The Boiling Toad

—Valor Thann to Udraal Thann337

The Boiling Toad

If hell were a kitchen, it would be The Boiling Toad.

The eeriness began long before Shiv descended into the bowels of the keep. Following Cuntus, he studied his surroundings as he told his new “Head Chef” about the Georges he knew. But while he spoke, while Cuntus listened and snorted, Shiv noticed something else; the individuals depicted in the portraits lining the walls had turned their faces askance, where moments prior they faced forward. Cords of fear stretched out beyond the lip of the portrait frames, but they weren't given unto Shiv; instead, they formed a messy nest around Ser Cuntus, shrouding him in a dense hive of dread.

Georges had been feared in his kitchen, but he'd also been respected. He had struggled alongside the lesser chefs. He never presented himself as a boogeyman.

But Shiv knew terror; he fed on it like a leech. And the tithes of horror offered to Cuntus by those they passed were rich enough to make Shiv a colossus were they directed at him instead.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

Shiv barked back, doing everything he could to mask the discordant feelings within.

Isolation became another bedfellow on their journey through the keep. The outside buzzed with activity; the Princess loudly proclaimed her urges, and thousands of faces scrambled to meet those glorious demands. Within the pendant resting upon her breast, however, there was only silence. A sense of emptiness—a wrong kind of emptiness, like a field harvested barren of wheat before the proper time. There should have been more people in the halls; at least hints of life or signs as to where everyone was. Instead, the keep was devoid of individuals and polished of architecture.

was the intrusive thought that wormed its way into Shiv’s brain.

Even when he used his Atlas, he saw nothing but a scant few glints. None of them were nearby, either. They were all scattered in different corners of the keep.

“Wondering if all the cunts are slacking off, are you?” Cuntus suddenly asked.

The question struck like a flicking blade, stabbing straight at what Shiv was thinking. “Something like that.”

Cuntus chuckled dryly. “Asked myself that question when I first got here too. Place’s too godsdamned fucking empty to hold enough staff to service a big lass like the Princess. But that’s because this place isn’t a place. It’s more like a kind of… corridor. Each of the royals has one.”

“A pendant?”

“No, a fat, hairy cock. Of course I’m talking about the pendant. Not all of their pendants are as big, but here’s the kicker, right? I think all the pendants… are actually the exact same one. Just being worn on different necks. Equipped to different Court nobles. Connecting different places. Figured that might be the case during one of my earlier escape attempts. No point in trying, by the way. I managed to slip out of His Radiant Lordship’s necklace and avoid getting turned to ash-powder for his tea, but didn’t make it much farther than that before Evanescia fucking turned the pages back. She’s always watching. And even when she ain’t, she can undo whatever she doesn’t like when she notices it… Although, she’s been a bit more aggressive recently.”

“Aggressive how?” Shiv had a suspicion. He and Uva had been swallowed by the Watchtower. Though his Unique Skills were spared from assimilation, everything else had been copied over. He was effectively a character in a story now. At least in part. Uva was burned worse than he was.

“Aggressive, like her flipping pages back and forth on a whim. And a lot of flipping ahead. It’s like she can skip or change the chapters of the Fairwoods at any moment—whenever she fucking pleases. Before the last few days, it took quite a bit of shite going off the proverbial rails before she decided to start the book over again, so to speak.”

With that came a chilling thought: What would Evanescia be capable of if she did manage to capture Adam? It seemed like Shiv and Uva’s incorporation into the Broken Watchtower had changed the foundations of the Fairwoods to some extent.

The realization that a seed of Divinity had flowered within Adam came back to Shiv.

Existence didn’t need to offer a reply—Shiv could feel its cruel hand laid upon his person with every encounter he survived. In the shape of Evanescia, it had gained an avatar to embody its worst impulses.

the Vestment’s fairies moaned.

“Wait, this armor heals by eating food?” The notion seemed absurd—but his bafflement was quickly replaced by genuine mirth. “You know what? I can work with that. I think I can work with that real good. Hey, fairies? I think we’re going to get along pretty good together.”

