Esau had set the table extra-nicely tonight. Forks and knives and shiny plates lay upon a cream-white tablecloth in a complex, precise configuration, the absolutely massive silver cloche in the center of it all polished to a dazzling shine. Kane had never been fancy enough in life to witness such an extravagant display through anything other than a screen.

“I had to prepare for the occasion,” Esau said with a grin, cracking his knuckles. Judging by his mannerisms, he was clearly aware of the tense vibe from earlier but attempting to push past it. “I don’t know if this layout is true to what’s considered ‘most posh’ back on Earth, but it looks pretty and overcomplicated, which should just about qualify.”

Lucian’s eyes danced over the spread wearily. He looked like he simply absolutely did not want to be there. Tal, meanwhile, eyed it all with a raised brow. Saul looked like he was warring within himself, unsure whether he should remain pissed that they hadn’t struck land yet, or be happy to be able to join in on a real dinner.

Esau tilted his head, his gaze fixed on Saul. He was rubbing his arms anxiously. “Are you sure we all should be down here, cap? No one watching the wheel? I know you tied it down, but what if—”

“It really does not matter,” Lucian said, shaking his head and taking his seat. Kane had caught onto the fact that the man always sat in the same spot on the table: the one directly in front of the shadow portrait, creating an odd contrast between the two. “Let’s make this quick. Where’s the food?”

The chef frowned deeply. “What’s with the attitude, cap? I’m really trying here.”

Tal took his seat to Lucian’s right and sighed. “I doubt you remember how we were meant to hit land today,” he said with a false smirk, cradling his jaw with his knuckles.

Esau took a moment to process the comment, his memory clearly having failed him once again. His face fell at the realization. “And… we haven’t.”

Tal clicked his tongue. “Bingo.”

“Dang.” He crossed his arms for a moment, looking down. “That sucks. Well, you know what helps with situations that suck?” Esau leaned over and lifted up the cloche with a grunt, revealing an unsettling amount of torrafin in cooked in myriad different ways.

Grilled torrafin steak. Torrafin kebabs. Torrafin curry. Torrafin jerky. Deep-fried torrafin nuggets. Braised torrafin. And even torrafin sushi rolls.

Esau elbowed Saul, who was in just as much awe as Tal and Kane. “I made that sushi just for you. I know you love sushi.”

Saul squinted at Esau. “I never said that. That’s gotta be racist.”

“Nah, nah! I just… I…” Esau lowered his arm with the cloche to his side. “Huh. Damn.”

“Fuck this. I’ve gotta eat.” Tal reached for the bowl of curry and dragged it over to himself without hesitation. He began to slurp it down with a spoon, clearly having restrained himself previously; he had skipped breakfast, after all. “Hey, this isn’t half bad, Esau. It’s got an extra-meaty flavor. Could use some more salt, though.”

Esau walked over and lowered his own spoon into the curry, raising it to his lips and swishing the food around in his mouth. “My compliments to the chef. I’d say it’s salty enough. Takes a refined taste to—”

“Did you add the salt that was in the jar in the chest?” Kane interrupted, fidgeting with his fork. He wasn’t very hungry; something about eating the beast that he had come face-to-face with earlier that day was oddly unappetizing.

The chef whirled on him, affronted. “You went into my chest?”

Kane raised his hands in innocence. “I just wanted a snack! The jar was the only thing inside.”

Esau narrowed his eyes at him, pressing an accusing finger to his chest. “You didn’t take anything else, did you—”

Lucian clinked a water glass loudly and impolitely with his fork, interrupting them both. “Where’s the wine, Esau? I can’t take a bite without a sip of wine first. Or a glass. Or five.”

Esau turned to Lucian sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, about that… the chest didn’t give me any food or drinks today.”

Saul, halfway into a kebab, grunted inquisitively. “Really?”

And thus, Kane’s suspicions were confirmed. So the galley chest really hadn’t given anyone food this evening. Maybe he’d broken it by going through it earlier. Or maybe there was something more at play.

“The only thing inside was a jar of some white powder, which, I can assure you Kane, was not salt. Had a sniff for myself. Atrocious, really.”

Lucian pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly on the verge of losing his composure. It was an eerie sight to see from the man who always seemed to have his shit together.

“Then what was it?” Kane asked, placing his fork down and nervously pinching at the tablecloth.

“Don’t know. Didn’t try it. Didn’t use it. Everything here on the table before you is 100% torrafin plus extra odds and ends we had laying about. Spices and water and the like.” Esau stalked over to his seat, reaching for a nugget and biting down on it. “And damn, despite all that, it’s actually really good! I’m so talented.”

