Nay’s mornings began while the moon was still hanging in the night sky. Quincy had hired town watchmen to stand guard at the Lodge through all hours of the day and night, so she only felt a little nervous getting in the rowboat by herself and rowing to the training glade.

She always found herself checking behind her, constantly concerned Krill or Mishell were out there, watching her, waiting to fulfill their dark promise to her. But they must have been keeping a low profile during these few weeks, staying in the shadows until they surely showed their faces again. Word of mouth indicated that the Two-Headed Trout had all but been gutted of business.

They knew Wint was out there fuming, planning something, yet Quincy didn’t seem worried. He seemed excited to put their plan in action. Like he wanted Wint to make a move. But he was making all the staff operate under cautious protocol to ensure no one was attacked again.

There were two watchmen outside at all times, front and back entrances. And there were two more watchmen inside the tavern itself, ready to take action if Wint or his children or anyone suspicious was lurking around or on the premises.

Once in the glade, Nay found peace in the quiet and the isolation and the winter beauty. She spent a few minutes doing the stretches Quincy had shown her, and then she drew Thorn out of the sheath at the small of her back and began her practice.

After Nay finished her knife routine, which Quincy called her ‘knife dailies’, she was to do her ‘fitness dailies’.

“Training your body is important to surviving here,” Quincy had said. He had stacked stones on top of a sled and tied two ropes to it. Part of her fitness daily was to pull and drag the sled around the perimeter of the glade as many rounds as she could for an hour. When he explained it to her, she got the prompt.

---

[Quest Detected]

[Quest: Pull Sled For An Hour, No Stopping]

[Accept Quest Y/N?]

---

Of course she had complied.

---

[Quest Accepted!]

[Pull Sled For An Hour, No Stopping]

---

Her boosted vigor gave her extra stamina and grit to make it twenty minutes before collapsing in exhaustion. This morning, her hands were rubbed raw from gripping the ropes.

The rest of her dailies consisted of push-ups for her upper body and leg raises for her core. Afterwards she would lie in the snow next to the ice cold stream, drinking up the chill water and groaning in pain. It was a grueling workout, especially for someone whose sense of fitness in a previous life was walking from the couch to the fridge to retrieve the leftover takeout boxes from the night before.

The first week of doing these dailies, she had never felt more frustrated or weak in her life. Her heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest and her lungs were constantly tight and on fire.

But each day she had managed to pull the sled for a little longer, or do a few extra push-ups and leg-raises.

By the time she had rowed back to the Lodge that morning, her body felt broken and she was light-headed and starving. She stumbled into the kitchen, dripping ice and snow. She collapsed into one of the tables, fatigued.

“You know,” Nom said, appearing with a flagon full of some thick, green concoction in one of his protuberances, “I should have a nutritionist fee written into my contract with Quincy.”

He set the flagon in front of her. “This is Nom’s Nutritional Post-Workout Smoothie,” he said. “There’s wintergreens, star seeds, green tea and the powdered whey we made from the cow’s milk we purchased this week.”

Nay grabbed the flagon with both hands and started guzzling the thick smoothie. She couldn’t taste the intricacies of Nom’s shake but she felt the Strength and Stamina and Spirit Buffs coursing through her. It really was the perfect recovery concoction. Already her fatigue was fading and she was beginning to feel renewed.

She reached the bottom of the flagon. “Is there more?”

Nom retrieved the leftover smoothie from the little gnomish blender and before he could fill her flagon she grabbed the container out of his hands and started chugging.

“You know,” Nom said. “You might want to go easy on that. If you’re not burning enough calories it might make you grow…big.”

Nay, mid-chug, punched him in the equivalent of his shoulder.

“I’m not kidding! All this working out and slamming protein is going to make you put on muscle! You’ll have to get new breaches! Your quads are going to get huge!”

“And that would be my prerogative!” Nay said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “It’s rude to talk about a woman’s body, Nom.”

“Why?” Nom said, genuinely confused. “I’m just talking in practicalities.”

“But you’re doing so when it may be uninvited,” Nay said. “You have to read the emotional temperature of the room. How do you know I’m not self-conscious? Maybe I’m sensitive about my body. Maybe it’s none of your business.”

Nom blinked.

“You could hurt someone’s feelings,” Nay said.

“I’ve done something bad,” Nom said.

“Relax, I know you’re still learning about social etiquette and manners. Hell, we all are here.”

“No, I’m not talking about that. I understand what you’re saying and I’ll think twice next time I comment on someone’s body. But I’m talking about something else. I’ve been up to…mischief.”

“Mischief?” Nay frowned, a bit confused by the topic change.

“I’ve been sneaking out at night,” Nom said. He said it like an altar boy in confessional with a priest.

“You have?”

Nom nodded. “Before I made your smoothie, I just got back in.”

“From where?”

Nom didn’t answer.

“From where, Nom?”

"First, promise me you won't get angry."

“Nom. From where?”

“The House of Saccharine Delights.”

/////////

“Mother of God,” Nay said. “You went to the whorehouse?”

“They don’t really like to be called whores,” Nom said.

Nay couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She stared at Nom in shock and dismay, wondering what his desires or moment of weakness had brought upon them. Did the girls of the House of Saccharine Delights know that a sentient tentacle was the sous chef at Quincy’s Lodge? Wait, did he…

“Did you sleep with one of the ladies?” Nay said. “Did you have relations with a woman of the House of Saccharine Delights?”

