Changeling

Nestra peered down with interest. The lizard builder placed his hand on the ground, which smoothed and hardened it. The human soldiers did the same a moment later. The ground at the bottom of the pit turned into a packed earth floor of decent hardness. It was interesting watching the two species silently cooperate, for once, even though it was only to see their champions fight.

Outside of the pit, Carved Tusk lizards were observing their human counterparts create an amphitheater of elevated bleachers so everyone could really watch her and the lizard beat the absolute shit out of each other, in a sports tradition that dated back to ancient Greece. A few of the more enterprising lizardmen were already imitating the half-circle, but making each step taller to accommodate their increased heights. Around three hundred soldiers and raiders and half as many lizards had been brought as spectators to the show — though Nestra wondered why Xayavong had authorized it. She spared one last glance at her blue-skinned opponent pacing on the other side of the pit.

He was nervous. Good. She returned to her group, standing in front of a thoughtful Mazingwe. They hadn’t commented on her action yet. That made her concerned. Immediate screams were easier to handle.

“If you’re going to complain, I’d rather you do it now,” she told them.

Mazingwe didn’t move. He merely looked up from his seat — and even then not much because he was so damn tall.

“I know you quite well by now, Nestra. And so I am not overly surprised now that the initial shock wore off.”

“Uh?”

“You made an impulsive decision that places you in danger for the sake of the city and allows you to showcase your swordsmanship. There is absolutely nothing there that isn’t your personal trademark. So no, I am neither surprised nor angry. I am merely wondering if I should fetch my doctor’s bag.”

“Doctor Cassin is here, so she will be in good hands,” Shinran said.

“As for me, I am not angry either. I cleared my schedule before coming in case we had to purge their clan. With this, I can get paperwork done while the problem hopefully solves itself. Professor Semerdjian’s assurance that you did the right thing only reinforces my opinion that you were the woman for the job, Special Agent Palladian.”

“Huh. Didn’t expect that.”

“You should. Threshold encourages personal initiative in its high level civil servants. You will be judged on results, of course. Oh, and as someone who has faced them quite a few times before… you understand what you need to do, correct?”

He looked up from his work while his fingers stopped. She hadn’t forgotten the purpose of the duel, no.

“We’ll get the treaty. Don’t worry,” she replied.

“I do not. You should. You are the one who challenged someone an entire class above you.”

Nestra admitted he made some sense, but she was still confident. The blue-skinned one was not a warrior, more of an advisor from his position and posture. He would be good with a spear only because every last lizard practiced with it. His water affinity would also turn against him, especially in the pit they’d dug. She had every advantage. She just had to make it count.

The thing was that her purpose was not to simply freeze him. Her objective was simple: she had to prove that she was good enough to deflect a single strike from a powerful B-class gleam not particularly inclined to kill her. That meant getting stuck in. Fortunately, Nestra had plenty of experience being poked with a spear!

“It’s about to start,” Shinran said, closing his laptop.

The earth mana people jumped out of the pit, now a circular arena of the ‘improvised’ variety, but there was something about the way people surrounded it, an ancient call as alluring to her human self as it was revolting to the Aszhii one. This was a spectacle, nay, a social ritual. All eyes would be on her. Nestra smiled as she fastened her helmet.

She was going to be the best damn fencer in Threshold. People just didn’t know it yet.

Blood-in-Throat moved in front of his people. His hisses echoed across the plain, still scarred by the earlier battle.

“My people. Tonight we will mourn the passing of Walking Mountain. Today, we fight for his honor. The sun-hair human in the gray shell claims he struck her in defense of their enemies. We called her honor into question. Could a weak, scaleless thing like her survive the blow of such a warrior?”

Hisses of disapproval rose until their side of the area was a giant, angry teapot. On the Earth side, those raiders who followed the translation bristled. Nestra loved that from them.

“The sun-hair gray shell one will prove herself, and to test her will be Sea-And-Sun, the one who found doubt in her words. Let the contestants show their worth!”

Interesting. The way he phrased it showed great support to the blue scale, but the translation made it sound like he was throwing his guy to the wolves. While she was waiting, Xayavong stepped forward in turn.

