by Virlyce
Alora rolled her eyes as she nudged Vur’s shoulder. “You should slow down.” She bit her lower lip as she stared at the mountain of cookies that didn’t seem to diminish no matter how many Vur and Tafel took. Her paw stretched towards the tray, but it trembled in the air as she hesitated, recalling her sister’s earlier words. “Aren’t you afraid of getting fat, Vur?”
Vur shook his head and swallowed, rinsing his mouth out with a jar of liquid that happened to be nearby. “If I get fat, I’ll polymorph myself into a skinnier version.” Vur nodded and shoveled another pawful of cookies into his mouth.
Alora’s eyes widened. “That’s cheating! You can eat however much you want and use mana to make yourself look skinny again!” Her eyes narrowed into slits as she raised her neck to look down on Vur. “Teach me.”
Vur paused his paws and swallowed again. “Okay,” he said. “To make yourself skinnier, all you have to do is gragh, rrrrr, and zwoop.”
“…I have to what?”
“Gragh, rrrrr, and zwoop,” Vur said. “You make your mana go gragh, then rrrrr, and then zwoop. See?” His ocean-blue scales shrank as his torso slimmed by a noticeable amount. “And if it’s too skinny, then you fix it with gurgle, mzmzm, and ploop.”
Alora’s head tilted and continued to tilt until her chin faced the ceiling of the cavern. “Uh, what? Is this some kind of ancient magical language that I haven’t learned yet?”
Vur sighed and shook his head before grabbing another few cookies off the pile. “Someday, someone will understand.”
“You make it sound like you gave up on teaching me,” Alora said, furrowing her brow.
“He did,” Tafel said. She waved at Vur’s grandmother. “Can you teach me how to make these?”
“Hmm?” Vur’s grandmother raised an eyebrow. “Well,” she said as she climbed to her feet. She plucked Tafel off the ground and lumbered into the kitchen. “It’s simple, really. It’ll be good for Vur to have someone able to make these for him when I’m not around.”
Tafel swallowed her fear by taking in a deep breath and focused on her surroundings. Surprisingly, there was actually an area designated as a kitchen. She had never seen one of those back at Vur’s place. Sera and the rest would fly outside and hunt bears when they were in the mood for a snack; she hadn’t seen any of them cook a meal before. Vur’s grandmother’s kitchen was filled to the brim with counters and cabinets, each adorned with lumpy knobs that were easy for a dragon to grasp to pull open. There was a magnificent orichalcum box adorned with magical symbols and lines that Tafel recognized as a chilling spell formation. There was another orichalcum box with magical symbols that were the basis of a heating spell formation. A floating spout that was attached to a ball of white light had a few switches that could be flicked on and off, emitting cold or hot water depending on the combination.
“Impressed?” Vur’s grandmother asked, her eyes lighting up. “A lot of dragons don’t cook. My mate doesn’t like cooking either, choosing to use his time to paint instead.” She shrugged as she placed Tafel onto a nearby table. “But everyone’s free to have their own hobbies, and this is mine.” She stretched her sky-blue-scaled paw towards one of the cabinets and pulled it open. She swiped her paw across one of the shelves, dumping large quantities of miscellaneous ingredients onto the countertop. “Now watch closely. First, we warm up the oven to five thousand degrees by pressing this button.”
“Five thousand degrees…?”
Vur’s grandmother ignored Tafel’s tiny voice. “Then you take golden sugar, rainbow sugar, and silver sugar and mix them all together in a bowl like this.”
Tafel bit her lower lip. “Um, where am I supposed to obtain this sugar?”
“From the cabinet.” Vur’s grandmother nodded. “Moving on, after you’ve mixed the sugars, you take some minotaur butter and breathe some fire onto it to soften it up. Once it’s nice and gooey, you throw it inside the bowl and give it a good swirl until it’s nice and clumpy.”
“Minotaurs produce milk?”
“After that, take some phoenix eggs and—”
“Wait! Wait, wait, wait!” Tafel shouted. “Don’t kill phoenixes like that!”
