Magic Murder Cube Marine - Chapter 40: Two Cooks

Francis didn’t dream often, but when he did, it usually didn’t end well for the monsters. His sleep paralysis demon was currently on strike, and the killer clowns had joined it in solidarity. Francis didn’t have nightmares, he was the nightmare.

The Marine yawned. He vaguely remembered something about chasing a demon down a hallway. That was typically how his dreams went, though this one had involved a lot more crying and begging than normal. (Francis had eventually taken pity on the demon and given it a head start.)

It was debatable whether his inner demons were real and had learned not to mess with him, or he had merely convinced himself that was how hostile creatures should act in his presence. But the results were the same.

Francis chuckled. “He must have been new.”

“Hmm?” Willow asked, not quite awake.

“Nothing, go back to sleep.” The Marine gave her a kiss and pulled on his clothes. The Robes of Casual Evil were incredibly comfortable, and even self-repairing. But it felt wrong to wear the same thing every single day. Francis was thinking of trying to get a Hawaiian shirt or something similar, for formal occasions.

He flexed his hand and Relativity appeared. Then he flexed it again and the staff vanished. Francis was beginning to understand the nuances of his class choices, and how incredibly badly he had fucked up during character creation.

He had thirty in every stat. Which meant he had missed out on the opportunity to push his most important stats even higher. A thirty in Intellectual didn’t actually make him that much smarter than someone with a twenty. But putting those ten points into Durable would have dramatically raised his HP.

Francis pulled up the relevant info as he walked to the kitchen to grab some chow.

Francis figured that made sense. Having stats above twenty acted like a kind of buffer. That meant he could take ten Stress before experiencing negative effects.

So he hadn’t actually screwed himself as badly as he thought. Basically, it was like he was walking around with a plus seven to his skills, as long as he didn’t have any Stress. But it still wasn’t ideal. He could have used the extra HP and MP.

The Marine considered this new information. Relevant skills could be combined. Interesting.

“Does that apply to combat?” he asked.

“Good to know,” Francis said, thinking about ways he might be able to use this new knowledge. There was a lot to take in. He hadn’t even started reviewing Spells and Abilities yet.

The Marine stopped short of the kitchen. There were sounds of breaking glass and pots being thrown. What the fuck? He wondered.

***

Mark Malvolio was not having a good time. He had been attending the grand opening of his new restaurant, Overpriced, when Amanda spotted him. The dragon had plucked Mark from the patio like a bird of prey grabbing an unattended chihuahua at a park.

To make things worse, clutched in the dragon’s other claw was his bitter rival and former friend, Violet Cremini. Her organized crime themed restaurant, Fishy Business, was his biggest competition.

Violet flipped him off when she realized who was coming along for the ride. The wind made it impossible to talk, so Mark flipped her off in return and went back to screaming his lungs out.

More excitement came when the dragon dive bombed a carriage. Amanda had transferred the two chefs over to her left claw and snatched the black carriage up in her right.

Mark could feel the warmth of his rival pressed against him. “We have got to stop meeting like this,” he joked as the wind whipped past them.

“Eat shit, and die.” Violet replied.

***

Francis sent a message to Willow and walked into the kitchen with Relativity at the ready. A salt and pepper haired man in a black and white striped chef coat stood in front of a woman with bright purple hair and a matching apron. The golden skeletons stood back and watched. Francis didn’t blame them.

“You always hog the clean towels!” Violet shouted, every inch of her short frame vibrating with rage.

“No,” Mark said calmly, “I divided them up evenly before we started. I do that because you always blow through yours and start stealing mine.”

“That’s because I use them to clean! I’m always cleaning up after you!”

Francis didn’t care what was going on between the two strangers. He had established that there wasn’t any danger and he was hungry. “Where’s my breakfast?”

The two chefs turned to face him. “Who the hell are you?” Mark demanded.

“My name’s Francis, I run the place.” The Marine looked around, dismissing Relativity with a wave of his hand. “Usually the servants make breakfast for us around now.”

“Servants?” Violet asked, “We haven’t seen any servants. Just a big fucking dragon that wanted us to cater a wedding for her.”

“Those guys are the servants.” Francis pointed at the golden skeletons. “They make pretty good grub and never waste time bitching about clean towels. So either get cooking, or get out of their way so they can work.”

Hesitantly Mark walked towards Francis. Violet followed along behind, looking at the skeletons with suspicion. The floor of the kitchen was covered in non-slip black ceramic tile with a few strategically placed trench style drains to make cleanup easier. Along one side was a meter wide section of gray tile where the undead servants waited while not in use.

As soon as the two chefs crossed the golden line that defined the threshold between kitchen and hallway, it was like a switch got flipped. The skeletons marched in a circle around the kitchen, peeling off to man any unoccupied stations they passed. The extra skeletons made three more circuits then went back to the gray tiles to wait until they were needed.

Francis had never seen the kitchen staff in action, usually he was just waking up when they started making breakfast. But it became apparent that the same mechanical logic he had seen in the city was at play here too.

