Chapter 28: Interlude: The Chocolatine Factory (1/2)
It was offering day, and so Chocolatine decided to bake three cakes: one for her god, one for her crush, and one for her brother.
Humming to herself as she dressed, Chocolatine explored her and her brother’s farm looking for the pantry. She kept a lot of demon flesh salted and fresh, and an imp in an iron birdcage. The demon looked at her with his big eyes. “Kill me,” the fiend pleaded. “Send me back to Hell, you crazy wolf.”
“Maybe later,” Chocolatine replied cheerfully, looking inside the cage. “I need eggs.” Savoureuse had given her one of her own, but it wasn’t enough for three cakes.
The imp looked inside the straw that worked as his nest, giving her four black eggs. “Only four?” Chocolatine complained, putting the eggs in a basket. “That’s twice less than last week!”
“I’m hungry,” the imp complained.
“But I give you meat all the time!”
“Demon meat! I would rather starve than eat my kindred!”
Chocolatine rolled her eyes. Damning souls and working for a lich was fine, but cannibalism wasn’t? What was the logic behind that? “I will give you a homeless inquisitor if I find one, but they are getting rarer. Or a gnoll. Do you imps eat gnolls?”
The imp nodded with energy, Chocolatine making a mental note to ask Jules for leftovers. She put the sugar, baking powder, and some of the strawberries Rolo gave her last week into her basket, then moved to the pens outside her ranch to milk her cow, Raisin, harvesting three bottles. She took a second to oversee the pigs’ pen; unlike that prickly imp, they gladly accepted demon meat, growing fatter and gaining tiny horns. With further animal husbandry, she would create a new breed of demon pigs who could sustain the village.
People thought her odd, but that was because she cared. As a priestess of Isengrim, it was her role to maintain the balance of nature, and a village full of carnivorous monsters presented unique problems she had to solve. One day, she would find a way to make the community sustainable, even if she had to keep importing food from Hell.
The vestal then went to the kitchen to bake, finding blood-splatters everywhere, even the oven. “I forgot to clean?” she asked herself out loud. Bah, she would do it tonight. Nothing better than the smell of sheep blood to get pumped while cooking.
After an hour of steady work, she finished the three strawberry cakes, the most beautiful she had ever made. Each of them, she shaped like a heart; the symbol, not the organ. She tried once, it didn’t take.
Congratulations! For creating delicious cakes with love while using morally dubious ingredients, you gained a new level in [Monster Patissier]!
+30 HP, +1 AGI, +1 SKI, +1 CHA, +1 LCK!
Croissant entered the kitchen just as she finished, lured by the lovely smell. “Good morning, sis.”
“Good morning, brother.” Chocolatine gave him his present inside a lunch bag. “Here is Charlene’s cake, with extra flavor.”
“Thank you, sis. You are sure there will be no secondary effects? The last cake bit me.”
“I told you, it was a Birthday Mimic, not my cake!” Since her Victor mass-promoted every monster he could find in order to prepare Murmurin for war, Chocolatine had no end of trouble with those shapeshifters. “None of my desserts killed anyone yet!”
Croissant gave her ‘the stare,’ but took the cake anyway. “Why three of them?” he asked, noticing the other two lunch bags she prepared, “One is for Isengrim, but the other?”
“It’s for my crush,” Chocolatine replied, without mentioning the name. She knew her brother couldn’t stand her Victor since he politically emasculated him.
“When are you going to tell me who it is?”
“So you make him run away like the last one?”
“I didn’t chase him, I ate him,” Croissant defended himself. “According to the taste, you were too good for him.”
“You’re not eating my new crush, brother.” Of course, she knew her Victor would laugh it off, but her brother’s overprotectiveness annoyed her. “How would you react if I ate Charlene?”
“Touché,” Croissant admitted. “At least promise me it’s not a gnoll this time.”
“No, he’s way cleaner,” Chocolatine chirped happily, taking the two lunch bags and leaving the house with her brother. “He is strong, charming, and forceful.”
“Eh, you can present him to me once you’ve caught him.” Croissant shrugged, as they separated, him going to Charlene’s office and her to the temple. “Maybe we’ll get along.”
She doubted it.
Chocolatine cheerfully reached the temple she shared with Allison, finding the dryad praying her goddess with Rolo. The golem had brought a sheep, asking Cybele to bless it. “[Multiply Cattle].” Rolo touched the sheep and activated his Perk, the animal dividing into two, then four, then eight.
