“Has to be both…”
The Lord of Death inspected the two objects in front of him. One was a bag of finely ground white crystals, the other was a golden bronze mush.
“White and brown sugar?” Kohra asked.
“Yep. White and brown.”
“Why?”
Arkadin looked at the bags again. “Why not?”
“I was always told not to mix my sugars…” Kohra muttered. “Dunno why. I was always told a lot of weird things.”
“Let’s use both. If it goes wrong, we make some more!”
“True…” Kohra filled two mugs up with sugar and poured them into a large, clear, plastic bowl. “The question is though, what fat do we use-”
“Salted butter!” Arkadin interrupted. “Nothing but salted butter.”
Kohra blinked. “Not oil or margarine?”
“Butter.”
“But-”
“No buts, just butter.”
The Kronospast shrugged. “Why?”
“We’re making cookies, not some sort of healthy snack. You use butter, it’s rich and glorious and amazing.” Arkadin emptied a whole pack of butter into a saucepan and put it over a low heat. “Butter is perfect. You put it in everything.”
“Are you obsessed with butter?” Kohra asked.
“Maybe!” Arkadin admitted. He began to tilt the pan about, melting all the butter evenly and stopping it from burning. “I pity the poor lactose-intolerant beings who can’t have butter. Lard and margarine are poor substitutes.”
“I can get putting butter in cookies, but why are you melting it?”
Arkadin didn’t answer. Instead he took some of the sugar from the bowl and melted it into the butter, before taking the molten mixture and throwing it into the bowl.
“Does it make the cookies better?”
“Yep. Softer.”
“But with less volume?”
“Unfortunately. But you can’t have everything in a cookie. You gotta make sacrifices somewhere, and if this means slightly less volume, then so be it! Can you get me two cups of flour please?”
Kohra did as he asked while Arkadin grabbed an oversized wooden spoon from a kitchen draw, slamming it shut with glee. Kohra handed over two mugs of flour, only to watch Arkadin leave them to one side, instead beating up two eggs and an egg yolk in a mug and pouring that in instead.
“Should we use baking powder or bicarbonate of soda?” Arkadin asked as he stirred vigorously. “I’m never sure. Baking power makes it rise, bicarbonate of soda makes it sink but weird things happen when you mix the two.”
“Hm… How about half a teaspoon of each?” Kohra suggested. “Oh, we should put in a pinch of salt too.”
“Good idea!” Arkadin rushed over to a cabinet, grabbed a bowl and threw that and a jar of salt at Kohra. “Sieve the flour, mix all the dry stuff together, will ya? There should be some vanilla sugar in the cupboard too.”
Again, Kohra did as he asked. Once he was done, he watched Arkadin mix up all the wet ingredients, creaming the sugars and eggs together then mixing in the butter mixture, which he had cooled with his breath.
“Alright, now we can mix this shit together!” Arkadin poured the contents of his bowl into Kohra’s bowl. “Stir that up, I’ll prepare the filling and a baking tray.”
Kohra mixed the cookie dough gently. Some ripping and tearing could be heard, and suddenly Arkadin was pouring huge amounts of broken chocolate chunks into the bowl. Arkadin then disappeared and reappeared again with a baking tray covered in a sheet of greaseproof paper.
“Spoon that shit on there!” Arkadin was grinning.
“Is the oven on?”
“Yep, preheated to gas mark 5.”
Kohra used his spoon to gently place small dollops of raw dough onto the tray, making sure none of them touched. When the tray was full, Arkadin produced another. The bowl emptied out and the Lord of Death placed both trays of cookies into the oven and set the timer for twelve minutes.
“And now we wait…” Arkadin grabbed two chairs and sat them in front of the oven. He sat down in one, with a glass of milk in his hand, and invited Kohra to do the same.
The clock slowly ticked down. Arkadin seemed way more amused than he should have been watching the cookies in the oven slowly crisp up and brown. Kohra tried to think of some small talk to pass the time, but nothing came to mind. For some reason, it was annoyingly hard to think, as if he had been drinking mead all evening. Surely that one glass of honey-beer wouldn’t make him this groggy?
At the 11th minute, Arkadin suddenly sat up straight.
“Did you feel that?”
Kohra glanced at Arkadin.
“Feel what?”
“That…”
The Lord of Death was staring at the ceiling. Kohra sighed. It was always like this. Just as they were getting comfortable.
“You know, Arkadin, I’d like us to have a meeting where something doesn’t come up and you have to go unexpectedly. That time we sat there watching television? Was lovely up until you disappeared to deal with a planetary apocalypse…”
Arkadin wasn’t listening. He was still staring at the ceiling. Or rather, staring through the ceiling, out into the depths of space.
“Arkadin?” Kohra was getting nervous now.
The Thantophor stopped staring at the ceiling and turned to Kohra. “I’m really sorry. I have to go.”
“Can’t the dead wait?” Kohra asked. “Does a minute mean that much once you’re deceased? You need your ‘you’ time otherwise you get all grumpy.”
“It’s not that…” Arkadin grunted as he got up, grabbing a full set of armour from a random kitchen cupboard. “Normally you’d be right, the dead can wait a few minutes. But this is more important.”
“Why?” Kohra asked. “If it’s just…”
“It’s not just dead people…” the Lord of Death growled.
Kohra shrugged. “Well, what’s the problem then?”
“Kairos is in trouble.”
“Oh…” Kohra fell silent. Arkadin pulled out a large, bladed staff, then put a hand on Kohra’s shoulder.
“Stay here, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s safer here.”
With another pat on the shoulder, Arkadin left, slamming the front door behind him.