“You’re acting like you didn’t try any of the food beforehand,” Saul mumbled, his mouth still full. The man seemed to have a bad habit of talking while chewing; no wonder the others didn’t want him at the table.

“I had the teeniest bit, just a few minutes ago,” Esau replied, lifting his hand and indicating a tiny amount with his thumb and index. “But I wanted to share the first actual bites with you all.”

Saul bit his lip, considering this for a moment. He appeared to judge Esau, weighing his thoughts on all this, before coming to a conclusion and saying, “So kind of you.”

So Esau, Tal, and Saul ate while Lucian and Kane didn’t make a move. Lucian was slumped back in is seat, spinning an empty wine glass about between his fingers. He rolled his head to the side to face Tal. “You’ve had your fun?”

But Tal was already moving on to the jerky, despite not having finished his soup yet. He lifted pieces of meat from the grand tray in the middle with his power and dropped them onto his plate. “At least try it,” he encouraged, using his ability to catapult a piece straight into his mouth. “Who knows when you’ll get the chance to again?”

Kane rubbed at his eye, getting more stressed by the second. “Let me get this straight. This is your first time eating food that didn’t come from the galley chest. And this is also the first time the chest hasn’t given you food for a meal. Is this all not the least bit concerning?”

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Esau shook his head, swirling a glass of water. “The galley chest gives us food based on how much we need, and who’s on board. Now that we have all this torrafin with us, it didn’t feel the need to give us anything, to ensure we didn’t waste food.”

Saul shrugged his noncommittal approval. Lucian pressed his palm to his cheek, looking thoroughly done with life. Tal slumped forwards in his bowl of curry.

Their resident swordsman chuckled, waving another kebab about in his hand. “Ha! Look at this guy! It was that good, eh?” He lost consciousness a mere second later, falling to the side and out of his seat.

Kane and Esau both sprung to their feet in shock. “Esau…” Kane intoned, his voice wavering.

Esau met Kane’s gaze for only a second, his eyes lost and scared, before they unfocused and rolled backwards, and he collapsed backwards onto the floor with a heavy thud.

Kane dropped down beside Esau in an instant and pressed two fingers to his neck, watching and listening carefully. “He’s still alive. Still breathing,” he said, his own heart rate climbing.

Lucian was looking around at the crew’s bodies with an unhurried, apathetic curiosity. “How strange,” was all he said, his tone indecipherable as he continued to twirl the glass.

“Lucian!” Kane snapped, leaping to his feet. He stood over the man and grabbed him by his lapels, teeth clenched in a righteous, panicked anger. “Why aren’t you taking this seriously?”

But the man simply stared at Tal’s limp body. The first mate’s gray-blond head of hair was still in the bowl, covered in bright curry. “I’m starting to think I take these things too seriously,” the captain mumbled, looking away.

“Fuck!” Kane slammed the table hard with both palms, rattling all of its contents, then booked it out of the room.

He nearly lost his balance several times as he sprinted through the ship. Within the dark hallways, his shadow grew and shrank as he passed by enchanted lanterns, casting color onto his face in periodic bursts like a streetlight painting a speeding car below.

Some part of Kane didn’t actually want to run. He wanted to sit there and let things play out. Despite their peculiar form of hospitality, he didn’t owe anything to these people.

He kicked the galley door open, stumbling to a clumsy halt. Since the last time he’d been here, it had turned into a veritable mess, cutting boards everywhere and pans upon the burner. The loosened wooden and metallic utensils overhead rattled with the movements of the ship, threatening to fall and end his afterlife here. Another new chest sat in the corner now, and given most of the torrafin was now no longer on the counters, Esau must have moved the pieces into it — he could see the slabs of meat sticking out from it.

However, Kane was only focused on one chest in particular, lunging and flipping up the magical chest’s lid with no regard for his own safety.

The jar of the white powder was still the only thing there, albeit now upright, while previously Kane had left it lying flat. Esau must have checked it out before putting it back, figuring he wouldn’t need it. Unfortunately, Esau was not the smartest person on the ship, and it wasn’t even close.

Kane sprinted back to the dining area, entering just as Lucian was about to take a bite of the filet, one hand tucked inside his cloak.

“Stop! What the hell are you doing?” Kane could not believe this guy right now. His whole crew was unconscious, and he was about to join them willingly. “The fish is clearly fucking poisonous!” He stalked over and slapped the fork out of his hand, and it flew against the wall harmlessly.