Chocolatine waved at the two, then attended her deity’s needs. She placed the cake in front of Isengrim’s deer statue, knelt, and spoke the prayer. “God of the Hunt, Lord of the Beasts, I offer you my sacrifice. I ask you for your blessing. You are the great white deer who roams the summer woods, the bringer of spring. Oh, Isengrim, please accept my gift.”
With the prayer, she sent a few of her SP to her god, and the cake vanished from the altar. Her lord had accepted the offering.
“Chocolatine, my favorite vestal, your cake tastes delicious!” The deer statue’s eyes shone, the god Isengrim speaking through with his youthful, cheerful voice. “You have done well maintaining the natural equilibrium in Murmurin, ousting the lich Furibon from power, and hastening the extinction of demonkind. I am proud of you, keep up the good work!”
“Thank you, my lord,” Chocolatine nodded. “Can I ask for your guidance, oh Isengrim?”
“Of course. What is troubling you, my child?”
“There is a boy I want to breed with, but he will not. How do I breed with him?”
“Is that that Victor whose name you keep repeating in your prayers?” Chocolatine nodded ardently. “Is he married?”
“No.” If that was the problem, Chocolatine would have solved it long ago. She had lots of poison in her pantry. “He is single, although he does not like it.”
“Have you offered to lay with him during the mating season?”
“Yes, I did, but he said he didn’t want to break our friendship.”
“While I am the god of the hunt, that kind eludes me. I will ask my friend Cybele, goddess of love, on advice on your behalf. Otherwise, try perfume. The sweeter the smell, the greater your chances of catching your prey unaware.”
“Thank you, great Isengrim!”
“Good luck, Chocolatine!”
The priestess ended her prayers, the light leaving out the statue’s eyes. She found out that Allison and Rolo had finished her own prayers. “Choc, are you available this evening?” the dryad asked her. “We need anti-vermin spells to help protect the culture from depredation.”
“With pleasure.” She owed the dryad one. When her Victor tried to make a move on her, proving that the ‘friendship’ could be overcome, Allison had said that she liked girls—which was true, but she liked boys just as much—to fend him off. The sisterhood resisted! “Do you think we could feed a big city, after the dragons are gone?”
“Ten thousand, if we finish the irrigation canals,” Rolo replied. “With judicious use of my, and Allison’s [Grow Plant] Perks, we could hasten the landscaping.”
“You wish to invite more settlers,” Allison guessed.
“Cousins from other tribes,” Chocolatine nodded, pumped by Rolo’s answer. “I thought about it while in Gevaudan: why do civilized species hate us werewolves, monsters, and predators?”
“Because you eat them,” Rolo replied.
“Because we eat them, and we eat them because we lack enough meat; to retaliate, the humans and their kin chase us away from the cities which could sustain our hunger, and the cycle continues! Mimics, vampires, and others adapted by infiltrating civilization, but that is not enough! We need trade, import! By creating a city of monsters which can sustain itself, we can inspire our kindred to imitate us, and ‘civilized’ species that we can feed in harmony! Maybe even trade!”
“You meant live,” Allison picked up. “Live in harmony, not feed.”
“Yes, same thing,” Chocolatine replied cheerfully, as the two worshippers of Cybele exchanged a glance.
Her service done, the vestal carried the last cake with her to the new building in the north part of Murmurin. Bug fiends under Malfy’s direction had constructed a large, ivory-draped, six-floor building there, the tallest next to Emperor Vainqueur’s own statue. Chocolatine didn’t particularly like the rounded architecture—which the fiends called ‘modern and trendy,’ but the place stood out.
She found a crowd of monsters gathered in front of it, including the Kobold Rangers, and Malfy himself. A ribbon kept the doors closed, her Victor ready to cut it with his scythe while riding the Black Beast of Murmurin.
The voice of Malfy, enhanced by a spell, resonated, the monsters focusing on him. “Welcome to the grand opening Nethermart, the first fiendish magic item shop in all of Outremonde, open to all monsters and mortals! If you cannot pay with coins, you can keep a tab with us for the low, low price of your soul as collateral! And to celebrate the coming war with Maure, we offer a thirty percent sale on weapons! An axe in every home!”