Ch 4
The Toize Valley mine itself was easy enough to enter. All Caleb had to do was enter in Regal's key card and he, Wren and Pepper were walking past the security system as smoothly as a picnic stroll on the beach. The inside of the mine was another story. Even though it was regularly excavated for new ores and other useful materials, monsters still roamed within the underground walls. Monsters that chased after Wren and Caleb until Pepper blasted them with her Mana Light, a horizontal variation of Luna's Ray spell. Dozens of beams of light shot from Pepper's body, slamming into anything that tried to get close.
The bigger monsters that held little fear of the mana beast were taken out by a combination of Wren's explosive recipes and Caleb's agile swordplay with a spoon. Once, to startle Wren and catch the rock golems stomping towards them off guard, Caleb stood still beside the cooking blonde, tracing out his focus point and then casting Wind Blade on the group of them.
"But you're an automatic doll! You can't use magic! You don't have the mana for it, or the bloodline!" Wren cried in shock once the battle was over. Caleb laughed sheepishly.
"That's what I said at first, too! My body frame is made of an aionis alloy and my Tri-Crystal System comes with a spare hexagonal mana crystal to use however I want, and I chose to use magic." he explained, "So, I learned a few spells here and there. I'm hoping to get some field experience with them."
The tunnel entrance was just up ahead. After Caleb slid the card into the security device set beside the locked door, it opened slowly before them, leading into a darkened tunnel that seemed to stretch for miles ahead. A railcar system was set up inside, the tracks following the tunnel to its end. Caleb looked around from the doorway, then caught Wren's attention as the chef peered into the darkness.
"The pressure will be high if it gets too deep in Moria, and the air will be thick and hard to breathe if the ventilation system was also destroyed in the collapse." Caleb murmured softly to the blonde, "Pepper and I can survive that; she's a being of mana and magic, and I have no need of air." Wren glared at him.
"If your next words translate into me staying behind, I'm going to skewer your head on my fork and see if Altessa can fix that." he growled irritably. Caleb smiled nervously. "I'm not backing out of this. I have too much at stake here."
"Okay, okay. Come on." Caleb relented and the three of them walked into the tunnel. The sound of sliding metal made them stop and they looked back with mixed emotions as the door slid shut behind them, the sound of a lock clicking into place like the final toll of a death bell. "We'll use the rail cars to get to Moria. At least we won't have to walk the whole way there." the doll said after a long pause and went to examine the car's systems while Pepper jumped into one of them in the train. She whistled and chirped, sending images of rushing wind into the minds of both men.
"I wish she wouldn't do that to me, too." Wren sighed, climbing into another car. Caleb shrugged helplessly and returned to figuring out the systems.
"Hmm. Okay, I see." he muttered and pressed a few buttons, watching several lines on a grid light up, "Okay, I got it! I've set the train to take us to Moria, but there's gonna be some turns to it. Apparently, this tunnel is part of a network that was used to mine Exspheres. That accounts for the special locking mechanism." the doll remarked and climbed into the car with Wren as the train began to move down the tracks.
Pepper whistled shrilly with pleasure as the train sped onwards to Moria. Wren covered his ears with his hands, sitting down in the car to keep the breath from being forced out of his lungs.
"Does she have to keep doing that?!" he yelled over the sounds of clacking wheels, rushing wind and screeching mana beast, "I know she's having fun, but I'll take her mental projections over this any day!" Caleb smiled sympathetically down at him, then returned to looking out for any wrong turns or fallen rubble on the tracks. The ride had taken them several hours, and the console on the lead car marked the journey almost at an end. "Are we there..." Wren began to shout and the train slowed to a halt in front of a gateway made of stone and metal, "...yet?! Ah, sorry." Caleb stared up at it.
"That's dwarven architecture, but it's familiar. I think it's the same as the design style used in building the Famine Temple!" he murmured in shock, "Wren, we're here in Moria!"
