Mallory rubbed her hands together. She looked at Halfborn. 'Alright. Our main goal is, it probably goes without saying, making sure our pie is better than Alex and T.J.'s.' Halfborn gave a single nod.

'Naturally. I think I found just the recipe in my grandmothers' cookbook.' Halfborn put the piece of paper onto the kitchen counter.

Mallory eyed him up suspiciously. 'Grandmother on which side, exactly? I do not think troll-pies will be any good.'

Halfborn pushed her away. 'Take that back!'

'I am right!'

'No, you are...'

'Einherjar!' One of hotel Valhalla's cooks demanded their attention before the situation could escalate. The man was grinning widely. 'Welcome to my pie-baking class! The first thing I want to say is that it is not a competition...' (that dude is lying through his teeth, Mallory thought. Obviously it is a competition, everything in this hotel is a competition) '...but instead a learning experience! The first rule of making a pie is: gather your ingredients.' The people in the room looked up. The cook had a very mischievous grin on his face. 'You are all here in teams of two or three, right? One person of each team is going to go through that small door over there. Behind the door are a chicken coup, a cow farm and a few patches with fruits and vegetables. Collect the ingredients and you can come back! Meanwhile, the other team member is going to heat up the oven.' Mallory stared at the bellows that appeared in front of her.

'I call dibs on picking fruit...' she began. Yet, Halfborn was already standing by the door, with a little basket. He looked over his shoulder. 'You'll manage!'

'Come back!' Mallory yelled at Halfborns' disappearing back. She swore while turning towards the bellows. 'Alright, alright then, I must beat Alex and T.J., I must beat Alex and T.J...'

Halfborn sprinted through the chicken coup, which caused him to accidentally break a few of the eggs. It did not matter - he had enough for himself, it just meant there was less for the rest. Like a wild beast he ran towards the fruit trees. His grandmothers' recipe was a recipe for apple pie, which seemed the easiest to him - at least there would be no pumpkin carving or doing whatever difficult thing with pecan nuts. Yet, he was not the only one who had thought of this. The trees with big, shiny granny smiths were almost all completely raided, leaving only a few manky looking apples. Halfborn cursed in language so colourful it almost turned the brownish apples back to green, but decided that they had to do.

The next step was getting milk. Halfborn gave the cow a dirty look and could have sworn the cow looked at him just as grossly. 'I... need some milk,' he muttered. The cow very visibly rolled her eyes and walked over to a small stool. Halfborn sat down on it and began with milking.

Gross. Gross. Gross. But it worked. The cow gave delicious, fresh milk. He did not even notice it, but the fact that he had asked to milk the cow was a good thing. Behind him, a person had tried to just begin milking, which caused the cow in front of him to kick him in the head, which was ever so slightly fatal. No pie after dinner for that guy, that much was clear.

With milk, eggs and fruit, Halfborn walked right back into the kitchen. Mallory was standing by the oven, her cheeks bright red from the heavy work. On top of the kitchen counter laid a few other things. 'I found... these things... in the cupboards. Are they helpful?' Mallory puffed. Halfborn stared at the stuff. Butter, flour, cinnamon and sugar. He bit his lip. He wanted to say they did not need help, but this might just be stuff that they actually needed for the pie. 'I do not know, but let us not throw away stuff too early.' Mallory wiped her forehead with her arm.

'Fine. I hope the oven is warm enough, because I cannot do this anymore.' Halfborn put his ingredients on the counter. He pulled a crackled slip of paper out of his pocket. 'Alright. This is the recipe. So first we must... combine the dry ingredients.' He blinked.

'So the flour, cinnamon and sugar?' He picked up a few packages. Mallory glanced over her shoulder. 'Go on. I already see Alex doing something with the eggs.' Halfborn tore open the three packages so quickly that half the flour fell onto his shirt. The sugar leaked onto Mallory's pants. 'Hey! Gross!'

'Yeah, yeah, let's continue.' He threw some flour into a bowl, followed by the sugar.

'Set aside. Cut up the apples and mix with the other half of the sugar.' They looked at the other bowl. 'More sugar is better, am I right?' Mallory asked, before putting the rest of the sugar that was still in the bag and not on her pants into the bowl.

'Do we even know how much flour and sugar we put in?' She asked, a little late. Halfborn shrugged. 'I poured until I heard a voice in the back of my head say it was enough.'

'So we are baking a pie with crazy. Great.'

'I say, we are baking a pie with the help of my dead ancestors' spirits,' Halfborn answered. Mallory rolled her eyes so far back she almost cut her own finger off.

'Add butter and eggs,' Halfborn said out loud. 'Knead into dough. Then layer the inside of a baking tin.' He looked at the ingredients. 'Than what do we need the milk for?'

'You said something about a deadly cow a little bit ago. Maybe it was an early elimination process?'

'That would be stupid!'

'Well, that fits you, doesn't it?' Halfborn slapped her on the back.

'Owh!' she got some stuff out of the bowl and threw it at him.

'Hey! We still need to bake with that!'

Mallory bit her lip. She wanted to say something sassy back, but decided against it. 'You knead the dough. I'll keep that stupid oven warm,' she said, before turning back to the bellows. She pushed her sleeves back. Halfborn awkwardly held his hands above the bowl with ingredients. 'Do I just... dip my hands in?'

'Yes. You can do it, I believe in you.'

