Aster Brooks Books
patreon
Ch. 15: Dinner
🕑 Added 2025-08-26 22:00:09 +0000 UTC“How did you end up cooking?” Alyx asked as she stirred her bowl of stew.
Night had well and truly fallen over the camp. Cass sat beside a smaller private campfire at the edge of the caravan’s encampment. Kelstor lay on the outer edge, his head resting over his paws. Alyx leaned against him while Pellen and Marco sat alongside Cass in the fire’s glow.
Cass shrugged. “It just happened.”
“It’s good,” Marco said approvingly.
“I just chopped stuff,” Cass said. She’d learned a lot from the experience, but she couldn’t claim to have had a hand in its quality.
Road Stew
[A tried-and-true roadside favorite by Hess Decar. Combines filling paro root with a collection of low-cost herbs and whatever meat is convenient to create a nutritious stew.
Greatly increased Stamina regeneration.
Greatly increased Focus regeneration.
Increased Health regeneration.]
“Not every road cook is good at their job,” Marco said. “Alacrity knows I’m not. Charred meat skewers are about all you can expect from me.”
“Telis is pretty good at it,” Alyx said.
“Well, she’s got a cooking skill, which helps.” Marco laughed.
“A skill I spent far more sweat and tears on than you spent on any of your fighting skills,” Telis said, stepping into sight from around a blind corner. Except Atmospheric Sense insisted she hadn’t been behind that tent until she stepped out.
Marco laughed. “That’s probably true! Aris wasn’t petty ‘bout much, but the only thing worse in her book than a missed meal was a bad one!”
Telis snorted, perching at the end of the bench beside Marco. “I never knew a pickier eater.”
Alyx smiled down into her bowl.
“I always liked your cooking, Miss Telis,” Kelstor chimed in.
“Oh, I remember.” Telis shook her head disapprovingly. “Aris would declare it ‘inedible’ and then, not five minutes later, I’d find you’d scarfed down the entire pot!”
Marco laughed.
“It was tasty,” Kelstor confirmed.
Telis shook her head. “But the rest of us wanted to eat it too.”
“You were making more anyway,” he said.
“A single serving!” Telis moaned. “I would have made her a single serving of something.”
“I was hungry.”
“You had your own food!”
Kelstor’s lips peeled back into a draconic grin, oozing with mischief. “But yours was tastier.”
Marco snorted.
Telis shook her head. “The things the lady let you get away with.”
Cass chuckled. For all the bickering, there was no real frustration in anyone’s voice. This had the cadence of well-worn ribbing. A skit they’d all performed a dozen times, each character with a well-understood role.
It was odd to see Telis drop so much of her professional bluster, but Alyx didn’t seem at all surprised. Perhaps this was how she usually was behind closed doors.
“You remember when Alyx was little?” Marco asked.
Telis let out a theatrical sigh. “I assume you are leading into the ‘snack escapades’?”
Marco and Kelstor both grinned.
Alyx covered her face. “Oh, gods. No.”
“Snack Escapades?” Cass repeated, sensing Telis was waiting for an outsider to ask.
“At some point, Kelstor got too big to fit into the House’s kitchen,” Telis explained. “It was about the same time a young lady of ours was big enough to get from the courtyard to the kitchens without supervision and just tall enough to reach the cooling shelves without help.
“Someone,” Telis’s eyes fell on Kelstor, “suggested to the young lady that she could have extra sweets if she took matters into her own hands.”
“Cute,” Cass said, imagining a tiny Alyx pilfering cookies freshly baked from the kitchen.
Telis didn’t quite roll her eyes. “Very. Until suddenly there is a band of 4 to 7-year-olds raiding my kitchen every afternoon to share with their ‘big brother Kel’.”
Kelstor smiled, clearly remembering it fondly. Alyx’s face flushed, an awkward smile on her lips.
“Every afternoon!” Telis repeated. “Stealing Lady Aris’s snacks! Do you have any idea how many extras I had to make?” She huffed, shaking her head, very clearly unbothered but too proud to admit it.
Marco laughed again.
“Don’t,” Telis pointed at him. “I know you helped.”
As the group laughed, continuing the gentle ribbing, Salos slunk back up beside Cass, settling in the dirt at her feet.