“Hmm?” Vur’s grandmother tilted her head. “Oh! Don’t be silly; these eggs are unfertilized.” She cracked the red egg over the bowl and dumped the reddish yolk inside before Tafel could reply. “Give it a good whisk, and if you think the texture isn’t good enough, add another egg—like this.”
“…I’m a cannibal.”
“Did you say something, dearie?” Vur’s grandmother blinked at Tafel, who was muttering to herself. “The oven waits for no one—I’m going to continue; try to keep up. After the texture is how you want it to be, add some genie bean extract and purified sea salt obtained from the bottom of the ocean. Give it a taste to see….” Vur’s grandmother dipped her claw into the mixture and gave it a lick. “And perfect.”
“Genie bean extract…? And purified sea salt from the bottom of the ocean?”
“They’re in the refrigerator, bottom shelf, near the tomato sauce.” Vur’s grandmother reached underneath a countertop and pulled out a bag. “Add some flour made from wizened mandrake wheat until the batter is nice and thick. At this point, you can add whatever you want: raisins, chocolate chips, oats, dried squid, fresh tuna, anything at all. I have some excess fruit from a Tree of Knowledge, so I’ll use these for now.”
“…”
“Once the batter is ready, just take out the mithril trays and scoop some generous helpings onto it. Place it into the oven for three seconds ... and we’re done! Transfer the cookies onto a different tray and cook the rest of the batter.”
Tafel stared at Vur’s grandmother, who was using her bare paws to place and retrieve the trays from the five-thousand-degree oven. Like a machine, she repeated her motions, piling up a mountain of cookies within a minute. Tafel bit her lower lip as the sky-blue dragon finished baking the last batch of batter and shut off the oven. “I never thought baking cookies would be so difficult…. Maybe I’m not cut out for cooking.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” Vur’s grandmother said. “You helped out a lot! In time, I’m sure you’ll be just as good of a baker as me. Now help me bring this tray to the young ones in the living room.”
Tafel sighed and muttered to herself as she carried a tray, “Why are dragons so good at everything?”
***
Two small red birds were perched on the branches of a leafless tree. The branch was thick, wider than both of them combined. Between them, there was a stone plate filled with all kinds of bugs, dead and alive. One of the red birds reached forwards with its talon and picked up a centipede, stuffing it into its mouth. With a loud slurp, the squirming insect disappeared down the bird’s beak. It belched before trembling, puffing its feathers out. “I can’t believe Big Sis really left us like that!”
“But, Emile, you were the one who told her to leave,” the other phoenix, Susan, said. “You can’t tell someone to leave and then get angry at them for leaving.”
“Says who? It’s my right to be mad at her!” Emile snorted as he tossed another bug into his beak, craning his neck back to swallow. He clacked his beak after he was done and lowered his head to glare at his sister. “We’re on a new continent; Mom told her to take care of us! How dare she leave like that?”
Susan sighed, her chest deflating as her feathers pressed against her body. “When you tell someone, ‘Go away or I’ll peck your eyes out,’ you’re not really giving them a choice to stay. And she left behind the signaling bead for us to break if we’re in danger or lost.”
“Oh really?” Emile asked, his chest puffing up. “And where’s that bead now, hmm? Exactly.”
“You threw it into a waterfall, dummy,” Susan said, rolling her eyes. “I couldn’t even retrieve it!”
Emile made unintelligible noises as he munched on more bugs. “Whatever. It’s her fault. If something bad happens to us, I’m telling Mom.”
Susan sig
hed again. “It’s not Tafel’s fault that the pretty peacock rejected you. You didn’t have to take your anger out on her. Everyone faces rejection; it’s a part of life.”
A worm splatted against Susan’s face. Emile flapped his wings and shouted, “I’m not mad at being rejected! I’m mad at Tafel leaving me when I told her to! Look, you stayed behind, didn’t you? I told you to leave too, right? But you didn’t! You stayed. How come Tafel didn’t stay too?”
“Oh, I was going to leave since you were being moody, but Tafel told me to stay behind to watch over you,” Susan said. “And she gave me that bead, which you threw away. This is your fault.”
