Morning came around quicker than Kreig expected.

He knew it because of two reasons. The first was the knocking on the door, and the second was that the sun was only barely peeking over the city. A voice at the door, most likely George’s, informed Kreig that if he wanted to continue acting as the cook of the house, he might want to get up and make some sort of breakfast even though the hour was early. Mostly because they had a lot of things to do that day and the both of them didn’t take two days off for nothing, and partially since Sam would likely throw a fit if she didn’t get her morning fix.

Those were two explanations Kreig could understand. Within five minutes, he had peeled off his pajamas and dressed in the clothes he’d arrived in. Still tight, still somehow better than his overall.

“Oh, you’re awake!” George said as Kreig pushed open the door into the hall. “Your hair is… We’d better have you take a shower. After we buy you new clothes, that is.” George nodded wisely and Kreig mimicked him, mostly since he had no better idea.

And now, for breakfast.

Strangely enough, the kingdom he was first summoned to didn’t have breakfast eating as anything important, while people of the Empire constantly told him it was the most important meal of the day. Since Kreig had spent 15 years in the kingdom (later to become a theocracy), he didn’t consider breakfast any special, and even though he’d spent more of his life in the company of people of the Empire, he had somehow never lost his belief that breakfast just wasn’t that important.

George seemed to lean closer to the Empire’s views in this regard. It was alright, though. He’d learnt several dozen recipes for Empire and Reignia-styled breakfast foods.

He just hoped his siblings would enjoy it, even though it was hardly modern to them. At least, that’s what he thought. It was easy to tell right off the bat that these modern people surely hadn’t tried anything from the otherworld, although many such foods were found inside the Other Island prison he’d been in. The only notable distinction would be that the food he recieved down in his cell had been much different from what was served to the prisoners as a whole.

Still, he cracked his knuckles and got to work. By the sound of it, Sam was still asleep. And by the way he looked, George was about half-asleep. Kreig himself wasn’t tired in the least.

But he knew just the kind of breakfast that would get them on their feet again. From what he could smell, all the ingredients were in the house, although a few spices seemed a little off. Might have been their manufacture or preservation process.

Either way. As he did last night, he moved through the kitchen like a whirlwind, some paprika there, some (non-fungus) flour there, eggs there… Swept up in his own work, he barely noticed George staring at him, silently enraptured by Kreig’s pure expertise. And at the very end, when it was all in the oven and Kreig knew it’d be ready in ten minutes (just enough time for Sam to wake up), George tapped him on the shoulder.

Kreig almost jumped out of his skin, but he was able to keep it together enough to turn to glance at George, half-washed bowl and washcloth in hand.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Kreig. How did you do that and what in the world have you made? It hardly smells like any sort of breakfast I’ve ever seen, and why is it in the oven?” George asked, pointing one accusatory finger at the lightly simmering oven.

That was three questions in one. If Kreig took a deep breath, he could surely answer it all. “The Raignan of my party taught me this recipe while we were on the run. It is usually meant to be baked over a weak fire, constantly spun. You have no such thing apart from this strange oven. I have always been a very good cook. It relied on intuition, which I have a lot of.” There. He said it all. And now, he wouldn’t be able to speak for about five hours.

George seemed fully confused. Or maybe overwhelmed? Either way, should he have asked for any further explanation, Kreig would have had none to give. That was the facts, and there was nothing more to it.

“...I’ll wake Sam up. There’s a long day ahead of us, and I trust that whatever you make will satiate us.” If it didn’t, there was surely something wrong with their taste buds.

This would wake them up. It better.

George went and got Sam and soon the three of them were sitting at that table once again, each with what seemed to be a pocket of flaky bread before them, alongside a few vegetables that Kreig picked almost on random. As with last night, George showed an inherent distrust of the odd meal while Sam was just about ready to attack it (although she almost seemed too tired to fully do so).

Each of the three took a bite, and their complexions changed in a moment. Kreig felt nostalgia for his old party-members. George seemed pleasantly surprised.

Sam breathed fire.

And then, she threw herself at her glass of water, downed it in a single gulp, ran to the fridge to swallow milk directly from the carton (what a wildebeast), became upset when it went empty, and ended her little spree by swallowing several gallons of water right from the tap. Her chest was heaving and her face was red. But, boy, was she awake.

This was always the best kind of breakfast when the whole party needed to wake up, and fast. Especially so since there was a (mushroom-filled) dish that was extremely similar in look and form, meaning that oftentimes party-members would feel groggy, see the flaky pocket of food and take a bite before knowing or asking what it was filled with.

Kreig used to get around it by simply never eating that meal since he couldn’t eat the mushrooms, but as he grew used to spicy foods, he found it more nostalgic than anything. Sam didn’t seem as enthusiastic.

“WhatthefuckwhatthefuckjesusSHIT my tongue is on fire-,” she spat out between gulps of water.

George took another bite of his breakfast. “Wuss.”

He wasn’t wrong. Though, then again, the old which-kind-of-breakfast-is-it trick used to make even the hard-assed pikeman burn his throat, so it was less so a weakness on her part and more so that George was strange.

Sam growled something horribly immature in return, and chose to just cautiously eat the bread instead of the entire thing. A sensible approach. The ranger usually threw it in the river after he realized what it was, but by then, it had already served its purpose of waking everyone up before the Empire advanced further on them.

“Okay, alright. I’m done. My tongue is less charred now. Fucking hell. Let’s just-, let’s just go. We’ve got a time and a place and the time is 9:00 and the place is the police station. If you two aren’t ready in five minutes I’ll shove a boot down your throats,” Sam said as she advanced on the front door. Neither Kreig nor George could deny her.

Both were ready within the allotted time-span, and off they were.

Kreig realized pretty quickly that he recognized the path they were walking. Only barely, of course, much of the city was still unfamiliar to him, but they were walking the same road he had arrived on. The same he’d been guided through. It felt quaint, finally recognizing something about this world. About this city he’d once grown up in.

Sam and George talked a lot. Or, rather, Sam talked a lot and chattered up a storm while George replied with single words and short sentences. Kreig barely said a thing.

And then, they arrived at the police station.

He’d been there before, hadn’t he?