I pry the crate open. The first block hisses at me.
Enchanted chocolate resists being worked. It's alive in a technical, magical-ingredient sense. The cacao spirits bound inside the bars don't appreciate being melted, chopped, or tempered. They express this displeasure through mild electrical shocks, sudden temperature spikes, and once, in my early apprentice days, a block that launched itself off the counter and hit my instructor in the sternum.
I reach for my chef's knife.
The first block snaps at my fingers. A literal crackle of brown energy arcs from its surface and stings my knuckle.
"Ow." I shake my hand. "Fine."
I reach again. Another snap. Harder. The hair on my forearm stands up.
"Problem?" Dash keeps whisking.
"The chocolate doesn't want to be chopped."
"Then use a bigger blade."
He says it so matter-of-factly. Like the answer to resistant chocolate is always escalation.
But he's not wrong.
"Your broadsword. Where is it?"
The whisking stops for exactly one second. His eyes slide to me. "Under the bed upstairs."
"Go get it."
He sets the bowl down, crosses the kitchen in four strides, and vanishes through the swinging doors. I press my palm to the side of the meringue bowl. Cool enough. I start adding butter cubes, folding them in with a wooden spoon, working the emulsion by hand. The buttercream breaks. Curdles. Looks like wet cottage cheese.
Normal. Keep going.
More butter. More folding. The mixture smooths, catches, transforms. By the time the kitchen doors bang open again, I'm elbow deep in twelve pounds of perfect Swiss meringue buttercream and Dash is standing in the entrance holding a four-foot broadsword with a leather-wrapped handle and a blade so sharp the fluorescent light splits on its edge.
"Cutting board." I gesture with my chin. "Line the blocks up. Two inches apart."
He arranges the six chocolate blocks on the largest wooden cutting board in the kitchen. The blocks tremble. One growls. An actual low-frequency vibration that rattles the board.
Dash raises the broadsword.
"Quarter-inch pieces," I say. "Uniform. I'm not joking."
He brings the blade down.
The first block explodes into a shower of perfect chocolate shards. The cacao spirit shrieks, a thin high sound like steam escaping a kettle, and dissolves into brown mist. The blade sinks two inches into the cutting board.
He wrenches it free. Moves to the second block.
Chop. Shatter. Shriek.
Third block. This one fights back. A bolt of chocolate-brown lightning arcs up the broadsword and hits Dash square in the wrist. His hand spasms. His jaw tightens. He brings the blade down harder.
The block surrenders in pieces.
Fourth. Fifth. Sixth. Each one faster than the last. Chocolate shrapnel scatters across the counter and he sweeps it all together with the flat of the blade, piling the uniform shards into a gleaming mountain.
"Into the double boiler." I jerk my head toward the pot of simmering water with a glass bowl perched on top. "Slow. Handfuls. Stir constantly."
He props the broadsword against the wall and feeds chocolate into the bowl. His stirring is patient. Controlled. The enchanted chocolate melts reluctantly, each shard releasing a tiny hiss of magical resistance before liquefying into a dark, glossy river.
