Imet, Whose Broth Is Causality\nThey/them\nesper gunslinger, precognition, high ego, telepathy, time dilation, temporal fugue, evil twin\ncarbide chef 0th needs no assistants in the kitchen. they are hashslingers supreme. one hour to cook a 5-course meal? what is an hour to their competition is four to the carbide chefs 0th. they can see into many possible futures from which to draw victory.\nevil twin is gonna come in and mess up their pots and pans.

Assistants cleared the remnants of Agate's dishes as Jathiss doled out her sliders, positioned elegantly on small, tasteful plates. Farouun quickly demonstrated precisely how tasteful they were. The others sampled the crabmeat sliders with thoughtful leisure.\n\n"These sliders..." mused Q Girl. "Quetzal! I just want to wolf it down in one bite, and I think the buns would be happy for me to do just that. You called them sliders for good reason!"\n\n"The gelatin in the buns coaxes out the sweetness that often lurks in dreadroot," said Sheba. "It's an inventive texture. It's sourced from your own glandular emissions, is it not?"\n\nJathiss nodded. "It is."\n\n"Exquisite," she replied.\n\nThe arachnid woman's massive body trembled almost imperceptibly at the praise. "It is a joy to use the fruits of my being to bring sustenance to others. Thank you."\n\nShe served her stir-fry next. Confusion reigned for several minutes as the judges and the Baroness alike suddenly blinked away at the first taste. In the stands, a dromad swooned as she found her lap occupied by the tremendous and somewhat crushing presence of Farouun. Earl Asphodel simply teleported immediately back to xyr chair, and picked up the slack for xyr fellow judges as they made their way back to the throne dais.\n\n"The texture is quite pleasing," xe said. "With the stimulating heat of the gaster and the nutritive completeness of the honey, we have no doubt whatsoever: this would make a fine compost. We shall slather some on for later." Xe did so, packing it over the dirt of xyr pot.\n\nSoon enough, the wayward hosts had returned, and Jathiss served her main course, filling bowls from a spigot inserted into a seam in the massive cooked crab's carapace.\n\n"This offering is my everything," Jathiss said as a reverent preamble. "Let this humble stew please you."\n\nThere was a momentary appreciative silence as the judges let it stimulate their palates. Sheba spoke first.\n\n"The subtle, smoky flavor of the venom combined with the liquefied crab innards to me is like... luxurious prose ensconced in the sweeping strokes of breathtaking illumination. You have successfully combined the flavors to create a dish with a profound depth to it. I am moved by this."\n\n"You honor me," bowed Jathiss.\n\n"You honor us!" said Q Girl. "This stew - my brain says 'Look out! This is poison!' But the heat of cooking has rendered the venom harmless, and my stomach says 'I can't get enough!' Quetzal!"\n\nAt last, it was time for the final dish of the night: Crab Sundae Ramen.\n\n"I had a bit of time, and a lot of silk and slime and desalinization pellets, so I made one of my favorite desserts, with a bit of a twist," the Carbide Chef said, almost sheepishly. "I hope you enjoy."\n\n"The silk noodles... it's such an interesting texture," said Sheba. "A bit chewy, but it contrasts well with the smooth sorbet and the surprising roe whip."\n\n"If it was all sweets, I think my chest would start to hurt," said Q Girl. "But the crab and the roe balances it out well. It's really something."\n\n"We must admit," said Asphodel, "we've been curious about crab eggs all evening. Almost perversely so. We would have perhaps preferred they remained intact, rather than semi-intact."\n\n"I understand," bowed Choraler Jathiss.\n\n"Dear judges," rumbled Baroness Farouun, "Kitchen Heptagon has fought for you, cooked for you, bled for you. Which of its champions tonight shall you recognize? Decide amongst yourselves." Her eyes twinkled lasciviously. "But don't let us wait too long."\n\n[[next|25]]

Q Girl, Asphodel, and Sheba began conferring quietly among themselves as Farouun leaned back in her throne and steepled her clawtips. Agate and Jathiss descended to the arena floor to await the results, partly for the sake of ceremony and partly so that Agate's acute hearing wouldn't pick up on the deliberation process and she could remain in suspense.\n\nThe two stood in silence, but at last, the hindren pariah turned to the Choraler and softly spoke. "You fought well. Even a competition such as this is an opportunity for further proving the rigor of one's theories."\n\nJathiss bowed her heads and replied, in twin harmonious voices, "May the heavens deliver us victory."\n\nAgate sighed irritably. "This is to say - I feel I may have learned from this competition. From you. I hope perhaps you may have learned from me as well."\n\n"Perhaps."\n\nSilence fell over the arena suddenly. Baroness Farouun had crested the stairs. Behind her, with a whirring of exoskeletal servos, a flash of teleportation, and a wheeling of curtains, Q Girl, Asphodel, and Sheba took up position. Below her, the other Carbide Chefs returned to their sconces. At last, the Baroness clapped her massive claws together and spoke.\n\n"In the Challenger," she rumbled, gesturing a claw towards Agate Severance Star, "I see a mirror of my own ravenous hunger. Where I hunger for transcendental cuisines, she hungers for knowledge. In the course of the contest tonight, I have seen and tasted struggles and dishes to make my heart sing. I find myself sated. But against my beloved Jathiss... has our challenger, too, sated herself? We must announce the verdict."\n\nE'Beth launched herself off the dais into the air, microphone in hand, and breathlessly spoke as the bandbots pounded a melodramatic and thunderous piano strain.\n\n"Challenger Agate Severance Star and Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt Choraler Jathiss locked claws, antlers, glands and spinnerets in a fearsome duel with Eyeless King Crab as the theme ingredient! You've seen them fight, bleed, and cook for us, but now comes true reckoning! Who takes it? //Whose cuisine reigns supreme?"//\n\n[[next|26]]

Farouun's face, half in shadow, was unmoving as stone. The bandbots fell silent.\n\n//''"AGATE SEVERANCE STAR!"''// she thundered.\n\nThe arena erupted in a riot of emotions, from applause to wailing to jeers to cheers. Agate Severance Star lifted her head in triumph, beams of light pouring over her.\n\n"Incredible!" sputtered E'Beth, touching down on the tier below the throne platform. "The Challenger wins! Overcoming the moral, emotional, and personal obstacles laid before her by our judges, the brilliance and subjective superiority of her culinary techniques is hereby recognized! What an upset! What a show!"\n\nJathiss strode towards her, fuzzy hand extended in congratulation. Agate reached past it, instead clasping her fingers under the chin of Jathiss's right head, the one clad in her sun-beaten pilgrim's hat. She drew her close, and her voice cut through the clamor of the stadium.\n\n"I heard once that it is customary, should ever a champion fail, for her to be sacrificed to restore the honor of that she failed to champion. Tell me, is it true?"\n\nThe audience gasped in shock. Baroness Farouun could have been a statue, so still she stood. None of the Carbide Chefs in their sconces had moved - though now nine Imets crowded the sconce of the Chefs 0th - and yet the keen observer could feel the pressure of potential violence looming in the atmosphere. Agate Severance Star's free hand drifted glacially to the pommel of her vibro-blade. Jathiss knelt softly, casting aside her shawl to bare her vulnerable breast.\n\n"Humble before my sisters, I walk," she prayed.\n\n"Agate!"\n\nQ Girl shouldered desperately past the impassive Farouun.\n\n"Agate, please - isn't it enough? I don't know if you've changed, and I can't expect that you have, but Agate, please! You've won! Isn't that enough for you? Why-"\n\nTears glittered like moonlight on the Spindle as they fell from her ursine cheeks.\n\n"-Why can't it be enough?" she croaked.\n\nAgate Severance Star cast a calculating glance over all the assembled figures clouding the throne complex's many tiers with their desperation. She smirked, and from a satchel just above her sheathed blade, she drew a rose, blue and grey, freshly plucked from the flower fields surrounding the canyons that sheltered Kitchen Heptagon. She pinned it under the band of Choraler Jathiss's hat, and kissed her.\n\n"Then it isn't true, and I am gladdened. You lost no honor tonight, Jathiss, Farouun. My theories are perfect. Your failure was assured, yet your nobility was clear from your unwavering dedication in the face of this. Live and drink."\n\nWith a final, flamboyant bow, Agate Severance Star turned and left the Kitchen Heptagon, hooves clicking on the fused glass floor. Q Girl sank to her knees. Farouun patted her head, softly.\n\n"It's all theater, darling," mused Earl Asphodel.\n\n"I know, it's just-" she wiped away her lingering tears with a stimulator-clad paw. "Just- ugh! Why did I have to like her dishes better? Why did I vote for her? Ugh! Why did I //encourage// that?"\n\n"We all encouraged that, I'm afraid," said a conciliatory Sheba Hagadias.\n\n"You chose with the ultimate consensus of your heart, your mind, and your gut," rumbled Farouun. "For that, I thank you. I would ask nothing else and nothing less of you."\n\nE'Beth grunted as Clactobelle landed on her once again. "Thanks for joining us tonight!" buzzed the glowmoth.\n\n"That's all the time we have," added the Seeker. "That is, aside from the Chefs 0th, who make their own time. But for the rest of you, may you never forget what you witnessed here. Live and drink."\n\n"Live and drink!" chorused the others.\n\n"And cook," rumbled Baroness Farouun. "Live and cook."\n\nThe moon rose over the lip of the arena. Soon enough, it would rise on another legendary duel. For now, there was time to rest.\n\n''THE END''

Had a traveler taken in the sight of the Kitchen Heptagon in the early evening, surely they would be struck with its severe beauty. Its glimmering edifice rose from rust-red canyon walls, which in turn rose from the softly swaying flower fields that festooned the western reaches of Qud. But all travelers that sought the kitchen arena that day had already arrived - all save for a small detachment of armored figures approaching from a nearby temporary encampment.\n\nWithin the arena's walls, the final preparations for the evening's proceedings were nearly complete. The stands were packed with all manner of mutant from across the salt pans, jungles, canyons, and caverns of Qud. Three humanoids, a plant, and a large insect chatted quietly in the announcers' booth, waiting for the spectacle to begin. On some hidden cue, E'Beth, Seeker of the Sightless way, finished her conversation and switched on the antique microphone on the table in front of her.\n\nA hush fell over the fused glass arena and the foamcrete stands as she spoke. "Five years ago a woman's fantasy became reality in a form not seen since the time of the Eaters: a cooking arena in the heart of the Glass Crater. Kitchen Heptagon!"\n\n[[next|28]]

"We're down to the wire tonight, as both our combatants race to plate every last dish before the final call!"\n\n"I admire their confidence, both of them," said Sheba Hagadias. "You'd never know they were on a deadline to look at them, at the way they move."\n\n"Yes, we must admit it's been quite thrilling to see them perform. Most entertaining."\n\n"And as much as I hate to say it..." said Q Girl, "Agate's dishes look... incredible. I'm just now remembering how hungry I've been for the last hour."\n\nAgate Severance Star turned a glance to the announcers' table, a cold smirk on her face. Q Girl sighed in exasperation and looked away. Agate returned her attention to the glasses bubbling with convalessence on the counter in front of her.\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle."\n\n"Ms. Star is finishing up her dessert course. As you can see, she's floating starapple slices and scoops of frozen crab in the convalessence. She says not only will the delicate flavor astound you, but you'll love the crunch."\n\n"A bold assertion! Thank you, Clactobelle."\n\n"How do you remember all these specifics, Clactobelle? Not just dish contents but quotes and actions as well?" asked Sheba Hagadias.\n\n"Clactobelle is a hardworking mother of 27," pre-empted E'Beth.\n\n"I work hard to remember everything about my kids! I extend that same effort to the Kitchen Heptagon! In fact, my 8th-11th daughters, Fustipe, Aroubenea, Isagisis, and Grilitia Billila, are watching the proceedings tonight! Hi girls!"\n\nFrom the stands, several glowmoths waved. Baroness Farouun heaved herself up from her throne and paced at the front of the platform, beginning the countdown.\n\n"Thirty seconds remain."\n\nAgate Severance Star and Choraler Jathiss scrambled to put the finishing touches on their dish presentations. Two chrome ovoids launched silently from the throne complex and hovered to the arena floor, lenses affixed to their front faces while huge squares of bleached canvas unfurled behind them like parachutes, or the sails of the wooden ships that once prowled the Earth's long-dried oceans in the early days of the Eaters. The other Carbide Chefs took up position behind Farouun, their taciturn faces betraying no emotions despite the charged atmosphere.\n\n"Our magni-drones now descend into Kitchen Heptagon, ready to project the finished dishes to you in mere moments," announced E'Beth, her voice flush with excitement.\n\n"Fifteen seconds remain," rumbled Farouun.\n\nThe bandbots struck up a drumroll. Agate stuck last-minute stems of fried qudzu into square-rimmed pyramidal goblets filled with a scoop of crab salad. Jathiss, seemingly done, merely bowed her heads before her array of dishes in silent prayer.\n\n"Agate coming in under the wire as Jathiss closes with a display of supreme confidence - or does her humility mask her hubris? Only our judges will tell!"\n\n"Five. Four. Three. Two. One."\n\nA tremendous gonging from the bandbots signaled the end of the competition.\n\n"And the Baroness's countdown calls for competition to cease! The Eyeless King Crab Battle is //over!"//\n\n[[next|21]]

Baroness Farouun stood almost motionless, save for the fluttering of her mane and ruffled sleeves in the evening breeze, as the platform she stood on sank to the arena floor, melting into a set of stairs once more. Meanwhile, the announcers' booth itself shuddered into motion, slowly circling around the stands to the back of the throne complex on embedded chrome rails, to await delivery of the finished dishes. After conferring briefly with E'Beth, Clactobelle fluttered to the arena floor, tracking down the hindren challenger.\n\n"So, how did you do?" she asked, her fluffy forelimbs extending a microphone to Agate Severance Star. The magni-drones circled the two of them languidly, projecting the view from their lenses onto the canvas screens behind them for the audience to better see.\n\n"Need you ask? My culinary theories are unparalleled."\n\n"That was quite the emotional outburst earlier."\n\n"The Carbide Chef is a worthy adversary. It wounded me to see her efforts stymied by her own designs."\n\n"What about your flamethrower? Do you want it back?"\n\n"Choraler Jathiss may consider it a keepsake of this match. A reminder of her ultimate failure."\n\n"Thank you!" Clactobelle bowed her antennae to the hindren, then fluttered over to the Carbide Chef, the magni-drones trailing behind her. Choraler Jathiss was fastidiously cleaning her hands and forearms with her twin mandibles.\n\n"How are your dishes tonight, Ms. Jathiss?"\n\n"It is my fervent wish that they be found worthy by my Baroness and our judges. I have labored and bled for them."\n\n"And what did you think of the Challenger?"\n\n"A fierce competitor. Though not, I think, without a sense of honor, strange though it may be."\n\n"Ms. Star said she wants you to keep the flamethrower."\n\n"I am honored. It shall be a fine homage to pay to the Argent Well, that it may return to the Kasaphescence."\n\nAcross the arena, Agate Severance Star's ear flicked in irritation. As Clactobelle conducted her short interviews, the Baroness scooped her massive claws expertly under the wide platters that held both Jathiss and Agate's full courses, hoisting them easily above her head despite their considerable combined weight as she climbed the stairs to her throne. Up top, the remaining Carbide Chefs had prepared the throne dais for the tasting that would follow the arrival of the dishes and the announcers' booth. E'Beth spoke in rich, soft tones as the magni-drones circled the platters.\n\n[[next|22]]

"Challenger Agate Severance Star has prepared for us four dishes. She leads with a crab salad with pickled cucumber and roe, topped with a garnish of powdered spark tick chitin, served with fried qudzu stems. The chitin shavings add an extra kick to a tangy appetizer. Next, she has prepared Phase Sashimi - crab meat marinated in shade oil, served atop a bed of swarmshade grubs. The grubs provide a mild and tender base for the pure flavor of raw crab. For her main course: Witchwood-smoked crab roast with dreadroot and hoarshroom, topped with sautéed young brinestalk shoots in a wine reduction. A hearty dish with expertly-cooked crab. Finally, she serves us a chilled dessert course: Flash-frozen crab floated in convalessence with garnish of sap-infused starapple. Sweet, refreshing, and as our dear Clactobelle relayed to us, you'll //love// the crunch."\n\nThe audience sighed appreciatively over the glistening delights projected over the magni-drones' screens. A cold, grim smile flickered across Agate's face as she and Jathiss followed the Baroness up the grand staircase. The drones turned their robotic attentions to the other platter now as Farouun deposited both gently onto small tables on the throne dais. The bandbots continued their stately hymn.\n\n"Carbide Chef Choraler Jathiss counters with four dishes of her own. Her opening appetizer: Crabmeat and vinewafer sliders on gelatinous dreadroot flour buns. The rich and delicate buns provide a perfect vessel for the tender crabmeat and crisp wafers. Dish number two is clawmeat stir-fry with voider gland and yondercane in a spicy sauce of fire ant gaster and honey. A succulent and bold dish that will have you out of your seat. Her main course: Crab stew liquified in herbs, cider, and spider venom, served from the shell. Stewed from a whole crab, the long heat process has denatured the venom and rendered it harmless. Her dessert course is Crab Sundae Ramen, a spider-silk 'pasta' in crab gelatin sorbet, topped with whipped roe tapioca. A soothing treat that expertly balances sweet and salty flavors."\n\nThe announcers' booth had now completed its half-circuit and came to rest at the rear of the throne dais. Seeker E'Beth stood from the table, taking her microphone to stand by her Baroness, her long red shawl flowing behind her.\n\n"The Challenger, Agate Severance Star, has come to us from the heart of the Rainbow Wood, where she studied with the enigmatic and fungal Pax Klanq. Of our formidable Carbide Chefs, she chose to face Choraler Jathiss, a tireless yet humble master of the culinary arts representing the Six-Day Stilt. After an intense and emotional battle, we harvest its fruits, here and now. It is the moment of truth."\n\n"My dears," purred Baroness Farouun. "My loves. Prepare for judgement."\n\nShe seated herself in her throne - pulled to the side to accommodate the judges and their tables - and E'Beth placed an ornate yet portable table in front of her. Agate Severance Star prepared to serve her first course.\n\n[[next|23]]

Silence fell over the stadium, save for the soft chiming of cutlery against plating. Farouun downed her goblet's contents, then her goblet, with a ravenous refinement, while Earl Asphodel, Q Girl, and Sheba Hagadias sampled theirs in their own ways. Sheba broke the silence.\n\n"This salad - I can feel my mouth puckering from the pickled ingredients and the shock of the spark tick garnish, but the crispness of the fried qudzu... It's not that it nullifies it or that it accentuates it, simply that it accompanies it perfectly. Really well done."\n\n"Had I more than an hour, I would have pickled the crab as well," Agate replied. She moved to serve her next course, Phase Sashimi.\n\n"We've several associates whom complain endlessly of the damned things when fully-grown," said Asphodel of the cooked swarmshade grubs. "This dish feels something like a victory for them. We'll have to regale them of it later."\n\n"The raw crab is so delectable, so simple," said Sheba. "It feels as though it will melt right out of my mouth! Perhaps that's the shade oil. It's slippery... but not unpleasant."\n\nQ Girl said nothing. Agate nodded, then brought forward her main course.\n\nAfter a pensive silence spent tasting the roast, Q Girl at last spoke. "I must admit, I had doubts about your methods on moral grounds. The results, however, speak for themselves. I've never had crab this tender. I don't know if this justifies you, but..." she trailed off with a faraway, shimmering look. "It reminds me that I still miss your cooking, sometimes."\n\n"My methods are perfect," said Agate Severance Star. "You will not doubt me again."\n\n"Okay, this? This is why we- we- we aren't research partners anymore, Agate."\n\nFinally, she brought forth her convalessence-crabmeat floats to close her flight of dishes.\n\n"Well this is simply divine," purred Asphodel, pouring the float into xyr clay pot.\n\nQ Girl licked the foam from her furry upper lip, then heaved a heavy sigh. "I do," she muttered. "I //do// love the crunch. Damn you."\n\nBaroness Farouun dabbed at her maw with a finely-embroidered handkerchief. "Agate Severance Star. You have comported yourself with true excellence. But have you reached the perfection Kitchen Heptagon demands? The perfection we crave? We shall see. Choraler Jathiss! Let us taste the divine with your offerings."\n\n[[next|24]]

All eyes turned to the sky as a massive and impeccably tailored chimera sank past the open lip of Kitchen Heptagon. Baroness Farouun stood astride her well-maintained hoversled in her customary fashion. In the last rays of sunlight, her mane was fire, fire that flowed into soft plasma as she passed from the light of sunset to the glow of the arc-lit arena. The ruffles of a cravat crept out from under her expansive mane, and matching ruffles graced the tips of her embroidered sleeves. She was a living marvel.\n\nE'Beth continued her practiced speech. "That woman was the Baroness Farouun, and her means were gained by the betrayal of her 3 greatest competitor-barons, who perished. The motivation for spending her truly obscene water wealth to create Kitchen Heptagon was to encounter new original cuisines, which could be called reflections of the true creation."\n\nShe landed at the foot of the stairs leading up to her throne. A uniformed assistant approached her with a basket brimming with ripe hoarshrooms and she selected one graciously. She began her ascent.\n\n"To safeguard the honor of this ideal, she called to her four chefs of great power, and she bid they be named her Carbide Chefs, the invincible lesbians of culinary skill."\n\n[[next|29]]

Baroness Farouun paused on the landing that held the darkened banner-bedecked sconces just below her throne dais. She turned to the arena and flung her arms wide. "Carbide Chefs, come forth!"\n\nGears churned in the darkness as the bandbots played the theme of the Carbide Chefs. Shadowy figures rose on platforms to fill each of the four darkened sconces. The Carbide Chefs had arrived.\n\n"Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye is Bajiko Ki!" As E'Beth spoke, the far left sconce lit up from below, revealing the impassive visage of Bajiko Ki. Her asymmetrical emerald-dyed chef's coat only had a left sleeve, as her right arm - which held a dreadroot before her with posthuman stillness - was sculpted from fluted and burnished chrome in a slightly abstracted mold. Eagle-eyed members of the audience could perhaps spot the way her irises seemed to focus and refocus with mechanical precision.\n\n"Carbide Chef Phyta is Emberlily!" The sconce to the immediate left of the throne dais lit, casting its photosynthetic occupant in a dramatic underlight. Emberlily seemed to be venting her verdant body's tremendous excess heat through the ghostly flames in her upper pair of hands and the ritualistic sharpening of the butcher's knife held in her lower pair of hands. Her well-tailored chef's garb was a deep, almost singed hue of chestnut, while her wide face sported a faint grimace of concentration.\n\n"Carbide Chefs 0th are Imet, Whose Broth Is Causality!" The sconce to the right of the throne dais lit with E'Beth's exclamation, and within it all could now clearly see its formidable occupant. Though slight in figure and obscured by the high collar of their bleached-white duster, the gunslinger suspended themselves off the ground with the strength of their psionic prowess. A spatula levitated just above their outstretched palm. It was clear, even from a distance, that a terrible power slumbered within them, ready to be unleashed at a moment's notice.\n\n"And Choraler Jathiss is Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt!" The final sconce now illuminated a tremendous tarantula-taur, twin heads bowed in prayer. A slate shawl over her shoulders was her only nod to modesty, though it was quite modest indeed. Perhaps despite the access to legendary tailors granted to her by her elite status, she found it too much of a bother to attempt to clothe her sizeable lower half. Her natural coat of arachnid fur seemed to do the trick just as well, if not better.\n\n[[next|30]]

Baroness Farouun had now reached her throne. Standing next to it it became clear - it wasn't that the throne was oversized, but that Farouun was simply //that// tall. Rather than sit, she turned to face the arena floor, sweeping her gaze first over her Carbide Chefs, then across the cheering crowd. She lifted the hoarshroom in her grasp, sifted its aroma, then took a decisive bite of it with the gusto that a famished traveler might reserve for a fresh starapple. She closed her eyes to relish the taste, glowing juices staining her furry chin, and within moments a delicate blue light seeped out from under her clothes as her organs started to glow.\n\nE'Beth continued. "The Kitchen Heptagon is where these legends test their skills against challengers from across Qud and beyond. Both the Carbide Chef and the Challenger have one hour to explore the theme ingredient of the evening. Using all their senses, skills, beliefs, and abilities they shall demonstrate their unparalleled artistry in destruction and recreation to the Baroness and her honored paramores and celebrity guest judges. Should the Challenger win, their deeds shall resonate through the fabric of this world to be preserved forever."\n\n"My loves," rumbled Farouun, her voice deep and rich and powerful, like tectonic honey. It thrummed through all assembled with an undeniable presence. "To fall here is to fall among legends. Brave souls, giving souls, test your might with me and I will promise you a breath of eternity. Please, face me. Face my beloved Chefs."\n\nE'Beth could no longer mask the fervor in her voice, as her excitement climbed with the crescendo of her speech. "We peddle in reputations, for here, legends are reforged. Best our Carbide Chefs and write your name in the cosmos. For here, we are gathered to truly test the limits of edibility and reality. This is Kitchen Heptagon!"\n\nThe crowd roared. Farouun spread her arms once more and her hair tumbled over her as she ducked into a flamboyant bow. She rose, and opened her mouth, lifting a claw to her chin thoughtfully. The crowd fell obediently silent.\n\n[[next|5]]

Carbide Chef

Celebrity Judge Four\nShe/her and they/them\npowerful\nmultiple esthers\nharder-spoken than most

Clactobelle\nShe/her\na legendary glowmoth always butting in on the chefs as they compete and asking them their strategy, relaying this back to the announcer and the three guest judges\n"I asked the Baroness why she kept me around, and she said she likes petting me! I like when she pets me too!"\n(the ota analogue)

"I am thrilled to announce that our call to find challengers was answered by the Barathrumites! As our longtime guest judge Q Girl's fate has often intermingled with our own here in Kitchen Heptagon, so too has this challenger mingled fates with her own. A tinker, a traveler, a soldier, and now, as the winds have rumoured, a chef. My loves, please welcome this Journeywoman of Grit Gate. Enter Kitchen Heptagon! //''WEARY PAW MARA!"''//\n\nThe bandbots trilled as the tremendous chrome gates embedded beneath the announcers' booth groaned open. A line of arc sconces crackled to life from the gates into the arena. Two figures emerged from the mists that billowed from the open gates. One was the stocky, quilled ursine form of Q Girl. She threaded her arm through the lower right arm of the other figure as they promenaded proudly into the light.\n\nFor the other was Weary Paw Mara, a four-armed verdant warrior with the lower body of a mutant tiger. Her four striped paws padded softly through the mists and over the black glass arena floor. She wore four swords in battered sheaths at her front hips. Two were forged of glimmering crysteel and two were curved, ornate khopeshes that hummed softly. Bulging saddlebags draped over her flanks, while over her four-armed upper torso she wore a supple nanoweave vest. Her fur was green with chloroplasts and striped. Delicate leaves sprouted from her vinelike hair. It framed her tiger's muzzle set in an expression of fierce determination.\n\n"We wondered why our dear Q Girl wasn't joining us this time," mused Asphodel.\n\n"Conflict of interest," replied E'Beth. "But there's still a space for her up here next to me. We would love another color-commentator."\n\nBaroness Farouun descended from the dais to meet them in the center of the arena. She clasped her massive claws around Q Girl's many-jointed bear paw, then around one of Mara's upper hands in turn.\n\n"Q Girl. Mara. Thank you for being here."\n\n"You're quite welcome," said Q Girl.\n\nMara craned her head up slightly to meet the gaze of the Baroness. "Heavens, look at you," she breathed. "Your mane is a hypernova of radiant alabaster."\n\n"Quetzal!" chuckled Q Girl. "There's that honeytongue of hers."\n\nFarouun bent to kiss Mara's hand, still clasped in her unshakeable grip. "And your exploits, Mara, are legend enough to fill this crater thrice over. It is an honor to host you. Q Girl, my thanks for bringing her."\n\n"If I didn't know any better I'd say you were propositioning her," said Q Girl.\n\nFarouun simply raised her eyebrows at the urshiib as a knowing smile flickered across her furred snout. "What dalliances the night may hold can wait until after the match. But now! Weary Paw Mara! My Chefs stand before you."\n\n"Yes," nodded Mara, sweating slightly.\n\nFarouun's snout cracked into a hungry grin.\n\n"Choose."\n\n[[next|60]]

"If memory serves me right," she began, pacing in front of her throne with a liquid grace that defied her bulk, "We have been starved of challengers lately. My loves, I am famished. Lest we resort to relitigating old challenges, I have begged of our judges past and present to call upon all they know and to spread the word of our need. Tonight I am thrilled to announce that our fervent networking has borne the sweetest fruit. But before we unpeel the suspense from this succulent spectacle and let you all gorge yourselves sick..." She trailed off, then swept her claw to the announcer's booth. "Tell me, my dear E'Beth, who joins you in the booth tonight?"\n\nE'Beth nodded, a blush seeping out from beneath her crimson blindfold. "I am your host and color-commentator, Seeker E'Beth. And I am yours, my Baroness. Even should the stars fall and the Spindle crack from crown to foundation, I will always be yours. With me are our celebrity guest judges. To my right, Asphodel, Earl of Omonporch."\n\n"Thank you, love," Asphodel buzzed. The alluring blossom sat next to her in a clay pot perch. Xyr dazzling contours were immaculately symmetrical. "And good heavens, we hope the Spindle doesn't crack. We're awfully fond of the thing - it's ours, you know."\n\n"To xyr right," continued E'Beth, "we have Mayor Nuntu of Kyakukya."\n\n"It's a delight to be here," said the toga-clad albino ape seated next to Asphodel. Nuntu rested his elbow upon the table to prop his chin on a muscled fist in a pose of classical contemplation. His voice was deep and affable. "It's always a stimulating experience, not simply for the appetite, but for the intellect as well."\n\n"And finally, we have first-time guest and leader of the Cervine Meadow, Hindriarch Esk of Bey Lah."\n\n"Thanks," said the hindren at the end of the long table, her deer torso seated upon a specialized chair reserved for four-legged guests. A painted vest of plastifer draped over Esk's shoulders, and a weathered walking stick leaned against the table next to her. Beneath her bead-adorned antlers, her ear flicked nervously. "There - ah - there are a lot of people here. I'm hoping to learn more about kendren food."\n\nFarouun smiled broadly and bowed deeper than ever. "On behalf of Kitchen Heptagon, let me extend our warmest of welcomes, Hindriarch."\n\nEsk put a hand over her breast. "Well, you're a charmer. I think I like it here."\n\n"I like it here too!" cried a dog-sized moth who crawled out from under the table through a freshly-chewed hole in the tablecloth. "You can move in if you want, there's plenty of room. Oh, right! I'm Clactobelle! I'll be reporting on the action from the arena floor!"\n\n"That's all of us," said E'Beth, reaching down to scratch between Clactobelle's antennae. "Now, who challenges us tonight, my Baroness?"\n\n[[next|59]]

Farouun bent to touch her forehead to that of her Carbide Chef. Her voice came as a gentle rumble. "Emberlily..."\n\nEmberlily threaded a lower hand up through their embrace to brush against Farouun's cheek. She kissed her. "How's this for your gift tonight? Only question is, what did you get me, Rouun?"\n\n"Wait and see, my love." Farouun kissed her back, then resumed her climb to reach her throne. Emberlily took up position next to Mara on the arena floor.\n\n"Sets the heart aflutter, doesn't it?" said Q Girl. She was panting slightly from the climb as she took the empty seat next to E'Beth in the announcers' booth.\n\n"Q Girl!" Farouun's voice thundered through the arena.\n\nQ Girl yelped in breathless surprise. "What?"\n\nThe Baroness smiled as silence fell. "Just as your deeds furnished us with a challenger, so too were your words a muse for our theme ingredient. I speak of your //Disquisition on the Malady of the Mimic,// which I had the chance to revisit recently. A moving treatise, and one that has soothed the doubts that grip even my soul on occasion when the night grows long."\n\n"Oh! Quetzal! That's why I wrote it, to help. Wait, is the theme ingredient-"\n\nMara and Emberlily shared a worried glance, then began furtively analyzing their surroundings for out-of-place kitchen appliances.\n\nFarouun held up a hand to still their concerns. At that moment, a subtle vibration that suffused Kitchen Heptagon escalated into the range of perception. It came from below. "Tempting," she rumbled. "But too obvious. No, for those who set foot in Kitchen Heptagon cannot help but belong here in fullest sincerity and authenticity. But Qud is harsh. It chews up the fraud and the savant alike. I sought an ingredient that reflected the cruel bite of materiality."\n\nAt another gesture, hidden sluices embedded in the arena walls groaned open. The redirected briny waters of an ancient subterranean canal gushed forth. Mara and Emberlily scrambled for the raised kitchen platforms as the waters rose swiftly past their ankles. Farouun stepped forward as the stairs of her throne dais rose one by one to form a uniform chrome platform. The thundering waters couldn't drown out her voice - if anything, she seemed to resonate with the cataract.\n\n"I speak not of mimics but of their fabled foe! We unveil it to you now!"\n\nAs the platform locked into place, it revealed a gate embedded below at arena-level. Even as water poured into the gap, blurred shapes hued a jaundiced yellow barreled against the current and slipped into the half-submerged Heptagon. Furiously questing fangs churned the waters into frothing wakes.\n\n"Tonight's theme ingredient: ''MADPOLE!"''\n\nThe bandbots hammered upon their gong. Baroness Farouun lifted her mighty claw to the heavens.\n\n//''"LIVE AND COOK!"''//\n\n[[next|62]]

E'Beth leaned into the microphone before her, speaking with a reverent excitement. "Five years ago, a woman's fantasy became reality in a form not seen since the time of the Eaters: a cooking arena in the heart of the Glass Crater. Kitchen Heptagon!"\n\nDescending from the heavens astride a hoversled, half lit by the setting sun, Baroness Farouun crossed the lip of the arena and entered her domain. Her regal mane billowed around her. Her scorpion tail had been buffed and oiled until the chitin gleamed. An iridescent lacquer graced her horns and outstretched clawtips. These were but her natural accoutrements. Her deep burgundy greatcoat cascaded over her hips, embroidered with gold-threaded panels depicting scenes of culinary triumph in an asymmetrically alternating pattern. Chains of brass and bronze coiled around her biceps and dangled down from her elbows. She was every inch an unassailable force.\n\nE'Beth continued. "That woman was the Baroness Farouun, and her means were gained by the betrayal of her 3 greatest competitor-barons, who perished. The motivation for spending her truly obscene water wealth to create Kitchen Heptagon was to encounter new original cuisines, which could be called reflections of the true creation."\n\nThe hoversled landed at the base of the grand dais that held Farouun's throne and the banner-bedecked alcoves below it. The Baroness dismounted and bowed to the arena. As she held the bow, an assistant deposited a ripe hoarshroom in her outstretched claw. She winked at them, drew herself back up, and began her ascent to the throne.\n\n"To safeguard the honor of this ideal, she called to her four chefs of great power, and she bid they be named her Carbide Chefs, the invincible Sapphists of culinary skill."\n\n[[next|56]]