An errant thought tickled Nestra: she’d been attacked because she looked like an Aszhii to Walking Mountain, and not a human. Walking Mountain had been caught off guard. With that said, he could have tried to talk to Mazingwe instead of fighting, or even attempted to flee. He hadn’t. Also, his ‘friends’ had heads. So, fuck all of them.

“Warriors of Threshold!”

A low hum spread through the human rafters. They felt louder than the lizard ones by a fair amount. Maybe it was the number. Maybe hisses didn’t carry. Maybe it was all Nestra’s imagination.

“You know why we’re here. You know what the Carved Tusk have done, and what they haven’t done!”

“Booooh!”

Coming from battle-scarred gleams, the disapproval took on a sinister note.

“Now they’re trying to squirm out of their punishment by questioning our raiders’ ability to withstand a B-class. Have we not withstood their B-class before? Yes we have, yes we have.”

The roar rose like a gathering howl. The raiders and soldiers were a very, very eager crowd.

“So what did our girl, Special Agent Palladian do? She said, you don’t believe me? I’ll show you! We stand witness to this, as she fights a lizardman a class above. Let her show them how Thresholders fight… in case they’ve forgotten! For Threshold!”

Nestra lifted a closed fist and the roar exploded like thunder. On top of the screams, many of the raiders banged their chest plates, adding a stampede to their howls. That roar was powerful. It was deafening. Primal. It vibrated in her chest. Nestra had never felt so hyped in her entire human life because this was all for her, or rather, what she stood for. At that moment, it made no difference. She was the City. Fuck, that felt nice. This was why she would never give humans up, even as an Aszhii. People mostly weren’t shit, but sometimes, they were good, and it made it all worth it.

Blue scale, well, Sea-and-Sun, approached the edge. Both of them dropped down at the same time, but they didn’t attack. Instead, they exchanged a gaze.

The lizard gave her an imperceptible nod, a human gesture. She drew and saluted. Now, the crowds were waiting in perfect silence.

It was time.

They moved. Nestra cast ice armor to coat herself while she strafed to her right. The lizard called water, predictably. She stopped to pour electric mana in her blade.

Sea-and-Sun extended his left hand. A long tentacle of controlled water emerged from it in a rush. At the same time, she stabbed forward and placed a dot on the incoming spell. While she wasn’t confident in hitting an opponent this way yet, an attack aiming straight at her was a different thing. Electricity coursed hungrily through the spell, disrupting the attack and the hand still holding it. The lizard jerked from the sudden shock. So Nestra charged forward.

The muddy ground cracked under her feet, frozen then smashed by her boots. Ice mana ran over the Bellerophon but it wasn’t done coating it quite yet. She needed more time, and she’d get it. Sea-and-Sun created water balls he threw at her. She dodged the first, moved to the side to avoid the second, then three hit her at once. She blocked two on her vambraces and took the third on the pauldron, then she was dancing again. Her armor was more than half coated by now, so just a little more. It showed two things though.

One, her opponent was C-class meaning he wasn’t that much stronger but he had massively increased mana reserves. That was the difference a solid core made.

Two, her armor was top shelf in Threshold. Sea-and-Sun was going to have to put some fucking work to get through it. Realizing this, the lizard raised both hands over his head. A massive ball of water formed. Nestra smirked. She formed a quick ice spear, the keys gathering effortlessly in her mind after intense practice, and tossed it. The lizard hesitated. Inexperienced. Not a duelist.

The spear hit. Creeping fingers of ice crawled through it. He lost control, dodging to the side to avoid the falling ice. Again, inexperience. Nestra had no control over it, and it would be nothing to a C-class. Hesitating, the lizard cast something vast but Nestra was ready. Her Bellerophon was now fully covered in icy spikes bleeding cold into the pit, vapor turning to crystalline powder around her.

She charged him. He kept casting as he thrust his spear towards her. Nestra dove and allowed the dangerous weapon to rake the spikes on her pauldron with no result. The blow was powerful enough to make her stumble but she recovered just as the lizard pulled back. A parry managed to deflect a weak follow up. Fuck, he was still strong.

The lizard backed up to create some distance. She followed at a dead sprint. He ignored her premature swipe only to realize at the last moment that she was aiming for his forward hand, saving his knuckle by a hair. Frost crept upon his spear.