Emile made a face as he grabbed the edge of the plate with his talon and flipped it off the branch of the tree. There was a crashing noise followed by a loud scream. Emile and Susan froze as they stared at each other. They crept towards the edge of the branch and peered over, pressing their stomachs against the bark to stay low. Beneath them, a group of people were gathered around a fallen person who had bugs crawling over her face. One of the people raised his head and met Emile’s gaze. The man let out a strange grunt as he reached towards his waist and pulled out a bow and arrow. In less than a second, the man’s bowstring was pulled all the way back, an arrow nocked and pointed at the two phoenixes.
“Look at what you did!” Susan shouted as she dove to the side, dodging an arrow. She scrambled to her feet and pumped her wings, lifting herself off the branch.
Emile leapt into the air, away from the hunter, and spread his wings. “Less talking, more fleeing!”
***
When Tafel returned to the living room with a tray of cookies, she found Vur and Alora glaring at each other with a single cookie left on the tray between them. They each had a clenched paw raised in front of themselves. With a rapid motion, their claws flashed three times before stopping. Alora’s claws were completely outstretched while two of Vur’s claws remained curled up. “Scissors! I win.”
Alora’s head dropped into her paws. “No! Why!? You did scissors three times in a row! Why would you choose scissors again!?”
Vur didn’t respond as he stuffed the last cookie into his mouth. His eyes lit up as Tafel approached him. She asked, “Wasn’t Alora worried about getting fat? How did she end up competing with you for the cookies?”
“They taste too good to resist,” Alora mumbled. She sighed and raised her head, but she ceased mid-sigh once she saw the tray in Tafel’s arms. “There’s too much temptation. Vur, if I get fat, you have to polymorph me to make me skinnier, got it?”
“Why do I have to do that?” Vur asked, blinking twice.
“Because we’re family, and family sticks together in times of crisis.” Alora nodded and snatched a few of the new cookies before Vur could respond. “And I’ll tell you about the genies. You were curious about the genies, right?”
Tafel picked up a cookie with three Fruits of Knowledge embedded inside of it. She’d definitely catch up to Vur if she ate enough! Her gaze shifted onto Vur, who was stuffing his mouth with half a dozen cookies every few seconds, and she bit her lower lip as she stifled a sigh. “Slow and steady wins the race, right?”
“What race?” Alora asked, crumbs decorating the sides of her mouth.
“Nothing,” Tafel said before taking a bite out of the cookie that was as large as her face. “I want to know about the genies.”
“Once we finish this batch, I’ll take you to them,” Alora said. “It’s nice and bright out, so there should be a lot of them. And it’s the perfect season too. Genies grow on vines like green beans, you see, but instead of green beans, they’re called genie beans.”
“Really?”
“Duh,” Alora said, cookie crumbs flying out of her mouth. “What’d you expect? They’d be born in lamps? Anyways, even if you get lucky and find a genie bean vine, there might not be any genie beans on it. And even if there are genie beans, there might not be a genie inside. It’s as hard as finding a three-leaf clover.”
“Three-leaf clovers are pretty common though?”
Alora rolled her eyes. “Well, when you’re a dragon, it’s really hard to see something so small, alright? Moving on, even if you find a genie inside, they might not be able to grant your wish. Older genies can grant more powerful wishes. Younger genies can barely grant any wishes. And if you find the genie king, you can wish for anything you want! But only stupidly lucky people can find one of those.”
“Vur’s going to find one!” Stella said, her head popping out of Vur’s forehead. “I have a good feeling.”
Alora stared at Stella. “Genie?”
Stella tilted her head. “No. Fairy. Do we look similar?”
“A little,” Alora said with a nod. “You’re both tiny, but genies are men. There aren’t any female genies, so I was surprised when I saw you.” She turned towards Tafel. “And there’s one thing you should know about genies. Not all of them are nice. They’ll fulfill your wish, but you have to be really careful about what you wish for and how you wish for it!”
***
“I know you wanted to start a war and all, but shouldn’t we have at least told Vur and Tafel where we were going?” Alice asked Mr. Skelly as the two followed behind the woman wearing a grass outfit with the little meatball girl in her arms. “We came here as a party. Parties are supposed to stick together.”