Dusk approached Kitchen Heptagon. Within the hour, fireflies would flare to one another in the salt marshes to the south, the bone-white expanse of dry Moghra'yi to the west would don a cloak of indigo to reflect the wheeling empyrean above, and to the east the shadow of evening would creep up the Spindle as the earth it rose from occluded it further. But all those who packed the stands of the kitchen arena were heedless to such beauties, for they awaited a far grander spectacle. It would unfurl before them shortly.\n\nUniformed assistants bustled on the arena floor. The customary layout was changed this evening - each half of the arena sported its own island of ovens, grills, and preparatory surfaces on raised platforms. Around the edges of the crater, beached skiffs laden with chests and cabinets lay on the fused glass floor. Several of the assistants ferried supplies into them.\n\nIn the announcer's booth, E'Beth, Seeker of the Sightless Way, conferred quietly with the figures to her right that shared her perch - a plant, an ape, and a hindren. An empty chair sat to her left. As daylight died, the arc sconces and speakers that ringed Kitchen Heptagon crackled to life. It was time.\n\n[[next|55]]

The Baroness now reached her ornate throne. With her Carbide Chefs standing to attention in their sconces below, the entire dais resembled nothing so much as an opulent wedding cake. Farouun turned to the crowd, casting her steely, hungry gaze across the stands and the announcer's booth. Seemingly pleased, she turned her attention fondly to the hoarshroom in her grasp. She sifted its scent, then took a luxurious bite. The bandbots crescendoed as Farouun metabolized the hoarshroom. Her organs began to glow through her skin. The panels of her greatcoat seemed to come alive as the turquoise light spilled through them.\n\nE'Beth continued. "The Kitchen Heptagon is where these legends test their skills against challengers from across Qud and beyond. Both the Carbide Chef and the Challenger have one hour to explore the theme ingredient of the evening. Using all their senses, skills, beliefs, and abilities they shall demonstrate their unparalleled artistry in destruction and recreation to the Baroness and her honored paramours and celebrity guest judges. Should the Challenger win, their deeds shall resonate through the fabric of this world to be preserved forever."\n\n"Beloved comrades," rumbled Farouun, her voice as strong as the ancient tides as it washed over all assembled, "Face my Chefs. Test your mettle. Sate me. Breathe deep the breath of eternity, and cook."\n\nE'Beth plunged into the climax of her speech, giddy with fevered energy. "We peddle in reputations, for here, legends are reforged. Best our Carbide Chefs and write your name in the cosmos. For here, we are gathered to truly test the limits of edibility and reality. This is Kitchen Heptagon!"\n\nThe crowd howled in excitement. Farouun bowed once more and her mane cascaded extravagantly around her. She rose, and signalled for silence. The crowd obeyed.\n\n[[next|58]]

Farouun's voice pealed like thunder through the arena. "Carbide Chefs, I call you!"\n\nThe bandbots struck up the brassy chords of the Carbide Chefs' theme. Hidden platforms within the dais ferried their formidable passengers to the light of the arena and the exultation of the crowd. E'Beth named them one by one.\n\n"Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye is Bajiko Ki!" Lights beneath the True Kin in the far left sconce flared, sending reflections scattering from the fluted chrome cybernetics that adorned her body. Both her hair and her chef's coat were a scintillating emerald hue. She held a dreadroot tuber before her, regarding it with the twin eyes of a cyborg and a horticulturalist.\n\n"Carbide Chef Phyta is Emberlily!" The neighboring sconce illuminated to reveal the chestnut-coated slynth standing with a barely-repressed energy. Ghostly flames wreathed the leafy hands of her upper pair of arms, while her lower pair sharpened a butcher's knife. Today, a faint but unmistakable smile graced her fly-trap mouth as she stared into the middle distance.\n\n"Carbide Chefs 0th are Imet, Whose Broth Is Causality!" Illumination spread rightwards along the alcove tier, revealing an esper clad in a gunslinger's duster hovering several inches above the platform. Their psyche was a great engine of awe and terror, though all it bent to at the moment was the simple act of levitating a spatula above their open palm.\n\n"And Choraler Jathiss is Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt!" The rightmost sconce lit. Photons swirled through the snow-speckled tarantula fur that coated the Chef's massive lower body, drawing out the iridescence hidden in every strand. She held her twin spider heads bowed in prayer.\n\n[[next|57]]

As the appetizer plates were cleared, Bajiko Ki ladled her stew reverently into waiting bowls. Farouun tipped it slowly to her lips, savoring it with uncharacteristic restraint. The taste of it thrummed through the both of them - to call it savory, silky, rich was to shackle it to the frail limits of semantics.\n\n"Bel's tits, that's //good!"// said Esther, once more alone.\n\n//"Language,"// admonished Asphodel.\n\n"I thought you weren't of the faith?" asked Q Girl.\n\n"Well, no," Esther replied, somewhat abashedly, "but you pick things up."\n\n"Of course, one can see why our dear warden was driven to profanity," mused the photosynthetic Earl. "Your - ekuemolli, was it? - it touches on the sublime. And, taken in broader scope, the profane circles around, inevitably, to return to the sublime."\n\nAn appreciative silence descended, save for the muffled crunching of Farouun eating her bowl.\n\n"It's almost too much, you know?" said Q Girl, her voice betraying a hint of vulnerability. "Knowing that something this beautiful can come out of... can come out of //that."// She gestured to the arena floor, to the pile of battered and stained armaments stripped from the fallen templar. As the urshiib continued, E'Beth felt the stab of regret spiking up behind Farouun's impassive facade. "Seeing them come in here was a lot. It dredged up a lot." She took a breath, then another. "This is the highest use for those fascists."\n\nBajiko Ki bowed her head, a hair deeper than her subdued standard. "Thank you. I hope dessert is to your liking as well."\n\nThe cyborg chef served the last course of the evening, her glazed eyeball pudding.\n\n"Oh, it's like tapioca, but huge!" chuckled Esther. "It's so sweet, but the tartness keeps it from being overpowering."\n\nAsphodel prodded the candied blossom with a shapely tendril. "Such a delicate preservation. Artful... yet macabre."\n\n"Judges," rumbled Baroness Farouun, rising from her throne to address them directly. "I apologize for the distressing nature of tonight's theme ingredient. I had no doubt for your physical safety, no doubt for any here in Kitchen Heptagon - but then mine was the mastermind's privilege. You had no such certainty. I am sorry. And with that said, judgement now falls to you."\n\nBajiko Ki and Eitan-Þjazi left the judges to their deliberations and returned to the arena floor, as was customary. The troll princess resumed sharpening her axes.\n\n"'Tis clear they favor you," she said, after a time. There was no resentment in her voice.\n\n"Nothing is certain. Your dishes were exemplary," said Bajiko. Her tone was flat, yet sincere. "Your fighting style, as well."\n\n"Aye," rumbled the princess. "And thee." She sighted along the haft of her right axe, and, seemingly satisfied, turned her ministrations to her left. "Thine axe and thine springy-legs. Served thee well, did they, when you slew my fathers?"\n\nBajiko turned back to the dais. "I'll not deny it."\n\nEitan-Þjazi said nothing.\n\n[[next|52]]

Bajiko Ki served her starting course. "The intended method of enjoying this," she said, with a pointed look at the Baroness, "is to dip the fried fingers into the provided sauce." A slightly grudging tone entered her voice. "You are of course welcome to improvise."\n\n"Oh, quetzal!" said Q Girl, after sampling hers. "You've made these bootlickers into finger-lickers!"\n\nAsphodel mused on the sauce. "Biting, yet sweet... Who knew our fellow plants could hide such precious flavors?"\n\n"Generally, most animals," replied Esther.\n\n"Who knew?"\n\nNext, the Carbide Chef served her tacos, two to a plate. The thick, glowing sauce steamed over each tortilla's fragrant innards.\n\nEsther looked skeptical. "This lava is...?"\n\n"In its unprocessed state? Fatal," Q Girl replied. "But to a skilled chef, such considerations are trivial. I understand your concern, but-"\n\n"One second," said Esther. In a moment of soft un-pressure, there were several more Esthers flanking the seated warden. She nodded to one of them, who took a tentative bite, several thoughtful chews, and then, with eyes watering, gestured her silent approval. "Share that one, okay?" said the prime Esther, picking up the remaining taco.\n\nConversation died as the true extent of the sauce's spiciness unfurled. Emberlily sidled in gracefully, bearing a glass carafe of convalessence beading with condensation. Q Girl motioned her beckoning interest, but the slynth chef made no move to comply.\n\n"What's it worth to you?" she asked.\n\n"Emberlily, do you- aren't we friends? Can't we just-"\n\nThe Carbide Chef poured a dram into a fluted glass, swirled it softly, then took a delicate sip. "Refreshing," she purred.\n\nWith a free paw, Q Girl rummaged desperately in the pockets of her jerkin. //"Damn you,"// she muttered, before tossing a silver nugget onto the table.\n\n"Pleasure doing business," Emberlily winked.\n\n[[next|51]]

"Princess. Your satisfaction is immaterial. Here you stand with the strengths of all three in one gestalt. From the pattern I have observed and collected from my fellow Chefs and from others, one conclusion is inescapable. The Troll Princes //gave// their essences to you, until they no longer had the strength to continue their own existence. Does this conclusion cohere with your experience?"\n\nEitan-Þjazi turned her gaze back to Bajiko Ki with a sonorous rumbling of joints. The winds she lashed around her gave one climactic howl, then dissipated. She let an axe dangle from her grasp to rub a stony finger against her chin.\n\n"Sayeth thou..." she began. //"I// slew my fathers?"\n\n"Yes."\n\nEitan-Þjazi stood in silent contemplation. Half-formed, dying snowflakes settled on her shoulders.\n\n"Acceptable," she rumbled.\n\n"I suspected as much," said Bajiko Ki. "Thank you for your challenge, Princess."\n\n"Aye. Savor thy win. Liveth. Drinketh. Fare thee well."\n\nWith that, she crossed her axes in parting salute and faded from the visible spectrum.\n\n"Farewell, Princess," said Farouun. Even pitched softly, her voice carried. "Live and cook."\n\nClactobelle landed on her horns. "Thanks for joining us tonight, everybody!"\n\nE'Beth twined an arm around the closest of her splendidly gloved claws. "Victory tonight doesn't just belong to Bajiko Ki," she said. "This victory belongs to all who suffer under toxic hierarchies, all who struggle against them. To all of you, all of you, take heart. Live and drink."

The arena grew silent. A decision had been made. Q Girl, Asphodel, and Esther took up position behind Baroness Farouun at the top of the throne complex's stairs. The other three Carbide Chefs returned to their sconces. The Baroness spoke like sultry thunder.\n\n"We have spilled enough words over tonight's match. We harvested the fruits of your actions already. Now: the verdict."\n\nE'Beth leapt from behind the Baroness into the air, levitating herself slowly, dramatically downwards as she spoke over the bandbots' somber piano.\n\n"Princess Eitan-Þjazi and Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye Bajiko Ki routed the Putus Templar in a stunning match tonight, but whose efforts have truly sung to the hearts of our judges? Who takes it? //Whose cuisine reigns supreme?"//\n\nThe bandbots fell silent. E'Beth could sense in her Baroness the building satisfaction of anticipation - rather, of the anticipation her ever-slightly-too-long silence inflicted upon the entire arena. She loved it.\n\n//''"CARBIDE CHEF BAJIKO KI!"''// she roared.\n\nThe arena burst into cheers. Bajiko Ki, the picture of restraint, merely tipped her head back in the spotlights, eyes closed.\n\n"Amazing!" cried E'Beth, letting herself touch down again. "Bajiko Ki wins! She cooked well, but the princess will have to search elsewhere for satisfaction, because tonight-"\n\n''"NAY,"'' spoke Eitan-Þjazi over the crowd's enthusiasm. What little moisture remained in the arena's air began to crystallize around her. ''"KI.'' You slew my fathers. I shall have my satisfaction of you."\n\nThe crowd fell silent. Bajiko Ki turned to the troll and blinked, impassive. She spoke, but her question was addressed to the dais. "Carbide Chefs. Who among you has slain the Troll Princes of Bethesda Susa? Jotun, Haggabah, and Fjorn-Kosef?"\n\nChoraler Jathiss bowed her heads slightly and stepped forward. "Regrettably, I have. Several years ago, on an expedition to gather ingredients. It was the only way to the wards below."\n\nEmberlily spoke up next. "I have too, love! With my flames, I turned the Alle-Sauna into a sauna in truth! Kyahahahaha!" Her riotous grin faltered when she grew conscious of the implications of her boasting. "Ah, but last I heard, it didn't take."\n\nThe Carbide Chefs 0th Imet nodded in their sconce, face swathed in shadow. "I have slain them several times in this timeline. Across my sympathetic selves, we account for three hundred and four slayings. In twelve timelines they slay or have slain me. In one, it is myselves on the floor posing this same question to our fellow chefs."\n\n"Doubtless there are others who could claim the same feat," continued Bajiko Ki. "The Troll Princes, whether by some quirk of the cryo-facilities or of personal physiology, returned from apparent death many, many times. Until one day they didn't. There is no guarantee that it was my slaying that broke the pattern, but I do not deny my deed. Their strength was much depleted when I faced them."\n\nChill winds whipped up around Eitan-Þjazi as she pointed her axe across the dais. "Taketh I satisfaction from all of thee, then!"\n\n[[next|53]]

Celebrity Judge One\nxe/xem\ndubious of the concept of eating\nvain\nillustrious with the consortium\nearl asphodel is a xymbo\nLOVE xem

"Wisp?" Esther stepped towards her. "Wisp the Ice Spider, you old cur, it's you!"\n\n"Esther?" Disbelief in Wisp's rasping voice gave way immediately to warmth. Beneath her fearsome mask - a severed human face, cured to leather - her bone-white skin around her bleached-white eyes wrinkled further in a hidden grin. She flung her four arms wide and embraced the unified wardens. "You young pups! You're a long way from home!"\n\nRumbling and splintering echoed into the arena with every wave of pressure. E'Beth kept her focus trained upon the old mercenary, her gaze boring through her blindfold. Wisp returned it dispassionately over Esther's shoulder. "Take not the name of the Elder lightly, Wisp the Ice Spider," said E'Beth.\n\n"I don't. You think it's just any pyramid out there? Oh ho ho." Wisp chuckled mirthlessly. She broke off the embrace and gestured to the southeast at the unmistakable and inevitable presence growing by the instant. "Out there is a dread exemplar of chromekind. I've been tracking it for a fortnight. That's HUNTER=SEEKER."\n\n"Oh." Q Girl said. Her voice sounded small. "Barathrum has a theory that HUNTER=SEEKER was cast onto our world from the cosmos when the Injunction fell upon us."\n\nE'Beth shivered at the name but did not relent. "And should the Ospreys sift out the anchor you've placed here by invoking the Elder, then Kitchen Heptagon will face HUNTER=SEEKER //and// a cadre of esper hunters."\n\n"Very well," Wisp sighed. "I'll restrict myself to the less psionically contentious curses. Only-" She stopped. The pressure stopped. The muffled rumbling ceased. "Take cover!"\n\nEsther flipped the announcers' table against the low fulcrete front wall of the booth and scrambled behind it with E'Beth, Q Girl, and Wisp. Feedback shrieked through the loudspeakers as the microphones clattered to the floor. Across the arena, Baroness Farouun stood with her Chefs and her railgun at the ready, unflinching.\n\n[[next|89]]

In one instant, only dry air and the ineffable mesh of the psychic aether filled the space within Kitchen Heptagon. In the next instant, there was chrome.\n\nAn impossibility of pure geometry hung over the arena floor. Each of its panes was a mirror-sheened razor, at once reflecting and defying the riot of arc-lit organic shapes that characterized the world around it. One pane bore a terrible scar marring its seamless chrome, the tapestry of some ancient, titanic struggle echoing into the present in rust pitting and machine viscera. Its presence defied scale and categorization. HUNTER=SEEKER was here.\n\nIn the next instant, the world realized that a colossus had willed itself into a new location, heedless of the intervening distance or the requirements of mass, trajectory and displacement. Reality buckled around the chrome pyramid. Shockwaves reverberated through the arena and rebounded against themselves in obscure interference patterns. The psychic aether snarled around the intrusion. E'Beth's nose bled even as dust clouds whipped into the announcers' booth where she huddled against her comrades.\n\nThe dust whipped against Baroness Farouun. Her mane billowed behind her. She stood unflinching, railgun trained to the robotic intruder. As the dust settled, it appeared that HUNTER=SEEKER had accreted a standing wave of rumpled reality-fabric around itself in a shimmering barrier of existential force.\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER waited.\n\nQ Girl risked a glance over the upturned table. "Oh," she said. "I should have evacuated."\n\n"You're in it now," hissed Wisp. "Don't do anything to aggrieve it."\n\n"How do you know what aggrieves it?" asked Q Girl, her eyes locked to the looming spectacle as it rotated slowly in place.\n\n"You'll know because it starts shooting hundreds of missiles at you," the old mercenary replied.\n\n"I mean, how do //you// know what aggrieves it?" Q Girl said.\n\nEsther answered. "If you believe her, she's killed them. I grew up on her yarns."\n\nWisp unholstered her heavily-modified laser pistols one by one to check their condition and battery charge. "More than my share. If it comes down to it, I'll kill this one too." Her eyes tightened in a grimace that her gruesome mask hid. "My usual prey aren't quite so..."\n\n"Infamous?" ventured E'Beth.\n\n"Primordial," said Wisp.\n\n[[next|90]]

Emberlily seemed to ricochet between the stations of her island, testing sauces, stirring pots, trimming cutlets and rattling off directives at a blistering speed. Meanwhile, Mara demonstrated to her assistants the process of completing her mysterious dish such that it could stay smoking in the witchwood for the rest of the match. Satisfied, she left them to it and returned to the pile of her discarded saddlebags. She withdrew a large tubular bundle of rough burlap. \n\n"What is that?" asked Esk. "A bedroll? Is she preparing for her next catnap?"\n\n"Her bedroll is bigger than that," said Q Girl.\n\n"I'm trying to sense what's in the bundle," said E'Beth. "It's something... fractal. I can't wrap my head around it. There are depths that feel as though they could pull me in."\n\nMara carried the bundle to a nearby countertop where she began clearing space. She cast about the kitchen island for some uncertain implement and found what she sought in the form of a deep baking dish. She began to unroll the burlap, revealing first a parchment roll of waxed paper, and then, below it, a long layer of moist soil.\n\nAsphodel gasped, but Esk spoke before xe could muster a statement. "It's just dirt?" she asked.\n\n//"Madame,"// rebuked Earl Asphodel. "What dear Mara holds in that roll is undoubtedly a sample of //sporesilt.// Only the most luxurious of topsoil, saturated with delicate networks - societies, even! - of tender mycelium. Sporesilt, harvested from the heart of the Rainbow Wood. Just //dirt,// madame? And sapphires are just //rocks,// one supposes?"\n\n"Ayvah, I get it," Esk groaned. "I'll never doubt dirt again."\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Go ahead, Clactobelle."\n\n"The Earl has it pegged - that's sporesilt! Mara said she carried it all the way here because she didn't know if we had any stocked."\n\nE'Beth nodded. "I believe we used the last of our sporesilt supply in the Battle of Theme Ingredient: Agolzvuv. We haven't had the chance to muster an ingredient gathering expedition to the east lately."\n\nClactobelle picked up her thread of narration. "When I told Emberlily, she said 'WHAT? She's got //sporesilt?// I'll have to bring out the big guns!' She didn't say what she meant but she's been rummaging around in her ichor cabinets since I got back up here to report!"\n\n"Thank you, Clactobelle. Wait-" A claustrophobic shiver played down E'Beth's spine. It was the sense of a narrowing future as parallel causalities snuffed out, one by one.\n\n[[next|70]]

The early evening's fading sunlight kindled the flames lurking within the exposed sandstone and shale strata of the desert canyons. Each layer told a history of vanished rivers, moisture that had long ago seeped from the highlands into the flower fields that ringed the ridge of canyons. Over this spectacle raced a flittering shape of iridescent emerald.\n\n"Danger!" called Clactobelle as she flew. "Danger! Everybody run!"\n\nShe dipped into a canyon and landed, breathlessly, on a witchwood tree for a moment's respite. A herd of equimaxes grazed apathetically just to the west.\n\n"Run!" she yelled to them, between breaths. "Flee! Danger!"\n\nThe herd blinked languidly. Clactobelle shrieked in frustration and fired a blast of gamma radiation at the herd leader's feet.\n\n"Run or die gawking, dumbasses!" she screamed. The herd grew skittish and cantered away down-canyon. Catching her breath at last, she took off again, flying north and west. To Kitchen Heptagon.\n\n---\n\n[[next|83]]

Within the arena itself, preparations were underway for the evening's match. Assistants on the arena floor stocked cabinets and cleaned cookware. Spectators filtered into the stands, finding their seats and chattering amongst themselves. There was time yet before the match.\n\nIn the announcers' booth, E'Beth, Seeker of the Sightless Way, listened casually to Q Girl and Earl Asphodel converse. The Wardens Esther did some lunges nearby.\n\n"So, naturally," continued Q Girl, "Given the historical record's account that the altered Ipsis automaton-anomaly remained in orbit, unchallenged and unmolested, for the last three years of Baradukht's reign, we can conclude that Baradukht was perhaps the only sovereign Sultan that could not use hypertractors."\n\n"Indeed?" fluttered Asphodel.\n\n"Yeah, I'm working on a collage that pays homage to similarly quetzal works from art history."\n\n"As a sort of unifying thesis?"\n\n"Quetzal! Exactly!"\n\nJust then, a new note entered E'Beth's awareness of the immediate psychic topography. A familiar soprano psyche, barreling closer and trilling with stress and fear. Clactobelle. Something was clearly wrong. E'Beth tensed involuntarily, then quested her psyche to meet that of her glowmoth comrade.\n\n//Clactobelle!// E'Beth projected. //What's wrong? Where are you?//\n\n//Danger!// Clactobelle replied. Vivid memories flickered out from her. Swarmshade trees buckling and splintering from inexorable pressure. Rocks tumbling from canyon walls. Gleaming chrome and unstoppable force. //Chrome pyramid! Coming right for us!//\n\nFear spiked through E'Beth from spine to gut. //Get here as soon as you can. Please be safe.//\n\n//Trying!// Clactobelle signed off. //Love you!//\n\n//Love you too.// E'Beth recalled her psyche. She stood silently and strode to the alarm in the rear of the booth. She pressed it.\n\nKlaxons rolled across the arena, wailing from every loudspeaker.\n\nQ Girl yelped. Asphodel ruffled in irritation. Esther drew her hammer and shield in a lightning movement. "What is it?" asked the warden, glancing nervously at E'Beth.\n\n[[next|84]]

Mara crossed the dais to reach Q Girl's side and threaded a hand into the urshiib's rainbow hair. "I'll see you in a moment, my love," the warrior said. Then she descended the staircase with Emberlily to await the final decision. As Esk, Asphodel, and Nuntu conferred, Q Girl joined E'Beth and Farouun in looking out across the arena. It was a candid moment away from the microphones.\n\n"We'll be staying the night as usual, Baroness," said the urshiib tinker.\n\n"As usual for yourself, Q Girl," replied Farouun. "It is your lover's first visit here, is it not?"\n\nQ Girl smiled. "Honestly, I don't know why it took so long for me to bring her out here. I think she was worried about stacking up to the competition."\n\n"She did well. We would have her again."\n\n"Speaking of having her," said Q Girl, sizing up the Baroness. "I remember //my// first stay at the Kitchen Heptagon. If you have anything like that planned for her, you have my blessing. I think you might be a match for her and I think that would be really good for her. She likes to cut loose."\n\nFarouun smiled hungrily.\n\nQ Girl nearly interrupted her own thought. "Oh! But if you and Emberlily wanted a special night together tonight, I don't want to pull you away from that-"\n\n"Q Girl," rumbled Baroness Farouun. "Could we impose upon the two of you to extend your stay?"\n\n"That would be just quetzal," nodded the tinker. A grin graced the bear muzzle of her face.\n\nAt the foot of the steps, Emberlily sat and cooled her ever-burning upper hands while Mara watched barge wreckage lap against the chrome and fulcrete that ringed the arena.\n\n"Those lag-latkes," said Emberlily. "Clever, clever. You're really not making my anniversary dinner easy."\n\n"Thank you," said Mara, graciously. "About your flux sashimi..."\n\n"Yes?"\n\nMara's voice grew quiet. "If you ever put my girlfriend in mortal peril again I will strike you down."\n\nEmberlily rose swiftly. "I'm sorry. Truly sorry for the distress I've caused you. Ach, after all you did for me."\n\nMara said nothing, but kept watching the soft waves.\n\n"We have espers for things like flux," continued Emberlily. "You wouldn't have known."\n\n"E'Beth showed me," said Mara. Strength slowly returned to her voice. "Right after. It looked desperate."\n\n"It always does, but we're still here," said Emberlily. "I hope you'll be able to trust us in future matches. What can we do to make this right?"\n\nMara rolled her shoulders one by one. "You could let me win. Massage my ego."\n\nEmberlily barked a laugh. "What can we do to make this right that //isn't// throw the match?"\n\n"I'll think of something," said Mara. After a moment, she laughed as well.\n\n[[next|81]]

Silence and darkness swept across the arena as the arc sconces dimmed to signal a decision. Baroness Farouun loomed at the top of the stairs. A ring of sconces around the top of the dais complex lit her from below like a living monument. Esk, Asphodel, and Nuntu took up position on her right flank as E'Beth and Q Girl stood to her left. The other Carbide Chefs returned to their sconces.\n\nFarouun clapped her claws together, then stretched an open claw to gesture at Mara. "Weary Paw Mara. You have honored us with your presence tonight. You have honored us further with your offerings. You have given a worthy challenge to my beloved Emberlily. Emberlily, first of my Chefs, first to my banner, first by my side." Her mane shimmered like plasma. "We will announce the verdict."\n\nE'Beth launched herself into the air with a flex of her psionic prowess, hovering gently down from the top of the dais to the next tier down. As she narrated, the bandbots offered melodramatic pianos, yearning and thunderous.\n\n"Challenger Weary Paw Mara faced off against Carbide Chef Phyta Emberlily in a photosynthetic fracas that nearly crushed our kitchen stadium under the weight of a thousand suns! They have transmuted these madpoles caught fresh from the mighty Svy into a feast worthy of Emberlily and Baroness Farouun's anniversary! You've seen them fight, bleed, and cook for us, but now comes true reckoning! Who takes it? //Whose cuisine reigns supreme?"//\n\nThe bandbots finished their strain. As their last harmony sustained into nothingness, true silence fell over the arena. Farouun wore it like a mantle of divine authority. At last, she snapped her head back and swept her arm towards the victor. Her roar pealed across the stands.\n\n//''"CARBIDE CHEF EMBERLILY!"''//\n\nThe arena roared back in exultation. Emberlily whipped her head around in disbelief, then burst into full-throated laughter. She turned to shake Mara by the lower hands, but Mara reached past her and wrapped the slynth into a complicated hug. The Carbide Chef returned the embrace warmly and without hesitation.\n\n"Astounding!" cried E'Beth, touching down on the next layer of the dais. "Emberlily takes it! There's just no substitute for flux! But she'd be wise not to rest on these laurels - it's only a matter of time until the next challenge. What a night!"\n\n"Hey, the beetle moon still waxes, doesn't it?" asked Esk, ambling to the edge of the dais with her fellow judges. "The night is young."\n\n"For you, maybe!" Clactobelle fluttered onto E'Beth's shoulders and clung to her crimson shawl. "I'm exhausted!"\n\nBaroness Farouun sped down the stairs to scoop Emberlily up into a crushing embrace. Q Girl followed at a more leisurely pace to seek her own lover for congratulations. E'Beth, sagging slightly under the weight of the glowmoth, smiled and waved to the stands.\n\n"From all of us tonight in Kitchen Heptagon," said E'Beth, "We wish you safe travels, sweet dreams, shade and vittle, friends."\n\nShe gestured theatrically with her upraised hand, and teased Clactobelle's glittering glowdust into a galaxy above her head.\n\n"Live and cook."\n\n''THE END''

A leafy susurrus came from Asphodel - the equivalent of clearing a throat for a sapient plant. "What of us, pray tell?" xe asked.\n\n"What do you mean? You were planning on evacuating, yes?" E'Beth replied.\n\n"Oh, goodness, yes," buzzed Asphodel. "We aren't obligated to assist with the effort, are we? The Esthers muddled that point."\n\nE'Beth shook her head. "You are guests. Esther is just like that. I would only ask one thing of you."\n\n"Yes?" Asphodel anxiously inclined xyr blossom towards the nearest exit.\n\nE'Beth strode to xem and offered Clactobelle into xyr waiting fronds. "Take her with you, to safety."\n\n"Oh!" said Clactobelle. "Thank you."\n\n"But of course," said Asphodel, adjusting xyr fronds for a more aesthetically pleasing carry.\n\n"Friends," said Clactobelle, "I just flew in over half the flower fields, and boy are my wings-"\n\nAsphodel teleported out of sight, carrying the glowmoth with xem. E'Beth turned to Q Girl.\n\n"What about you, Q Girl?"\n\nQ Girl pulled on her vape rig and blew a ring of fruity vapor. "I'm staying," she said. Her paws shook.\n\n"You are certain?"\n\nQ Girl tapped on a bulky bracelet around her wrist. "I have a contingency. It's an emergency recoiler hooked to my biometrics. Really quetzal tech. Besides, it's not every day you get the chance to study a chrome pyramid in person."\n\nE'Beth nodded. "Then I'll stay with you. My gifts may help ensure it doesn't come to that."\n\n[[next|87]]

"You aren't obligated," said Q Girl, her eyes worried.\n\n"Of course not," said E'Beth. "Nevertheless."\n\nThe last stragglers from the audience filed through the exits, waved through by the last few assistants who would follow them shortly. The Carbide Chefs returned to the throne dais and Esther, her fugue-sisters spent and reassembled, returned to the booth.\n\n"She's staying," E'Beth said to her, sensing the warden's concern and preempting it. "As am I."\n\nEsther grunted. "Then so are we."\n\nA pressure grew from the edge of perception. It swelled from the southeast. Even within the walls of the arena, it rolled through in staggered pulses like the tide.\n\n"Please, don't endanger yourselves for my sake," said Q Girl.\n\n"Come now!" Esther clapped a gauntleted hand on Q Girl's quilled shoulder and pulled E'Beth to her side in one movement. "Between the seven of us, we'll find a way to see this through."\n\nE'Beth stilled herself and tilted her head back, but made no effort to extricate herself from Esther's grasp. "Something's coming," she said.\n\n"The pyramid?" asked Q Girl.\n\n"No. Something else. Elusive. They have the gift." E'Beth turned her head slowly, then focused her sightless gaze through the fulcrete walls of the arena on a point almost directly over the booth. "There."\n\nAcross the arena, the Baroness snapped the sights of her jezail to a figure on the lacquered mangrove-shingle roof of Kitchen Heptagon. Her VISAGE's display suggested faultless trajectories for her jezail's waiting ordinance.\n\n"Hold, friends! Warning and shelter!" cried the figure on the roof. It was a voice sharpened with age and unaccustomed to speaking at such volumes.\n\nFarouun tipped her rifle back over her shoulder. "Be welcome," she called.\n\n"That voice," Esther said, craning her head back to follow E'Beth's gaze, but stymied by the intervening architecture. "Is that...?"\n\nThe newcomer clambered down from the roof, finding handholds with four spindly arms. She seemed almost desaturated, swathed in form-fitting black elastyne and a vest of grey nanoweave. A cloak of ethereal rainboweave fluttered behind her, defying her self-imposed palette, as she dropped the last few meters into the booth. She stood. In a practiced motion she adjusted the bandoliers crossing her chest and checked the deadly contents of their attached sheathes and holsters, then took stock of the booth's occupants.\n\n"What in Ptoh's fractal taint are you lot still doing here with a chrome pyramid at your gates?" The old woman demanded.\n\n[[next|88]]

"A chrome pyramid has been sighted to the southeast," said E'Beth. Her voice was flat under harsh control. "We need to evacuate the arena."\n\n"It's coming //here?"// asked Q Girl, hoarsely.\n\n"Yes," said E'Beth. She returned to the booth and switched on her microphone. "Attention, Kitchen Heptagon," she announced through the klaxon's lulls. "Evacuation procedures are now in effect. All staff, please direct all guests to the nearest shelter entrance. All guests, please proceed to the nearest shelter entrance in an orderly fashion. This is not a drill."\n\nEsther looked over the packed bleachers all around the booth, then sheathed her hammer. "Damn," she growled. In a blink, four more Esthers flanked her. "Let's get to it, sisters," the prime Esther nodded. They dispersed into the surrounding stands to assist with the evacuation.\n\nAt that moment, Baroness Farouun emerged from a doorway hidden behind the throne dais. Awe bubbled from those in the crowd who witnessed her entrance in full battle regalia. A military uniform of woven chrome in an archaic cut hugged her grandiose figure. A chain pauldron of zetachrome links graced her left shoulder, with a fringe of gilt tassels dangling around its lower lip. The red visor of a VISAGE arced over her eyes. Its internal displays were fed information from the scanning unit mounted on her right wrist by way of a chunky, spiralling cord that linked them. She wore articulated gauntlets of zetachrome custom-tooled to fit her massive claws. As she passed her throne, she unslung a jezail nearly as long as she was tall from her back. The rifle's lacquered exterior was inlaid with a mosaic of opals and other precious stones, a breathtaking facade to conceal the fact that within the shell of an antiquated long-rifle were the fixtures of a railgun.\n\n"What's the situation?" Farouun barked, her voice cutting through the hubbub of evacuation. Her Carbide Chefs fanned out behind her on the dais.\n\n"Chrome pyramid!" Clactobelle's shrill cry echoed down from above as she flung herself over the lip of the arena. "Everybody - oh you're already evacuating. Oh good." She adjusted her trajectory with a few weak flaps to point herself towards the announcers' booth, then glided down limply. E'Beth caught her with a grunt. The esper could sense the panic frothing up around the arena in the wake of Clactobelle's warning.\n\n[[next|85]]

