Dinner was surprisingly pleasant. At least, it had been so far.

Kane couldn’t quite bring himself to say it, and he hated himself for even thinking it, but if he simply forced it, he could imagine himself being at a nice restaurant. A ship-themed one, perhaps. Likely on the New York Harbor.

There were candles lit all around them, burning bright with red flames. This cabin, located towards the stern, had decent windows, so Kane could just barely make out the dark-red sea and the night sky beyond the glass. Not that there was much to see at all — the clouds pervaded, as if they weren’t moving at all, while the sky and sea had mostly turned gray.

It was unsettling that the only pockets of color at the moment were around Esau’s flames. According to Lucian, regular flames didn’t cut it when it came to adding color during nighttime. Unless, of course, he enchanted the candles. Lucian had claimed he simply didn’t feel like doing so since they had Esau around, but Tal had clarified that Lucian simply wasn’t good enough with magic yet.

Suffice to say, most of the cabin was lit up and rather colorful. This cabin was more ostentatious than all the others Esau had shown Kane; it had several more furnishings, including nicer chests, iron candelabra, cherry-wood cupboards, a china cabinet, big empty bookcases, and yes, actual chairs! With subpar but functional cushions, to boot!

There was even a painting on the wall — Kane hadn’t seen any painting or picture this entire time — although he’d quickly decided he preferred not to look at it. It was a portrait featuring a figure posed at a two-thirds angle, sort of how one might pose for any painted portrait in the days of old. This figure wore a black-and-gold tricorne hat exactly like Lucian’s, but unlike Lucian, this figure didn’t have a face.

Nor skin, or other clothing. Just a pitch-black, person-shaped void. Kane had quickly found that if he stared for too long, the figure’s edges would start to tremble, and his own head would start to ache. Tal had nonchalantly told him to simply ignore it.

So, yeah, this wasn’t quite like a Michelin star place back home. Kane even doubted he’d ever been to one — more of a gut feeling than his memories loosing the facts. But this was an impressive, if uncomfortable, approximation, and likely as good as one he would ever get.

He still couldn’t get over the spread. Once everyone had been seated, Esau had wheeled out dish after dish of exquisite food. Salads, fruits, fish, meats, cheeses, and spirits. It didn’t quite add up how they had this much food on deck, until Kane remembered Esau mentioning something about a magical chest that gave them food, because that totally made sense. Kane was typically one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but after going however long as he had without eating, he figured he could make an exception.

The first bite had been Heaven right there in Hell. Once he’d started, he’d found he couldn’t stop. A drumstick here, a cut of suckling pig there. A handful of grapes, a bite of lobster, and some slices of brie — for some reason, Kane had never forgotten brie.

Dinner was blowing all his expectations out of the water, and Kane couldn’t stop thinking about how willing he suddenly was to do Esau’s chores, kiss Esau’s feet, be the deck Esau walked on, anything for that man afterwards. He even came close to using the quality of the meal to justify his prospective stay in this hell, nearly convincing himself than an existence filled with treacherous seas, deadly monsters, and dubious allies might all be worth it for this on the daily.

Everyone else seemed nonchalant about it, though, because in some sense, this was their daily. They made idle chatter. Lucian talked logistics — because he seemed unable to discuss anything else — as he sipped on some aged fine wine. Tal cracked a few deadpan jokes despite his drowsy visage, and thankfully offered some more varied conversation, mostly settling on sipping on the orange juice and the beers. Saul hadn’t come down to eat; according to Esau, he was munching on some hardtack and biscuits upstairs as he stayed by the wheel, washing it down with a flask of rum — apparently not an uncommon occurrence. And somehow, even having joined the table last after he’d presented the last dish, Esau was chowing down like there was no tomorrow, eating as much as everyone else combined. It was genuinely concerning.

“And I thought I was hungry,” Kane mumbled with a grin before taking another bite of an apple. Speaking with his mouth full was typically not his thing, but between his implacable hunger and the abhorrent dining etiquette of Tal and Esau, he didn’t give it too much thought.

