A Wok of Infinite Light
A Taste of Things to Come
Regal left the restaurant with his cloak tightly wrapped around him, and only partly for the camouflage it afforded. The long avenues of Meltokio funnelled the bitterly cold wind like a river held water, and for some reason the clear, sunny sky above did little to warm those foolish enough to leave their houses. Rumour said that the coliseum had been closed after the Dragon Knight defeated itself in the final round. Firebreath is a dangerous thing with an unexpected cross-breeze.
The Wonder Chef had been quite right to pick that stew for Regal, he felt strong enough to fight off an ox, and irked enough to seek out an entire kitchen's worth of Dark Chefs. The trouble was that he didn't know how to begin his search, and he hadn't learned much from their cryptic meeting.
Perhaps what he needed was an ally who paid closer attention to rumours, gossip, and news of far-off places, the kind of information no one could possibly have the slightest use for, beyond the satisfaction of strange, reptilian urges to know the secrets of every living being on the planet...
Racing up to the third tier of Meltokio (and not even beginning to sweat, thanks to long training and the new season) Regal took a right turn into the upper-class quarter of the city, sprinted through several sets of gilded gates, and hammered on the door of the second house on his left. On the off chance that it was an admirer dropping off gifts, the owner of the mansion answered the door himself.
"Zelos!" Regal said quickly. "I'm looking for information on the whereabouts of an order of cooks preparing to execute a dark and terrible scheme and immediately thought of you."
The Chosen blinked once, but gave no other hint that this could be odd. "Really? Sure, c'mon in." When there was a solid wall again safely between them and the harsh weather, he noticed the change. "Hey, Regal, you lost the shackles. Still only fight with your feet?"
Bryant looked down at his unbound hands, and then questioningly at Zelos. "Indeed."
"Glad to hear it. Someone's got to hold up morality in this world, and it's not gonna be me. You want to tell me more about these Cooks of Evil?"
It took a depressingly short time to fill Zelos in on everything Regal knew about the Dark Chefs, and even less time to remind him of what they had learned of the Wonder Chef during their journey. He took literally no time at all to mention the possibility of becoming the next Wonder Chef, preferring to pretend that no such thing had ever been said.
"No kidding? I don't remember any of this stuff," said Zelos, reclining on something that wasn't quite a chaise longue, but certainly extended further than an ordinary chair had any right to do. "And even though his whole family can't find these guys, you think I might know something?"
"You or one of your peers," said Regal.
"They're yours too, your grand dukeishness," Zelos reminded him.
"Not for a great many years. Nothing is occurring to you?"
"Well, keep in mind just how much I hear per day. Besides, rumours are just a hobby for me. You want someone who deals in them, talk to the king's advisor. Better yet, get Mizuho on your side."
Regal shook his head. "The Dark Chefs are too well-arrayed against inquisitive organisations."
"Blast. I could really use something to show Sheena I haven't gotten complacent since Lloyd patched these continents back up. She gets tetchy some days when she goes into Igaguri-Chief-of-the-village mode. Plus the king is telling me we need to cement our alliances with the other countries out there, and–"
"Zelos, please, you know my disinterest in political matters," said Regal.
"You want to be there?" asked Zelos, abruptly.
"...For what?"
"The sealing of the alliance," Zelos replied.
"Oh. If you insist, I suppose there could be benefits to the presence of Duke Bryant," said Regal.
"Great. Well, let's see if there's anyone in Meltokio with a clue to spare."
Stunningly, not even the maids at the castle, who could likely have survived on gossip for several weeks without water, had heard of either raid on the Lezareno shipments or anything that could have been Dark Chef activities.
"Now, I did hear the most amazing thing about milady Worthington, you'll never believe this, I couldn't at first but it's the goddess's truth, on my honor, they do say that every weeknight she–"
"Thank you," said Regal, "but we must move on."
"Well if you really must I'll not keep you here, oh dear me no, it'd just be awful if someone started saying I was waylaying lords in the south corridor, don't know where I'd put my face and you do know what they say–"
"No, but I've been piecing it together all afternoon," said Regal. "Chosen?"
"Right," said Zelos, and he politely pushed past the breathless maid, waving Regal on while he bowed out of the 'conversation'. "So sorry, but I'd be happy to hear about Lady Worthington another time."
When they were safely around the corner, Regal leaned against a pillar and tried to release his annoyance in a sigh. "This is how the servants live?"
"Nah, just how they pass time," said Zelos.
Regal gave the red-haired man a calculating look. "That's it," he realised. "You didn't even try her. No mention of 'beauteous one' in the slightest."
"Hey, even I can have too much chatty," said Zelos, defensively, but for some reason the feeling persisted. "Weird that we wouldn't have heard even a rumour yet. Not one. It's like these Dark Chefs don't want to be found."