E'Beth extended her psyche to Farouun, roping in each of the Carbide Chefs in a fevered effort. //Chrome pyramid to the southeast,// she transmitted, weaving in the memories she had mirrored from Clactobelle. //There is still time for an orderly evacuation.//\n\n//''Understood,''// replied her Baroness. The sentiment echoed in her Chefs. Even now, a scuffle arose in the western stands. A salamander villager, pressed by the crowd around the western exit, had panicked and bitten a Mechanimist pilgrim. One of the Esthers pushed her way through the crowd to break up the conflict, but the press was thick. E'Beth could sense the promise of chaos simmering all around her.\n\n"Heed me!" roared Baroness Farouun. Her assertion was an icebreaker's prow through the arena's frothing fear. "The Heptagon's depths are spacious and mighty! They will shelter the lot of you. There is time yet before the pyramid comes."\n\nAs Farouun's words rang over the crowd, Choraler Jathiss clambered down from the dais to assist at the western exit. She began a calming hymn as she waded through the press. Esther took the opportunity to interpose herself in the squabble.\n\n"Easy, pilgrim," she said. "We're all going to the same place. You are among friends."\n\nFarouun continued. "Kitchen Heptagon has weathered Qud's ire and yet it stands. While there is breath and spirit in my frame, it will yet stand! While Kitchen Heptagon stands, it will shelter you! Take heart, and know that we protect you!" She raised her rail-jezail to the sky. The evacuating crowd gave a ragged cheer. Panic subsided as a dogged sense of purpose eclipsed it.\n\nClactobelle stirred weakly in E'Beth's arms and spoke. "I guess I didn't have to yell 'chrome pyramid' in a crowded arena, huh?"\n\n"You meant well," E'Beth answered. "They deserved to know of the danger approaching."\n\n[[next|86]]

AGATE SEVERANCE STAR:\nCrab salad with pickled cucumber and roe, topped with a garnish of powdered spark tick chitin, served with fried qudzu stems\nPhase Sashimi - served atop a bed of swarmshade grubs\nWitchwood-smoked crab roast with dreadroot and hoarshroom, topped with sautéed young brinestalk shoots in a wine reduction\nFlash-frozen crab floated in convalessence with garnish of sap-infused starapple\n\nCHORALER JATHISS:\nCrabmeat and vinewafer sliders on gelatinous dreadroot flour buns\nClawmeat stir-fry with voider gland and yondercane in a spicy fire ant gaster extract and honey sauce\nCrab stew liquified in herbs, cider, and spider venom, served from the shell\nSpider-silk "pasta" in crab gelatin sorbet, topped with whipped roe tapioca\n\nEITAN-ÞJAZI:\nOrgan and cider pâté stuffed in crisped rimewyk molting\nSalthopper-wrapped heart roast with slime marinade\nSalt-packed templar head served whole with pickled hoarshroom and blanched lurking beth\nSweetbreads poached in convalessence, powdered nanohull breading\n\nBAJIKO KI:\nBreaded "finger-food" with acidified urberry dipping sauce\nTrue Kin chorizo in dreadroot tortillas with goat cheese, vinewafer, and lava-and-dawnglider sauce\nThighmeat ekuemolli with wine, fermented voider stock, Ekuemekiyyen greens and rust seasoning\nHoney-glazed eyeballs in spinefruit pudding, garnished with a candied lover's blossom\n\nWEARY PAW MARA:\nWitchwood-fired lag-latke with madpole filet and holographic toppings - it's like okonomiyaki\nSporesilt and sweet tripe casserole with pollen and psychal gland glaze\nMadpole and limestone in primordial stew\nLignin matcha parfait topped with fin crisp \n\nEMBERLILY\nMadpole and pickle stir fry, mountain-style spices\nMadpole sashimi, lightly seared, flux marinade\nWhole roast madpole, stuffed with Carbide Chef Emberlily\nWaxcream mumble-maw pudding, honey-aloe topping\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER:\nSingularity (edible)\nBanana split with splice cream\n\nIMET: 6 dishes survive - 10 were planned\narsplice-flour bread (psychic mill)\nTwin arsplice hand pies, one with nullbeard glad paste, one with psychal gland paste\nslow-rosted firesnout carnitas with arsplice, mirror dust, and spinefruit rub\nphase silk elder dreambeard moltloaf with arsplice bread stuffing\nGlimmer Gumbo - brine whale, pearlfrog legs, stunion shoots, thickened with arsplice flour roux\nFlux cannoli with toasted arsplice seed topping

"I summon the Carbide Chefs!" roared Baroness Farouun.\n\nUnder E'Beth's steady tones and the synthesized trumpeting of the bandbots, one could perceive the rumbling of machinery as hidden platforms within the bannered wings flanking the throne began to ascend. The Carbide Chefs now joined the proceedings, standing taciturn in the dramatic shadows of their sconces.\n\n"Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye is Bajiko Ki!" Light flooded over the figure standing in front of the far left banner, revealing her to be a True Kin, her emerald hair graced with a tall cap of molded elastyne, her loam-hued skin graced with the cold gleam of cybernetics. She silently and somberly analyzed the biometrics of a dreadroot tuber clasped motionless before her in her perfectly steady hand.\n\n"Carbide Chef Phyta is Emberlily!" The next sconce lit up to reveal a Slynth in padded chef's garb. Her upper arms she crossed over her chest, faint wisps of smoke rising from the ghostly flames that played across their hands, while her lower arms honed a butcher's knife with swift, practiced motions. She tapped her leafy foot in impatience, almost too fast for the eye to follow.\n\n"Carbide Chefs 0th are Imet, Whose Broth Is Causality!" The light jumped across the throne dais to illuminate the inner sconce of the right wing. A figure in a chef's hat and a high-collared gunslinger's duster of bleached leather suspended themselves several inches off the ground. A ladle hovered above their outstretched hand. Ephemeral reflections of the prime Chef flickered in the shadows cast behind them.\n\n"And Choraler Jathiss is Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt!" The final sconce lit up, revealing a massive chimera nearly too big for her platform. She had the lower body of a giant tarantula, and her whole body was coated in snowy-speckled arachnid fur. A simple but well-maintained shawl with a neck wide enough for her twin spider heads graced her muscular shoulders. One head was clad in the wide-brimmed hat of a pilgrim, the other in a tall chef's hat. Both were bowed in prayer, pedipalps flanking her claws clasped before her.\n\n[[next|4]]

Baroness Farouun nodded and strode to the head of the stairs, composing herself for a long thought. The lights dimmed across the arena, leaving only her and her Chefs, lit from below. "Agate Severance Star," she said at last, "is a peerless analytical mind. The thought of such a calculating intellect turned upon my Chefs, plumbing them for weaknesses... I must admit, it chills me. Agate Severance Star, you have never faced the unbridled, unflinching passion of my Carbide Chefs. Can your science surpass our burning hearts? We shall see. I call you now, Agate Severance Star! Enter Kitchen Heptagon!"\n\nThe chrome gates groaned open at last to the blaring of the bandbots as a line of arc sconces snapped into illumination from the gates into the arena. Mist billowed forth, and from it emerged a severe woman in a long and spotless white coat, whose front dangled between her front legs and whose coattails spread over her haunches. Her every step was punctuated with a click from one of her four cervine hooves. An array of obscure gadgets dangled in saddlebags strapped to her dappled flanks. Most shocking of all was the ridged and luminous fungal outcropping of glowcrust that flowed over half of her face like a mask and coated one of her antlers.\n\n"That's new," said Q Girl.\n\n"Rather in poor taste, wouldn't you say?" murmured Earl Asphodel. "We're going to have a real heel match tonight, aren't we?"\n\nHer face bore a faint and cold smile as she approached the center of the arena, where the Baroness met her. She clasped her massive claws around her outstretched hand, dwarfing them for a heartfelt shake.\n\n"Agate. May I call you Agate?"\n\n"As you like." The hindren's voice was as cold as her smile.\n\n"You have recently been training with Pax Klanq, have you not?"\n\n"I have."\n\n"That explains it," muttered Q Girl.\n\n"I'm sure the two of you together pushed your understanding of reality in ways we cannot begin to comprehend. But Agate, I ask you this: What is theory without praxis? Before you stand my invincible Carbide Chefs. Show us the true application of your theories. Choose."\n\n[[next|8]]

Imet offered a deep and silent bow, then turned and descended the stairs to the arena floor. At the center of the shadow cast by the floating pyramid, they drew their legs up beneath them and sat in the still air, meditating. The process of deliberation reigned in the judges' collective wonder. It was a swift process.\n\nBaroness Farouun stood to her full augmented height. The burning tips of her horns drew nearly level with the Heptagon's roofline. She turned to the arena floor. She cast her imperious gaze over the deserted stands, the blast-scarred booth, the shattered kitchen islands, her waiting Chef and the chrome challenger looming over all. HUNTER=SEEKER had stilled its pulses for the tasting process and remained divested of its reality shield. Perfect silence reigned.\n\nFarouun raised a claw the size of a rhinox over her head and clenched it to a fist.\n\n"Kitchen Heptagon stands!"\n\nThe echoes of her defiant exultation rang through the stands. She lowered her fist before her and opened it, stretching out her claw to HUNTER=SEEKER. Plasma played between her clawtips and wreathed her mane.\n\n"We have weathered the mortal and metaphysical perils. We have faced down the legacy of the Eaters and the powers from beyond. We have tasted the sublime - meals that never were and shall never be again. Meals that reflected the engines of cosmic force that shaped our world, our lives, our realities. All that remains is to announce the verdict."\n\nE'Beth stepped forward with microphone in hand to punctuate Farouun's suspense. No bandbots accompanied her breathless narration - they too were below with the huddled throngs waiting for the danger to pass.\n\n"Tonight, we few have witnessed and partook in the titanic struggle between psyche and circuitry. We have tasted what fruits can grow from the arsplice seed. Will HUNTER=SEEKER's singularity be enough to topple the undefeated record of the Chefs 0th? Now comes true reckoning! Who takes it? //Whose cuisine reigns supreme?"//\n\nFarouun clasped her claws before her and drew in a slow breath like furnace bellows. She flung out her claw once more in theatrical indication and roared out the victor.\n\n//''"CARBIDE CHEFS IMET, WHOSE BROTH IS CAUSALITY!"''//\n\nImet looked up from their shadowed meditation to the colossal Baroness atop the dais. They nodded with a subtle smile. The smile passed just as quickly. There was a pressure in the aether centered once more on the looming pyramid. It was perceptible now to everyone still in the arena.\n\n[[next|109]]

"Get behind me," cautioned Farouun in a murmur that sank down clearly to the rest of the party on the dais. Her body subtly tensed for action.\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER pulsed. The webs and currents of the psychic aether once more snarled and tangled in its wake. The night sky itself seemed to refract and compress around the pyramid's geometric presence. Yet again, HUNTER=SEEKER girded itself in ablative reality. It began to rotate. As it rotated, it gathered energy within itself for some cryptic purpose.\n\n"Reckon I've got enough juice for another shield," grunted Wisp. Within her gathered shadows came the sound of the old mercenary drawing her pistols. From her psyche and those of Q Girl and Esther came a dogged hope that the meal had given them the potential to face a chrome pyramid and triumph.\n\n"Hold," said E'Beth, softly but firmly.\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER funneled its gathered energy into vertical motion. Its altitude rose in the pulse-ridden silence with the speed of its rotation. Just before it was lost to sight, it loosed a blaring tone that faded over the land. Then, as another shimmering light in the jeweled sky, it disappeared. With it fled tension and psychic disruption.\n\n"Ah, it left." Farouun heaved a sigh of relief and lowered herself to sit at the edge of the dais.\n\n"What were you planning to do if it hadn't?" asked Q Girl.\n\n"I was going to throw it out of the arena."\n\nWisp whistled. "Too much excitement for a woman of my years."\n\n"Friends," E'Beth said to the ones below. "The danger is passed. You may leave our shelters, and we will wish you safe passage home. There will be food for all and a place to rest for those who stay tonight."\n\nShe turned at the fluttering of moth wings in time to catch Clactobelle as the glowmoth burst onto the dais and barrelled into her at full speed. Though it knocked her from her feet, she slowed the fall to a gentle drift with her gift.\n\n"You made it!" cried Clactobelle. "I was so worried!"\n\n"We all made it," said E'Beth. She smiled and scratched behind her lepidopteran co-commentator's antennae.\n\n"Wow!" said Clactobelle, suddenly realizing the state of the other members of the dais. "The Baroness got huge! How did she do that?"\n\n"I am simply more of what I always was, by the grace of transcendental cuisine," rumbled Farouun.\n\n"Whatever she is," said the Wardens Esther, "she's gigantic."\n\n"Friends," said E'Beth, rising from the carpeted dais and dusting moth-motes from her shawl. She addressed herself to Q Girl, Esther, and Wisp. "Thank you for your courage tonight. You are always welcome at the Heptagon."\n\n"Thanks for the grub!" said Wisp. "I'll be back for certain."\n\n"It's really such a quetzal place," said Q Girl. "I'm here all the time and even then I never knew cooking could do this."\n\n"Likewise," said Esther. "But next time, I'd rather not have to fight an esper."\n\nBaroness Farouun bared her massive fangs in a proud and fond grin. "Next time, return with an empty stomach and a discerning palate. Until then, live and cook."\n\n"Live and cook," they chorused.\n\nNight settled over Kitchen Heptagon and the canyons, jungles, rivers and meadows of Qud. With it came the promise of a meal in company, a place by the hearth, and peace under the starry sky.\n\n''THE END''

"Five years we have stood here," said Farouun. Her voice thundered through Kitchen Heptagon's arena and aqueducts, its vaults and its cellars. It flowed through its quarters, gardens, and stables. The Baroness Farouun spoke to all assembled around and below. She faced the monolithic interloper on her dais and she did not flinch or quail. In her voice was a contagious power and defiance.\n\n"Five years is a blink in entropy's eye. Hardly long enough to whet my appetite. If this be the end Qud allots us, then I regret that I shall face it hungry. For that reason, I cannot accept it."\n\nThe judges stood at their places but were reluctant to take their seats, both from the ceremony of Farouun's address and from the resignation that sitting and waiting for dinner would seemingly signal. The Baroness continued.\n\n"While I stand, the Heptagon stands. I ask you, HUNTER=SEEKER: have you come in noise and terror, dishonor clouding your circuits, to unmake us? To flatten us beneath a terrible unity? Or have you come to compete? HUNTER=SEEKER, have you come to //make us dinner?"//\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER pulsed once into the following silence, then stilled itself. Whatever cryptic pistons or compressors within its chrome edifice that maintained its cocoon of ablative reality ceased their tireless rhythm. The true bounds of its self gleamed in the arclight as the refractive shield dissipated. It rose from its perch upon the steps with an uncanny delicacy until its basal plane faced the judges atop the dais.\n\nFrom seamless apertures along its underbelly unfurled a panoply of spindly chrome limbs. The central appendage bore a platter whose contents were obscured by a lustrous domed cover. HUNTER=SEEKER readied four clasping limbs around the descending platter as a fifth limb hovered over it, poised to reveal its opening course. Light bubbled from the seam where cover and platter met. E'Beth sensed the tension steaming from Q Girl, Esther, Wisp, and Farouun. She felt that tension reflected in herself as she stood by the throne of her Baroness. Silence greeted her from the bordering causalities.\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER lifted the cover. Beneath, perfectly quartered onto four silver plates, was a paradox. Four shapeless things quivering in offertory anticipation. A delicate lattice of normality defined the contours of the quartered singularity and confined its gleaming unknowability within a squamous barricade of monochromatic opalescence, shifting like a soap bubble, or a sunspot.\n\n"Quetzal," breathed Q Girl. \n\n"That's...?" said Esther.\n\n"Aye," said Wisp, slowly relinquishing the grips of her pistols. "Must be."\n\n"Bel's tits," swore Esther.\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER's empty limbs took up the plates and extended them to the judges' tables. The last it placed before Farouun. The limbs retracted. The pyramid hovered with what could have been impatience. The chimera sat at last - the others anxiously following suit - and nodded her head graciously.\n\n"Thank you," she said. She plucked the captive singularity with a delicate clasp of her clawtips and popped it into her maw.\n\nAnd wept.\n\n"Of course," muttered Q Girl. The urshiib tinker never broke her fascinated gaze from Farouun's reaction. She fumbled for a spoon with shaking paws. "Of course! Quetzal! If we had just applied the An‡helme integer to Bajiko's readings - it's an //edible// singularity!"\n\n[[next|103]]

Wisp grunted in disbelief, lowered her gruesome mask, and dug into her own serving. Seeing no immediately apocalyptic result upon the old mercenary and the Baroness, Esther tried it herself. Q Girl's own sampling followed close behind. Where cutlery bit into the singularity's surface, the normality lattice clung to it flawlessly and furcated the roiling oneness into bite-sized portions. Where each portion touched the tongue it tasted of axioms, and the body could only weep.\n\nE'Beth clutched the arm of the throne for support. Now, atop the warping pressure each serving projected into the psychic aether, there came the frothing emotional resonance radiating from those she shared the dais with. She let it wash over her.\n\nIt was some time before anyone spoke.\n\n"This-" began Q Girl. She cleared her throat. Her voice was husky with emotion. "This was a difficult dish to start with. Or, challenging."\n\n"Hard to summarize," agreed Wisp.\n\n"It's like - it's the semantic extension of the feeling I get when I see a quetzal. It's the feeling itself. It's a quetzal. It's //all// quetzals. It's //everything."//\n\n"It's salt and sun," said the wardens Esther. "It's bustle and quiet. Wholeness and separation. It's a miracle."\n\n"It's blood and triumph and survival and loss," said Wisp. "It's too many things. It's been too many things."\n\n"It is the depths and the firmament," Farouun rumbled. She wiped tears from the fur of her cheeks with an embroidered kerchief. "It is passion and strength. Hunger. Satiety."\n\n"I'll never forget it," said Q Girl. "But at the same time, I'm already forgetting it. I'm already further and further from it. But that's okay. But..."\n\n"Ach, I'll say it," said Wisp. "I've no damned idea what an arsplice seed tastes like. Hard to pick out from //everything// if you don't know what you're looking for."\n\n"And there was so much to look for," said Esther. "And no filter but ourselves. Pretty bold move to lead with. It was incredible, but..."\n\n"But I'm left just as mystified," laughed Q Girl. "Quetzal! What's next?"\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER hung above them. Subtly at first, it began to vibrate. Then shudder, then rumble, in greater and greater intensity, until at last its buzzing drone climaxed into silence and stillness. Its apertures slid open once more and extruded another bundle of spindly limbs wreathing a fresh platter. To accompany this offering, the legendary chrome pyramid piped out a tinny little fanfare of culinary invitation, dredged up from disused and corroded soundbanks somewhere within its archaic and storied circuity. The platter's cover lifted to reveal four banana splits. Delicate strands and whorls of shimmering spice traced strata through the perfect scoops of ice cream, while the roasted, crumbled meat of arsplice seeds rested atop them. Four robotic limbs divvied up dessert to the judges waiting in stunned silence.\n\n[[next|104]]

E'Beth and Wisp lowered their psionic barrier around the booth. Q Girl heaved herself back into her chair with a heavy sigh. She tossed the battered disc onto the table, where Wisp quickly pocketed it.\n\n"That was miserable!" said Q Girl. "But we made it! Quetzal!"\n\nEsther, alone once more, made her faltering way back to the rest of them, one hand rubbing her temple. She sank into her seat and rested her free arm on the announcer's table to still its trembling.\n\nWisp turned and placed a hand on the warden's armored shoulder. "Your sister..." said the mercenary. A long lifetime's worth of loss shadowed her rasping voice.\n\nEsther's countenance softened at the gesture, but her voice was pained and shaken. "She'll... she'll return to us. We'll find her again."\n\nQ Girl placed her paw on Esther's other shoulder in sympathy. E'Beth, who knew the contours of Esther's gift, placed her hand over Esther's in reassurance.\n\n"You will."\n\nQ Girl looked into the arena and gasped with dismay. "Imet's dishes!"\n\nSome last explosive retort of the challenger must have finally overcome Imet's defenses, for the kitchen on the arena floor was in disarray. Baking trays, cooling racks, saucepans and stockpots scattered over mounds of rubble.\n\n"They looked so good," lamented Q Girl.\n\n"Would this be grounds for disqualification?" asked Esther.\n\nWisp scoffed. "You want to try telling that monster it's disqualified?"\n\n"No, witness," said E'Beth, returning to her seat at last and retrieving her microphone from the floor. All her efforts to save the judges from catastrophe were to give the Chefs 0th space for their own temporal safeguarding.\n\nDown below, Imet's sympathetic selves each wove themselves out of dimensional harmony with the Heptagon. Each formed living bridges into timelines where the dishes under their charge had never suffered wholescale destruction. Flawlessly plated offerings and dishes on the cusp of completion knit themselves back into being. Imet's selves faded at last. Time resumed its accustomed pace on the arena floor. The Chefs 0th were as one again.\n\n"Quetzal! That's a relief."\n\nWisp grimaced. "Couldn't save 'em all, it seems."\n\nIndeed, several pockets of the kitchen remained given over to destruction. The prime Imet unfurled their menu as they appraised the aftermath. Midway down the list, they placed their brush next to an entry and struck it out in one deliberate motion.\n\n"No!" gasped Q Girl.\n\nAnguish flared from Imet like a corona with every fallen dish stricken from the menu. Four in all. E'Beth winced in sympathy. This time, it had taken four timelines to defeat Anti-Imet.\n\n"Six of Imet's dishes remain to be submitted to the judges tonight," E'Beth announced into her rekindled microphone. "Six dishes survived HUNTER=SEEKER's retaliation to Anti-Imet. For your continued safety, we ask that you remain in our shelters."\n\nImet, alone, resumed the work of plating. Bajiko Ki dismounted gracefully from the chrome pyramid's apex. Farouun, on the steps below, caught her. The Chef Ekuemekiyye gave a grateful kiss to Farouun's gauntleted claw, then made her way back to the booth. The end of the match approached with an unceremonious certainty.\n\n"Thirty seconds remain." Farouun's intonation carried over the empty arena. On the floor, Imet laid down final illustrative flourishes to their menu, a catalogue of the culinary perfection ringing them.\n\n"Well, the worst part is over, I hope," sighed Esther.\n\n"No," said Bajiko Ki. Once more she entered the booth. A delicate spool of ticker tape printed from a slot on her cybernetic arm. She tore off a strand and spread it on the table. "Look at these readings I gleaned from HUNTER=SEEKER when we were interlocked."\n\n"That's a singularity," Q Girl gaped. "It's been sitting on that the whole match?"\n\n"Fifteen seconds," said Farouun.\n\n"Not sitting," said E'Beth grimly. "Cooking. It's been cooking a singularity."\n\nNone could muster a response.\n\n"Five. Four. Three. Two. One."\n\n"The Arsplice Seed Battle is over," said E'Beth. Her voice shook. "Friends. Remain in our shelters. The danger has not yet passed."\n\n[[next|101]]

Sparks showered from the corners of the announcers' booth. They crackled under the tortured shrieking of damaged mechanisms. The booth itself shuddered, still trying to move itself along the broken rails with a machine's unthinking insistence. Minor as it was, none of the booth's occupants could weather this shock unfazed. Adrenaline still ran high. Bajiko strode to the killswitch to prevent further damage to the Heptagon's machines. \n\n"I guess this means we're walking," said a miserable Q Girl. "Though, do we really want to get //closer// to the singularity?"\n\n"Won't matter how far away we are," grunted Wisp.\n\n"I'd like some fresh air," said Esther. "Smells like ozone and ash in here."\n\nE'Beth lingered in the booth while the others made for the dais. Her psyche ventured to the arena floor to commune with the Chefs 0th.\n\n//Chefs 0th,// she sent, //can you unwrite a singularity?//\n\nImet's gaze remained upon their dishes but E'Beth felt the weight of their attention. The esper replied: //Can you?//\n\n//I'm spent.// Had their exchange been voiced, she would have given a mirthless chuckle. Instead, she let her depletion color the emotional context of her psyche's sentiments. //Have you anything in reserve?//\n\n//I have trust in my dishes,// replied the Carbide Chef. And though she felt Imet's own depletion reflected in the touch of their mind, she felt that trust all the more. She felt little else from the Chefs 0th - by necessity Imet and E'Beth maintained a mutual distance. The potency of their assembled mind was, historically, too tantalizing a target for Ptoh's hunters. Even a communion this brief carried risks, but the impending umbra of HUNTER=SEEKER's opening dish overshadowed those risks. \n\n//What are your dishes? For the sake of ceremony.// Normally, this task fell to Clactobelle, but her glowmoth companion still sheltered herself below in Kitchen Heptagon's vaults. It seemed a paltry hope those vaults granted now. If E'Beth stilled herself, she could sense the anxiety seeping up from the huddled crowds below.\n\n//Glad you asked,// Imet answered. E'Beth gathered up the microphones from the booth and made to follow the others, her task accompanied by the sensory and compositional details of Imet's dishes sent through their communion. E'Beth kindled her own microphone and began her circuit through the empty stands. Her voice echoed through the arena and down through its subterranean loudspeakers. If her voice did not carry hope, it carried the honest acknowledgement of a shared predicament.\n\n"According to our readings, the challenger, HUNTER=SEEKER, has prepared two dishes for us tonight. The first..."\n\nHer voice faltered, briefly, in dread. Ceremony lent her the composure to continue.\n\n"The first is a singularity. The second dish we project to be-"\n\nShe took a breath.\n\n"The second is a banana split with splice cream."\n\nQ Girl, Wisp, and Esther marched ahead of her with a determination that balanced on the knife's edge of uncertainty and despair. Atop the dais, Farouun hauled tables and stools from the Heptagon's wings to prepare a new space for judgement.\n\n"The Carbide Chefs have overcome the interference of their evil twin to answer with a post-singularity banquet. It centers - but does not wholly rely upon - the stone-ground arsplice flour milled as a foundation. They lead with the purest implementation of this flour: a loaf of fresh-baked powerdough bread. Next, twin arsplice hand pies, one with a filling focused on nullbeard gland paste, the other with psychal gland paste. Their third dish: slow-roasted firesnout carnitas with arsplice, mirror dust, and spinefruit rub. Through temporal manipulation the firesnout has cooked for the equivalent of a day. Imet's fourth dish is elder dreambeard moltloaf with phase silk and arsplice bread stuffing. All these are merely the groundwork for their main course."\n\nE'Beth paused for breath. The closer they came to the dais, the more she felt the chrome pyramid's pulses through her entire body. It sapped at her resolve.\n\n"The center around which Imet has leashed the gyre is Glimmer Gumbo. Cuisine and ingredients from 0th and Qud combine to form a harmonious stew of brine whale, pearlfrog legs, and stunion shoots in a broth thickened with arsplice flour roux. Finally, Imet closes our competition with a stellar dessert: flux cannoli with toasted arsplice seed topping. Provided, of course, we survive to taste the Carbide Chef's courses, and provided that the very concept of survival survives a singularity. My Baroness, my friends, people of the Heptagon, it's been an honor and a delight."\n\nThey reached the dais. Farouun placed the final table before her throne then stretched her open claw to E'Beth. The Seeker passed her microphone to her Baroness.\n\n[[next|102]]

They lifted a plate from the banquet table and displayed its contents. It held a slice of marbled loaf - this one shaped not from water and flour but from animal products.\n\n"In the honeycombed depths of Qud," explained the esper chef, "some dreambeards live long enough such that the soporific substance once confined to their breath-glands suffuses their entire scaled being. A single molting from an elder dreambeard can shift the heart of a cavern ecosystem for weeks - assuming the beast itself doesn't account for it as a post-shed snack."\n\nThree plates of moltloaf sailed gently from the banquet table to the judging table. Imet placed the fourth plate before Farouun. The sound of cutlery on ceramic joined Imet's monologue in accompaniment.\n\n"I have molded a modest sample of elder dreambeard molt together with the silk of a phase spider, a secret blend of seasonings, and breadcrumbs from another arsplice flour loaf. Now, for your enrichment and to illustrate a particular phenomenon, I serve it to you: my moltloaf."\n\n"Oh, quetzal, the exterior is perfectly crispy. I'm - I'm literally drooling. Wait, what is this?" Q Girl's voice sounded thicker. Strands of a curious glimmering substance dripped out of her ursine mouth. She wiped them away with a cloth, then paused as the strands seemed to evaporate from reality.\n\n"Silk?" ventured Wisp the Ice Spider, voice similarly heavy with the stuff. The mercenary laughed. The outburst launched her own portion of mysterious silk that hung briefly in the air as a glittering latticework parachute before it, too, dissipated. "From mouth-spinnerets! Hah! I'm a spider in truth, now!"\n\n"You didn't have spinnerets already?" Esther asked in silk-muffled incredulity.\n\n"No, never," said Wisp.\n\n"All these years I just assumed you did," said Esther. Every word in their exchange painted ephemeral web-glyphs that hung in the air before them and faded into the aether.\n\nWisp laughed. "You young pup! No, it's the arms and my ice-gift. That's where the name's from."\n\n"All these years." Esther shook her head, then took another bite of moltloaf.\n\n"It's not just any silk," said Q Girl, entranced by this new byproduct of metabolizing the Carbide Chef's fourth course. "Phase silk? But phase silk is more stable than this."\n\n"It is a rarefaction of phase silk," explained Baroness Farouun. The veritable tapestries woven by her new spinnerets and cast forth by her powerful voice showed that she was no stranger to this effect. "We've taken to calling it 'dream silk'. Though unstable and short-lived, anything caught within a web of dream silk is induced immediately to slumber."\n\nImet nodded. "Arsplice holds a great power of conjunction. My opponent has graciously illustrated one possible endpoint of this power. I merely wish to fill in the margins with ephemera. Would you like tea? I have prepared some."\n\nThe Chefs 0th summoned six earthenware mugs and a steaming kettle from the banquet table. They poured from the kettle over subtle troughs of psychic force woven into the aether such that the stream forked evenly into each mug.\n\n"Aye, I'd kill for a cuppa," said Wisp, accepting her mug graciously. "Wait, is this a seventh course you're slipping in?"\n\nImet shook their head. "The tea is unspliced. There is no ceremony. Thusly ineligible, it is a respite from the mental burden of judgement."\n\nQ Girl warmed her paws on her mug for a moment. "It's interesting, I would've thought by now that I'd be stuffed, but I'm already thinking about the next course. It turns out the secret of the mutable self is a hungry secret."\n\n"It is good to take stock of where you are and what you can do; what you are and what you can become," said Imet. They gestured to the remaining dishes on the banquet table, resting in meticulously-tuned pockets of psionic heat and cold. "My courses will keep."\n\nContemplative silence fell as those upon the dais drank exquisite tea. The tea was not merely a respite from judgement - it was grounding. In truth, E'Beth already sensed that judgement was not a weighty prospect in this match. Much of what she gleaned from the psyches of the judges illustrated a foregone conclusion. She touched Farouun's shoulder in silent communion. She could share her observations with the Baroness for, like E'Beth, judgement was not her burden.\n\n//My Baroness,// she sent. //What are our contingencies should HUNTER=SEEKER not accept defeat with grace?//\n\nFarouun leaned towards her subtly as she formulated her response. //''Oh? And it is already decided?''// \n\nE'Beth projected a mental shrug. //Honestly, only two dishes?//\n\nThe Baroness huffed softly in amusement. //''I will account for it.''//\n\n"Have you prepared yourselves for my centerpiece?" asked Imet. The judges nodded. Farouun grinned hungrily. E'Beth cleared away the empty mugs.\n\n[[next|107]]