“Hm?” Esau lowered the pig leg from his mouth, which was completely stuffed. “Iff foh mah powa.”

“Huh?”

Esau chewed and swallowed. He squinted at Kane for just a moment, as if deciding whether he should be privy to this information, before continuing. “You remember how I burnt that stack of coins in order to heal you and Saul?”

“Uh-huh…” He had found it weird that down here, in the apparent absence of authority structures and social hierarchies, throwing money at a problem still seemed to work.

“Well, it’s like the laws of physics. At least, I think it is. Every action’s got an equal and opposite reaction.” Esau wiped his ring-adorned fingers clean with a napkin. “In this case, I burn something I value in order to create fire, and I use that fire for an equally valuable purpose.” At this, Tal frowned but said nothing — opting to sip his beer — as if there were some immense gap in Esau’s logic.

Esau had said it like a teacher might repeat common knowledge to a grade-schooler. But more than anything, Kane was incredibly intrigued. He’d thought that Esau was just creating the fire out of bullshit, consequence-free magic, but that seemed to not be the case. Which meant that perhaps, in order to figure out his power, he just needed to find his own magic-compatible medium.

“Wait a second,” Kane said, placing down the half-eaten apple. “I distinctly remember you creating a fireball and shooting it at the kraken without burning any coins.”

A funny grin slid on Esau’s face, and lifted his hands up in front of it, fingers pointed downwards. He wiggled them about, his shiny, ostentatious rings glinting in the candlelight.

“I’ve had these on forever. Before I even came down here.” His voice took on a more contemplative tone. “I never take them off. Well…” He slid a thin silvery ring off the end of his pinky finger and, without warning, flicked it over to Kane, who just barely caught it at the risk of falling out of his seat.

Esau cradled his fingers and leaned in. “Take a close look at it, Kane.”

Kane did. The ring was simple — wiry, yet encrusted with good amount of tiny diamonds. However, it was pretty clearly half-eroded, its edges turning rusty red and burnt black.

It all made far more sense now — Kane had been wondering how the man could put up with wearing several rings on all his fingers all the time, even while eating. Kane had never really been a flashy person in life, and here in what seemed to be death, he didn’t really have any desire to start nor a reason to. He’d simply figured that was how Esau rolled.

Additionally, it added more context to the healing the man had done earlier. Back during the kraken fight, Esau had asked Kane for cash, likely because (for some reason) cash was still something of value to him, and he didn’t want to use his rings when he could just steal from someone else. At the time, some part of Kane had thought he was trying to rob him of anything useful before feeding him to the kraken as a sacrifice.

… It had felt like a very realistic possibility at the time.

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“I try to burn one at a time,” Esau said, gesturing to Kane in a ‘gimme’ motion. “Well actually, I try to burn none at all, hence the coins.” Kane tossed the ring back, and Esau caught it gracefully. “And food does the job too, somehow. Mad efficient for burning despite its lesser value. Ever since I got down here, my stomach’s felt bottomless.”

“Isn’t that right,” Lucian cut in with a low chuckle as he sliced a piece of steak. He and Tal had mostly been listening and eating quietly. “If we didn’t have an endless food supply, Esau would have killed and eaten us before the first night.” He turned to the ship’s chef. “And I’d say you value food quite a bit more than you’re letting on.”

It was a friendly sort of jab, but Esau didn’t seem to interpret it as a jab so much as a call to get on his soapbox. “Food is better than people, Lucian. Better than money, too. Food doesn’t talk back. Doesn’t ruin your life. Doesn’t try to steal your shit, and doesn’t try to kill you.” When he said those last parts, his eyebrows had knitted. Clearly there was something there, but now wasn’t the time to pry.

“Sometimes it does,” Tal said, voice slurring a bit as he swirled his beer. Apparently, the new topic had woken him up enough to be comprehensible. “Back on Earth, I survived my fair share of food-poisoning episodes.”

