Two Hours Later
Ruho was still on the roof, working his way through his second steak this one even less cooked than the first because he'd gotten impatient when Azirel's voice cut through his miserable silence.
"Hey, so, I just remembered something."
Ruho didn't respond. He just kept chewing the rubbery meat.
"There's a walk-in furnace in the castle," Azirel continued.
Ruho stopped chewing. "A what now?"
"A walk-in furnace," Azirel repeated. "You know, like a really big oven. Big enough for a person to walk into."
"Why," Ruho asked slowly, "would a castle need an oven big enough for a person to walk into?"
Vexor's presence manifested, and his tone carried that familiar pride mixed with historical matter-of-factness.
"It's a torture chamber, actually. Traditional design from the medieval period. You place the prisoner inside, seal the door, and slowly increase the temperature. The confined space, the gradual heat buildup, the knowledge of inevitable death psychologically devastating. Most subjects would last approximately two hours before expiring, depending on the temperature settings and their physical constitution."
Ruho stared at the half-eaten steak in his hands. "You put a TORTURE CHAMBER in my house?"
"In your castle," Vexor corrected. "And yes. Every proper fortress has facilities for interrogation and punishment of prisoners. It's historically accurate."
"I don't HAVE prisoners!"
"Not yet," Vexor said ominously.
"But here's the thing," Azirel cut in, his voice taking on an excited quality. "That furnace is big enough to fit all your meat. And if you set it to a low temperature like, way lower than torture temperature you could essentially slow-cook everything. That would buy you maybe two or three extra days before it spoils completely."
Ruho sat up straighter. "Wait. Seriously?"
"Yeah!" Azirel said. "Low and slow cooking. It's a legit preservation technique. Not as good as salting or smoking, but better than just leaving it raw on a counter in a castle that has no cooling system because SOMEONE didn't think that through when designing it."
"I designed a medieval castle," Vexor protested. "Refrigeration wasn't invented until the 19th century. I was being historically accurate."
"Where is it?" Ruho asked, already standing up. "The furnace. Where?"
"Ground floor," Vexor said. "Near the stairs. There's a heavy iron door set into the wall. You can't miss it—it's got the heating runes carved around the frame."
Ruho abandoned his steak on the roof and practically ran down the stairs. Ground floor. Near the stairs. There—a door he'd completely overlooked before, heavy black iron with intricate carvings that he now realized were magical runes. The metal radiated heat even from three feet away.
He grabbed the handle yelped and pulled his hand back from the hot iron then used the hem of his blood-crusted cargo pants to grip it and pulled.
The door swung open with a deep groan, and a wave of heat hit him like a physical wall. The interior was exactly what Azirel had described—a chamber maybe eight feet deep and six feet wide, with stone walls that glowed faintly red from residual heat. The floor was grated metal, presumably to allow heat circulation, and the ceiling was low enough that Ruho would have to duck to enter.
It was currently empty and hot enough that Ruho could feel his eyebrows trying to singe off just from standing in the doorway.
"How hot is this thing right now?" he asked, taking a step back.
"Approximately 150 degrees," Vexor said. "Celsius, of course. That's the standard operating temperature for prolonged suffering. Hot enough to cause severe discomfort and eventual death, but not so hot that the prisoner expires immediately. The goal is psychological torture as much as physical. Two hours of knowing you're being slowly cooked alive, unable to escape, feeling your body temperature rise degree by degree until organ failure sets in—"
"OKAY!" Ruho shouted. "I get it! It's terrible! Can we make it less terrible? Like, significantly cooler? Slow-cooking-meat temperature instead of slow-cooking-people temperature?"
"The runes are adjustable," Vexor explained. "There's a control panel on the right side of the door frame. You can reduce it to as low as 90 degrees, which should be sufficient for your purposes."
Ruho found the panel more carved runes, these ones with small crystalline nodes embedded in the stone. He had no idea how to read magical runes, but there were helpful little marks indicating temperature ranges. He pressed the crystal at the lowest setting.
