Wet echoes came from the minced-meat lined halls that sprouted from the kitchen like roads from Rome. Its breath was that of deliciously cooked onions, and it all pulsed, as if it was an intestine with some sort of ominous peristalsis going on. All considered, it looked like a comfortable place for your body to be disposed of after you mess with the restaurant mafia.

“Mariana, why are you not … digging into the meat and causing a disaster?” I asked, as she stood serene yet alert by my side, like a lion statue.

“I am more than a mere animal that cannot control its instincts, if and when need arises. The stupid is stashed away until the danger passes by.”

“Couldn’t you remain intelligent?” Asked Sabrina, her voice devoid of emotion, like her heart wasn’t there.

“I suffer my intelligence in ways you couldn’t conceive. For example, I yearn for the colors you see but I don’t, yet must thank the night-vision you lack; and I have become increasingly aware of my deficient lifespan, of the fact Walter will outlive me, and have another dog, maybe another golden retriever, and he will feed it like he feeds me. Love him or her as he loves me. I think of things no dog should, Sabrina. It’s dreadful. The moments of dumbness are a blessing.”

“Is that why you are aiding me go back to Earth, Mariana?” I asked as I scratched the underside of her neck.

“Partly.”

The moment was interrupted by the sloshing roar of something inside the meat halls. Something big, something, paradoxically, hungry.

“Oh lord, not the wingless dragon again,” Florencia complained, more out of annoyance than out of fear.

“Mariana, summon the Newfie.”

She obeyed, and the water dog slowly dripped from the cracks between and in the roof bricks. Soon enough, the water-waterdog had formed in front of us.

I gestured for everyone to remain still and stared intently at the back of the newfie. There, among the water hairs, a small vibration created a wave. And another. And then another.

“Judging by the rules this universe abides by, that cannot me a dragon without wings, Florencia,” I concluded.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“The water moves as if something heavy came with firm, determinate steps. Which is nonsensical, as the minced meat would cushion the steps of a big creature at least a little bit and the Newfie’s shape is probably not optimal for transmission of force and tremors to its back. This can only mean that what approaches is a dinosaur made out of empanadas, and we just made a Jurassic Park reference with the aid of rule of funny,” I hastily explained, turning to look at them, readying my belts.

That was when it turned the corner. Several meters long, wearing a thick coat of plumules composed of shredded tuna. He resembled a tyrannosaurid, and, below his big sliced-olive eyes, there was a nightmarish mouth full of small, elongated empanadas that filled in the role of teeth.

The monster approached with measured, heavy steps, leaving big, three toed tracks on the minced meat.

“Wait, is it a… Copetinranosaurus?” I asked to the universe.

Big letters coated in gold appeared above my head. They read “Achievement unlocked: Figuring out the Punitischians.”

I groaned. The empanadasaur running at us was the least of my preoccupations. I had three allies who could serve as fodder fodder.

Mariana approached it prancing with a bit of excessive mirth, if you ask me. But it was just her gait, as there was not a drop of the absent-mindedness usual to her in her eyes.

The Empanada dinosaur, recognizing his natural predator, started retreating, walking backwards, while emitting short, desperate warning roars. When Mariana was about to reach it, the dinosaur turned on their heels and ran away crying like a scared baby.

“What just happened?” asked Sabrina, who was too busy dwelling on her misery to pay attention.

“The empanadas learned to fear me after what I did to their emperor,” said Mariana, looking back, panting and wagging her tail.

“What did she do to their emperor, Walter?” Asked Sabrina.

In remained silent, following Mariana into the throat of minced, cooked, delicious meat.

“I guess she just ate it,” Flor ventured, shrugging and joining us.

Sabrina quickly accepted the hypotheses and followed us, deeper into the empanada tunnels, turning in whatever halls were not clogged by ingredients, making a counterclockwise approach to the kitchen. To the architect who designed the castle: please, go fuck yourself with the first pointy thing you find in Flor’s room. Whether that is a sword or some knitting implement, I’ll be happy with the results.

