Underneath Homewell, Charlotte Wick continued to study the patterns of the lifeseal.

Life energy flowed freely in and out of her body as she breathed. The guards came around regularly and left trays with indeterminate slop, but she had left the food untouched. All her focus went inward. Her rough-shaped mud, all particulate and grit, the messy and vague image she had arrived with fed on the history present in the city and became much more potent. Her intent refined itself, her Willpower stretched and swelled without sacrificing any of its intensity.

But the greatest benefits came from understanding.

Perhaps this is not universally true. And maybe I’ll one day bash up against a hard limit because I chose to frame things this way… Charlotte hummed to herself in the darkness. But life isn’t necessarily special. A thousand mechanical responses, layered on top of one another. Piled and piled up… until the predictable result is so segmented and distant from the actions that cause it that it becomes unknowable.

Therefore, life is complexity beyond understanding. The heavy bank of impenetrable systems. Nothing more, nothing less.

Charlotte shivered, finding the framing to be both oddly horrifying and invigorating. She became complexity upon complexity, adding small single-cell organisms within the shifting tides of her primordial mud, fighting vast battles for existence that simply became the foundation of life for higher organisms. The color of her mud darkened, more and more varietals of microorganisms flourishing and staking their claim.

After witnessing the Alpha Cosmos, Charlotte understood it was possible to be a person while also being multitudes. To have your existence populated by almost unrelated forces, which affected her life and yet weren’t even aware of the connection between them. The mud of her image pulsed and seethed. She lay in the darkness, bit by bit becoming more foreign and unpredictable to herself.

Her eyes were closed and her fingertips twitched, like a sleeper experiencing a dream. Yet she had never in her life felt more alive.

*****

Randidly took his time making dinner for the group after Lowanna returned with bulging canvas bags of fruit, vegetables, and meat. He felt the Stillborn Phoenix beginning to grow impatient within the pause, almost unconsciously beginning the process of thawing itself back out into dangerous territory, but he knew he still had a few hours before he needed to carefully peel the image apart again. The strange power of the Muse’s Reverie proved to possess quite a bit of staying power.

Besides, he wanted to move through the mundane motions of a meal with Lowanna’s wisdom guiding his hand, considering not only ways to eliminate the overly vigorous image of growth imposed by the System but also cleansing the food of any story that did not end in their bellies.

Honing the strange connections he had learned from Lowanna earlier in the day was a tall order. First, he wanted some practice with the concept of stories within Nether. To accomplish this, he pushed his senses to the limit as he considered his options.

“Need help?” Lowanna asked as Randidly stood for five minutes in front of the ingredients, just using his fine senses to examine the ingredients closely, cataloging both Aether and Nether within them.

Before he even needed to disengage from his focused state, Devick stepped up and patted Lowanna on the back. “Let the man have his cooking fun. Did you know his first action when he came to Malloon was creating a farm? This is a Nether King obsessed with a good meal. Besides, what can you do with your fancy manacles?”

“I can cut,” Lowanna frowned stubbornly, but allowed herself to be led away by Devick. Randidly offered a silent thanks to Devick and refocused himself on the task. His Nether Core tried to stay mild but began to accelerate with excitement at the prospect. He began to work with a few hiccups, as he reached instinctively for the Stillborn Phoenix to manipulate the ingredients with waves of gravity and remembering he could not. But very soon, he fell into the grove.

Carrots and another root vegetable he sliced to roast into a vegetable medley and finish with lemon juice. The lean meat he sniffed a few times and then set aside in a bowl while he prowled through Devick’s small kitchenette for any usable spices. Tragically, she seemed to subsist on fungible foodstuffs seasoned with salt and butter.

I can’t decide whether I’m unfairly judging here and maybe the Turtlelines just don’t have a sophisticated palette. Well, pasta it is, Randidly found flour, yeast, and salt and placed them upon the table. With eggs bought by Lowanna, he used his hand to roll and shape the dough until it had been warmed from his hands and the friction. He massaged, curled, stretched, and flipped the dough. Energy radiated out from his limbs, his Fourth Authority imbuing the nascent meal with life energy.

This Randidly then carefully pruned down, relying on Nether rather than the Stillborn Phoenix. The lifeseal still seemed vaguely suspicious of his actions even through the Engraving, but Randidly calmly worked Nether through his hands and into the food. As always, the mundane task left him feeling soothed and balanced.

Next came the hard part. His Acute Nether Nose activated and he traced every connection the dough had made. With a gentle touch, he began to trim here too, all the while continuing to dust his hands with flour and continue his squeezing.

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While he continued to give the dough's meaning cut, he fruitlessly scoured Devick’s kitchen for a rolling pin. Foiled, he approached Devick and asked her about the implement, earning a blank stare from her and a muffled snort from Lowanna.

“The old-fashioned way,” Randidly clicked his tongue as he returned to his dough. He sent it a fortifying blast of life energy and then raised both his hands. He kept his touch light, but began to rapidly drum the dough down on the table until it was entirely flat. He crouched down and eyed the evenness for a few seconds before unleashing another flurry of motion.