"It is difficult for seafood to survive the desert passage. Most caravans are simply not equipped with the speed or refrigeration necessary to bring the sea's fruits to our landlocked Qud. Thus, when my heart longs for the tastes of the Shore of Songs, I sing away the distance between myself and the fish markets, and I return the same way with my prizes. The Free Seer hates this! But I have ever chafed at exile. Here is a dish born of it: Glimmer Gumbo."\n\nBowls of stew landed before the waiting judges. The broth was thick and rich with spice. Its meats and vegetables were simmered to perfection. Each portion exerted a subtle gravity over the psychic aether.\n\n"The menu says there's brine whale in this?" asked Esther. "I've never even heard of those. Are they like urchin belchers?"\n\n"They are crustaceans," explained Imet. "Gentle giants of the Pale Sea, stout of plate and rippling of limb."\n\nOnce more an organic silence descended upon the dais. Conversation was impossible in the presence of gumbo of this caliber. Within each of them struggled the tongue's desire to savor every bite and bask in its flavor with the body's impulse to devour it and bask in its power. Egos flared with every spoonful.\n\nFarouun, who favored the impulse to devour, finished first, stood, and pushed her throne aside. She took a deep breath and began to grow. Through an extension of will, her uniform remolded itself to accommodate her surge in size.\n\nE'Beth's cheeks flushed to match the dye of her hooded shawl. //This is your contingency?// She sent.\n\nFarouun grinned down at the Seeker. //''I will account for it.''//\n\nAcross the dais, equally dramatic effects played out between the judges as they finished their courses one by one. Glowing fugue-shades flickered and hummed around the Wardens Esther. The prime Esther stood shakily and reached out, pulling one from the aether into a fierce embrace.\n\n"Oh!" she said, with tear-stained cheeks. "My sister! We've found her!"\n\n"She's back?" asked Wisp. There was relief in her voice nearly as powerful as her own excitement. Shadows and frost gathered around the old mercenary such that it was difficult to tell precisely how many limbs she had.\n\n"She's back," said Esther. "I didn't know how long it would be. I didn't think it would be so soon. Feels like a miracle."\n\n"It's so quetzal," said Q Girl. The urshiib tinker had licked her bowl clean. She held her arms before her and reverently, giddily willed her mechanical exoskeleton to meld over and into her body. Purple light traced out of her body's circuit patterns as chrome flowed over her quills. "I drew out its history and its history is my own. It's my body just as surely as my bones and my ink, and - and now I'm burning with the secret to reshape my body. Wow! This is the best stew I've ever had."\n\nWisp leaned back, wrapping herself in comforting shadows. She sighed in satisfaction. "Ahh, but what's for dessert?"\n\n"Now we come to the end of our menu," said Imet. Though their eyes were obscured behind their mirrorshades, their psyche shone with fascination and delight. They bowed their head briefly, then turned to the banquet table and lifted the four plates containing their final course. The judges returned to their seats - Farouun to the carpeted floor of the dais - and accepted their plates in turn. On each plate was a delicate tube of fried pastry containing a heavy filling of cream and star-stuff.\n\n"Cannoli," Imet intoned gravely. "For the death of a sun."\n\n"It's great!" said Esther. Her fugue-selves flickered around her in echoed reflection of her every movement. It was the tight orbit of a binary star extrapolated across her fivefold self.\n\nQ Girl dug into her own pastry and hummed in agreement. Rainbow energy flared, quasar-like, around her chrome-quilled shoulders. "This has neutron flux in it? I didn't even catch that while you were baking these!"\n\n"My Imet is no stranger to flux," rumbled Farouun. Her voice and presence had only grown. Crackling graviton arcs played between her horns, clawtips, and the tufts of her mane.\n\n"Never had the deathwish to cook with the stuff myself," mused Wisp. Darkness now was her cloak and armor as she experimented with its density and pattern. In her, the flux metabolized as the obscurity of a black hole. "What a taste, though! An old gal could get used to this."\n\n"Ahh," Q Girl sighed. "I'm so full. And so //actualized!// I feel like I could fold myself into the Thin World!"\n\n"Oh, but the weight looks so good on you," said Esther.\n\n"What? Oh, no, it's like, this layer of existence tangential to our reality? Our mainframe back at the compound lives there. I miss her."\n\n"You say this'll last a few days?" Wisp asked of Imet.\n\nThe esper nodded. "It is a hungry secret. With no further splice to sustain it, it will eat itself into obscurity once more. You will return to your accustomed forms. Even then, the splice fortifies you."\n\n"Interesting," said Q Girl. "I hope the reversion isn't unpleasant. Maybe I shouldn't have molded myself into a cyber-form union of chrome and flesh."\n\n"Oh, but the cyber-form looks so good on you," said Esther.\n\n"There should not be complications," said Imet. "You can always change again while the secret remains known to you."\n\n"Judges." Farouun's voice cut through all conversation. "Yet again, Kitchen Heptagon calls for your service. You must choose tonight's victor."\n\n[[next|108]]

"Is it supposed to do that?" Esther whispered to Wisp.\n\n"I'm in the dark the same as you are, lass," the mercenary replied. She gathered up a spoonful of split and tasted it. Her pragmatic air dissolved into an appreciative hum. "But it splits a mean banana!"\n\n"Oh, wow," said Esther between bites of dessert. "That's arsplice? It's like it's saturated in potential. It's so... //decadent."// She leaned into the microphone in front of her. "Asphodel, you're really missing out."\n\nNew gifts awakened and old gifts deepened within the judges with every bite. Q Girl set down her spoon and ran her paws along the joints of her exoskeleton and over the various gadgetry that adorned her, freshly cognizant of the secret histories within their machinery.\n\n"I always love cooking with bananas," she said. "It really gets the neurons firing. I just think: Quetzal! This is how Mara feels all the time! Oh, Wisp, pass me the disc, would you? I always wanted to know how to make one of those."\n\nWisp fished the geomagnetic disc from a pocket on her bandolier, but paused with it in hand, contemplating its history on a deeper psionic level. This capability was already part of the old woman's gift, but the dish bolstered it.\n\n"Fair warning," said Wisp. //"Lot// of death in this one's history."\n\n"How many are Templar?" asked Q Girl.\n\nWisp bobbed her head side to side in appraisal before shrugging. "Ninety percent?"\n\n"I'll take it."\n\n"We're getting away from the dish," cautioned Farouun.\n\n"I mean, it's-" Esther gestured vaguely with her spoon. "It's really, //really// good. I don't know. We just ate a singularity. I think we're all struggling for a baseline. The frozen part really ties this all together, though."\n\n"Splice cream," offered Q Girl.\n\n"Yes," said Esther. "Right. Thank you, HUNTER=SEEKER."\n\n"First time one's cooked for me," said Wisp. "Guess you're never too old for surprises."\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER gathered the empty dishes with mechanical precision, then retracted its limbs back into itself. It hovered above the dais in silence.\n\nCresting the stairs and stepping out from the pyramid's shadow, Imet, the Carbide Chefs 0th, set foot atop the dais. Their calligraphed menu unfurled above them like a banner. Their dishes orbited gently around them on unseen thermals of psychic force before settling onto a prepared surface nearby.\n\n"May I serve my courses?" the esper asked.\n\nFarouun nodded and swept a claw to the seated judges. "By all means, my love."\n\n"Thank you. I made bread. There's a bit of sage butter you can spread on it, but try it without first."\n\nImet stepped forward with a braided loaf and offered it to each occupant of the dais in turn to pull off a piece. Serving plates and ramekins of spread lifted from the banquet surface and landed in front of the judges.\n\n"Oh, it's leavened!" said Q Girl. Wisps of aromatic steam drifted up from the loaf's fresh interior. "What a treat!"\n\nImet nodded. "That starter crossed great Moghra'yi with me. It boasts an unbroken lineage that kings and emperors can only dream of in envy."\n\n"This texture," said Esther, appreciatively. "This //tang."//\n\nWisp nudged Esther and gestured with her spreading knife. "That all the butter you're going to use?"\n\nImet offered the loaf to E'Beth, who took her own portion. They pulled one last braid for themselves, then gave the rest of the loaf to Farouun. Conversation lulled as the party on the dais ate bread. Imet spoke at last.\n\n"I wanted to break this bread with you before we begin. The fight against my antagonist-self was not your own, yet you made it yours. Please let tonight's meal stand as a small token of my gratitude."\n\nWisp laughed briefly. "I've been ready for a fight these last two weeks of tracking and bivouacking. Didn't expect it to shake out this way, but now that the fighting's done, there's nothing for it but to eat."\n\n"Ah, I love this place," said Esther. "A night's entertainment before a legendary meal in the cool canyon air. I'll lift my hammer for that, and so will my sisters."\n\nQ Girl pulled the butter ramekin from her bear snout and composed her own thought. "Ah, and I've learned so much tonight! I felt guilty for so much of it - I had the least to lose, thanks to my safety bracelet. But then again, it's not like you can recoil out of a singularity. I'm glad I didn't have to! Quetzal!"\n\n[[next|105]]

Imet gave a graceful nod. "You honor me. Now, let me commence my thesis. Let me show you the power within the arsplice and its preparation."\n\nThe Carbide Chef held their hands out to either side and a pair of small plates rose from the banquet table to display themselves over each. Both held hand pies. Through steaming vents in the pastry, one could see differences in the arsplice-marbled filling: one was dark and rich, while the other seemed to shift in rainbow hues when left in peripheral vision.\n\n"I present to you a choice. Which pie you eat last in this course informs your body's reaction to the rest of my dishes. You finish with this pie-"\n\nThey indicated the rainbow-filled pastry floating to their left.\n\n"-then the psychal gland paste filling entwines with the arsplice to reveal the secrets of the mutable self to you. The following courses shall be a guided meditation of form through the medium of transformative cuisine. The aftereffects may last for several days. Or, instead, you finish with this pie-"\n\nAt this, they indicated the other pastry.\n\n"-and the nullbeard gland paste filling normalizes your genome for the evening - girds it against the more dramatic effects. Then this meal is simply a meal. That is-"\n\nAn open smile cracked beneath their shaded gaze.\n\n"-simply the best damn thing you eat all week. I guarantee."\n\nWith that, they passed a pair of hand pies each to Q Girl, Esther, Wisp, and Farouun. Q Girl raised a paw in question.\n\n"You said finish? So we can try both pies, but the last one we eat is the one that takes effect?"\n\nImet nodded. "Baked into the arsplice is a sequential metabolic override. It is a very delicate process of patisserie."\n\n"Oh, it's savory!" Esther said, already digging in to the nullbeard pastry. "The filling is almost like curry roux. It's an entirely new profile for the arsplice."\n\nQ Girl nodded in agreement. Both she and Farouun also started with the nullbeard pastries. Wisp's fork hesitated above her pair of dishes.\n\n"My genome's always been a bit of a wobbly thing," the old mercenary said. There was a depth of quiet understatement in her tone. "It's brought me nothing but gifts, but I know as folks who ain't so lucky. This won't make it flare up, will it?"\n\n"It ignites a deep mechanism within the self," said Imet. "A conscious impulse or organ of radical bodily determination. I believe it is distinct in its metabolic pathways from genomic instability."\n\nWisp nodded, then started on the nullbeard pastry. "Well, you can always be a few more things."\n\n"Oh, this one's almost sour," said Q Girl, starting on the rainbow pastry. Each bite seemed to spark something with her psyche. "Almost fermented? There's still that organ-meat richness to it, but there's a pleasant accent on its body. Oh. Oh, quetzal, I think I found it."\n\nThe same awakening kindled within the others. Q Girl set down her cutlery and held her paws before her in anticipatory wonder.\n\n"The gastrophysicist An‡helme once said 'Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are,'" quoted the tinker. "This is beyond that, though. This is... Tell me what I eat, and I'll tell myself what to be."\n\nImet grinned again. "You've found it. My next dish is firesnout carnitas. The rub of arsplice, dried spinefruit, and mirror dust is one that I and my harmonious selves have developed in tandem with the irreplaceable Bajiko Ki, my fellow Carbide Chef and dedicated bane of my antagonist-self. Consider this a transformative work."\n\n"It just melts, doesn't it?" mused the wardens Esther. "It was an hour for us but four-and-twenty-fold for the flamepig. And the heat on it!" A lock of hair slipped from under her shawl as it curled and reshaped into a coil of blossoming fractus. Light gleamed off of each spine.\n\n"Beats trail jerky any day," laughed Wisp. A series of gleaming spines grew out of the back of her head.\n\nThe Baroness in her throne tore into her own generous portion, then the plate it came on. As she metabolized the course, the same chrome-like mirror sheen flowed up her horns. As it crested her points, twin wisps of flame like those of a pair of candles ignited just above them.\n\nFor Q Girl, meanwhile, the mirror-texture inscribed itself along the patterns of circuitry tattooed across her body as her quills lengthened and strengthened. She finished her plate of carnitas and sighed appreciatively. "This feels like... finding beauty in our defenses. It's a very reflective dish, in more ways than one."\n\nImet smiled. "You all have delightful interpretations. My next dish gets a bit niche."\n\n[[next|106]]

Seeker E'Beth\nShe/her\na seeker of the sightless way who senses the flow of the competition with her mind. once faced Imet in a titanic bout that brought the Ospreys to Kitchen Heptagon. resists the pull of the Elder Cant.\n(the main announcer and doctor announcer are being compressed into just her, she's the announcer)

At last, after the ferocious whittling of Eitan-Þjazi and Bajiko Ki, the final templar collapsed onto the pile of his dead fellow knights, bleeding from countless wounds. The competitors immediately set about divvying up the dead for butchery.\n\nWith the invaders slain, there came a palpable release of tension in the atmosphere of the arena. E'Beth found herself breathing again, though the hurt remained.\n\n"Kitchen Heptagon has broken the Templar!" she cried. "The subdual phase is over!"\n\n"Hah!" barked Esther. "Good riddance! And not a scratch on Ki or the princess. Marvelous!"\n\n"55 minutes remain," rumbled Baroness Farouun from her lacquered throne. Her vigil did not lapse, but she allowed her body a more relaxed poise now that the chefs below had prevailed.\n\n//''E'Beth. Let us convene.''// The psionic presence of her Baroness was twice as formidable as the woman was in the flesh. It swept in like dusk, a certainty flowing around her, warm and intoxicating in its potency. E'Beth signaled her assent not with words but with a dissolving of her mental armor. Farouun's ego poured into the sudden breach and E'Beth drew her in readily.\n\nWith Farouun's psyche-peninsula established, E'Beth dredged herself up to fill the emotional sea surrounding it. All the turmoil, the hurt, the betrayal, but so too the love that sought even now to mend her wounded trust - a complex tapestry in countless internal dimensions, complete yet ever-shifting, and unutterable in its totality.\n\n//''I did this.''//\n\n//You did this.//\n\n[[next|40]]

"What about the challenger, though?" asked the Wardens Esther. "I haven't heard of her before, but then, I've never been to Bethesda Susa."\n\n"I know a bit about her," said E'Beth. "She's the daughter of the troll princes - Jotun, Fjorn-Kosef, and Haggabah. Her specialty is in troll cuisine. It's... not for the faint of heart."\n\n"Her fighting style is really something else," Esther replied. "How can you fight an opponent you can't see? Especially one calling down psionic frost everywhere."\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Go ahead, Clactobelle."\n\nThe glowmoth began to speak, but Eitan-Þjazi's gravel-throated roar drowned her out.\n\n"Three fathers had I!" she bellowed, crushing a helm with the pommel of one of her axes. "'Twas Haggabah who foaled me, but all bore me in turn, and all their strength do I carry with me! Now seeketh I //who slew them!"//\n\nAs another templar clattered to the ground, Clactobelle cleared her throat. "I was going to say that since she said it to me, but then she didn't want to wait for me to relay it to you, so she said it first."\n\nAsphodel fluttered xyr petals in unease. "The princes are //dead?// Well and truly?"\n\n"Many have boasted of it in the past," said E'Beth, "but come to think of it, I haven't heard anyone say as much in... over a year? Maybe more."\n\n"Well if someone's going around offing royals, we want //no// part of it," retorted the Earl.\n\n[[next|39]]

Celebrity Judge Seven\nshe/her\nfolks, you know her, you love her, she's a grandma now and i can't stop writing her as uncharacteristically chatty

The gates into Kitchen Heptagon clanged shut with a resounding finality. Joffroy craned his neck slightly to meet Farouun's silent, judgemental stare.\n\n"I see you mustered the resolve to answer our challenge, profligate," sneered the Putus Templar. His voice was slightly nasal, yet forceful enough to be heard without a microphone, tinged with a terrible zealotry.\n\n"And so you've come," replied the Baroness.\n\nE'Beth turned her focus inward, letting her ego slip past the bounds of her physicality, questing towards her comrade. //Clactobelle,// she projected.\n\n//Woah!// the glowmoth thought in response. //Woah! Woah! I forgot you could do this!//\n\n//Clactobelle, this is bad. I need you to find out what's going on down there. But please, be careful.//\n\n//Yeah okay!// Clactobelle stretched her wings in preparation. //Don't worry, I hate this too! I mean not the telepathy, this is nice, I meant the-//\n\n//Good luck. Stay safe.// E'Beth retracted her psyche as Clactobelle fluttered down to the arena, alighting silently atop a warm oven.\n\n"She //invited// the Putus Templar into our midst? Is she mad?" muttered Esther, uncaring as to whether or not her microphone picked up her lament.\n\nIf Farouun heard her, she gave no indication. She slowly began to descend the steps down to the arena floor. "Many things could be said to describe our challenger tonight. Driven, relentless, formidable, descending from a reclusive tradition. All these, and more. Please trust me when I say that tonight shall be a spectacle like none other."\n\n[[next|34]]

"And I won't let you forget about me, Clactobelle!" cried the dog-sized moth that leapt suddenly onto E'Beth's hooded head.\n\n"Who could possibly forget you, Clactobelle?" grunted E'Beth. "Do your best out there tonight, okay?"\n\n"I always do!"\n\n"That's all of us, Baroness. Now please, would you stop being so cryptic? What's in store for us tonight?"\n\n"A real showstopper," the regal chimera retorted. "They have traveled far to be here, where the threads of fate meet the loom of conflict. Tonight, Kitchen Heptagon gives answer to the challenges leveled against us. So! Enter the arena, Warmonger Joffroy Ludrig! Enter and face us!"\n\nFor a brief moment, as the chrome doors beneath the announcers' table groaned open, the crowd was shocked into silence. It didn't last. A severe man in fullerite plate mail strode onto the fused glass floor of the kitchen arena at the head of two marching columns of four similarly-armored men. From the moment the arena's arc sconces lit their tabards to reveal the cross of the Putus Templar, the stands erupted in jeers and howls of rage.\n\nQ Girl's claws dug into the table as a growl built in her throat. //''"What."''//\n\n"Entering the arena-" E'Beth's voice betrayed no small amount of confusion. "Entering- wh- the Templar? What good could possibly-"\n\nFarouun merely held up a single clawtip to still her objections. She had made no move to descend from her dais. Joffroy reached the center of the arena and motioned for his templar to halt.\n\n[[next|33]]

"If memory serves me right," she said, "There are many who would challenge my beloved Carbide Chefs in the hopes to prove themselves. But lately, a certain faction has grown more adamant in voicing this challenge. Their motives must not be as simple as a mere desire for validation. But I'm afraid, my loves, that I must keep you in suspense for just a while longer - E'Beth, darling, who might our honored guests be tonight up there with you?"\n\nE'Beth blushed slightly and responded. "I am, as ever, your host, Seeker E'Beth. It is my honor and my deepest pleasure to serve you, my Baroness. With me tonight are our celebrity guest judges - to my right is Earl Asphodel."\n\n"Charming as always, dear," fluttered the stunning blossom seated next to E'Beth. "Seeing as how we technically outrank our dear Baroness, we could easily decline her invitations and she'd simply have to accept it. But it's so much fun to be here, we really can't stay away."\n\n"To xyr right, we have scientist, acclaimed author, and long-time guest Q Girl."\n\n"Quetzal! It's so good to be here, but I'm just //dying// to know who the challenger is tonight."\n\n"Soon enough, darling," rumbled Farouun, with a wink. The urshiib tinker blushed slightly.\n\n"And last but not least, we have first-time guest and protector of the Six-Day Stilt, the Wardens Esther!"\n\nThe handsome, weathered, and heavily-armored woman whose head was modestly clad in a gorgeous shawl dyed a deeper scarlet than E'Beth's robes leaned forward to speak into her microphone. "Sheba's told me all about this place. She can't get enough. Glad I finally made it down here myself." Her shadow flickered behind her in much the same manner as Imet's did in the light of their sconce.\n\n"I won't let you leave unsatisfied," said Farouun, before popping the rest of her hoarshroom into her maw.\n\n[[next|32]]

Baroness Farouun at last drew up to her throne and turned to face the spectacle of the crowd and the arena, knowing full well that she accounted for a good 60 percent of that spectacle with her radiant presence. She considered the hoarshroom as she raised it before her, savoring its aroma, and took her customary and exuberant bite. Shortly afterwards her organs began to glow as her body metabolized the fungus, revealing the embroidered marks of several legendary clothiers as the light bled through her waistcoat.\n\nE'Beth continued. "The Kitchen Heptagon is where these legends test their skills against challengers from across Qud and beyond. Both the Carbide Chef and the Challenger have one hour to explore the theme ingredient of the evening. Using all their senses, skills, beliefs, and abilities they shall demonstrate their unparalleled artistry in destruction and recreation to the Baroness and her honored paramours and celebrity guest judges. Should the Challenger win, their deeds shall resonate through the fabric of this world to be preserved forever."\n\n"Beautiful souls of these dusty lands," rumbled Farouun, her every sultry word resonating through the bodies, the very fabric of all assembled with an intoxicating power, "Test yourselves against my loves, my Chefs. Fill your lungs with the breath of eternity."\n\nE'Beth's speech climbed to her feverish climax, scripted yet undiminished in its sincerity. "We peddle in reputations, for here, legends are reforged. Best our Carbide Chefs and write your name in the cosmos. For here, we are gathered to truly test the limits of edibility and reality. This is Kitchen Heptagon!"\n\nThe crowd went wild and Farouun's face split into a fang-spangled and self-satisfied grin. She bowed deeply, then rose and motioned for silence. The crowd was hers.\n\n[[next|31]]

On the floor, Eitan-Þjazi took several earth-shaking steps towards the templar pack, then vanished mid-stride. At the same moment, just before the templars closest to Bajiko Ki could mount a counterattack, she disengaged gracefully, leaving her kris embedded in the collarbone of another templar, melting its way through a seam in the carbide plate. With another subtle flick, a gleaming wristblade slid out from her immaculate sleeve. Just then the line of templars buckled as the troll's invisible charge hit them like a train.\n\nLimbs and knights flew under Eitan-Þjazi's chilling assault. The spinning of her axes whipped up a blizzard around her. Joffroy skidded across the ground as his templars desperately reached for him, trying to keep him within the deteriorating defensive circle. Bajiko Ki was quicker. She dashed in, axe raised, and with a venting of steam from her bionic arm, she sent it crashing down into the Warmonger's helm, cleaving it terribly and discharging a tremendous electric shock as it punched through. With one movement, she dragged his body forcefully behind her and wrenched her axe free. Her assistants scurried to catch the corpse and immediately set about the grisly task of butchery.\n\n"This is almost indubitably a frivolous question, but," mused Asphodel, "One would think it would be difficult, morally or psychologically, for dear Bajiko to strike down her fellow man."\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle," replied E'Beth.\n\n"Carbide Chef Bajiko Ki anticipated your dilemma, Asphodel, and she said: 'Not my fellow man. Fascists. Easy.'"\n\n"You haven't made much of a study of human history, have you, Asphodel?" asked Q Girl.\n\n"We've made study of looking good, darling."\n\nClactobelle continued. "Miss Bajiko Ki also said: 'Every Templar that remains alive will kill women, children, the infirm, the ones I love, whole families, whole communities. Dead Templar are harmless. Meat. If I kill a Templar, I save lives. And I never waste meat.'"\n\nE'Beth nodded. "Always a pragmatic one, she is. Thank you, Clactobelle."\n\n[[next|38]]

"Bang a gong, we are on!" E'Beth shakily announced. She had started this match firmly on the back foot, but she was nothing if not professional. "Kitchen Heptagon is sealed, and so is - presumably - the fate of these Templar selected to be our theme ingredients tonight. The Challenger and the Carbide Chef have one hour to prepare as many dishes as they can centered around... manflesh."\n\n"Now technically," mused Asphodel, "our dear Bajiko is herself a True Kin, is she not? What's to stop the challenger from attempting to cook //her?"//\n\n"That would, thankfully, be grounds for disqualification," said E'Beth.\n\nOn the arena floor, Bajiko Ki circled cagily around the Templars' bulwark. Eitan-Þjazi merely grunted, clapping her axes together above her head and slamming them down in front of her. As the crysteel wedges hammered into the arena floor, a shockwave of psionic frost burst forth, knocking two templars out of formation. They quickly closed ranks around their fallen brethren.\n\n"Good woman!" Joffroy cried out to the circling Bajiko Ki. "We have no quarrel with you! Aid us against this monstrosity, against this impurity! We are your kin!"\n\nBajiko's wordless response was to flick her sleeved wrist subtly and catch the hilt of a gaslight kris in her offhand as it ejected from concealment. She fired its coruscating blade into life as the forearm of her bionic arm unfolded a secret, skeletal compartment and extruded from it a crackling ursteel battleaxe into her main hand. The merest flexing of her calves sent her rocketing 12 meters through the air to crash into the nearest templar. A gauntleted hand, still grasping its former owner's longsword, flew wildly in the wake of her electrified stroke.\n\n"She's good!" marvelled the Wardens Esther.\n\n"GET 'EM!" cheered Q Girl. "FUCK 'EM UP!"\n\n"Isn't this the part of the match you usually decry as bloodthirsty, dear?" asked Asphodel.\n\n"Well, usually it's animals they're fighting," she replied, returning to her seat. "They don't have a choice in the matter. These are fascists. They had every choice not to materially enforce a genocidal hierarchy with their lives and efforts, but they did anyway, so now they're going to get killed and eaten."\n\n"Did I hear right that they came after you and yours a little while back?" asked Esther.\n\n"They did! I hope one of our chefs makes a dish centered around their hearts."\n\nE'Beth let her co-commentators converse freely. Her thoughts and emotions remained tumultuous and raw. //Baroness,// she projected, reaching out across the ephemeral webs of psionic energy that wove their way through the space between them. The Baroness's psyche was a fortress, practically unassailable, but this was no assault. Despite E'Beth's blindfold, she could sense Farouun's gaze upon her. //We need to talk about this. Soon. Please.//\n\nIt was all she could do.\n\n[[next|37]]

Bajiko Ki nodded curtly and made her way to the stairs, meeting Farouun on her way back up to the throne. The Baroness stopped her for a moment, lifting her head delicately with a cupped claw.\n\n"Fight with honor, my love," she said.\n\n"I shall cook with every means available," replied the dark-skinned cyborg. Farouun bent down to kiss her.\n\nThe stairs had already begun to rise and transform into an elevated platform. Bajiko hopped down the remaining distance to the fused glass floor, rising to bow respectfully to her geological opponent.\n\n"Fortune favored me once more with the perfect opportunity for the perfect theme ingredient," said Farouun, pacing now to the edge of the stairs-platform. "And hasn't it been obvious? There is nothing to unveil save with what you reveal through bitter and righteous combat, my loves. Tonight's theme ingredient?"\n\nThe Templar seemed to realize at last exactly how alone they stood.\n\n''"MAN."''\n\nThe crowd roared to shake down the stars. Baroness Farouun held her clasped fist dramatically before her, as if she had caught one of the stars cast down by that thunderous noise.\n\n//''"LIVE AND COOK!"''//\n\n[[next|36]]

"Hell of a thing to ask of us," said Asphodel, visibly irritated. None of xyr other companions in the announcers' booth felt like speaking at that moment. The presence of the Putus Templar in the heart of their sanctum was at once demoralizing and horrifying.\n\nJoffroy, his fullerite helm cupped under his arm and his aegis strapped to his arm, smirked with every word even as his men drew closer, scanning the overwhelmingly hostile crowd ringing them with trepidation. Farouun reached the bottom of the staircase and gestured expansively towards what appeared to be the empty air to her right.\n\n"Now, please welcome tonight's challenger: from the frigid caverns of Bethesda Susa, Princess of the Alle-Sauna, ''EITAN-ÞJAZI!"''\n\nConfusion reigned in the stands, the booth, and the arena alike. The air next to Farouun wavered, phasing first through a vague shimmering distortion, then a large blob of coalescing shadow, and then finally, stepping forward with a loosening roll of her glacial musculature, Eitan-Þjazi the troll made her presence known. The top of Farouun's head just came to her monumental shoulders, but the troll's craggy head hunched forward just below them in a ponderous overhanging posture. Rime and lichen blossomed across her rocky skin, sending down shimmering dustings of powdered snow and spores with her every movement. Twin axes of battered, serrated crysteel dangled from cords of leather looped over her massive wrists. Farouun turned to clasp an oversized claw over Eitan-Þjazi's forearm, a gesture that she reciprocated out of mutual respect.\n\nClactobelle waved energetically up to E'Beth, who linked psyches with her once again. //E'Beth, the real challenger is a troll!//\n\n//So it seems,// replied the esper. //I know of her, but somehow I couldn't sense her. How long has she been here?//\n\n//I don't know! Also I don't know why the Putus are here if they aren't the challengers! She faked us all out!//\n\n//Why?// It was difficult, if not impossible, to keep the hurt she felt out of her psychic voice, seeing as how it was a manifestation of her pure internality. //Why did she feel the need to lie to us?//\n\nJoffroy donned his helm with a final anxious glance back to the arena doors, as if to confirm that they were, in fact, still sealed. His men drew tighter around him, shields and swords at the ready.\n\n"Princess," rumbled Farouun, apathetic to the shield wall that bristled mere meters away. "It's an honor to have you here."\n\n"Aye," the troll replied. Where Farouun's deep timbre flowed out warm and rich, Eitan-Þjazi's voice was searing and fecund. It was the hiss of steam through subterranean vents and the groaning of the cliffs before the landslide.\n\n"The privilege is yours. Before you stand my Carbide Chefs. Which do you desire to face?"\n\nEitan-Þjazi hefted an axe and pointed it at the leftmost sconce.\n\n"KI." she bellowed. "FACE ME."\n\n[[next|35]]

chimeraproblems

Celebrity Judge Five\nhe/him\nphilosophical and erudite\na learned ape given to pontifications\ncan still absolutely throw the fuck down

"The choice now falls to Mara," narrated E'Beth. Q Girl gave Mara a good luck kiss and made her way to the booth. "Will it be Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye Bajiko Ki? Or does she fear that the former horticulturalist would be wise to her plant-based strategies? Speaking of plants, will she challenge our formidable photosynth, Carbide Chef Phyta Emberlily? Would the resultant dishes operate on a logic incomprehensible to two-thirds of our judges?"\n\n"Oh, //please,"// Earl Asphodel purred.\n\n"Will she face Imet, the Chefs 0th? Who //dares// face Imet? Or will Mara test herself against Choraler Jathiss in a 16-limbed scrum?"\n\nThe bandbots at last dropped the tense drumroll they had carried through E'Beth's entire speech. Mara opened her four arms in a gesture that was equal parts welcoming and questioning. Her voice rang out clearly.\n\n"Emberlily, if you please!"\n\nEmberlily started in her sconce, then pointed at herself with a smoking hand, seeking confirmation in the eyes of the challenger. Mara nodded. Emberlily's face split into a fanged grin and she nodded back, emphatically.\n\n"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! //Thank// you," said Asphodel, pounding xyr fronds on the table with every syllable. Xe grew conscious of the spectacle after a moment and fluttered xyr petals smoothly. "That is to say, in the words of the great bard Willow Shakesprig... //'A pairing sweetly sought as vine abranch seeks vine / Must glimmer and besot the lot while fates entwine.'"//\n\n"Shakesprig really had some laser-focused metaphors, didn't they?" muttered Esk.\n\nEmberlily ambled down the staircase that ran the central length of the dais excitedly. Farouun met her on the way up. The Baroness clasped her claws around the slynth's upper hands, heedless of how their ghostly flames caused the decorative talon-lacquer to bubble.\n\n[[next|61]]\n

//"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." - An‡helme//\n\n[[eyeless crab battle (jathiss/agate)|1]]\n[[man battle (bajiko/troll)|27]]\n[[madpole battle (emberlily/mara)|54]]\n[[arsplice seed battle (imet/HUNTER-SEEKER)|82]]

"Bang a gong, we are on!" called E'Beth as the Baroness took her throne. "Kitchen Heptagon is flooded, sealed, and infested with our theme ingredient. Our contestants tonight now have one hour to best these voracious pseudo-amphibians and transmute them into a legendary meal for us to enjoy!"\n\n"Madpoles," shuddered Nuntu. "This is why I rarely leave my village these days. The river Svy is rotten with the things and I value my feet."\n\n"Why don't you teleport to the other bank?" mused Asphodel. "It's quite simple."\n\n"I won't dignify that with an answer."\n\nAssistants watched the struggle begin from the safety of their skiffs, now afloat in the artificial lake. Mara had reached her kitchen island where she shrugged out of her saddlebags and vest. From a larger pack, she withdrew four sparking gauntlets and a complicated full-body suit of insulated rubber, custom made to fit the contours of her multi-limbed body, and began the tenuous process of donning it.\n\n"Usually I help her with that," said Q Girl. "I hope she can put it on alright."\n\nOn Emberlily's side, the waters roiled and steamed. A school of madpoles had cut her off before she could reach the island, and now her flames were all that fended off their hunger. She hurled jets of flame, nets, and curses into the pack as she tried to circle through waist-deep water closer to the island.\n\n"I don't envy Emberlily's position," said Esk. "And her tactics seem questionable. This is a bit nerve-wracking. Do these matches always start like this?"\n\n"Nearly always," said Q Girl, ruefully.\n\n"E'Beth!" Clactobelle alighted upon the booth's railing.\n\n"Go ahead, Clactobelle."\n\n[[next|63]]

"I asked Emberlily if she was doing okay! She said it gave her a chance to start the madpole broiling early!"\n\n"That's a bold answer," said Nuntu.\n\nClactobelle wrung moisture from an antennae with her unoccupied forelimb. "Sure, but she sounded //really// stressed!"\n\n"I can't blame her," said E'Beth. "What about Mara?"\n\n"Well, I asked her what those gloves were and she said they were overclocked ulnar stimulators! I didn't see any clocks on them so I guess she really is over them. She was still putting on the suit so I'm not sure what she's gonna do with them but they look dangerous!"\n\n"Oh, quetzal!" said Q Girl. "I've got a standard pair of those. They're great for fine-detail work. Though I have to say, if Mara's ever had a factory warranty, she's voided it now."\n\nNow fully garbed, Mara donned the stimulators and slipped gracefully into the water. Her four tiger legs half-stepped and half-paddled through the lake, buoying her towards a madpole pack that had congregated in her sector of the flooded arena.\n\n"She's headed right for them!" cried Esk. "Is she mad? They'll take a leg off!"\n\n"No, look," said Nuntu, furrowing his brow. "Their patterns aren't hunting patterns. Intriguing."\n\nThe school circled aimlessly around Mara as she slipped into their midst. Her expression remained untroubled save for a passing grimace as an occasional madpole tried an exploratory nibble. At the right moment, she spread her four arms around her and plunged her hands into the water. Pulses of electricity surged into the circling school and stunned madpoles floated to the surface all around her. She retrieved a wide woven basket from a nearly-submerged counter nearby and scooped madpoles into it.\n\n"Amazing!" said Nuntu. "How did she do it?"\n\n"Perhaps they've no palate for vegetables," ventured Asphodel.\n\n"Taxonomically speaking," corrected Q Girl, "my girlfriend is closer to an herbaceous perennial."\n\n"Apologies," xe murmured.\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Take it, Clactobelle."\n\n"I asked Mara how come the madpoles weren't eating her alive! She said a while back, while delving in a ruin, she found an entire folio of Schrödinger pages from the //Annals of Qud!// She said she had been so weary of death and fighting that she Entangled them all on the spot, and ever since then, fish have liked her!"\n\n"Schrödinger pages..." E'Beth said, uneasily.\n\n"Something wrong with those?" asked Esk. "I feel like I'm missing some context. I don't think I've ever even seen one, in fact."\n\n"We..." started Q Girl. "We had a challenger a couple years ago who tried to Entangle their way to a victory in the arena. It was very contentious."\n\n"Sweetest dromad you'd ever meet," E'Beth sighed. "Really fond of their respect for the solstice and their help with the festival of Ut Yara Ux. But it took a lot of time, effort, and sphinx salt to untangle that win. You can't rely on retroactive causality alone to conquer Kitchen Heptagon."\n\n"But don't worry!" said Q Girl. "Mara would never do that."\n\nBack on her kitchen island Mara set down the basket of twitching madpoles and made an emphatic gesture of agreement to the booth. On her throne, Farouun rubbed her chin in contemplation, then nodded. Q Girl and Mara alike heaved a sigh of relief.\n\n[[next|64]]

