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He’s back in his old house. Paintings lining the walls, antique furniture, his family wasn’t rich, per se. But being such popular magicians left the Trescounts with plenty of gold to lead a modest life.
Walking back through the long wooden hallways brings F- Alastyr an odd mix of nostalgia and guilt and the sinking hint of bitterness. Just a tad. Enough to bury back down within himself.
His boots make a soft thumping sound as he walks, every footfall making the long red carpet cough up another spurt of dust.
And he walks, and he walks, and he— what was he doing here?
Right. He was walking. And he was looking for something.
He’s looking…. he’s looking for a way out. Or he’s looking for someone. Or maybe—
Alastyr’s stomach rumbles, snapping him out of his thoughts. It clears his head.
He is looking for an exit.
He does not want to be here.
Because—
Because—
Because you do not belong, says a voice that is not his own. A voice that speaks through layers of teeth, the sound whistling and struggling to make its way between rows of fangs.
Or so Alastyr assumes, with a shudder. He can’t actually see the thing (as much as he turns and cranes his head) but if anything he’s got a pretty good imagination.
That is all you have, isn’t it.
“Hello?” he calls out to the empty corridors. His eyes scan the surroundings until—
There.
In the painting, of what was perhaps his great great great something or another, sharp ears angled up and fair skin muddled by brushstrokes. The wizened face morphs into something horrid, features contorting and ripping themselves apart. Between the seams of the tearing, fleshy cloth, Alastyr can see red. And yellow. And blinking and eyes and pupils and—
Alastyrrrrrr… the thing hisses.
Alastyr startles, back hitting an ornate mahogany table on the opposite side of the hall.
“What,” he asks, voice trembling, “what the hell are you???”
The thing doesn’t answer, the thing doesn’t laugh, it doesn’t blink with any of its hundreds of eyes, or writhe its red twisted flesh.
You know me.
Without warning, from the torn and mangled eyehole of his painted relative, a tendril of sinew shoots out and embeds itself into the wall, grazing Alastyr’s cheek, and missing its target with a CRACK of splintering wood.
Alastyr screams.
And Alastyr runs.
Heart pounding, head pounding, feet pounding against the rug— there’s no time to care about scuff marks, he just needs to get out.
He pivots sharply to try to open one of the many doors lining the sides of the hallway jiggling the handle— locked.
Alastyr can afford to take one nervous glance behind him to see—
Fire.
Everything is on fire.
From the tendril embedded in the wall, flames begin to lick out from the pores of that horrid thing.
The flesh rubs like vines up and down the walls in irregular patterns, leaving scorch marks and bursts of flame in their wake.
And oh FUCK they’re coming quick.
Alastyr runs and he runs-- sweat dripping down his brow not from the exertion but because holy hells it’s getting hot in here.
He’s trying to control his very, very laboured breathing but it—t-
That train of thought is cut off by a yelp as he feels his left foot come out from under him.
With a bang, Alastyr’s chin hits the ground. Hard.
His cheek still stings from where the tendril had shot by, and now his body is aching from the running, and his ankle is being steadily choked by….
Ohhh gods.
He tries to tug his ankle away from the vine of flesh, but it is sharp.
It feels like teeth digging into his skin, and-
Oh those are just straight up teeth.
Those are teeth embedding themselves in his ankle, drawing deep crimson blood.
Alastyr wants to throw up.
“STOP!” he shouts. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck stop stop stop stop—”
He’s not fast enough, trying to get away on his elbows with his ankle trapped. The fire beats him in the race, roaring along the walls on either side of this endless corridor.
Eating the decorations, eating those paintings, eating the antique furniture, eating the home that he’s still not sure he can call his own.
The mass of flesh is steadily approaching, all eyes and teeth and horrid things.
It smells like rotting, rotting, and wet concrete. Wet concrete and blood. Blood and bone. Bone and gunpowder and the smell— the smell of burning wood.