Pepper whistled sadly at the end of the ride, then leaped out of her car to shake herself off and sat down, beginning the process of grooming and straightening her fur. Wren exited and stumbled about for a few minutes, trying to get himself used to solid stable ground again. Caleb dug through his pack and brought out a candlestick. He placed it into a lantern and lit the wick, closing the tiny door in the side and holding up the source of light. Pepper jerked her head up to examine it, then clacked and returned to her grooming.
"I need a break to work out my legs." Wren remarked and flinched as the echo of his words sounded down the long tunnel. He looked at the walls and surrounding rock before rubbing his arms to ward off a sudden chill. "I seriously don't like it down here." he mumbled.
"The arch is carved directly into the surrounding stone. This metal must have been inlaid afterwards so as to help support the arch." Caleb remarked with interest as he studied the gateway, "These stones have protective charms engraved on them, as well as greetings and a warning to potential enemies about the strength of numbers the dwarves possess." He held the light up to study the markings better, leaning forward to trace the patterns with the tips of his fingers. "It reads, 'To those seeking entry into the House of Moria, be ye friend of dwarf or foe of knowledge, the treasure of the deep be closer than ye think.'"
"Does he come with a Ruin Mode?" Wren asked Pepper, who only looked at him as if to say that that had been the dumbest question she'd ever heard, then returned to chewing on her arm. The Wonder Chef sighed. "This is going to be tiring indeed." he muttered.
Moria itself was dark and littered with rubble from whatever it was that had happened the previous year. Machinery and broken metal lay scattered about with the fallen rock and open pits. Wren carried the lantern as Caleb swept the floor with his illuminated optics, twin shafts of shimmering green light scanning the area for any kind of danger, winking out on occasion as the doll blinked. Pepper stuck close by, looking around almost fearfully at times and bumping into more than her fair share of stalagmites.
The smell of rotting bodies wafted through the air at some places where great concentrations of monsters could be seen from a distance. Wren covered his mouth as his face turned from green to white. Both Caleb and Pepper turned away and blocked the sounds as the Wonder Chef finished being sick off the smell and sight of monsters tearing into Martel-knew-what. Though the trek was more difficult than the first path, the group wisely chose to circle around the pack of beasts and move on, taking their chances with rubble and narrow spaces to walk through. Sometimes a stray monster would come their way and Caleb would dart in to stun it with the flame of the Sorcerer's Ring, giving Wren and Pepper time to kill it off without fear of additional monsters hearing the sounds of a battle.
Mana Light was too vivid for the darkness, so Pepper began to use her FireBlossom attacks, incinerating evidence of the monster with Lethal Flora, a super-hot flame that spiraled around the corpse to seal it off and then collapsed inwards to burn the creature from the inside out, fire blooming out like deadly flower petals from its body. Caleb would whisper praise to her each time she did an attack well and in concert with what he or Wren did to take out the monster in silence. With that reassurance and reward, Pepper gained the insight of which attacks were most useful in a situation and when to unleash them based on what she was seeing before her. Lethal Flora was breathed from her mouth, so she had the most control over it than Mana Light.
"It feels like we've been down here for days! We don't even know how to look for the Moria Gallery!" Wren whispered harshly as they rested in a circle of stalagmites, the lantern set in the center to ward off the darkness and give them some warmth. Pepper dozed as she curled along the perimeter of the circle, protecting both men's backs with her own body as she also maintained the comfort of warmth. Caleb sighed and checked his internal clock.
"Well, we have been down here for a day and a half, so you're technically right. The words said that the Gallery was closer than we think. Maybe if we just go straight to the bottom level, then work our way back to the top, searching each floor, we'll come across it." the doll pondered aloud. He looked over at the chef. "Don't worry. We'll find Moria Gallery and everything will turn out for the better, you'll see."
"Or we all end up dead down here and turned into five-star meals for a bunch of stupid monsters." Wren grumbled and dug into his pack, "I need a snack." Pepper's eyes popped open and she stared at the bag in hopes that 'snack' meant she would get one, too. Caleb noticed and smiled.