"What about Emberlily?" asked E'Beth. "Did you catch up with her?"\n\n"I lost her," Clactobelle said, miserably. "There was too much steam. It was too dangerous."\n\n"I think I can still hear her in there," said Esk, cocking her head towards the cloud of steam obscuring a quarter of the arena. "She's quite vocal."\n\n"Oh, there!" said Asphodel. "She's made it out!"\n\nEmberlily limped onto her kitchen island and dropped a bulging net to the floor with a wet slap. Her handsome chef's coat was soaked and singed and her vines were bedraggled.\n\nEsk gasped in shock. The same reaction rippled through the stands. "Her arm!"\n\nA madpole had latched itself around her upper left hand. It twitched once and slid from her forearm. The bloodthirsty neonate fell to the floor with a muffled sizzling and lay still, quite dead. Emberlily's hand was gone.\n\n"Ach," the Carbide Chef spat. Her voice carried in the arena's sudden silence. "The damned indignity."\n\nBaroness Farouun leapt up from her throne, but froze in chagrin, claw outstretched. Keen-eyed observers could have noted how her jaw shuddered with an unvoiced cry.\n\n"Fifty-five minutes remain," E'Beth announced. Waves of sympathetic agony thrummed at her temples. She flexed her fingers subtly to remind her body they were still attached. Her voice shook. "The subdual phase is over."\n\nSkiffs docked at the islands and assistants disembarked to begin the process of butchery. Mara clambered into the stern of one nearby and rummaged in the cabinet. She emerged with a lover's blossom and took it to a countertop along with some scrap she pulled from one of her saddlebags. After a moment of delicate activity, she bundled up a gleaming tube, gave a few instructions to her assistants, then slipped into the water to swim to the other island.\n\n"She works remarkably fast," said Nuntu. "But then, this isn't for a dish, is it?"\n\n"Looked like an injector of some sort," said Esk. "Kendren don't //eat// those, do they?"\n\n"It's not out of the question to congeal the contents and spice up a dish with it," said Q Girl. "I can remember a few offerings from previous challenges that fit that bill."\n\n"Ayvah," said Esk. "That's decadent."\n\n"It barely scratches the //surface// of decadence, my dear," buzzed Asphodel. "Wait and see."\n\nEmberlily sat on the edge of her island, leaning against a counter as she held a towel soaked with blood and sap to her stump with a lower hand. She gave instructions to her assistants, but sat up as Mara approached. Emberlily waved her up onto the island. Mara pressed the bundle into her grasp with a few quiet instructions. Emberlily nodded and pulled out a gleaming injector, then sunk it into her left arm as Mara slipped back into the water with a wave.\n\n"Oh, quetzal!" said Q Girl. "That looked like ubernostrum, perfect!"\n\n"Well spotted," said Nuntu.\n\n"E'Beth!" the glowmoth returned, breathlessly, to the booth.\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle?"\n\n"Yeah, that was an ubernostrum injector!" Even as Clactobelle explained, a new hand erupted from Emberlily's stump. It was the chartreuse of spring leaves and still dripping with sap. She flexed it experimentally even as flames uncoiled from her freshly-sprouted digits. "Mara told me that she felt bad about it since the madpoles weren't a danger to her. She thought it was an unfair advantage. So she whipped one up to help out Emberlily!"\n\n"She's so sweet," sighed Q Girl. Emberlily scratched the back of her head distractedly as she watched Mara swim back to her island.\n\nClactobelle continued. "Before Mara came over to her I heard Emberlily say 'on tonight of all nights!' But after Mara left I asked Emberlily about it and she looked very wistful and said that it was the nicest thing a Challenger has ever done for her! She's back in fighting trim!"\n\n"Thank you, Clactobelle," said E'Beth. "It's a load off all our minds, sincerely." She could sense a soothing relief spreading through the collective emotional psyche of the stands. Soon it would return to excitement as the chefs could finally start cooking.\n\n[[next|65]]

The arena floor filled with the precise, wet sounds of paring knives in the grips of a small army of chef assistants. Mara began pruning particularly shapely fin specimens to set aside. Emberlily bent with a heavy ceramic dish and scooped up the madpole that had claimed her hand. The waters stilled, and the flickering glow of submerged arc sconces rippled from below.\n\nAsphodel spoke in xyr customary sultry buzzing. "One notices dear Mara availing herself of Kitchen Heptagon's knives. This, despite the formidable cutlery with which she entered the arena."\n\n"You ever tried to clean a fish with a broadsword, Earl?" asked Esk.\n\n"Don't be asinine," said Asphodel. "They spend their lives in water. Why do they need to be cleaned?"\n\nQ Girl cleared her throat diplomatically. "It's true that nothing cuts like a vibrokhopesh. If the theme ingredient were something like, say, basilisks, then it would make more sense to use one for trimming the meat. But they'd just cut right through madpoles. I don't think Mara wants you to have to replace your cutting boards. Or your counters."\n\nClactobelle fluttered to her perch on the balustrade of the announcers' booth in a cloud of shimmering moth-dust. "E'Beth!"\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle?"\n\n"I asked our contestants what they thought about our theme ingredient tonight! Mara said it was a challenge since she hasn't worked much with madpole meat before, but it was a challenge she felt honored to face!"\n\n"Fresh fish is just quetzal," sighed Q Girl. "But for most of the time we've been together it's been too dangerous to bother catching any. I wouldn't want her to risk herself for my sake any more than she already has."\n\nClactobelle continued. "I asked Emberlily if she liked cooking with madpole and she said 'Are you japing? I hate the gristly little bastards! Every ounce of flesh is saturated in condensed spite.' She said it was an acquired taste but one that she'd try to make accessible!"\n\nNuntu leaned forward and squinted. "Emberlily is using them," he observed.\n\n"What?" asked Esk.\n\n"Vibroweapons. Is she not?" The albino ape pointed with a stubby finger to the arena below. "Two of them. She's awfully quick with a knife."\n\n"Oh, quetzal! That's the vibrodagger I made for her!" Q Girl clapped excitedly, then stopped just as suddenly. "Oh. And //that's// the one she got from //Agate."//\n\nEmberlily paused her butchery to twirl Q Girl's vibrodagger with an elaborate and blindingly fast flourish, ending with a kiss to the pommel and a wink to the booth. Then she spun the other vibrodagger, ending with a four-armed shrug and an apologetic grin.\n\n"It's subtle," said Esk, "but I think it comes down to confidence and training. Mara's knife technique is beautiful, but there's a part of her, I reckon, that wishes it was a sword. But Emberlily looks like she was born with a knife in each hand."\n\n"Born?" murmured Asphodel.\n\n"Germinated. You ken what I mean, kendren."\n\nNuntu mused on the topic at hand. "Is there truly such a difference between sword and dagger that the mere absence or presence of a bit of blade length could shape someone differently from the mere practice of it?" He scratched his fur-tufted chin with a heavy hand. "I would have thought the underlying philosophy to be the same. But then, I've never been one for martial pursuits."\n\n"No, wethinks our dear Hindriarch has the right of it," said Asphodel. "It's a subtle thing, but made no less real should one lack the context from which to observe it."\n\nAcross the arena, the Baroness shifted in her throne. "Forty-five minutes remain," Farouun rumbled.\n\n[[next|66]]

Down in the arena, Mara's knifework stopped. Her chest rose and fell gently as she stood, eyes closed, at her counter. An assistant approached her for further instructions but stopped uncertainly as they found her asleep.\n\n"What's Mara up to now?" asked Esk.\n\n"Dreaming, very rapidly," answered E'Beth. Her voice carried a wistful tone. "They're lovely."\n\n"Quetzal!" said Q Girl. "She falls asleep sometimes - it's a consequence of her narcolepsy - but I had no idea it was instantaneous REM sleep!"\n\n"Still, it's eating into her time, isn't it?" said Esk. "Damn shame."\n\nEmberlily spared a glance across to the opposite island. Her wide and usually expressive face was set into something unreadable. Her focus returned to her assistants as she called a few more directives out to them. There came a fluttering of moth wings.\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle."\n\n"Carbide Chef Emberlily is planning four dishes for us tonight! She said she'd try for five if she had time but she also said not to get your hopes up."\n\n"Thank you, Clactobelle," said E'Beth. "What about Mara?"\n\n"I tried to ask her, but she was asleep!"\n\nDown below, Mara jolted awake. After a moment of uncertainty, she finished cutting the ingredients laid out before her. She set her knives to the side, craned her face to the open sky, and steepled the fingers of her lower hands below her chin in contemplation. The assistant returned to pose their question. She answered, never looking down, then shooed them away encouragingly with an upper hand.\n\n"Now's your chance, C," said Esk, nodding her antlered head at Mara's island.\n\n"What?" asked Clactobelle. She spun herself in place on her railing perch to follow Esk's gaze. "Oh! Miss Mara! Miss Mara!"\n\nClactobelle launched free of the booth and glided down to the floor to resume her interrogation.\n\n"I know that look," said Q Girl. "Mara's about to work through something."\n\n"Come to think of it, I know that look too," said Nuntu. "I don't like to boast, but I believe I was the one to introduce her to the possibilities of cooking."\n\n"Quetzal! When was this?"\n\n"Oh, ages ago, now." Mayor Nuntu's brow furrowed in recollection. "It was before her fame had spread near as far as it has these days. She was a newcomer to Kyakukya. I didn't know of her at the time, though you don't forget a being like her. She was gracious enough to earn my recipe for Mulled Mushroom Cider."\n\n"Fascinating," said Q Girl. "She's known at least the basics of cooking for as long as I've known her. To think she learned it from you, Mayor!"\n\n"I believe she was simply subsisting on photosynthesis previously. Not-" he hastened to add at an irritated rustling from Asphodel, "-that there is anything whatsoever wrong or inadequate with photosynthesizing."\n\n"There's simply no substitute, dear Mayor," huffed the Earl.\n\n"E'Beth!" cried Clactobelle, returning breathlessly to the booth.\n\n"Go ahead, Clactobelle."\n\n"Four dishes for Mara, too! She said she finally worked out the last one during her nap! But she also said it was delicate and she'll have to keep it under wraps until plating."\n\n"We'll wait warmly for it," said E'Beth.\n\n[[next|67]]

"I must admit to being sorely drawn towards speculation," said Nuntu. "There's little else to do from here. What is Mara stoking that oven with?"\n\n"Witchwood," noted Asphodel.\n\nThe ape sighed. "Yes, Earl, which wood is she stoking it with?"\n\n"Clumsily worded, but correct, dear Mayor."\n\n"I simply asked-"\n\nE'Beth cleared her throat. "Mara appears to be making witchwood charcoal. Whatever she smokes in it should gain a frisson of mild psychotropia."\n\n"Ah," said Nuntu. He lapsed into a bashful silence.\n\n"She wasn't kidding about keeping it under wraps," said Esk. Down below, Mara had draped a large cloth over her counter space and ducked her head under it to cut hidden ingredients. Her assistants nearby peeled and grated thorny roots to form into shredded, starchy pancakes. On Emberlily's side, she used her multitude of limbs to stir saucepots and shake a tremendous sizzling wok simultaneously. A fungal-encrusted assistant with a dour expression waited patiently as two other assistants fussed over them and gently pruned particularly shapely specimens from their body.\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Welcome back, Clactobelle. You hardly left!"\n\n"I work fast! Well, since I couldn't ask her about what she was working on under there, I asked her how she felt about the match! She said she was honestly very nervous to be here but she felt buoyed on by the presence of her girlfriend! She's doing it for her!"\n\nQ Girl clamped her long-fingered paws over her ursine snout as a flustered blush bloomed across it. "Oh, I love her," she said.\n\n"Thank you, Clactobelle," said E'beth. "Did you happen to get Emberlily's ingredients?"\n\n"I did! The saucepot on the left has a glaze of honey and a variety of aloes. On the right, she's melting down some creamed waxflab. In the wok, we currently have madpole and an assortment of pickled vegetables frying in dogthorn oil, herbs, and a bit of asphalt, for texture."\n\n"Sounds exquisite," said Nuntu. "I don't suppose you have the same cucumber provider as my village?"\n\n"Our providers are a matter of public record," said E'Beth. "We have done business with Yurl of Kyakukya in the past."\n\n"Oh!" Asphodel started. "That odd little perv- that... //aesthete?// We suppose their singular fixations must ever seek larger audiences."\n\n"I think it's enterprising, selling your own cucumbers," said Nuntu. "Perhaps I've never considered it from a plant's point of view."\n\nAsphodel sighed. "Well, they pay their Consortium dues regularly. It seems one can no longer put off experiencing the fruits of their endless fussing and germinating."\n\nAcross the arena, Baroness Farouun stretched in her throne, her mane ruffling in the faint breeze. "Thirty minutes remain."\n\n[[next|68]]

Esk leaned forward and looked down the length of the judges' table, propping her head up as she rested an elbow on the table. "Q Girl," she said. A smile both sweet and wry graced her split-philtrum lips. "I'm curious. What do you love most about Mara?"\n\n"You can't simply ask me to split a single trait from her entrancing totality, Hindriarch," Q Girl replied, without any hesitation.\n\n"Please, call me Esk."\n\n"Esk. As I was saying, every last bit of her - the way she moves, the words she weaves, the way she protects me and everyone I love, the way she flows through my space like it's just as much hers and she belongs beside me - it's all so //quetzal// that I simply can't pick."\n\n"Sounds a lot like my warden," Esk said, wistfully. "My Neela."\n\n"I'd love to meet her," said Q Girl. She thought for a moment, then continued. "Honestly though, Esk, if there's one thing I truly cherish about Mara... it's how //much// of her there is."\n\n"She's really a drink and a half, isn't she?" agreed Esk.\n\n"Quetzal! She's like two girlfriends in one."\n\nDown below, Mara emerged from under the opaque cloth sporting a furious blush of rose across her verdant tiger's face. Clactobelle swooped back to the announcers' booth.\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle?"\n\n"I asked her about what Mara said and Emberlily //just// relayed to me 'It's a big mistake to think you're the only one competing for love tonight! I've got at least four lovers here whose names I uphold in the arena!' Then she got a very faraway and lovey-dovey look in her eye and said 'Ahh, but tonight it's all for one. They understand.' She didn't say why, though!"\n\n"Thank you, Clactobelle." E'Beth knew full well which of Emberlily's lovers that one must be. The why of it spilled from the slynth Chef's psyche like the light of a sheltered bonfire in the depths of midwinter night. But if Emberlily wouldn't say just yet, then E'Beth's place was to respect her secret. "Would you like to take a quick break so I can pet you?"\n\n"Would I ever!" The glowmoth barrelled into E'Beth's lap in a shower of glimmering motes. E'Beth lavished her to show her appreciation of Clactobelle's hard work. After a moment, the temptation grew too great, and Q Girl joined in petting the glowmoth as well. The contest continued around them.\n\n[[next|69]]

Celebrity Judge Three\nShe/her\nhidden behind a curtain\nVERY pleased to see a fellow woman of the cloth defending the honor of the Kitchen Heptagon\nhopeful and thoughtful\na domestic lesbian LIBRARIAN

Ancient refurbished speakers crackled to life all around the arena. The hubbub of the assembled crowd died. E'Beth, Seeker of the Sightless Way, leaned forward to speak.\n\n"Five years ago," she intoned, her calm voice betraying a reverent exuberance, "a woman's fantasy became reality in a form not seen since the time of the Eaters: a cooking arena in the heart of the Glass Crater. Kitchen Heptagon!"\n\nThe uniformed assistants on the arena floor finished their preparations and craned their necks to the sky above. The last rays of the sun caught a figure descending from the heavens astride a hoversled, slowly sinking into the arena of Kitchen Heptagon. A massive cloud of hair trailed behind her and flowed over her breast in a regal mane, glittering in the dying light like a comet. Two horns sprouted from her brow and a confident smile graced her furred snout. Even from a distance, one could recognize that her clothes were immaculately tailored. Sleeves flared out over her meaty, oversized and luxuriously gloved claws, her arms stretched wide in welcome to her adoring audience. The tail of her waistcoat split around her actual tail - a wickedly barbed and segmented scorpion's tail - and fluttered behind her in the breeze. Like the arena she descended into, she was perfect, impossible.\n\nE'Beth continued. "That woman was the Baroness Farouun, and her means were gained by the betrayal of her 3 greatest competitor-barons, who perished. The motivation for spending her truly obscene water wealth to create Kitchen Heptagon was to encounter new original cuisines, which could be called reflections of the true creation."\n\nThe Baroness touched down at the foot of the stairs leading up to her throne, dismounting the sled with a bow and a flourish. She turned to mount the stairs, plucking a glowing hoarshroom from a nearby cornucopia on the way up.\n\n"To safeguard the honor of this ideal, she called to her four chefs of great power, and she bid they be named her Carbide Chefs, the invincible beings of culinary skill."\n\n[[next|3]]

"With me are our celebrity judges, whose judgement ultimately will decide the subjectivity of whose efforts tonight reflect the deeper truth of things. Next to me is Earl Asphodel."\n\n"Hello, loves," buzzed a voice from the breathtaking blossom whose clay pot perched on the seat next to E'Beth. "We still aren't quite certain on this food idea of yours, but we love any opportunity for more to enjoy my radiant presence. If we could cook a damn, we would be down there ourselves. It's endearing to put so much effort into perfecting an imaginary concept like food."\n\n"To xyr right is scientist and respected author Q Girl."\n\n"It's really quetzal to be here!" The rainbow-haired urshiib tinker waved a many-jointed bear claw to the audience. "And, uh, sorry about the interruption. It's just- why her? Sorry! Oops."\n\n"And to her right, we have esteemed Librarian of the Six-Day Stilt, Sheba Hagadias."\n\n"Thank you for having me, as always," came a gentle voice from behind the curtain. "Oh, Farouun? I've brought transcriptions of a few more cookbooks I've compiled, don't let me forget to give them to you after the match."\n\nFarouun purred out a happy sigh. "Sheba, you're an angel." The audience gasped. Such familiarity!\n\n"And assisting me in reconnaissance tonight is-" E'Beth grunted as a glimmering moth the size of a large dog landed on her shoulders.\n\n"Me!" cried the glowmoth, gesturing triumphantly with her front legs. "Clactobelle! Anything you need to know about the battle to come, you can count on me to see it and tell you all about it!"\n\n"How did you get here, Clactobelle?" said a rather strained E'Beth.\n\n"I challenged Emberlily once! But I just microwaved everything with my gamma ray eyes! It all got burned and nobody liked it! It was real boneheaded of me, and I'm a moth! We don't even have head bones!"\n\n"That wasn't quite what I meant, but we're all glad you're with us, Clactobelle. Good luck out there. Baroness, that accounts for us."\n\n[[next|7]]

Celebrity Judge Two\nShe/her\npublished scientist and celebrity\nstrong moral core\na domestic lesbian!!!

Emberlily\nShe/her\nwater merchant, high will & agi, flaming hands, heightened speed, multiple arms, photosynthetic skin, spontaneous combustion.\nan ambitious slynth who specializes in flambés. spontaneous combustion is a risk one must accept when you cook this fast.\nthe first chef to rally to farouun's banner, with her from the start

Carbide struck flesh as a fugue-sister pierced Anti-Imet's defenses. In retaliation, the esper pushed the wardens away with a wave of force. Killing intent lanced through it into the offending Esther. The fugue-sister gave a soft grunt and crumpled to the floor in a clatter of platemail already dissipating into ash. The remaining wardens staggered at the blow to their gestalt. E'Beth found her own resolve buckling from proximity to such a vicious attack. She sensed a similar buckling from Wisp, hers from an anguished vengefulness rising within her.\n\nBut there was another presence. The answer to E'Beth's summons.\n\n"Stop this," said Bajiko Ki, her voice soft, yet commanding. The Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye stepped into the booth behind Anti-Imet. At the sound of her voice, the esper paused from retrieving their fallen pistol. A new emotional current rose within Anti-Imet - a lovestruck hesitation.\n\nBajiko crossed the intervening distance with her arms stretched forward to embrace the esper. Anti-Imet turned to meet her, to return the embrace. They clasped together. There was a brief slithering sound, nearly lost over the thunder of detonations.\n\n"You poor fool," murmured Bajiko Ki. Anti-Imet's legs gave out. Bajiko lowered them gently to the floor of the booth. "How many times has it been?"\n\nAnti-Imet said nothing. They raised a trembling hand to Bajiko's cheek.\n\n"So long as you stand against my Imet, this will ever be the outcome," said Bajiko. She knelt over the antagonist-esper as their body crumbled into ash. Delicate flakes drifted silently from her extruded wristblade. She gave a subtle flick and it retracted into her sleeve.\n\n"Uh," said Q Girl, voice tinged with desperate effort, "HUNTER=SEEKER's still mad."\n\nWisp grunted. "Ach. Just give me an opening." As she braced the psionic barrier with her upper hands, her lower hands unholstered her laser pistols.\n\n"No. Stay here." Bajiko Ki's gaze snapped across the arena with grim purpose. Her skin was livid with the seams of recent cybernetic surgery. Despite this, she launched herself from the side of the booth and sprinted along the stands circling the arena.\n\nDown along that circumference, Baroness Farouun rose from cover and ran to meet her. Without breaking her thunderous stride, she fished an ancient timepiece from her uniform's breast pocket for a brief consultation.\n\n"Five minutes remain!" roared Farouun.\n\n"Wait, the match is still on?" sputtered Q Girl.\n\nTwenty paces apart, Bajiko Ki launched herself into the air towards her Baroness. Farouun caught her, swung her in a tight circle, then flung her out over the arena towards the dais and its berserk robotic interloper.\n\nBajiko Ki spiraled through the swarm, untouched. Her body unfurled with chrome as implants awoke within her. HUNTER=SEEKER drifted its aim up to intercept the Chef's trajectory. Bajiko was faster. Plunging through a final indignant pulse, the Chef caught herself upon HUNTER=SEEKER'S apex. She raised her bionic arm above her to channel her cybernetically-boosted rebuke.\n\n"HUNTER=SEEKER!" cried Bajiko. "Stand down for immediate threat reassessment!"\n\nShe punched her arm into the chrome pyramid's apex. Interlocks seeped from the fluted bionics and wove seamlessly into HUNTER=SEEKER's immaculate geometry. The chrome pyramid shuddered subtly.\n\nThe barrage ceased. The missile tubes sealed themselves away. HUNTER=SEEKER lapsed into a sullen, pulsing silence. Futures ventured up like seedlings in E'Beth's psychic periphery.\n\n[[next|100]]

"Stay down, you young pups!" barked Wisp.\n\n"Hold!" E'Beth lurched forward to grab her by one of her four wizened arms. In an instant, she cast her chaotic memories of the uncertain future into the Imets. Riding it was a desperate strategy. She raised a force wall before the booth. "Bolster me, Wisp!"\n\nConfusion flitted through the old mercenary's eyes, but gave way before the haunted purpose in E'Beth's voice. Wisp joined her psychic efforts to barricade the booth. Already (already - for the first time) HUNTER=SEEKER loosed its catastrophic barrage upon the arena floor in search of its foe.\n\n"Esther, company incoming. Q Girl, get the disc." E'Beth augmented each of her terse commands with bursts of intent. Time was a luxury. Esther summoned her fugue-sisters and formed a shield wall to ensconce the judging party. Q Girl gingerly fished the geomagnetic disc from one of Wisp's pouches and readied it. With her other paw, she tapped overclock routines into her own mechanical exoskeleton. They would test this strategy salvaged from a doomed timeline.\n\nImet's shields strained against HUNTER=SEEKER's onslaught. They ringed the kitchen aisles to shelter the dishes and the dizzying combat playing out between the counters. Anti-Imet parried and spun between the attacks and counter-parries of four Imets. Every exchange in the feverish melee contorted through the freezing air with superhuman agility and precision. Each hand slid towards its target with digits tracing vampiric sutra-strikes in the aether.\n\n"That technique-!" grunted Wisp. "One touch of that palm'll suck the life right out of you!"\n\n"In fact," said E'Beth, unable to shield her inner sight from the arena floor and the aether's gleaming, "each is attempting to dominate the psyche of their opponent in order to force an attack back against them. Such is the unassailable nature of Imet's defenses." She sent one last desperate summons below.\n\nSutras snarled into each other in tesseract reflections, until suddenly the aegis within Anti-Imet woven from the very aether shattered. In the slightest opening it gave, an Imet danced forward and banished their antagonist-self from the arena floor.\n\nAnti-Imet reappeared behind the table in the announcers' booth. Their eyes slid over the assembled commentators with an empty disinterest. Their only perceptible emotion was an anxiety at having been separated from their true quarry. Just as Imet's shields buckled under the missile barrage, HUNTER=SEEKER's laser sight snapped across the arena to Anti-Imet's steaming waistcoat. Death followed.\n\n"Q Girl, missiles!" E'Beth barked, then touched her psyche against the fivefold wardens to tell them: //Esthers, keep them busy.//\n\nQ Girl flung the disc out of the booth towards the oncoming explosive swarm. The shields parted in a thin bubble around it. It hummed and ricocheted between the projectiles, slicing them open and bursting them prematurely. The Esthers gave a battlecry and charged Anti-Imet. Their hammers flashed in the brilliant glare and their scarves billowed like a forest in an autumn gale. Anti-Imet's gaze awoke from disinterest into an indignant fury.\n\nThe anti-chef swung the Ruin of House Isner across the line of charging wardens, fanning its hammer all the while. Bullets dug into shields and ricocheted from armor, but the last struck true as a flanking Esther stumbled. Her sisters countered with a flurry of hammerstrikes that struck the pistol from Anti-Imet's grasp. E'Beth could sense some part of how drained Anti-Imet was from their struggle against the prime chefs. Though the Esthers had the Gift, its manifestation within the wardens may not have afforded them the same knowledge. Yet even against such a terrible foe, Esther's will remained steadfast.\n\n"How much longer do we hold?" Wisp cast anxious glances back over her shoulder at Esther and her fugue-sisters clashing with Anti-Imet. Despite this, her shield still held against the blasts.\n\n//Soon,// was all E'Beth could send in paltry reassurance. In truth, she didn't know if they //could// hold until her strategy bore fruit. Too many timelines spiralled into oblivion in her peripherals. Was this strategy anything of an improvement? Instead of being picked off one by one, she had stuck them between the deadly attentions of an antagonistic master esper and a legendary chrome pyramid. There was no appropriate metaphor for their predicament, nor the luxury to devote enough energy to find one. The shield still held, the wardens still fought, the disc still careened through the swarm and back again. It had to be enough.\n\n[[next|99]]

"Which is it to be?" announced E'Beth. "Will she test her science against the science of Bajiko Ki, Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye? Or does she quail at her mastery of poisons? Will she challenge Emberlily, our Carbide Chef Phyta, to strike a victory for her fungal mentor? Or is she daunted by the determination of a plant who will cook so fast she catches on fire? Dare she cross her destiny against the invincible causalities of Imet, the Chefs 0th? Does she think she can rely on the Chefs unknowingly summoning one of their fugue-selves from an Antagonist Material? Or will she prove her mettle against Choraler Jathiss - a fearsome intellect and perfect mechanisms against a loving heart and humble brawn? Tinker against Mechanimist? Taur against taur?"\n\nThe tense drumming of the bandbots fell away as E'Beth finished her breathless narration. When Agate Severance Star at last spoke, her voice rang out alone through the stadium.\n\n"You Mechanimists have been a thorn in the side of my science for too long. Choraler Jathiss! I challenge you!"\n\n"I'm afraid she's lost me too now," admitted Sheba Hagadias.\n\nThe bandbots blared a defiant fanfare as Jathiss gave a silent curtsy before making her way to the stairs. Farouun met her just below the bottom tier of the throne complex. She caught the cheek of her closest head with a gloved claw.\n\n"Jathiss, my love. Our hopes tonight ride with you."\n\n"I will say as I always say," replied the Carbide Chef. "May the ground shake but the Kitchen Heptagon never tumble."\n\nFarouun kissed her free cheek and resumed her climb as Jathiss took her place opposite Agate Severance Star. As she neared the throne once more, the Baroness turned and began speaking. "I gave much thought to the ideal theme ingredient tonight. What basic elements of our culinary practices reflect the phenomena that make them possible? And inevitably, my thoughts turned to one phenomenon in particular."\n\nThe stairs began to rise up into a uniform platform, cutting off the arena from the throne. As it reached its full elevation, it revealed another gate embedded inside it. It shuddered open, and raucous croaking echoed from within. "I speak, of course, of carcinization. We unveil it to you now! Tonight's theme ingredient: ''EYELESS KING CRAB!"''\n\nA gong sounded as massive albino crabs poured from the darkness into the arena. Baroness Farouun stood atop the platform, her claw raised above her and clasped as if she had just plucked a star from the sky.\n\n//''"LIVE AND COOK!"''//\n\n[[next|9]]

Sparks crackled from within HUNTER=SEEKER'S scar. It blared a single overwhelming tone that resounded through the arena and sent Imet's white duster fluttering softly. Then it fell silent.\n\nBajiko Ki turned to her fellow Chef. A small sensor dish folded itself back into her bionic arm. "You have indeed parsed its intentions, Imet. HUNTER=SEEKER challenges you."\n\nImet spun on their boot-heel, showing their back to the monolithic challenger hovering before the dais. Their duster flared around them. "We accept."\n\nE'Beth reached with a trembling hand for a fallen microphone and rekindled its transceiver. Its signal would carry into the Heptagon's depths and bring her words to those sheltering within.\n\n"Friends," she said. That she remained to speak at all was its own good omen to those below. "The legendary chrome pyramid HUNTER=SEEKER has challenged Imet, Whose Broth Is Causality, the Carbide Chefs 0th. For your own safety and continued wellbeing, please remain in our shelters until this contest is at an end."\n\n"How are they going to cook with the arena in this state?" asked Q Girl.\n\nThe arena floor had suffered the brunt of HUNTER=SEEKER's shockwave. Cookware, debris, and toppled cabinets clogged the aisles between the battered cooking stations. Dust and spices drifted in pulsing eddies with every wave of distortion that rolled from the cryptic monolith suspended overhead. The Chefs descended from the dais into the pyramid's baleful shadow and set about restoring each cooking station's culinary capacity.\n\n"Between Bajiko Ki's expertise, Emberlily's speed, and the strength of Jathiss, they'll soon have it functional," said E'Beth.\n\n"What about the ingredient?" asked Esther. "If there's to be another hunt this time, that chrome terror could bring the whole place down around us!"\n\nE'Beth turned her occluded gaze to the dais. Farouun stood before her throne, rifle lowered but readied, scorpion tail swishing in thought.\n\n"She knows this," said the esper. "She's ruminating."\n\n[[next|92]]

"HUNTER=SEEKER," Baroness Farouun called. Her voice boomed over the hum of obscure machinery and echoed strangely through the pyramid's barrier. "What is the meaning of this intrusion?"\n\nBeside her on the dais, the Carbide Chefs assessed the pyramid in their own fashions. Choraler Jathiss prayed, kneeling in reverent contemplation before this avatar of the Wonders-In-Chrome. Bajiko Ki toggled an implant at her temple as her eyes focused and refocused, gathering as much telemetric data as she could while the standoff remained a standoff. Emberlily's attentions seemed split between keeping tabs on HUNTER=SEEKER, anxiously assessing the nearest exits, and glancing at the debris that choked the arena floor with undisguised anguish. Imet simply stood in a solid stance, feet planted as wide as their shoulders, hands clasped behind their back. The glint of their mirrorshades reflected the chrome geometry looming before them, just as the pyramid's gleaming surface reflected the esper.\n\n"That's the Baroness, then, with the peashooter?" asked Wisp. "She's a gutsy one."\n\n"Yes, that is the Baroness Farouun," said E'Beth. "I am E'Beth. You've met the Wardens Esther. And this is Q Girl of the Barathrumites."\n\n"A pleasure," nodded Wisp, her back still to the table. "Always meant to visit this place. Shame it couldn't be under less dire circumstances."\n\nQ Girl spoke in an urgent whisper. "It's doing something."\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER ceased its rotation. One vertex pointed to the booth and its opposite pointed to the throne. It began emitting a dull, steady whine that climbed in intensity.\n\n"Never heard one do that before," breathed Wisp.\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER's apex gleamed, then suddenly up shone a thin ray of red light, disappearing into the late evening sky above. The beam was only visible in mottled fits as residual clouds of settling dust drifted through it. Slowly, the beam arced downwards towards the throne dais. The whine amplified.\n\n"They need to move," said Wisp. Her hands tightened on the grips of her pistols. "Move!"\n\n"Wait," said E'Beth.\n\nPossessed of a preternatural foresight, Imet stepped forward a heartbeat before HUNTER=SEEKER's beam centered over their chest. The whine came to a crescendo, then broke, leaving silence in the Kitchen Heptagon. Imet's voice rasped through it, disciplined and clear.\n\n"You would challenge me?" asked the Carbide Chef. The pinpoint of red light remained fixed upon them. "You disturb our sanctuary, interrupt our ceremony, pollute the gestalt of our emotional landscape with panic and fear, to challenge //me?"//\n\nAs they spoke, the red light began to weave in gentle slaloms around each button of Imet's white vest, scintillating as it passed over the embroidered diamond quilting of silver thread.\n\n"For what?" the Carbide Chef continued. "To sate your ego?" They raised a hand, and by their will the chrome pyramid's beam bent. Imet reached for it, then spun the photons between their fingers. "What do you know of Ego?"\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER snapped off its beam. Nevertheless, a tangle of photons danced in Imet's grasp for a moment before they scattered them with a gesture.\n\n"Bel's tits!" Wisp swore. "They all like that?"\n\n"None are like Imet," said E'Beth.\n\n"That said, in their own ways, yes, they're all like that," said Q Girl.\n\n[[next|91]]