He hissed, and the frost fell. A water coat covered the tip, which Nestra hit immediately. Now he was holding half an icicle. She charged again.

She could tell that it was at this moment, he realized how fucked he was affinity-wise. He had water. She had two easy counters.

His back hit the wall.

Nestra moved in with a torrent of strikes, passing through his guard. She stopped right before he could strike her with his hands. This was the sweet spot… In the next ten seconds, she darted in and out but to her surprise, blue scales handled her well. He used his spear as a quarterstaff to push her back. She’d never seen this before.

Had to work a bit on those defenses then.

As planned Nestra kept darting in and out, still pushing all the mana she had into her armor, which now emitted the inevitable white fog of her Zero Aura. The lizard did his best to keep her at bay, going so far as to wear a mantle of water to force her to coat her blade instead, preventing her from feeding her armor. It was a waste of his time though: the aura was kept alive whether she fed it or not. Nestra smirked when she scored a gash on his knee, then quickly after another one on the back of his hand. It didn’t slow him down. A massive burst of water pushed her back and she was on the defense to block and parry a furious flurry of strikes. He almost got her eye but she leaned to the side, allowing the spear to graze her temple and get deflected by the unyielding helmet. Sea-and-Sun overextended thinking he had her. She used it to close in. Now he was on the backfoot again and it was her turn to hound him. He tried to surf on water to go faster but it froze immediately. He tried another mantle but her coating made it untenable. He did that massive wave again. This time Nestra was ready and she threw an ice bolt at his face before he could trap her in his rhythm. The icy ground made him stumble when she closed in and scored another wound. He was C-class, and much older, and he was struggling. Outside of the pit, the lizardmen and humans hissed, roared, clapped and howled as the two of them fought.

This.

This was her element.

It was fucking phenomenal.

They were evenly matched.

Well, almost evenly matched. After a next expanding wave, Nestra called for more ice mana for another bolt, and stopped when pain lanced her mind.

She slowed down. Her Zero Aura had turned the pit into an icy ravine. It would remain freezing and treacherous for the next day. Sea-and-Sun was panting, bleeding and frostbitten, his scales dulled by encroaching hypothermia. She almost had him, almost… but she was out of mana. She’d felt her magic moving more sluggishly. Now, the familiar aching of a dry core threatened her with agony and nausea. The lizardman pulled more from his massive C-class core, but he didn’t cast. Instead, he stood there, unmoving. The two opponents gazed at each other again.

She could win, maybe. Or he could use the fact she would no longer manage a coating to overwhelm her with spells. Either path was possible. The Aszhii in her wanted to kill him and devour his core. It had been a long time since her instincts fully dominated her, however, and the audience silenced Nezhra even further. This was the fight of Clytemnestra Palladian, raider and Special Agent of Threshold. And her objective was already accomplished. She knew what Sea-and-Sun wanted. Slowly, she spread her arms wide in a gesture that puzzled the human side, but Sea-and Sun mirrored her, and Blood-in-Throat stood.

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“The duel is finished. It is a draw!”

The lizardmen smashed their spear butts against the ground in a thunderous if slightly bitter call. Confused whispers echoed on the human side until the translation was whispered across the bleachers, then honest applause joined the drum.

Blood-in-Throat made a gesture to quiet them. He then turned to the humans who unexpectedly consented to stop, though some of them only did so after a few more seconds.

“The human has proved herself. She is a mighty warrior too, and her shell is hard and cold. Her honor is intact. Our honor… is not.”

He turned to Shinran, eyes narrowing. The insane monk waited politely.

“You have been true to your words from the beginning while we have not. Walking Mountain’s disgraceful conduct indebts us to you. We… consent to the altered treaty. If the human tribe remains honorable, then the next time you are attacked, we shall join you in battle against other tribes.”

Hisses of protests erupted from his ranks, but his next ‘words’ whistled in Nestra’s ear from the sheer power behind them.

“I have spoken!”

There were no more protests. Nestra properly saluted Sea-and-Sun who returned a human nod, then she forcefully climbed her armored ass out of the pit using icicles as handholds. As soon as she faced the bleachers, she found a familiar face: Manu the massive fire user.