'As if that means anything at all.'

'Today it just might, Halfborn!' She pushed down hard on the bellows and stuck out her tongue. Halfborn put his hands into the bowl and began kneading.

It went from gross and moist to slightly less gross and moist. 'Now this is gross and moist,' was all the half troll knew to say about it. Mallory barely paid any attention to him. All her concentration was on the bellows and keeping the oven heated.

They managed to make dough that did not look like soup. Mallory looked over her shoulder for a second, only to see someone with a tentacle around their throat. It had seemingly come from one of the pumpkins they had been carving. 'We made a good call when we did the apple pie,' she whispered to Halfborn. His attention was focused on Alex and T.J., who already had an artful looking pie, ready to be put into the oven. 'Yes. Come, we must put the dough into the tin,' he hastily answered.

Mallory put a finger on the tin, but immediately pulled it away again. 'Gods in Valhalla! That thing is hot!'

'That's cheating,' halfborn whispered. Mallory smacked him on the shoulder.

'It is literally impossible to put the dough into that thing and still have it look good!' Halfborn picked up some dough and put it into the tin with a quick movement. 'It does not matter if it looks good. It has to taste good. And nobody ever died from some burns.'

'Remember floor forty-eight?'

'Except for some rando's from floor forty-eight, who were really stupid and should not have been counted.'

Mallory shrugged. 'Fair enough.'

'Nothing is ever fair in hotel Valhalla. Now help me with the dough.'

With a lot of swearing, they managed to make a bit of pie crust. Mallory threw the apple mixture into the tin. 'We were not going for pretty anyway,' she answered to Halfborns' annoyed look.

'So what? It says here it needs to be gently put onto the dough! Maybe we have just ruined the taste because we did not treat the apples correctly!' Mallory rolled her eyes.

'Then it is my fault, alright? Let's just put another layer of dough on top and then we can put it into the oven.'

Mallory pushed the bellows a couple more times when it was in the oven. 'You know what? It is fine now. If it becomes too cold, it becomes too cold.'

'Are you starting to give up on this pie?'

Mallory bit her lip. '...no, not at all.' She did not say anything else about it.

'Alex and T.J. got their pie out of the oven!'

'Ours has to go seven more minutes and forty more seconds. That was what my late grandmother wrote and that is how it will be. I trust her guidance.'

'Should we not trust our own eyes? It looks fine to me!'

'And it will be better in seven minutes and twenty seconds!'

'Just now it was forty seconds!'

'Yes, because that is how time works. Now sit and wait.'

Exactly seven minutes and ten seconds later, Halfborn got the pie out of the oven. He threw the tin onto the thick kitchen counter. 'Man, that tin gets hotter every single time I touch it!'

'It has been in an oven, what did you expect?'

'In hotel Valhalla, I expect a pie tin that is freezing once it comes out of the oven! Yet, we have to get the pie out somehow.'

'Let's hope it does not fall apart,' Mallory answered, while sending death glares to T.J. and Alex, who had a gorgeous, golden brown pumpkin pie on their counter. Mallory tore open a few drawers, until she found a knife.

The next moment, Alex was standing next to them. 'You know you must take the ring of the tin, right?' Alex grabbed the tin and opened it up, so that only the (Slightly ugly) pie remained at the bottom of the tin.

Mallory pushed her away. 'Get out! Who knows what you already did to our pie now!' Alex shrugged.

'Then you don't want my help.'

'No, we do nót.' Halfborn shook his head to emphasize the point. Alex rolled her eyes, before walking back to her own counter.

Mallory looked at the pie. 'I... I think we are done now, but I have no idea what that untrustworthy person might have done to it!'

'Probably sprinkled on pepper.'

'Totally.'

A few minutes went by, until the cook came to their desk. 'Hello! Can I have a taste?'

'If you really want to.'

The cook got a small fork and a small knife out of his pocket. He cut of a small piece and put the fork into the pie. 'It doesn't look very good,' he commented. He got two pokerfaces as a response. Without saying anything else, he took a bite.

'... Is... is this the secret Mawlings family pie recipe I taste?'

Halfborn looked at his piece of paper. 'Yeah, I guess...'

The cook began to cry large tears of joy. 'It's delicious! I haven't tasted this in years! Oh, this recipe was world famous in its days... It never looked very pretty, but the taste made up for it by a wide margin...' The cook began to give a whole speech about the flavour and live and times of the specific pie. Mallory and Halfborn quickly tuned out.

Mallory subtly turned her head towards T.J. and Alex. They were gawking at the pair. Mallory grinned. 'Mission complete,' Mallory whispered to Halfborn. He gave a quick nod.

'...And so, because no other pie could possibly top this one, I declare this pie-baking session closed!' The cook picked up Halfborn and Mallory's pie. 'Now there is only one thing left to do!' With a graceful movement, he threw the pie into the face of some poor schmuck who was standing next to their own (beautiful and therefore clearly inferior) pie.

Mallory screamed and jumped towards the chef. 'How dare you!? I didn't even get to try that myself!' She screeched. She pulled a knife from her belt and lowered it to the chefs' neck. The chef whipped out a knife of his own and held Mallory back.

In the meantime, other residents began throwing pies and more dangerous objects at other people as well. In the background, someone tried to stuff their whole pie in their face before someone could throw the thing. He was clearly the smartest person in the room that day.