“Doot dee doo da, doot doot dee,” goes the Other, walking to the beat of his own tune. “Hmmm, who should we have cook… How about the new girl? Should remember how to cook a bit right? It’s only been a few months I think.”

The Other turns a few corners and finds a few golems chatting. He asks them to find Margarette, or failing that anyone who remembers how to cook and prepare food, and send them to the kitchenette in five minutes time. The Other continues to walk seemingly aimless for the same number of minutes while sending off any other golems in his path to find Margarette.

As he’s about to call out to a few more, he notices he is at the kitchenette and walks through the door instead. To his pleasant surprise, Margarette is already inside. After a period of debate, unknown to the Other, she settled on an outfit with a bright red bow and frilled cuffs. Also unknown to the Other is the fact she has been here 18 months.

“So, your royal lunatic, what am I supposed to do in this kitchen when the last time I’ve eaten, let alone anyone else here, was a year and a half ago?” Margarette says, firing off a glancing blow.

“Precisely that! I can’t cook and there’s a foxkin and sheepkin who would like some food before leaving in say, thirty minutes. I do have copious amounts of ingredients in here though!” the Other exclaims while opening several cupboard doors to show off the time-stopped herbs and spices.

“And I have some fruits and meat, and probably some vegetables in here,” he finishes, placing a magic bag on the table.

“Honestly,” Margarette begins in a huff while reaching for the bag, “The only person actually able to taste anything around here, is the oldest being I’ve heard of, and can’t cook. What have you done with your life you immortal bastard?”

“Well, to be honest it’s less can’t and more that the last time I did Fleur got very angry, so I had to help fix the three walls I broke in the process. I did fix the problem that caused it though!”

“That-,” she begins while pulling out a haunch of meat as large as she is. “What is this?”

“Hindquarters of the Terror Beef. Common enough on the Demon Continent. Misnomer that, there’s plenty of humans there and no speciesism to boot.”

“Well, something this large would take a while to cook, longer than you said. Even if I sliced it thin, it would still be too long to cook the entire thing.”

“Ah,” the Other says quietly while leaning in close and using conspiratorial tones. “If you really want to use the beef, I can use some of that forbidden kitchen magic just so long as you don’t tell Fleur. Will be done in 15 minutes, promise. You would just need to work on the other dishes in the meantime.”

Margarette, unaware of the cooking experiment from hell ten years prior, thinks briefly then nods.

“Just cast a couple extra barriers around the wall and me and we have a deal. Slice it into some decent portions first though. This device in the corner is a magic stove that works like the heaters in the lab, correct? I’ll balance out the meal a bit.”

With that, Margarette grabs an apron and several vegetables and spices that she is familiar with. After a few minutes of prep work and starting to fry things using a slab of lard from a Desert Swine, Margarette looks over at the ball of swirling flame in the middle of the Other’s area.

“How does that work? From here it looks like you’re just holding a fireball in mid-air.”

“This is from a piece of work we discovered in the lab. We found out that by compressing air or steam and heating it, or even just trapping air and heating it without letting it expand in volume, we noticed we could get much higher temperatures and that some substances acted differently. So, I have the meat suspended in a compressed vortex of air and a touch of water, which is then surrounded by a layer of flame. The flame heats the air and steam, the hot air cooks the meat. I found out I could cook things faster using this when we were checking.”

“So, what happened to cause the… ‘incident?’”

“Well, I got a little excited about having a fast meal and dispelled the forces holding the entire thing together a little early. Essentially, it created an explosion and took out three walls…”

“Ah,” replies Margarette before turning back to the side dishes. ‘That must be when and why they installed the hidden teleportation system.’

- - - - -

“Besides an incident while cooking the Terror Beef, here’s a meal for you!” The Other declares after setting the food on the table. Noticing Fleur’s naturally expressionless gaze leveled at him, he continues as if just talking to Fontine and Helen, “I forgot that when cooking it the spirit of a raging bull manifests is all. Happens all the time though.”

“That happens?” Fontine asks.

“No, it doesn’t. I’ve never heard of it happening before, and it seems like something my father would mention when he sells it. Though I suppose it could happen if it was cursed before death and then purified later, but that would still be strange,” Helen supplies.

“Whell!” the Other says, clapping his hands and briefly glancing nervously at Fleur, “The main thing is nothing has been destroyed and it’s perfectly safe to eat. There’s plenty so don’t be shy.”

