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They were gathered in a fairly tight group, looking at the lights on the other side of the massive wall and already starting to sweat in the makeup they were wearing. Why was so much makeup even called for?
“Doty, take this down,” Taryon whispered and someone nearby (possibly Keyleth but it was hard to say for certain) quietly laughed. “Just… take everything down. You’re not allowed to help which is fine because I am a very good at baking. I help run a bakery so obviously Taryon Darrington is very good at baking. But you should get this all down for the sake of posterity. Oh and so we can make a cookbook for everyone later. I’ll call it… Tarragon with Taryon. It’s a good name, don’t you think?”
“Tary.”
“I think so too.”
“What about Tasting Taryon?” Vex suggested, adjusting her hair for the fifteenth time.
“Oh oh I know. Traveling and Tasting Treacle Tarts with Taryon,” Keyleth added, giggling as she got all the words out.
Someone shushed them when all three fell into laughter. “Your queue is in five, four, three,” the stage hand gestured the last two numbers and then a door opened and light flooded into the space they were standing. Taryon, Keyleth and Vex all walked onto onto the brightly lit stage where three people stood waiting for them. In the center was a woman they all recognized as they had met her previously when they were being told about this contest, Nicole Byer. Beside her was the famous chocolatier Jacques Torres who smiled at all of them, he was also familiar from the formula of the show. On Nicole’s other side was a grinning, blue tiefling in a pink dress and ribbons; the guest judge whom none of them recognized.
Nicole smiled at them all and the camera and Taryon smiled back, covering the little bit of nerves that were fluttering in his stomach.
“Tonight, one of you is going to win ten thousand gold,” she said, drawing out the word thousand as though that was a lot.
“Oh, I thought this was for a big prize,” Taryon mumbled. Vex snorted in an unladylike manner and smacked his arm. “Ow.”
The host fixed them both with a rather stern look and it was all caught on camera. “If you want to win that money, you’re going to have to impress us, your Judges. To my left we have Jacques “King of the Chocolate” Torres.”
“Hello,” Jacques waved to them and took a little bow. “I am looking forward to trying your creations. Please try to remember that taste and presentation are both quite important.”
“And our special guest judge, all the way from the Menagerie Coast, Jester. Now Jester, as I understand, your mother is the Ruby of the Sea, is that correct?” Nicole asked, introducing the blue tiefling.
“Oh yes,” Jester said, clapping her hands together in front of herself just once. Her tail flicked, ringing as little bells jingled with the motion. “She is the most beautiful woman and I have eaten so many treats and I am looking forward to trying your treats as well.”
“Thank you. Now, in this first round it’s Baker’s Choice. There’s a big prize for the contestant who does the best job replicating one of the three delectable treats hiding behind door number one. You’d best be careful or these sweet treats are going to fly away from you.” Nicole had a way of talking to both the camera and the contestants and Taryon attended her words just in case there was a hint about the tests before them.
“Be careful or you’re going to get burnt,” Jacques added with a little smile. On the other side of Nicole, Jester laughed and looked to where door number one had mist spilling out from beneath it.
The door swung open and Nicole announced dramatically. “They’re fierce, they’re dangerous, they’re dragon cake pops!”
Behind the open door, three different cake pops were nestled in a display of fake treasure. Each was designed to look like a different chromatic dragon. While Nicole explained that they were each supposed to pick their favorite, Taryon was gauging which would be the most impressive once he made a precise replica of the dragon. He’d personally seen dragons and could probably make a much more realistic representation but it seemed as though the hosts wanted something cartoonish and simple like the cake pops.
While he considered this, Vex and Keyleth surged forward to grab cake pops from behind the door and Taryon belated realized he’d missed some sort of announcement to select their dessert. Rather than run, Taryon pretended he’d meant to walk there the whole time and ended up with a blue cake pop dragon. It was definitely the one he’d wanted from the beginning.
“Now, you have one hour to make these delicious little darlings,” Nicole said, talking half to the camera and half to the three members of the Slayer’s Cake. “Now get to it and don’t let those dragons bite.”
Taryon jogged to his station, and paused just long enough to make sure Doty was where he could observe and record everything that took place. When he was certain everything would be recorded for posterity, Taryon winked for the camera and turned his attention to the recipe in front of him. It didn’t seem too complicated, he just had to make cake first. Keyleth and Vex were already moving around the stage kitchen so Taryon got to work collecting the things to make a cake. He sort of wished Pike was around, she would tell him what the next step, instead he had to follow instructions and guess based on the sample dessert at his table.
