Salt Fat Acid Magic [Nom-Fiction | Food Fights | Culinary Academy]

"No, no, no," Tarragon scolded. He threw a little gooseberry that bounced off the crystalized skin of Archie's bare chest. Morning dew shook off the grass where the berry fell. "You're too slow. Reset."

Archie let his essence return to its neutral state.

"Start wide. Then pull in. Freeze when it hits." Tarragon conjured another gooseberry and flicked it at an absurd speed.

Archie covered his arm and shoulder in sugarskin as he thrust it forward to take the impact. In the split second that the was afforded, he determined the point of impact and did his best to consolidate his sugarskin to that single point. The berry hit with a light crack, and Archie froze. His sugarskin had condensed to about the size of his hand.

Not good enough for Tarragon. "Too! Slow! A puncturing attack would break right through that."

Archie clenched his teeth and threw his head back. "Okay, but what if the berry was going to explode? Wouldn't I want wide protection?"

Tarragon flicked another berry that Archie struggled to defend against in time. "If you want to talk smart, be smart. We're practicing for puncture defense. That needs to be your focus. The reason I'm not using any puncturing attacks is that I don't want to turn you into a pin cushion."

"Okay, but what if I'm in a real fight and I defend against a puncturing attack and it ends up being a splashing attack? Then I'm screwed!"

"The answer to that is easy. Don't get hit." Tarragon conjured several gooseberries into his hand and walked backwards to put distance between them. "Show me."

Archie primed his legs by flexing them. The first gooseberry shot from Tarragon's fingers, prompting a surge of essence in Archie's legs. It started at his skin, which shimmered with imperfect sugarskin, before seeping into his muscles. He expended the essence in a single bound as he propelled himself several feet to the side and closer to Tarragon.

The second gooseberry came without pause. Archie put essence in his planted leg from his hamstring down to his calf. He zigzagged closer to Tarragon as he dodged the second, then the third, the fourth. The fifth came just as Archie had halved the distance between them, and it struck him in the rib with a painless pop.

"And you're dead." Tarragon tossed the last gooseberry high into the air. "You need to be able to keep your sugarskin up while sugar rushing."

Archie conjured his blueberry-noodle slingshot and shot the gooseberry out of the air. "It's hard to bolster something while also consuming it."

"Tough." Tarragon dismissed Archie with a wave. "Barley, you're up."

Archie didn't sulk. Instead, he practiced his sugar rush, taking leaping strides to get out of the way. Tarragon had gotten meaner over the weeks, but Archie had gotten tougher. He and Barley woke up early every morning for private instruction. Yarrow only made it half the time.

Fall had a short tenure that year. One week, Archie was sweating through his jacket. Even just a month later, he was shivering in the morning cold. They trained shirtless to better assess the progress of their defenses, Yarrow and Archie freezing while Barley seemed unbothered. On this particular morning, Blanche had also woken up early to work in the greenhouse. She paid more attention to Archie's training than she ever had before, which made things difficult for him considering he felt the need to maintain a light flex at all times.

Things had fallen into a routine with them. Archie filled his weekdays with training, and the harvest season kept Blanche far away at Blue Orchards on the weekends. That left the evenings in which Archie would bring her dinner in the greenhouse. They'd talk and work until they were the only two left, and then they'd kiss for a while before one of them, usually Archie, suggested they get to sleep for the next day's early morning.

Archie doubled over to catch his breath. A stem poked out of the earth beneath him and grew and budded into a pale blue flower. Archie looked over at the greenhouse to see Blanche with a smile on her face and her hands flat on the ground. He laughed, waved, and made sure to flex his abs so that doubling over wouldn't produce any belly rolls.

Barley was slower than Archie in both essence and evasiveness, requiring him to tank hits on his widely cast mintskin. But he had made up for his deficiencies and capitalized on his strengths with a new technique. It took him a while to conjure, but by the time Tarragon had pelted him with three gooseberries, Barley held a leek the size of a quarterstaff that he used to strike the next berry down. He used the splayed leafy ends to deflect the projectiles and brought the hard white end down on Tarragon. The Head Chef deflected with an orange, leathery forearm.

"There you go," Archie nodded and clapped.

But Tarragon wasn't impressed. "Where was your mint fog?"

"I kept my skin up for a counterattack," Barley answered as he panted for air. "Like you told Archie to do."

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"You and Archie aren't the same kind of fighter. You'll get two, maybe three opportunities to land a hit if you're lucky. You need to make them count. It's good that you're ready to take a hit, but you need to still be able to take advantage of the few offensive windows you have."

"Yes, sir."

Tarragon nodded toward Archie. "Do it to him. Don't break any bones."

Barley didn't hesitate, launching himself toward Archie. They had sparred many times before, but Archie still couldn't quell the panic that arose when he saw his friend charging at him like a bull. As quickly as Barley could take two steps, Archie launched a blueberry that the Khalyan caught on his hardened arm.

