continue narrate the epic and fantasy novel in the style of Pulp Fiction and Jules Verne , where two men sit in a fast food and they eat their hamburger with no potatoes to dip into the sauce. Provide minutiae painstaking details their dissatisfaction of a hamburger with no potatoes.

By the time the dragon reached the harbor, the two men had established that there were no potatoes.

This was not immediately apparent.

At first, Captain Vale believed the potatoes lay beneath the hamburger’s wrapping, concealed by the greasy paper upon which the cook had stamped a cheerful red crown. He lifted one corner. A sesame seed adhered to his thumb. He lifted another. There was a wet crescent of onion, a smear of mustard, and nothing else.

Across the table, Orsin inspected his own tray.

The restaurant stood three hundred fathoms beneath the Bay of Lanterns, enclosed within a crystal dome whose construction had bankrupted a kingdom. Beyond its windows, enormous pale fish drifted among the drowned towers of an older kingdom, which had enjoyed no better financial judgment. Copper pipes supplied breathable air. An ingenious arrangement of heated seawater warmed the kitchen. Above the counter, letters of enchanted glass proclaimed:

THE KING’S QUICK TABLE
A HOT MEAL BEFORE YOUR DESTINY

Vale turned his empty paper wrapping over.

“You lose something?” Orsin asked.

“I’m checking.”

“For what?”

“The remainder of my meal.”

Orsin looked at the hamburger in Vale’s hand. “That appears to be the principal structure.”

“The principal structure, yes.”

Vale set it down.

He was a narrow man with a navigator’s patient eyes. In his coat he carried the last map to the Furnace of Creation. He had crossed the Ash Republic on foot and once survived eleven days upon a raft made from the shields of his dead companions.

He lifted the bun.

The beef was present. So were two slices of cucumber, a flattened onion ring, and a square of yellow cheese whose corners drooped beyond the meat. Everything promised by the word hamburger had been supplied. This precision made the omission more irritating.

Beside it stood a little white cup of red sauce.

Vale moved the cup into the middle of the table.

“Explain this.”

“Tomato sauce,” said Orsin.

“I know its ancestry. Explain its purpose.”

“For dipping.”

“What?”

Orsin considered the question with the gravity he ordinarily reserved for suspicious bridges.

“The hamburger.”

Vale stared at him.

Outside, a luminous eel unwound itself from the belfry of a submerged cathedral.

“You would dip the hamburger.”

“I didn’t say I would enjoy it.”

“The bun is wider than the cup.”

“An edge.”

“Which edge? It’s round.”

“A portion of the circumference.”

Vale leaned back. “Listen to what they’ve done to us. We’re discussing circumference at lunch.”

Orsin picked up his hamburger with both hands. The bun gave way beneath his fingers, releasing a little steam and a bead of cloudy fat. He took a bite.

For a moment, there was merely chewing.

Then came the difficulty.

The bread was soft. The meat, finely ground and lavishly salted, was soft. The cheese had become a warm adhesive, soft in a different and less respectable manner. Even the cucumber, which should have offered resistance, folded without protest between his teeth.

He swallowed.

“Well?” Vale asked.

“It needs something.”

“Yes.”

“Something crisp.”

“Yes.”

Orsin looked at the sauce.

The cup had been filled almost to its rim. Its surface shone under the electric globes. Along one side, where the attendant had pulled away the paper lid, a red streak marked the exact height to which a potato might have been plunged.

Orsin rotated it so the streak faced away.

That did not improve matters.

He took another bite, smaller this time, hoping to preserve some appetite for a remedy not yet secured. Salt collected along his lower lip. A fragment of onion slid from the sandwich and landed beside the cup.

He dipped it.

Vale watched.

“Well?”

“Now I have a cold onion with sauce on it.”

From the kitchen came a splendid crackling sound.

Both men turned.

An attendant was shaking a basket over a vat of hot oil. Vale straightened in his chair; Orsin stopped chewing. The basket rose through steam, carrying six battered sea-plums.

They turned back.

“That,” said Orsin quietly, “was cruel.”

Vale examined the empty portion of his tray. It was a broad, shallow rectangle, perfectly proportioned for a little heap of fried potatoes. He could almost reconstruct their arrangement: the long ones lying across the bottom, the shorter pieces caught between them, the crisp brown fragments gathering in a corner with stray grains of salt. He wanted one of those fragments first. Then a whole potato, hot enough to require care, its end dragged through the sauce.

Instead, his thumb found the sesame seed again.

He brushed it off.

A bell rang above the counter.

“Order seventy-three!”

Their order had been seventy-one.

Orsin watched a woman carry away two hamburgers and a small paper boat containing something golden.

He rose halfway out of his seat.

The contents were fried turnips.

He sat.

“Did you ask whether they had potatoes?” Vale said.

“I ordered the meal.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“There was a picture.”

They both looked up.

Above the counter, beside the illuminated price, a painted knight held a hamburger over a magnificent heap of potatoes. The artist had given each one a golden edge. Several leaned against a cup of red sauce.

Vale folded his wrapping neatly.

“I’m going to speak to someone.”

At that moment, the dragon struck the dome.

The windows boomed. Cups leapt on their trays. Far overhead, a black claw scraped a white furrow through the crystal, and every enchanted letter above the counter went out except DESTINY.

Orsin caught the sauce before it tipped.

Vale looked at his hand.

“Why did you save that?”

Orsin held the little cup for a moment, then put it down.

“I don’t know.”