The red glow inside the chamber dimmed slightly. The wave of heat became more of a strong warmth than an immediate threat to his continued existence.
"Perfect," Ruho muttered. "A torture oven. My preservation solution is a fucking torture oven."
He spent the next thirty minutes hauling meat from the kitchen to the furnace. Trip after trip, his arms loaded with crocodile steaks, carefully arranging them on the grated floor so air could circulate. The meat sizzled slightly when it touched the hot metal, and the smell of cooking reptile began to fill the entrance hall.
Eighty kilograms of meat fit, barely. The chamber was packed, steaks stacked on top of each other, but everything was inside.
"How long should I leave it?" Ruho asked, wiping sweat from his forehead. Standing near the open furnace door was like standing next to a giant space heater.
"Twelve hours minimum," Azirel suggested. "Longer is better. The low temperature will cook it slowly while removing moisture, which is what causes spoilage. You're essentially making jerky, just with much bigger pieces."
Ruho closed the heavy iron door. The heat was immediately contained, though the metal still radiated warmth. He could hear the meat sizzling inside, could smell it cooking.
"This is so fucked up," he said to himself. "I'm using a medieval torture device to preserve food."
"To be fair," Vexor said, "most torture devices have practical applications. Iron maidens make excellent storage containers. Racks are just adjustable tables. The breaking wheel is essentially a very aggressive massage device—"
"Please stop talking," Ruho interrupted.
"I'm just saying, repurposing is economical," Vexor finished.
"It's cruel is what it is," Ruho said. "Building a torture chamber into someone's house."
"you live in equivalent to 14th century standards," Azirel pointed out. "Child marriage existed. Slavery was standard practice. Torture was a legitimate judicial tool. In that context, a slow-roasting chamber is barely noteworthy."
"That doesn't make it okay!" Ruho protested. "Just because terrible things were normal doesn't mean they should be!"
"I mean, the last person executed by guillotine was in 1977," Azirel said casually. "That was only like fifty years ago. France was still publicly beheading people while Star Wars was in theaters."
Ruho blinked. "Wait, seriously?"
"Yep. Hamida Djandoubi. September 10, 1977. Look it up. Well, you can't look it up because you're in a fantasy world with no internet, but trust me. It happened."
"That was forever ago," Ruho argued weakly.
"Forever ago? It was less than fifty years! Your parents were probably alive! That's barely—"
"WAIT WAIT WAIT!"
A new voice exploded into the conversation, loud and manic and vibrating with barely contained excitement. It had the energy of a game show host who'd consumed nothing but pure sugar for three days straight.
"IS THIS HAPPENING?!" the voice continued. "ARE WE REALLY DOING THIS RIGHT NOW?!"
"Oh no," Azirel muttered. "Not now, Tyrix—"
"LADIES, GENTLEMEN, AND DIVINE ENTITIES OF ALL CLASSIFICATIONS!" Tyrix's voice boomed, somehow gaining even more energy. "WELCOME! TO! OUR! FAVORITE! DIVINE! GAME! SHOW!"
There was a sound effect. An actual sound effect. Ruho could have sworn he heard confetti cannons going off, horns blaring, an audience cheering wildly.
"DIVINE INTERVENTION!" Tyrix announced, drawing out each syllable. "The weekly ninety-minute spectacular where mortals in crisis receive DIVINE assistance through CHALLENGES and GAMES! Broadcasting LIVE to all realms! Available on Halu streaming and GodlyCable premium package! Rated PG-13 for divine violence and occasional existential dread!"
Ruho stood in his entrance hall, next to his torture-chamber-turned-meat-smoker, covered in dried blood, and tried to process what was happening.
"You guys have CABLE up there?!" he shouted at the ceiling. "YOU HAVE STREAMING SERVICES?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN GODLYCABLE?!"