You’re back, Cass said.
He nodded.
Cass waited for him to say something else. She could feel his soul was withdrawn, only the edges barely brushing hers.
Alyx was yelling something, her face flushing and pointing accusingly at Marco. The old guardsman laughed.
His retainers forced him to retire for the evening, Salos reported.
Kohen? Cass clarified, though there was no one else he could be talking about.
Salos nodded. They act as if their lord is ill.
Telis said something sharp. Pellen covered her face, a chuckle slipping out.
Is he? Cass asked. Could her fix for his demon-ness have had other side effects?
No, that was the wrong question. She knew it had side effects, just not to what extent. Was it more than just the confused memories?
I’m not an expert, Salos said, but he looks physically fine to me.
His mother mentioned a ‘miracle clinic’ when we left, Cass said. So Kohen must have told his mother something about what happened to him. Was he pretending to be sick? He hadn’t sounded enthused about going when they’d left.
“Cass?” Alyx calling her name snapped Cass back to the conversation of the rest of the group.
Cass blinked. She hadn’t meant to zone out. She shouldn’t have needed to with her mental stats. Following the banter around the fire should have been trivial, even while talking to Salos.
Before she could ask Alyx to repeat herself, Liminal tugged at Cass’s sleeve, pointing to a thread on the far side of its Veil.
Carefully, Cass pulled the thread back over. She blinked again. Right. The others had kept teasing Alyx. She’d attempted to throw it back at Marco, only for Telis to jab at her again. In an attempt to throw off the teasing, Alyx had asked Cass about her family.
Cass hadn’t missed it. Rather, Liminal had set it aside momentarily. She could remember it all clearly now, as if she’d been paying full attention at the time. But now wasn’t the time to wonder at Liminal. She needed to help Alyx.
But not before taking her own shot first. Cass grinned over at Alyx. “I don’t know. I think I’d like to hear more about that story Telis was about to tell us.”
“Don’t you dare.” Alyx glared at Telis.
Telis chuckled and shrugged. “You heard my lady.”
Alyx looked away.
“I don’t know if I have that much to say.” Cass scratched the back of her head. What was there to say? Kaye was Kaye. Robin was Robin. It wasn’t fun to tell embarrassing childhood stories if the subject wasn’t around.
“You’re just so determined to get back to them,” Alyx said softly. “But I don’t even know their names.”
Oh. Salos looked up at her from where he lay at her feet. Had she even told Salos about them?
“I’d like to hear about Miss Cass’s family, too,” Pellen chimed in.
She hadn’t talked about them much, had she? “Well. I’m the oldest of my siblings. There are three of us. Me, Kaye, and Robin.
“We’re two years apart,” Cass rambled as she looked for anything interesting to add. “Kaye’s a mechanic. Robin is still in school.”
“A mechanic?” Alyx repeated. The word had come out in English.
“Ah, it’s a kind of craftsman, I guess,” Cass tried to explain. She was sure there was a pseudo-medieval equivalent if she thought about it hard enough. “She works on—I mean, does maintenance on—cars, a kind of self-propelling carriage.”
“Then, is she a kind of artificer?” Pellen asked.
Cass shrugged. That sounded like a magic-type of profession. But the only magic Kaye did was keep the family’s car running despite it failing on them three times last year.
“What does Robin study?” Pellen asked.
“He’s a linguistics major,” Cass said, immediately aware that the entire phrase didn’t come through in Jothi. Cass tried again. “He studies language.”
Yeah. That came through that time.
“Oh. A particular one?” Pellen asked.
“I don’t think so,” Cass said. “It’s more about how language works in general. Like why certain sounds are found together. Or how languages evolved from one another, I think? I’ll admit I don’t know the specifics. It’s way outside my area of expertise.”
“What is your expertise?” Pellen asked.
“Oh,” Cass chuckled a little. “I studied computer science. Imagine little magic constructs that can do all sorts of crazy calculations for you on demand; that’s a computer.”
Pellen’s eyes got wide. “Mathematical calculations?”
“You were a mage back home?” Alyx asked. “I thought you said there was no magic?”
