Frontier Chef: My Cooking Skills Are Broken-Chapter 19: The Sandsea Leviathan

The leviathan’s tail came down and Ezra dove left.

Sand exploded where he’d been standing and the tail rose again, but he was already running along its underside.

’A second sooner and I’d be paste.’

> SP: 125/205

The plates were warm under his hands when he grabbed on. Each one the size of a dinner table, yellow and ridged, no longer vibrating.

He pulled himself up between two of them and the gap nearly pinched his fingers shut.

The harpoon was ten feet ahead, lodged where two plates met at an angle.

Ezra ducked low against the leviathan’s body as it thrust over in the sand, still disoriented from the breach.

He lifted himself up towards the wound, cursing under his breath as he nearly lost his fingers when two plates closed together. It was almost like rock-climbing, except he was on a one-hundred foot long whale that somehow swam in the sand.

Even then, the beast seemed to understand Ezra’s intentions. Otherwise it would have belly-flopped onto the sand and got rid of the pest for good.

He gripped the shaft and for a second the eye of the leviathan met Ezra’s. As big as the tire of a semi-truck, no less. It blinked once, and opened its jaw without teeth and wailed a final time.

The sound carried through the open desert, probably echoing off the bowl where the Ossalakas stayed cowering in their little homes. Ezra let the heat build against the hilt of the harpoon, jaw tight and knees ready.

> SP: 95/205

’I don’t need a lot of heat. Just enough to melt the core of it so it can snap off. But that means I need to pull it out at the exact right moment, at the exact temperature.’

"Hold on, big guy," Ezra said. The heat was warping the metal from a dull gray to orange now. "This is gonna fucking hurt."

’Not yet.’

The metal was turning red now, a dim light glowing in the middle of nowhere.

’Not... yet.’

> SP: 30/205

> SP: 10/205

> SP: 2/205

The heat warped into a dark blue and that was enough. Ezra pulled with all of his fucking back.

Flesh parted, followed by the clang of the melted harpoon on sand.

The leviathan exhaled through its blowhole and a column of sand shot twenty feet into the air. It shook Ezra off its body and the plates began vibrating again all at once.

It was like a chainsaw revving back up to full speed, and Ezra did not intend to get in its damn way. He fell on the ground and rolled away a few more feet for good measure.

The harpoon lay next to him, still glowing from heat and bent at the angle that he had pulled from. Whether it was purely his strength or the work of the heat, Ezra couldn’t tell.

Not like it mattered at the moment. The plates were now vibrating at full speed, the ground underneath the leviathan dissolving by the millisecond.

From where Ezra was, the leviathan took over most of the night sky, and most of the air really. He was finding it hard to breathe. It was like sitting right next to a jet engine firing up in reverse.

It opened its jaw once more, wailing something that was no longer a cry for help and more like a cry of resolve.

Then it dove into the ground, the sand filling up the hole it created in the same breath.

The leviathan was gone now.

Ezra was sure only after the earthquakes ceased.

The stars in the sky were blinking, taking turns to pry on the naked man heaving his chest in and out. The adrenaline was wearing off now, and so was the Sated passive.

"Holy shit," he muttered under his half-breaths. "Did you see that, System? I fucking did it. I looked at it in the eye, and it felt like... like I was helping my son."

[ Bzzt ]

Ezra ignored the golden text in his face and got up to his legs before slipping right under himself.

’I’m all out.’

He felt another rumble then. This one was weaker, quick about it too.

"Ossa, ossa!"

Three Ossalaka were hauling ass with a bone-frame cart in tow. They barked orders at each other in Jackalyn, quieting down as they got closer to Ezra lying on his back. From that distance, he was as sure as dead.

So one of them poked his hip with a bone, then again.

"Ossa," it whimpered. It went around to Ezra’s feet and raised it toward his crotch.

"Wait!"

The Ossalakas sighed in relief and loaded him up into the cart, not really caring for how they put him in there. His butt was facing the stars now and Ezra was too tired to fix the posture.

They scurried back through the desert. One of them was standing on the cart looking overhead in the darkness, bone spear ready for combat. It was quiet and empty, cold enough that Ezra’s breath came out as a fog.

The cart reached the oasis and the rest of the Ossalakas barked and howled all at once. They were already celebrating, torches relit and drums banging.

The three Ossalaka medics dragged him back through the rocks as the sky started graying in the east.

All the furballs were dancing around a pit of fire that rose into the dark sky, bones thumping against hide and little cubs mimicking their parents’ moves.

They even brought back out the meat on the slab. Some of the royal guards were cutting it up and Ossalakas lined up for their turn. The ones with a cut were searing it against the fire.

The meat was nowhere near cooked enough to satisfy its contents, but what do semi-sapient animals know about the first thing of cooking?

Ezra looked around for the bird girl. He couldn’t see beyond the cart and a dozen or so dancing Ossalakas.

Somewhere out there, the leviathan was swimming under the sand. He thought about naming it. What the hell would he name a giant sand whale?

’Betty.’

Ezra shifted his brows as the Ossalaka propped him up against a rock.

’It’s not even a girl. Wait, is it even a guy? I mean, I didn’t look at its crotch. How would I know?

Besides... do whales even have—’

"Ezra," a voice said, loud enough that it cut through the Ossalaka celebration.

Neve was at the spring again, wearing a circlet made of bone. The flames cast a shadow over her chin, her pale lips, catching the glint in her green eyes that looked him up and down.

If he was any dumber he’d think the Ossalaka was presenting her as the reward for warding off the Gleaming Beast of the Dunes.

But he knew better.

That, or it was the frostbite catching up to his head.