Chương 16: Improper Applications of Syrup

Bart stood in front of the plain white door of the Staff Restroom. The heavy wooden sign had already shimmered and changed to display their new destination. OUTBOUND ACQUISITIONS: GILDARA Destination Accuracy: 81% Bart paused, his hand hovering over the brass doorknob. He looked over his shoulder.

"Albert," Bart said.

"Is 81 percent considered safe?" The skeleton leaned his broom against the intake desk and pulled a dusty, leather bound Employee Handbook from his ribcage. He flipped through the fragile pages.

"Let us see," Albert murmured.

"Portal stability, spatial transit, acceptable safety margins... ah. Here we are." He stopped turning pages.

"The relevant page is missing, Keeper."

"Naturally," Bart sighed. He opened the door. Beyond the threshold lay a swirling vortex of warm, golden light.

"Stay close, Gregor," Bart said, stepping into the portal.

"We are on official archive business." Whoosh. Gurgle. The first thing Bart realised was that the air smelled incredibly good. It smelled of melting butter, sugar and spice and everything nice!. The second thing he realised was that he was falling. The Archive, relying on spatial coordinates that were several centuries out of date, had failed to account for the fact that the monastery's courtyard had been excavated and lowered by twelve feet during a historic renovation.

Bart dropped through the air and landed hard on a massive canvas sack of flour. It saved his back, but the sack ruptured with a dull whump, covering him from head to toe in white powder. A few feet away, there was a wet, heavy SCHLUCK. Bart sat up, wiping flour from his glasses. Behind him, the plain white Staff Restroom door remained standing inexplicably in the courtyard, unsupported by any wall. He was sitting in the centre of a vast, open air courtyard built directly into a golden cliff face.

Heat radiated from natural magical vents in the rock. Standing in a perfect, concentric circle around him were dozens of men with shaved heads and thick grey robes. They were all staring at him in absolute silence. They had been in the middle of the silent Ritual of the Seventh Rise. In the exact centre of their circle sat a ceremonial wooden bowl the size of an elephant. It was filled to the brim with smooth, perfectly proofed, golden dough. Slowly, the surface of the dough began to bulge.

Gregor's head emerged from the sticky mass. He was completely coated in thick, raw pastry.

"Boss," Gregor whispered, spitting out a mouthful of yeast.

"I think I have become bread." Gregor tried to pull himself free, flailing his arms blindly. His sticky hand caught a thick velvet rope hanging nearby. He pulled it hard. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. A deafening bell echoed across the golden cliff. In perfect unison, 7 massive iron oven doors built into the rock face slammed open, releasing a wave of intense heat. The monks gasped. An older man pushed his way to the front of the circle.

He was stern, completely humourless, and looked personally offended by Bart's flour covered green sweater.

"Sacrilege!" the man hissed.

"You have interrupted the Seventh Rise! Who are you to defile the Order of the Unbroken Crust?" Bart stood up and dusted off his trousers, which only smeared the flour deeper into the fabric.

"Apologies for this intrusion I am Bart, Keeper of the Infinite Archive. This is my Junior Helper, Gregor. We are looking for a book."

"A book?" the older monk demanded.

"You drop from the sky into our sacred dough, violating the four vows of our Order - Patience, Precision, Purity, and Absolutely No Improvisation…for a book?"

"It is a very specific book," Bart said calmly. The older monk drew himself up.

"I am Abbot Halvorn of the Seventh Oven, and I can assure you, we have no books for trespassers!" Bart pulled the corrupted catalogue card from his pocket.

"We are looking for The Master's Guide to Advanced Pastry Baking. It was written by Chef Rickard Astel." Every single monk in the courtyard stopped moving. Somewhere in the back, a young monk dropped a metal baking tray. It clattered loudly against the stone floor. Abbot Halvorn's face turned the colour of overbaked crust.

"There has never been a Rickard Astel within these sacred walls." Bart adjusted his glasses. Behind the abbot hung a long gallery of painted monks, each standing proudly beside one of the Seven Ovens. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. One portrait had been covered with a black cloth. Only the brass plaque beneath it remained visible. BROTHER RICKARD OF THE FIFTH OVEN BANISHED FOR CULINARY HERESY Bart pointed towards it.

"Your record-keeping appears to disagree." Halvorn's jaw tightened.

"The founding charter forbids us from destroying the record of any brother who attained an Oven."

"So you covered his face."

"We compromised."

"He was banished," Halvorn said, his voice trembling with suppressed anger. He pointed a shaking finger at the portrait.

"He committed the Rose Syrup Heresy."

"Rose Syrup Heresy?" Bart asked.

"He took a sacred Moonfold," Halvorn continued.

"72 perfect layers of butter and air... and he drowned it in rose syrup. The syrup reacted with the enchanted butter. Every Moonfold expanded to the size of a cartwheel. The Seventh Oven exploded, and its iron door landed in the herb garden." Bart glanced at the younger monk who had dropped the tray.

"Was anyone injured?"

"Only doctrinally," Brother Odo whispered.

"The pilgrims loved them." Halvorn's eye twitched.

"That was the worst part." The abbot turned back to Bart.

"The heretic Rickard wrote his foul book long after he was expelled from this order. The Monastery of the 7 Ovens has never possessed a copy of his published work."