“Only because you could never figure out how to cook things right,” Lucian said with a knowing smile.

Tal rolled his eyes, nearly spilling his beer Maß as he did so. “It doesn’t matter now. I don’t need to cook ever again.” He leaned back and downed the rest of it, stretching and yawning and getting to his feet. “Well, boys, I’m gonna—”

Lucian reached up and grabbed his shoulder, yanking him back down into his chair. “Nuh-uh. Not yet.” He grabbed his half-empty wine glass and raised it up. “Two toasts, really quick. Can you handle that?”

Tal gave the man a stare that screamed being done with Lucian’s shit, and the captain only smiled back. But the first mate didn’t protest with his mouth — only with his eyes.

The captain took it as a go-ahead, tilting his raised glass ever so slightly. “The first is to our new heading — May we finally find our way through and out of this cursed sea!”

For once, acting before he knew what the vibe truly was, Kane reached for his champagne as Esau reached for his whiskey, and the four men clinked glasses, Esau letting out a resounding “Aye!” that totally drowned out Tal’s semi-enthusiastic “Cheers!”

Lucian didn’t slow down. “And the second is to Kane. A welcome addition to our crew, and quite honestly, hopefully the last. May your dagger stay sharp and your drinks stay strong.”

Kane wasn’t one for attention, especially attention he hadn’t had the opportunity to prepare for, but he stomached it regardless with minimal blush creeping to his cheeks as the other men exclaimed their agreement, clinking their glasses twice as hard.

They all shattered at once.

Esau and Tal were left holding their drink handles, while Kane and Lucian were left holding nothing at all, their half-finished drinks now soaking into the suckling pig, its metal dish, and the wooden table below.

“Now that’s how you know it was a good toast,” Lucian chuckled low amidst the stunned silence.

—

It wasn’t long until they’d all eaten their fill.

They hadn’t lasted five minutes longer, actually. Tal had left, taking his dishes away, and Lucian had sipped on more wine rather thoughtfully. Esau scarfed down the entire rest of the spread, basically single-handedly, while Kane picked out a few morsels here and there.

He’d drank a good amount of champagne, the amount that allowed you to remain in control yet feel nice and light. Before leaving, Lucian had said one sentence to him, gently enough to not alarm him or Esau, but seriously enough to make it clear it had to happen.

“Come meet me in the pirate’s quarters when you’re done.”

With that, the captain marched out of the room, his boots clicking crisply on the wooden floors. Kane and Esau turned to each other with a mild mix of confusion, suspicion, and wariness.

“Did he do that with you?” Kane asked.

Esau placed a final slice of orange into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Nah. Either he wants to kill you quietly, or he just wants to get to know you to make sure you won’t kill us in our sleep.”

Kane blinked, his eyelids slightly droopy as he got to his feet with his dishes. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah. You don’t got that in you.” Esau grinned as Kane walked away. “Oh, wait!”

The man got to his feet and beat Kane to the door. “Do you even know where you’re taking those?”

“Umm… the galley?”

“Do you want to die?”

“Excuse me?”

—

The crowded space that constituted the ship’s galley shouldn’t have counted as a room at all. It was smaller than every other room on board — it could hardly fit three hammocks side by side.

The room was all wood and steel. Jars and pots littered the floor; every surface was covered in pans and dishes and chopping boards and crumbs and utensils; and ladles and spoons and knives hung on the walls and from the ceiling, swaying side-to-side precariously as the ship cruised onward.

Kane thought that that was the part that had made Esau ask him if he wanted to die. He’d been mentally ranking the parts of the ship during their little tour earlier, and the galley was down low on that list, partially due in part to the constant risk of Damoclean death. Not to mention the low lighting, the strangely intense warmth, the absurd organization of the ingredients, and the claustrophobia-inducing tightness of it all.

But when Esau led Kane down into the galley this time, he did with far too much pep in his step. He made dramatic finger guns as he breached the threshold, and fired dramatically in seemingly random directions to light the few lanterns present in this room, which somehow drastically changed the ambiance. But still, not enough to earn it a higher spot on Kane’s list.

