Two Hours Later - Dawn
"They're gone."
Azirel's voice cut through the silence that had settled over the kitchen. Ruho hadn't moved from his spot against the counter. His eyes were open but unfocused, staring at nothing, his mind deliberately blank because thinking about what had happened outside would make him vomit again.
"What?" His voice was hoarse.
"The blood hounds," Azirel clarified. "They're gone. Well, most of them are dead. The survivors from the winning pack left about twenty minutes ago. Probably heading back to their territory to digest."
Ruho didn't respond immediately. He just sat there, processing the information with the efficiency of a computer running on a single battery cell.
"The good news," Azirel continued, trying for an upbeat tone, "is that now that the Gigantosuchus has been completely drained of blood, any meat you harvest will taste way less gamey. Blood is what makes reptile meat have that strong flavor. So really, the blood hounds did you a favor."
"A favor," Ruho repeated, his voice flat.
"Yeah! Silver lining and all that."
Ruho pushed himself to his feet. His legs were stiff from sitting for two hours. His entire body felt like it belonged to someone else. He walked through the entrance hall, his bare feet leaving prints in the dried blood he'd tracked in earlier, and approached the front door.
He lifted the crossbar. Pulled the heavy door open.
Dawn light spilled across the plateau, painting everything in shades of pink and gold that would have been beautiful under any other circumstances.
The plateau looked like the floor of a slaughterhouse.
Blood hound corpses were everywhere. Dozens of them, scattered across the stone in various states of destruction. Some were relatively intact, just throat wounds or disembowelment. Others had been torn apart so thoroughly that Ruho couldn't tell where one corpse ended and another began. Most of them had been partially drained—other blood hounds drinking from their fallen pack mates before either dying themselves or being driven off.
A few were still twitching. Not alive, just residual nerve responses, muscles spasming as the last electrical signals fired through dying tissue.
And in the center of it all, the Gigantosuchus. Except it didn't look like the Gigantosuchus anymore. It looked like someone had draped a leather tarp over a dinosaur skeleton. The scales hung loose against the bones, every ounce of blood and fluid extracted, leaving nothing but a desiccated husk that barely resembled the terrifying predator that had chased him.
Ruho stood in the doorway for a long moment, taking it all in. Then he walked forward, stepping carefully around blood hound corpses, and approached what was left of his kill.
He spent the entire day harvesting meat.
It was grim, silent work. He didn't talk. Azirel, sensing his mood, didn't offer commentary. The only sounds were the scrape of his short sword against scales, the wet sound of flesh separating from bone, his own breathing.
The blood hounds had focused on areas with easy access to blood vessels—the neck, the belly, anywhere the scales were thin. That meant large sections of muscle tissue remained, particularly in the tail and the inner thighs where the armor was thickest. Ruho cut away scales, peeled back hide that was now loose and pliable without the internal pressure of blood, and carved out chunks of dark red meat.
His technique was terrible. He wasted probably half the usable meat by cutting too deep and hitting bone, or not deep enough and leaving good flesh attached to hide. But he was learning, in the most disgusting hands-on education possible.
Around midday, he made a terrible discovery.
One of the meat chunks he'd set aside earlier maybe three hours ago—= had started to smell. Not just blood smell. Rot smell. The distinct, cloying odor of decomposition.
"Azirel," Ruho said quietly, still working on separating a thigh muscle. "Why is the meat rotting?"
"Oh, yeah," Azirel said. "Reptile meat spoils really fast in warm climates. Something about the protein structure and bacterial growth. You've probably got like, six hours max before anything you harvest becomes inedible. Less if it's in direct sunlight."
Ruho looked at the pile of meat he'd been building. At least forty kilograms, sitting in the sun, some of it now definitely questionable.
He worked faster after that.
By evening, as the two moons began to rise, he had roughly eighty kilograms of crocodile meat stacked in the castle kitchen. Most of it was from the tail and thighs—dense, dark red muscle that looked vaguely like beef if you squinted and ignored the lingering reptile smell. Some pieces were definitely borderline, with that slight sickly-sweet smell that suggested the early stages of decay, but he kept them anyway. He couldn't afford to be picky.