"You find that weird?" Regal repeated, bemused.
"I guess there's no chance they'd answer a direct command that all Dark Chefs gather in Meltokio Square tomorrow morning?" Zelos went on.
"It's a slightly insane concept," said Regal.
"Well, I am the Chosen of Mana. Hmm... we're pretty much stuck, aren't we?"
"We're a 'we' now?" Regal asked. "This is my desti– my business. You don't need to concern yourself more than you already have."
"Hey, what else am I going to do? It's only a matter of time before the King revokes the rank of the Chosen anyway," said Zelos.
Regal sighed. "If you could give me even one lead to follow, I would consider that more than enough help."
"Well..." Zelos sat down at the base of a staircase, wearing the deeply-thoughtful expression that looked so unusual on him. "Maybe we should look closer at what we already know. For example, what did they steal from Lezareno?"
"One shipment was entirely meat, mostly beef, going to Sybak; their usual herds are still recovering from the disruption of mana. The other was a variety of vegetables and grains, and would have been on course for Palmacosta if the Dark Chefs had given it a chance," said Regal.
"Hard to pick out a trend from two things that are totally different. There wasn't anything unusual about either one of those, or something that would set them apart from your other deliveries?" asked Zelos.
"Not really, except for being entirely foodstuffs–"
"I love that word," Zelos interjected. "That and 'topography'."
"–And there are others of the same composition that weren't touched," Regal finished.
"Wait... Palmacosta and Sybak? The best way to get to either of those is by sea, right?"
Regal recollected what reports he had bothered to read before hearing about the nature of the thieves (and event that had reorganised his priorities considerably to include 'deny fate' and 'find crazy man with funny hat'). "Yes. Both shipments were taken at the docks at night, before they could be loaded onto vessels."
Zelos stood and struck a heroic pose. "The Chosen of Mana does it again. You're dealing with pre-emptive pirates. Schedule another shipment by sea, make sure it's all food, and we've got ourselves a cheftrap. I recommend we use lots of cheese, just for the irony."
"The word 'we' is popping up rather a lot. What makes you think you're coming along?"
"Chosen of Mana," Zelos reminded him.
"I do hope you end up at a lower rank than Duke," Regal muttered.
There was a small Lezareno branch in Meltokio, and they had a near-future schedule for nearly every dock on the Tethe'allan continents. By luck, fate, or a deity who thought life on the new world needed a little more stirring up, there was already a cargo ship scheduled to make a run out to Iselia the next day, and it was currently docked at the new Lezareno Shipping Port near Altamira. It was a long-range vessel, preparing for a long run to several ports, distributing goods as needed.
"You're sure about this?" asked Zelos, steering his modified EC across the waves without enthusiasm.
"You did insist on coming along," Regal said.
"Okay, but if I hadn't, how would you have reached Altamira in time?"
"Now you're going to argue that you were forced to force me to bring you along?"
"Mostly I'm hoping that you'll introduce me to any particularly exquisite ladies working at the Lezareno Port," Zelos said. Regal just watched the waves race past them, waiting to see if any of his guesses about the 'outgoing' Chosen would be proven true. "...Just kidding," he added nonchalantly, when he decided that Regal wasn't going to comment. Bryant smirked, out of Zelos' sight.
Sailing from the dock at the Grand Bridge to the new mountain pass took no more than three hours, but they lost quite a bit of time convincing the workers to let them through. The construction of an ocean pass to encourage trading and travel was actually one of Mizuho's ideas, but Meltokio was supplying most of the workers, and they were exceptionally stubborn.
This might have been partly to do with the pass not actually being finished, or for that matter, remotely safe, but the sight of Zelos' Cruxis Crystal, his personal EC, and Regal's ducal crest eventually ganged up and triggered their instinct to bow their heads and say "Yes, m'lord."
"Whenever I use ducal prerogative I feel the need to scrub my hands off," Regal remarked as they took off into the mountains.
"Not around me, thanks, I like this boat without bloodstains," said Zelos. He pulled a lever and activated the magicells on the EC's sides, which helped him avoid collisions as they entered the deep river canyons. In the same manner that the EC normally hovered over the water, these new additions would repel walls, jutting rocks, and –although neither of them wanted to test this– possibly divert small avalanches.
The funny thing about zooming through the mountain rapids was that it was at the same time mildly terrifying and totally mind-numbingly dull. Opportunities to be crushed in a fiery wreck against sharp boulder got boring after the thirtieth last-minute veer.
"Have you ever ridden the impact-carts at the Altamira amusement park?" asked Regal, long past being refreshed by the river's spray and on his way to drenched.
"When I was six I triggered a cascading crash that wedged all of them in an elegant geometric shape involving concentric hexagons. For my graduate thesis in university I described the same pattern with a derivational decaying algorithm," said Zelos, swerving around a river stone like a seven-foot meat cleaver. "Even I don't know which parts of that I made up."