“Oh, it’ll be fine,” Mr. Skelly said and gestured at the woman ahead. “She said the village is pretty close. We’ll be there and back in no time; those two won’t even know we’re gone. Besides, isn’t it more exciting to adventure alone with me?”
“You’re not a healer or a ranged attacker,” Alice said as she slapped away Mr. Skelly’s arm that he was trying to wrap around her shoulder. “We’re both frontline fighters; there’s a severe imbalance in our party composition without Vur and Tafel. We have to be prepared for anything when entering new lands.”
Mr. Skelly chuckled. “You say that, but you’re following me anyway without informing Vur and Tafel ahead of time. Actions speak louder than words. You protest verbally but comply physically; it’s clear what you want.”
Pink tinged Alice’s cheeks as she turned her head away. “I only came along to keep an eye on you. Who knows what kind of trouble you’d start without someone to watch over you?”
“What? Me? Cause trouble?” Mr. Skelly leaned back and covered his open mouth with his hand. “Just what kind of person do you think I am? Back when I was still alive, people praised me for resolving all kinds of trouble. I’ve slain many a ferocious beast threatening the kingdom I belonged to, and I helped many an old lady cross a busy marketplace street.”
Alice rolled her eyes, but before she could reply, a clearing came into view as she walked past some trees. The woman ahead of them turned her head and smiled at the two. “We’re here. Welcome to Sacrifice Village.”
“I think you should change the village’s name,” Mr. Skelly said. “It sounds like something terrible is going to happen to it if you don’t.”
“Please don’t be the cause of that calamity,” Alice said, pulling Mr. Skelly’s shoulder. She walked in front of him and frowned. Though it was called a village, town or city would be a more apt word to describe it. Wooden walls encircled the village, and clay roofs of buildings peaked over the top. Smoke drifted out of chimneys, but the gray mist dispersed before rising beyond the treetops. Clamoring sounds that accompanied large populations of people rang through the air. “This isn’t what I was expecting at all.”
The woman tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
Alice pursed her lips and shook her head. “Never mind.” If a group of young women doomed to be sacrifices were able to build a town inside of the wilderness, then who was she to question how? Maybe the dragons helped out, but she doubted it. Alice grabbed Mr. Skelly’s wrist, stopping him from marching up to the wooden gates. “Can you tell me what you’re planning on doing before you actually do it?”
Mr. Skelly frowned. “But that’ll ru
in the surprise.”
“I don’t like these kinds of surprises.”
“Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean you should avoid it,” Mr. Skelly said. “Gathering new experiences, even if they’re unpleasant, is one of the thrills an adventurer lives for. How can you call yourself a guild master if you avoid a core part of adventuring because you find it unpleasant?”
“Alright, I’m a terrible guild master; sue me,” Alice said, her grip tightening around Mr. Skelly’s wrist. “Now tell me what you’re going to do.”
Mr. Skelly sighed. “You’re not going to let go of me unless I do, huh?”
“That’s right.”
Mr. Skelly sighed again. “It breaks my heart to see you suspect me like this. What have I done to warrant such distrust?”
“You tricked me into signing a declaration of war by changing its appearance into that of a mundane document’s through the use of fairy magic,” Alice said. “You deceived a fortress of dwarves by claiming the war was over and marching into their fortress under the guise of peace talks. You made me accept a kidnapped baby griffin by lying to me and telling me its mother was dead. The list goes on and on; shall I continue?”
Mr. Skelly scratched his cheekbone. “It’s embarrassing for me when you list out all my glorious deeds,” he said. “Alright, I’ll tell you my plan so you can brag about it to Vur and Tafel later.” He cleared his nonexistent throat. “If we’re going to start a war, then what’s the most important thing we need?”
Alice frowned. “An army? You’re planning on recruiting these people?”
“Nope, guess again.”
Alice furrowed her brow as she chewed on her lower lip. “Oh! Supplies. You need a source of mana crystals before you can raise an undead army.”
“Nope. Guess again.”