The Firelands

61 - The Giant's Kitchen

3rd day of the forth Month, Worth's Moon

3:00 am

The Giant's Kitchen

"And so I told him that if you won't eat what I offer you, you won't eat at all, I won't have you snooping in my kitchen for snacks at midnight when there's good food set out at every meal time. Don't you find it so rude when people just don't eat what they're given, even though you take so much time to prepare it?"

"Yes... quite rude," Kalen said, from where he hung upside down over the sink.

As it turned out, the giant hadn't been quite what they had expected.

He was large, certainly. There was no doubting that. Zedkiel at his full height was the length on his middle finger. And when he walked the earth trembled... and he was called Toby.

And his home was very prim and proper, his humongous kitchen immaculate, everything where it was supposed to be and gleaming. It was just a magnified version of Kalen's kitchen back home.

Toby himself was just as well turned out, a smart apron around his waist, a bandana around his hairline, keeping the brown locks back as he bustled to and fro, setting everything up for his dishes. He was surprisingly delicate with his hands despite his lumbering form.

Turned out one of his favourite things to do was bake and – like every good baker – he was up at a ridiculous time of the morning to get to work and prepare the ingredients.

The boys – who were currently tangled up in some type of sticky webbing and hanging upside down over the sink – had to admit they didn't take kindly to being some of those ingredients.

Toby turned to them, holding a sieve filled with freshly washed chives.

"And then! You know what that little cheek said to me? He said I couldn't cook. Teenagers, they're so difficult to please."

"Agreed," Kalen said, glaring at the giant as he meandered past, setting the herbs down and getting out the flour. He looked at Zedkiel. "Teenage princes are worse."

Zedkiel opened one eye. "I never said you couldn't cook."

"No, but you have been a nightmare to feed— ow!" He glared at Incendio who had just managed to knee him in the back.

The werewolf had been wriggling around for the last half hour trying to get free and he was no closer to loosening his binds then he had been when he started. It was that or suffer a panic attack however, so the others left him to it.

Kalen's attention was on Zedkiel anyway. The elf was only half conscious, his breathing laboured and he couldn't even be bothered to sum up the energy to glare at Kalen.

He wasn't sure how he was going to handle this situation. First they needed to get free – and Incendio was proving that to be difficult – then they had to get away from the giants.

Toby wasn't the only giant around after all. His home was an underground labyrinthine that hosted an entire community of giants, all with their own specific roles and jobs and functions.

Kalen was almost ashamed to admit that he hadn't known giants could be so sophisticated. Well, these ones at least.

There were two species that he knew of. One just looked like magnified humans. Completely normal looking – except they could be a hundred feet tall.

Then there were Toby's kind, who resembled humans in a way, but they were heavy in their baring, lumbering in their walk and – quite frankly – rather ugly in their appearance.