126 (II)

Competition

A Woundeater flared across Shiv’s arm as he reached out with his Biomancy. At the same time, Band leaped back into the air, drawing hard and long on his violin. A scream of notes sounded, and the air elementals washed down, crossing through Band’s body and lifting him high into the air. He drifted above Shiv and briefly sneered down, as if a god staring at a pathetic mortal.

But these psychological tactics no longer worked on Shiv. The Chef Unwavering was active, and now all that existed was the meat, the paste, the kitchen, and himself. The orcs ceased to be people in Shiv’s mind. They were just variables he had to account for. The whiteness of The Chef Unwavering consumed the world.

Shiv entered a trance. He focused on dipping pieces of lean meat first. He drenched them, massaged them, drew varieties of paste into them with pulses of Biokinetic power. Once more, Biomancy proved invaluable for cooking. He could feel the flavors seeping in, feel the mango and loomgrape juices spreading through the outer layer of the meat—spreading faster as Shiv stretched the structure of the flesh outward, letting the insides soak faster.

But as he did two at once, Band directed water and air dimensionals downward and commanded them to pick up the entire series of lean meats. They sailed through the air, hovering in the neat and evenly spaced rows. And there they stayed, in the grip of the air dimensionals.

At the same time, the water dimensionals splashed down from on high, their bodies like coiling ropes of rushing water. They reached out and used their Hydrokinesis to perform the marination. Thick streams of mango paste blasted high into the air. They directed their fluid jetstreams through each chunk of flesh and sank the flavoring deep with clenching pulses of Hydromancy.

Shiv regarded Band’s efficiency ever so briefly. The orc was moving fast—his dimensionals using a combination of Aero, Pyro, and Hydromancy to set up and work quickly. Shiv continued on, focusing on his own task. He made sure his lean cuts were prepared properly and soaked all the way through. His meat retained a faint glow of white, while the meat that Band prepared flickered. Something was wrong with Band’s preparations—something that offended The Chef Unwavering—but Shiv was too deep in his own trance to call a stop right then.

The Deathless walked over to the searing skillet with two hovering chunks of meat, each one the size of his head. The skillet was white-hot with heat now, made so by the gleaming Skysplitter planted just below. As Shiv threw one chunk of meat atop the skillet, it immediately began to sear. Shiv worked the mango-soaked cut first, watching it cook and manipulating the cut’s shape to let the flames spread out and burn deep.

Rather than using the skillet, Band commanded his fire dimensionals to act, and each of them sent flames upward to burn the meat chunks hovering over them. They cooked fast. They cooked hard. They cooked the cuts inside and out, channeling their fire all the way through the flesh.

Meanwhile, Shiv was just one Pathbearer. He was a good chef. He made no mistakes and gave all of himself to the task, but even with the aid of Chronomancy, he couldn’t keep up with an entire concert of dimensionals.

“Need. More. Efficiency. Chef,” Band taunted.

Tequila let out an almost mournful sigh as he continued doing something to the soaking rice. “I’m afraid this struggle was never truly fair. He is but one. One against a maestro with an army.”

Shiv ignored them. He focused on his own task. He felt how his cuts of lean meat burned with Biomancy. Felt how some patches heated faster than the others, and he shifted the tissues around. He was going to make sure it was even. That the flavor was fully spread out.

Band and his dimensionals worked fast and did good enough, but their cooked food did not glimmer like Shiv’s. Rather, Band’s finished cuts were coated in fading motes of white dust—unacceptable for The Chef Unwavering.

The Chef Unwavering 59 > 60

Minutes passed. Band fried dozens of cuts while Shiv finished six.

At a glance, it seemed like the Deathless was far inferior—and far too slow to compete with the music-wielding orc.

“Come on, Shiv,” Adam cheered weakly off by the side. Shiv could feel the Gate Lord’s body tense. Uva was glaring at Band as well.

They’re focusing on the wrong thing. So is Band. Shiv scowled.

Band reveled in his superiority. His violin began to shriek notes of primal triumph. More fire dimensionals emerged into the world. Air dimensionals followed thereafter. Water dimensionals arrived in support. Soon, he was reaching out for the fattened meats as well. Two streams rose from the assortment of flavorings. The loomgrape speared deep into the first chunk of fattened meat, burrowing deep and fusing within the insides of its fat.

And that was when the meat lost its pale luster altogether. Something had gone terribly wrong with that act. It got worse as the mango sauce coated the meat’s outside. What followed next was fire and a swirl of concentrated air, both unleashed by varying dimensionals. At once, the meat seared, burning deep, true, and completely as Band finished his first cut of fattened flesh.

As it was done, Band descended and had one of his air elementals hold the fattened piece of meat over Shiv. “Would you like me to take over, Chef?” Band asked, with a slight growl of triumph in his voice. He finally spoke a complete sentence, and it sounded like something was wrong in his throat. “Seems like a struggle on your end. Seems slow.”