“What are you?!” Alastyr whispers through coughs and gags. The smoke isn’t making it very easy. His vision is going blurry.
You already know.
A tendril the width of his arm spears through the space between his ribs.
He gurgles, he chokes, he coughs as his own blood spills down from his mouth onto his charred lab coat.
And with a final breath, Alastyr—
Grggrgrgr
“Mrgfph….
…..what time is it………
….
…. does time really matter in space?” Flynn mutters to himself. He supposes time doesn’t really matter as much as a schedule would.
It had been more of a simultaneous “we’re going to collapse” from the entire party, before being led to their own rooms by Strangle.
“If we knew this guy had a mansion, in space no less,” Flynn muses, “maybe we woulda tried harder to make sure he didn’t get literally eaten by that dragon in the first place.”
The room is nice. Weird, but nice. He’s used to warm lantern light, or the flickering flame of a candle to sleep by, so the, y’know, neon purple strips of illumination along the floors and ceilings are kinda weird.
But they just came from the cowboy dimension so it could be weirder.
Point is, at this time everyone else should be asleep in the Stranglehold. Flynn is not, however, because—
Grgrllgrlg
Because he is really fucking hungry. Even a space mansion in the middle of space is bound to have akitchen, right?
He double checks Garuda’s lamp is safe in his bag, before tugging on his vest and setting off into the hall.
Gods be damned, Strangle MaCock has a kitchen.
Albeit the most alien kitchen Flynn has ever seen, but cross dimensional cooking can’t be that hard right?
He’s got a stove. A weird one with buttons, but the buttons are all labeled.
He’s got a box that just…. well, Flynn didn’t know many artificers (save the elf in his party) but he could assume there was…. a frost spell imbued into the metal? There’s other way to explain the burst of cold that blasted his face upon opening the door.
A faucet, pots and pans, cabinets, a sort of tavern-bar-ish table with high stools… yeah he could probably work with this.
Flynn takes a couple minutes to take inventory of what Strangle has holed up for food.
Eventually, his mental list (of what doesn’t seem radioactive or alive) comes up to:
- Frozen squid (???) tentacles
- Purple vegetable stalks
- A row of what he could guess are spices
- Eggs???? Blue eggs??????
And last but not least…
- Rice.
Flynn blinks once, twice. Yeah that’s just… that’s just regular grain rice in a cloth bag.
It seems, he notes to himself, Strangle just kind off… picks up what he can find in his travels.
“Im sure he doesn’t mind,” Flynn hums to himself, “if I borrow a thing or two.” He climbs up onto the counter to reach the man’s dusty collection of pots and pans, grabs a large pot with a self satisfied huff, and clambers back down.
Quietly as he can, of course. There’s no need to wake the whole Stranglehold. Plus, he rarely gets to do this while they’re off dimension-hopping, spider-fighting, pearl-finding, and the like.
So, letting his shoulders drop and the ever present tension in his body ease, he starts to hum. A quiet tune as he works.
He sets the pot onto the strange stove for starters, filling it about halfway with water. The squid creature makes a strange popping noise as he takes it from its package, and oozes an uncomfortable amount of strange green liquid onto his hands.
“Eugh….” he groans, before pausing. Curiously, and lacking any and all of his usual common sense (he blames the past week’s wildness), he brings a drop to his tongue with one finger.
…sweet!
“Huh. Eh, couldn’t hurt.” He mixes the tentacles, green ooze and all, in a bowl with a handful of crystal-spice from the cabinet. Literal crystal. Ittinkles and shimmers as he dumps it in.
Looking down at it (Flynn did have to grab a stool), it almost makes….. yeah, a batter of sorts.
“Fuck it.” He slides them into the boiling water, watching as the batter clings to the squid and slowly begins to crackle and stiffen around it. Flynn smiles to himself, and moves onto the next thing.
He isn’t really planning on making anything huge, but any chance to play around with ingredients is a chance taken. Besides, for once they aren’t eating from the storeroom of an overgrown moldy Food.