"I will waste no words tonight," said Farouun. Her voice echoed in the empty stands. Her Chefs streamed past her to seek the shelter of the throne. "For the ultimate struggle, we must tender the ultimate ingredient."\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER's beam flicked idly from Farouun's chest to the covered case before her. The Baroness clasped a corner of the draped cloth.\n\n"We unveil it to you now!" Farouun called. She whipped the cloth away, revealing the bounty beneath. Two hefty cornucopias spilled forth fist-sized seeds, each traced with shimmering veins of delicate potentiality.\n\n"Tonight's theme ingredient: ''ARSPLICE SEEDS!"''\n\nThe cloth drifted over the silent stands, spasming in the pyramid's pulsing grandeur. The Baroness held her upraised claw before her, as if to beseech the heavens to bear witness. Anticipation was her armor.\n\n//''"LIVE AND COOK!"''//\n\nImet broke into a dead sprint towards the ingredient display. HUNTER=SEEKER descended. Farouun turned and climbed to her throne.\n\n"Bang a gong, we are on!" E'Beth announced for the sake of those in the holds below. "Baroness Farouun has unveiled tonight's ingredient: arsplice seeds. The chrome Challenger and the Carbide Chef have one hour to prepare as many dishes as they can around this ingredient."\n\nQ Girl sputtered. "You can't - you can't //get// those! I've never even seen one before! I've never even seen anyone who's seen one before! How? What?"\n\n"She wasn't gone fifteen minutes," said Wisp. "I really should've come here sooner, if that's not the least of the Heptagon's secrets."\n\n"Friends," E'Beth said to her comrades in the booth. "Are you still willing to judge the results of tonight's battle?"\n\nThe Wardens Esther grinned. "Wouldn't miss this."\n\n"Quetzal! I'm in too," said Q Girl. "Asphodel must be tearing xyr roots out in envy."\n\nWisp checked her pistols again. "Assuming we //survive// tonight's battle, I'll eat anything you put in front of me. They're really cooking all of those?"\n\n"They really are," E'Beth confirmed.\n\nThe old mercenary grunted. "Well. This'll be a fine yarn to spin for Luli back at the Stilt."\n\n"Not if I tell them first," said Esther.\n\nImet crooked a cornucopia under their arm and shoveled as many seeds into it as they could. HUNTER=SEEKER approached inexorably. As it descended upon the stairs, it began a mechanical keening. \n\nEveryone at the table flinched at the sudden, harsh tone. Wisp cursed. "The damn fool needs to move!"\n\n"What happens to organics in that reality distortion field?" asked Q Girl.\n\n"I'd rather not find out," said Esther, sounding queasy at the prospect.\n\n[[next|94]]

It was difficult to glean the subject of the Baroness's thoughts under the easiest circumstances. Every pulse from HUNTER=SEEKER sent the psychic aether snarling and tangling like torn banners in the wind. E'Beth couldn't sense Farouun's intentions until they were focused directly upon her.\n\n//''E'Beth,''// came Farouun's sortie, commanding and undeniable. //''I must go below to prepare. Call on me if the situation changes.''//\n\n//Best of luck,// E'Beth responded. Farouun shouldered her rail-jezail and disappeared through the hidden doorway into the Heptagon's depths. HUNTER=SEEKER resumed its slow rotation.\n\n"Leaving?" Wisp asked. "Can't say I blame her."\n\n"Don't mistake it for cowardice," said E'Beth. "She goes to make ready tonight's theme ingredient."\n\nEsther's carbide platemail clanked as she stood from behind their makeshift barricade. She groaned softly and limbered herself to work out the discomfort of her crouch. "We can probably fix the table, huh," she said.\n\n"I suppose," said Wisp. "There's only so much it can do as cover against the payload of a swarm rack."\n\n"It's still just //sitting// there," said Q Girl. Her eyes hadn't left HUNTER=SEEKER. She rubbed her temples. "I'm getting a headache."\n\nE'Beth said nothing, but wiped the blood from her upper lip with the hem of her crimson shawl. They righted the table and rearranged the cloth and microphones. The Carbide Chefs continued their repairs in the arena below. The minutes passed in tense silence.\n\nFrom the grand staircase of the throne dais came the sound of hydraulics. A section of stairs lowered into the darkness. HUNTER=SEEKER snapped its beam to the gap in the staircase and ceased its rotation. E'Beth knew well what the staircase's movement portended and searched for Farouun's psyche.\n\n//The pyramid's aim is upon you,// she warned. //Be careful.//\n\n//''I shall,''// her Baroness responded. Farouun returned to the light of the arena astride the rising stairs. She held her arms wide and her gauntleted claws open. It was a pose that served not only to show off the cloaked display case before her, but to broadcast that she held no weapon readied.\n\nThe Carbide Chefs ceased their repairs. They had restored enough functionality to the arena's stations to ensure that neither party would be hamstrung. Jathiss and Emberlily rested their hands upon Imet's shoulders. Bajiko Ki clasped the esper's hands. The Chefs stood in brief, silent communion, then returned to the dais to attend the Baroness. Imet remained on the arena floor.\n\n[[next|93]]

Down below, an Imet levitated two millstones and ground them together in relative fast-motion. Shimmering seed-flour cascaded into a waiting basket below. HUNTER=SEEKER brooded.\n\n"It's //still// just //sitting// there," said Q Girl. She shivered. "What's it //doing?"//\n\n"Cooking, presumably," said Wisp. "Oh! Just remembered something. It had completely slipped my mind in all this excitement. You know //why// the damn thing's here?"\n\n"To challenge Imet, no?" asked E'Beth.\n\n"Aye, aye, but before that, I mean. You don't often see a legend amongst chromekind out of its chosen lair, do you?"\n\n"Well, you're the expert here," said Esther. "Sometimes you find a pilgrimage of Mechanimists bringing a reprogrammed robot back to the Stilt, but chrome pyramids tend to be beyond their means. Something tells me that hasn't happened here."\n\n"Indeed not," Wisp sniffed. "Before I was tracking this one, I was on the trail of a grand warband of Putus Templar trekking into the Deathlands. Seems they were searching for the lair of HUNTER=SEEKER as a means of avenging themselves upon the Heptagon." She chuckled grimly. "Well, they found it."\n\n"How did you suss out their intentions?" asked Q Girl, rapt.\n\n"Their leader had crammed his damn fool self toe to tip with communications interlock implants. He meant to bend HUNTER=SEEKER's will to his own. Instead, he led his band to their own undoing. I found him bleeding out in the rubble, the only survivor of the attempt." She tapped her gruesome mask of tanned human leather. "So I asked him a few pointed questions and took his face for my troubles. It's a fine get for my collection."\n\nAcross the arena, Bajiko Ki turned her gaze to the booth. She lit from the dais and made her way through the empty stands.\n\n"You killed him, then?" asked Q Girl.\n\n"Aye," said Wisp.\n\nQ Girl nodded. "Good."\n\n"So how did it get //here?"// asked Esther.\n\n"Hovered, didn't it?" said Wisp. "The Templar's rebuke did fuck all to bend its will, of course, but the attempt must have kindled something within it. Off it went on its merry implacable way, crushing a swathe through the jungles and rivers and canyons before it until at last it breached your vaunted walls."\n\n"I'm happy to hear of the Templars' failure," said Q Girl. "The thought of those genocidal bastards commanding something like //that-"// she gestured across the arena to the monolith on the dais. "-It's not quetzal at all."\n\nBajiko Ki entered the booth at last. She outstretched her chrome arm in greeting. "Hail, Wisp. I am Bajiko Ki, the Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye and a fellow hunter of Templar."\n\n"Live and drink, friend," said Wisp, clasping her arm to return the greeting. "Come to swap techniques?"\n\nKi smiled faintly. "The prospect is enticing, but this current threat weighs upon me. No, I came to ask if you managed to butcher any of those communications interlocks from your quarry."\n\n"A few, yes. They sell for a tumescent dram to the right collectors. You've got a fair bit of chrome, yourself - you buying?"\n\n"Yes," Ki nodded. "I trust this will be adequate recompense." From a pocket of her emerald coat she carefully withdrew a disc of whorled aquamarine a hand's span in diameter and set it upon the satin-clothed table before Wisp. A recessed socket for an energy cell sat in the center of it, and its circumference tapered to an eye-watering monomolecular edge.\n\n"Oh! Quetzal!" said Q Girl, leaning in interestedly. "That's a geomagnetic disc, isn't it?"\n\nWisp whistled in appreciation. "Well now, there's a pretty trinket. Looks like we're already swapping techniques, aren't we?"\n\nKi smiled openly. "This little one has bitten deep of fascist flesh, yes. May it fly true for you as well."\n\n"Reckon it'll bite chrome just as hungrily. Thank you," said Wisp. She rummaged in her pack and drew forth several cybernetics. "Tried to get most of the stains off. This disc is more than enough for them, friend. You want anything else? Ammunition? Grenades? Jewels?"\n\nThe cyborg Chef turned a calculating gaze to the pyramid across the arena, then returned her gaze to the mercenary. "How many EMP grenades do you carry, friend?"\n\n"More than enough to spare. Glad I'm not the only one preparing for eventualities."\n\nBajiko Ki gathered her acquisitions, spared one final glance to HUNTER=SEEKER, then quit the booth to seek her chambers below. The match, such as it was, continued. Nothing could abate the atmosphere of dread and malaise.\n\n[[next|96]]

Imet's duster billowed about them as the edges of HUNTER=SEEKER's aura bore down upon them. Just before the field of ablative reality swallowed Imet, the Chefs 0th sparked their ego and teleported away. Imet reconstituted in the aisle of their kitchen station and placed their bounty of arsplice seeds on a nearby counter.\n\nThe arena shook as HUNTER=SEEKER landed on the display case and its remaining seeds. It settled its base against the stairs of the dais and brooded there like the design of a malevolent architect. It silenced itself as suddenly as its keening had begun. At the edge of E'Beth's empathetic perception, distant, muddled confusion percolated up from the depths.\n\n"Friends," she announced to those below, "That impact came from HUNTER=SEEKER laying claim to the remaining theme ingredients. It rests now upon the dais, but the dais holds."\n\n"Quite the bounty Imet absconded with," mused Wisp. "Unless I miss my guess, that's more than half of the seeds in their court."\n\n"Is that allowed?" asked Esther. "Hardly seems sporting."\n\n"These things fall where they may," said E'Beth.\n\nWisp chuckled. "I doubt that's how the Chef sees it. Imet seems one to massage fate until it falls to their liking."\n\n"Ah, but they're not //one,// Wisp," said the Wardens Esther. "They're a bit like us."\n\n"Oho?" The old mercenary's interest was piqued. "So that's how they're expected to fix us a multi-course supper in an evacuated arena."\n\n"The Chefs 0th have never used the Heptagon's assistants," said E'Beth. "Observe."\n\nDown among the reclaimed wreckage and fused glass, Imet drew in a centering breath. They released the breath with nine bodies, nine selves. In the next instant, from the perspective of the booth's denizens, the unfurled Carbide Chefs launched into a frenzied culinary dance of superhuman speed. Where HUNTER=SEEKER's very presence disrupted the psychic aether, Imet's colossal ego wove it about themselves with such a tender certainty that it seemed almost a natural phenomenon. It was as though a tapestry had assembled itself from quantum noise in the distant, empty cosmos.\n\n"So fast!" Q Girl rubbed her eyes with her many-jointed paws. "I can't follow this. Where's Clactobelle when you need her?"\n\n"She struggles with Imet's matches as well," said E'Beth. "Time itself becomes dilated around the Chefs 0th. By the time she reaches them to ask about any given saucepot, it's already been transferred into four other dishes-in-progress."\n\n"Makes it a bit hard to commentate, doesn't it?" asked Esther.\n\nE'Beth sighed. "Yes."\n\n[[next|95]]

Anti-Imet drew to a halt at the foot of the steps. Shuddering compression patterns of reality washed over them from their proximity to HUNTER=SEEKER's distortion field. Blood trickled from their nostrils and beaded under the rims of their mirrorshades. Their posture betrayed no pain. With a rime-encrusted hand, they drew a magnificent revolver - the very same revolver that graced the hips of the Chefs 0th. Arclight gleamed from brass embellished with strands of withered ivy.\n\n"That's-!" cried Esther.\n\n"The Ruin of House Isner," breathed Wisp.\n\nSix shots rang out with such swiftness that they may as well have been one. The bullets strained against HUNTER=SEEKER's distortion field, vertices in a hexagon. Splintering spiderwebs spread through the cocoon of ablative reality from each leaden point. Anti-Imet thumbed the hammer back a seventh time with a chilling satisfaction.\n\nThey fired.\n\nThe final bullet punched through the center of the hexagon traced by its predecessors. An entire pane of distortion shattered, revealing naked chrome beneath. The bullet ricocheted from the face of HUNTER=SEEKER. For a terrible instant, there was silence.\n\nAn earsplitting klaxon blared from the pyramid as another pulse flooded through the Heptagon. The gap in its field led to chaotic interference patterns and harrowing echoes. Featureless chrome melted into a honeycomb of missile tubes, each gravid with volatile ordnance. With this terrible unveiling, E'Beth felt devastation sweep through the timelines in her psychic periphery. She made an anchor of herself in the final instant before chaos erupted.\n\n"Stay down, you young pups!" barked Wisp. The old mercenary vaulted from the booth and sprinted counter-clockwise along the empty stands, snapping off wild shots towards HUNTER=SEEKER. "Come to me, motherless dog of the Old World!"\n\nBut the pyramid's attention fixed not upon Wisp, but upon the one who had dared interrupt its cryptic culinary processes. A creeping barrage swept down from the dais over Anti-Imet. The Heptagon shook, but the esper had already blinked away, directly into the center of the kitchen space claimed by the Chefs 0th. The Imets unslung their Ruins and took aim upon their antagonist-self in imperfect synchronicity even as the missile barrage followed.\n\nE'Beth flung her arms forward in somatic supplement to the wall of psionic force she raised around the Imets. Missiles pounded against it and spilled their blasts into the surrounding arena. It was all going wrong. Death billowed up in her senses.\n\nA laser bolt punched into the scarred section of HUNTER=SEEKER'S chrome face and sparks burst forth. The pyramid sounded its klaxon once more and swept its terrible focus to Wisp. The old mercenary flung up her own wall of force before her. Thunderous, deadly blossoms trailed up from the arena floor to the stands.\n\n"No!" cried Esther. She ran to the mercenary's side, but too late. The shock E'Beth absorbed through her psionic wall rendered her unable to voice her urgent cautions. HUNTER=SEEKER's missiles crept up past Wisp's wall and hammered into the roof above her. The edifice groaned. It was all going //wrong.//\n\nKitchen Heptagon fell. Shattered tiles and foamcrete debris buried Wisp. The Esthers cried out in anguish. Gunshots rang out from the arena floor. Anti-Imet sunk to their knees with a sickening grin. They flung their head back and wove the last of their essence into a localized sphere of unmaking. Glass and fulcrete, oven and counter, roast and remoulaide, all buckled and fell under psionic disintegration.\n\n"Q Girl," gasped E'Beth, //"Run."//\n\nQ Girl's gaze flicked past E'Beth and widened. "Down!" She tackled E'Beth to the floor. E'Beth winced as a few of the urshiib's quills punctured her, but before she could even process the sensation, a missile slipped into the booth and burst over their heads. Dust, debris, and flame fell over them.\n\nIt was wrong, and it was //enough.// Through the thunder and the shock, E'Beth sought the anchor she had placed in causality and wrenched herself from the timeline.\n\nThe klaxon's echoes rang through the Heptagon.\n\n[[next|98]]\n

"I just realized," said Q Girl. The weight of her attention focused on Imet's psionically quickened actions split among their selves from harmonious chronologies. "The flour that they made earlier is going into nearly everything they're in the process of preparing. They've established something truly foundational with the theme ingredient."\n\n"Yes," E'Beth nodded. "Not only are they an unrivaled gun- and hash-slinger, but their baked goods could topple empires."\n\n"That one there," Wisp pointed to an Imet perched at a table in an eddy of time. Lavish brushstrokes plied a vellum scroll and trailed a wake of elegant calligraphy. "They making a menu?"\n\nEsther narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. "Sure looks like it. Can't make it out from here, though. If only Clactobelle were here!"\n\nQ Girl nodded wistfully. "At least she's safe below. Myself, I wish Mara were here. She can read the graffiti off the underside of a table from a third of a parasang away. I'm still not certain how she does it."\n\n"And that one," Wisp gestured with an undertone of concern to another duster-clad figure on the arena floor, taking deliberate steps towards the throne dais and HUNTER=SEEKER perched upon it. "What's that one doing?"\n\nIn all aspects, the blank-faced esper approaching the pyramid was identical to Imet, save for the calamitous intention rippling from their psyche. In the throbbing pressure of HUNTER=SEEKER's pulses and the chronological maelstrom the Imets had made of the Heptagon's kitchens, this one had escaped E'Beth's notice. Now their presence unfurled a violent promise into the immediate futures as a cliff face unfurls itself to the lowlands below after a century of wind and rain and thaw. E'Beth lurched to her feet.\n\n"That's not Imet!" she cried. "They've drawn too deep!"\n\n"You can //do// that?" gasped the Wardens Esther.\n\n''"STOP THEM!"'' roared Baroness Farouun. She leapt clear of the dais and its obstructing chrome occupant, snapped her rail-jezail to her shoulder, and took aim at Anti-Imet. She fired.\n\nHer smartlinked railgun spat forth a slug with fatal precision. Anti-Imet seemed to flicker in place. The ordnance slipped through them harmlessly and sunk deep into the glass floor of the Heptagon. Farouun snapped open the breech to cycle in a new slug. Psionic frost swept up the length of its barrel and jammed its internal mechanisms. Farouun cursed and dropped the rifle.\n\nThe esper antagonist's hand drifted casually to the holster at their hip.\n\n"Damn," Wisp spat. "Can't get a shot from here. I wasn't expecting to face a rogue esper."\n\n"It's dangerous!" said Q Girl. "Maybe the real Imets can deal with them?"\n\nTo the ungifted eye, the air surrounding Anti-Imet seemed to shift between subtly shimmering heat and faintly glittering cold with every step the esper took towards HUNTER=SEEKER. To E'Beth's Sightless sight, these manifestations were the corona to a solar furnace of titanic mental struggle. Each Imet diverted as much attention as they could spare from their dishes into halting their antagonist-self. These efforts were inadequate. A superhuman vitality and stamina possessed Anti-Imet. E'Beth sortied with her killing intent as much as she dared, but to strike at Anti-Imet was to sortie into a hall of mirrors.\n\n"Stay," said E'Beth. Her voice wavered with strain and the dread of inevitability. "We will yet need you."\n\n[[next|97]]

The flaming crab fell at last, its carapace slashed open in several strategic places. The air filled with the smell of roasting crab. Agate Severance Star barked commands to her waiting coterie, and several of them advanced on the still-burning hulk with padded gloves and butcher's implements. She fell back towards the occupied pantry, trying her best to dodge the phased crab's ineffectual attacks as she primed a freeze grenade. She rolled the grenade into the pantry where it bumped into the lovesick crab's feet, then she shut the door. The entire pantry shuddered and immediately frosted over as what little moisture the air held found itself trapped by the sudden thermodynamic shift. With a final calculated flourish, she spun and thrust her vibro blade effortlessly into the phased space that would soon be occupied by her final crab's head. The shade oil tonic ran its course at that very moment.\n\n"Agate Severance Star has finished the subdual phase!" called E'Beth. "Now, she can truly-"\n\nFrom the other half of the arena came a wordless hymn that pierced through the roar of the crowd with its beauty. Agate Severance Star whipped her gaze to Choraler Jathiss with a sharply drawn breath, her ears flicking in surprise. The crowd fell silent and even the Baroness leaned forward in her throne. Jathiss approached the crabs struggling in her webs, singing in solemn, haunting harmony with herself. At her gesture, two assistants closed in on the furthest two crabs carefully, armed with mallets and long fullerite stakes.\n\n"Let me know when they're done," muttered Q Girl, covering her eyes.\n\nJathiss, still singing, withdrew a bundle of herbs from one of her satchels as she knelt down before the final crab. Its thrashing and croaking quieted the closer she drew until finally all but its softly scent-sifting mandibles lay still. She slowly offered the herbs to the crab.\n\n[[next|12]]

At that moment, one of the crabs squaring off against Agate Severance Star burst into flames. The second swiped a massive claw at the hindren, but croaked in confusion as it passed directly through her. The third simply scuttled off to hide in a nearby pantry. Agate holstered her bowgun to draw her vibro blade.\n\n"Ms. Star said that weaponized injectors were crucial to her opening strategy," buzzed Clactobelle. "She said the blaze injector was to start the meat roasting immediately, while the shade oil injector was to get the other one out of her hair so she could start butchery."\n\n"While it's still alive?" croaked Q Girl, hoarsely.\n\n"What about the third one? The one that hid?" asked E'Beth.\n\n"A love injector!" replied Clactobelle. "Ms. Star said it would preserve its meats from the stress of combat, and that we could expect its flavor to be much more delicate as a result!"\n\nQ Girl heaved a deep breath and ran her paws through her hair. "Of course."\n\nMeanwhile, Jathiss danced back from the pursuing crabs as her kitchen assistants waited anxiously for the first to fall. She was surprisingly fast for her bulk. She spun back and spewed a slime-slick out of her mouths across the glassy floor between her and the crab pack. Their momentum carried them directly into it and their legs gave out from under them, sending them toppling into the sticky webs underfoot.\n\n"Ms. Jathiss told me that the small surface area of crab legs meant it was more difficult to catch them with her ground-based webs. She was contemplating using her slime glands, which she has now obviously deployed. However, she mentioned that she was reluctant to do so, because it would make her section of kitchen more difficult for her assistant chefs to navigate."\n\n"Thank you, Clactobelle. Naturally, the Carbide Chef and the Challenger must subdue the theme ingredients alone, but once they have succeeded at this, our Kitchen Heptagon staff can step in to assist with meal preparation."\n\n[[next|11]]

"Why ever doesn't our dear Baroness join us during the match?" mused Earl Asphodel. "We do so enjoy her company."\n\n"Perhaps she doesn't want to bias our judgment?" replied Sheba.\n\n"We certainly don't need her help for that this time around," grumbled Q Girl. "Though, she's got her Chefs over there with her, so at least she isn't lonely."\n\nIndeed, the other Carbide Chefs had taken up positions of repose on cushions arranged at the feet of the throne shortly after the match began.\n\n"That's part of it," said E'Beth. "But mainly, our Baroness suffers from social anxiety."\n\nFarouun jolted upright in her throne, gazing desperately at the announcers' booth and drawing her clawtips across her neck in a repeated cutting gesture.\n\n"My dear Baroness, I can't see what gesture you're making with your hands. I have a blindfold on."\n\nFarouun buried her face in the palms of her massive claws.\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle."\n\n"I asked Ms. Jathiss what all was in the herb packets she's feeding the king crab, and she said it was 'nothing so fancy, just a hearty blend.' Then she said she was also going to feed the crab some cider before her next step!"\n\n"She seems to be taking it a bit slow," noted Q Girl. "Is she alright? A king crab's pincer is a hard thing to shrug off."\n\n"She said the crab was going to pinch whether her leg was there or not! Then she said it still wasn't as bad as the battle of Theme Ingredient: Yempuris Phi."\n\n"It took us weeks to clean up from that one," shuddered E'Beth.\n\n"Then she ate another piece of witchwood bark and said I looked like the Kasaphescence! She was crying!"\n\n"Radiant as always, Clactobelle. Thank you."\n\n[[next|14]]

With a spray of slime, the king crab wrenched a massive pincer free of the Choraler's webs and clamped it ruinously around her closest leg. The crowd gasped in horror. Blood wept from the crushed chitin, staining the slime puddle that mired them both. Her song faltered.\n\n"What happened?" asked Q Girl, peeking from behind her stimulator-clad bear paws.\n\n"She's - ah, such pain!" groaned E'Beth, clutching her temples in empathetic agony. "She's pinioned! But-"\n\nSlowly, haltingly, Jathiss resumed her song, her twin voices wavering with strain. The crab quieted its croaking and gingerly, almost abashedly, released the pilgrim's leg. It took several delicate bites of the herb bundle, then started in on it in earnest. Everyone could breathe again. She gestured with nods of her heads and her free hand to her waiting assistants, then back to her thorax and her wounded leg.\n\n"She's bleeding quite a bit, isn't she?" asked Asphodel.\n\n"Our dear Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt is a hemophiliac," replied E'Beth, still wincing. "These are the risks when one has an open circulatory system."\n\nAn assistant waded through the slime to help spool some stickier threads from Jathiss's spinnerets, which they brought forward to wrap around her injured leg to staunch the bleeding. Jathiss fed another herb pouch to the crab as she retrieved a few strips of witchwood bark to chew on for herself.\n\n"Incredible," breathed E'Beth. "Choraler Jathiss has persuaded the final eyeless king crab to accept its own death and inevitable butchery with song alone! The subdual phase is over!"\n\n"I've attempted to transcribe her compositions several times," mentioned Sheba Hagadias, "but each time I seem to fall short, or choose the wrong modal scale. In this one I detect strains of the Song of Ben-Charonium, but most seems to be original. She's entirely self-taught."\n\nBaroness Farouun stood and applauded both Challenger and Carbide Chef alike. "55 minutes remain," she rumbled, before taking her seat once more.\n\n[[next|13]]

The slynth listened attentively as Jathiss laid out her ichorous needs. She rummaged through the cabinet once more and surfaced with a small rattling box labeled "SALT-AWAY" and a bulging waterskin. Handing the box to Jathiss, she bent and poured a few drams of honey from the skin over the pilgrim's silken bandages. She rose again and held the skin back from Jathiss, beckoning her instead. The arachnid woman of the cloth bent down obediently and kissed Emberlily, first with one head, then the other, then with both on each verdant cheek simultaneously. It was a practiced ritual. Emberlily passed the honeyskin to her fellow Carbide Chef, and then with perfect dignity, as Jathiss returned to the fray, burst into flames.\n\n"Not to play girshling's advocate here, but-" said Q Girl, "-isn't this a clear display of favoritism?"\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle."\n\n"I asked Emberlily about that, and she said that business was business. But then she looked very serious and said that Jathiss is putting herself on the line for all the rest of them and the Baroness too. That this wasn't just about love, it was about honor too. Then she said that anyway she had always wanted to try out a vibro dagger!"\n\n"I can make her a better one," said Q Girl. "Tell her that, Clactobelle. Tell her I said that and I'll do that."\n\n"Okay!"\n\n"It'll be //so// quetzal. Tell her that, Clactobelle."\n\n"Okay!"\n\n"Okay? I mean-"\n\n"No, I just had more things to report!"\n\n"Oh. Sorry."\n\n"It's okay! I also asked Ms. Star how many dishes she was planning for us tonight and she said four, and then she said 'Am I to be afflicted with your interruptions all evening?' Like that."\n\n"Was that all she said?" asked E'Beth.\n\n"Well, I told her yes, and then she said 'Why does Farouun even keep this oaf around?' - but very quietly. So I asked the Baroness!"\n\n"I believe that was intended to be rhetorical on the part of Agate Severance Star, Clactobelle."\n\n"Well, the Baroness said she keeps me around because she likes petting me! I like it when she pets me too!" Clactobelle shook out her wings and thorax for effect, sending off a shimmering cloud of rainbow motes.\n\n"Thank you, Clactobelle."\n\nBaroness Farouun shifted in her throne to blow another kiss at the announcers' table. "45 minutes remain," she rumbled.\n\n[[next|16]]

While Jathiss's staff struggled through the pools of webbed slime to finish butchering the massive crabs, preparations on Agate Severance Star's side of the arena had hit a snag as well. Or rather, they had hit a slynth. Emberlily had deposited herself in a chair in front of the liquor and ichor cabinet and now leaned back against it, bartering languidly with a visibly agitated Agate.\n\n"Ah, always an enterprising one, our Emberlily," said Asphodel. "It must take her back. She got her start as an ichor merchant, you know. Goodness knows why she decided to be a chef instead. We suppose there's something romantic about dedicating one's self fully to a life of roleplaying where there's demand enough for one to be supported in it."\n\nSheba Hagadias laughed softly. "Most of us do, in fact, have to eat, Asphodel."\n\n"You're quite certain? One does forget."\n\nAgate Severance Star turned away from Emberlily, her cold composure broken by a silent grimace, her hands clasped behind her head as she tilted it back in frustration. Finally, she made up her mind, drawing a vibro-dagger from her satchel and driving it point-down into the thick mangrove-wood countertop next to the ichor cabinet. She gestured at it dramatically with both hands. In a flash, Emberlily was on her feet, opening the cabinet and pulling free two dusty bottles of wine and several glowing canisters of bubbling convalessence, which she passed to Agate with an innocent grin. The hindren scooped them up and stormed back to her portion of the arena.\n\n//"Quite// the vintage she parted with, unless we miss our guess," Asphodel purred.\n\nMeanwhile, Jathiss's lilting hymn drew to a close as her heads sank to a seam in the docile king crab's carapace. She spread her pedipalps wide to bare her fangs, then plunged. The crab jolted softly, then grew still. Choraler Jathiss rose, giving soft commands to her waiting staff. As they bundled the fallen crab towards the yawning furnace-mouth of a great clay oven, Jathiss limped to the ichor cabinet and the waiting Emberlily.\n\n[[next|15]]

The Choraler herself was a bulwark of calm and patience, tasting mixtures, shaking cast-fullerite woks to spread heat, sprinkling in crab portions and herbs everywhere she turned. The same couldn't be said of her assistants desperately navigating the treacherous floor between cooking stations. Those who were skilled at passing through webs still found themselves slipping in slime; those accustomed to swimming through slime pools still found themselves befouled by thick webs; those who could do neither held fast to their prep stations and hoped that they wouldn't have to move.\n\n"Ms. Jathiss said she's grateful as always for the opportunity to prove herself in the Kitchen Heptagon! She's planning 5 dishes for us tonight if all goes well!"\n\nA loud clattering rose from Jathiss's side. An assistant lifted themselves up, absolutely mortified, from where they had fallen in the slime. The spilled contents of the pot they were carrying settled woefully into the quagmire in front of them. Jathiss turned her chef-hatted head to the announcer's booth and held up a hand with four digits raised. Then she limped towards the assistant to help them up and comfort them. No one spoke. Agate Severance Star looked away from the disturbance and shook her head with a faint grimace. She barked a few more orders and returned her attentions to the sauté in front of her. Activity resumed.\n\n"30 minutes remain," rumbled a stonefaced Farouun.\n\nThe next several minutes of competition went by with steady intensity. Agate and Jathiss gave orders and checked on dishes while Clactobelle flitted back and forth regularly to relay the fruits of her inquiries. Kitchen Heptagon staff with buckets and mops attempted to clear up the Choraler's mess, but ultimately served to make it even more brackish.\n\n"The fullerite cookware surprised me too at first," said Q Girl, making casual conversation. "But when you consider its conductive properties, it makes a lot of sense."\n\nE'Beth nodded. "Kitchen Heptagon is of course equipped with a wide variety of cookware to match our Chefs' and Challengers' material preferences."\n\n"Fullerite is something of a luxury material, being from the ancient days," mused Asphodel. "Surprising that our Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt seems to prefer it."\n\n"It's really the only conceit she allows herself," replied Sheba Hagadias. "I'm sure you've noticed by now her dedication to traditional, artisinal techniques."\n\n"Yet she uses her techniques more as a springboard to more experimental compositions and presentations," said Q Girl. "Quetzal! I love watching her work."\n\n[[next|18]]

With the crabs butchered and the ingredients procured, Kitchen Heptagon became a flurry of steady activity. Both sides knuckled down to craft dishes to their leaders' specifications. Knives minced, pots boiled, batter fried and chefs of all genotypes wiped sweat from their various brows. On Agate Severance Star's side, her assistants seemed to be having difficulties extracting the lovesick (and deceased) crab from its frost-bound pantry tomb. Agate dispatched curt orders to the assistants milling around outside the pantry, then strapped two insulated sleeves over her arms, flung a thick blanket over her hindquarters, drew her vibro blade, and entered. A muffled high-pitched sawing joined the noises of the arena from within the pantry.\n\n"It looked like a Mk 3 she tossed in there with that poor crab," said Q Girl. "I don't envy her the task of butchery at -6000 AU."\n\n"AU?" asked Asphodel. "Astronomical-?"\n\n"Oh! No, Arbitrary Units. Here in the announcer booth, I'd estimate we're at a quetzal 27 AU, so just um, imagine 5973 less of them. Though to be fair, that sort of temperature is unsustainable, even in an enclosed space like that pantry. By now it's probably more like... -4000 to -3000 AU in there."\n\n"I must admit it's a bit chilly up here for my tastes," said Sheba. "I like to keep the library at a comfortable 97 or so."\n\nE'Beth searched for something diplomatic to say. "That sounds... unique, Ms. Hagadias."\n\n"It's a dry heat."\n\nPresently, the hindren competitor emerged from the pantry, stamping her hooves to get circulation going again before busying herself with warmer dishes.\n\n"She came out empty-handed?" asked Sheba.\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle."\n\n"I asked Ms. Star about that and she said she got what she needed, and it could stay refrigerated for the moment. She also said that everything was going to plan!"\n\n"Interesting."\n\n"I asked her if that plan included all the cabinets next to that pantry freezing shut from the leeching cold and she said it was fine! It was totally fine!"\n\n"Our Challenger seems an elusive one. How's Choraler Jathiss doing?"\n\n[[next|17]]