The walk lasted a short while longer until they reached the end of the corridor. There, a set of doors multiple stories high stood before them, radiant with sunlight—and seemingly forged of it as well. Rather than being made from gold, the closed portal appeared to be Pyromancy mana smelted into matter. The magic suffused into the frame was dense enough to be at Master-Tier, and it snapped open as Ser Cuntus gave it a wave. On the other side, inexplicably, was a door leading to a platform. A huge elevator shaft greeted Shiv, wide and high enough to fit a building.

“Don’t think too hard about the architecture here,” Cuntus said with a scowl. “It’s been bloody forever, and she still doesn’t care enough to add proper detail. Eons and ages, and the bitch can’t seem to figure out how to transition a scene properly.”

His words made the wheels in Shiv’s head turn. “Yeah. The entire place is kind of messy, isn’t it?”

Cuntus snorted with derision. “It’s not finished, is what it is. Problem with trying to translate a story to an actual world: Text isn’t enough to convey the whole of a bloody thing. So, you’re just missing a bunch of shit. Going from one area to another isn’t very narratively exciting unless you’re experiencing a development or running into some interesting sights along the way, so guess what? You’re getting a bit of a jump-cut from one scene to the next. If you manage to slip out from here and rush north, don’t be surprised if you take three steps and find yourself going from a nice and happy little farmstead filled with grinning, cheerful fuckers to a swampy graveyard filled with moaning corpses who want to drain your vitality to feed their Mother Green.”

“It really works like that?” Shiv asked. He looked up. “Evanescia… You’re really kind of lazy, aren’t you?”

That didn’t get a reply either, but he was sure he'd offended her at least somewhat, since his Sticks and Stones Skill trembled with slight delight. “Hey, Cuntus. How long have you been here anyway? Seems like you’ve tried to escape a bunch of times.”

“Lots. Thousands. Millions.” Cuntus sighed. “Who the fuck knows. I lost count. And it doesn’t matter. I’m not getting out of this shithole. Neither are you. Neither is anyone who had themselves thrown into the flame. So. Just accept it. Deal with it as best you can—and remember, there are no consequences to anything you do here, so long as you keep the Reader happy.”

“But how long?” Shiv pressed the question. “If you had to guess, how long do you think you’ve been here in the Fairwoods?”

“Not exactly like there’s a calendar, but I counted over…. well, fifty thousand loops before I just gave up.”

Shiv blinked, and he exercised his meager math abilities for a few moments. “That… can’t be right. That’s over a hundred years.”

“Sure as shit feels like it.”

“No, I mean mathematically, that’s literally like… one hundred and thirty or forty years, I think.”

Cuntus shrugged. “Yeah. Might be.”

“But it hasn’t been nearly one hundred and forty years since Georges escaped from Longinus,” Shiv insisted. “It couldn’t have been more than a few decades.”

Cuntus eyed him. “Well, maybe I counted wrong. But also, I said loops. Not days. Loops are longer than days, Deathless. A loop is four seasons. Four seasons are as long here as they are on Earth.”

Shiv’s mind became a vacuum. All his thoughts were ripped right out. “What… That's… That would be so much longer than—”

“Feels like one eternity stacked on top of another. Yeah.”

With that revelation came a period of quiet. Shiv thought to himself.

But Shiv wasn’t the only one with time magic at his disposal. His own wasn’t even worth mentioning compared to that of the Post-Legendary Pathbearer Evanescia had inserted herself into during their brief battle.

A new question arose: At what Tier could someone use their mana field to cover a continent or world? At what Tier could they accelerate the flow of time within so severely that everything outside felt like it was standing still?

Shiv summarized.

“Yeah, there’s a feeling I love.” Cuntus chuckled darkly. “A bit of hope just spilled out from your prolapsed asshole, didn’t it? I remember feeling that way. I remember all the others like us realizing that there was no way out. Most of them lost their minds—lots ended up dead. But the Fairwoods have a way of keeping you around even after your death. New Fae gotta come from somewhere, right? Well. While we make more of ourselves through a bit of hip work, this place runs on inspiration. And individuals and monsters make for pretty good kindling if there’s enough mana inside of them.”