Shiv ignored Band for a moment. Instead, he held out a hand. “Wait. Stop. Watch me.”

Ban blinked, unsure what Shiv was doing. The other orcs stopped what they were doing as well. “You don’t stop,” Shiv said, shaking his head at Mortar.

The big orc grunted as he continued applying pyromancy to the Skysplitter, managing the skillet’s heat.

Shiv worked very differently from Band. Instead of exploiting a variety of magic and going fast, Shiv used his Biomancy as he unfurled patches of leanness from within his chunk of fattened meat. He let the leanness soak in the mango before flipping the fat deposits out. Then, he infused the loomgrape into the fat until all the meat was yellow or purple. The process took arduous minutes. And only thereafter did he use his biokinesis to reshape the cut back to its original form.

He cast the cut down on the skillet, and sweat poured down from Shiv’s brow. Slowly, his body shrank as Plaguefueled wore off, but he didn’t notice. He was fully entrenched in his actions, in the process of cooking. It took a full five minutes for him to finish with that cut, but during all that time, Band just watched, his arms folded, unimpressed by Shiv’s performance.

Whisper, however, was squinting his eyes. Mortar sniffed at the air, smelling the mixed flavors. Shiv grunted as he used his own Pyromancy in a delicate way, directing some heat away from the fat so the loomgrape wouldn’t burn inside. The meat was bubbling, changing, and popping from the temperature. The fat expanded, and the loomgrape swelled with it as well. Shiv used his Chronomancy when things got dangerous—and he still lost a bit of glow. This wasn’t his best work.

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Shiv growled. “Shit.”

But he was going to finish it. No matter what. And he was going to make the orcs try Band’s cut and then his to learn the lesson he was about to teach.

At least I know Band wasn’t trained by Georges now. He would have never put up with what he just did.

And after a long and arduous process, Shiv finished his cut. He held it up, and though it gleamed a bright yellow on the outside with veins of purple hidden within, the only color he wanted to see was that wondrous soft white. The Chef Unwavering painted the cut with a faint aura, and Shiv sighed.

“It’s fine,” Band whispered. “Can’t be good at everything. Or most things.”

“Everyone, stop,” Shiv said. “Stop, Mortar.”

Mortar stopped channeling his Pyromancy. The orcs gathered around him. “Band,” Shiv said, pointing at Band’s mixed-sauce cut. “Take a bite out of your fat cut, and then try mine.”

Both pieces were the size of Shiv’s head. Band frowned slightly, but he accepted. He bit down on his own cut first. His teeth crunched through the mango exterior, but Band frowned slightly as he chewed.

“That missing flavor,” Shiv said, trying not to snarl at Band. “Those are the parts of uneven leanness. You missed those with your flavoring. The dimensionals are powerful. Pyrokinesis is useful, but the meat needs different temperatures for different parts. It’s not undercooked—it’s unevenly cooked. The loomgrape didn’t soak in fully, and some of it isn’t in the fat. That’s the key here. You tried to shove the sauce in and left holes where there shouldn’t be.”

“Still not bad,” Band complimented himself.

He held his meat out to Shiv, and Shiv used his Biomancy to pull away a smaller chunk before putting it into his mouth. He bit down, he chewed, and true to Band’s words, it wasn’t bad. Sweet came first, then the slightly acidic sour of the meat, then sweet again, and another, lasting sour this time, the grape’s aftertaste. It was a journey of flavors, but it was an incomplete one. There were patches where the meat’s sour overpowered the grapes, and it felt like a resurgence rather than a synergy—offering an intensifying sourness rather than a lingering one in the aftermath. Follow current novels on novęlfire.net

“Too much, too fast, too strong,” Shiv critiqued. “Just like you. Try mine.”

Shiv didn’t boast; he didn’t need to. And he was on the verge of being genuinely pissed off, so he didn’t much feel like it either. Band was about to learn an important lesson about being a chef: not rushing. This wasn’t a competition.

Band bit down on Shiv’s cut, not expecting much, but as soon as his teeth clicked together, Band froze.

“This…” Band said, blinking.

“Yeah,” Shiv growled. “You think about that for now. The rest of you try both.” The other orcs gathered round and sampled both Band and Shiv’s mixed-flavor meat.

After they did, Whisper spoke first. “It’s rushed.” He eyed Band and slowly shook his head. “I can taste it, the unevenness. You’re supposed to build on the sour, not overpower it, not kill the sweetness entirely.”

“Too many cooks under one,” Mortar chuckled to himself.

Band continued chewing on Shiv’s cut. His face was scrunched in focus. He was trying to find something that was wrong with Shiv’s meat—

“If you’re looking for a flaw, I already found it. I didn’t heat it well enough. Parts are still uneven. Like yours.”

The orc grunted in discomfort. “Still pretty good.”

