"What did you bring back?" Annan asked curiously.
"Don't ask. Anyone who asks will throw up."
"I'm curious."
Annan didn't want to hear it. He knew the answer would make him miserable for a day, but not knowing would bother him for a year.
Beludona indulged his damned curiosity. "Have you heard of that dish human nobles make? They stuff an egg into a fish, the fish into a goose, the goose into a lamb, and the lamb into a cow."
"Heard of it? I've eaten it once, though I only had the outermost meat." Annan had always wondered whether the egg at the center of all those layers could still have any flavor. Or was the whole point just the novelty?
Beludona told him it could. Her ingredients were layered the same way, except she had used carrion eaters.
Well... dung eaters would be just as accurate.
"You mean that bundle held a vulture, with a rat inside the vulture, a fly inside the rat, and a maggot inside the fly?"
"Nothing that mild."
Annan clicked his tongue. "More than the idea itself, I'm curious where you found all that."
"You know what the Abyss is like. You can find anything that defies logic there."
Annan nodded thoughtfully, then suddenly pulled off a sock and threw it into the Cooking Pot.
"What are you doing?"
"When people first learn magic, they always wonder whether they can cast a spell some other way. When they first learn to cook, they want to try throwing every ingredient together."
"What does that have to do with your stinking sock?"
"The fact that it has nothing to do with anything is the whole point."
Beludona fell into thought.
Beludona had inspired Annan, and Annan in turn inspired Olmedo. She began adding one strange