The existential terror lasted less than a half-second.

“Got a question for you now, son.” Cuntus coughed. “How long you guess you’ll last here? Before you try to finish yourself off or she cracks your will for good.”

This text was taken from NovelFire. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The words were meant to provoke, to chisel a chasm of despair into Shiv's shaken spirit. They had the opposite effect. Shiv drew upon his Dread-Tainted Feat as he delivered his reply. “You ever eat something that made you sick for days? Had you spewing out from both ends?”

The beginnings of Cuntus’ mocking smirk vanished. “Can’t really remember. Why? The fuck’s that got to do with my question?”

“I am that something. For Evanescia. The Fairwoods. And the System. If she’s listening right now, I want her to know that she didn’t put a wild animal in a cage. That’s not what I am. I’m a bomb. One that keeps going off over and over and over until everything around me is rubble. Your question is wasted on me. You say that shit to her the next time you two talk or fuck.”

Shape of Monstrosity 163 > 165

Flashes of Daughter’s suffering bombarded Cuntus—and Evanescia, if she was listening in. The former tried to hide his surprise, but failed. And for the first time, Shiv saw something break the strange waters that composed Cuntus’ emotional core: fear.

“The fuck was that?” Cuntus gasped hoarsely. He stared at Shiv, his gaze less certain than before. It also presented a hardness that wasn’t there prior; a hint of recognition as well.

“Just a little something I picked up the last time someone tried to trap me in their prison. The prison doesn’t exist anymore. Said someone got a new scar from me. The others learned to leave me alone. Let’s see if the Usurper-Narrator is smarter than Daughter the Deadly.”

Cuntus was speechless. Something at the corner of his lip quirked, but Shiv wasn't sure if it wanted to move up or down. “You…” The words stopped coming for another few moments. He turned away and glared down at the platform. “The Boiling Toad. Make it fast, you shit.”

The Pyromantic doors slammed shut. The elevator plunged down sharply, carrying the two into the bowels of the keep. A tension built between them. With a few words and a hit of Dread-Tainted, the dynamic between them had shifted. Before, Shiv was wary of Cuntus because of the way he acted, his resemblance to Georges. Now, everything was inverted.

Cuntus continued looking forward for a while, staring at nothing, before he finally asked, “How?”

“How what?” Shiv replied.

“How did you get into a fight with Daughter the Deadly? How did you do that to her?”

Shiv considered telling him. He decided against it. “I think I’m going to keep you in suspense for now.”

“You fucking—are you serious?” Cuntus barked. He spun on Shiv as steam began whistling out from his eyes and ears. “You hit me with that vision and don’t tell me shit? What the fuck is that?”

“Just something I do to people who aren’t very nice sometimes,” Shiv answered casually. “I might tell you if you tell me what you know about Daughter?”

“What do I know about her?” Cuntus’ face was tomato-red with anger. His eyes grew bloodshot as red veins burst in the white. “What don’t I know about the little fucking monster? She can’t stop killing, she can’t keep her claws to herself, her mother can’t be assed to keep her fucking bastard under control, but won’t accept anyone hurting the sack of shit she abandoned. So the entire Republic suffers for it. So I suffer for it. So everyone has to deal with the fact that there’s a literal godsdamned horror running around, butchering and wearing girls to keep her skills fueled. How’s that for an answer?”

“About sums it,” Shiv replied. His heart softened. But his vigilance endured.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

“Let’s just say she didn’t try to keep her claws to herself when it came to me,” Shiv said. “And her claws didn’t quite go deep enough. But mine did.”

“She’s a fucking god,” Cuntus breathed. “You couldn’t have hurt her.”

Shiv rolled his eyes. “She sure didn’t scream like a god. More like a hurt, insane kid.”

Cuntus almost choked. “You’re a Legend. At most. You have to be. And that’s not enough.”

