120: Dinner

Entering the familiar inn, I noticed Larry had already emptied the place out, as the only people currently here were from my own group. The only exception was Janette, who was currently in conversation with Micca at one of the tables.

“I’m going to go into the kitchen,” I told the others. Crisplet rapidly left the brazier before following me into the small space that was once so familiar.

I caught sight of Geo, who was already working away at a dish I recognised straight away—he was preparing the ingredients to make crumbed fish.

“Mind if I use some kitchen space?” I asked from the doorway.

Geo smiled broadly. “You don’t need to ask, lad, get in here.”

Entering the kitchen, Crisplet followed me, clearly looking around, before spotting the stone oven built into the wall.

“This is the second kitchen where I learnt pretty much everything,” I said, gesturing to Crisplet, but the focus was clear as he had already moved to the oven, looking back at me.

I just laughed and gestured that it was okay. “You’re fine to take over the oven, I’m sure Geo won’t mind.”

Geo let out a laugh. “Not at all. Crisplet understands you?”

“Yeah, he understands everything.” This was reaffirmed by Crisplet, who shot off a burst of embers.

“That’s a yes,” I chuckled.

Geo looked at Crisplet entering the oven. “What’s a no, then?”

A moment later, a piece of coal flew out of the oven and hit Geo in the forehead, catching him by surprise.

“That.”

I couldn’t help but laugh as I pulled out the three chickens I had bought.

Geo raised an eyebrow at the chicken. “That’s basic, isn’t it?”

I shook my head. “It is, but I feel I need to make an offering at the temple of a roast chicken.”

“You know we have plenty of food there, right?” came the voice of Martin, appearing in the doorway.

“Not for the people—for the Goddess. Three times I’ve prayed to her, and three times I’ve had the smell of roast chicken waft over me during the prayer,” I explained, staring down at the chicken.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Did I go all out and use all my best ingredients, or keep it super simple?

“Ah—sorry. Martin, this is Geo. Geo, this is Martin.” I did the introductions, though Martin had already made his way into the kitchen and was shaking Geo’s hand.

Since I had three, I decided to do both a simple one and a complex one. For all three, I made a very basic stuffing, mixing butter, bread, garlic grass, onions, and just basic salt and pepper.

On the outside of the first, I added a small amount of fire salt and pepper, with a healthy coating of oil that Geo had in the kitchen.

For the other two, I made them a little fancier. Instead of regular salt and fire salt, I used Pyrrhosite.

“What are you doing?” Martin asked, looking at me scrape the salt off the large crystal with the back of the knife.

I looked up, confused. “Uh, scraping off some salt?”

Martin shook his head. “You’re going to damage your knife like that!”

Looking around, he seemed to find what he was searching for and held it up for Geo to see. “You don’t mind if we use this, right?”

Geo shook his head, and Martin came over with a stone bowl and mini stone club. “This is a mortar and pestle. It’s used to grind spices—and in this case, salt crystals…”

Martin finally took in the crystal. “What kind of salt is this deep red colour?”

“It’s called Pyrrhosite. It’s a rare quality one we found.”

Martin’s eyes widened. “Rare?” he stammered. “Is this even safe?”

I chuckled, scratching the back of my head. “It is now…”

Geo laughed. “There’s a story there, isn’t there?”

I just nodded, but Martin was still staring at me. “Trev, are you sure you want to use this on something as common as a chicken? You know you could probably sell this and make a fortune, right?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. I don’t need much for the meal, and I don’t really need money right now.”

Shaking his head, Martin pulled himself together and got back to the lesson. “All right, with hard items like this crystal, seeds, or even bark—you want to grind them to a powder or a paste.”

He placed the mortar and pestle on the table, using the pestle to chip off a small chunk.

“You can do this ahead of time and just store it away, so you only need to pull out a small vial of it instead of this whole crystal.” He carefully handed the crystal back to me.

Martin then demonstrated how to grind it into a fine powder. When he was done, he handed me the mortar so I could grind the salt myself. I looked around for something to store the salt in and stumbled across a couple of the small vials I had used for the soup.

I didn’t have any empty ones and was contemplating throwing away the contents of one of the vials when Geo came over holding an empty aged metal tin.

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“Use this.”

Thanking him, I put the ground salt into the tin and stored it away. The next change was pulling out three death caps and a small handful of dilwater berries. If I were honest, I just wanted to scare my old mentors, but I knew they’d both go really well with the stuffing.

Geo was the first to notice. “Trev, what are you doing? That’s toxic!”

Martin quickly clued in to what I was cutting. “Are you trying to kill us?”

I couldn’t help laughing, catching them both off guard. Placing a dilwater berry in my mouth, I said, “It’s all fine. Here, try one.” I held out two berries.

“A lot has changed since I was cooking here. Try it—trust me.” I reassured them, holding the berries closer.

Geo was the first to reach out and grab one, only hesitating slightly before putting it in his mouth. Martin quickly followed suit.

“So—are you going to tell us why these are not toxic?” Geo asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I have an ability that lets me purify toxic ingredients, making them safe to eat. That’s why I can use dilwater berries, or death caps, or that salt, which originally nearly burnt my mana channels,” I explained.

It looked like Martin was about to lecture me about the salt too. “I know now not to test random ingredients—especially rare ones. Don’t worry.”