Morel Nilsen always wanted to be a Chef. But life had other plans for him.

As a child, he was full of optimism. He didn't just believe he would manifest, he knew he would. It didn't matter that it hadn't happened during the last Festival of Ambrosia or the one before that or the one before that. He lived every day thinking that the next Festival would be the one. That maybe Ambrosia herself would appear before him to bless him.

Morel had heard of such stories, and while others believed them to be the tall tales of braggarts, Morel knew them to be true. He knew he would be one such story. Ambrosia's chosen. He just had to be patient and pure of heart.

And then his eighteenth birthday came and went without so much as a sparkle of magic, and Morel's worldview came crashing down. His family tried to console him. They told him that people in Khala just didn't manifest as often as in other kingdoms. Only one person from their village had manifested in the last hundred years—some boy that ran off to the Academy of Ambrosia.

Optimism turned to cynicism. One Chef in a hundred years? How could that be fair? He heard that one in a thousand Urokans became a Chef and that Kuutsans had an endless supply of buffalo parading through their land and that truffles grew in fertile Labruscan valleys. What blessing had Ambrosia bestowed upon Khala? Had the heavy snows and freezing winds iced out her generosity? What did they have but suffering? They weren't like those privileged Platterians in Ambrosia City, all growing fat on their laurels.

Oh, how Morel wanted to be one of them. He wished that even if he couldn't be a Chef, he could be like those peasants in Ambrosia City that lived easy lives from their gifts. Not tiring in infertile fields. Eating as they please.

Sometimes Morel's envy grew so much that he blacked out, his childlike soul of wonder and hope being squeezed to the side for something else. The blackouts were infrequent at first. An hour here, an hour there. He could never remember much around them. But then they started to span days and weeks. He'd reawaken while walking down the middle of the road, all of his neighbors giving him a wide berth and casting harsh looks at him.

Everyone in the village glared at him. Everyone hated him. He hated himself, but he couldn't be exactly sure why. Years must have passed—he couldn't be sure—before he finally had a rare spell of control over himself and looked in the mirror. He didn't recognize the man looking back at him.

He was never sure that they were true blackouts, because he remembered some things. Feelings. Never good ones. Hunger. Cruelty. Anger. It was as if he was forced to watch as something else operated his body, some invisible force pulling his strings like a marionette.

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One time he was more awake than normal during one of these spells. He watched like a detached spirit as his body snuck into an elderly neighbor's home and stole their coins. They had a stockpile of salted meat, and he knew he'd be able to buy it all cheaply once the old widow realized she was broke.

And then Morel's consciousness was shoved back into some distant corner, leaving his body to do what it willed. But he remembered. He held onto that memory with every bit of power he had. And when the time came that his body came to collect the widow's food, whatever was left of Morel tried desperately to claw his way back into control to tell the woman of his sins.

But he was too weak, his morality squashed by the weight of hunger. A harsh winter came that year. Morel kept his meats to himself. The widow had coin, but there was no food to be bought. She didn't survive.

Morel wanted to cry, but his body wouldn't let him. With each passing day, he had less and less control of his body until one day he finally gave up. He imagined that little boy—the one that counted the days until the next Festival—and closed his eyes.

He disappeared from the world.

And then, many months or perhaps years later, something stirred him. He thought it must have been essence—that feeling he had waited for so long to experience. It strengthened him enough to see a woman before him dressed in a white Chef's jacket, and he thought it must have been Ambrosia herself. She had come for him at last. Her warm embrace enveloped him as essence flowed into him and his senses returned.

But then he realized that the woman was not Ambrosia. She was bald and albino and alien, and the embrace he felt was that of leather binding his wrists to a stone slab. After living in a dull haze for years, fear burned every nerve, and he realized that whatever else was inside of him was afraid too. For a brief moment, Morel had control of his body again.

But only for a moment.

Little Morel was squeezed into the corner again, and whatever else was there grew and ripped the restraints off and charged at the woman. A Black Jacket, this one albino too, stepped between them and attacked, launching giant lotus flower petals that sliced at Morel's tendons. He couldn't control his body, but he could feel the pain.

And he could feel himself growing.

The Black Jacket became little more than a rodent to him, some pest with its stinging flower petals. Morel drowned in something else's bloodlust as he witnessed his body launch attack after attack, cracking the ground with each missed punch. And then the Black Jacket stumbled, and Morel knew the next blow would be the last.

His spirit raged for control. He was fully awake now—more awake than he had been in a decade—but the other thing in him was also more alive than ever. Morel regained the slightest bit of control of his body, and although he tried to restrain himself, it was not enough, the cold realization striking him that he would have to witness himself killing someone.

And then a miracle happened. Something pulled his arm back just long enough for the Black Jacket to get out of the way. Morel thought it must have been Ambrosia herself, having finally come down to intervene in his miserable life.

But when his body turned, he didn't see Ambrosia. He saw a little boy in an orange jacket that had wrapped a long noodle around Morel's arm.

Bloodlust and hunger ripped Morel's hands off the reins as his body charged at the boy.

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