"I believe you," Bart said.

"However, as his former residence, you must possess disciplinary records, correspondence, or references to his early experiments. The Archive needs to track his movements after he left."

"His early recipe drafts were burned," Halvorn said firmly.

"Only his disciplinary record remains, locked in the Vault of Heresy. Outsiders are forbidden." Bart sighed. He could not use Archive rules here being outside his jurisdiction. He had to use pure, administrative logic. He walked over to a nearby reading stand and opened the monastery's public master index.

"Volume 441: Sacred Oven Temperatures," Bart read aloud.

"Volume 443: Approved Uses of Cinnamon Bark." He looked up.

"Curious. The catalogue claims Volume 442 was never assigned." Bart glanced towards Rickard's portrait.

"But his plaque cites'See Disciplinary Ledger 442: Improper Applications of Syrup'." Halvorn's jaw tightened.

"So the ledger exists," Bart continued.

"Someone merely removed it from the catalogue. Abbot, a missing book is a tragedy. But a deliberately falsified index? A corrupted catalogue? That is a sin against information." For the leader of the Order of the Unbroken Crust, admitting that their sacred catalogue was imperfect was almost worse than admitting Rickard existed. Halvorn's eye twitched again.

"Fifteen minutes," Halvorn gritted out.

"You may examine the ledger for fifteen minutes. Then you will leave." While Bart sat at a wooden table reviewing the dusty disciplinary ledger, Gregor quietly peeled himself out of the ceremonial bowl. The monks were busy ignoring them, attempting to silently purify the courtyard. Gregor caught a faint, incredibly sweet scent drifting from a dark corridor and followed his nose. Deep inside an abandoned, dimly lit kitchen, Brother Odo was frantically rolling out a sheet of dough.

Behind Odo, six enormous trays of glazed Moonfolds were rising inside the abandoned oven.

"You're the one who likes the syrup, right?" Gregor whispered from the shadows. Odo jumped, nearly dropping his rolling pin.

"Please! Do not tell the abbot! Some of us younger monks... we admire Rickard. We think pastry should be fun and experimented all the time." Odo pulled a small, golden pastry from a hidden oven. It was glistening with a thick, ruby red glaze.

"I am trying to recreate his Rose Pearl Moonfolds." Gregor didn't wait for an invitation. He snatched the pastry and took a massive bite. It was extraordinary. It was so sweet, so buttery, and so magical that when Gregor opened his mouth to say "Delicious," his voice cried out in food ecstasy.

"De-li-cious," Gregor sang. Odo winced.

"I may have used a bit too much enchanted syrup." Odo reached into his robes and pulled out a crumpled sheet of parchment.

"One fragment of his experiment's journal survived the burning," he whispered.

"We younger monks have been secretly copying it for years. This is my copy. Take it to your Keeper." At the top of the page, written in bold, rebellious ink, was a personal motto: Never give up the dough. Out in the courtyard, Bart closed Ledger 442. He had found the missing link. Years after becoming famous, Chef Rickard had sent a signed copy of his book back to the monastery as a peace offering.

Bart copied the official disposition record onto a scrap of paper: Item: The Master's Guide to Advanced Pastry Baking Sender: Chef Rickard Astel Disposition: Rejected as doctrinally unsound. Transferred to: Master Gurrum Goldbelly, Golden Troll Bakers' Guild. Destination: Honeyglass Market The monastery did not have the book, but its trail now led to a Golden Troll baker. At least both searches now pointed in the same direction. Gregor jogged back into the courtyard, followed nervously by Brother Odo.

"Boss," Gregor almost sang after eating the delicious pastry.

"I found a clue." Bart stared at him.

"Why do you sound like a choir?"

"Something delicious Boss, dunno how to describe it!" Said Gregor, "Here, one of the monks gave me this!" looking at Odo who stood beside him. Bart looked at the surviving recipe page. He scanned the ingredients. His eyes stopped on a note scribbled in the margin. Note: One drop of clarified Golden Troll Fat prevents the Moonfold layers from sticking. Bart slowly looked up at Gregor. Gregor was happily licking sweet red syrup from his fingers.

"Good news," Bart said, adjusting his glasses.

"We now know where to find the trolls."

"Excellent," Gregor sang angelically.

"And," Bart added, "we know they use their own fat in their cooking." Gregor froze. He slowly stopped licking his fingers. He looked at his hand in absolute horror. Before Gregor could panic, the heavy iron monastery bells began ringing wildly. Brother Odo turned pale and looked towards the dark corridor leading to his abandoned kitchen. A vast, glistening wall of golden pastry was slowly expanding through the doorway, inching towards the courtyard like a buttery avalanche.

Behind it, shattered baking trays tumbled through the dough.

"I may have followed Rickard's original batch measurements," Odo whispered. With a loud CRACK, the wooden roof of the monastery lifted three inches from its stone supports. Bart closed his eyes.

"Of course you did." He rolled up his flour covered sleeves.

"Gregor, secure the portal. Brother Odo, bring me every sack of salt and every empty baking tray in the monastery." Odo stared at him.

"We do not have an emergency procedure for expanding pastry." Bart looked at the advancing wall of dough.

"I had already gathered that."