The castle reeked. Not just the kitchen—the entire structure. The smell of raw meat and blood had permeated the stone walls. Every breath Ruho took was flavored with the scent of slaughterhouse and decomposition.
He stood in the kitchen, surrounded by his hard-won protein, and felt... empty. Not triumphant. Not relieved. Just empty.
"You did good," Azirel said quietly. "Seriously. That was rough work and you got through it."
"How do I preserve this?" Ruho asked. "This much meat. I can't eat it all before it spoils."
"Salting is traditional," Azirel suggested. "Or smoking. Both work pretty well for preservation."
"Where's the salt?"
There was a pause.
"Uh," Azirel said.
"Azirel," Ruho's voice was dangerously quiet. "Where is the salt."
"There... isn't any?"
"WHAT?!" Ruho spun around, looking at the empty shelves, the barren pantry. "You gave me a CASTLE! A GOURMET MEDIEVAL KITCHEN with pots and pans and a fucking HEARTH! And NO SALT?!"
"Vexor builds structures," Azirel said defensively. "He doesn't stock pantries! We've been over this!"
"SALT ISN'T A LUXURY ITEM!" Ruho screamed. "It's BASIC! It's FUNDAMENTAL! Humans need salt to LIVE! And it's the PRIMARY METHOD of food preservation in pre-refrigeration societies! How do you build a medieval castle kitchen and not include SALT?!"
"I don't know! I didn't design the kitchen!"
"This place doesn't even have a FRIDGE!" Ruho continued, his voice rising. "No cooling system! No preservation magic! Nothing! Just a pretty castle that REEKS of rotting meat and a kitchen full of food that's going to be INEDIBLE in twelve hours!"
He grabbed one of the better-looking steaks—a thick cut from the tail section, maybe two kilograms. The meat was already starting to feel slightly tacky, that first stage of surface degradation.
"I need to cook this," he muttered. "Cook it now. Cooked meat lasts longer than raw meat. Maybe if I cook all of it—"
He looked at the eighty kilograms of crocodile steaks piled on the wooden preparation table. Even if he cooked nonstop, he'd never get through it all before the rest spoiled.
Ruho walked to the hearth. It was massive, easily large enough to roast a whole pig, with a grate for grilling and hooks for hanging pots. He threw his steak directly onto the grate—no seasoning, no oil, nothing—and watched as the stone underneath began to glow with heat.
Magic. The stove was magic. Of course it was. The one thing Vexor had gotten right.
The meat began to sizzle, fat dripping onto the glowing stones below and vaporizing into smoke. The smell was... not terrible, actually. Rich. Meaty. Almost familiar, like very gamey beef.
Ruho didn't wait for it to cook properly. The moment the outside had some char on it, maybe three minutes per side, he grabbed it with his bare hands—too tired to care about burns—and carried it up the stairs.
Past the second floor. Past the third floor. Up the narrow spiral staircase that led to the roof access.
He emerged onto the battlements of the northwestern tower, the same spot where he'd fired the ballista. The two moons were bright overhead, casting everything in silver-blue light. The plateau stretched out below him, still littered with blood hound corpses, still reeking of violence and death.
Ruho sat down with his back against the stone parapet, held up his barely-seared crocodile steak, and took a bite.
It was tough. Chewy. The texture was wrong—too dense, too fibrous, like trying to eat a leather belt that had been soaked in meat juice. The flavor was intense and strange, somewhere between chicken and fish and beef but not quite any of them.
But it was food. Actual, real food. Protein and calories and sustenance.
Ruho chewed slowly, mechanically, staring out at his apocalyptic plateau kingdom. His body was covered in dried blood. His castle smelled like death. He had eighty kilograms of rapidly spoiling meat that he had no way to preserve. He was being watched by gods and legendary warriors while he sat alone on a roof eating barely-cooked prehistoric reptile.
He took another bite.
Chewed.
Swallowed.
"This is my life now," he said to no one in particular.
The moons didn't answer. The blood hound corpses didn't move. The wind carried the smell of rot and iron across the plateau.
And Ruho kept eating, because what else was there to do?