“Hey sis. Good stuff, good stuff. Fros - ting! Fros - ting!”

The call was taken by the rafters until three hundred throats roared it — Frosting! Nestra’s complaints were lost in a sea of approval.

“But I already have a call sign!”

Then people threw packages as if she were a Roman gladiator getting coins. She frowned until she saw what had landed at her feet.

“Holy shit is it a doughnut made with real maple syrup? From the Quebec fortress?”

The day couldn’t get any better.

***

The aftermath was more pleasant than expected. Xayavong granted everyone some time off since Shinran was around. An improvised party started on the plain, with ball games and grills and quite a bit of beer. Lizardmen who lingered were invited to share games of dexterity and strength with varying results, and it looked like the humans were going to give their reluctant allies a chance. Nestra knew why they were being so tolerant despite the previous offense: attacks by enemy tribes were an inevitability. It was just a matter of time before the Carved Tusk joined humans in a fight against other lizardmen. When that happened, they would irredeemably be considered traitors by their own people. Threshold was going to be the first nation to get a dependent race since humanity had tamed the dogs.

No, she was being an asshole. Shinran would never allow his side to treat the tribe as disposable labor or slaves. That wasn’t his style. Still, this was a turning point in race relations, and Nestra had been an architect of it. She could only hope they would remember her.

“Very impressive, young Palladian,” Shinran said, making her jump.

Someone with this much mana under the hood ought to be noisier.

“A great performance to end a great project. I recognize Hector’s touch in your technique, though I have to say you are far more vicious.”

“It comes from my mother’s side,” Nestra replied.

“Not from your aunt that is certain. She is more direct. Well, it appears I am no longer needed. I really expected the day to end in blood and regret, and thanks to you, it didn’t. I will make sure the city acknowledges your efforts, young Palladian. We need more people like you.”

He smiled, then he was gone. Nestra frowned.

He hadn’t recognized her.

Well, to be fair, her Aszhii self wore a mask and fought much more wildly. It was still strange to her that he wouldn’t know. It was so easy for him to just look up who owned the warehouse he had seen her in. Or he could ask the AIs with all her recorded information. But he hadn’t.

She couldn’t tell if he was terminally honorable or a complete idiot.

***

That night, Mazingwe informed Nestra that her mobilization had been temporarily rescinded.

“Why so fast?” She asked, suspicious.

“Do not be alarmed. Camille and myself received similar messages. My understanding is that our dear leadership mobilized support to mop up and resist a second attack. The mop up was finished in record time, and the second attack completely failed to materialize. I do not believe the attacking tribes were aware of how close they got to inflicting massive damage. The survivors have retreated to lick their wounds. I expect we will not see them again unless new tribes enter the war with us.”

“I wanted to raid with Valerian… make a dream team…”

The old first gen placed a friendly hand on her shoulder.

“Young Nestra. There will always be more raiding. Now, get your belongings ready. We are being rotated tonight.”

“That’s good news.”

She was going to be summoned home, then pumped for information by her mother who wouldn’t fail to ground her for taking unnecessary risks. Again. Before that happened, she had an important visit to make.

***

Sereth’s den had changed. It was in a different warehouse, but that was a detail. It seemed both Nestra and he favored wide open space cluttered with different areas and, to her surprise, flowers on the walls as well. Sereth favored white lilies apparently. She still couldn’t get exactly what was different as she moved in, the door unlocking for her. The master of the place waited for her on his pillow pile which was larger than hers, something she’d have to rectify very soon. And there was the first difference. A larger, flatter area to the side with…

“Is that Stibbs’ pajamas?”

The Aszhii didn’t comment but his ears twitched, so Nestra knew she was right. A pillow pile was so personal she’d never even climbed on his. And he allowed her friend on it? Damn. Wait, of course he would. They had sex.

“I have a reserved spot for her in my den,” the big lug replied in a voice that was just a little too fast. “Although her house is right next door. It felt… important.”

“Oh,” she realized, “the tech workstation…”

“Basic drone repairs when she just wants to hang out. That is her spot. I do not touch it!”