Satisfied, he straightened and began drawing sharp lines in the air with his pointer finger. The flicking motion was so quick it conjured a blade of wind that sliced the dough into neat ribbons.

Once he had sculpted the shape and fed small threads of meaning into each individual noodle, he let the finished product set for a while and turned his attention to the sauce. Lowanna had luckily bought some cheese, so he rubbed salt into the lean meat and planned out how to make a cream sauce. His body moved through the easy motions, manipulating the pans over the flames to warm the metal before he added the fat and meat.

He deftly reached into the oven and removed the vegetables, not even bothering with a glove. At this point, his body would ignore anything less than being slugged with the molten core of the world. A small hunk of butter became the sacrifice to the pan as an appetizer for the meat, which began sizzling pleasantly. Once the meat browned, he sliced the lemon and added cream, butter, and pepper to the meat pan to get the sauce started. As the citrus soaked into the vegetables, he dug out another of Devick’s pots and brought water to a boil.

A wave of his hand, edged with Yggdrasil, sped up the process of the noodles setting and allowed him to dump the pasta almost directly into the pot. Which allowed Randidly to focus more fully on the sauce, where the bulk of the meal’s flavor would come. He considered it, manipulating small amounts of Nether through disparate elements, proteins and fats spreading out and seeping into one another. He traced the history of each ingredient, following back to its origin point.

Randidly’s eyes glowed. He couldn’t actually affect the past, but he could frame it. That was the story Lowanna kept emphasizing, after all. A selective sort of memory, highlighting the aspects of the idiosyncratic life that brought the carrots and meat and cream all into alignment now. More than anything else, the process felt like editing a truth, erasing the edges so all the elements of the ingredients that didn’t contribute to the story he told became forgettable and unobtrusive.

The sauce simmered as the vegetables cooled to a temperature acceptable to a mouth. Randidly dumped the noodles out of the boiling water through a strainer. After adding them back into the pot with a small nub of butter, Randidly tossed them with the sauce. He released a small breath, staring fixedly at the meal. Not only the lessons he had learned about cooking, but so much of his understanding of significance had been poured into this. The unity in the Nether hummed to him, but he didn’t know whether Devick would be able to tell.

Randidly felt confident that Lowanna would notice something.

“Dinner’s ready,” Randidly said, feeling quite domestic for the first time in a while. He felt a pang in his chest, missing his farm. The slow, gradual passage of time when he had first entered the memory had been replaced with a frantic rush. Finding a moment now to recapture it felt good.

Neveah, I bet you are happy. Although when I think of you, I remember that you are the one walking toward danger right now, and I hate it.

Eat your special dinner, Neveah replied with exasperation. Savor it. I’ll comb through your memories of it later so I can get a taste. I should find Mae soon.

“About damn time,” Devick smacked her lips, tugging Randidly back to reality. He carried the steaming plates over to the small table crammed into the corner, the three of them keeping their knees pressed together so all three could fit and eat.

After a single bite, Devick released a long sigh of appreciation and pleasure. Then the only noise from her for the next few minutes was the rapid shoveling of food into her mouth. Lowanna ate silently the entire time. Randidly savored his own food, as recommended by Neveah. His body digested the food almost in real-time, delighting in the synchronous threads of Nether he had woven through the different foodstuffs. Yet he wanted an expert’s opinion.

Lowanna finished her entire plate, wiped her mouth, then regarded Randidly. “...I’m starting to understand how you were able to climb so far, able to forge your Nether Core, without guidance. You can see patterns, lift them from their native environment, and try them elsewhere. In this case… bravo, chef. That harmony is exactly what we are looking for.”

“Could have used some more salt,” Devick added over a yawn, leaning back in her chair and rubbing her stomach. “But I did like-”

A knock at the door cut off Devick’s words. Randidly pivoted to Lowanna to ask more pointed questions about her opinion, but the expression on Devick’s face stopped him. He frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“Only one bastard knocks like that,” Devick hopped to her feet. The knock came again, but she walked toward her sleeping quarters. “Just a second, I need to fetch something.”

“Devick!” The voice through the door sounded familiar, but it took Randidly a moment to place it; he blinked when he realized Vualla’s father stood outside the door. “We need to talk. I know you are in there. The Turtlelines told me how disrespectful you were. I cannot believe you’d act like that after I vouched for you!”

“Colonel, again, we are off duty. You have no influence over me right now. You are disturbing a meal with friends.” Devick reappeared in the main room of her lodgings. In her hands, she held a heavy saber. As she spoke, she drew the weapon from the sheath. “I’ll say this one more time. Fuck right off, or I’m going to attack you.”

“Devick, don’t be a child. We need to talk about your issues,” The Colonel called. Devick shrugged. The scabbard clattered as it hit the floor and she swung with all her force.

Randidly hadn’t actually bothered to keep a close track of how powerful the current Devick was, but he definitely hadn’t expected the rush of crimson, glittering black, and grey energy that congregated around her weapon as she swung. A grinning specter of greed latched onto her weapon, opening its mouth to blast outward and annihilate everything beyond the door.

Almost belatedly, Randidly twitched into motion. Somehow, he knew that if the military complex blew up while he was staying there, culpability would fall in his lap.