“Alright,” Shiv grunted.

“Alright? The fuck do you mean by alright?”

“Not my job to convince you of what happened. Believe it. Don’t believe it. I don’t care.”

“Then what do you care about?” Cuntus’ Adam's apple bobbed. Then, his eyes narrowed. “Me. You got some strange feelings pointed at me there, don’t you? Meant that much to you, this Georges did?”

“Yeah,” Shiv answered honestly.

Cuntus calculated his next response. “And I’m like him?”

“Just enough. Just enough for me to have a hard time looking at you.”

Cuntus smirked. “Well. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

But it really wasn’t.

A small mercy came as the platform came to a sudden stop. A looming set of gates came into view, their surfaces marred and battered from something trying to bash its way out. Shiv narrowed his eyes at the blockade before them. The gate was made from adamantium. He could tell by the texture alone. Behind the door was a vast expanse of glittering lifeforms. There were hundreds in the vicinity, and exponentially more beyond. Shiv tried to use his Atlas to get a better look, but felt his Awareness bounce off the gates instead.

The doorway physically rattled on its hinges. Dust and bits of stone tumbled out from the surrounding walls.

“Tried to take a peek into my kitchen, did you?” Cuntus laughed darkly. “Surprised your eyes aren’t popped. Most people who launch their Awareness at what’s mine don’t get to keep their senses.”

And indeed, Shiv was currently blinking repeatedly in an attempt to clear his eyes. It felt like a High Heroic-Tier Pathbearer had jammed their thumbs into his eyes while clapping his ears and flaying his taste buds. “Felt a bit like running into a wall,” he grunted. “You got Awareness blocking wards?”

“Not just one set, but considering I run the single most productive kitchen in all the Fairwoods, well, I got no shortage of resources, no shortage of favors, and no shortage of mithril.” Cuntus looked Shiv up and down, and his lip twisted like he was trying to stop himself from snarling. His core combusted with visceral blasts of violent anger, and Shiv watched in fascination as the man bottled up all that malicious intent with barely any of it showing on the surface. “I’m going to tell you this once, yeah? Just once. I don’t appreciate what you just did. Don’t reach or touch what’s mine without asking. I’m fine with a lot of other things—fuck, I love sharing. But when it comes to my stuff, you ask me for permission. Otherwise, there’s going to be a real fucking problem between us.”

There was a biting weight behind every word. Shiv felt something snap at him. It was an unseen pressure—invisible and heavy, like the jaws of some kind of hidden beast. Shiv's chest actually ached under the weight. A

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

“Alright,” Shiv finally replied. “I’m sorry. I’ll be courteous next time.”

His words forced another sneer out of Cuntus, but the Chef of the Summer Court let things stop there.

A sudden crash shook the adamantine doors. Shiv flinched back and saw a particularly large lifeform pressed against the doorway. Even in a glimpse, he could see they were badly injured—their biological simulation told of multiple lacerations—a spell Shiv could cast on a whim. There were also so many contusions and—

“Fucking hells, look at this shit. Look what happens when I’m not there for a few bloody minutes.” Cuntus snarled as he stormed toward the gates. “All the collared cunts forget my face. They forget what’s coming their way when I get back! Always! Never changes! They never fucking . But today, they’re gonna get it. And you’re gonna help me. As long as the Princess doesn’t call, you’re gonna help me. Because this is your fault!”

“My fault?” Shiv frowned. “What do you mean it’s my fault?”

“You distracted me. You made me cross over. If I were here, this would have never happened.”

As he said that, Cuntus finally arrived just before the double doors. Cuntus was dwarfed a hundred times over by the gate. He was effectively a toddler man trying to pull open castle doors—but he managed with a casual flick of his wrist. Both doors swung outward from the elevator room, striking whoever was on the other side. The adamantium rumbled from the impact. The unmistakable sound of a skull fracturing crackled through the air, followed by whips of trailing blood untangling like cords in the air.