By the time the host called the half hour mark, Taryon was sweating and struggling to get his cake pop to stay on a stick. Taryon hated sweating, it was for poor people. He dunked his cake pop back into the blue melted candy and wiped his hands on the apron but his fingers were still blue. How did this actually work? He peeked at the other two stations to see how the ladies were doing. Keyleth had a smear of green across her cheek and nose. Something was smoking at Vex’s station so Tary held out a little hope he might not be in last place. Not that he would ever be in last place, he was Taryon Darrington, he was born to excel and win.
He spent the last minutes of the round trying to get fondant wings far too heavy to stay in place to defy gravity and stay on his dragon. All without using magic, that was in the rules. So what if it looked more like a blobby beholderkin than it did a dragon? He felt rather proud of his creation.
“Three. Two. One. Ya done!” Nicole announced and Taryon released his dragon and immediately closed his eyes because he didn’t want to see the wings fall off.
“Psst Tary. Put the cloche on.” Keyleth whispered across the stage kitchen, loud enough he could hear her.
“The what?”
“The cloche,” Keyleth gestured something that looked like starting a chainsaw but Taryon looked past her and saw the glass dome covering her cake creation.
“Right the- the cloche,” he over pronounced it, as though he simply hadn’t understood the way she had said it in the first place. He put his cloche on over his dragon, so careful of the wings that had not fallen off (yet) and then stood there like it had been on the entire time.
“Keyleth, let’s start with your dragon. Just so everyone remembers, this is what the dragon Keyleth was trying to make looked like. And let’s see what you’ve done!”
Keyleth pulled the cover off her cake pop to reveal a dismembered dragon and several plastic cocktail skewers stabbed into it. “Nailed it.”
None of the judges really seemed to know what to say other than Jester the guest judge. “Oh Keyleth, I really like the blood, that’s very realistic. Is that his tongue?”
“Her,” Keyleth corrected but didn’t elaborate further.
“Wow, Keyleth,” Nicole said once she’d had time to recover. “That sure looks like it’s parts of a dragon. What happened?”
“I think maybe you try to put a filling in?” Jacques asked, trying to bolster what he thought was Keyleth’s frayed nerves and battered ego.
“No, it’s blood. I mean it’s not real blood because that would be gross, right?” She laughed awkwardly. “That’d be gross. Who would do that?”
No one answered her rhetorical question.
“I made a dragon and I dismembered her. She took a dagger or three to the face. But she’s going to taste delicious.” Keyleth smiled, unembarrassed by the display of cooking she’d made.
“Right. Well, we’re just going to go and see what the other dragons look like now.” Nicole edged away from the manically smiling Keyleth and toward Vex. “Vex! Here’s the amazing dragon she was trying to replicate. Let’s see what’cha got!”
Vex smiled and pulled the lid from her dragon, she’d gotten the red dragon and while she’d done some really impressive work with the fondant, it looked as though she’d intentionally given it the stupidest face Taryon had ever seen on a dragon. “Nailed it.”
Jester was again delighted, leaning in to get a better look at the face. “Oh, this is my new favorite, I will have to tell the Traveller all about him. Is that poop underneath the dragon?”
“Mmmhmm,” Vex grinned, quite proud of herself. “See, he saw Vox Machina was coming and his bowels just let loose.”
Nicole and Jacques exchanged a look, clearly having second thoughts about having the bakers of the Slayer’s Cake on their show as special guests. “Well I’m sure looking forward to giving him a try. But we’ve got one more cake pop to look at.”
The judges walked over to Taryon’s station and he straightened his shoulders and put on his most dazzling smile yet.
“Okay, Taryon. It’s Taryon, right? Let’s see what you’ve made,” Nicole had a level of trepidation in her voice, as though she wasn’t sure she wanted to see how he’d slaughtered his dragon.
Taryon pulled his cloche off to reveal his dragon, which looked a little more like a marshmallow with wings than it did a dragon but at least it was in one piece, the wings were attached and there was no indications of a bowel movement. “Nailed it.”
“Ohh, Taryon, I think this one is really cute, don’t you think?” Nicole gushed, so happy that one of their guests seemed to be some level of normal.
“Yes I can see where you shape the head here. I look forward to tasting it,” Jacques chimed in.
Jester tilted her head to one side and then the other, squinting just a little bit. “It looks sort of like a flying cock and balls doesn’t it?”
The entire stage got quiet for a moment and everyone slowly turned to stare at the blue tiefling.
“I think she’s my favorite,” Vex declared.