Cass shrugged at Alyx. “I say ‘magic construct,’ but it doesn’t work under any of the principles of magic of this world. Not that you’d believe me, given the only way I can think to explain it is that its powered by stored electricity—” which Jothi Language Comprehension equated much more closely with ‘lightning’ than English did, “—and can be used for everything from talking to people on the other side of the planet—ah, Continent—in real time, to playing video recordings on demand, to looking up a wealth of information from an endless database of information available at all times to all people with one of these devices.”
Cass hadn’t thought Pellen’s eyes could get that big. Her entire face was all eyes.
“And you made these?” Pellen whispered.
Cass laughed again. “No. Not even close. I piddled about with some of their programming.” Programming came through in Jothi as a word closer to ‘instruction’, as in the word used to describe teaching children. That wasn’t really right, but it was close enough for this discussion.
Pellen drew her notebook from her pocket and scribbled something down.
“You’re right that it sounds like magic,” Alyx said. She shook her head and stared up at the stars. “But I believe you.”
“Thank you,” Cass said. This wasn’t what Alyx wanted to talk about. Cass could see it in her fidgeting hand, worrying around the hilt of her sword.
“None of you were combatants?” Alyx asked.
Cass nodded. “Where I’m from, most people aren’t.”
“I suppose that’s true even here,” Alyx said softly. Most people in the towns and cities Cass had seen were laborers or craftsmen. It really was only the nobility she’d seen a sizable increase in combatants. But the nobility was most of the people Alyx interacted with.
“Kaye does some sword reenactment stuff, for fun,” Cass added. It was cool, but Cass had never had the aptitude for it. She looked down at her hands. She could probably mop the floor with Kaye now, with all her magic stats. Maybe even with just her Strength and Dexterity. “And Robin started archery a month or two ago. But again, that’s all for fun. No one is ever seriously hurt. Not on purpose, at least.”
“And you get along with them?” Alyx asked. Was that a longing in her voice?
Cass shrugged again. “Better than most other siblings I know.”
Alyx sighed. “So your relationship is unusual even on Earth.” Was it relief or resignation in that sigh?
Cass shrugged. “Hard to say.”
“Do you have family, Pellen? Alyx asked.
Pellen looked up from her notebook. “Oh. Yes.”
“Siblings?” Alyx asked.
Pellen nodded.
“Do you get along?”
“Oh. No,” Pellen shook her head. “I don’t have any hard feelings toward any of my siblings, but they would want to spend time with me about as much as I want to go back to the Catacombs. And I think the feeling is mutual.”
“That bad?” Cass asked. If that wasn’t a ‘hard feeling’, Cass was worried how Pellen would describe one.
Pellen shrugged. “They aren’t the worst.”
Again, Cass worried about what Pellen considered ‘the worst.’
Pellen went back to scribbling in her notebook. Cass waited another beat for her to elaborate. She didn’t.
Well, not everyone got along with their family.
Alyx leaned back, staring at the sky. The fire crackled between them.
What about you, Cass asked Salos. Do you have family?
Salos considered the question for a long moment. For a moment, Cass worried he wasn’t going to answer at all.
Spirits don’t have familial relationships like what you imagine, he said finally. Before she summoned me, I was one of the thousands of mindless spirits of the Azorth seas. And after… He shook his head. Perhaps if she had other permanent summons, we might have considered one another siblings. But I was the only one she kept at her side.
That wasn’t what Cass had expected. She’d assumed… What had she assumed? That Salos had always been a person, she supposed.
She didn’t know much about spirits, and it showed.
He sighed. Most spirits are much like animals. They possess instincts that aid their survival and little else. Left to their own devices, only the old and powerful ones develop a sense of identity.
And summoned ones? Cass asked.
It depends greatly on the summoner and how they treat the summoned spirit. His voice was heavy, like his thoughts were elsewhere.
Despite everything, Cass wanted to reach down to scoop him into her lap, but if he’d wanted to sit there, he would have. So she restrained the desire to stroke his back and pressed a wave of comfort over their bond instead. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away either.
Cass stared up at the night sky, the warmth of the campfire suddenly not enough for her. Was it Kaye or Robin alone out here in this world? Were they safe? Were they looking at this same sky, wondering where she was? Were they looking for her, too?
She’d find them. They’d make it home. She had to.
