Chapter Eighteen

Breakfast seemed frankly ‘British’ if I were to put a word to it. Which is to say, kind of awful. The bacon looked frankly raw, the fruit might have been good but despite the reassurances that it was alcohol free, I did not trust it enough to eat it. The tea was very good, served in a porcelain cup, the bread was crustless and covered in sugary material, obviously pan fried with butter and egg. I had not intended to order diabetes for breakfast.

I thought pudding sounded nice. But it was basically a black brick that looked like hardened animal feces cut into a circle.

The red peas looked like baby food somebody had bled in, and worse, it was smeared over toast.

“I am a pilgrim in a land of the unholy.” I said, staring down at my food while watching Loysa just devour hers.

“What? Ish good!” She said with her mouth stuffed full of… whatever that was that she was squeezing out of an oily glazed segment of intestinal lining.

I contented myself with eating the ‘edible bits’ which was mostly eggs that had somehow been cooked into a breaded sausage segment. I left most of the rest, though I nibbled at bits so as to taste as little as possible. I privately resolved that my other ambition would be to ‘build’ good cooking in this world, from the ground up if I had to.

I was barely good enough to be called an amateur, but compared to this world? I might as well have been a master.

“You can have the rest of mine.” I said, and downed the cup of tea before I went to draw a bath for myself.

Loysa hummed some version of yes with her cheeks stuffed like a chipmunk and leaned across the table to take my plate and scrape the contents onto hers. They used knives and forks and spoons here, which was good. I’d seen stuff about how people in the middle ages used bread and their hands for the most part.

In this germ riddled world that definitely didn’t appeal to me. But the use of silverware did not make the food I was supposed to eat with it more palatable.

A few minutes later I was scrubbing away when Loysa’s noisy chewing finally stopped and she said, “Don’t take too long, I want to meet up with the dwarf I was telling you about. And you know, if this kind of food isn’t to your liking.” I gave her a sour look from where I sat soaking.

She paused, shoved a bit of mushy bloody babyfood, or so I’d dubbed it to be, into her mouth, and chewed it very slowly while looking back at me, as if daring me to say it was awful.

When Loysa swallowed she said, “Since this food doesn’t appeal to you. Try some vendors on the street, maybe common food will fit your hoity toity garbage palette.”

She might have been mocking me, but from where I saw, she was the crazy one. But crazy or not it wasn’t a bad idea. “I’ll do that.” I promised.

But then it hit me, “Wait, I thought the mech thing was yesterday, aren’t we way too late?” I asked.

“Who told you that?” She asked and cocked her head at me, “It was delayed yesterday, but even if it wasn’t, the tournament goes on for several days, with daily tours and everything. They need time to repair between bouts after all.”

“The one who…” I turned red in the face for reasons other than the really hot water.

“Stole from you.” Loysa guessed, and I could only sheepishly nod.

“Let’s not take his word for it.” She suggested as if she were talking to an idiot.

Right then, I think she kind of was. I felt pretty foolish.

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Thankfully she didn’t make too much of my moment of folly and we were fed, somewhat, changed, fully, and gone, quickly.

The elevator ride down was as smooth as I could have asked for, and I looked out over the street as we went. It wasn’t all that busy yet, the sun was barely peeking over the horizon, and I will say that despite a lot of the dirt and grime and haphazard design of the buildings… not to mention some of the sheer craziness of it all, the wyverns, airships, rails between buildings that wrapped around them and even used the structures for support…

This world actually was beautiful in its own weird way. My home was gone. I was going to have to deal with that. I didn’t know if I was in some other dimension, or some other galaxy, or what. But regardless of what it was, even if I occasionally felt a little sad, thinking of a story I wouldn’t get to finish or a model I wouldn’t get to build… that would fade. I would get over it eventually.

Having a pretty world to look at certainly helped that perspective.

Loysa was unusually quiet on the way down, and I wondered what she had on her mind while we went over to the arena again. As we came close to the entrance and I remembered the way I was scammed, I made a private vow that no matter how much I enjoyed mech fights, ‘I will never return to this arena ever again. I’ll do this one thing one time, and then go see mechs battle at ‘other’ arenas.’

Loysa pointed to a stall that was just starting to open up, “Go, get yourself a meat stick or something, I’m just going to go see this guy, we’ll meet back at the entrance after you’re done eating garbage.”

I snorted and approached a vendor, watching as she disappeared within. It was so early that it was pretty well empty. Then I focused on the food stall. It was actually kind of surprising. It was a ‘cart’ made of wood but lined with metal on the surfaces, with holes in one side and a handlebar on the other and little wheels made out of metal on the bottom. The holes had three pots hanging down under it and inside there were various sticks boiling in oil.

“Uh, can I get a meat stick?” I asked, and the vendor, a young boy who didn’t even have a beard yet, who worked by standing on top of a small stool, said “Sure thing. It’s two for five creds right now though, so you want that?”

“Sure thing.” I replied and then we completed the transaction.

He had a big broad grin on his face and said, “I made these myself, my pa didn’t even do it, so you eat up!” He beamed a bright red in his freckled face and drew out the meat sticks between two fingers. They were exactly that. Little sticks of meat…but wrapped in…corn?!

‘Corn dogs?! They’ve got corn dogs here?!’ I almost howled with glee.

As he took the meat sticks out, he put them on some old newspaper and then took what looked like a paintbrush, dipped it in oil, and rolled the corndogs under it, giving it a funny looking shine before rolling the paper up and handing it to me.

“Come back soon, lady!” He said, and I bobbed my head up and down like one of those stupid drinking bird desk toys.

“I plan to.” I said, and I meant it. Depending on the other food available out here, I might have to bloody well live on those damn things.

Since these sticks of meat were so easily portable, I decided to meet up with Loysa early. I didn’t know what dwarf she was going to meet, though I assumed if they were here, they were probably part of the repair teams that helped fix damaged mechs.

I took my time about eating and strolling, chewing slowly, even languidly on that sweet, sweet, familiar crispy flavor, the oil the boy used seemed to have turned it into a kind of crunchy shell, and the meat within while different than what I was used to, was still fantastic. After I finished the first one I became curious. ‘I wonder if it comes from a mythical beast? Could this be manticore meat? Or minotaur? No, those, if they exist, are probably intelligent. Oh, what about cockatrice or dragon?’

I tantalized my mind with the endless possibilities and enjoyed my idle stroll around the arena until I heard Loysa’s familiar voice with a shout.

“I told you this is not my idea, this is my Goddess telling me to come see you! Otherwise I definitely wouldn’t!”

I kept my meat stick in my mouth and raced over to where I heard her shout, it was right around the bend, thankfully, and so I arrived to see Loysa’s hands thrown up and her face red from shouting while she loomed over Dwarguy.

“Loysa, what’s wrong?!” I exclaimed, and they spun on me at once.

“You?! You’re the one she wants me to help with her quest?!” Dwarguy shouted, but Loysa looked at me faintly green in the face.

“In Kuduru’s name… I was only joking. I didn’t mean for you to literally eat rat meat!” She shuddered, “What in the hells of man do you eat back on your world that that is what you bought?!”

The meat stick fell from my mouth and hit the ground hard enough to crack its corn shell.

On the plus side… I was no longer hungry.