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Yue pulled the empanadas out of the oven and smiled hopefully at them. Golden brown. Gently bubbling sauce peeking out between the crimped edges of the crust. Smelling utterly delectable.
Of course, the last four batches she'd made had also smelled delectable and looked beautiful. Their crusts had varied from consistencies that could be charitably described as "shoe leather" to "kevlar." Several, she had simply dumped straight into the compost bin, after she had tapped them against the countertop, and they had not shed even a single flake of pastry.
Yue was beginning to wonder if she had met a cuisine that required the mystic arts to perfect when a loud BANG! rang through the Sanctum corridors.
Her head went up, and she reached up with one hand and tapped the hovering watch-spell she'd set that morning.
It spun out a brief flicker of light that wrote, " 妖鬼 i," which was enough to make Yue mutter under her breath, throw a dish-towel over the empanadas, and race up the stairs following her spell to get to whatever the thing was. It had probably gotten in during the period between when Master Drumm had died and Doctor Strange had been sworn in as Master, and now it was taking advantage of the fact that the Master was in Kamar Taj and hence not in apparent residence.
Yue, however, was. And after four rounds of botched empanadas, she had more than enough frustration to fuel a proper containment spell that would last until the Master returned.
The spirit - when she found it - was hovering in one of the smaller bedrooms that the novices occupied when they were staying in residence, and it was doing its level best to warp the room into some sort of unholy torture chamber. It was being thwarted by the Sanctum's rock solid conviction that this was not what it was - the Sanctum, after all, had been here for a long time, and the spirit didn't grasp its underlying nature - and also by the fact that sometimes the novices considered these places something of unholy torture chambers themselves, but not of the "blood dripping from the walls" or "brains oozing out of the light fixtures" type. It was usually more of the, "I'm going to die of boredom if I don't find something to do that doesn't involve studying," imagery.
The thing looked like someone had taken a bunch of eyeballs and glued them to the underside of a jellyfish. Complete with eyelids and eyelashes in some cases, but less so for the eyes that looked a bit more like marbles. Yue didn't really care, but she knew that these sorts of details mattered in figuring out which kind of spirit it was, and thus what its weaknesses were.
The first containment circle she threw around the thing fizzled quickly, and it roared up to strike at her with tentacle-tendrils that whipped blue fire at her. She dodged, thinking, I need to make time to do drills at Kamar Taj. I need to be faster.
Her second containment circle was much better formed, and hit the thing with a smell like someone burning trash in a back alleyway. It hovered around the spirit, turning slowly in place as she took a step back and tried to catch her breath. Then she felt the Sanctum...twitch...in the back of her mind.
It was just enough warning for her to drop to her knees, as a second set of tentacled-eyeballs lashed through where her head had been. She called up a dome ward without even getting up off the floor, then looked up cautiously. Another one of the things was hovering above her, poking at her ward cautiously. She winced as two more squelched their ways through the wall and started trying to dismantle the containment spell on the first one, and a third drifted down the hallway.
Oh crap. It summoned more of itself. We are definitely well above my pay grade and then some. Yue thought grimly, and placing one palm on the Sanctum floor she summoned an orange glyph then circle spun around her hand for a second, then sank into the floor to trigger the alarm spell woven into the sanctum's fabric of reality.
A soundless bell rang in the back of her mind - higher than the Hong Kong Sanctum's, but lower than London's (or so she'd been told) - and Yue nearly jumped out of her skin until she remembered that the alarm went off for the Seneschal as well as the Master - so that the Seneschal could make sure evacuations happened if need be.
Well, I'm the only one to evacuate right now, she thought, a bit hysterically, and I'm a bit pinned down... ugh! Four tentacles slapped against her dome, and she flinched, willing more power into it. Full shield wards went both ways - she couldn't attack back with her own magic while she was pinned down like this, but she began the gestures to manifest her spear whenever the ward went down.
"EYES!" a male voice bellowed, and Yue flung an arm across her face and looked down as white fire slashed down the corridor and blasted the spirits off her dome. It was bright enough that even with her face covered, she could almost see the bones in her arm, and her dome-shield fizzled out with a smell of ozone and a loud pop the moment it was done.
Yue didn't bother to stop and wonder if that would have killed her if she hadn't been pinned under the ward; she rolled to her feet, calling up the qiang spear that was her preferred manifest weapon of choice. Doctor Strange ran past her after the four he'd just blasted off of her, Master Wong following quickly after, but he paused long enough to say, "Are you --?"
"Yes, go," Yue said, leveling her spear at the one that was (miraculously) still contained inside her circle.
Wong left her to it. The sounds of carnage, spell weaving, and another door falling off its hinges echoed through the Sanctum from the direction they'd gone. Yue ignored that, trusting to the Sanctum to warn her if she was about to be in danger again. Instead, she focused on the thing in front of her, shifting her qiang to her off hand to gesture up a spell of revelation.
The spirit was thrashing frantically, trying to pierce the containment, and Yue could tell the spell was about to go down, but --
Ah! she thought as her revelation spell clicked, and she leveled her spear.
As the creature drew its tentacles in for one last frantic push, Yue canceled the spell with one smooth gesture, bringing her hand down, around, and onto the shaft of her qiang. As its tentacles sprawled in all directions at once, she lunged - piercing the central eye in the cluster, and the thing gave one shuddering gasp and disappeared. Yue slumped against the wall as her adrenaline crashed.
Don't you dare drop that weapon, girl, the voice of Master Mordo remonstrated her from her memory, as she almost let go of her spear. First determine if there is another threat.
Noise in the hallway had her levering herself upright and turning a heartbeat later, but it was only the two Masters walking wearily down the hall toward her. "Are you all right?" Doctor Strange looked slightly singed, and he had wrapped his arms around his waist; she hoped he hadn't burned himself.