He was smiling with all his black, nacreous fangs and the sight might have been terrifying on any other centuries-old A-class juggernaut but to her he just looked goofy. Nestra felt the overwhelming, sisterly urge to tease him a little.

“Ooooh you got it bad. My brother has fallen! He is tamed!”

But the jab fell flat. He leaned back in his pile, muscular arms under his neck. The very image of relaxation.

“I like it here. I think I want to stay a while. The Sunflour is doing super well with deliveries, so I have legal money. I can finish all the work in the morning thanks to my speed. Baselines are inconspicuous. In the future, if I want to raid, I can just travel to a nearby world for a challenging dive. And I like Stibbs very much. And she likes me very much as well. She gets me. The real me. Not just Seth, but also Sereth, and also Prince Serethion…”

“That’s your first name!”

He chuckled, then shrugged.

“Yes. I told her… I was vague. She still guessed that my childhood was… difficult. Competitive. To say the least. She listens. I like to watch her build drones. We just fit together so well. I think… I am happy. Maybe I can be happy for a long time.”

Nestra didn’t feel the need to remind him she would age while he remained unchanged. He knew. Maybe he was old enough to accept it.

“But enough about me. You went to the node! Only one so far but that might change in the future. I wonder if the lizards are a client race themselves. I haven’t had the time to check yet.”

“So you’re saying that one day another node will open on Earth and we’ll get the opportunity to colonize an unprepared race?”

“Maybe! Probably. Won’t be for a while though. Oh, so, I think I feel another body on you. How long did it take you to kill and assimilate a new form?”

“Errrr.”

She counted.

“Maybe around 18 hours? After crossing?”

Sereth’s face remained impassive. His ears betrayed his amusement. Nestra threw a pillow at him, which he dodged.

“You little monster you. Ah, humans.”

“Camille saw me do it. They know I’m an alien now. Sorry.”

Sereth shrugged.

“At this point, the secret is far too spread out for me to pay attention to everyone. If I really wanted to keep it, I should have started killing your friends long ago. Now it’s too late. We’ll just have to trust that they will keep it long enough for you to reach B-class.”

“Yeah, I think it’s time I took some additional precautions. Oh, speaking of not reaching B-class yet, guess who I met in the portal world?”

Sereth tilted his head, suddenly more serious.

“A kin?” he asked, using a peculiar Aszhii term that could also be understood as ‘rival’.

“Wow, calm down. We had a good spar but otherwise everything went well.”

“He hit you?”

“We hit each other.”

The tall Aszhii gave her words a moment of consideration, then he shrugged, the movement comically exaggerated on his massive frame.

“I don’t think the covens would mind a good spar. Friends and siblings duel, regardless of gender. It is still… a dangerous path to fight a female without clearing things up.”

“He must be without contact if he’s not yet C-class therefore he couldn’t know. Actually, I’m surprised he didn’t have plenty of questions.”

“You humans are the champions of self-doubt and questioning and all that anxiety. Many other species, ah, what do you say? Take things at face value. Your instincts told you of your nature. You elected to question them.”

“Instincts can’t always be trusted,” Nestra objected.

“In complex social environments! Not when you’re about to be ambushed! Or when you inexplicably turn into an alien!”

“I mean, it could have been a weird kind of transformation.”

“You know very well it couldn’t have been,” Sereth countered.

It was an old argument of theirs. Nestra shrugged.

“So… should I do anything?”

“Just try not to kill him if you meet him again. For all you know, he could be our brother. Or not.”

“He did feel like he might be just a little older.”

“There are not so many of us but we do tend to congregate where the fighting is the thickest,” Sereth said. “It’s still very rare for us to meet by accident. Hmmm. I suppose it is your human luck.”

Nestra wanted to see Argent Ephis again just because it would be fun. Maybe they could spar again, in true form. Sereth was infuriating to spar against because he was just too good, even adjusting to her speed, but she’d gotten some really nice punches into that saurian, gullible jaw.

“Oh, that reminds me. So Aszhii are adults by the time they leave. By the standard of their own species.”

“Almost always, yes.”

“What if they have children before they leave?”

Sereth clammed up. Nestra could tell from the way his posture changed and his ears stilled. It was always sad to see this because that was not the ‘I can’t tell you’ answer. It was the trauma one.

