The Haunting: A Legend of the Artificer Side Story

Chapter 1

"Well, this is it," Tibalt said as he pushed the door open, and Innes floated in at the tail end of the party, looking around with some degree of curiosity. "This is the entry hall, and uh, next floor up is the guest room. After that is the store room, and you gotta be careful with that one; there's bees on the balcony. Fourth floor is another guest room, fifth is the dining room, and sixth is the kitchen. Seventh floor is the shooting range, eighth through tenth are the library, eleventh is the workshop - don't touch anything there; it's liable to blow up. Twelfth is master bath, but don't worry, the second floor has a small bathroom, and the top floor is my bedroom. Pretty easy to memorize."

"I see," Innes said as ze looked around with an air of polite curiosity.

"There's also two basements, but I wouldn't recommend going all the way down. The fish have teeth," Tibalt continued, "but the second basement is somewhat safe. It's a mushroom farm. All edible, and good source of protein for the fish."

"You feed fish mushrooms?" Innes asked and Tibalt shrugged as the party swarmed to start hanging up coats and discarding their weapons with practiced precision.

"It's good for them, and I don't have real meat to feed them."

"They eat meat?"

"Yeah. They're carnivorous. Hence, mushrooms. I was using the mushrooms as a replacement for my own meat for a while, actually."

"Hey, I'm gonna get started on dinner," Grim said and patted Tibalt on the shoulder as he made his way to the spiral staircase.

"Since when do you make dinner in my kitchen?" Tibalt asked in confusion. "I'm hosting; I should cook."

"No," Grim replied peaceably as he made it to the second floor. "I'm cooking."

"But---"

"Just let him," Angel said and tapped Tibalt on the shoulder. "He probably has a meal in mind. Best to let him at it."

"... Fine," Tibalt grumbled, feeling thoroughly put out all the same. "Anyways, Innes, do you want to see the garden you almost wrecked?"

"I did what?"

"You almost killed all of my vegetables and herbs," Tibalt said and started climbing the stairs. "With your little storm thing."

"Didn't you say I wasn't responsible?" Innes asked as ze hesitantly drifted to the stairs and paused.

"In the matter of my pettiness, you're not absolved," Tibalt replied and hopskipped up the stairs. "Besides, I need to make sure Grim isn't about to wreck my garden. I'm not done with my canning."

"Your... canning?"

"Yeah, preserving food," Tibalt said and glanced down at Innes hesitantly floating up beneath him. "Canning. Fermenting. Etcetera. I grow a surplus of food, so it can't always be fresh vegetables. I was actually planning on making some kimchi and garlic confit to take on the road so we can always have a little flavor to get us through."

"I do not know what either of those things are," Innes said as Tibalt hopped up another two stairs at a time.

"Well, now is as good a time as any to learn. Kitchen's big enough for us and Grim. Do you like cooking?"

"I've... I don't know much of cooking," Innes admitted, zir voice colored with shame. "I finally had an opportunity to learn and I simply didn't."

"Ah," Tibalt said after a pause, and then crested over the threshold into the kitchen. "Well, you can learn now, I guess. I can teach you."

Tibalt had to learn how to cook over the entire course of his life. He could not imagine simply not learning to cook. It seemed almost inhuman. Not that he or Innes were human, but whatever. He could teach Innes this and then go to work on that new project. There were three now, and his attention was going to be split, but he was sure he could figure it out.

"Thank you," Innes said quietly, and Tibalt idly wondered if ze had ever had a single inflection in zir life. Everything was quiet and calm and lacking all emotion. Maybe it was a cultural thing, or maybe Innes was just like that.

"Anyways," Tibalt said as he turned around. "This is my kitchen. I make food here."

"Are you going to be underfoot?" Grim asked and Tibalt stared at him in sheer offense.

"It's my kitchen, the fuck do you mean, underfoot?"

"I don't actually know what that means, you know. None of us do."

"What what means?"

"Fuck. You use it all the time and I have no idea what it means," Grim replied simply as he reached into his bag to pull out a huge slab of meat wrapped in butcher's paper, and Tibalt stared at him.

"Oh." Of course this world didn't have fuck. Ass and shit made sense, in terms of translating things. But fuck literally meant a million things and could be used a million ways. "It's... it's a word."

"I gathered that," Grim said with a completely straight face.

"I don't actually know how to explain it. It's used as, a, uh, well, you know, there's many ways to use it."

"Okay." Grim was just agreeing now.

"Anyways, it's used as flavor. Spice to a sentence. Just ignore it when I say it."

"Alright then," Grim agreed, though he didn't look like he understood at all, and Tibalt pushed open the doors to the balcony.

"Innes, come help me," he ordered and Innes floated out to the balcony and looked around with an air of quiet indifference.

"Right there is where all my garlic grows," Tibalt said and pointed at the planter. "I need you to pull out all the cloves that are there while I get this napa cabbage."

"I understand," Innes said and floated over, stared at the soil for a solid three seconds, and then started digging. Well, that worked.

Ah, Tibalt hoped the next few days would be calm. He really hoped the next few days would be calm---

Wait.

No, he needed four projects. He needed to figure out how to refrigerate a bag of holding. Shit.