He starts up his humming again, this time something jauntier, as he starts to chop up Strangle’s bunch of purple-stalked vegetables with his dagger.
“Ba-da dum……”
Flynn lets himself take a long breath. It’s nice, right now. No dragons, no cowboys, no fishes, just the quiet sound of his dagger and slow boiling water.
Chop.
Chop.
Chop.
Hm… was he forgetting something? No dragons, no cowboys, no fish, and no…..
no……..
No flesh monsters! That’s it—
“Flynn?”
“AAAAAH-“ he lets out a startled yell as the dagger goes flying from his hands. It lands with a twang, tip imbedded in the cutting board (and not his arm thank the gods).
“What the hell?” he panic-whisper-hisses to whoever is standing in the doorway., “Who- Alastyr?”
Annoyed-panic turns to confused-confused as he sees… Alastyr! In the flesh, standing in the tall doorway of the kitchen. And, putting it lightly, he looks like shit. His arms are wrapped tight around himself, shaking slightly at the shoulders and the knees, and he sports eyebags that Flynn coulda’ sworn he didn’t have earlier.
A quiet beat passes.
…someone’s gotta break the silence.
“…Alastyr? You good?” That seems to snap the guy out of it.
“Oh! What? Oh yeah!” His posture straightens, and a smile, albeit nervous, pops onto his face. His eyes don’t change though. Tired, panicked… panicked like a hunted rabbit would be, for Flynn’s own lack of better metaphor. “…what are you doing?”
It’s Flynn’s turn to stiffen his posture. “Oh— oh yeah— yeah I was just… just making something small. Cooking. Things. Meal. Yeah.” Wow. Eloquent Flynn, great job.
“I was…. I wondere—” Alastyr cuts himself off. “Uh could…. could I come in? Just to sit, won’t say a word, promise.” Alastyr makes a motion of crossing his heart for emphasis.
Flynn raises a quizzical eyebrow, but shrugs. “Yeah go for it. Don’t condemn yourself to silence or anything though, we can talk.” He gives his best soft smile (it probably comes out strained) as he hears Alastyr let out an audible breath, sliding himself onto one of the stools next to the table.
His body language is a bit off. Alastyr’s shoulders are hunched, and it seems like he’s trying to take up as little space as possible.
The worried feeling in his gut grows.
“So….” Flynn begins, resuming his cutting, “….nightmare wake you up?”
Behind him, he hears Alastyr draw a sharp breath.
“O—or, he adds, turning around panicked, “just guessing! Uh— you don’t need to talk about it or anything, it’s just—“ gods above he fucking sucks at this. Talking is not his strong suit and Alastyr looks like he’s on the verge of tears at this point— should he hug him? Is that weird? Would pressing further help anything? Should he go get Kroe? Or Kasper? Or-
“No, no it’s fine,” Alastyr says, eyes low. “Nightmare… nightmare woke me up.”
“What was it about?”
“…ah nothing. Nothing. Nothing in particular,” Alastyr lies. Maybe… maybe he just needs to get his mind off of it! Something to distract him!
“Alastyr!” He blurts.
The elven boy’s head shoots up, startled. “Huh? What?”
“Can you… uh…” he looks down. “Are you decent with a knife?”
“I’d say… yeah, I’m alright with one. Not the greatest or anything, never actually fought with it or anything myself—”
“Great!” Flynn moves his stool so the space in front of the cutting board is empty. “You get vegetable duty.” He pauses. “O—only if you want to, there’s no pressure I mean—”
“Oh! Yeah sure!” Alastyr Perks up. He shuffles up to the counter and picks up the knife, looks at it for about five seconds, before turning bright red.
They wait in silence.
“…you’ve never done this before, have you.”
Alastyr sputters, “I— well— I! I’m a scientist, Flynn! In my profession, we aren’t usually putting celery into beakers—” Flynn cuts him off with a chuckle.
