Dungeons Are Bad Business

For the third night in a row, the kitchen was an absolute madhouse. Orders came in faster than the trio of [Line Cooks] and the [Head Chef] could keep up, and everyone’s tempers were as fried as the meat and vegetables they served up. Mistakes – which always happened, even on slow nights – became frustratingly common, and furious cursing was the only conversation amongst the employees as they fell further and further behind.

Crouching down to pick up a carton of chopped vegetables, Irvine felt a familiar click in his lower back that heralded trouble come tomorrow morning and grimaced. He stood back up slowly, hoping against all knowledge and experience that it would somehow undo whatever he’d just done. Unfortunately, the barely perceptible tightness in the small of his back remained, taunting him and promising future misery.

He swore under his breath, grabbing two big handfuls of onions and red bell peppers and angrily tossing them into the skillet, where they hissed and sizzled. He stabbed at them with his spatula, flipping them over when they started to crisp and color and adding a bit of sauce.

His back twinged again. “Wouldn’t have happened if I’d gotten my break an hour ago like I was supposed to,” Irvine muttered darkly, scowling over at Loren, the [Head Chef] who was responsible for his longer than expected shift.

The younger man was a whirlwind: he was managing three skillets and a chopping board at the same time, his long blond hair tied back in a ponytail and his shirt damp with sweat as he cut, stirred, flipped, and served. Everything he did was purposeful, and not a single motion was wasted.

Irvine hated Loren, though he knew it was irrational to do so.

He remembered when Loren had first started working at the restaurant as a [Prep Cook] five years earlier. The blond man had been slow and shaky, so nervous about hurting himself in the kitchen that he took three or four times longer to do anything than the rest of the crew. Worse, his food tasted like crap. When it wasn’t bland it was almost as salty as seawater, or so spicy you could taste nothing else.

Somehow though, he’d snowed the owner of the joint into thinking that he was better than he was, and it was only a few months before he got promoted and upgraded his class to [Line Cook]. That same process had taken Irvine three years of hard work.

By itself, that would have easily been enough for Irvine to dislike the other man, but it got worse from there. See, Loren moved even faster after that, leveling rapidly and becoming a [Chef] – and then [Head Chef] – within two more years.

The faint smell of burning distracted him from his brooding recollection, and Irvine glared down at his skillet. Sure enough, almost half of his onions had gone from pleasantly brown to unpleasantly black, and Irvine swore under his breath once again.

Scraping the more-than-slightly charred vegetables out onto a plate, the [Line Cook] started another batch. Loren would yell at him if he tried to serve burnt vegetables.

The thought of enduring another scolding from a man he’d taught the ropes to sent a fresh wave of unpleasant thoughts through Irvine’s mind. He didn’t care what people said: the System definitely played favorites. It picked winners and losers, because there was no other way to explain Loren’s rapid ascent while his own leveling had been so slow it was basically nonexistent. They’d both done the same work in the same place, with the same rules and constraints around their behavior.

After all, Irvine was positive that those stupid cookbooks and lifestyle magazines Loren had brought in and read during his breaks could never have caused such a difference.

There was just no way, he told himself, the old thought familiar and comfortable in his skull. There was just no way.

Right as his veggies finished – without being burned this time – Loren’s voice filled the kitchen. “Come on, guys, I’m still waiting for a bunch of stuff to get this order up. Let’s pick up the pace a little bit, eh? We can get back on track if we just keep at it!”

“Pick up the pace yourself,” Irvine grumbled, plating his dish and bringing it over to where the rest of the plates were waiting.

As he walked, he looked out into the restaurant and caught a glimpse of the crowd eating. There were easily sixty people if not more, and judging by the weapons and armor stacked near the tables they had to be adventurers. Same as the last two days.

Irvine shook his head. He didn’t know why there were suddenly so many freaking adventurers in town, but it probably had something to do with the dungeon in town. He vaguely recalled some sort of event or something taking place, but while he didn’t remember the specifics of it he was ready for it to end. Being so busy was unpleasant; the [Line Cook] desperately wanted to go back to the slow, relaxing nights he’d gotten used to over the years.

Returning to his station, Irvine grabbed the next ticket and groaned. It was another fancy pants order that was going to take way longer than it should. He went to grab some potatoes and found that the bucket was empty, which meant that he’d have to chop some himself.

Knife in hand, Irvine arranged a dozen potatoes on a chopping board and activated [Quick Cubing], letting the skill guide his hands and the knife as he turned them into a pile of mismatched shapes that were only vaguely cuboid on account of his version of the skill being faulty. He’d watched Loren – and the other [Line Cooks] – get perfect cubes without problems, but his own efforts never reached that level of quality.

Oh well. It wasn’t like it really mattered, Irvine thought as he scooped the potatoes into his skillet and sprinkled them with salt and pepper. The people eating them wouldn’t care if they weren’t all the same size or shape.

With that done, Irvine turned to making the sauce for his dish, counting down the seconds until he could be done for the day.

