Just desserts

“Come closer, my little chick!” grated the Duchess, a saccharine smile plastered across her lips. “Mmm…properly seasoned, you’d make a handsome dish!” “I’m not edible.” “Not a full meal, certainly, but alight snack, I think!” “I’ll have the Turtle’s shell now, you disgusting ogre!” “Over my dead body!” “I’ll try to accommodate you,” I sneered, pulling out my Blade. “I’ll teach you to take that tone with me! Grah!” she yelled, and I was completely caught off guard by a large, stinky, slimy uncooked chicken. Pushing the revolting thing away from me, I threw my Blade at her, but with her head being so high up, the Blade merely ripped her smock slightly. This wasn’t good. “Ha! I’m the one who’s good at kitchen utensils around here, girl! Take this!” she cackled, dousing me with dirty-black pepper from her sprayer. It was like a serving of spores except this burned worse. As I choked and coughed, the Duchess struck me across the head with her club-like spray, knocking me to the other side of the room.
“I didn’t want to need to do this, but you have left me no choice,” I growled. I began to wind up my Jackbomb, but the Duchess was already striding towards me, chicken in hand, forcing me to hurl it at her without further ado. Unfortunately, it landed halfway down the smock rather than her nauseating face, but it was sufficient. Though not the mighty flamethrower it had been when clearing her garden, the Bomb exploded into flames which started to lick greedily at the stained cloth of the smock, then landed unobtrusively on the floor. “Darn you! Have a taste of my pepper!” she shrieked, waving the pepper spray wildly in one hand, frantically putting out the fire with the other. I wasn’t taking another seasoning from that nasty weapon, and leapt for the fireplace, just avoiding the stinging cloud. “Observe, learn and react,” advised Chessur from somewhere in the deep recesses of my head. Blinking at the unexpected cranial intrusion, I looked around for somewhere to hide in relative safety. Finding only the cluttered mantel piece, I jumped, gripping the chipped ceramic, but nearly lost my grip as another plucked fowl slammed into my feet. Quickly hauling myself up before the Duchess could make a grab for me, I slid behind a wide table clock, concealing myself from the Duchess’s piggy eyes.
Rather puzzled by my abrupt disappearance, she settled for rattling about the mantelpiece. “Here, girly, girly, girly…come on, come out, wherever you are!” teased the Duchess, using her vile condiment dispenser to push random ornaments out of the way, releasing wisps of pepper from its pores. Seeing her move closer and closer to my hiding place, my heart beat like a bass drum. I looked about frantically and caught sight of the jerking pepper spray. Tensing myself, I held my breath, and as the spray knocked into the side of the clock, I darted out, hefting the tool out of her less-than-firm-grip, and poured the contents down her nose. “Hey, what the — “she choked, then sneezed. The sneeze was violent enough to pop her ears and knock her backwards. “You little bitch, it’ll take more than that to down me. I’ve used pepper all my l — “another sneeze. Bigger this time. Blowing a trumpet of steam from each nostril.
“Yea? Looks like that life won’t be lasting any longer,” I scorned. Picking up the abandoned shaker, I swung it hard at the Duchess, emptying all the pepper at her face. “Huh. This is pathetic. I say, girl, you’re rea — “A third sneeze, this one traumatizing the entire body. Tears streamed down the Duchess’s face. Her legs jittered and I swore I heard a shoulder joint pop. “Arrgh!” she squealed. Tendons tightened, toes pointed and her finger ripped holes in the air. “Wow,” I said. This was a stronger reaction than I’d expected. Looks like someone isn’t as experienced as she’s claimed. The Duchess sneezed again. And again. I could almost feel the jet of air blowing me down from where I stood. Then she sneezed so hard I heard a crack, and somehow she literally sneezed her head off. The force of the sneeze flung half her skull right at me, and though I dodged in time to escape ending up as a messy splat on the wall, drops of hot blood and assorted grey, squelchy bits spattered my dress and hair. Turning to look at the Duchess, I saw dark red fluid spurting out of the jagged cavity that was once her head, before her body toppled heavily to the ground.
“Help…is someone out there? Help me out…” Like a wraith, tortured whispers issued from the wooden floor. “Who are you? Where are you?” “Under…in the basement…pull the lever beside the fireplace…” Doing as the stranger asked, I heard a crackling noise as a section of the floor opened, revealing stone steps. Hurrying down the spiral staircase, I came upon a youthful woman who had seen better days. Though dressed in atypical flowing, noblewoman’s attire, the single torch in the chamber threw into sharp focus her skeletal frame, mostly skin stretched over bones with hardly any muscle mass underneath. Reaching out to touch the alabaster skin, to confirm that she was real and my eyes were not fooling me after days of lack of food, I whispered, “Who are you? Who did this to you? “You…killed that woman?” I nodded in the affirmative. “Thank the gods; I can be free at last. Help me unlock these awful chains, please…the key is in her pocket.
Retrieving the surprisingly small key from the cooling corpse of the woman I battled, I lightened a splinter of wood using the torch. She glanced into the darkness and swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing then closed her eyes, clasping and unclasping her clammy hands, seeming to preparing herself mentally for something. “The chains…are at my feet.” “Where exact — Oh my god!” Coming from me, the merciless slayer of scores of Card Guards, it was truly something horrific. An entire chunk of flesh had been gouged out of where her calf had been, and without any bandage to minimize infection, the wound had begun to fester and rot, a faint decaying odour emanating from behind the thin film of dark congealed blood that had collected in a puddle on the basement floor and the cavity of her wound.
“I am the Duchess,” murmured the young noble lady morosely. “You are the…well, then who’s that repulsive woman I fought with not moments ago?” “That is, was, my Cook. She only ever did put too much pepper in my food from time to time, but of late she turned into a monstrous horror. Eats all my food, locks me in this dungeon to starve, and even overruns my beautiful lawn with weeds just as bloodthirsty as her. She was the one who dug out a chunk of my leg for supper yesterday when the provisions in the pantry ran out…I suppose I don’t even need to begin to tell you how much it hurt when she went at me with a carving knife, with that beastly pepper pot constantly releasing acrid plumes all the time…” “Ouch. I helped you clear your lawn, though. Burnt down every last stalk. Do you need help going up the stairs?” I said as I unlocked the chains, trying to vain to tear my eyes away from the gaping hole in her lower left leg.
She smiled wanly, her pale lips drawing upwards ever so indiscernibly at the corners. “It is nice of you to offer, but you are simply too — oh! I think I can solve that for a while.” Bowing her head, she wrinkled her forehead, making her face look gaunter than ever, and a small pastry materialized in her hand. “Here, have some cake. It should restore you to your original size for some hours, I think.” Popping the cake into my mouth, I felt a warm sensation flowing slowly from my mouth to my extremities, seeming to stretch them up and outwards. Now just as tall as the Duchess, who didn’t seem that older than me even in her starved state, I hauled her up, avoiding the injured leg as I went, and ascended the stairs slowly. “Thank you so much…I haven’t eaten in weeks, and what with the blood lost from my leg…you wouldn’t happen to have any Mana Crystals, would you?” “As a matter of fact, I do,” I asserted. “How wonderful…but you don’t seem to be from around these parts, or even like a Wonderlander at all. How do you even know what Mana Crystals are?” “…It’s a long story.”