“Does every kitchen have one of these?” Sean asked, poking the crystalline-blue mote’s metal cage. The mote inside, which resembled an adorably cute teardrop and was placed atop a bluish half-moon-shaped crystal, shivered at his touch and immediately began emitting a small stream of water into the sink. “Seems pretty handy to have unlimited free water in a desert.” 

“Doubt it.” Gel said dismissively, the slime’s whole attention currently devoted to making exaggeratedly deep inhales over the bubbling pot followed by contented exhales. “The memories I have from those paladins suggest those things are pretty expensive, and so is the crystal it’s sitting in: Streamstone, is what they call it. Handy for sure, but they did build the city next to a bunch of water, so… it’s in a desert, but is it really? ” 

“Fair enough.” Sean acknowledged the point, reaching to turn the mote-powered “faucet” off… before remembering that there was no actual method to do so. He pulled the bucket away, and the mote stopped spewing immediately, just as it had before. Still pretty handy. Sewer plumbing, whatever those sky towers are, and now in-home water access? Dervash is more modern than I gave them credit for.

The ‘Wildheart Stew’ recipe Auntie Ta had given them required literally buckets of water, which made sense given that the druid had access to her own oasis. He hadn’t anticipated being able to make it so soon, but the geladin had to admit he was excited to see the results as he added his fourth ‘measure’ to the pot by tipping the entire thing in. The murky-brown water shifted to a more reddish hue, resembling the way her notes said it was supposed to look by now. 

And now for the hard part. He thought, dipping a finger into the now-swirling water and began concentrating on pushing out his mana as if it were sparks of cold-blue flame. The visual seemed to help, but he had to time each release to when each of the hearts in the stew rotated past his finger. Which is easier said than done, especially when you’re stirring and have to keep up the right speed. 

The instructions called for each heart to make a full lap at around the same pace as a single breath, which would have been easy to track– if he could still breathe. Instead, Sean was going off of memory and just hoping he had it right. He withdrew his finger once he reached a count of 5 imbuements. This was the final step in the dish, so if it was done right…

A faint black shadow crossed over the surface of the bubbling liquid, and Sean’s victory fist clenched hard as he grinned. Hell yeah!

“Alright, it’s ready to eat! Now we just grab some bowls and let it–” Sean’s voice tapered off as the slime’s crimson whip shot past him into the pot. To his credit, Gel didn’t spill so much as a drop. 

“-- cool.” Sean finished with a chuckle. “I guess when you don’t have taste buds to burn, you don’t have to wait for things to cool down.” 

“Mmmmph! Mmph! This is just– the flavor!” Gel practically oozed contentment in his mind. “It’s like you packed all of the hearts with sauce instead of blood– it’s brilliant! Ohh, oh my wobble, I can taste the seasonings in every ventricle, it’s remarkable. Why haven’t we been doing this before!? We had all those hearts…” 

“We didn’t have a recipe for them.” Sean pointed out. “And honestly? I had no idea how to cook a heart before this. I mean, I’ve heard of people doing it, but it’s kind of a specialty buy.” 

“A specialty buy? They don’t eat hearts where you’re from?” Gel sounded simultaneously horrified, and for some reason delighted by the thought, even as the sound of heavy slurping entered the geladin’s mind. Inside the pot, the stew began to disappear at a rapid pace. 

“Not… often.” Sean hedged. “Glad you like it, though.” 

“Like it? I love it!” Gel declared, with the utmost confidence as his whip waggled about in the pot in excitement – though not so much that it spilled any. “It’s perfect, perfect I tell you!” 

A loud, and somehow angry-sounding thump came from downstairs. 

An eyeball appeared at the upper end of Gel’s whip, and the pair of them stared back down the hall then at one another.

“You heard that, right?” Gel asked, whipping his eyeball – a mirror of Sean’s own human pair – back in the direction of the stairs. 

“I did…” Sean admitted slowly. “But I’m not picking up a heartbeat on my pulse sense. Something fall, you think?”

Another thump came from down below, followed quickly by another. 

That sounded… closer?

“Not unless it’s a lot of things.” Gel said, before returning his attention to gorging on the stew. “But if it’s not alive, then it can wait. I’ve got important business to attend to with this stew right here first.” 

Sean was going to agree, but then another thump sounded off along with what sounded like a clawing sound, and this time there was no mistaking it. 

Definitely getting closer. 

Sean turned, retrieving his midnight blade from where he had left it leaning against the wall even as the now-rhythmic thumping sounds grew louder. He was about to suggest Gel put off his meal for a moment to investigate, despite how unlikely that particular outcome was, when a voice of pure, sophisticated outrage rose from the bottom of the stairs. The words were nonsense to Sean of course, so the geladin simply waited for his friend to translate. 