The halls winded towards eternity and the progress towards the kitchen dripped at a snail pace. Empanada summons watched us from every corner, hiding and stalking from away, far enough to run off if they happened to be approached by Mariana.

With each step sauce and grease entered in my boots, and they complained. My belts were debating if their old bodies were somewhere in there, cooked, seasoned, shredded. Florencia advanced imperturbable. Sabrina, clearly the coddled child, trembled like the voice of a generic anime protagonist when interacting with a—and I must apologize to my fellow otakus for uttering this word—woman.

Eventually, Mariana got tired of walking in circles and head-butted one of the walls, obliterating both empanada filling and brick, crumpling them like rice paper.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

There we say him. Snoring peacefully, cradled by tuna, meat, corn, ham, and cheese hands, with long sharp kneaded claws. It would have made chills run down my spine, were it not for the fact that my smell and tastebuds were overloaded by the scrumptious atmosphere.

The Emparaña hands tried to grab at us until Mariana casually stepped in their way and got taken instead.

“Oh, it tickles,” she said as the nightmarish hands grasped at her and tugged violently, like they were trying to dispute a freshly cooked turkey, chicken, or Turkish chicken.

“Mariana!” exclaimed Florencia, clearly worried.

I slapped her with the back of my hand. “You have no permission to worry for her welfare when I don’t. She will be fine.” I caressed my knuckles, for even Flor’s cheeks were hardened by training and stupidly high defensive stats.

“The hands are going tear her apart!” she protested, extending a hand to point at Mariana.

“No, they aren’t,” replied an unconcerned Mariana, before being muzzled by one of the hands “It’s telepathy, you foolish hand, I need not my mouth, ha!”

That’s when I realized AM would have, against all odds, found a way to commit

suicide while trying to torture Mariana.

The cobweb of grease and fillings jerked, and the priest gurgled awake, unveiling a head that, until then, had been hidden by the curl of his body. Raising his little head, he revealed one of his eyes had been covered by a grease-grafted Arabian empanada. Poor thing was restrained at the center the grease net, prey of his own creation.

“Arf…” he greeted us, head hanging back, as if judging us mere mortals.

“What have you done to you?” I asked, with my best dramatic tone.

“Blrrf.”

“How could you say that? After all we have lived together, after all we have done…” I began a long heartfelt rant.

“Is he bluffing or does he understand the dog?” Asked Sabrina.

“He’s Walter,” plainly stated Mariana. She was correct, I am afraid.

“Mariana, you are a dog. How can you not understand what he is saying?” butted in Florencia.

I kept on giving my speech, unfazed by the interrogation unfurling around me, “…And remember that time you held onto my head? You were the best hat I ever wore.”

“Just because I belong to the same species as the priest it does not mean I can understand him. Do you, for example, speak French?”

“Yes,” said Florencia.

“Well, Russian?” tried again Mariana.

“Yes.”

“Japanese?”

“Fluently.”

“How?” she howled, finally giving up.

“I don’t know that one.”

Mariana left behind any pretense of wanting to carry on with her life and went limp, letting the hands play with her like children with a ragdoll. Rabid children. With a rabid ragdoll.

I concluded my heart to heart and fell forward on my knees, knowing the minced meat would cushion the fall. Finally, the dramatic moment I deserved and had been denied for so long.

“Farf blrr gawrf,” the empanada priest granted, thoughtfully, with a voice full of understanding and mercy.

“No, fuck you, you cannot say that, that’s hate speech!”

“Arf? Blabfp? Darch”

“Yes, yes, that, exactly that is what I am talking about,” I continued to lambast him. The hands had stopped tugging at Mariana to listen intently.

“You are not seriously having a conversation with him, do you?” asked Florencia, placing her hand on my shoulder, digging her non-delicate fingers into my non-rough flesh.

“Blap? Bark prffff fafachiffparf,” elucubrated the little priest.

“Forgive her, My Lord, she knows not of your discursive skills.” I pleaded, raising my hands to the new ruler of the castle.

“Arf irf werf.”

“I am afraid she would not like that. Changing subject, esteemed priest, I must ask: have you seen Cornelio around?”

