She shrugged, left her dirty glass on the counter, and walked out of the kitchen, weapons jangling against her hips.
Hark sighed, but didn’t let her immaturity distract him from the meal. Turning back to the godmeat, he placed it with care inside a circle of salt, lily petals, and steel shavings and set a timer, one of those fussy new clockwork pieces from across the Spidered Sea.
As he reveled in the satisfactory ticking of the copper mechanism, a pressure grew behind his eyes. He didn’t have time for this; there were side dishes to prepare. But he closed his eyes all the same.
In the darkness of his mind, a light grew. As his vision adjusted to the brightness, Hark stood before the Hollowed, seated in their gnarled thrones of wood, bone, and glass.
They numbered nine, and when they’d first approached him, they’d been little more than the idea of ghosts, fragile clouds pinned to a harsh sky. Now they were more than hale. Myriad Hells, they were practically robust. Skin had yet to solidify on all of them; rich flashes of crimson muscle and webbed veins ran through them, and Hark did his best not to stare. But the past four years of divine consumption had invested in them a very true sense of existence, and they were beyond eager to cement themselves back onto reality.
Where they came from exactly, Hark didn’t know, and he wasn’t stupid enough to ask. They’d introduced him to Spear, who he assumed was in it for the same reasons he was, and sent them off into the Wild World.
They’d sworn fortune in success, torture in failure, and so far they hadn’t backed down from either end of that promise. All it took in exchange was four years of murdering ancient godbeasts who kept the laws of reality in place, and serving them up for sumptuous dinner.
It only gnawed at Hark’s conscience in the beginning; concerns fell away once he began to revel in the art of the meal. Pride always had a way of replacing fear throughout his life.
In the center sat their leader, jawline red and exposed. The Golden King opened his crimson mouth, and his breath was a dry, foul wind in the psychic space.
“Where is our meal, chef? We hunger for the Sea Mother.” Every sound he made was a fat black fly tickling Hark’s nose. He shivered, as he always did.
The other Hollowed murmured their agreement, and Hark couldn’t stop his eyes from wandering across their thin bodies, their red muscles, their empty eye sockets: Mother of Knives, Fisher Knight, Father Flame, Hunter of Screams, Sister Rapture, the Visionary, Heart’s Crown, and Cloudbreaker. Each claiming to be a god, each hungry to be filled up again with the divine potential they once possessed and usher in a new age of the Wild World, each a nightmare to behold.
But he’d be damned if he was cowed by a gathering of impatient, hungry patrons who wanted him to skip to the end simply because their bellies were rumbling. To Hark, it didn’t matter if he was making a soup of fresh tomato, basil, and cream or a seared steak of the finest divine beast: he would serve when it was ready, and not a moment before.
He cleared his throat and folded his arms, staring into the empty eye sockets of the Golden King in what he hoped was a humble but imperious manner.
“Look here, my lord. It has been four years since you hired Spear and me to produce for you all the divine ingredients necessary for your actualization in the physical world. And have I even once, even for but the breath of a moment, served any of you your meal before it was ready?” The Hollowed sat still as syrup, and Hark could feel very real sweat leaking into existence on his forehead. But he had to forge ahead; you couldn’t very well stop churning the butter halfway through, could you?
“Your demands do not respect me. Your ignorance of the work I do continues to grate on my professionalism, and your aggression only demeans me as I work well beyond the methods of my culinary career in preparing that which you have asked of me.” He took a deep breath as each of the Hollowed sat taller in their chair, their bones rattling with rage. “Please know that I have no intention of dishonoring any of you, your positions, or your needs, but you must remember that while I am mortal, the work I do is divine and needs the proper patience. Else you’re wasting my time, Spear’s time, and, most importantly, your time.” He tried an old smirk on for size, one he used to give his line cooks when they would mouth off at him. “Or did you all think that you were immortal just yet?”
Their silence crawled over Hark. It would be insane for them to kill him, yes? Their contract was almost up, just one more after the Sea Mother, and—
Hark blinked, and found himself back in reality. A whisper in his ear, and a sensation like a wasp landing on the nape of his neck: Get it done and serve us.
Hark let out a shaky breath. His hands were gripping the marble counter with an intensity he reserved for cutting root vegetables. Then, a flat voice from the other room: “I told you they wouldn’t be happy.”
“Shut up, Spear.” He snatched up a rag and mopped his brow.
A sizzling to his left interrupted his terror. He looked up to see that the steel shavings, the salt, and the lily leaves had burnt away to a fine pink powder that pulsed like morning light on ocean stillness.
He sighed with relief, happy to throw himself back into his work. He lifted the cut of godmeat, scooped the bright powder into a glass vial, and went back to preparation. There were still hours to go before the Sea Mother was ready for consumption, but Hark didn’t mind. This was his calling, and he answered it gladly, even if the Hollowed did not respect it.
He hummed a song to himself as he worked and tried to forget that the world was one meal closer to ending.
The Hollowed may have had the ability to act like spoiled children, but they truly knew how to appreciate a meal when it reached their table.
Spear and Hark stood at attention while each of the Hollowed took a fair portion of the Sea Mother’s fillet; even from where he stood, Hark’s mouth watered at the smell of the steak, his eyes drinking in the velvet line between rare and medium-rare, his nostrils screaming at the scent of woodsmoke, sea salt, and hibiscus that lingered around the meal like swaddling robes. But the Sea Mother was not for him, and though it tantalized every aspect of his appetite, to taste of the godbeast would drive him mad.
As one, the Hollowed feasted, savoring every morsel of the ancient goddess that graced their palates, the taste of ages caramelizing in their mouths like apple butter, every bite releasing torrents of rainwater and storm winds into their stomachs, the long history of the Sea Mother playing out like an orchestra between their teeth. Coils of white lightning arced between the Hollowed as they ate, and in their eye sockets pulsed the night-blue light of hurricanes.
When the meal was finished, Hark watched the Golden King work his now full jaw back and forth, skin the color of midnight fully drawn over it, taut. Only his eyes remained empty, the sockets flashing the blue of the deep, as the power of the Sea Mother ran through him.
“Visionary,” he said, his voice booming like tidal waves crashing to the sand. “Tell me what you glimpse with the Sea Mother’s gaze.”
The Visionary’s nine eye sockets, arranged in a diamond across his copper face, all glowed with the hue of the ocean, and he sucked in a strangled breath of glee. “Ships, I see them! Numbering twelve, bedecked with cannons and steel, usurping the gift of wind do they travel on the Haljredan Strait, to make war upon their neighbors.”
The Golden King’s grin was infectious. “Father Flame. Speak to me of the sky.”
Father Flame’s fingers burned with the trembling spark of barely held lightning. His gums glowed like newborn embers on a fire and lit his smile from behind. “The clouds are swollen with heat. Oh, how they wish to dance!”