"Don't be so pessimistic." he remarked as he fished out an apple to appease the mana beast. The blonde sighed between bites of a sandwich and rubbed at his head.
"I know, I know. Sorry. I didn't come along to bring everyone down. And you've put up with me like this for this long. I shouldn't be pushing my luck and your patience." he murmured. Caleb kept his smile.
"Yeah, you shouldn't." he agreed, then looked serious. "Okay, I think I've had enough time puzzling out what's been up with you. Let me see if I have it straight." he remarked, noticing the chef come to a start, then huddle up, legs pulled close to his body in a hug as he gazed hauntingly into the light of the lantern. "The Wonder Organization never really needed new recipes. You're just using it as an excuse to overstay in other cities." Caleb remarked with an expression of disapproval, "You ran away from the Wonder Chef Family!"
"Caleb... I wish that was the case. I really wish this was all just a stupid idea I had to escape my duties as Wonder Chef." Wren answered and looked up at the redhead, the single blue eye that escaped the curtain of his blonde hair filled with hollow exhaustion. "I said I would tell you after I got those recipes."
"I'm not waiting anymore! If whatever is going on is doing this to you, wasting you away to this shell of a man I used to know, then, damn it, I need to know what it is!" Caleb demanded and ground his teeth when the chef shut his eyes tightly and buried his face in his knees. "You want to play it that way? Fine! Pepper!" the doll snapped and the mana beast looked up warily, not liking the tones of the voices. "Use your mental probe on Wren and find out what he's hiding from me." he commanded, "Search for a connection to the Wonder Organization and this obsession with new recipes." Pepper whistled in worry but went into her trance.
"Stop it!" Wren shrieked, hands flying up to hold his head. "I said stop!" He held out a little longer, wailing loudly as his fingers dug into his scalp. "All right! All right! I'll tell you, just knock it off!" Caleb tapped Pepper on the snout and she blinked, ending the probe and she looked between the two of them in confusion.
"Okay, then. If you're not running around without Wonder funds to support you because you decided to make a run for it, then why?" the doll growled. Wren sighed and glared back up at the redhead, a faint red stain just below his nose that he quickly wiped away with a corner of his cape.
"You can be a real bastard sometimes, you know?" the chef replied bitterly.
"Why, thank you, my dear, charming little cook." Caleb shot back, mimicking the tone Zelos had once used when he mocked Sheena in the Tower of Salvation, "But I still haven't heard an explanation for all this. You're my friend, but I won't stand for you refusing help when I'm offering it to you, no strings attached."
"Fine, fine." Wren grumbled, arms folded over his chest as he glared into the lamplight, "I told you how the Wonder Organization reacted when they learned of my memory loss and recovery, right? They sent the best physicians and therapists to make sure I was completely there. That all of the knowledge I had before my ambush and abduction was still there."
"That was awfully nice of them." Caleb muttered. Wren snorted.
"Tch, nice? I found it annoying. I wasn't dying of any illness, but they kept prescribing medicines for me to take, even suggested that I take a leave of duty until they were sure of my recovery." he growled, "The Council of Gourmet Chefs wouldn't have it, of course. But I guess they had some lingering doubts. So, before an audience and the Council, I was tested on my skills and knowledge in cooking, the trial used to test potential Wonder Chef successors before they ascended to take the Wonder Fork."
"That doesn't seem so bad."
"I failed."
"That's bad."
"You think?" Wren muttered, "I'm supposed to be the great Wonder Chef, the leader of the Wonder Organization, the best chef in the world and possessor of the Ultimate Recipe... and I failed to make a decent stew."
"How'd you manage that anyway?" Caleb asked in confusion. Wren laughed bitterly.
"It was kinda stupid, actually. I mixed up the ingredients on account that I was more worried about trying to make the stew that I never actually decided which one to make and wound up throwing everything into the pot. One of the Council Chefs threw up after a sniff of the stuff; I thought my grandmother was going to faint from embarrassment." he replied. He sighed and shrugged. "Well, it was a shock to the whole Organization. It practically divided them up. A large part of them began demanding that I immediately step down from my position as Wonder Chef. Another group insisted that I was perfectly capable of doing my job, I just needed some time alone to sort things out. The rest are just ignoring me, waiting for Regal to come along and boot me out."