“First of all, I’m pretty sure that’s the furthest you could get from celery. Second of all, it’s fine dude. Here, I’ll show you.” He uses his hands to guide Alastyr’s own shaking one's into a position where he won’t cut his fingers off. “So, please stop pointing the knife at me. Thank you. And then— no stop— second you gotta make it so your knuckles are out when you hold the thing straight. So you don’t, yknow, chop your entire finger off. Move a bit to the right and— there you go!”
Alastyr gives a shaky smile, as Flynn beams. “Alright, just cut all of them to about finger width and I’ll keep going with the rest.”
Alastyr does as told, keeping his motions steady. His shaking hand does him no favors (it shows in the quality of the cuts) but his tongue is poking out from his teeth and his brow is furrowed so Flynn gives him an A for effort.
But, he knows he’s gotta ask Alastyr about it eventually. The blanketing awkwardness isn’t going to help anyone.
“…what was your nightmare about?” Flynn asks while washing out the suspiciously normal rice.
Next to him, the cutting stops. He hears Alastyr take a large breath in and out, as if steeling himself.
“Fergus… I think.” he says quietly. Flynn cocks his head.
“…Fergus?”
“The funny flesh I got from that city,” Alastyr draws out a bottle shape in the air with his finger, “kept him in a little jar, that lady made me let him go?”
Flynn nods. He… sorta remembers.
“It…” Alastyr seems to swallow back a lump in his throat. “It was weird. And it got really weird. And I think I got infected… or something,” his hands begin to shake even harder, “and now I can’t stop seeing him in my dreams and it’s really weird Flynn because the first time it was a rabbit but this hole opened up in my stomach with teeth and but this time he was in my fucking house that I lived in my– where I grew up and everything started bur–burning down and–”
“Hey!”
Alastyr looks at him, eyes panicked.
“Oh– shit I didn’t mean to yell, just uh–” Flynn gestures to the knife, “… why don’t you put that down. Don’t want you to hurt yourself, here–- take over rice, yeah?”
Alastyr nods. He makes room for Flynn to scooch the stool over to the cutting board.Mentally, Flynn is bashing himself on the head. His friend is breaking down because of flesh monsters and infections and he asks him to wash the rice??? Hello?????
Physically, he’s done chopping. He only put enough for one serving for himself, so….
Flynn, silently, grabs everything for another batch.
More squid, he reminds himself, I think I remember the spices I used last time… does Alastyr even like spicy stuff? Well I mean he’s drinking all those concoctions everyday, gotta have a pretty strong stomach… ok, double the vegetables, the rice should be fine, I’ll just ask him to-
“Flynn?” Alastyr asks.
“Hm? Huh?” He shakes his head to clear the mental math, “what’s up?”
“Can you… can you tell me about something?”
Flynn blinks.
Alastyr stammers, “I mean it– it’s too quiet? In here? Like, it’s nice if there’s other noise besides my thoughts– no pressure though! I’m just–”
“Yeah, sure,” Flynn replies. “I don’t really have any crazy stories though, hah. This last week has been the craziest of my life, probably.
“Well…” Alastyr starts slowly, “I guess… start off, I didn’t know you could cook anything besides corn?”
“Oh! Yeah I guess I don’t really show it off that much,” Flynn muses. “It’s not really an easy hobby to travel with. I picked it up a while ago, though.”
He shakes out the squid tentacles from the pot, which have a nice, crispy (although greenish) outer layer to them, before adding in another two.
“I’m pretty young. Well, I guess most halflings would be young to you, but still young by that standard. Fifteen is still young. I lived with my family up until…” he pauses. “….a little while ago. Before I left.”
Alastyr looks like he wants to press for more, but stays silent.
“The whole thing was complicated, but that’s not important. We were way richer than we needed to be, so there wasn’t–“ he pauses to hand Alastyr a pot of water to put the washed rice into, setting it to boil “--a lot for me to do. Ever. So, a lot of the time I was in the kitchen. Doing my thing.”