In an instant, the insides of The Boiling Toad were unveiled to Shiv, and he found himself blasted by waves of miserable heat, gazing into a blasted landscape of oppressive smoke and raging flame. The vast horizon was consumed by pillars of spearing flames, and they cast a glow that was so bright it smote all detail from those standing before Shiv, reducing them to shadows moving across the walls of a cave.

Cuntus’ figure was unmistakable, as was a set of fortress walls far beyond. Why a kitchen would need—or have the space for—fortress walls was another question. A question that was further exacerbated by Fire Dimensionals hovering at the top of the walls, pooling their mana fields to shape a tower-sized arrow forged from hateful flame.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

Shiv got his answer as his eyes adjusted. He saw Cuntus walking toward a downed figure. A huge, olive-skinned humanoid lay splayed across the ground, clutching his face. Blood was pouring between the three fingers of his hand, and the ragged loincloth that offered him modesty did little to hide the horrific scars lining his back and chest.

The sight of the scars hit Shiv like a lightning bolt.

A keening moan of pain escaped the giant. He was over twice the height of an orc—eight meters tall maybe.

The answer, aside from the race, was terrified. The huge humanoid was on the verge of madness, despair, and complete emotional collapse. “P-please don’t! I’ll go back! I’ll be good! I’ll go back to helping stir the pot. Don’t the pit! PLEASE DON’T PUT ME IN THE PIT!” His squeals were unbefitting of his size. He sounded young. Like a teenager begging his father to stop hitting him.

Cuntus was practically an insect before the downed giant. But he stared daggers of scorn at the behemoth as his core churned with ill intent. “Oh, you’re not going into the pit. Don’t fucking worry about the pit. You know the rules. What are the rules?”

“Please—” the giant whimpered.

“What are the rules?” Cuntus hissed. “Since your fat skull seems to have leaked out everything I beat into it, I'll so gracefully remind you: You try to run, you go from being a commis to being food.” He put a foot on the boy's cracked and bleeding head and pressed down until he screeched. “And it’s been a while since I added some cyclops to my soup. Might make them boil you extra slow. Set it all to simmer. How’s that sound?”

The cyclops began to sob uncontrollably. He curled tighter around himself and did all he could to retreat from the world. Beyond the huge form of the boy were others as well. Others that looked on at the terrible scene. There were thirty of them. Most sported disgusting burns, with their flesh peeling off the bone, tissue smoking as it hung in flaps. Most of them were ragged and clearly desperate. Their breaths hissed forth wet and wheezing, while their eyes dimmed with building despair.

At the center of the group was a small boy. He stood as an anomaly among the others. While they were dressed in rags, he wore a pristine white toga that some of the Republic’s nobles fancied—one that was a bit too transparent for Shiv’s comfort. There was also something about his hair, dark as midnight, and his skin, pale as ivory, that called out to Shiv. Worst of all was the child’s gaze.

There was something broken there. His core was withered as well. A part of him had been corroded and rotted, unable to feel—or perhaps unable to endure the traumas that ailed him.

The boy never looked away from Cuntus, and after a second, the chef noticed the boy as well. What rage simmered inside Cuntus raged until it reached new heights. His core was an inferno of fury. Outside, he went perfectly calm. He even smiled. But it was a trembling smile. One that spoke of ill things to come. “Henry. What. Are. You. Doing. Here. With. .”

“Cuntus,” Shiv called out from behind, shaking off the sights. “W-what’s going on?”

“You got eyes, don’t you?” Cuntus spat, spinning to glare at Shiv. He waved a hand at the slaves. “They’re escaping.”

“Escaping,” Shiv muttered. He looked back at the fortress and, for the first time, saw that the prisoners had been fleeing across a bridge. Fifty meters away, running all the way to a second set of gates, was a mess of disfigured flesh that had once been people. Hundreds had been boiled to death, with their skin and meat peeling from skeletons. Some survivors whispered for death while others were melted into the flesh of their fellow escapees. And then there were the castle walls themselves. They were of a stainless metal.

The kind used for flat-top grills.