Half an hour before midnight, Irvine finally got to take off his filthy apron and step outside. His shift was finally done, having been made longer by the fact that he’d drawn the short straw on cleaning and locking up the restaurant for the night. Hobbling across the alley, Irvine sagged against the brick wall near the dumpster and started fumbling around in his pockets for a cigarette and his lighter. His back was starting to properly hurt now, each movement an exercise in willpower.

“That was miserable,” Irvine said after his first blissful pull of his cigarette. “Absolutely. Miserable.”

The rats scurrying around the dumpster didn’t respond, but Irvine hadn’t been expecting them to; like anyone in the continent he’d heard stories of “kin” other than kitrekins and elkin that he knew – born from rabbits and turtles and bears and all sorts of other animals – but never any involving rats.

He thought about that for a moment – since it was rather weird – before his more usual melancholy returned to his skull and he slowly sank down to the street to finish his smoke and stare at the sky.

Twenty years he’d been doing that. Actually, now that he counted back, it was more than that wasn’t it? He was thirty seven now, and had started working at the restaurant at fifteen, which meant it’d actually been…twenty two years.

“Just something to do for a while to get some spending money while I figure my life out,” Irvine said with a small, bitter chuckle. “Nothing I’m going to stick with long term.”

Of course, that carriage was long since left the station. What was he supposed to do now? Join the adventurer’s guild? That wasn’t possible: Irvine had no other skills, no ability to go forth and seek adventure and glory in other areas of life. He only had one class and his body was starting to betray him with almost alarming regularity, and the aches and pains that had been minor inconveniences were rapidly replaced by near-crippling agony.

What was left for him to accomplish over the next five years? Let alone ten, twenty or thirty? What did he even want to do? He’d grown up in the city of Oar’s Crest and he was going to die in the city of Oar’s Crest. Nothing he did was going to change that.

It was simply too late. Some people were fated for great things, and he simply was not. They got so-called “fortuitous encounters” that charted the course for their lives, and kept them on it without issue. Other people, normal people like him weren’t so lucky. They had no choice but to muddle forward with the hand they’d been dealt and do the best they could.

Such was the way of the world, as it always had been and always would be. It was like his back. There was no point in complaining about it, because nothing would – no, could – ever change.

He might as well scream at the sky for being blue.

[Jaded Heart +1]

“Bugger off,” Irvine grunted, swatting the notification away like it was a mosquito.

Irvine brooded for a few more minutes, wondering if his back would tolerate him getting back up and the long walk home. A small movement forward told him that the answer was no, because of course it was. He’d have to stay here for a while and rest until his willpower was sufficient to push himself to move again. Irvine patted his pockets again. He had a few more cigarettes somewhere in there, so that wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

A low, powerful voice came from the shadows. “Excuse me, any chance you have a lighter I can borrow for a second? I can’t seem to find mine.”

Irvine turned to look and found himself staring up at a huge ogre holding a large pipe. She had a single cracked horn, and even in the dark gloom of the alley her eyes seemed to glow with a strange light.

“Sure.”

He jimmied out his lighter and handed it over, only to be surprised by the ogre sitting down beside him and lighting her pipe. The smell of her tobacco filled the air, old and strong and carrying a whiff of something that reminded Irvine of a medicine he’d had as a child.

“Thanks. Mind if I join you for a while?”

Irvine shrugged, and the two strangers sat quietly, looking up at the sky.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“The sky. It looks nicest at the end of a long day, don’t you think?”

Irvine snorted. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it before.”

“Ah.”

Silence reigned for a little while longer, but eventually the ogre stood back up and said. “Well, I should be going now. Thanks for the light. {Be Well}.”

With long, almost impossible steps, she strode away and vanished into the gloom of the alley.

Wondering what that’d all been about, Irvine finished his cigarette and smoked another. Only then did he decide that it was time to be getting home. Gritting his teeth, the [Line Cook] went to stand up and was shocked by the lack of pain in his back. He twisted his torso and bent down. Still no pain or discomfort.

What the heck?

He started walking home, somehow feeling better than he had in years.

A few blocks from the restaurant, Irvine stopped and his mouth fell open.

Loren was walking toward him, an eager smile on his face.

“Hey,” the [Head Chef] said brightly. “Just finished up, huh?”

“I took a bit of a break outside afterwards. What are you doing out so late?”

“I came up with a new idea for a dish that I want to try making before we open up in the morning. I think the adventurers and other people coming to the restaurant will really like it.”

Any other night Irvine would have wished him well and kept going. He didn’t care what Loren did. However, a curiosity he’d never felt before filled Irvine’s stomach, and despite his own fatigue he tucked his hands into his pocket and said, “You mind if I come with you?”

“Sure. Come on, I’ll tell you all about it.”

[Jaded Heart - 3]

Irvine's Character Sheet:

Irvine Randstrider

Primary Class: Line Cook (Russel’s Restaurant, Oar’s Crest), Level 22

Might: 31

Wit: 16

Faith: 6

Ambition: 2

Persistence: 1

Jaded Heart: 62 (-2)