“Are you sure you don’t sense a heartbeat down there?” Gel asked, still more than half-distracted with his dish. “Because whoever that is sounds extremely mad at u–HEY!”

To Sean’s surprise, the slime’s crimson whip actually came up and out of the stew for a second. It pointed at the staircase as if threatening its very existence, and Gel immediately began bellowing more words the geladin couldn’t understand down the hall. Several increasingly louder exchanges passed between the two, with a steady rhythm of thumps continuing on all the while. After the third back-and-forth, Sean was beginning to wonder just how close this shop’s neighbors were. 

“Uh… Gel?” Sean asked, still holding his blade as he stood there. Am I being ignored?

“Gel!” 

“He insulted your food!” Gel all-but-roared indignantly. “Whoever that is coming up, they can smell your stew and he insulted it! As soon as I finish, we’re killing and eating whoever that is. Melting them down to the BONE!” 

“Wait, what?” Sean tried to envision a scenario where that chain of events made sense, all while the voice from the stairs continued to shout while thumping its way closer. “What are you talking about? Who insulted my food?” 

“I’m not repeating it.” Gel said definitively, slamming his whip down into the pot and draining it with impressive speed. The slime shook himself, his entire length vibrating along Sean’s bones in a way that the geladin had only ever felt his friend do before a particularly intense battle. “Alright, I’m ready. Let’s go. CHARGE!” 

Still feeling like he was missing something here, but rather irked that someone would just insult the food he had spent all that time preparing, Sean did just that. He wasn’t sure how whoever was down there had figured out what they were doing – how had they even known – but the prompt that appeared as he ran down the hall proved he had nailed the recipe. 

Congratulations, you have consumed a full double portion of the dish: Wildheart Mutated Rat Stew! In addition to being completely sated your bodily health has been fortified, and the first 10 points of damage that you take in the next two days will not affect your total health points. Secondary effects may still apply. 

Note: Due to the inclusion of Mutated Rat hearts in the meal you consumed, there is a random chance that you will experience a potentially temporary random mutation whenever damage is negated. 

‘Potentially temporary’? ‘Random mutation’? Sean did not like the sound of either of those things. While there was a good chance, if not a 100% chance, that Gel would just consume any random fleshy mutations he might incur… if there were even 1% odds that he might grow a second skull, they would not be cooking with mutated rat hearts again. If I had known they were ‘mutated’ rat hearts, we wouldn’t have used them in the first place… 

Just as Sean was deciding to enact a ban on all future ‘mutated anything’ parts in his future dishes, they arrived at the stairs to find… nobody. Well, not quite nobody.

“Is that your book?” Sean asked, stopping short at the top step. “And where did the claws come from?”

“No… can’t be.” Gel said, suddenly more curious than angry– though the slime was clearly still fuming internally. “My book used nothing but human leather for its pages. This one has way more than just human leather going on… and, also, it has claws. Mine distinctly did not have claws, I would have been much more impressed by it.” 

“You were already impressed by it.” Sean pointed at the book literally clawing its way up the steps as they were talking with his sword. It was partially splayed open, using the sharp, curving claws running along the length of one edge of its cover to pull itself up while the claws on the other side of the cover pushed against the step below. “If that’s not your book, then whose is it? Where’s whoever you were talking to?”

“No idea. Maybe they heard you coming and ran off?” Gel’s curiosity began to fade as his anger returned. “Quick, down the stairs before they get away!” 

Before Sean could move, the book flopped back down onto the step its lower half was already resting on. Hundreds of pages flipped rapidly across its tanned leather surface, the images blurring so fast as they went that they were every bit as indecipherable as the text that definitely hadn’t been there before. It slammed shut, two metallic silver clasps running down its front to form what looked like a mouth–

– and then the book began shouting at them. 

“O-kay…” Sean said after a second, lowering his sword now that it was clear they had found the disturbance. “So we were being shouted at by a… book? You’re telling me a book insulted my stew?” 

Sean didn’t know what to make of that, but he felt vaguely offended.

“I didn’t know it was the book doing it, but yes!” Gel said quickly. “And I don’t care what or who it is, nobody insults your cooking! Now quick, carve it in half for its culinary transgressions!” 

Sean began walking down the steps towards the book. Not because he planned to go full stab on a novel or anything, but because he wanted a closer look. He also wanted to understand whatever it was saying, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen anytime soon. 

I really need to pick up some of the language around here. Languages? Even if I can’t do any speaking practice, I can at least learn some of the words. Get some context when people – or things – start shouting at me.  