Yue nodded.
Wong frowned; Yue knew perfectly well it was a habitual expression for him, but it didn't stop her from tensing a bit. "Why didn't you call sooner?"
"I didn't realize there was more than one."
Wong eyed the smoke in the air and her faintly vibrating summoned spear. "Ah."
"And one, you could have handled," Strange said, looking at the faintly blue smoke that the creature had left behind as it dissolved.
Yue nodded again.
"Well. All right." Strange sighed, and looked at Wong. "Can we pretend this is a slightly larger crisis than it turned out to be?"
Wong actually cracked an almost-smile at that. "I'm sure your Seneschal can find something she needs you for." He glanced at her.
Yue took that as her cue to let her spear dematerialize. "Bad meeting?" she hazarded warily, wondering if she was about to get scolded for even trying to deal with the problem herself - or if she would be scolded for pulling them out of the meeting in the first place.
"Let's just say...the other Masters and I don't always see eye to eye," Strange said slowly.
Yue thought about it for a moment, then said, "As your Seneschal, I think you ought to eat something, sir, before you return to your meeting. The exertion of that much magical energy with such little warning will have depleted your reserves. The, the other masters deserve to have your full attention, when you return, and I'm sure your stomach growling would upset their deliberations."
Wong snorted. "She's right," he admitted. "That's not even stretching the truth."
"Well, I can smell something that's not ozone," Strange said. "What were you cooking?"
"Empanadas," Yue sighed, as they turned to head for the kitchen. "But they might as well be rocks the way the crusts keep turning out."
"Perhaps we can provide some pointers," Wong said.
"Or maybe you'll put the empanada filling in wonton wrappers and call it a day," Yue retorted, feeling slightly drunk on relief at not-being-eaten, and thinking of Wong's request of boxed Mac-and-Cheese. Then she sobered and glanced sideways at Strange. "Unless, of course, you need me to make it faster, sir, in which case I can cook a frozen pizza in less than ten minutes."
"Surely good tea takes longer to brew than ten minutes." There was a hopeful note in Strange's voice.
"The meeting was that bad?"
She didn't catch what Strange muttered under his breath, but Wong said, "There is some debate as to whether Stephen should be allowed to serve here alone as primary."
Yue stiffened. How dare they! "I am sure that Master Fei will listen to me when I explain that you rescued me less than sixty seconds after I rang the Sanctum's Bell," she bit out, "and yes, the electric kettle is cold - I do not generally drink tea when the kitchen feels like an oven all by itself."
That won a small smile from Strange. "Thank you, Seneschal," he sighed.
The empanadas had cooled to lukewarm when they reached the kitchen, but Wong made three quick gestures (Yue grimaced, she hated reheating food magically) and they were hot again. Yue warned them, "This is batch number five - and I hope they are more edible than batches two and three."
Strange picked one up carefully - his hands were shaking a little, but so were Wong's, and Yue wondered just how much energy they'd used banishing the things. Then she picked one up and discovered her hands were shaking too, and that she felt a bit like the time Jish had slipped her the chocolate-covered espresso beans - without telling her they were caffeinated.
"To adrenaline crashes," Strange joked after a moment, raising his empanada like a glass in a toast, "and the side benefits of getting out of really boring meetings."
"Hear hear," muttered Wong, and the two of them bit into the pastry, while Yue started filling the kettle. When she turned back, she discovered that the men were each about two thirds of the way through their respective empanadas, and they weren't slowing down.
Yue picked one up and followed suit, a bit more cautiously.
The pastry was not flaky light, but it was also not shoe leather. A bit denser than she might have wished, but perfectly serviceable. And she'd done a very good job on the filling, if she did say so herself.
The men reached for seconds. "These are quite good," Strange said.
"Thank you, sir," Yue said, pulling the teapot and the cups out of the cabinet. She paused, then got down the piece of abstract art that Wong considered to be a proper mug - it looked a bit like someone had attempted to sculpt a tree trunk that the carpenter ants had had a decade to work on out of clay, and it was a pain to wash, but he had helped Strange save her life after all. The least she could do was some dishes. "Did you want a cup, or a mug, sir?"
"A..." He sighed, looking down at his quivering hands.
I have got to find this man a spill-proof teacup, Yue realized. No. I have got to make him one. She reached up and got down her own favorite, a large mug with a monster's face painted and etched around the bottom, looking for all the world like it was trying to eat the mug (she had found it at an open air market in Hong Kong when she was 15 and adored it) and a second mug that had been left in the Sanctum and miraculously remained unbroken.
As the men started in on their third empanadas, she spooned leaves into the pot, choosing a mate with some ancho chili pepper and mint as accents. "I am not giving you oolong with that," she said, when Wong raised an eyebrow at her. "They do not mix in my kitchen."
Wong snorted and resumed eating, but paused to nod gratefully at her as she put his ugly-mug down next to him. She set the second mug next to Strange, and turned to fill the pot with water - when she heard Strange's first real laugh. She smiled, turning to find him looking at the mug she'd set down next to him.
It had a picture of the Great Wave of Kanegawa painted around it, like a standard landscape - but when one looked closely, one noticed that the wave had googly eyes, and was eating cookies. In other words, some clever artist had transformed the wave into Cookie Monster.
"My seneschal has a better sense of humor than you do, Adele," she heard him say to Wong as she turned back to the kettle.
Adele?? Yue thought, glancing over her shoulder to see Wong crack a small smile.
She smiled herself, as she fished out the tea strainers and set one in each mug. There would be time to demand Master Fei's attention and cooperation later. For now, she intended to enjoy the company of two people who apparently thought she'd handled the morning fairly well. And a second empanada.