A mound of vegan empanada filling —heresy, heresy!—began to move under the surface, and soon enough a thumbs-upping rickety hand emerged. And then, a ball of reddened, swollen eyes followed

“Ugh, what did that rice have?” Complained Cornelio as he disembarrassed himself from the vegetables, Sabrina and Florencia rushing to his aid.

“You died earlier today, didn’t you, Empanada priest?” I asked. The little pup nodded with enthusiasm.

I went up to the mound that was birthing Cornelio, and after pushing the midwives to the sides and recalling Mariana so she would, if she wanted, if she willed, if she would be so inclined, regroup with us.

I shook him, by protocol, and then stared at him in a random pair of eyes, “Quick rundown of the events: Someone poisoned all the pit bulls, so you have lost your job. They all died, but the priest has that reincarnation skill that… well, Empanada Priest things. Also, your father is dead.”

“Come again?” he asked, blinking with all of his eyes at the same time, dedicating me a… number of disoriented stares.

“Someone poisoned the dogs. And also your father and we have to bury him before he starts bloating and smelling like Mariana’s food after being left under the sun. But the dogs are many more so they will stink out the place before long.”

Mariana licked her nose. Then her eyes, like a gecko. “That sounds scrumptious.”

“Father… died?” he asked, taking in the situation with difficulty. Then, he grunted, closed all of his eyes and buried his nails in his cheeks. “Make the headache stop, by the Demiurge.”

“They must have poisoned him too. The elf blood must have saved him,” said Sabrina, couching besides his brother to touch his cheek. “He’s burning from fever. Florencia, remember when we drank dad’s Cyanide stocks thinking it was juice?”

“Worst hungover of my life. And dad was so worried!” she recalled cheerfully, as if it were a funny anecdote.

“This means the murderer didn’t know cyanide would spare a witness,” I said, standing and looking at the Empanada Priest. “Or… a functional witness.”

“So you don’t understand the priest?”, ventured Mariana.

“No, I do understand the priest, but he is too far gone. He wanted to graft an empanada to my eye.”

The empanada priest bobbed his head up and down, smiling mischievously, his little paws joined together, as if he were rubbing his hands.

Cornelio screeched, kicked, trying to crawl away from us.

“Stop it. Mercy, calm down the headache.”

The information that Mateo was dead refused to reach his brain, it seemed. I grabbed him from the leg and lifted the small, top-heavy shortie. And by “top” I mean “head”. He had more eye-weight than you average magical girl. That poor neck should have been the Arnold Schwarzenegger of its kind.

“Your father is dead, get it together.” I said, swinging him from side to side. Nice pendulum he made.

“My head! Walter, my head!” he repeated, sobbing, clawing at my legs in vain.

I shook him some more. It felt like a giant dangling fish.

“My head. My head.” I mocked. “I will pluck each one of your eyes out if it takes me all day long, unless you listen.” I gave him a big shake to drive the point home. “Capisci?”

“Yes, yes!” he granted, all of his eyes wide open, the blood gathering on his head probably making his excellent vision go blurry or something like that.

I let him go.

“Good. Get this into your little skull full of holes for so many optical nerves: You father has been poisoned, he is dead. Gone, his body lies lifeless on the throne room and we need to give him a burial, at the very least.”

He looked at me, and simultaneously at his sisters, and at the priest, and the the remainder of the room. But the pair of eyes beside his nose bridge, those were fixed on my person.

“Repeat that. Please.”

“Mateo, your father, perished. Which has nothing to do with pears. Generally. Maybe it has to. Depends on where they extracted the poison from. But the important part is that Mateo is caput.”

“Could you say that again? “he pleaded once more.

Sabrina grabbed her brother from his tattered shirt. “Dad. Is. Dead.”

He blinked with all of his eyes and pushed her away, wildly looking at his sides, disoriented. The information had finally landed on his one neuron. “How?”

“Poison. I bet you consumed it too, but the elfish resilience to a variety of poisons saved you.”

His breathing became irregular, some of his pupils expanded and others constricted. Then, he let out the saddest whine I ever listened to.