text: [Themes: Food, Fantasy, fantasy, violence, fairy tale, hunger, child protagonist]
  
  > Go downwards
  You descend the staircase.
  
  Inhale that wondrous mouldering stench: fine cheeses stacked in ripening rows. A monger's cellar wouldn't boast a breadth more noseworthy. There's brie and cantal, gloucester, blue stilton and red leicester, morbier, spermyse, and maroilles amongst others heaped deep in shadow.
  
  Westward's the undercroft, and upward a staircase curves to the eastern tapestry.
  
  > go west
  Come and leave as you like. This red-velvet chamber's vacant, with no one left to ensure prisoners stay locked away.
  
  Westward lies the creamery, eastward the armory, and southward the dungeon.
  
  > go to the north
  Come and leave as you like. This red-velvet chamber's vacant, with no one left to ensure prisoners stay locked away.
  
  Westward lies the creamery, eastward the armory, and southward the dungeon.
  
  Your breath's still reeking with onion.
  
  > go east
  Inhale that wondrous mouldering stench: fine cheeses stacked in ripening rows. A monger's cellar wouldn't boast a breadth more noseworthy. There's brie and cantal, gloucester, blue stilton and red leicester, morbier, spermyse, and maroilles amongst others heaped deep in shadow.
  
  Westward's the undercroft, and upward a staircase curves to the eastern tapestry.
  
  > Go upwards
  You ascend the staircase.
  
  Across the eastern wall's hung a great tapestry woven with warfare and carnage. Your heart would have thundered in the skirmish sewn through these threads, wherein this castle's pretender found herself driven into exile. Ah, what a bloody rout that was.
  
  Southward sprawls the banquet hall; westward lies the balance gallery; stairs wind upward into the bower and downward to the armory.
  
  Now the odor in your mouth begins to dissipate.
  
  > go south
  Gaze down the hall and you'll gaze down a valley between smashed dishes. Above that valley rotates a boned chandelier, below that chandelier stretches a table the hall's length, and around that table is ranged the Amuse-Bouche Quartet: Earl Escargot, Dame Demitasse, Frypan Fredrick, and Mistress Caviar. Tonight their plates are heaped with devils on horseback, battered mozzarella, vol-au-vents, toast points, dolma, and boquerones en vinagre.
  
  Southward, footmen stream from the kitchen; northward lies the eastern tapestry.
  
  A footman carries choriqueso to the table.
  
  > Blow
  You blow out the onion's tearjerking odor, but with all the hors d'oeuvres inside this banquet hall, even its aroma simply wanders and gets lost amongst others.
  
  > examine Escargot
  Earl Escargot is what you might refer to as a connoisseur. He's slow to chew, slower to swallow, slowest to admit satisfaction. He dabs his luscious lips after each bite with a napkin; his second tentacle roves the table for more hors d'oeuvres. Garlic butter shimmers in every fold along his flesh, golden, unctuous, tinged green with minced parsley swimming inside his shell.
  
  the platter.
  
  > look at Demitasse
  Fine porcelain flesh, veins patterned cobalt blue beneath the glaze, teacup eyelids, ceramic handles curving from her skull, that skull's cap sawn and sundered with coffee brimming inside: meet the magnificent Dame Demitasse. She exhales steam. Roasted aromas, wooden, malted, floral, toasted, waft around her place at the table. Perhaps each time she lifts her arm, her china chips a little more, joints delicately splintering, but no beauty was ever forged without pain poured into the crucible.
  
  A footman delivers cucumber sandwiches to the table.
  
  > examine Frypan
  He's a hopper, Frypan Fredrick, each limb, each finger a breaded frog's leg. Why, even his head is a breaded frog's leg, sticking from a ruffed collar whose starched fabric has gone translucent with grease. Doublet fried crisp, crackowes squelching with lard, he's apt to leave breadcrumbs behind. No eyes, poor dear, nor nose, nor ears: that's what you get with a leg for a head. At least he has a mouth, and what a mouth, with human teeth in the hundreds to compensate.
  
  Frypan Fredrick tears into the dolma and discards the plate.
  
  > examine the Caviar
  A glob aglimmer in her seat, roe oozing to absorb hors d'oeuvres, you'll recognize no single silhouette in Mistress Caviar. She shifts into whatever shape commands the highest bid, black beads brighter than diamonds sparkling beneath the chandelier, arms coalescing when she needs more limbs. A hundred sturgeon gutted would not yield one hundredth her measure. She'd snare a tsar's heart with her champagne laugh.
  
  A footman brings samosas to the table.
  
  > look at the footman
  Sardines in eggplant livery. Sometimes they slouch, it's true, what can you do about your posture when you're a herring on land, but otherwise they're excellent servants: expedient, focused, disposable.
  