"I take it that there aren't any psychological-wellbeing tests to become the Chosen."
"They should put in a ride like this at the park," Zelos went on, ignoring the remark. "Racing down watery rapids. Maybe on a log."
"...Yes," Regal said slowly. "Somehow a log seems like the right thing."
"Lacks any romantic aspect, though. You don't want to leave that out."
"Maybe you don't. Anyway, you've never registered a complaint about the whirling teacups," said Regal. "And I hardly see how those are..." What he did see was the look on Zelos' face, which conveyed plenty of information. "...They're three-seaters anyway, the third passenger would object to–" The look took on a whole new level of smugness. "...Origin save us all."
"You want to make lunch, or what?" asked the grinning Chosen.
"Maybe you should just drive."
"Maybe I should. Whoa– duck!" Zelos had belatedly noticed the condition of the pass ahead, namely that it got much smaller very quickly.
The EC raced under the overhanging rocks at ludicrous speed, making Regal wonder for a brief moment if Zelos even knew how to slow the ship down. It was brief because he didn't quite duck fast enough, and dropped the rest of the way to the deck semiconscious.
"And I think that leaves me in charge," Zelos said to no one in particular. The overhanging rocks grew thicker, until the river flowed into the mountains with space just wide enough not to shear the sides off his EC. "Great. A tunnel. And instead of one of my fans from Meltokio in the passenger seat, I've got a concussed duke on the floor. I bet Colette never has this sort of problem."
They arrived at Altamira not long before dusk. Whether or not this was a remotely good thing was debatable.
"It was really too bad," Zelos told Regal. "You were just telling me how great it was, best chili you had ever tasted, and WHAM, falling rock knocked you cold. Stroke of bad luck that the bowl went over the side."
"Tragic," said Regal, in an expertly chosen flattish tone. It was utterly impossible to tell if he was being sarcastic or not. "I expect there will be a place for a vessel this small at the docks– let's not waste any time."
"Great. I'm supposed to navigate a cargo-ship-infested harbour at night?" asked Zelos.
"If you're right about the piratical aspect, we may meet them on open water." This failed to cheer the Chosen up, but his love of challenges kept his foot pressed firmly on the accelerator.
"Pirates," Zelos mumbled. "You do remember Aifread, don't you?"
"What's that sound?" said Regal suddenly, tilting his head to hear faint echoes in the stillness of the night. Say what he might about the many opportunities for fatal incidents in an EC, they were nearly silent at all but the highest speeds.
"It's the sound of your chauffeur saying he'd rather have gone to the casino."
"Quiet!" Regal hissed. Zelos stopped the EC to pay closer attention to their shadowy surroundings. The wind stirred up waves across the harbour, knocking against the cargo transports like a sloshing heartbeat, but he couldn't hear anything else.
"I don't think–" Zelos began.
"An amusing conundrum, this," said another voice, confident and imperious. "On one hand, it was very clever of you to come here. You must have some idea of our goals to guess where we shall strike." At the edge of the deck on the ship nearest Zelos' EC, glowing redness outlined a figure that couldn't have been anything but a Dark Chef. "And on the other hand, it was endlessly foolish, because you believed we would be unprepared. And instead you shall die."
With that, the Dark Chef drew forth a long object, somehow reminiscent of the Wonder Chef's fork. As the midnight-blue figure removed its sheath, the giant knife glittered red, as though it could taste the coming blood (or a perfectly simmered marinara).
"I do not fear edges, no matter their size," Regal proclaimed.
"That is wise," the Chef countered. "There are better things to fear." The sheath was tossed aside, and replaced in the cook's hand by a small, bulky object that could have been a whole, partly prepared chicken. Knife raised high in a mockery of the Wonder Chef's common stance, Regal and Zelos couldn't help but watch the chicken's path as he hurled it through the air...
CRUNCH!
And snatched by a scaly blue head that struck with snakelike speed. The horned visage of a dragon had risen behind the Dark Chef, its serpentine neck twisting to catch Bryant in its frenzied gaze. It was armored in dark blue scales to match the chef's uniform, and the red aura that had caught their eye was radiating from the beast's fiery mouth.
"Anything but ravenous dragons," Zelos whispered grimly.
The Dark Chef's knife swung around like a scythe to point at Regal and Zelos, more threatening than any enchanted staff, and his next words were worse than any incantation. Magic can, at worst, unleash storms of fire and stone or the piercing light of conviction. It won't sink its teeth deep into you and shake until you stop struggling, which is definitely instinct for a dragon.
And Regal was learning exactly what kind of sense of humour these Chefs –whichever side they were on– enjoyed, which was why he immediately recognised the command to attack. Eyes wild, the Dark Chef managed to whisper louder than thunder: "Bon appetit."