Frontier Chef: My Cooking Skills Are Broken-Chapter 7: Fifty-fifty

The bird girl dragged him the last hundred feet to a flat outcrop near the summit and dropped him on his back like a sack of rice.

"Stay put," she said, "or the next time I shoot you it won’t be a Paralysis arrow."

"Do I look like I have a choice?"

She didn’t answer.

"At least let me cover my manhood."

His words fell flat against the back of her helm. She was already scanning the rocks above them, one hand tracing the wind with her fingers.

’Fifty-fifty she’s checking the wind or picking where to bury me. I’d bet 100 Frontier Tokens she’s that crazy.’

[ Wallet ]

> 450 Frontier Tokens

’I wasn’t talking to you. How are you so noisy?’

[ Bzzt ]

’At this point you’re invading my personal space.’

The HUD panel faded away as quickly as it came.

Ezra was still laying where she dropped him, the nerves in his legs already his again. He didn’t reveal that yet—she hadn’t noticed it either. That was the theory he was betting on.

His left arm was still a mangled limb of hanging flesh and shattered bone. The medicine had dampened the pain but dirt and sand clung to the exposed meat where nothing had knit back together.

His fingers twitched when he tried to close the grip and nothing more.

Ezra closed the fist on his right arm. His only weapon had been left behind. He could still feel the way the shaft settled into his grip.

Actually, she had kicked it away before she started dragging him by the arm. Worse yet, she didn’t even mention it. Ezra was proud of the little pincer spear, of his first ever weapon in this fucked up place.

Either she didn’t see it as a weapon or she didn’t see him as a threat.

Both pissed him off equally.

The summit was bare, no trees in sight besides more boulders, wind, and a sky full of stars he didn’t recognize. The moon—three moons, Ezra realized—were fat and high. One a vomit green, another a baby blue, and the smallest the color of piss.

’Where the fuck am I?’

Above the summit’s peak, two faint points of violet light sat close together. They blinked together in unison and he almost mistook them for a pair of shooting stars that had stalled out. They didn’t move again.

’Do stars do that?’

Not like he knew the first thing about astronomy. He was an Aries, that was about all he could confirm.

A laugh came out of him, though it was quickly ruined.

"What fairy tale’s making you chuckle like a predator? It’s creepy," she muttered. She had a tiny satchel open, sorting through vials and needles. "The brute already gone crazy being dragged up a mountain?"

Ezra held his tongue, bit into it even. People always said the pretty ones were mean. He’d never gotten close enough to test it. The Gynoscylla’s tail didn’t count, which was a stance Ezra would take to the grave.

"Y’know, I would have helped if you just asked."

She zipped the satchel with more force than necessary.

Conversation done.

From up here he could see the canopy they’d climbed out of stretching toward the coast.

Somewhere back there was the beach. The crab, the coconuts.

To his right, past the outcrop’s edge, the cliff dropped. Not straight down—the rock face angled out and then gave way to nothing. Far below, something caught the moonlight.

A thread of silver cutting through dark vegetation. Water, not like the beach. It was clear and void of bubbles. A river fed by the mountain’s runoff, spilling over a ledge he couldn’t see the bottom of.

The mist from the falls rose like pale smoke against the cliff, and the vegetation growing from the rock face down there was thick.

Leaves the size of bed sheets fanned out from the stone wherever the spray reached them. Vines roped between them in wet tangles.

The high-oxygen jungle didn’t stop at the treeline; it crawled up the cliff wherever there was water.

"You dove for your stupid, useless spear," she said, breaking the silence. "That was your choice. And this is the consequence. The Gynoscylla is near us. Look alive. Well, don’t."

"If things go to shit I’m not risking my bare ass for you," Ezra said.

"Likewise."

’Bitch.’

She stared at him a second longer. Had he said that out loud? Either way he kept his lips closed just in case.

She crouched behind a boulder fifteen feet to his left and held her palms out. A quiet hum moaned into his ears. A bow manifested where her fingers held nothing a second ago. Blue this time unlike the yellow one from before, catching the moonlight’s tri-colors.

"Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t even breathe loud. When it comes, it checks the body first. If you flinch, you die. Either way, I get my trophy."

She pressed her feathered armor against the boulder and went still.

Ezra met her green eyes one more time. She was the one who looked away this time.

He counted in his head, killing the minutes that went on for eons. His left arm pulsed with his heartbeat, spiking when the wind caught the exposed meat. The cut above his eyebrow pulled every time he blinked, and he blinked a lot.

The familiar smell crawled into his nostrils first. Rotting meat, yellow liquid under bags of trash.

Then the sound of wet rope on stone, dragging across pebbles and dirt without care. Something heavy was pulling itself over the far ridge.

A stump came first—charred knot of flesh the size of his torso, still raw and weeping. The nerve endings he’d burned were blackened tendrils twitching in the wind. Purple stains coated the base and towards the trunk.

Under the moons the burn had cratered deeper than he remembered.

Then came the body. An ostrich the size of a car, if there were no feathers, beak, or talons. Instead its body was skinless pink. The neck—the real neck, elongated into a head without eyes besides rows of teeth that spiraled down its throat. The teeth clattered in the cold air.

’It looks like a fucking foreskin.’

It stopped thirty feet out.

The stump swiveled toward him and lingered.

The Gynoscylla didn’t charge.

That was the wrong thing.

Its legs weren’t bracing to lunge. They were bracing to bolt. Every few seconds the rear set repositioned, angling its weight back toward the ridge.

It was looking at him but thinking about something else.

The Gynoscylla was fifteen feet now. Close enough to see the plates on its back clamped flat. Gaps sealed, skin pulled taut. Everything tucked in and locked down.

He’d seen that in nature docs—when something bigger was nearby, the prey would tuck its tail and pray.

The four-star Apex that had lured him through the jungle and tried to eat him alive.

The thing that had worn a woman’s body, mimicked speech, enjoyed the hunt.

The thing that had cost him his arm.

It was fucking terrified.