a blessed day.”

Mr. Fancy Pants beamed at them and left, his cloaked body guard following behind closely as Nerick stared at Chef with disbelief and hurt.

“We did it.”

The goblin declared victory, smiling at his shocked and appalled buddy.

“Chef… you didn’t even ask what our jobs would be. They never described it in literally any detail and you just… accepted it…”

He thought about the conversation in as much detail as his advanced stats would allow him, which was quite a bit. As he did, Chef realized that the Baron hadn’t actually said what they’d be doing beyond the words ‘personal chef’ and ‘your companion.’

“Oops?”

His faithful companion groaned, putting his face into his hands as a muffled scream filled the empty ruins.