He pulls out a pan, and tosses the purple vegetable things in with some kind of sauce. Alastyr watches, entranced, as he flips the uneven slices up into the air.
“No one really wanted to try any of it. To be fair, it was all kind of shit,” he chuckles to himself. “And I got pretty self conscious. Is what it is.” Alastyr nods, listening intently. “And then I left. For reasons. Didn’t really cook after that, but every now and then Garuda would let me into his lamp and I could fuck around with the sort-of-real kitchen and sort-of-real food in there. You mind sitting at the counter?”
“Oh! Yeah, sorry,” Alastyr hurries out of his way to the counter. “So… you do this for fun?”
Flynn hums in agreement. With his back turned to Alastyr, he gets two bowls ready. First goes the rice, then he mixes in the sauce-fried whateverthesepurplethingsare, and drops two of the squid pieces in each bowl.
“It’s… cathartic. It’s nice. There’s no pressure, it’s a good way to just get out of my own head and focus on something tangible,” he rustles around Strangle’s cabinet for utensils, turning to Alastyr, “you know?”
Alastyr nods, lost in thought, tapping his fingers against his arm.
“World’s big, food’s small, that’s all there is to it. Eat up,” Flynn says as he pushes a bowl to Alastyr and takes a seat next to him.
“I–--what?”
Flynn pauses, fork halfway to his mouth.
“What’s up? You allergic to squid? Well, I mean that’s fair, I’m not entirely sure what any of this is so it’s totally cool if you don’t–”
“You made this for me?” Alastyr blurts.
“I mean, yeah man of course– well, technically we both made it, had to do some readjustment to fit the serving size, but you helped a lot with the–” Flynn lets out an oof as he nearly gets the wind knocked out of him as Alastyr wraps him into a tight hug. The elf’s face is buried in the shoulder of his vest, mumbling something incoherent.
It’s….
It’s nice.
He’s really warm, Flynn notices. And the shaking has dulled from a whole body quake to a slight tremor as he feels Alastyr inhale, and exhale, against him.
Slowly, he hugs back.
“You’re strangling me. Pun not intended–”
“Oh! Right! Sorry,” Alastyr pulls back. If Flynn notices his shoulder feels more wet than before, he doesn’t comment.
“Alright I’m not eating first though. If one of us is getting poisoned by the space squid in Strangle’s fridge it will absolutely be you.”
No quarrel from Alastyr as he digs right in, Flynn following shortly after.
It’s…. not bad. Pretty good actually. The squid is tough to chew, but the crispy ooze on the outside gives it a sweet flavor. Balances out well with the surprisingly salty vegetables (whatever the hell they are) and overall, not the worst thing he could’ve made from a random guy's space kitchen!
“Not bad. What do you thi–” he turns to Alastyr to ask him how it is. Or, more accurately, how it was. Considering there is absolutely nothing left in the bowl.
“You should cook more often!” Alastyr beams, “that was amazing!”
“We’ll see, we’ll see–” Flynn pauses, before turning to Alastyr. “Hey are you… are you good to go back to sleep? Cause of, y’know…”
“Honestly,” Alastyr lets out an exhale, “I– probably not. I don’t know. My original plan was to just sit and wait, so–”
“Alright. Bad plan.”
“Hey–”
“New plan– first of all, you are helping me clean all this up,” Alastyr doesn’t seem to protest, “Second of all, I’m dragging a blanket into your room.”
A moment of silence.
“I– well–” Flynn backpedals, “I don’t know– it might help? Just knowing someone is there and you’re not actually being eaten by flesh monsters?”
“Yeah sure! Like a… well I don’t actually remember what they call it but I’m sure if there’s two people that’s half the chance of funny fles-”
Alastyr is interrupted by a voice from the doorway.
“Hey something cooking?” Kasper calls, “you kids got any extra-“
Flynn slams the door.