Archie thought of launching another, but past experience had informed him that if he didn't get out of the way, he'd have a bruise that would have him running to Anise. He leapt backwards and extended his slingshot noodle until it was long enough to need two hands to hold. He hardened it as much as he could by the time Barley arrived, but the brittle noodle still snapped from the force of Barley's leek. Luckily for Archie, Barley had the restraint to stop his swing short of snapping his arm.

"No!" Tarragon scolded. "You have tools, use them! Smokescreen, bola, lasso. Separate and do it again. You know, Flambé used noodles. Turned them into javelins."

Archie thought of impaling someone and shook his head. "I'll try the bola."

"Good. Again!"

Archie and Barley went at it until the morning fog lifted and some of the third-years had come gathered around to watch.

"What do you think, Sorrel?" Tarragon asked one of the students. "I'm going to have you two fight first."

Sorrel sat in the grass with outstretched, crossed legs and ran a hand through his short brown hair. Archie had seen him before. Sorrel was Juniper's brother, but Archie rarely interacted with either of them.

"I think I'm a little intimidated, to be honest," he said. "If that leek hits me, I'm mashed potatoes."

"No, no. I'm talking about the smaller one."

"He's fast." Sorrel scratched the stubble on his chin. "I can handle fast."

Tarragon laughed and clapped once at Archie and Barley. "Hey! Speaking of fast, you two better get to class."

Archie groaned and stomped over to wash up at the well. Second-years had a long rotation of Tarragon's class and a short rotation of Anise's, but Archie wished for even more imbalance. Their innovation scores were based on anything accomplished in the last year, so Archie already knew had a perfect score locked up for the end of the year. Without the drive to improve his score, Archie was just left with textbooks and lectures.

And lectures made him…

Blanche giggled. But Blanche always giggled. That wasn't worth opening his eyes for. But then someone else giggled. And someone else. Something hovered in front of Archie's face. He opened his eyes and jumped away from the wrinkled face in front of him.

"Have a nice nap?" Anise asked. Her blue eyes seemed to look through his. "I'd have let you rest, but then you started talking in your sleep and distracting everyone."

Archie wiped the sleep from his eyes and looked around. Most students smiled and laughed softly at him. Sutton shook his head with intense disappointment.

"What was I saying?" Archie asked.

Anise smiled, but Archie knew it wasn't a friendly smile. "Don't you think you should ask what…I…was saying?"

"Yes, yes Head Chef. I'm sorry."

Anise took a deep breath and got back to her lecture. "To catch our Archie up, we are discussing the innovations surrounding whale oil and interior lighting, of which I think we might need to have more of in this classroom to keep some of you awake."

Archie surveyed the room for his fellow sleepy brethren. Barley's naturally thin eyes made it hard to tell if he had given in to sleep or not. Julienne held two handfuls of his hair tight in his fists so that he'd stay awake. Oliver doodled and occasionally blew a single large bubble that floated to the ceiling where a dozen more awaited, none of them popping for several minutes.

"You okay?" Blanche whispered.

"Just tired."

"You sounded like you were having a nightmare. I think you were talking to the Bhantla."

Archie pulled his cheeks down so his eyes couldn't shut. He had dreamt of the Bhantla every few weeks since meeting her. The structure of the dream was always the same, but the content varied. They were in hiding or on an island or in a forest, and they spoke of Gluttony or sacrifice or power. But no matter the dream, Archie always awoke more tired than he had left the night before as if he hadn't really been sleeping at all.

"So your dad's coming in?" Blanche whispered.

"Yeah. My mom, too."

"Good. I'm glad he'll be there for your fight. And from the royal box. Pretty cool that Head Chef Tarragon managed that."

"They both will. Barley gave me his admission token. Actually…" Archie pulled a metal token out of his pocket. "Yarrow gave his to Julienne, but Julienne doesn't want to go."

Archie thought Blanche might snatch the token out of his hand. Instead, she looked at it and pursed her lips. Maybe she just didn't understand.

"So this one is for you," Archie clarified. He put the token down in front of her. Blanche still did not smile, so Archie tried to sweeten the deal. "I heard the royal box gets catering."

"Oh. Okay." Blanche slid the token into her pocket and went back to looking at Anise.

Archie resisted the urge to push further. Anytime they argued about Archie's combat training, they both ended up raising their voices, and he didn't want to draw any more of Anise's ire. Instead, he stuck his hands under his desk and practiced conjuring sugarskin on one finger at a time. That kept Archie awake long enough for him to be entertained by the newest class dynamic.

Anise punctuated her lecture with questions to which a few varying students would raise their hands, but there were always two hands that went up no matter what. Sutton reached as high as he could, tilting his body so that his fingers might raise that extra inch. And on the other side of the classroom, Nori would barely lift her hand above her shoulders. To the amusement of the class, Anise always called on Nori, whose perfect answers would make Sutton groan with jealousy.