The flames Shiv had been seeing were coming from below. They shot upward and curved around the castle at the end of the bridge, heating it. Like it was a pot or some kind of pan. Some of the flames tumbled even higher into the air and left flashes of light lingering in the sky, combusting as brilliant fireworks in the aftermath.

Shiv’s mind whirled in a daze.

A pained cry from the thin boy drew Shiv’s focus back. Cuntus had the child hanging from a seized arm. One of the other slaves tried to intervene—but Cuntus reduced him to crimson mist with a globule of spit before Shiv could comprehend what was going on.

He acted. There was no thought. He blurred forward and clamped his arm around Cuntus’ as he pulled the man back.

“The fuck are you—let go of me and deal with them!” Cuntus snarled up in Shiv’s face. “You came down here to help with the cooking, right? You want to impress your new daddy? Well, here’s your first job: Them!” Cuntus pointed at the miserable, dying, wretched slaves. “Deal with the commis .”

“Deal with,” Shiv breathed. Something inside him cracked. “Commis… waste-flesh?”

“Oh, for—you picked a wonderful time to go back to being a fucking simpleton, didn’t you? Yes. Them. Just chuck the slaves off the sides. Can’t take you more than a second.”

Shiv’s head turned like his neck was a rusted hinge. He stared at the slaves. They stared back. One of them sobbed. Another two fell to their knees and started to pray. The last managed a word through quivering lips. “Please…”

“Let me go!” the dangling boy cried. He kicked at Cuntus. “Let me go! I don’t want to!”

“You ungrateful little shit!” Cuntus seethed. “Them, I can see. They’re worthless, useless, and stupid. You? I was good to you. I was kind to you. So why are you with them? Why did you betray me like this, sweet Henry?”

“I don’t want it!” the boy all but shrieked. There was a raging flood of near-madness that came with his suffering. Just being touched by Cuntus made him feel ill. “I don’t want you—”

Cuntus’ expression twisted in a grin of savage glee. “Well. Like I told you before, sweet Henry. It doesn’t matter what you want. It’s what I decide to give you that counts.” Cuntus’ grip closed. A snap sounded. The boy’s wrist folded as bone and flesh pushed through skin. His screams took on a tortured dimension. With a frantic motion, Shiv pried Cuntus free from his victim and pinned the chef to the ground. Before Henry could crash to the ground, Shiv caught him with his other hand and reflexively tried to heal him.

But his physical body didn’t have Biomancy infused.

“What the fuck is this?” Cuntus cried. His eyes were wide and leaking steam. “The hells are you doing, you stupid cunt?”

“You broke the kid’s arm!” Shiv all but screamed. “You the other one! What do you mean, what am I doing? What the fuck are doing?!”

The inferno summoned by the Fire Dimensionals grew brighter in the backdrop of this hellish world, and the arrow they were shaping adjusted its angle and now pointed at Shiv.

Cuntus’ expression twisted. “They’re mine! All of them are mine! This and in is As he screamed, the steam erupting from his eyes was suffused with a blazing incandescence, and with each syllable he spat, his voice grew layered.

Georges was on the surface, but there was also something else below.

Another voice. One Shiv recognized for what it was. he whispered.

Cuntus stopped struggling for a beat. Slowly, a sneer spread across his face. One more mocking and disdainful than all the ones before. “So. You recognize .”

Shiv felt his insides twist. His breath was coming fast. He knew why Georges had gone to the Fairwoods. He knew what Goerges had been trying to escape from. he'd been trying to escape from. What had been done to him.

Shiv had known. He just hadn't wanted to consider the possibility of someone else wearing Georges’ flesh.

But the System didn’t care about what Shiv wanted either. Neither did Evanescia. They just wanted him to hurt and fight.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

And to that, there was only one response: “N-no,” Shiv said, his voice cracking. “I don’t think I know you at all. Sorry, Georges. S-sorry.”

Before the Ascendant wearing his adoptive father could respond, Shiv drove an elbow through his head.

Georges’ skull broke apart.

So did Shiv’s heart.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart 167 > 170