"Yes, passions run high in Kitchen Heptagon!" announced E'Beth. "Our Challenger wanting to pay our defending champion a favor, apparently, though she could have fooled us from the way she paid it."\n\n"At the very least, it should be easier for the Carbide Chef and her assistants to maneuver their portion of the arena now," said Sheba Hagadias.\n\n"That's right, and it's gotta help as both contestants get closer to plating. At this point in the contest, we're starting to witness dishes approach their final forms."\n\n"We're curious as to what dear Jathiss has been assembling in that wok," said Asphodel. "It looks stirred, and fried, which makes it... casserole?"\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Go ahead, Clactobelle."\n\n"Ms. Jathiss's stir-fry contains meat from the claws, as well as diced voider gland and yondercane."\n\n"Stir-fry..." muttered Asphodel.\n\n"That sauce looks incredible," said Q Girl. "She's putting Emberlily's honey to good use, it seems."\n\n"That's right!" buzzed Clactobelle. "Additionally, the sauce contains an extract of fire ant gaster for extra spice. She said it would 'teleport your palate to a new echelon of sensation.'"\n\n"And that's not even her main course, is it?" mused E'Beth. "Both competitors have been making judicious use of our ovens, so I imagine they'll be pulling those out soon. There's Agate's now."\n\n"In that roasting pan with the crab, I'm told we have dreadroot tubers and luminous hoarshrooms, some freshly-plucked from the Challenger herself. Notice the secondary pan full of witchwood bark - Ms. Star has infused her roast with its smoke!"\n\n"Your reports are invaluable, Clactobelle," said E'Beth. "Would you like me to pet your head?"\n\n"I would!"\n\nE'Beth held out her hand and the energetic glowmoth rammed herself into it head-first.\n\n"What ever is our Challenger placing atop the roast?" queried Asphodel.\n\n"That was the wine reduction she was working on, wasn't it?" replied Q Girl. "I can't recall what she put in it."\n\n"So not only do you //eat// our fruit, you //ferment// it and cook with it? What strange fixations must drive you."\n\nClactobelle piped up, still pressing her head against E'Beth's palm with all her insectile might. "Ms. Star's wine reduction contained young brinestalk shoots!"\n\n//"You cook our ''younglings'' in fermented ''fruit?"''// Asphodel was nearly apoplectic.\n\n"You predicted a heel match, Earl Asphodel," said E'Beth. "You've got one!"\n\nAcross the way, Baroness Farouun licked her chops at the scents of competition and leaned back languidly. "5 minutes remain."\n\n[[next|20]]

"Wait!" E'Beth cried out suddenly. "I sense it - from the Challenger! A perfect intention! Like a knife held to the world! What-"\n\n"Is that a flamethrower?" gasped Q Girl.\n\n//"Stand clear!"// Agate Severance Star stood at the far end of the morass of slime and spiderwebs that coated the floor of Jathiss's side of the arena. Uniformed assistants scrambled wildly to clear out of the promised trajectory of her dripping flamethrower. She fired. As flames arced down the kitchen corridor, the arena filled with the smell of napalm, evaporating slime, and burning silk. The smoke cleared, revealing a floor free of hazards - save for a few smoldering patches of fire.\n\n"I couldn't bear to watch you struggle any longer," said Agate Severance Star. Her voice rang through Kitchen Heptagon, clear and commanding. "It's pathetic! Our intents, our methodologies - you must sense it, Choraler, we're not so different! Yet you limit yourself, you deny yourself tools that could amplify your efforts a thousandfold! Tools that could annihilate any obstacle in your path!"\n\nJathiss turned away, stamping softly on a small fire as she retrieved a kiln-fired pastry mold to resume shaping the dreadroot flour buns she had abandoned. Though she spoke softly, the audience's shocked silence meant all present heard her reply. "I am not worthy of their make."\n\n"She never turns it off, does she?" murmured Asphodel.\n\n"Turns what off?" asked Sheba.\n\n"Who never turns it off?" asked Q Girl.\n\n"Indeed," said Asphodel, wryly.\n\nAgate Severance Star growled in frustration, hefting the flamethrower over her hip. "And who determines your worthiness? The Argent Fathers, did they stride the earth to find you, you specifically, to chastise you for using //a battery?// The Kasaphescence? Did She come to you to say Oh, the wonders-in-chrome wrought from my Womb? //Those// wonders? They aren't for your ilk. //Did She?"//\n\nJathiss said nothing. Her snow-furred hands trembled.\n\n"You determine your worthiness! You steer it and shape it with your words and deeds! Now will you wallow in your abject limitations, or will you face me with everything you have? Your true, unbound potential?"\n\nChoraler Jathiss wheeled to face the hindren at last, the pastry mold clattering to the countertop as she spread her arms wide. "This is everything I have!" she cried. "This is all that I am! My body blesses me with all the means I desire, and my soul aches to serve with those means. Humble before my sisters, I walk!"\n\nAgate stood in silence, gazing at the pilgrim before her. Her flamethrower's nozzle dipped low to the floor, and at last she looked away. Her shoulders shook softly. "Hmm. Hmhmm. Aha ha. Ha ha hahh! Hahhh hah hah hahh!"\n\nShe slung the flamethrower from her back and propped it on a nearby counter, spinning to saunter back to her waiting staff to rejoin their efforts. She lifted a fist in a parting salute.\n\n"Very well. Live and drink, Chef."\n\nAbove them, Baroness Farouun heaved herself up from her throne to pace to the edge of the stair-platform. "Well, well. A taste of our burning passion, dear Challenger." She spun her back to the Heptagon, casting a fiery gaze over her shoulder at the proceedings. "15 minutes remain."\n\n[[next|19]]

imet lines:\nmy mind is a liquid sword\ni have burned away the hope of your victory from every timeline\nto paraphrase anth=lme zirself, "tell me what you eat, then tell yourself what you are"\nconsider this a transformative work

Baroness Farouun\nShe/her\nbutch as hell, chimera (lite)\nhorns, double-muscled, burrowing claws, confusing stinger, beguiling, domination\na water baroness who built her impossible kitchen arena such as has never been seen since the time of the Eaters. she did this by betraying 3 of her largest rivals at once and thus they perished. gathered she to her 4 legendary chefs, and bid she they be named her Carbide Chefs. \nBIG HAIR\nBIG CLAWBS AND IMMACULATE LEATHER GLOVES TO COVER THEM.\nFLARED SLEEVES AND A CRAVAT AND COATTAILS SPLIT AROUND HER REAL TAIL.\n"LIVE AND COOK!"\n(the chairman kage analogue)

Bajiko Ki\nShe/her\nTrue kin cyborg horticulturalist, high int & agi, stabilizer arm locks, chemical bioscanners, others as considered thematically.\nmight poison you by accident\n

jathiss vs agate\nEYELESS KING CRAB. LIVE.\n\nbajiko vs eitan\nMAN\n\nemberlily vs weary paw mara\nMADPOLES\n\nimet vs HUNTER=SEEKER\narsplice seeds

Celebrity Judge Six\nshe/her\nwry, finally in the stride of her position, L E S B I A N\nCANON LESBIAN!! CANON LESBIAN!!\nTAUR!!!

Baroness Farouun settled into her throne. With a subtle nod, she signaled to the troll princess to begin serving her plates. E'Beth swooned against the throne's ornate arm. This close, Farouun's physical presence layered into the radiance of her ego in an intoxicating superposition. E'Beth felt as though she were melting, blissfully, into her.\n\nAs the others tucked in to their appetizers, Farouun paused for just a moment on the morsel's trajectory between plate and maw. In that moment, seemingly, her presence withdrew from E'Beth. The esper floundered in disbelief and confusion for the merest microcosm before she sensed the truth of Farouun's intent. This time it was //she// who had dissolved her defenses in welcome. E'Beth needed no further invitation. She poured herself into her Baroness.\n\nThe space she filled within her - the space Farouun had opened for her - was basal and root-deep, the fibres of sense and sensation, physicality, kinaesthetics. She shared her body with E'Beth precisely as her stately claw popped a pâté handroll past her lips. Crisp molt-wrap gave way to iron-soaked richness. Unbearable in its delight.\n\nVaguely, like an evening's ache from the morning's stubbed toe, E'Beth sensed Q Girl's worried gaze upon her and the concern from the other judges. Esther, the closest to her, leaned down past her microphone and said, hushed, "You well, love? You're drooling."\n\nE'Beth gestured that her concern was appreciated but unnecessary. "Psionic communion," she croaked. Not entirely convinced but unwilling to press the matter further, the Wardens Esther nodded and she and her fellow judges returned their attentions to their hors d'ouevres.\n\n"Quite rich," said Asphodel. "We should know, naturally."\n\n[[next|49]]

Next came Eitan-Þjazi's wrapped heart dish. "To sate yon pricklebear's desire," she rumbled, indicating Q Girl with a still-dripping spatula.\n\nThe urshiib hummed appreciatively with her first bite. E'Beth knew the precise feeling as Farouun savored her own psychically shared portion.\n\n"It's so tender," said Q Girl. "And the marinade has kept it so juicy. It just melts in my mouth. Oh, quetzal, that's good. Thank you, princess."\n\nEitan-Þjazi prepared her main course for serving, parting the head into quarters with precise applications of brutal force. Asphodel fluttered in anticipation as the princess parceled out her portions.\n\n"We've been //most// curious about this dish. The garnish is so gruesomely whimsical. Not to mention the daring use of..."\n\nEsther took a bite and couldn't stop her face from puckering. "... salt," she croaked.\n\n"You've really, ah, emphasized it here, haven't you?" said Q Girl, reaching for a nearby carafe of water.\n\n"'Tis a fine mineral, aye," rumbled the troll princess.\n\nE'Beth's communion wavered at the rush of sensations brought on by this dish. Farouun had easily fit her entire portion in her maw but now found that the blanching process had done little to soften the garnish's spines. Then of course, into the havoc wrought by the lurking beth on her gums seeped the salt, even as the pickled hoarshrooms tried to soothe it. The pain was nearly overpowering, yet E'Beth sensed that even this sensation was treasured by her Baroness - yet never shown. Her composure was unbreakable.\n\n//You're showing off.//\n\n//''You read me too well, my E'Beth.''//\n\nFinally came dessert. The judges tucked in with much relief.\n\n"These sweetbreads," said Esther. "If I hadn't seen the organs prepared for myself I'd be hard-pressed to peg it as meat. The convalessence has really suffused it."\n\n"The nanohull breading is exquisite," noted Asphodel. "So fine and crisp a texture. Though perhaps one could do with a moister dish in the wake of the main course."\n\n"You've given us such an enlightening sample of the sorts of ingredients and techniques found and fostered in Bethesda Susa," said Q Girl, as the last dishes were cleared away. "I'm truly grateful. Quetzal!"\n\nE'Beth made to rise and help clear dishes - the taste of porcelain still resonating into her - but the Baroness snaked her segmented tail through her throne's tail-hole to wrap around her, pinning her to the throne. The haptic feedback of shared contact was enough to floor E'Beth. Instead, the reserve Chefs prepared the way for the next tasting. "Princess Eitan-Þjazi," began Farouun. "You have cooked with honor. You are a worthy Challenger. But how fared you against my Carbide Chef? Bajiko Ki, your dishes."\n\n[[next|50]]

"Thirty seconds remain," she rumbled.\n\nThe magni-drones launched from the throne dais, preparing to project the tantalizing dishes out to the slavering audience. Bajiko Ki placed the last of a series of candied lover's blossoms atop her desserts. Eitan-Þjazi's assistants finished plating her hors-d'ouevres as she ran one of her crysteel axes over a whetstone knuckle.\n\n"Fifteen seconds," announced the pacing Baroness.\n\nThe bandbots began their drumroll, but both sides seemed not to heed the drama. Bajiko stood back from her plates, sweeping her gaze smoothly over them, then nodding curtly to her assistants. The troll princess, meanwhile, had stowed her axe and now clasped arms with her assistants, sharing words of gravel-toned gratitude.\n\n"Both Princess and Carbide Chef seem to have time to spare, but time will tell whether that was a miscalculation!" announced E'Beth.\n\n"Five. Four. Three. Two. One." The bandbots gonged.\n\n"And that's it!" cried the esper. "The Templar Battle is //over!"//\n\nFarouun's dais sank with mechanical precision back from platform to staircase. The Baroness herself stood astride it like a living figurehead. At the same time, the announcers' booth began its half-orbit of the arena as hidden, uncomplaining gears pulled it painstakingly along chrome rails. Clactobelle, with microphone in claw and flanked by the magni-drones, landed on a counter next to Eitan-Þjazi.\n\n"How did you do, Princess?"\n\nThe troll rolled her shoulders, eliciting a geological chorus of cracks and clacks. "Well. A fine hunt for a fine sup."\n\n"You think you'll win?"\n\nEitan-Þjazi cocked her head with an air of ambivalence. "Aye. But 'tis no shame if loseth I."\n\n"One last question: why Bajiko Ki?"\n\nThe princess barked a short, sharp sound, half grunt and half laugh. "Showeth I in fullest time, bug of mine."\n\n"Wow! Frustrating answer! Thank you, Princess!" The glowmoth bowed to the troll and flew next to Bajiko Ki. The Carbide Chef held a tiny screwdriver to the elbow of her cybernetic arm, making minute adjustments as she tested the dexterity and responses of its digits.\n\n"How do you feel about your dishes tonight, Miss Ki?"\n\n"80%," she replied. "Subdual took longer than anticipated. I rally with my sauces."\n\n"80%? Isn't that a bit hard on yourself?"\n\n"It is... average, for me."\n\n"Why do you think Miss Eitan-Þjazi chose you?"\n\nBajiko Ki turned from her cybernetic adjustments, casting her gaze over to the troll princess - sharpening her axes once more - then down to Clactobelle before ending her internal deliberations. "I estimate it is because of all my fellow Chefs, I was the one to last visit Bethesda Susa."\n\n"Oh. Oh dear. Well, thank you! Good luck!"\n\n[[next|47]]

Clactobelle returned to the roving announcers' booth to confer with E'Beth, leaving the magni-drones to attend to the Baroness. Farouun, as always, scooped up the massive platters that bore the dishes of both competitors to carry them up the stairs. E'Beth still felt fuzzy and somewhat subdued - it was difficult to remain linked during the sudden flurry of activity and new considerations that came with a completed match. Still, her professionalism won out.\n\n"Challenger Eitan-Þjazi has prepared for us four dishes," she began, her voice suffusing Kitchen Heptagon. "Her starting dish: organ and cider pâté stuffed in crisped rimewyk molting. A masterful study in richness and texture. Next, she serves a salthopper-wrapped heart roast with slime marinade. To call this dish hearty is perhaps on-the-nose, but it absolutely is. Her main course is a salt-packed templar head, served whole, with pickled hoarshroom and a garnish of blanched lurking beth. The salt pack has allowed the hoarshrooms to marinate the meat while cooking. She closes with sweetbreads poached in convalessence with powdered nanohull breading. The delicacy of her selected cuts is drawn out by the convalessence and preserved thanks to the nano-breading."\n\nFarouun mounted the stairs smoothly to the bandbots' hymn. The magni-drones switched focus to the other platter as behind her, in motley procession, trailed the monumental presence of Eitan-Þjazi. Bajiko Ki seemed almost to be slipstreaming her.\n\n"Carbide Chef Bajiko Ki rebuts with her own selection of four. Her appetizer is breaded 'finger-food' with acidified urberry dipping sauce. The tender fingermeat has been prepared to perfection. Next, she fills the liminal space between appetizer and entree with tacos. True Kin chorizo fills dreadroot tortillas, topped with goat cheese, diced vinewafer, and lava-and-dawnglider sauce. Her third dish is a signature stew: Thighmeat ekuemolli with wine, fermented voider stock, Ekuemekiyyen greens and rust seasoning. The flavor profile is savory, subtle, rich, and masterfully complex. Her final course is dessert: Honey-glazed eyeballs in spinefruit pudding, garnished with candied lover's blossom. Sweet and artful - a feast for the eyes, if you will."\n\nAs Farouun placed the platters gently on waiting lacquered tables, the announcers' booth ground to a halt at the back of the throne dais. E'Beth rose from her seat, the sconcelight rendering her in scarlet, sweat, and shadow. She strode to join her Baroness, questing even now ahead of her own steps along the subtle currents of the psyche.\n\n"Princess Eitan-Þjazi journeyed from the chill depths of Bethesda Susa to face us. Though she challenged Carbide Chef Bajiko Ki in culinary trial, the two stood as one in defense of the Heptagon to crush the Putus Templar. Was it merely an alliance of convenience? Her true motives remain elusive - but her dishes, and the dishes of our Bajiko, speak for themselves." The crimson-clad Seeker stretched her hand out to the arena and the audience beyond. "It is the moment of truth."\n\nFarouun clasped E'Beth's hand, pulling the esper against her and dipping her low. Had she not been blindfolded, their gazes would have met, but no veil could obstruct the reunion of their egos.\n\n"My loves," rumbled the Baroness, before at last turning to the crowd. "Judgement comes to Kitchen Heptagon."\n\n[[next|48]]

Patterns of excitement and anticipation pressed into her from the others in the announcers' booth, drawing her once more to the match. A collective gasp went up as Eitan-Þjazi pulled from the oven a tray heaped with a glittering white mound.\n\n"What's in there?" asked E'Beth. "I can't sense through that layer of salt."\n\n"I think it's a head," replied Q Girl. "Check it out!"\n\nWith deft raps of her stony knuckle, the troll princess cracked the shell of salt-pack, peeling away chunks of it to reveal a grim culinary spectacle. A desiccated (and roasted) severed templar head emerged like a stillborn chick from its salty shell. Scalloped slices of softly-glowing fungus had been packed into the axe cleft along the top of the skull before it went into the oven. She set the tray down on the counter next to a set of stoves and reached into a boiling stock-pot to grab a fistful of wiry, ghostly vines, still writhing feebly in the sudden temperature shift. Heedless of the tangled morass and its mineral spines, she laid it over the templar head like a wig.\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle?"\n\n"Miss Eitan-Þjazi has stuffed this whole human head with pickled hoarshrooms and has just now added a garnish of blanched lurking beth."\n\n"Emphasizing the saltiness of a dish is certainly a gamble," murmered Asphodel.\n\n"Still, how bad could it be?" said Esther.\n\n"Oh, Bajiko's working on something sweet over there, isn't she?" noted Q Girl.\n\n"When the heat flares up I sense residual flashes of visual stimuli... Eyeballs?" asked E'Beth.\n\n"That's right!" answered Clactobelle. "In Miss Bajiko Ki's various saucepans we have eyeballs and honey, another with spinefruit pudding, and another with clarified sap."\n\n"Oh, probably for candying!" said Esther.\n\n"Is that a wager?" asked Asphodel.\n\n"What? Do you usually try to fleece your fellow judges?" the wardens countered.\n\n"Regardless, sounds delectable. Thank you, Clactobelle," said E'Beth, returning to her psionic reverie.\n\n"10 minutes remain," rumbled Farouun.\n\n[[next|45]]

This close to the battle's conclusion, E'Beth hadn't given herself over to Farouun's presence so heavily as to block out the voices of the judges. Asphodel's lyrical, reedy tones filtered in even now.\n\n"Still," xe said, "one is curious as to why the Princess chose to face Bajiko Ki."\n\n"Maybe she just sensed a kindred axe-wielder?" mused Esther.\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle?" Silent gratitude to the glowmoth for keeping her from shirking her duties entirely surfaced through E'Beth, a sentiment that brought her Baroness no small amount of amusement.\n\n"Miss Eitan-Þjazi hasn't mentioned her reasoning to me, but I'll try to ask her once the match is over. I //can// tell you that she's working on stuffing those rimewyk moltings with templar pâté."\n\n"Oh, the one she made earlier?" said Q Girl. "So many organ-based dishes! I feel so spoiled."\n\nAs the contest drew closer to its finale, E'Beth took the opportunity to extend her senses over the arena. The competitors in their kitchen segments, the bustling assistants supporting them, the completed dishes joined by those soon-to-be-completed, all weaved together into a grand tactical tapestry.\n\n"This match..." she said, haltingly, "It's going to be close, isn't it? It's rare to see both Carbide Chef and contestant so unfazed by the time limit."\n\n"Is it?" asked the Wardens Esther. "Looks like I picked a good match to sit in, then!"\n\nFarouun's presence inside her pulsed waves of emotions through her psyche - excitement, anticipation, but above all, hunger. She found her own stomach growling in sympathy. The Baroness stood, brushing a claw through her mane in languid exaggeration to bring the ancient timepiece at her wrist into her view.\n\n[[next|46]]

Farouun sought out from her crumbling bulwark with plaintive, delicate tendrils. She needn't ask anything. It was E'Beth's turn to sweep her up in a radiant tide of love and forgiveness.\n\n//If not for my sake, my Baroness, then for the sake of the show. It's a weird vibe, being stuck with all this processing when we have to be on air.//\n\n//''Sorry.''//\n\nEarl Asphodel fluttered xyr petals in the evening air. "One notices that our dearest Emberlily isn't up to her usual ichor merchant shtick this time."\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Go ahead, Clactobelle." She surfaced, with reluctance, out of a steadfast sense of professionalism.\n\n"I asked her about that and she said 'Are you mad? Better to barter with a landslide, the result's the same!' Then she went back to honing her knife."\n\n"Sensible," murmered Asphodel. "Eitan-Þjazi seems a being not easily denied."\n\n"You catch that glow from Bajiko's side?" asked Esther. "What is that?"\n\nQ Girl lifted up a small telescope to peer closer. "Lava?"\n\n"I can confirm lava," buzzed Clactobelle. "Also in the food processor is cured dawnglider tail."\n\n"That'll kick like a kindlehooved equimax," said Esther.\n\n"Bajiko Ki's sauces are purest legend-stuff," E'Beth said. "Refined in their simplicity, yet profound in their depth. I count myself lucky to have tried some. Thank you as always, Clactobelle."\n\n//E'Beth! Are things okay yet?// The contact was energetic and bright, though she could sense the worries tinging her lepidopteran cohort's thoughts.\n\n//Yes, Clactobelle, I'm communing with her now. She knows.//\n\n//''I know, dear one.''// Farouun's psyche sluiced through her to brush reassuringly against that of Clactobelle.\n\n//WOAH!// Clactobelle's psionic contact sputtered out in surprise as the glowmoth made an emergency landing atop a cabinet to cover her face with her forelimbs, blushing.\n\n"Is she okay?" Q Girl asked softly.\n\n"She's fine," replied E'Beth, also blushing.\n\n[[next|43]]

Across the arena, Baroness Farouun stretched languidly, hopping up from her throne to pace at the edge of her platform, casting her eye over the proceedings below. Kitchen Heptagon's assistants bustled to match the pace of challenger and Carbide Chef alike. On Bajiko Ki's side, assistants pounded out flat discs of dreadroot dough before setting them to bake on a rotating griddle, while Ki herself tasted sauces in between bouts of frying. On Eitan-Þjazi's side, the assistants dredged sweetbreads in powdered nanohulls and stoked the roaring ovens. The troll princess busied herself with the delicate work of crisping rimewyk molt.\n\n"15 minutes remain," rumbled Farouun. E'Beth started in surprise. Time flowed differently when her Baroness linked minds with her. Faint amusement percolated through Farouun's osmotic sympathy.\n\n//Baroness, you really should talk to the Chefs about the full situation. Soon.//\n\n//''Shall I talk to them now?''// She feigned a withdrawal - an imagined simulacrum projected out from her psychic bulwark. E'Beth sensed its facetiousness before it had finished flowing through her. She dispelled it and clung all the more doggedly to Farouun's presence.\n\n//They knew a deeper context than I. They'll abide for now. Permit me this selfishness. Let me keep you in me a while longer.//\n\nFarouun poured a touch more of her loving radiance into E'Beth even as she formulated a tease. //''Don't you have a match to commentate, my E'Beth?''//\n\n//This one's a wash. Stay with me.//\n\n[[next|44]]

A soothing remorse seeped from that of her Baroness's ego that filled her. It was tempting to allow herself to be placated, but first she must be understood.\n\n//Why didn't you tell us, my Baroness? You grasp how even the appearance of hosting and humoring those fascists is cause for dismay? Why?//\n\n//''Should the ruse have been any less than perfect, the prey may not have taken the bait.''//\n\n"E'Beth!" came a chipper cry from the arena floor.\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle?" Her answer was reflexive. She realized Asphodel had asked something that she had completely missed - conversation was difficult when hosting the mental presence of Farouun.\n\n"In the Carbide Chef's neutron cooker we have thigh meat, wine, fermented voider stock, and a mixture of Ekuemekiyyen greens and rust seasoning."\n\n"It was our understanding that those greens are mildly toxic to you lot, no?" mused Asphodel.\n\nFrom the floor, Bajiko Ki spared a glance to the announcers' booth and merely shrugged.\n\n"Thank you, Clactobelle," said E'Beth. She plunged herself back into her embroiled interiority.\n\n//I would never betray you, my Baroness. Your enemies are my enemies. You doubted me?//\n\nAcross the arena, Farouun's claws clenched the arms of her throne, her anguished gaze silently seeking E'Beth's despite the blindfold that denied her. //''No!''// The depths of her sentiment was enough to make E'Beth physically flinch. Love, sorrow, and remorse radiated from Farouun's psychic bastion within her. It was tempting indeed to forgive and give in, a sentiment she made no effort to hide from her Baroness, if even she could as they linked minds. But she hadn't yet delivered her point.\n\n//Did you confide in the others? Your chefs?// She felt the answer even as she was coalescing its question.\n\n[[next|41]]

//''Foreknowledge would privilege them unfairly against our competitors.''// This was truth, but truth framed to be agreeable. Something remained swirling underneath. She surfaced briefly at the sound of Q Girl's voice.\n\n"Oh, quetzal!" the urshiib cried, clapping excitedly. "The princess is wrapping a heart with something!"\n\n"That's the one she punched through carbide plate to rip out, aye?" asked Esther. "Glad it's still presentable."\n\n"E'Beth!"\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle."\n\n"Miss Eitan-Þjazi is planning to wrap several hearts with salthopper belly before putting them in a spiced slime marinade."\n\n"Sounds delectable," sighed Q Girl. "She listened?"\n\n"I asked her about that," continued the glowmoth, "and Miss Eitan-Þjazi said the geas was an honor and a pleasure to fulfil."\n\n"Oh, but dear Bajiko is up to something too, with those organs and that... grinding contraption," noted Asphodel.\n\n"They //both// listened?" Q Girl gasped.\n\nClactobelle fluttered onto an empty countertop for a momentary respite. "Yeah, in the sausage maker Miss Bajiko Ki has some organs and meat cuts, dried spices, and hearts just for you. She's making chorizo."\n\n"Thank you for your hard work, Clactobelle," replied E'Beth, before lapsing back into contact.\n\nThere - the truth beneath the truth. //But you told them of the challenger.//\n\n//''I did.''//\n\n//You could have told the rest of us! You could have told ''me.'' Anything to prevent us from leaping to the worst possible conclusion when the Putus Templar - the Putus Templar! - come marching through our wide-open gates.//\n\nShe could feel through the surface of Farouun's justifications that shame and remorse ate away beneath the facade. The chimera sank miserably in her throne.\n\n//You must communicate when the stakes are this high, my Baroness. Are we not also lovers?//\n\n//''E'Beth - my E'Beth - I am sorry. The secrecy was unnecessary and damaging.''//\n\n[[next|42]]

The sun sagged in the sky, brooding in the late hindsun hour. The light it cast over the land longed to linger amidst the canyons at the edge of the great Moghra'yi. They rose out of the flower fields as an island in vivid, churning greenery. Nestled just below their shallow peak was a hub of activity in the region: a great stadium of fused glass, foamcrete, and chrome, built around the crater of some ancient detonation. It glittered in the early evening as arc sconces around its lip and within its walls flickered to life.\n\nThe stadium's interior bustled with directed chaos on the arena floor and barely-restrained excitement in the stands. The arena itself featured symmetrical arcs of counters, cabinets, and cooking apparatuses rising from the polished black glass of the crater's belly. A small army of uniformed mutants scrabbled between the kitchen islands, stoking fires, boiling water, stocking pantries, and finishing last-minute preparations. Above the high walls ringing the crater floor stood stands packed with all manner of beings - from weary pilgrims to taciturn droids to slavering, seat-pounding cannibals to softly braying dromad libertines. Two structures broke the uniformity of this outer ring. The northern quadrant of the arena's circumference was dominated by a lavish tiered structure topped by an ornate and oversized throne. One level down, two wings of wide sconces extended to the left and right of the throne, each wing sporting two brilliantly-dyed banners, each banner embroidered with a stylized depiction of a different being - cyborg, slynth, esper and mendicant. Opposite the empty throne, across the arena floor, stood an elevated booth with a row of chairs seated at a long table, each occupied - though a large curtain obscured the seat on the left end of the table. The being on the right end - a woman in a hooded red shawl, her eyes occluded by a worn blindfold - broke from her quiet conversation with the plant seated next to her to fuss over the microphone on the table in front of her. Natural light bled from the arena floor and shadows deepened as the stars overhead grew visible, one by one. It was nearly time.\n\n[[next|2]]

"If memory serves me right," she began, pacing slowly and deliberately in front of her throne, "There is a certain chef renowned for her scientific approach to the culinary arts. But perhaps one might also say, there is a certain scientist renowned for her advances in the field of cuisine. Her accomplishments are as many as they are undeniable. She was even at one point research partners with our own celebrity judge, Q Girl."\n\nAcross the arena at the announcers' table, Q Girl bumped the microphone in front of her in her haste to speak. "We're - ah - no longer affiliated with each other. That is, if we're talking about-"\n\n"We are, darling." Farouun lifted her eyebrows at the interruption, but after a beat she smiled and resumed. "Indeed, for her accomplishments are not without their own controversies. This Hindren is a pariah to her people, and few have heard from her in over a year. All the same, I knew - I felt, deep in my breast, the certainty that I would have her here, in my Kitchen Heptagon. The thought that she might illustrate her culinary theorems - might refine them, might advance them in competition, here, against my beloved Chefs... It thrilled me to my core."\n\nShe finished her hoarshroom with a satisfied sigh, and licked a stray trickle of juice from her gloved clawtip.\n\n"As luck would have it, after a favorable astrology reading, I happened to encounter her while traveling abroad. I relayed the depth of my sentiment to her, and to my delight, she accepted. Tonight, my loves," she licked her chops, "It is my pleasure to host as Challenger... ''AGATE SEVERANCE STAR!"''\n\nShe flung her claw open to the chrome gates installed beneath the announcers' table, took a breath, then winked. "But before we bring out my hindren guest, tell us a bit about yourselves, darlings. Give a personal context to the spectacle about to unfold."\n\nE'Beth smiled. "I am Seeker E'Beth, your host for the evening once our dear Baroness steps back. Once I faced the Chefs 0th as a challenger, and the resultant clash summoned the Ospreys to the Kitchen Heptagon. I failed. Imet is unassailable. I begged you to stay. My Baroness, you let me. It is with this gratitude I silence the Elder Cant."\n\nFarouun blew her a kiss. The audience swooned.\n\n[[next|6]]

"Bang a gong, we are on!" E'Beth leaned excitedly into the microphone as the Baroness retired to her throne across the arena. "Kitchen Heptagon is sealed, and our contestants tonight now have one hour to take these beautiful specimens now bearing down upon them and transmute them into a legendary meal for us to enjoy!"\n\nBoth chefs sprung into action. Jathiss scurried forward, luring half of the crabs towards her in a rough pack of three, then fell back suddenly and precisely, her multitudinous limbs stepping deliberately over the shimmering strands she had woven behind her initial charge. Agate, meanwhile, let loose a piercing whistle to capture the attention of the remaining crabs, unholstered a sleek-looking bowgun from her hip, and took aim.\n\n"This is always my least favorite part," admitted Q Girl. "It's bloodthirsty."\n\n"All sustenance, no matter its form, is begat from trauma, dear," purred Asphodel. "Not ours though, unless one considers the feelings of hydrogen as it fuses. We like to imagine it feels good. You should try photosynthesizing, it does wonders for the conscience."\n\n"What about milk?" asked Sheba.\n\nAsphodel looked taken aback. "Do crabs have milk?"\n\n"Crabs have eggs," posited Q Girl. "That's similar, in the sense that substances associated with reproduction are nutrient-dense and well-suited to be repurposed for sustenance."\n\n"Eggs..." Asphodel fluttered xyr petals, a bit lost in the conversation.\n\n"They're sort of like fruit, but for animalia, Asphodel," said Sheba, gently.\n\n"Fruit? But those are our- oh. //Oh.// And you- you //eat// these?"\n\n"E'Beth!" Clactobelle fluttered back to the announcers' table in a trail of rainbow dust.\n\n"Yes, Clactobelle."\n\n"I'm told that four of the crabs tonight are male, while two are female. This means that roe is a potential tonight!"\n\n"Thank you. What can you tell us about our contenders and their strategies? These first few minutes of subdual are crucial."\n\n[[next|10]]

E'BETH:\nFive years ago, a woman's fantasy became reality in a form not seen since the time of the Eaters: a cooking arena, nestled in the Glass Crater in the mountains twixt the flower fields. Kitchen Heptagon. That woman was the Baroness Farouun, and her means were gained by the betrayal of her 3 greatest competitor barons, who perished. The motivation for spending her obscene water wealth to create Kitchen Heptagon was to encounter new original cuisines, which could be called reflections of the true creation. To safeguard the honor of this ideal, she called to her four chefs of great power, and she bid they be named her Carbide Chefs, the invincible beings of culinary skill.\n[introduce the carbide chefs]\nCarbide Chef Ekuemekiyye is Bajiko Ki. (go in on her?)\nCarbide Chef Phyta is Emberlily.\nCarbide Chef 0th is Imet, Whose Broth Is Causality.\nAnd Choraler Jathiss is Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt.\nThe Kitchen Heptagon is where these legends test their skills against challengers from across Qud and beyond. Both the Carbide Chef and the Challenger have one hour to explore the theme ingredient of the day. Using all their senses, skills, beliefs, and abilities they shall demonstrate their unparalleled artistry in destruction and recreation to the Baroness and her honored paramores and celebrity guest judges. Should the Challenger win, their name and deeds shall resonate through the fabric of this world to be preserved forever.\nFAROUUN:\nTo fall here is to fall among legends. Brave souls, giving souls, test your might with me and I will promise you a breath of eternity. Please, face me. Face my beloved Chefs.\nE'BETH:\nWe peddle in reputations, for here, legends are reforged. Best our Carbide Chefs and write your name in the cosmos. For here, we are gathered to truly test the limits of edibility and reality.\nFAROUUN:\nIf memory serves me [etc etc]

