He moves. Crack, separate, tip, tip, drop. Crack, separate, tip, tip, drop. By the fifth egg, his hands have the rhythm. By the eighth, he's faster than my KitchenAid was.
I'm already working the butter.
Six pounds of unsalted butter sit in a warming bath on the one burner the fire sprites didn't destroy. I cube it with mychef's knife, fast, the blade rocking through each cold block in practiced strokes. The cubes go into a second massive bowl. My arms will handle the butter. His arms will handle everything else.
"Whites are in." He holds up the bowl. Twelve perfect egg whites pool at the bottom, no yolk contamination, no shell fragments.
"Whisk. Clockwise. Don't stop until I tell you."
He grips the balloon whisk and starts. The first few rotations are slow, exploratory, the whisk circling through the viscous whites like a paddle through honey. Too gentle.
"Faster. You're not stirring soup. You're building structure. Air into protein. Force it."
His shoulder engages. The pace doubles. Then triples. The whisk becomes a blur and the egg whites begin to froth, bubbles forming and multiplying. His forearm muscles cord and flex, tendons rolling under his skin, and the froth climbs the sides of the bowl.
I turn back to my station. Flour, sugar, vanilla, the good vanilla, the one I keep in a sealed titanium flask in my emergency bag because I trust no one else's vanilla. Three drops. The scent cuts through the smoke and foam residue like a blade through fog.
"Soft peaks!" I call without looking.
"What does that mean?"
"Lift the whisk. Do the whites droop or stand?"
A pause. "Droop."
"Keep going."
The whisking intensifies. The bowl vibrates against the counter. His breathing stays level. Combat conditioning repurposed for Swiss meringue buttercream. The absurdity of this does not escape me but I file it away for later because rightnow I have ten pounds of cake to produce and one hundred twelve minutes on the clock.
"Lift."
"They stand. Little curl at the top."
I spin around. The egg whites in his bowl are gorgeous. Glossy, dense, peaked. A perfect stiff meringue, hand-whisked in four minutes flat. Most pastry chefs with professional equipment couldn't match that.
"Now the sugar." I slide a pot of boiling sugar syrup off the burner, its surface roiling at exactly two hundred forty degrees. "I'm going to pour this in a thin stream. You whisk continuously. You do not stop. If you stop, the sugar seizes and we lose the batch."
He braces his feet. Sets his stance. Grip tightening on the whisk.
"On your mark, baker."
I lift the pot with both hands and begin to pour.
The sugar syrup hits the egg whites in a thin golden thread. Steam curls up from the bowl. Dash whisks through it without flinching, his pace brutal and unwavering, the balloon whisk carving circles so fast the meringue catches air in sheets.
"Steady." I tilt the pot lower. The stream thins. "Don't let it pool."
He adjusts. The whisk dips and lifts, dips and lifts, incorporating every drop of molten sugar before the next one lands. The meringue transforms. Raw frothy egg whites become silk. Become cloud. Become the glossy, marshmallow-dense Swiss base that took me three years at culinary school to master and that this seven-foot mercenary is producing by sheer brute force in a smoke-damaged country club kitchen.
The pot empties.
"Keep whisking. Three more minutes. It has to cool to body temperature before the butter goes in."
He doesn't nod. Doesn't speak. Just whisks. His shoulders roll in a steady mechanical rhythm, the bowl locked between his forearm and his hip. A one-man industrial mixer.
I turn to the chocolate.
The enchanted baking chocolate sits in a heavy warded crate I packed in my emergency supply bag. Six solid dictionary sized blocks, stamped with the seal of the Dwarven Confectioners' Guild. This chocolate costs more per ounce than silver. It also bites.