On the wall in front of the first skeleton was a map of the palace. The rooms were all labeled and numbered, with a line of numbers along the bottom. Under some of the numbers were red tiles that had been stuck to the wall, probably with similar magic to what the AG used for their bounty system. In fact, it all looked a bit familiar, now that Francis thought about it.

The skeleton gathered the tiles and set them on black serving trays. Then it slid each tray over to the next station, walked in a loop three times around the kitchen, and then went to join the other dormant skeletons. Apparently if there were no tiles on the wall, it didn’t stop at the first station.

The next station was where plates and glasses were set on the trays. The skeleton then passed the tray down and did its own triple loop before going dormant. After that the next skeleton reached into the magical equivalent of a refrigerator and retrieved enough ingredients for each tray, passing them and the trays down the line.

“It’s creepy, yet beautiful,” Mark said, “So precise and simple, yet inefficient.”

“That’s because you’re thinking about space and labor costs.” Violet replied. “Necromancers don’t really have to worry about either. There’s plenty of room here and no shortage of help.”

Mark watched as fruit was cut and sausages were grilled. “But, where does the meat come from?”

“It’s wild boar.” Francis explained. “There are whole big ass slaughter houses that operate just like this kitchen does. Meat goes in, sausage comes out.”

“Just wild boar, right?” Violet asked, voicing something Mark had been wondering about.

“Or deer. We were worried it might try and chop people up too, but it seems to ignore them.” That last part had come as a relief to Francis. He didn’t like the idea of corpses ending up in his breakfast. The dead green cloaks had risen a few hours later, then walked to some kind of service station underneath the city. He had already talked to Jack and Willow about investigating what happened to the corpses. (And more importantly, their belongings.)

The Marine shook his head. “This whole place is clockwork as fuck. Honestly, I don’t understand most of it.”

“But aren’t you in charge?” Violet asked.

Francis let out a laugh. “Yeah, I’m in charge. But only because I killed the asshole who used to run it and took his shit.” He looked at the two chefs, wondering if they might want to join his team. With the refugees coming soon there would be plenty of people that needed to be fed. Sure, they looked a bit soft and slim for cooks. But he wasn’t exactly in a position to be picky.

“To be frank, I’m taking it one day at a time and doing the best I can. Have either of you ever done disaster relief work, or cooked for large groups?” He asked.

Mark nodded. “Yeah, I do meals once per week for the temple of Soteria. On Fourday we feed two hundred people or more. It’s a lot of work, but worth it.”

“Wow, that’s actually surprising.” Violet looked at Mark with begrudging respect. “I volunteer at the same temple on Threeday.”

The man looked at his rival, realization dawning on him. “You’re the one who preps all the dough the day before. I thought I recognized that recipe.”

“Yeah, slow and cool is the way to go. I’m not about to knead it all by hand if I can let time do the hard work for me.” Violet saw the confusion on Francis’ face and decided to explain. “I do a no-knead recipe for large batches of bread dough. I start it Threeday afternoon so it’s ready for baking on Fourday morning.”

“It’s great and saves us a ton of time. Thank you for that, by the way.” Mark smiled briefly, then his expression soured. It was time to discuss the dragon in the room. “Look, I don’t know exactly what is going on. Violet and I were abducted by a dragon along with some bard in a black carriage. Now, that’s not the first time something like this has happened.”

“The bard is new.” Violet added. “Usually it’s just us.”

“The bard is new.” Mark agreed. “Generally when this happens it is some wizard throwing a party and he doesn’t know shit about food, so he just abducts the two best chefs in the kingdom. Which is flattering, but a real pain in the ass.”

“Yep, it absolutely fucks up my schedule.” Violet nodded.

Francis shrugged. “Well, I have zero control over the dragon. Her daughter Shiv is getting married and we’re just all along for the ride. Also, an important point I should probably share is that Julia’s family might get mad and try to kill everyone. Julia is Shiv’s wife-to-be, and her parents had locked her into a marriage contract against her will before I took care of it.”

“Took care of it?” Violet raised a thin perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Do tell.”

Francis shrugged again. “There’s nothing to tell. She asked me to void it, I did.”

“Yeah, but how?” Mark pressed. “Usually only very powerful entities can void a contract. So unless you’re secretly a god, I don’t see how that would be possible.”

Francis wasn’t sure how that statement interacted with the Ghostbusters rule (language was tricky sometimes). And yes, he was a god, but he still felt weird telling people about it sometimes.

Violet examined Francis for a moment. He wore a wizard’s robes, but was built like a brick shit house and had calluses on his hands thick enough to stop a knife. “Tell me, Francis, what exactly is it you do? What is your actual title?”

The Marine considered this. Maybe there was a way for him to show them? “System, tell these two who I am.”

A blue box appeared and started reading out loud. Mark and Violet’s eyes went wide as they took in the information.

“Oh,” Mark said, “Yeah, I get it now.”