Cooking

In a sprawling system of subterranean caves teeming with monstrous life perfectly adapted to survive in that harsh, unforgiving environment; in a small, round hollow at the end of a tight passage accessible only by scaling a natural stair of slick limestone steps; something fairly unusual was happening.

If, on a hunch, someone capable of seeing through thick fields of magical energy and hundreds of meters of stone had decided to watch in that particular cave, that someone would have probably been extremely surprised at what Alice Desare, unwilling world-hopper, was trying to do.

“Okay. This might work.” She said, stepping a few paces away from the large and somewhat flat stalagmite stump she had previously been using as a crafting table.

Previously as in, until less than an hour before, when, tired of eating raw bat meat, she had decided to try her luck with cooking.

Given the fact that she hadn’t access to fuel, vegetables, spices and other condiments as well as most of normal cookware and appliances, she felt her second trial could be seen as respectable. She tried not to think about the first one.

“I messed up okay? I know” she said, looking at her spectators.

Alice had woken up to the loud rumbling of her stomach, lamenting its own emptiness.

The previous night, she had forgotten to move back to the base, electing to instead sleep on the futon in the antechamber with the swarm of spiders as company. Groaning, she had gotten up, carrying her beautiful futon through the round opening of the cavern and leaving it a few meters away from the pool.

Sighing, she had eyed the few remaining screechlings before gloomily moving towards them.

In a few minutes, the girl had butchered one of the furry fliers and, after numbing her taste receptors as usual, had dug in.

She had just started munching on the cold, chewy meat when a light sound of falling pebbles had caused her to turn back in alarm, only to catch sight of the fat grub on the wall, messily eating its stony meal.

After that, It had taken only a few seconds for her eyes to go from the grub to the meat in her hand and back to the grub again, a hungry smile appearing on her lips.

“Time for you to earn your keep, you little freeloader” she had said, briefly kneeling on the ground to grab one of the few remaining metallic spikes harvested from the Spear Spiders’ legs. A couple of minutes later, Alice had skewered the chunks of meat and quickly tied the resulting shish kabob on her trusty, if now seldom used, stone club.

Slowly and carefully, the hopeful chef had closed the distance from her new favorite cooking apparatus and had started prodding the larvae until, after a couple of pokes, it had decided to release a powerful electrical discharge that had instantly moved through the metal rod and caused the meat on it to sizzle and smoke.

It had then taken only a few more seconds for the meat and the silk securing the spike to the club, to simultaneously catch fire.

With a yelp, Alice had turned like an Olympic weight-thrower and swung the club in the air, launching it into the pool just as the silken chord was starting to fail. With a huge splash and a tiny sizzle, her prospect of a meal had become the one of the newly re-homed Lumen glimmers. Those that weren’t cooked at least.

“Cooking Lesson One: No direct electricity”. She had said, the echo of plinking legs already coming from the antechamber.

“Goddamnit”.

It was going to be a long time before breakfast.

On the leveled limestone surface, she had rapidly hammered a somewhat shallow bowl with her now quite dented club, carefully cleaning away the dust and bits of rock once finished.

Afterwards, she had, with some issues, filled it up with clean, non-shiny water from her drinking basin and lined up all the metallic spikes she had harvested from the Spear Spiders before their truce.

Now, Alice was closing in on the most important cog in her plan.

The pale, hairless grub wriggled on the ground under her eyes, the length of silk forming its leash disappearing in the blubbery folds on its body as it worked on munching on the ground it was on with its circular, teeth-filled mouth.

She knelt beside it, the fat larvae not even giving her notice. It was even uglier under her newly improved vision. Alice closed her eyes and took a very deep breath.

“Ewwww” she said, quickly scooping up the overweight creature with her hand, the grub instantly starting to squirm in her arms as she picked it up, its body vibrating as it tried to shock her as it had done before.

Sadly for it, its charge had been previously depleted and she only got a tiny zap from the jiggling creature as she carried it towards the workbench.

Once there, she placed it between two heavy rocks, its already pitiful moving capability further reduced; not that it actually cared since Alice had also taken her time to hammer out a mix of limestone and every bit of the crystalline material it seemed to enjoy so much and had placed it in front of its mouth.

A few seconds later, the grub was back to happily crushing its stony meal with its powerful, flat teeth.

“I still don’t know what that crystal it eats is…” she mumbled before shrugging “doesn’t matter though, now it’s only a matter of waiting, right guys?” she said to her spectators, the squad of Spear Spiders bodyguards that had rushed to her aid after they had heard the loud impact of her club on the surface of the water.

Skitter, the leader of the charge, had seemed quite happy to take it as an excuse to barge in and establish a closer guard duty on his ward, despite her definite objections.

“Incredibly annoying… Oh well. Now I’ve got to wait for it to recharge. Dinner time has long gone by so I guess I’ll eat tartare and then work as we wait.” Her tone promptly dropping in energy and cheerfulness.

After a quick meal, she decided to start preparing for the approaching day of her departure towards the main nest.

