1 Soul Bound
1.2 Taking Control
1.2.1 An Icy Welcome
1.2.1.19 Umami
Bungo: {Noooooooooooooooooo.}
Alderney: {Nah, na, na, na, naaaah.}
Kafana: {What happened?}
Alderney: {The forces of beauty, grace and skill crushed their brutish opponents.}
Bungo: {It was luck. Tomsk just slipped. It could have happened to anyone.}
Tomsk: {Worth it to see Columbina do that victory jiggle.}
Bungo: {Tomsk, you didn’t!}
Tomsk: {Certainly not. She wouldn’t respect me if I were easy.}
Bulgaria: {Will you two clowns get out of there? I have another match due to start.}
Kafana: {Bulgaria, you’re doing a good job. The gelato has run out. Can you announce that? I’m going to go wander the stalls, and maybe get to watch the final.}
Bulgaria: {I got the quest completion messages. Good job too, the reward looks interesting. Putting people back on mute.}
She sent Nicolo off to join the other orphans carrying Judge Tartaglia’s carefully written descriptions of their products and promised to meet him at the Vecci camp at 6 bells of the Dog watch. Then she looked around to find Omobono. He was sitting in on the meeting with Wellington, Vittoria, Lady Pia and Emmanuelle.
She didn’t want to interrupt, so she tapped his icon in her social screen and sent him a direct message.
Kafana: {Kafana here. The gelato is finished and I’m going for a wander. Do you want to join me?}
Omobono: {Aaargh, Hachiko was right! I have spoken to him, and we are keeping everything about your redevelopment scheme under strict embargo, but it will be an amazing story when you eventually allow us to break it. The speed you Wombles move at is unbelievable. Is Wellington really as smart as he seems?}
Kafana: {Smarter. You should try linking to him directly mind-to-mind some time.}
Omobono: {That’s possible? Sorry, I am getting distracted. I have called Mary-Lynn over to meet up with you. She will walk around the stalls with you. It has been an honour to watch you in action. I thought I’d drawn the short straw, when I learned my shift would be just watching you serving food to people. How exciting could that be? I will see you again, this evening, at the Vecci camp. Singing and dancing, it is my thing. I must find a chance for us to play together. My viewers will expect no less of me.}
Kafana: {I will look forward to it. Maybe you can give Tomsk a lesson in drumming.}
A few minutes later, Mary-Lynn turned up, having handed over doing the match commentary to Hachiko, and they set out to explore the stalls, the monks discretely trailing a little way behind them as they weren’t in danger of being crushed.
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Kafana: “Who do you fancy in the tournament?”
Mary-Lynn: “Team Dove, I think. Blaze and Nastya are fast, but their coordination without using Spirit-only tools is not as good as it could be. The team with the best coordination are actually Herberto Landi and his older sister, Tori. She’s incredible, which I suppose is to be expected given she’s spent 10 years fighting monsters as part of an elite force on the northern borders of the Etruscan City States, but while Columbina is weaker than her, I think she may be a shade faster. In the end it is going to come down to skill and coordination rather than pure stats, which is exactly how it should be. The crowd are lapping it up, and that’s not just because of how good these fit players look in Alderney’s uniforms.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Kafana: “I was serious in my suggestion about trying to use this as a dispute resolution mechanism, to blow off steam between houses. It worked with the original Olympic Games. Would you like to take it on as a regular weekly franchise, make a broadcast slot out of it in arlife, and make it a thing here in Torello?”
Mary-Lynn: “Hell yes. Almost half the viewers who tuned in for your initial singing set have stayed watching, and many don’t even play XperiSense games. These are hardened Battlematch fans. I need to dig into the demographics and get some polling done to find out why, but it is certainly worth giving it a go. Channels have to spot changes in tastes or they die out. It’s a harsh world.”
Kafana: “Maybe sometimes you can get to lead rather than follow. Make them want to watch it. Sell them on it.”
Mary-Lynn: “You can only lead from a little way in front. Mostly people just find a parade already moving, and run to the front of it then start waving a flag so they look like they’re in the lead.”
Kafana: “Cynic.”
Mary-Lynn: “That's just the word that optimists use to describe realists. Talking of which, how much do you want for the rights to do this?”
Kafana drew them to a halt by a food stand that was giving off appetising smells, to give herself time to think. The adventurer running the stand had a slightly curved sword and armour that obviously had been brought over from Divine Mountain. He was frying balls of something in a pan with several dents in the bottom. She switched on her Cook’s Sight and invited Mary-Lynn into a group so they could study his cooking.
The balls contained octopus, ginger, green onion, flour and several other ingredients. In bowls to one side were sauces and flakes of something that appeared to be dried Stumper fish. He was cooking with great focus and a certain amount of flair, using his sword to cut a ball of the resulting batter nearly in two, in order to offer them both a sample. He placed the rest on a dish, drew runes upon it with the sauce and then sprinkled the flakes from shoulder height, releasing mana into it, then serving it to the customer in front of them.
Jeiji bowed to her: “Kafana-sama. My stall is honoured by your presence. May I cook some takoyaki for you? It has great umami!”
She decided to imitate Columbina and turned her aura on before holding the sample up and examining it closely, analysing everything she could about it. There seemed to be a gradient in the density, as though the ingredients had settled a bit or the cooking had been uneven. She tried a nibble, trying to analyse the types of mana it evoked. Water and Light. Not health restoration, though. Or not purely. Mana? Perhaps.
Kafana: “Talk me through your choices. What ingredients did you pick, how did you prepare them and why?”
She listened carefully while he spoke. He seemed to have used an arlife recipe, without adapting it for Covob’s magic system, just layering the magic on at the end by drawing runes. On the plus side, he was obviously passionate about cooking, and keen to improve.
Kafana: “You used green onion, which is associated with Dro, and ginger which has associations with Krev. Food can be a means by which we send messages. If you shout loudly, you may compensate for lack of clarity, but you lose subtlety. It is better if all the elements of your message are in harmony with each other. The artistic challenge is to find a compromise that sends clear messages to the magic while sending a pleasing message to the palate.”
Jeiji sank to one knee and offered his sword to her balanced on both hands. “Kafana-sama. All the other cooks in CraftySquId have gone to Mezelay, but I felt drawn here instead. I thought it was because the creatures in the sea here are closer to those I know in arlife, but now I realise it was because I was destined to meet my Master here. Will you take me on as your apprentice? I will swear my sword to your service.”
Mary-Lynn: {I’ve heard of him. He really is a good swordsman. You could do much worse.}
Kafana: “I do not feel ready yet to take on any apprentices. I am still on a journey of learning to improve my own skills. But perhaps I can help you a little, now. Will you trust me?”
Jeiji: “Yes, Kafana-sama.”
She produced her purple mind-healing stone and touched his forehead with it. He let her in. His mind seemed to her to be a series of watercolour paintings. She imagined a picture frame and poured into it her memory of how she cast poison detection while in the Speckled Dove, then hung it up, before gently backing out of his mind. A moment later she was removing her hand and stepping back. She was getting better at this!
[Skill “Mind Magic” has reached level 14.]
Kafana: “I have gifted you with a memory of the technique I use to detect poison. If you do not use my method, you should find another way, if you intend to carry on cooking fish from Torello. There are some very venomous ones here, and they have the nasty habit of biting other fish.”
As she moved on she checked Sys had switched her aura off. Sys had; good. Sometimes having a person learn to read your mind was a good thing. It all came down to trust.