He could hazard a guess as to why Esau liked it so much, though. Everything about it matched with what he knew about the guy so far — a vast array of cooking utensils for him to use, DIY mood lighting unlike any other room in the ship, needless danger from above to keep the heart pumping and blood flowing, and an all-round cozy, toasty vibe fit for one person and one person only. This sort of placation was the only way someone could possibly be OK with cooking an insane spread for near strangers day after day.

After Esau lit the last candelabrum, he drew up to full height and turned around. “I didn’t mention a couple of things on my tour, and with good reason — that reason being I forgot. The first is this.” He jabbed a thumb towards the porthole behind him, the only one the room had. “Toss your dirty dishes and utensils out here.”

Kane furrowed his brows, his plates stacked in his hands. “Into the sea? What, no garbage can? No sink?”

But Esau simply fixed him with a glare that made it clear that they needn’t give a shit — they were in Hell, and they didn’t even know why they deserved to be here. This was not the place to worry about the environment or the sea life.

So Kane stepped forward and yanked the window open with some elbow grease, pushing his plate and cutlery out into the black sea below with a peculiar amount of reluctance.

“Besides the reason you may be thinking — yeah, I don’t want to take out your trash — there’s no running water here. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now. We can’t really wash the dishes. And we’re not running out anytime soon.”

“But there was water at the table,” Kane pointed out. Tall glass bottles that he’d remembered receiving in some restaurants. The water Esau had brought out to them had honestly been heavenly, but that was likely just because everything down here seemed antithetical to the simple, fresh goodness of a glass of ice-cold water.

“And that brings me to my second point. Did anything in here catch your eye during our little tour earlier?”

Kane pointed to the knives overhead.

“Huh. Were those always there?” Esau waved a hand. “That’s not important. Look.” He gestured towards a large chest over to other side of the room. It was the biggest Kane had seen on board, resembling the quintessential Pirate Chest with a rounded lid and edges reinforced with black steel.

“You know, you’d mentioned it earlier, but you didn’t show it to me on your tour.” So this was the hyped-up, magical, food-giving chest? “You weren’t keeping it for yourself, were you?” he asked with a smirk.

Esau crossed his arms, leaning against the counter. “Maybe I should, since I’m the only one who interacts with it.”

“So how does this work?” Kane put his hands on his knees, squinting down at the chest; the alcohol in his blood caused him to sway slightly as he ogled it. “Do I just… ask it for a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos? Must I perform the Dorito ritual? Light some candles, say a prayer—”

“That won’t be necessary.” But Esau didn’t move, simply watching on.

“Hm.” So that meant Kane could just go and grab something — whatever he wanted. But just in case, Kane thought extremely hard about a bag of Doritos — partially because it was one of the only junk foods he remembered from Earth.

He walked over and reached down to open the lid, but then the lid opened itself.

It was the stuff of nightmares. Within the chest sat row upon row of jagged yellowed teeth, and a long, pink tongue to accompany them. It had moved at unnatural speed, the mist of saliva the tongue had flicked at Kane’s hand being his only real form of a warning before it chomped down.

Kane yelled out in shock, drawing his arm back by pure reflex. He could have sworn he’d just had his index nail clipped by the beast, the cut so clean and straight that a stranger would have believed Kane had just hit up a nail salon and split before the manicure was fully finished.

“Ooh!” Esau yanked his fist up with a growl, an elated look on his face. “Saul owes me twenty coins!”

Kane slowly turned around and fixed the chef with a look of horror. “You guys bet on this… this thing biting my hand off?”

Esau pushed off from the counter and threw an arm around Kane’s shoulder, pulling him close and jostling him about. “Any appendage, but look, you lost none! If it makes you feel any better, I bet in your favor. We’re rich!”

Kane couldn’t shake the sinking feeling in his stomach. Not that it had left since he’d arrived.