“Family life is abhorrent to males before they reach B-class, though sex isn’t. Most raider civilizations have some forms of birth control as well. Sometimes, well, there are children. And yes, they’re Aszhii. Unfortunately…”

Nestra didn’t dare push, in case Sereth was one of them. Was he already a father? Fuck, he was pushing 300. Did he have have kids that were older than her?

“Hmm. If you don’t want to talk about it…”

“There is only misery there, Nestra. Raiders have more difficulty conceiving as they grow older and more powerful. It slows down their population’s increase. We Aszhii are uniquely good at making children by comparison. We’re also uniquely bad at caring for them, including keeping them alive.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged like it was no big deal. He wasn’t very convincing. The thought of abandoned children nestled in Nestra’s heart like a cold knife. It felt entirely too familiar even though it had been her decision to leave, and she’d been a teen. Then she realized she had been abandoned as well.

Her Aszhii gene donor had just been such an absent figure she couldn’t even see him as a parent. If Dad hadn’t picked up… If she hadn’t instinctively acted as a parasite, rather…

She really owed them the truth.

She just didn’t want to lose them

“I’m a fucking coward.”

Sereth must have heard. He didn‘t respond though. What could they even do?

What if it went different with mankind? What if she made it different? The cooking show might help, weird as the situation was to think about. Could she even achieve anything? There was only one of her.

“I must still try,” she whispered.

“Hmmm?”

Nestra shook her head. She needed a last episode planned in advance just in case. That would require some planning. Later.

“Yeah. So, I’ve been focusing on the human gleam aspect of things lately, but I believe it’s time to return to making Crescent stronger. Can you suggest portals?”

He pushed himself back up, now more focused.

“I may. When do you want to raid?”

“I’m in between jobs so tomorrow for the serious stuff. I already have something planned for tonight.”

***

“New Crescent video just dropped.”

Alden opened the video but only after he’d placed his meal prepped tacos in the air frier for a reheat — fucking videos always made him drool.

This time, it started with an altar in the middle of dense woods, or perhaps it was an ancient menhir tilted to the side, its stone dotted with lichen. Behind that was a dense forest of ancient trees to the left, and a quiet meadow to the right. Crescent was leaning forward with her hands on the stone. Her voice was low-pitched and it would be sultry if she were not so serious.

“Hello everyone, and welcome back to Cooking with Crescent. Today, I wanted to do some red meat but I came across a unique opportunity for another land crustacean so that’s what we’re gonna do. I wanted to do something a little different today: an outdoor grill using locally -sourced tools. Let’s begin with the marinade. First, I wanted to show you this.”

She placed a small plant with unremarkable white flowers on the stone, with the bulbs still attached.

“This is Allium Manafaera, or faerie onion. It’s amazingly mana rich, especially when cooked fresh. It will replace onion or garlic every time they are called for, so that’s what we’re going to use today as a base for our sauce. First, we’re going to grind it into a fine puree.”

She removed a small, half-crushed helmet and what looked like the top half of a broken cudgel.

“So this is a fae world and they have plenty of weapons. Here I’m going to use them as improvised mortar and pestle, but obviously you can use your better tool at home or even a grinder. I’m just doing this for presentation, and as proof that yes, it works. Next we’re going to add fish sauce and MSG, and those are the only ingredients besides the last one that can’t be found here. You can replace them with water and flour or water and honey in a pinch although I recommend raiding with a small condiment box as a general rule. I’m adding salt I found in a fae tent as well. Just make sure it’s salt first.”

The sauce took form and by fuck Alden wished he could just smell it.

“Now as a side dish I’m going to use instant white rice. I don’t have a brand to recommend, honestly, and you can use whatever you prefer if rice isn’t your thing. Now to get the meat.”

As usual, Crescent grabbed her massive two-hander before strutting towards the meadow. He now realized that there was a single large tree there loaded with shockingly red fruits. As she approached, half of the screen exploded in a shower of dust, making him gasp. What followed was the usual display of cataclysmic violence he couldn’t really judge since it was, what, top of C-class? He could only guess the monster looked like a giant lobster with a stinger and two small claws. And a lot of legs.