“Pretty good?” Shiv snarled. “The felling fuck do you mean pretty good? We didn’t get a bonus to any skill from this. Do you know what that means? Means it wasn’t good enough. Means it was shit. We’re cooking shit right now, Band. Because we are competing with each other rather than trying to finish the food. You think that’s domination?” The orc looked away from Shiv. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Band did. “No, Chef.”

“No. Okay. So you’re faster. So you can command a lot of dimensionals and get your cooking done—when was this a race? Tell me. Tell me when it became a race? I want to know.”

“It’s not.”

“It’s not. Great. So. Why the fuck are we doing this? Who won when both pieces of meat are mediocre? Who’s the better piece of shit? Is that what we’re fighting for here? Do we need to go back to scrambled eggs?”

“No,” Band said, looking down at the ground.

Again, the orc seemed almost human—and actually felt shame. The other orcs were quiet too.

The scene was an odd one, a shrunken, human-sized Shiv chewing out monsters three times his size, but they took it with uncomfortable grace. “I understand you all want to dominate. I understand that you need to hurt, that you need to fight, to feed yourself, to feed that itch inside of you. But what we just did just now was make a lot of mediocre food. Are we going to get good at cooking by making mediocre food? Are we? Is that what we set out to do?”

The orcs looked at him. None of them spoke.

“Is mediocrity domination?” Shiv asked. He met the eyes of every orc and shook his head. “No. This is what Georges calls passable shit. Passable shit is still shit! If you are a chef, shit is not acceptable. Shit is what a Pathbearer trying to survive in the woods eats. We are not in the woods. We have time. We have the ingredients. We have each other, so the fault is with us!”

“We do not fight,” Shiv began, looking at Whisper, “with our fellow chefs in the kitchen, because it risks the dish. We do not rush through the process, either. This is not a race. If you’re going to race, then don’t do it in the kitchen. Efficiency is one thing. Missing flavors are felling mess-ups for taste.” Shiv looked at Tequila and Mortar. He gave them a grunt. “You two did fine. Looking forward to drinking your wine, Tequila. Good job with the heat, Mortar.”

“Aye, Chef,” Mortar grunted. A slight smirk adorned his face thereafter, and Whisper frowned slightly.

“Now,” Shiv said, “we’re going to do this together. We’re going to start over from where we left off. We’re going to do it carefully, and we’re going to get this meal done right. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. It’s going to be properly soaked on the inside, properly marinated on the outside, and it’s not going to have any missing patches of taste—or any overpowering flavors. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Chef,” the orcs said as one.

“Good. Whisper, you’re back in. No more fucking around with knives—just focus on the meat. Band. Use your dimensionals if you want. It is efficient. Just don’t have them do this quarter-assed. They are not the performers. The meal is the performance. The taste is a performance. This is showboating. No one can taste your song. Focus on the godsdamned food.”

“Yes, Chef,” Band said.

Shiv sighed. “I don’t know where you got that knife, but I know it isn’t from Georges. He would have never accepted this shit. You would be gone. On the spot. So. We’re going to be having a conversation about that knife after we make something acceptable.If. But congratulations—the mystery you tried to build up earlier is gone now. Nice job.”

Band flinched.

Silver Tongue 25 > 27

Shiv continued. “This was not acceptable. Showing off skills and humiliating me is fine if the dish is finished and finished well. It felling wasn’t! We’re going to be chefs, then we’re going to do it to the bone. That means that we need to be great alone and perfect together. Not scattered. Not a mess. Tight! Together! Like a fist!” He held out a fist, and he shook it at the orcs. A few of them nodded, repeating the act. He didn’t know if they were playing psychological games, trying to appeal to him to make him lower his guard, but right then, he didn’t care. The dish came first. “Do it right. Or you’re just wasting your time here. There is no dominance in half-assing.”

He turned to Adam and Uva, and now they were looking on, both of them seeming entranced by the sight.

“Adam,” Shiv said, slightly apologetic. “It’s going to take a while longer for me to finish this.”

“What?” Adam blinked, breaking from the stupor. “Oh, no, no, it’s fine. It’s just… Take as long as you need to.” He nodded. “Did… did you just chew out a group of orcs?”

“No. I chewed out a group of chefs,” Shiv replied. “And they’re going to do it right now. Aren’t they.”

“Aye, chef!” The orcs called out. “As long as it takes!”

“Good,” Shiv said. “Let’s get this done right now.”

And as the Deathless and the orcs attacked the recipe with renewed vigor, Adam leaned closer to Uva. “I think… I think this might work. I think Shiv might be able to control the orcs.”

“I don’t know about control,” Uva said, an equally surprised look on her face. “But compel? Command the respect of? Yes. He… He seems to have an intuitive understanding of their nature.”

Both watched as Shiv shouted commands and the orcs obeyed.

Adam let out a breath and rubbed his face. “Ascendants. We’re going to be saving Blackedge with an orc army. How the hells did I get here?”

The Chef Unwavering 60 > 62

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