As Sean reached for the book, another metallic clasp with a darker tinge to it slid down the cover. It came to rest just above the mouth, and opened up to reveal a bright, black eye with blood-red sclera. Sean paused, waiting to see what the monstrous little tome would do now that his bone-hand was resting mere inches from its cover. He wasn’t particularly worried about taking damage from its claws, given his high toughness, but he was curious. 

For a moment, the two just stared at one another. Burning red orbs meeting a single, devious eye. Gel had dropped their disguise while he was cooking, so the pair of them looked like their normal, heavily armored and still relatively newly evolved selves. 

“What is ze meaning of zis outrage?!” The book roared up at him, somehow getting its sophisticated and somehow noticeably french accent to come through the language. It glared up at him, as if its single eye were demanding an answer. 

“Did the book just swap to Beast?” Sean asked Gel through their mental bond, confused. “How is a book talking? Actually, nevermind that, how is it talking in the language of monsters?” 

“I have just as many questions right now as you do, Sean. Starting with why you’re not ripping out all of its pages for questioning your choice in seasonings!” Gel’s outrage was still there, but the slime seemed at least willing to wait before melting the tome down for its crimes. “That stew you made was wonderful, and it’s just a book. What could it possibly know about the intricacies of taste?” 

“I know you can hear me, geladin! Your kind has a base intelligence, does it not? There iz nobody else up here so it must have been you shouting back at me earlier! Now, answer my question!” The book shook itself violently, as if trembling with barely repressed anger. “What is ze meaning of zis outrage zat you have dared to perpetrate in my presence!?” 

“Alright, translate this for me.” Sean asked Gel, and the slime readily agreed. “What the heck are you talking about? What outrage?”

The very second Gel’s voice faded, the book shook so violently that its claws rattled together and it almost fell off the step it was resting on. Sean reached out and picked it up, deciding that he felt better with the aggressive tome in his hands as opposed to the floor. It was heavy. Heavier than he had expected. Its claws were quite a bit larger up close too, though he still trusted in both his own toughness and Gel’s armor to protect his bones.

“Do not pretend zat you do not know! I could smell your abomination from downstairs and I had to correct it! What sort of self-respecting monster uses dried primea cloves with mutated rat heart?! Just because you are feeding a slime zat will devour everything zat you make does not give you an excuse to just toss in random ingredients! Bortwurt root is ze perfect pairing with mutated rat heart, everyone knows zis! One pinch per heart, now take us back to your miserable kitchen and we shall start again! Properly zis time!”

Sean stared down at the leather-bound book in his hands, not quite believing that his ability to translate Beast was lining up with reality here. 

“Did this book just tell me to remake my stew?” The question was more to himself than to Gel, but the slime answered him anyway. 

“It did.” His friend confirmed, the slime’s fury lessening somewhat at the prospect of being fed another round of cooked food. “And, as much as you know I hate to say this, we do have a whole bunch of hearts left. Actually, no. Only six, I think. How many is in a bunch? I always forget.” 

“Okay, hold on a second.” Sean felt like they were getting off track, though he was curious more than a little curious to learn what ‘Bortwurt root’ was. Not to mention if this book could identify herbs for them… No, wait. Strange books climbing stairs and distributing cooking advice is no basis for a system of trust. Supreme authority derives from the fact that I could tear this thing in half, not the mad ravings of some farcical, apoplectic tome. 

“Before we even consider doing that,” Sean began. “I want you to ask this thing what it actually is. And tell it if it plans on insulting my cooking all day, I’m more than happy to toss it down the sewer grate in the basement. So how about we have it rethink its attitude and start properly, like with an introduction ‘zis time’ or else I’ll toss it down to hang out with the mutated rats.” 

Gel cackled as he complied, and the book Sean was holding fell silent in response. 

Would you look at that, self-preservation at work. Threatening an object that in all likelihood couldn’t feel pain had been a gamble on his part, but it had evidently paid off. Whatever intelligence was powering the monstrous tome he was holding, it could learn. 

Which may or may not have been more troubling than the alternative, now that Sean thought about it. A few seconds later, the tome spoke up. 

“I am ze book zat all chefs wish they could have! Ze tome whose recipes cowardly cooks are not worthy to look upon! Ze champion of cultured taste and refined delights zat few know and fewer still have ever had ze pleasure to witness! Ze–” 

Sean cut the escalating ramblign off by raising the book high and looking meaningfully down the stairs as if planning the arc of his throw. Amusingly, at least for him, the book actually coughed.

“Ahh, yes. Quite. Well zen I suppose you may call me by my official title: ze great and wondrous Omnomicon!” 

“... the what?”