While her body was healing rapidly thanks to her powers, she was still severely lacking in tools and protections. During the brutal siege, she had once again lost her foot wraps, together with her cloak and most of her knives and spikes. What she felt the most want, however, was her prosthesis, she had plans for the new one...

Seeing how the spiders were bringing their own freshly-captured food to the cave, an idea had come to her mind and she quickly headed out of the cave one more time, passing through the antechamber and swiftly walking the short tunnel leading to the main expanse where Eleanor rested.

Once there, she stepped close to the large metallic spider, noticing the many injuries still covering her body.

Respectfully, she waited as the female weaver lowered her face to her height, staring at her with eight, large black eyes.

Alice gently extended her hand, stopping a few centimeters away from her carapace, looking straight at her while patiently biding her time.

After a few minutes of silent staring contest, Eleanor finally closed the distance, letting the hand come into contact with her exoskeleton.

The Biomancer of Symbiosis closed her eyes, once again moving through her body to reach the many injuries.

This time she worked slowly, carefully, ignoring the more instantaneous Hemostasis to instead use her increased knowledge to actually heal the spider’s wounds.

She ignored the stump for the moment, focusing on the lacerations that kept reopening every time she moved, probably causing discomfort, and forced the cells to weave a far more flexible coat of metallic chitin that would be more likely to resist eventual strains.

Under her hand the spider shivered slightly as her body slowly knit itself back up.

Once every other wound was healed, she focused on the stump, preemptively activating the spider’s immune system to prevent a possible infection and subsequently sealing the still exposed flesh.

Alice was quite certain the leg would then regrow with the next molt she had.

Once her work was complete, the girl went back to her body, a wave of fatigue causing her to stumble as she raised the hand from the monster’s warm shell.

Eleanor, for her part, stood up once again and, without a single glance to the kneeling Biomancer, started moving down the slick steps of limestone of the ledge, her many eyes set towards a few roaming millipedes in the no man’s land Alice could now perfectly see even from that distance.

The girl’s face, normally so innocent and pure, opened in a devious, scheming smile as she tapped Eleanor rear limb just as it started moving, the spider stilling and turning towards her once again.

With a set of signs she had rehearsed many times in her mind, Alice obtained the spider’s attention.

She pointed at the large millipedes the spider was heading towards and pushed away a pebble on the ground, shaking her head.

Instead, she pointed at one of the largest pools of the cavern, easily more than twenty meters in diameter and probably quite deep. Inside, she had previously seen a few, large Cave Crayfish, most busy gallivanting in the shallows, searching for prey.

She mimed the signs for eating them, then pointing at herself and Eleanor, looking expectantly at the polished monster.

A tittering sound briefly echoed in the cave as the gleaming female turned away, her large abdomen almost knocking her down as she proceeded down on the main floor and headed towards the millipedes. In a few seconds, the silvery behemoth had taken down three of the largest insects and as their smaller siblings retreated, she had begun feasting on their juicy insides, ignoring the noise of the screechlings dropping everywhere around her to feast on the scraps.

“Damnit” she murmured, despondently looking at pool with its enticing crustaceans, finally sitting down on the ledge and playing with the shadowy core in her hand.

As soon as Eleanor was finished with her multi-legged meal, she started heading back towards the ridge Alice was sitting on, the rest of the cave inhabitants giving her a wide berth wherever she trod.

The metallic spider was halfway through the set of steps when she suddenly turned, a line of silk having appeared in her frontal spears, extruded from the spinnerets on her butt.

An instant later, a large glob of silk was sailing in the air, connected by a line as thick as a high-tension cable. The sticky sphere impacted the water with an enormous splash and disappeared underneath.

Eleanor waited only a second before starting to pull, her two frontal limbs working like the reel of a fishing rod, coiling the line in a tight, grey bundle.

A heartbeat later, the large shape of a Cave Crayfish started emerging from the water; its limbs ineffectually scratching on the limestone for a grip that it would never find, its pincers flailing madly in the air while the glob of silk stuck on its back inexorably hauled it towards them.

As soon as the crustacean was within reach; a single, acuminate limb speared it through the head with a resounding crack, a pool of blue blood coalescing on the ground as its body slightly shivered before completely stilling.

The large spider dumped the carcass in front of her, tittering one more time before going back to her guarding position with nary a glance.

“Thank you. I should have probably just asked uh? You’re still a bit of a bitch tho” she mumbled, already working to drag the two days of meals back to the base. Her mouth was watering at the thought alone.

After dragging the engorged shrimp all the way to her base, Alice shooed away a very interested Skitter and proceeded to start butchering the aquatic monster.

Over the course of a few hours, the crawfish was carved up into its many components.

On the ground beside the pool went the hardest parts of the carapace, piled up to form a heap of plates and panes of resilient chitin.

The weaker parts of the exoskeleton were instead used as temporary trays for the slabs of meat she expertly cut up from the tail after tossing into the pool the long, tube-like digestive tract of the creature, together with its bloody head.

In the end, she was left staring at the two most important parts of the carcass, the chelae.

She left the largest one untouched and grasped the smaller, sharper one, starting her work.