  Mistress Caviar devours the toast points and casts aside the tray.
  
  > examine the chandelier
  Duck fat drips from the chandelier, rendered most marvelous into candles whose wicks flame green and knock shadows onto the walls. Each burns upon a rib's snapped tip, splayed from a keel anchored to a wishbone, and that wishbone hung from high waffled groins.
  
  A footman carts pickles to the table.
  
  > examine table
  A table long enough to sit a crowd, with drumstick legs and duck skin draped across the top. My, what a mess: plates strewn higgledy-piggledy with cutlery and serving trays shoved aside to make room for more hors d'oeuvres. Right now the table's cluttered with pickles, samosas, cucumber sandwiches, choriqueso, devils on horseback, battered mozzarella, and vol-au-vents.
  
  Earl Escargot sucks down the vol-au-vents and tosses the dish.
  
  > eat the table
  They'll not notice a nibble missing from their tablecloth. There: just a corner, crisp crackling that softens in the mouth.
  
  A footman bears tongue toast to the table.
  
  > eat footman
  Why, this sardine's so servile that it practically swims down your throat. They've been trained well, these footmen have: jump when they're told, even when it will land them in a mouth.
  
  Not that this footman should be missed. Others flow constantly from the kitchen.
  
  Frypan Fredrick thoroughly chews the battered mozzarella and tosses the tray.
  
  > eat footman
  Come, come, footman, step right into these jaws. Yes, very good. That one slipped down as nicely as the first, and here's his stand-in from the kitchen already.
  
  A footman carries gravlax to the table.
  
  > eat Caviar
  "Appreciate the finer things?" asks Mistress Caviar. "Care for a little nibble right here, love? A little taste? I'll have you know I'm unavailable, nor would my friends enjoy seeing me mistreated. We'll stick together long as we've hors d'oeuvres to eat."
  
  Earl Escargot chomps into the devils on horseback and discards the plate.
  
  > eat Frypan
  Have you ever been kicked by a frog's leg before? Now you have. Frypan pulls one knee backward, there's a crackow in your gut, and the wall takes your breath upon impact.
  
  A footman delivers croquettes to the table.
  
  > eat the croquettes
  "I wouldn't," says Dame Demitasse, steaming slightly hotter.
  
  Dame Demitasse swallows the choriqueso and drops the platter.
  
  > go to the south
  Pandemonium, thou art a castle kitchen. White toques bob as sardine chefs labor over cutting boards and coals, stirring saucepans, stuffing pastries, rolling dough as flour thickens the air. Footmen teem around counters, poised to carry dishes to the banquet hall.
  
  Northward you could follow the footmen; westward a door opens to the castle gate; stairs wind upward to the pantry and downward to the buttery.
  
  Another footman bears crab rangoon into the banquet hall.
  
  > look at the chefs
  Among these bustling sardines, you can distinguish the chefs by their white turnip toques. They've got peeled turnips buttoned down their scales for uniforms as well.
  
  > examine the boards
  Minced meat covers the cutting boards. No way to tell what animal it was before the sardine chefs got their fins onto it.
  
  Another footman carries deviled eggs into the banquet hall.
  
  > look at coals
  Every now and again, some sardine rakes the kitchen's coals to encourage their blaze. They're throbbing white and orange in a hearth against the wall. Above their mound, the air wobbles, and hanging pots bubble.
  
  Another sardine flops into the kitchen from upstairs.
  
  > look at the saucepans
  It's chaos with chefs fighting to manage their pots over the kitchen's coals. There's always an elbow, or the sardine equivalent, in someone's face as they dash spices into pans and whisk sauces.
  
  Another footman takes steak tartare into the banquet hall.
  
  > examine the pastries
  These unfinished pastries are little coffins waiting to be stuffed. Fillings couldn't request a final resting place more marvelous.
  
  > look at the dough
  Oh dough, plain as you are, lumps clumped across counters, you're the clay from which masterpieces rise, miracles spring. You're raw potential ready for kneading.
  
  Another footman bears bruschetta into the banquet hall.
  
  > examine counters
  Glistening suet countertops these are, darling: fat firm and clean as any cook could dream. Tile'd not shine as brilliantly after the soundest scrub.
  
  > eat chef
  Drag a chef from the crowd, engulf him whole, white toque and all. His fellow chefs pay no attention as you push his fins into your lips. They're far too focused on their cookery.
  
  Indeed, darling, there's already another tripping downstairs to replace the first. No sardine shortage around here to speak about.
  
  Another footman takes canapés into the banquet hall.
  
  > eat the dough
  A sardine slaps your hand with a meat tenderizer.