"What about your family?"
"Last I heard, they were calling my sister from her attempted self-imposed exile, hoping she'll come when she hears about my lack of focus and either talk some sense into me or finally get married. Whoever she marries becomes the next best successor to the position of Wonder Chef."
"A woman can't be Wonder Chef?"
"Oh, yeah, they can. She just doesn't want to. Can't stand being in a kitchen. Says the temptation to eat and get fat is too high." Wren grinned, "We may be twins, but we're totally different when it comes to cooking."
"Okay, so how does you running around on a quest to find ancient recipes fit in?" Caleb pressed on. Wren sighed.
"I was getting to that. With the Wonder Organization divided, and confidence in my abilities fading, my father set a sentence on my head. Sort of an ultimatum." he muttered, propping one cheek on a fist. "The Wonder Organization agreed to it, of course. All I have to do to prove I can still be Wonder Chef, that I still have all my skills and didn't suddenly become a total idiot, is find a set of new recipes that they can use to modify and experiment with."
"That doesn't seem so bad." Caleb remarked brightly.
"And if I can't find any before this year ends, the Family and the Organization will disown me."
"That's just wrong." Caleb growled. Wren laughed shortly.
"That's only half of it. The part of the Organization that wants me out of the position fast is hoping I'll get killed in the journey; the part that's hoping I succeed is trying to help, but by flocking to all the places that could have been of help to me they drew the attention of the Dark Chefs; and the part that's ignoring me is doing a damn good job of it." he summed up.
"You're in a real bind, then. No wonder you've been so easy to tick off lately." Caleb remarked in realization, "But you also said you wanted to be free of being the Wonder Chef. So why not use this as an excuse to step down and gain your freedom?"
"Because I can't now!" Wren told him in near panic, "The original rules of the Wonder Organization decreed that if a Wonder Chef were to step down or be removed upon the ascension of a new family line, he or she would be confined to the base forever to prevent the spread of the knowledge of the Ultimate Recipe. But after one of the Wonder Chefs betrayed the laws by discriminating against half-elves, the rule was changed to send resigned Wonder Chefs to human ranches! They were sent to death, Caleb! They were executed to keep the Recipe a secret!" Caleb looked startled as Wren held his head almost despairingly, "And now that there aren't any human ranches and the Angelus Project is gone, no one knows what to do with me if the Organization declares me unfit to be Wonder Chef! That's why I had wished that they did think I had died last year! Then I'd be free of my title without having to forfeit my life!"
"Can't you just promise never to tell anyone about the Recipe?!" Caleb asked, appalled, "Do you really have to give up your life to protect it?!"
"It's either that or agree to exile in some Goddess-forsaken land without hope of ever seeing civilization again. Basically, I have to no longer exist in the world to keep it safe. Caleb, I can't afford to lose my title and position." Wren sighed and shook his head. "As it stands now, the Wonder Organization is too badly divided to stand up against the Dark Chefs, and I just know they're up to something. Ginger Spicewood, that spy, still has a ton of information stolen from us. It's only a matter of time before the Dark Chef Alliance uses it, and the Wonder Organization will fall. I can feel that." Wren stood up and sighed. "I have to stay on as the Wonder Chef, no matter what it costs me. I'm the only one who can stand up against Ginger's tricks and knows what it is she can dish out. There's no time to train anyone to take my place, unless the Organization's already begun doing that." For a long moment, only silence reigned. Finally, Caleb stood with him, Pepper following after a mental griping about all the blathering they had done.
"Well, let's get going and find those recipes then. You always seem to get yourself into trouble with very little effort, y'know?" Caleb remarked with a smile. Wren blinked at him, then laughed, the haunted look in his eyes beginning to fade.
"It's a gift." he joked and the little group continued their quest.