"Weary Paw Mara has come from afar. Q Girl has shown her the way and brought her here. Here, to Kitchen Heptagon. She is a legend among legends. Does our hallowed arena have the power to bend her destiny? If ever there is a night to do so, let it be tonight. Let it be with this feast." She clasped her hands to her breast. "It is the moment of truth."\n\nThe decorative chains on her arms clanked as Baroness Farouun flexed her arms, then heaved the empty barge back into the center of the arena with a guttural roar. The barge crumpled magnificently into the lake. Skiffs bobbed up and down in the impact's wave. The Baroness dusted her claws in satisfaction, then plucked the microphone gracefully from E'Beth's grasp.\n\n"Comrades," she rumbled. She pulled Emberlily to her side and dipped into a deep kiss with her. She surfaced and huffed happily through her fangs. "This is my mate! I love her!" Her dripping mane caught the arclight in a prismatic burst. "But now comes judgement. Don't you dare go easy on her."\n\nThe two parted and Farouun settled into her throne. She nodded to Mara. The tigertaur nodded back and prepared to serve her dishes. First, she unveiled her secretive lag-latkes. Slivers of fish and curiously stable slices of ivory root topped the fried pancakes of shredded lagroot. A delightful iridescence accentuated it from the witchwood charcoal it had luxuriated in.\n\n"Oh, like okonomiyaki!" clapped Mayor Nuntu.\n\n"I must ask you to hold off on commentary until everyone has tried it, sorry," said Mara. She served one to each judge, Farouun, and Q Girl. Each tried it and each cycled through a gamut of facial expressions (or floral arrangements in the case of the Earl) before settling on a surprised appreciation.\n\n"Oh!" Esk laughed. "Oh it isn't even real! That's so playful, the faundren would love it!"\n\n"The young ivory slices - they were //holographic// young ivory slices," said Nuntu. "The witchwood tricks you into tasting it, and then the layer of lagroot banishes it with its sheer //reality."//\n\n"Suddenly we appreciate madpole in the simplification, the recontextualization, the realization that the ivory was never real at all." Asphodel ruffled xyr fronds thoughtfully. "Quite a niche tasting experience you've concocted. We can grasp the appeal."\n\n"And plus, this pancake?" Esk flicked her ears in satisfaction. "Fried perfectly. I think you've earned the secrecy."\n\nMara laughed graciously. "That's a good sign! My next dish is the sporesilt casserole." E'Beth cleared away the latke dishes so that Mara could serve the casserole plates.\n\n"Earl, I must warn you," said Mara. "The glaze does contain my own pollen."\n\n"You know we're no strangers to it, dear Mara," buzzed Asphodel. Xe sampled it deliberately. "You know we take precautions. Thank you for your consideration, darling."\n\n"Ayvah, this dirt," said Esk. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back slightly. "Are you tasting this //dirt?"//\n\n"It's everything we hoped for," Asphodel fluttered, too satisfied to care to correct the Hindriarch.\n\n[[next|78]]

The arena lights returned. The Baroness set Emberlily to the side and cracked her neck and clawed knuckles in preparation. Clactobelle arrived once more to the rotating booth to relay the finished dishes to E'Beth. The booth itself had nearly completed its half-circuit of the Kitchen Heptagon, approaching its destination behind the throne atop the dais complex. E'Beth heard Esk quietly chatting offmic with Q Girl next to her. The hindren had trotted over as soon as the match ended.\n\n"Do the Chefs usually get that, uh... flashy?" Esk asked.\n\n"In the wrap-up interviews? Not usually," said Q Girl. "But Emberlily is the //first// Carbide Chef. She likes to run her spots like this."\n\n"The first, huh? I wouldn't have guessed."\n\n"I mean, you heard her. She's been with Farouun since this whole place was a twinkle in her eye. I think it's fun. That they're both, you know, like that. Quetzal!"\n\n"I ken what you mean, like-" Esk struck a dramatic pose, then giggled herself out of it. "It's good."\n\nE'Beth switched her microphone back on and leaned forward. The magni-drones began orbiting the platters atop the display barge, projecting the products of culinary combat on the screens anchored to their chrome. In a moment, they had to adjust vertically. Farouun lifted the entire barge from the arena waters and hefted it over her head. The dishes atop remained pristine and perfectly-balanced.\n\n"Challenger Weary Paw Mara opens with a dish we still can't show you, due to its apparent sensitivity. We'll take her word that her appetizer platter contains witchwood-fired lag-latke topped with madpole filet and young ivory. Her next dish is an exercise in decadence - Sporesilt and sweet madpole tripe casserole with pollen and psychal gland glaze. Note the interplay of flavors and textures between the layers. Her centerpiece this evening is a more liquid entree: Madpole and shaved limestone in primordial stew. Highly decorative and almost alive in its vibrancy. Finally, her dessert is a lignin matcha parfait topped with madpole fin crisp. Savory, earthy, and thick, with a complex profile that can't easily be called sweet."\n\nEmberlily and Mara followed Farouun up the stairs to the throne, where the other Carbide Chefs busied themselves with setting up the tasting tables. They trailed at a distance so the barge's hull didn't drip on them.\n\n"Carbide Chef Phyta Emberlily's anniversary dinner leads with a madpole and pickle stir fry, mountain-style spices. A dish, she informs me, with a special personal history. For her next dish, madpole sashimi, lightly seared, flux marinade. Much has been said and felt over this dish tonight. All that is left is to let it speak for itself. Her centerpiece for the evening is whole roast madpole, stuffed with Carbide Chef Emberlily. Her still-burning limb trapped in its belly cooked it from within as the oven cooked it from without. Her anniversary dessert is a fungal masterpiece of aesthetics. Waxcream mumble-maw pudding with honey-aloe topping."\n\nFarouun reached the top of the stairs. She hesitated momentarily, barge still held above her head. E'Beth heard Emberlily's soft chuckle as she fell in behind her Baroness.\n\n"You didn't think this through, did you?" Emberlily teased, too quiet for the microphones. "You just wanted to show off."\n\nFarouun bared her fangs in a smile. E'Beth rose from the table and made her way forward. With one hand, she held her microphone. The other she flexed for the sake of physicality as her mind levitated Mara's platter from the barge to a nearby table. Imet, the inscrutable Carbide Chefs 0th and a fellow esper, took responsibility for retrieving Emberlily's platter. E'Beth continued her narration.\n\n[[next|77]]

Clactobelle flittered to the barge to seek out her interview subjects. Mara stood in a softly localized rain from the waters she had kicked up in her sword forms. Clactobelle alit on her shoulder, her glittering wings protected under the shelter of a lacquered parasol crooked in the glowmoth's forelegs.\n\n"Wow! I've never seen anyone do swords like that!" the glowmoth said. A magni-drone circled them softly through the misting rain. "I was supposed to ask you something but I'm completely blown away!"\n\n"Thanks," said Mara. She was scarcely breathing hard. "I used that form to fell a leering stalker, once. In the Deathlands."\n\n"Wow!" said Clactobelle. "I've got family there! Um, how do you think you did?"\n\n"Tonight? I honestly have no idea. I'm not a professional chef. I'm probably pretty good at it, but like." She sheathed her swords and ran a hand through her vinelike hair. She took up the microphone that Clactobelle offered her. "I'm a //legendary hero?// I know it's gauche to acknowledge it but I've been out there for a long time and I have seen enough things that I feel confident in asserting this bit of self-aggrandizing metacommentary. I have //never// done competitive cooking before. I have //no// idea what's going to happen."\n\n"Wow!" said Clactobelle.\n\n"I've seen... a lot." Mara lowered the microphone, looking slightly haunted.\n\n"No kidding, didn't you go to //space// once??"\n\nMara lifted her microphone again and looked up at the traveling announcers' booth. "I'm doing this for Q Girl I love you Q Girl"\n\nFarouun's chrome dais melted into stairs and she descended to the arena floor even as the announcer's booth began its half-circuit of the arena walls on massive rails. Clactobelle fluttered to the skiff where Emberlily still lounged.\n\n"Carbide Chef!" the glowmoth cried. "Why have you been so tight-lipped all evening? What is this secret that has been burdening you all match long?"\n\n"I'm glad you asked, Clactobelle, because it's no secret." In a blink, Emberlily stood and snatched her coworker's outstretched microphone. She vaulted atop the helm of the barge. The crowd gasped as all arc sconces in the arena snapped off, leaving only the torches that ringed the barge's helm to light the slynth.\n\nCarbide Chef Emberlily sighed. Nostalgia gleamed in her gaze. "Tonight's our anniversary."\n\nBelow, cyan light seeped up through the waters. The submerged bulk of the Baroness slipped under the length of the barge and out to circle the waters before the torchlit Chef. Farouun's organs glowed from a freshly-ingested hoarshroom. Her beastly presence dominated attention from the shadowed stands. Emberlily continued.\n\n"It was two decades ago that I came into the service of my Baroness as a dedicated chef to sate her particular and bottomless appetites. It was six and ten years ago when we consummated the bond between us. Twelve when we pledged ourselves to each other in the Rite of Chimarraige, and it's that date we honor tonight."\n\nFarouun surfaced. The arc sconces immediately surrounding her reactivated with a muffled thrum and illuminated her. Emberlily hopped from the helm of the barge and onto Farouun's outstretched palms.\n\n"Jathiss, Bajiko, Imet, I love all of them but I met them through //you,// Rouun. Tonight's been all for you. Wait til you see my dishes."\n\n[[next|76]]

In the final rush of the match, the labor of chefs and assistants ushered dishes from preparation to plating. As the spreads blossomed, assistants ferried them from the kitchen islands to a central display barge bobbing softly in the flooded crater's heart. Parfaits, stir fries, casseroles and puddings fanned out from the barge's mounted platters. Mara covered the mouth of the witchwood-smoking oven with her heavy cloth and emerged from it with a wide covered platter before passing it to an assistant on a nearby skiff. Emberlily, meanwhile, revealed the centerpiece of her evening's thesis as she pulled from an oven the heavy roasting dish and its perfectly-browned contents.\n\n"I know I've been making a lot of noise this match," said Esk, "but I want you all to know that I am anticipating these dishes with an appetite I haven't felt since the old Hindriarch kicked me and my sisters out of Bey Lah."\n\n"Oh, this sounds like a juicy bit of gossip," tittered Asphodel. "How ever did you depose her?"\n\n"Well, you're probably already thinking that it wasn't a purely internal affair, right?" Esk scratched the back of her head. "She kicked us out for being inconvenient to her rigid orthodoxy. On top of that, she got greedy enough to pin the theft of Bey Lah's ancestral treasure on us after the fact. Truth be told, it was Weary Paw Mara who ambled into town, got to the bottom of the whole mess, and cleared my name."\n\n"No shit!" said Q Girl. "Quetzal! How has it taken us this long to meet each other?"\n\n"I'm wondering that myself," replied Esk. She croaked suddenly and grasped her antlers. "Wait, this means Mara is to thank for my position. Can I truly be impartial? Why did I have to realize this five minutes from tasting?"\n\n"Two minutes remain," rumbled Farouun.\n\n"Two minutes!" wailed Esk.\n\n"It's a smaller valley than you might think, Hindriarch," said Nuntu in a slightly consoling tone. "With a being as storied as Mara, it's hard not to have crossed paths with her at some point."\n\nQ Girl nodded. "Even //Agate's// met her. Don't sweat it, it's impartial enough for the Heptagon."\n\n"I'm glad for that," said Esk. She heaved a sigh of relief. "I'm //hungry."//\n\nOn the floor, Mara focused on seasoning a thick stew in front of her, a blush on her cheeks and sweat on her brow. Emberlily chuckled silently then resumed sampling the roast madpole before sending it off to the barge.\n\n"One minute remains," Farouun intoned. She hopped up from her throne and began pacing atop the platform of raised stairs.\n\nOn Mara's side, an assistant braced their stew in a skiff and hunkered around it. Mara dove into the water with the skiff's tow-rope clasped in her lower hands. She surged through the lake, with the skiff spraying a wake behind her.\n\n"Gracious, she's fast in the water," remarked Asphodel.\n\n"Being on good terms with fish has its perks, you know," said Q Girl.\n\n"With Mara's last skiff-load, all dishes will be submitted," said E'Beth. "Good timing and planning from both teams."\n\n"Thirty seconds!" cried Farouun.\n\n"Still, she doesn't need to be going //that// fast. She would have easily made it at the skiff's regular pace," said Asphodel.\n\n"It's been a long match for her," said Q Girl. "Let her cut loose, alright?"\n\nMara dropped the tow-rope and spun, bracing all four arms against the oncoming bow of the skiff. She guided it smoothly to the barge's side, masterfully redirecting and absorbing its momentum in mere moments.\n\n"She's made it!" cried Esk, pumping her fist in triumph. "Go, Mara!"\n\n"Fifteen seconds!" Farouun's voice howled through the riotous stands. This was her element.\n\nEmberlily kicked back in her skiff as the esper assistant leisurely propelled it towards the central barge with their psionic prowess. The Carbide Chef trailed her flaming hands in the water and crossed her lower hands behind her head, gazing at her Baroness with undisguised fondness. Mara, meanwhile, struck a swift series of sword forms in the waters by the barge while her assistant placed the stew with the rest of her dishes. The crowd was rapturous.\n\n"Five! Four! Three! Two! One!" The bandbots gonged.\n\n"And that's it!" cried E'Beth. "The Madpole Battle is //over!"//\n\n[[next|75]]

The match pitched into the escalating intensity of the final stretch. Emberlily plated her madpole sashimi. Some she transferred with her cool lower hands and some by her flaming upper hands as the result of their earlier searing necessitated. Mara, meanwhile, donned insulated kitchen mitts and pulled free her sporesilt casserole. It bubbled with residual heat, and delicate strands of spore and pollen rose in helices within the steam wisping from the dish.\n\n"Oh, that's //marvelous,"// purred Asphodel. "This is the match. This is the one."\n\n"The glaze on that looks incredible," said Nuntu. "Rich in texture and nutrients. And taste."\n\n"E'Beth!" cried Clactobelle.\n\n"Go ahead, Clactobelle," replied E'Beth.\n\n"That glaze is made out of concentrated psychal gland paste fermented from a memory eater, sap, and pollen. It should be very complex."\n\n"Seems like it'll be... gritty," Esk said.\n\n"Have you had psychal gland paste before?" asked Nuntu.\n\n"Never. But, I mean, it's made from an organ, right? Organ meats and organ products tend to be gritty, in my experience." Esk poured herself a refill from the nearby water carafe. "I'm not saying it's bad."\n\n"What's in those dessert bowls?" asked Q Girl. "Over on Emberlily's side."\n\n"Looks like that fungal pudding and the aloe sauce she was working on earlier," said Nuntu. "She's adding a garnish. Is that mumblemouth? There's something stuck in them."\n\nQ Girl lifted a telescopic monocle to augment her gaze. "Teeth?"\n\nEsk set down her water cup. "Teeth."\n\n"Teeth?" asked Asphodel.\n\n"Fangs, I guess," noted Q Girl, adjusting the focus, "but-"\n\n//"Teeth?"// asked Asphodel.\n\n"Madpole fangs!" said Clactobelle. "Arranged decoratively in ripe mumblemouth nodules!"\n\n"Thank you, Clactobelle," said E'Beth.\n\n"One doozy of a dessert offering," said Esk. "Y'all are really expecting me to eat dirt and stars and teeth, huh."\n\n"Sporesilt!" Asphodel buzzed.\n\n"Sporesilt, yes," Esk waved a hand downtable at the ruffled blossom.\n\nAcross the arena, Baroness Farouun snapped shut an ornate antique timepiece. "Five minutes remain," she rumbled.\n\n[[next|74]]

"Quetzal," said Q Girl. E'Beth unfurled her memory into them. How along with the esper she had snatched localized reality from the brink of gravitational annihilation. The tang of sphinx salt that still resonated through the syrupy wash of memory. That they lived, and that life was a triumph. Relief coalesced in the photon wash and poured over them like precious warm water.\n\nQ Girl laughed, and kissed Mara. Where their psyches flared against each other there was a brief and sublime oneness that E'Beth was not witness to. Psychic reverberations of their emotions thudded against her chest. Then Q Girl parted from their kiss.\n\n"I love you, Weary Paw Mara," she said. "Now, you have a match to win."\n\n"I make no promises," laughed Mara. "I love you too, Q Girl. But what in the blazing luma am I supposed to do to hold a candle to neutron flux?"\n\nThen they parted, and Q Girl unclasped her paw from E'Beth's hand. Around them was the arena, in all its life and fervor. Mere moments had passed since they had linked grasps in the first place. Q Girl wiped a tear from her eye. "Thank you, E'Beth," she said.\n\n"You know that I would do anything for you. Both of you," said E'Beth. "This is why I'm not judging."\n\nOn the floor, Mara started as if awake from sleep. Clactobelle landed on the railing. "E'Beth!"\n\nE'Beth reached forward and switched on her microphone, then turned to greet her glimmering comrade. "Go ahead, Clactobelle."\n\n"I've //just// got the ingredients in that marinade bowl of Emberlily's. It's just madpole cutlets, lightly seared, and marinated with neutron flux! It's nearly ready to plate. She's relying on the simplicity of the dish and its application of heat and mass to be enough to reveal its hidden depths!"\n\n"We're going to //eat that?"// asked Esk.\n\n"The decadence!" crowed Earl Asphodel. "The utter decadence! A //star!"//\n\n"Thank you, Clactobelle. I'm glad we're all still here."\n\n[[next|73]]

"You were fertilizing your pot," snorted Esk, visibly shaking.\n\n//"Yes,"// fluttered Asphodel in irritation. "Yes, we were. We were acutely aware of our own mortality in a way such as we haven't felt since dear Mara was involved in that //incident// at my Spindle some years back. It was unpleasant. Are you satisfied, now that I have voiced my discomfort?"\n\nMara, on the floor, flicked a glance at Asphodel but returned it to Q Girl. The two had locked eyes from the moment the danger passed.\n\n"I am, actually," said Esk. "I don't like lies and I don't like people lying to themselves."\n\n"One wonders why we let ourselves be dragged to these events with Mara," buzzed Asphodel ruefully. Xe waved a frond down the table. "That was in jest, dear Hindriarch. We do so enjoy her company."\n\nE'Beth switched off the microphone in front of her and leaned towards Q Girl. "She-" said the esper in hushed tones, "-she's holding this huge feeling over the fact that both of you could have died-"\n\n"Don't tell me," said Q Girl. "Get me to her. Even if you have to be there, even if we have to do it through you. Ask her and then get me to her. I know you can."\n\nE'Beth nodded, then took up Q Girl's paw and psyche in a singular movement. She quested her psyche down the astral lattice that flowed through arena and booth. She brushed in cordial inquiry against the steelwound, sunny verdancy of the psyche of Weary Paw Mara.\n\nHer intent was understood immediately and Mara bid them across the threshold of her selfhood. Qud unspooled around them in a warm wash of photons, streaming in the glory of an eternal sunrise. The vista was not of the canyons and flower fields that ringed the Kitchen Heptagon, but of gracefully moldering ruins and the jungles beyond. E'Beth knew well Kitchen Heptagon's vista, that of her Baroness, but this new vista was unknown to her.\n\n"The roof," breathed Q Girl, "at Grit Gate." Her paw was clasped in E'Beth's hand. At the esper's other hand, Mara twined a lower hand with hers. Their egos flowed and thrummed through her.\n\n"Q Girl," said Mara. "I thought of you in mortal danger. It was a danger I couldn't prevent. And I //froze.// I couldn't - I couldn't protect you from it."\n\n"Oh, Mara." Q Girl sobbed, stepping forward, flowing through the photon wash, pressing herself to Mara's breast. "Mara, I couldn't stop thinking that my last words to you weren't 'I love you.' Mara I thought that my every word to you wasn't 'I love you.' I clung to that thought through the flux and it seared me."\n\n"Q Girl," gasped Mara. She wrapped Q Girl in her arms, in her vines. "I won't lose you. I won't face that. We have so much life left together."\n\n[[next|72]]

A sickly radiance filled the arena, spilled out by the fulgurating phial clutched triumphantly in Emberlily's smoldering grasp. Mara turned and froze. Her chest rose and fell imperceptibly with her shallow breathing, lost against the flickering shadows of a chained star.\n\nEsk shielded her eyes and winced. "What is //that?"//\n\n"Neutron flux," breathed Q Girl. "There are fates beyond death for the engines of the heavens."\n\n"Is this tablecloth satin?" asked Asphodel, running a frond along the judge's table. "If we're to die here we'd rather be crushed against something beautiful."\n\nEmberlily beckoned a spindly esper from amongst her bevy of assistants. The two of them squared up in front of a marinating bowl of immaculately-trimmed madpole cutlets. E'Beth gave a silent prayer and quested her psyche forward. She would bolster her fellow esper's psyche as they slithered through the crumbling maze of unraveling temporality.\n\nNuntu's pensive rumble came to E'Beth through her concentration as if through a layer of gauze. "Should we evacuate? There are failsafes for particularly hazardous ingredients, are there not?"\n\n"There are," E'Beth grunted. "I'm one."\n\n"What kind of hazards are we talking about, here?" asked Esk. She swallowed nervously, her body tensed as if to flee.\n\nAsphodel answered her. "One hears of the occasional foolhardy ichor merchant whose slipshod ambition outpaces their grasp of common-sense safety procedures. One artless jostle of a flux-phial and suddenly their distillery fits on a pinhead, or ends up crushed under the weight of a thousand suns. Neutron flux mistakes are excessively fatal." Sensing that xe had done nothing to assuage Esk's fears, nor the same fears that bubbled up from the audience, xe continued. "That said, Emberlily is no greenhorn. Before she was the Carbide Chef Phyta, before even she was the dear Baroness's personal chef, she earned her fame as an ichor peddler unparalleled. She knows her way around a spot of flux."\n\nBeads of sweat gleamed on Emberlily's brow like diamonds in the flux-light. She held the phial at a canted angle and hovered a lower hand over the stopper, poised to unstopper it and pour the star-stuff into the marinade. Her body vibrated with nervous energy. Poised. Something loomed in E'Beth's precognition - a death so sudden and total it seemed as though death itself was but a single facet of this cessation. And //there,// outracing the wave - the organic impulses of muscle and neuron rising within Emberlily that ushered it in.\n\nShe spiked the esper assistant in warning. A moment before Emberlily would have moved, the assistant clutched her forearm, shaking their head with a haunted gaze. Emberlily nodded. E'Beth could taste the ghostly tang of sphinx salt sieved from the assistant's senses. Their eyes burned with it, as if in attempt to outshine the orphan remnant of an undead star.\n\nSmoke rose from Emberlily's collar. Still as she was, the feverish energy that constantly churned within her body had nowhere to vent. She burst into flames. Emberlily grimaced in pain but held fast to the phial. But there, within the flames, E'Beth sensed a path to the future. Her will entwined with that of her fellow esper and together they coaxed a tunnel of flame between the lip of the flux-phial and the mixing bowl below. Within that vortex, the flames devoured the atmosphere and left a perfect vacuum. The esper assistant released their grip on Emberlily's arm and nodded.\n\nA swift movement. A single dram of furious radiance freed from its prison, viscous as honey as it fell. The fire seemed to eat away the very sounds of the arena.\n\nThen flux met flesh and soaked reluctantly in.\n\nFutures blossomed past E'Beth, lofty and free of the shadow of critical gravitational collapse. She laughed at the sheer joy of it. Down below, Emberlily whooped and dove off the kitchen island into the artificial lake. Wisps of steam rose from the waters around her as she resurfaced and sighed in doused relief. The esper assistant dipped a washcloth in the lake, laid down in a nearby skiff, and draped the wet cloth over their eyes and brow. The match proceeded.\n\n"We had the utmost faith in her, of course," Asphodel fluttered. "Never a single doubt crossed our prodigious intellect."\n\n"Twenty minutes remain," the Baroness rumbled.\n\n[[next|71]]

Agate Severance Star\nShe/her\nA HINDREN. A TINKERING POWERHOUSE. A LEGEND. intense and cruel in a horny mad scientist kind of way. WILL use the level-up of this Beat the Carbide Chefs quest xp to grow another head on the spot so she can kiss both heads of Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt at once.\nformer research partner of q girl's??\n\nEitan-Þjazi\nShe/her\nTROLL PRINCESS OF BETHESDA SUSA\nseeking the one who slew her fathers for the final time. in truth, it was her! a mountain of a troll and a woman of few words\n\nWeary Paw Mara\nShe/her\nyou know her, you love her. four-armed tigertaur made out of plants. paramour of Q Girl\n\nHUNTER=SEEKER\nit/its\na legendary chrome pyramid spotted in the area, causing kitchen heptagon's staff and civilian population to evactuate to the caverns below. HUNTER=SEEKER is come to break the unbreakable record of the imets. can it??

E'Beth and the Carbide Chefs who had not competed that evening cleared the remains of Mara's dishes. Emberlily started doling out her stir-fry. She launched into a yarn as she served her dish, speaking in her quick but clear cadence.\n\n"Sixteen years ago Rouun and I were holed up in an old snapjaw fort some long ways to the north, in canyon country. Old Baron Mumthaz and his hired dogs had us besieged. He was out for our blood, for we had just betrayed the Barons Incarnadine. But what he didn't know was the fort sat on a feeder-vein of the mighty river Svy. For a week, we had it dammed while the mercenary jackals waited below. The backwaters filled with hungry madpoles and the barrels of pitch we floated over them. Of course, the fish weren't the only ones hungry. It was a siege."\n\nThe judges, Q Girl, and Farouun all had a plate before them now. They ate in rapt attention.\n\n"At last, we breached the dam and sent the floodwaters ravaging through their camp. A river unshackled, alive and angry with fangs and burning pitch. Mumthaz had no answer. This was the dish I cooked for Rouun that night, to celebrate our victory. Ahh, my Baroness was a vision in fire and blood that night. I loved her then as I love her now."\n\nFarouun tasted her portion with remarkable restraint, savoring every bite.\n\n"It's delicious," said Esk. "The heat on it! The spices are masterful."\n\n"The flavor profile is smoky and tangy in an enticing way. I think something starchy would be unparalleled in here," said Nuntu. "It's wonderful as it is, of course, there's just an opportunity in this dish for a certain..."\n\n"Dreadroot?" asked Emberlily.\n\n"A certain..."\n\n"You want fucking dreadroot?"\n\n"...//ingredience,"// Nuntu finished his wistful thought.\n\n"I would have given my pistil for a dreadroot. It was a siege. This is what we had and it's what I wanted to cook again." She rubbed her verdant chin with a lower hand. "Damn, I think you're right."\n\nNext came her sashimi. Each cutlet had a hint of charring, but beyond that, each sat on its plate with an undeniable presence. They practically glowed. There was one for each plate, and five plates in all.\n\n"This is the one we nearly died for?" fluttered Asphodel. "Marvelous. At last."\n\n"It might help you actually eat it if you just think of it as a cutlet of madpole," explained Emberlily. "It might be hard to lift it otherwise. It probably doesn't help to explain."\n\n"I think I get it," said Esk. She lifted her serving of sashimi with only slight difficulty, then ate it. //"Oh.// It's - it's full of //star."//\n\nAsphodel tipped over backwards in xyr chair with a fluttering moan.\n\n"I can't even voice this," said Nuntu. "It's so far outside my experience. I'm amazed my body knows what to do with this."\n\nEmberlily scratched the back of her head. "Well, I thought of Farouun's love and I thought that I'd like to contain it. It is as the sun. This dish was the truest metaphor. Each of you contains just that much more of a sun, now."\n\n"I certainly feel denser," said Q Girl. "Quetzal!"\n\n"What could follow this?" Asphodel asked from the floor. "What could possibly follow this?"\n\n"I'm glad you asked," said the Carbide Chef. Emberlily strode to her main course and began carving portions from the roast. The tender roasted flesh parted like butter before her vibrodagger, revealing cross-sections of Emberlily’s own severed hand lodged in the beast’s belly. "I'm about to serve you something no one outside this dais has had before." She turned from the serving table, a plate grasped in each arm, one for everyone at the announcers' table. "Me."\n\nShe returned to the serving table and brought one last plate to Farouun. She set it on the lacquered folding table pulled up before Farouun's throne. She rubbed the back of her head against Farouun's mane.\n\n"You gave me this opportunity, you sentimental fool. I love you. Savor this."\n\nFarouun purred. E'Beth helped Asphodel's chair upright so xe could sample the next course.\n\n"You're a little bit gamey, but sweet," Asphodel buzzed, having now tried the dish. "Roasting has done you some real favors, dear Emberlily. It's such a nice texture to nestle in this fish."\n\n"What kind of a chef would I be if I didn't already know that before I served it to you, Asphodel?" replied Emberlily.\n\nNuntu cleared his throat. "Carbide Chef. I'm sure you have some thoughts of your own on the question I posed to Mara. I'll repeat it: What is the nature of this dish we eat? Or of the act itself?"\n\nEmberlily grinned, cleaning her vibrodagger for something to fidget with as she talked. "I'll not retort anything the Challenger said, for Mara was true of it, every word. Here's what I think."\n\nThe soft clatter of cutlery on ceramic accompanied Emberlily's philosophy.\n\n"All food is sex. Sex is that what helps us reproduce and thrive. All sex is death. Death is a surrender of the self. All death is food. We are all of us feasting upon entropy of a scope that we can scarcely grasp. And everything we ingest shapes us. In times of scarcity, this, too, is a surrender of the self. In times of abundance, it is an expression of the self."\n\nShe paced around her serving table and switched her cleaning attentions to her steel butcher knife. "Cooking exists within this grand cycle as erotic slaughter raised to an art. This grand cycle is as old as life. It is older than life, even. This cycle has been painted across our universe in the very foundations of reality and matter. It is a totality of incalculable brutality and unimaginable tenderness."\n\nShe reached into the roast with her freshly-grown hand and pulled out a roasted green tendon from the belly. She tasted it, finished it. "This hand is proof. We are shaped by what we consume as much as by what consumes us. Even as we shape in turn. Let us never shy from this responsibility. Let us revel in it."\n\nNuntu nodded and patted his stomach in appreciation. "Thank you, Carbide Chef. I believe I am ready for dessert."\n\nEmberlily brought out her pudding to end the night's feast. The garnish of mumblemouth nodes bristled with madpole fangs, still twitching in the evening air from obscure fungal impulses.\n\n"One never thinks of these as dessert mushrooms, does one?" asked Asphodel. "Yet there's such a sweetness you've coaxed out of them. It's very rich."\n\nEsk crunched through the fangs in the garnish. "Ohh. That's really good bonestuff. I needed some of this."\n\nNuntu cocked his head to his plate and blanched. "I regret to inform you that my pudding just told me the location of the lair of a legendary chrome pyramid."\n\n"See? It's educational, too," said Emberlily.\n\nAsphodel settled blissfully into xyr pot. "Ahh, it was all we could have dreamed of. All of it and more. Have you ever photosynthesized from within, darlings?"\n\n"There's nothing like it, isn't there?" agreed Emberlily. She draped herself in Farouun's lap, heedless of the dampness lingering from the chimera's swim. Farouun curled her bulk down into a lingering kiss with the slynth chef in her lap. Then she rose, lifting Emberlily and setting her down next to her.\n\n"Dear judges," Farouun rumbled. "Tonight, Kitchen Heptagon has witnessed the raw stuff of destiny spun on the lathe of our arena. I can think of no finer way to spend my anniversary. I ask you to confer among yourselves and determine what shape destiny has taken."\n\n[[next|80]]

Farouun finished her serving in her customary silence, then finished her plate with a crunching of ceramic. Mara prepared to serve her main course. The cartilaginous pseudo-skeleton of the madpole bobbed in the stew of primordial soup, tender madpole flesh, and flakes of limestone. It looked a fossil granted life.\n\nAs the judges sampled her stew, Nuntu paused thoughtfully between bites. "Mara. I feel as though you've been anticipating this question for the last hour. I must ask it." He scratched his furred chin, then stirred the stew idly. "What is the nature of this dish we eat? Or of the act itself?"\n\nMara laughed. "You're right, I was expecting that from you. This dish is a sort of meditation on life cycles on a grand scale. The limestone is life that has come before us, made into the structure of our world. The primordial soup is where life springs anew. The madpole is, I suppose, the most metaphorical aspect of the dish, since it represents that life. But also, I can confirm that madpoles don't come out of primordial soup fully-formed, so that's why it's still a metaphor."\n\n"Kind of crunchy," said Esk, through a mouthful of stew. "Nice flavor."\n\n"Thank you, Esk. Nuntu, you also meant more broadly than the dish, didn't you?"\n\nNuntu spooned himself another taste and nodded. Mara took a deep breath and spread her four arms slightly.\n\n"Cooking is holy," said Weary Paw Mara. "For myself, it is unnecessary, voluntary. I give this time and labor and skill to you freely because it nurtures and strengthens you. I give thanks to all that gave of itself for your sake. I pray for the understanding of all that I took from to bolster you. This is my choice. I choose for your favor, for you, all of you."\n\nNuntu finished his stew and smiled. "I'm glad you were prepared."\n\nFinally, Mara served her parfaits. They were a deep, vibrant green, similar to the hue of her darker stripes.\n\n"You know, I've never had a parfait before," said Esk, plucking free the crisped madpole fin that graced the lip of the glass and sampling it.\n\n"That's so sad," said Q Girl. "Someone get this girl some more parfaits."\n\n"This is maybe a difficult introduction to the concept of parfaits," Mara winced. "There's a lot going on. They don't usually have fish in them."\n\n"Oh, but it works," remarked Asphodel. "Matcha has a sort of brine to it sometimes, don't you think? You've merely teased it forward. And your lignin is such a shapely addition to it."\n\nMara blushed. "I'm glad you've all enjoyed my spread. I'd like to cook some more with each of you sometime. Oh! And, happy anniversary, Baroness Farouun."\n\n"Thank you, my dear," rumbled Farouun, picking a stray shard of parfait glass from between her fangs. "You have availed yourself with the honor and skill that we find synonymous with the name Weary Paw Mara. But tonight, you face the first Carbide Chef. Emberlily, my love, let us witness your dishes."\n\n[[next|79]]

Choraler Jathiss\nShe/her\na tarantula taur and mechanimist convert. largely balanced but low agi & low ego. a hulking beast of a woman who specializes in desserts and experimental plating. slimy. two heads. spinnerets.\nsubby. a bottom. a humble pilgrim, a holy woman. a Holy Woman.\nhemophiliac. makes her own bandages.\nAgate Severance Star chooses her.