In the meanwhile, the shadowy core was now resting on her thighs as she sat cross legged on the ground. In essence and to her dismay, even with her class upgrade, the core had to always in contact with a part of her body. Thusly, over the course of her day she had had to carry it in her hand and in the crook of her elbow, sometimes under her chin or armpit as she dragged back home the encumbering carcass. It had not been simple, or comfortable.

That, however, had only been a temporary solution, she only had one hand after all, and the size of the core itself wouldn’t allow for a ‘jewel’ like the first one had.

Therefore, when she started emptying the claw of its meat, she did so with a plan in her mind.

As soon as the claw was cleared, she quickly filled it up to the brim with glowing water and, after spilling a bit of her magic in the vessel, she expertly commanded the Lumen globules to eat any fleshy remains without touching the shell itself.

Once done with the cleanup, she started meticulously sanding the sharp edges of her future limb while also enlarging the opening she would insert her stump into.

After establishing that her arm fit loosely inside the claw, she carefully placed the core inside the prosthesis before sliding the residual arm back in. While not particularly uncomfortable, she confirmed it fit in, even if it was still loose-fitting.

“Nice” she smiled, removing the chela once more.

After the first set of trials, she proceeded to upgrade the weapon itself as much as she could.

As a first step, and as she had done in the previous iteration of the prosthesis, she removed the chitinous tip, exchanging it with one of the metallic spikes resting beside the grub, shaping a hollow where it snugly slid in.

Afterwards, she offered a large slab of shellfish to Skitter who, in exchange, wrapped up the chela with a pearlescent layer of silk, reinforcing the material and also securing the spike to the weapon.

Finally, after everything felt perfect, she enacted the last part of her plan.

Alice stood into the pool, her bare feet touching the cold, slippery stone beneath the fresh waves filled with shining specks of light.

She broke through the barrier of her well and let the warm, magical power flow through her body and stream into the waters, each glimmer it touched starting to move towards her.

In a few minutes, the entire population of bioluminescent microorganisms was gathered around her in a glowing halo of green.

In an oozing and slightly ticklish line, the glimmers moved up her legs, working against the gravity holding them down, coalescing into a single line on her waist and leisurely proceeding upwards, between her breasts and across her right clavicle. From her shoulder, they gently flowed along her arm and slowly started to fill the empty space in the claw like a swarm of diligent ants.

Within a few minutes, the claw felt quite a bit heavier, her residual limb placed snugly within a layer of shining gel separating it from the hard chitin.

After a few experiments, she also managed to have the oozing specks stay relatively inert, without attempting to consume the core or the pincer itself, solely sustained by her magic, which, on account of the particles being inside of an actual vessel, wasn’t particularly draining on her well, only working to keep the glimmers alive and the gel from spilling from the gaps.

Following a few tentative swipes, she felt satisfied with her upgrades and moved to the next step.

After selecting the best parts of the exoskeleton, Alice proceeded to smooth out their sharp edges once again, before dribbling the tiniest amount of glowing water inside previously carved indents. As soon as the small, shining droplets were in position, she focused on the few specks contained within each one, ordering them to eat through the chitin until a hole had formed.

As soon as the plates had been perforated, she exchanged more of the meat to have them covered in silk, whereupon she tied them to various parts of her body as a somewhat comfortable and lightweight protection.

When she finished the tiring work, Alice’s armor consisted of a pair of vambraces and greaves, an easily removable breastplate and a short skirt of silk and interwoven plates of chitin.

Her feet were also protected by a new set of foot wraps.

An entire day had passed and, despite her improved metabolism, her stomach was definitely grumbling and asking to be filled.

Smiling slightly maniacally, Alice proceeded to approach the fat grub still munching on the remains of powdered stone.

Expectantly, she cubed some of the crayfish’s meat and tossed it into the water-filled shallow bowl.

Then, she carefully replaced every metallic spike at her disposal until they were all connected, finally having the last one touch the feasting larvae.

Optimistic, Alice poked the creature once more with her club, forcing it to release the electricity it had hopefully had the time to store in its body.

With a yelp, the girl jumped back as a far larger shock than the one before grounded itself on the metal, travelling through the haphazard line until it hit the water with a spark.

An explosion of hot steam enveloped the place, forcing her to try and fan away the mist with her hand.

When the fog finally dissolved, in the shallow bowl stood many hot cubes of pinkish meat, soaking in a slightly bubbling puddle of cloudy water.

To any cook anywhere, the sight would have probably been insulting to their craft. To her, after more than a month on raw bat meat? She jumped on it, moaning at the smooth and slightly springy texture of cooked crawfish, its sweet flavor coating her watering mouth.

Once done with the meat, she brought her lips to the bowl and sipped every ounce of the weak, leftover broth until every centimeter of the bowl was perfectly spotless.

With a contented sigh, she jumped on her futon, not even bothering to undress after the pleasant meal.

As her breath grew steady and she prepared to drift towards her mental dark room, her last thought was on the next day.

No more waiting. Time for a new journey.

*****

This chapter is officially Sponsored by Robert C.! Thank you for the support!