The implications didn’t even have time to fully flood his mind. Was Lucian going to give up just like that? Leave Kane on his lonesome? Some captain you’re turning out to be.

Lucian eyed the jar in Kane’s hand. “What’s that?”

But Kane didn’t waste his time answering. He knelt down over Esau and opened the man’s mouth, turning the jar upside down and rattling it. White flakes, with a sulfur-like scent, fluttered down onto Esau’s tongue like snow out of the collection of holes in the lid, and Kane pressed Esau’s jaw upwards, shutting his mouth with a snap.

He waited for a few painstaking seconds, his only movements that of his chest heaving up and down as he breathed and watched Esau. Although Kane didn’t want to admit it, he would absolutely hate it if the only person he could really consider as a friend in this place up and died within a day of meeting him.

What an odd realization. Him and Esau. Friends. That wasn’t how Kane had felt when he was about to be eaten by the torrafin, thanks to Esau’s shenanigans. Or when he’d plummeted towards the waves, because Esau had pushed him off the ship. Or when the man had thrown a dagger at face the day before. All things considered, Esau hadn’t babied or coddled or treated Kane all that well at all. He’d just been there to listen and shoot the breeze and argue and joke around and make things down here a bit more bearable.

Enough so to sometimes forget he was here.

Friendship was a peculiar thing. Perhaps it was something about Earth that Kane had forgotten certain parts of, or perhaps it was something he’d never known at all.

Kane wondered if he’d had many friends in life.

Esau’s eyes fluttered open with a start, the man taking a deep inhale that broke the pin-drop silence of the room. Kane held the man’s shoulders steady as the chef sat straight up in a spasm, patting his back slowly to calm him down. “Breathe, Esau, breathe…”

Kane reached for the white powder he’d set aside, finding himself surprised when he only touched air. He turned to see Lucian with the jar in his hand, already feeding its contents to a propped-up Tal. The unconscious man’s white skin had already begun to turn a sickly shade of purple.

“Oh fuck,” Esau breathed, pulling his eyes away from the display and his knees to his chest. “I… I poisoned the whole crew, didn’t I? Fuck, don’t hate me, fuck, fuck…”

Kane simply held Esau, steadying the man who shivered in his grasp. He didn’t really have anything to say to the guy. Sure, he could have said any number of things. How reckless it was for the guy to serve the entire crew a food they didn’t know was unsafe. How stupid it was to ignore the galley chest’s offering. How rude it was to dismiss all of Kane’s concerns. And how he still hadn’t gotten a proper apology from when Esau had nearly abandoned him to the torrafin.

But none of that really mattered for now.

He was kind of glad Esau wasn’t dead.

Tal came back to life with a halting gasp, sitting straight up. “Jesus— what the fuck, Esau?” He scanned the room for the chef, still clearly disoriented, and once he’d located him, he reached out a flexed hand. Esau flinched back, both of them knowing what was coming.

But nothing did.

In fact, Tal fell out of the chair as he made the motion, carried off-balance by his momentum.

Lucian, who had just finished flaking the powder onto Saul’s tongue, glanced over at his fallen friend with intrigue. Kane, meanwhile, noted how Saul’s skin had not only turned purple, but how it also had black veins spidering across it, as if the blood in his face were being siphoned away. It made a shiver crawl up Kane’s spine.

Tal reached out towards Esau again and again, while Esau shivered, bracing himself for a telekinetic impact. But no dice. “Esau!” Tal shouted, far too loudly for the size of the cabin they were in. He grasped his wrist, turning his hand over and clenching and unclenching it before reaching out again.“What happened to my powers?!”

Esau withdrew from Kane, shifting away and snapping a finger. He snapped again, and again. “My fire isn’t working,” he whispered, eyes widening with the realization.

Saul sputtered and coughed, color returning to his skin as he pushed up from his spot on the deck. His eyes locked on Esau, and before the chef could say or do anything, the older man was unsheathing a scimitar from his back.

He pulled it out in front of him with a crisp, satisfying shing. However, instead of attacking, Saul simply stood in place.

Esau lowered his arms, which had been raised to helplessly protect him, and looked at Saul strangely, watching the man’s arms trembling. The scimitar crashed down to the floor, chipping it violently. Saul, whose face was turning red, heaved it up once again, readying himself to slice Esau in half, but he lost his balance, careening and crashing into a wall to the side. An empty picture frame fell on top of him, as if to rub it all in.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kane saw Tal’s pleading eyes meet Lucian’s gaze. But Lucian, despite everything, was smirking.