The three dig in while Helen asks various questions about how her father has been, Fontine pokes experimentally at the beef before consuming as much as the Other as he wolfs down food between answers. Helen eats moderately enough, though soon everything is finished and cleaned up by Fleur and the other golems.

Fleur stands in one of the archways watching as the platform rises back to its original position. Once the movement stops, she turns towards the kitchen, raises her arms in anger and yells, “I’m going to kill him! I swear one of these days I’m going to kill him!”

Marching down the hallways, the other golems greet Fleur as they stream away from the kitchen. Princess that she may have been, if she still had eyebrows they would be twitching furiously as she reaches the kitchen only to find Margarette cleaning up vegetables on the floor. And wall. And ceiling.

Turning at the sound of tapping, Margarette sees her and declares, “Why can’t anything around here ever be simple!”

Fleur sighs and shakes her head. “What happened? I wasn’t told much and everyone I’ve met between there and here just chuckled and kept walking.”

Margarette puts the pail of vegetables down and begins re-enacting the incident. She explains how she was preparing the vegetables and put the Other in charge of preparing the meat, and when she was almost done she was startled by the raging bellow of a bull immediately behind her, only to see a massive red specter of said animal rush off through the wall behind him.

“So did he say anything after that? Did he explain anything?” Fleur inquires.

Margarette shakes her head and replies, “No, though he muttered ‘Why is it only when I’m cooking with others? And she’s not even technically alive…’ Then he finally pays attention to me and asked if I needed any help preparing new sides since what I was working on was now everywhere. I swear if I still had a heart it would have stopped when it all happened. I decided to just wash up some fruits and vegetables rather than try again. I can’t believe I screamed like that…”

- - - - -

Just outside of Daisy Acre Trading Post, Howard Daisy has his daughter wrapped in a hug while thanking the Other and Fontine for bringing her back, particularly since several weeks have passed. After several pleasantries are exchanged, the Other states he will be back the next day to pick up some supplies when Helen interrupts.

“Dad,” she begins, pushing back to get some breathing room. “He fed me some Terror Beef, but why is it called that? Is it just because they just big and scary?”

Helen is still bothered by the earlier discussion and tries to fish some information about this land-cow from her father.

Howard nods and gives his daughter a bit more space. “Big spender he is, not many adventurers harvest them since they are quite large and powerful yes. Not much of a problem if you manage to get one acting on its own mind you, but really the problem is what comes after they kill them. As soon as anyone in the party lets their guard down there is a ghost of sorts that bellows and charges at them from behind regardless of where they are facing. It’s part of the reason there are few predators of the things. One way to get around that is to put it into a magic bag before that happens, but that only delays the trap. Anyone who buys Terror Beef knows to check if that curse or magic or whatever it is has been tripped. Merchants and cooks refuse to buy it otherwise. We haven’t figured out a way to get rid of that particular problem.”

“We’ve tried using a silence spell on someone so that it’s easier to relax and ignore the noise,” the Other cuts in, “but it isn’t any use. The most promising theory at the moment is some sort of magic that resonates within the soul rather than the ears.”

“Terror Beef,” Fontine says with noticeably more understanding. “Why haven’t I heard of this before? I may not have been at the top of my classes but I never slacked off during training.”

Two adventurers, a catkin and an elf happened to exit the trading post and hear Fontine and decide to speak up.

“Quite simple miss,” the elf begins, “it’s just one of those things you learn on the job.”

“Yep,” continues his partner, “that, and it’s a right-of-passage of sorts for those that take it on, so most veterans won’t let on the specifics until after the hunt. On my first hunt, we had finally knocked it down and this grizzled old man told me, ‘Don’t let your guard down! Go check it to make sure it’s dead.’”

“Damn you Carl,” mutters the elf in remembrance.

“So I do as Carl said, approached cautiously and kicked it from an angle I could escape easily if it was just playing dead. As soon as I do a few times I relax and turn around to wave the rest in so we can dismantle it, split it up and all, I hear the ** roar. I swear I must have leaped twice my height and nearly crapped my pants. Carl is over there rolling in the dirt laughing his ** off.”

Howard shakes his head as they conclude the story and flips a few coins at the two.

“Go drink one for Carl for me would you?”

The two nod and wave goodbye to the group. The four of them finish up as well and send off the Daisy duo.

The Other turns to Fontine on their way back through town and asks, “So, do you want to head back to the capitol today and finish up shopping or would you like to take a break and pick things up in the morning?”