There was a ghastly crunch, a pained hiss, and now the thing had fewer legs. Then it had one less claw which smashed against the stone, barely missing the marinade. The fight slowed long enough to show Crescent attempting to pull the creature’s head from its shoulders while it tried to fend her off with its remaining claw. Crescent must have lost patience because the next shot showed her carving through the neck with a single, powerful swing. Next she was standing by the quivering tail and next, half of that tail was in front of the camera. Fuck, that was a lot of lobster.

He eyed the taco. That might not cut it. But lobster was, like, far above his budget. Maybe mana shrimp might be doable.

“I’ll check Baihe’s delivery service later.”

Sometimes they offered discounts on food orders with one order per person max to prevent bots from snatching everything as soon as it was put up.

“Right,” Crescent said. “So the tail is far too thick to cook quickly, so we’re going to slice it into thin chunks, say, about three fingers thick and a handspan long if you have normal hands. Be sure to remove the black part on the back as it’s the digestive system and we really don’t want to eat that. I won’t have the time but if you can grill the head, do it. As usual, if you can’t kill your own ambushing land ravager guardian, store-bought is fine too. I’ll be using fae sniper arrows for skewers though that’s optional and you’d better clean those tips, and speaking of poison, here’s my secret ingredient!”

With more enthusiasm than what should be considered sane, Crescent used her massive sword to carve out a gland at the base of the beast’s tail, next to the arm-long stinger. She sprayed a bit of it into her half helmet.

It didn’t hiss but Alden believed it should have. That thing was fucking purple.

“Ravager venom! It gives your sauce an extra kick and the way it numbs the mouth is just so nice and weird. Not recommended if you have any sores or if you’re a baseline. You don’t want that in your bloodstream. Trust me. Now we apply the marinade. Like so. And to let it stick, I recommend two hours in a fridge but since it’s a little cold here and I didn’t bring my fridge, I think this will be ok.”

She used a clearly inhumanly made pot as a container seeing how fucked up that thing was.

“Just make sure to thoroughly, thoroughly wash local utensils because the fae are opportunistic cannibals.”

Fucking ew.

“Mine were unused so I’m confident it’s fine but you never know. Also, for cover I’ll be using a shield. If you do so, make sure the handle is outside for hygiene reasons. Now, I’m going to build a home-made grill using infantry swords. You just need to bend them a bit. Watch this.”

Alden was pretty sure he’d never be able to bend metal, but that was ok, he already had a grill at home. As of last week. Grilled vegetables were a revolution for his diet.

“Ok now we have a serviceable grill. I’m going to use fae charcoal for this. You want the grill to be really hot before you add the meat. And now I’m going to use time magic to get to the interesting part right away.”

She snapped her finger and one obvious cut later, she was back. Alden noticed the difference because Crescent’s posture was ever so slightly different and also because the background of meadow and forest was now a ravaged battlefield of stumps, torn soil, and fae corpses, including a noble with diaphanous wings pinned to a tree by a spear, like a big fucking butterfly. A severed arm fell from a branch.

“And we’re back! Time to put the meat on the grill with the last ingredient. I’m going to add chili flakes, specifically gochugaru though black pepper is fine too. Or nothing at all! And now we wait. Make sure the meat is opaque and fully cooked through before removing, which can take six to eight minutes depending on the size of your servings. Obviously for me it’s going to be a little longer. If you used honey, be extra careful because that stuff burns fast. And now for another bit of time magic. Snap!”

She really didn’t have to say it out loud. Alden looked around and yep, a new pile of bodies waited on the side — those looked like black hyenas. Maybe scavengers.

“And we’re done! One last spritz of lemon if you want, and we’re ready to dig in. Hmmmm! Nice, bouncy consistency. Amazing freshness. Oh, that is good. Oh I forgot: don’t burn your mouth. Wait a bit if it’s too hot. Some rice as a cleanser… oh that is fantastic. I’d suggest white wine or sake as a pairing if you want, and as a dessert, I’m going to try one of those red things on that tree over there! Never seen them before.”

She did try one. Alden waited with bated breath as she chewed pensively. It did look good, but…

“Hmmm. Yeah. Hmmm. Yeah yeah yeah. This is super poisonous.”

As expected.