I once owned a legendary artifact known as The Ladle of Endless Suffering.
It was forged in the Molten Maw of Mount Ka'thaz by the War-Mage Sous-Chef Ragnul, who—according to ancient recipe tablets—believed true flavor came from pain.
The ladle was cursed.
Also, it was excellent for stirring.
I found it at a roadside flea market.
Next to a gnome selling "authentic" manticore moustache combs and a woman who claimed she could bottle thunder if I gave her three chicken bones and a secret.
I offered her two chicken bones and a lie.
She accepted.
It was that kind of town.
The ladle didn't look cursed.
It looked... ladle-y. Old, sure. Silver, a little too shiny. The kind of shine that said "I've witnessed wars but now I stir carrots."
The stallholder grinned at me with one tooth and said, "That there's death on a stick."
"Perfect," I said. "I'm making soup."
The first sign something was wrong came when I tried to taste the broth.
The ladle yanked itself from my hand, flung the spoon across the campsite, and stirred in the opposite direction of what I'd been doing.
Counterclockwise.
With intent.
"Right," I said. "You're haunted."
The ladle gave a proud little shiver.
That night, the stew was... transcendent.
Rich. Deep. Spiced like ancient sin.
I wept.
So did my neighbor, a retired bard named Meryl who once wrote sonnets for a cyclops. She claimed the stew helped her forgive her father. Who was not in the stew, to be clear.
Word spread.
By morning, I had a line.
The ladle wouldn't let anyone else touch it.
A dwarf with culinary gloves of resistance tried to grab it. Got slapped.
A sorcerer cast Utensil Reversal. The ladle reversed him into a small frog.
I put him in a jar for safekeeping. Named him Greg.
Soon, I wasn't adventuring anymore.
I was... catering.
Epic heroes came to my campfire to receive enlightenment in bowl form.
A barbarian declared my soup "the only reason I haven't cleaved my cousin in half."
A necromancer stopped raising corpses just to ask for seconds.
The ladle glowed with dark, brothy pride.
Then came The Review.
An actual food critic. From The Forked Quill, no less.
Name was Philo Dregg. Carried a quill sharper than most daggers and a monocle made from dragonfly wings.
He sniffed the stew. Judged it.
He smirked.
"It's a bit forward," he said.
The ladle trembled.
Philo continued: "A touch arrogant. The basil tries too hard. The thyme doesn't try at all. And this broth—well, it's suffering, but it's the wrong kind of suffering."
The ladle erupted into black fire.
Philo vanished.
The air smelled of smoked opinions.
After that, the ladle went quiet.
Wouldn't stir.
Wouldn't bubble.
Just laid there. Cold. Brooding.
I tried making soup the normal way. Carrots. Onions. A bit of regret.
But it wasn't the same.
The stew tasted like mediocrity.
Like unresolved tension at family reunions.
I tried to comfort the ladle.
"You're still a legend," I said. "You've brought warmth to countless battle-hardened souls. You turned goat meat into grace."
It hummed faintly.
Then vibrated like a tuning fork and launched itself into the sky.
A streak of silver vanished beyond the horizon.
I never saw it again.
Now I cook with a normal spoon.
Soup's not as good. Not terrible either.
Just... decent.
Sometimes, when the wind's right and the fire's low, I hear a faint sloshing on the breeze.
And I whisper, "Stir bravely, old friend."
Then I add more salt.
Because no matter how powerful your ladle is...
Soup still needs seasoning.
---
The inn broke into laughter with more than a few jeers. Sam just smiled.
"I'm telling you," he said, wiping tomato pulp from his cheek. "All true. Every word."
That got him a mug of ale, another jeer, and half a cabbage. He caught it. Took a bite. Not bad.
The inn was packed tonight, the fire was high, and Sam had held up his end of the bargain: stories for a roof, soup for a bath, laughter for breakfast.
One or two more tales and he'd earn himself a warm bed instead of a broom closet.
He stood, raised his mug, and grinned.
So here is a tale.
A tale about a king, a knight, and a mage.
And, regrettably, me.
Once, long ago—give or take a century—I was invited to court.
Not because I was noble.
Or powerful.
Or even invited, technically.
I was simply in the castle's wine cellar when a royal decree rang out:
"Let it be known! The kingdom of Flarendale shall possess a dragon by week's end!"
This, as you may guess, is not a normal thing to announce.
Even in Flarendale, where most decrees involve trousers.
The king was a short man with large ambitions and an even larger chair.
"We need a dragon," he told his court, "to intimidate the neighbors. Have you seen Lord Crimbleton's griffin? It sparkles when it flies. Sparkles!"
"A glittering griffin is no reason to—" the royal advisor began.
The king waved him off.
"No excuses! We shall acquire a dragon! We shall ride it into battle! Or at least park it near the moat. Intimidation is nine-tenths of victory."
A knight stepped forward.
Sir Hallowbrand the Overconfident.
"I shall retrieve your dragon, my king," he declared, puffing out his chest like a peacock caught in a lie.
He had never seen a dragon.
He had never even seen a lizard up close.
But he wore the shiniest armor in the land and once defeated a goose with a spoon, so spirits were high.
Then came the mage.
Of course there was a mage.
Archmagister Elzabet the Wise-and-Tired.
She sighed heavily. "I can conjure a dragon... of sorts."
"How of sorts?" the king asked.
Elzabet looked directly at me. "It would be better if no one was near it. Or looking at it. Or thinking aggressively."
The king beamed. "Perfect!"
Now you may wonder: where do I come in?
I was simply passing through.
Looking for a place to nap, really.
But when the summoning began, I happened to be seated on a barrel nearby, eating a turnip.
This, I later learned, made me the "ritual anchor."
A term which sounds impressive, but mostly involves glowing slightly and trying not to explode.
The ritual went off without a hitch.
If you define "without a hitch" as:
- A minor temporal rift.
- A chicken aging backwards into an egg.
- And a dragon that was... well...
Imagine a lizard.
Now make it the size of a horse.
Give it a trumpet for a snout.
Remove its eyes.
Add six legs, none of them in the right place.
And instead of fire, it screamed poetry.
Loudly. Constantly.
In Ancient Elvish.
Badly.
The knight charged valiantly at it.
His horse immediately betrayed him.
Jumped into a fountain and refused to leave.
Sir Hallowbrand swung his sword.
The dragon recited a sonnet about loss and fingernails.
The knight wept.
The king was delighted.
"Marvelous!" he declared. "Does it breathe fire?"
"It breathes confusion," Elzabet muttered.
"I love it," the king said. "Build it a pen!"
The dragon bit a statue of his grandfather and screamed, "OH WOE UNTO THE GARLIC!"
The royal army fled.
The court magician tried to reverse the spell.
Accidentally turned his own eyebrows into ferrets.
They escaped into the ventilation.
They are, presumably, still there.
Eventually, the dragon grew tired of performance art and flew off toward the mountains.
Not so much flew as… ambled skyward while complaining about clouds.
The king insisted we'd succeeded.
He had a dragon, however briefly.
The neighbors were impressed.
Lord Crimbleton's griffin stopped sparkling from sheer embarrassment.
So technically... it was a diplomatic victory.
As for me?
I left that castle with a turnip, a scroll of aggressive poetry, and a mild glow that lasted a month.
Not the worst Tuesday I've ever had.
Moral of the story?
Never sit near a summoning circle unless you really trust the mage.
And never trust a king who says he wants a dragon for "decorative purposes."