Once everyone arrived, the meeting could begin in earnest, and though she managed to keep herself quiet, Mae couldn't help but be a little excited. Any meeting with Lady Faetalis or the other supreme beings was naturally of utmost importance by default, but those occasions that called for the presence of every Infactorium Overseer at once were truly a cut above. Since the guild's arrival in these unknown lands a couple such gatherings had come and gone, but still they never lost their luster, at least for Mae. While her eccentric but endearing family of Maneaters meant that she never felt lonesome, she seldom had occasion to visit -or even hear from- the other factories beyond what little she could glean from the idle chatter of those who came and went in the Gorging Trough. That meant being around her peers -not to mention her betters- always felt special. And yet, today the headless horror had a certain, inexplicable feeling that this meeting would be more extraordinary still.

As such, when Faetlis got started, the immense chef took the biggest seat that the room had to offer and listened at rapt attention, her arms rested atop her belly with her hands clasped. Her boss's first order of business was to disseminate some big news, namely that big things were going to start happening very soon, in one way or another. By sheer bad luck, the sudden introduction of the guild to this particular mountaintop had led to a disruption in the supply of a vital local resource, without which the nearby vassal kingdom would quickly incur the wrath of its imperial overseer. The whole thing went a bit above Mae's pay grade as a humble chef, but it sounded like no matter what Faetalis chose, conflict would be inevitable. Like the true professional she was, however, the supreme one already had plans in the works, and wasted no time presenting them.

A mere moment later, without neither an excess of preamble nor exposition, Mae found herself endowed with a heaping portion of extra responsibility. [i]Supervisor? Floors? My command?![/i] If Mae had a forehead she might have drawn the back of her head across it, or nervously scratch her neck, but with no such facilities she could do little more than wring her hands as the details poured in. It was a lot to take in, but a kitchen expert like Mae could boil the blueprint down to its essential components. Right now Infactorium existed as a cluster of factories atop the mountain, but now the core of the mountain itself would be hollowed out and developed into a series of floors, each one being the essence of an existing factory writ large. But this was more than just the chance for a bigger workplace. This time she wouldn't be just the one brought in to operate the facility that Lord Sugi the Hammer designed; [i]she[/i] would be the designer, in charge of the place from top to bottom, bearing both the power to make decisions and the weight of delivering results. Having creative control over a cake was one thing, but a [i]factory[/i]? She was just one monster!

But no. Though inner conflict roiled her guts like a bad stew, she swallowed her fears and with a ginger hand accepted her key. As much as she needed him, Sugi wasn't here right now. Instead, Faetalis stood before her, and placed in Mae her wholehearted trust. She hadn't just bestowed upon Mae the honor of defending the guild, but also made [i]her[/i] the penultimate defender, with the new Gorging Trough to be situated directly below her own eminent Domain. Not the ravenous swarms of Gammaton, not the machined might of Tungsten, not the inexorable breaker Levia, not even the venerable forgemaster Cormac...her. A morbidly obese monstrosity without a single kill to her name. She would be the last line of defense, the one in whom Faetalis trusted to put down whatever threat all the others could not. It was an incredible responsibility, and though it made Mae a little afraid, it also made her incredibly proud. Her fist closed around the tiny key in her hand, and she beat it against her clavicle. "You got it, ma'am! We won't let ya down, I swear it!"