“No!” Nom said. “You got it all wrong. I was just watching from underneath the bed, from the rafters. I took care not to be seen. I was just curious. I just had to know, Nay. I had to know!”

“Jesus, Nom!” Nay said. “Had to know what? You can’t just use your imagination! You had to go and be a voyeur!”

“Don’t get judgmental with me!” Nom said. “A tentacle is allowed to watch! We’re allowed to watch!”

“Ew!” Nay said. “No! Ew! You’re not allowed to watch! Not unless you’re invited to watch! That’s just creepy!”

“Don’t look at me like that!” Nom said. He went and hid under the table in shame. “Don’t look at me!”

Nay sat down and put her head in her hands. Her sous chef was a total perv. Well, it wasn’t so uncommon. She had heard worse stories from every other sous chef she has had. Hell, tales from line cooks could downright make you want ear bleach.

“That’s not the worst part.”

Nay looked under the table at him. “What do you mean?”

Nom didn’t say anything, but he was shaking.

“Nom. What do you mean that’s not the worst part?”

“I couldn’t help myself,” Nom said. “He was hurting her, so I had to do something…but he deserved it for…for what he did, he deserved it…”

“Who was hurting who? Back up for a second, who is ‘he’”?

“You know they have food there…for the clientele. There’s a kitchen and they’ll make food all hours of the day. Nothing as good as we make, but the men can request food whenever they’re hungry, and I…well…”

“Nom what did you do?”

“I think it will be easier if I just show you.”

“Show me?”

He came out from underneath the table and leaned forward towards her. She flinched and backed away. But he grabbed her hand with his protuberances. “No, put your forehead against me. I’m going to use my Mind Meld spell.”

“Mind Meld?”

“It will let you see what I saw,” he said. He bent his head forward. Nay obliged and leaned forward as well, so her forehead touched the point of the tentacle.

Upon contact, she saw sparks and everything went white.

/////////

There was a rush of visual distortion, and a sound and a fury like Nay was a charge of chemicals traveling through Nom’s synapses, finally reaching his visual cortex. Then the blur crystallized into a clear image.

She was high in the shadows of the rafters, looking down into one of the rooms in the House of Saccharine Delights. The general vibe for Nay was like the French Nouveau as filtered through a maugrim escort who really liked the color burgundy.

For some reason there was a lot of use of the color burgundy. Burgundy bed sheets. Burgundy bed cover and blankets. Also, there seemed to be strategically placed mirrors in the room. So that from no matter where you were, even in the rafters, you could catch your own reflection in a mirror. It was like being inside of a jewel.

There was a stitchgal touching up her makeup at a vanity mirror when a large stitchguy entered the room. He cut a wide and familiar silhouette.

The stitchgal froze at the sight of him. Her face stricken with disgust and fear. “You again,” she said. “I told Madam Snowstroke that one of the other girls would be a better match for you.”

“I’m not interested in any of the other girls, mot skljef,” he said in a low voice, more of a sinister whisper.

It was Krill.

Nay felt both fright and anger at the sight of him as he stepped into the candle-light. The feeling of wanting to recoil but also lunge at him was a weird one, made even more-so that she wasn’t in her own body, but was rather experiencing one of Nom’s memories from his point-of-view. Still, the urge to both run and fight surged through here, and that must have been the adrenaline releasing back in her own body.

She wanted to close her eyes at what happened next, but found that she couldn’t because Nom had watched everything.

When it was over, Krill had laid against the headboard and demanded that the stitchgal put in his order of food. It didn’t matter that she was weeping into a pillow, smearing the fabric with her makeup, blood and tears.

“I said order my mot skafjerik’s pie!” Krill said, shoving her off the bed.

That son of a bitch, Nay thought, as the stitchgal scampered off, covering herself in her robe and sobbing.

At that moment, Nom took off down the length of the rafter and slithered down the opposite wall on the dark side of the room. Then there was a rushing blur as he squeezed through a crack in the wall and raced through the inner architecture of the House of Saccharine Delights, through the spaces between the walls, emerging into a dark corner of the kitchen.

The cook was an old stitchguy, smoking a pipe with one hand and preparing the mince of a shepherd’s pie with another. He stirred at the mince with a wooden spoon, then set it down and sprinkled seasonings into it.

He coughed, and went to pull on his pipe, but the tobacco had burned out. He stepped away from the bowl of mince to go refill his pipe with a fresh plug of tobacco.

That’s when Nom rushed to the bowl and deposited a dropper of some type of liquid into the bowl of mince. As he did it, Nay’s HUD came to life, coming from her vision but overlayed over Nom’s memory.

Poisoner’s Gambit [Base Rank] in use.

Lamprey’s Spit.

Lamprey’s Spit is a poison derived from a surfeit of Lac Lampreys, by extracting bile from their venom sac glands and mixing with a bit of fermented crystal berry juice.

Nay was somehow using her HUD to interpret the Marrow Ability Nom had used to create and deploy the poison. Somehow, Nom had developed the Marrow Ability to create poisons. She wondered if it came from the Marrow of the Sketsis, that it had somehow combined with one of his latent skill trees or something. When this memory was over, she was going to have so many questions for her sous chef.

Nom disappeared back through the walls and soon they were back in the rafters, watching Krill from the dark ceiling. The stitchgal was staying away from him, sitting at her vanity and covering her bruises with makeup.

There was a knock at the door and a stitchgal entered, depositing the tray of food with the shepherd’s pie on the bed for Krill. He guzzled a goblet of wine and then started digging into the shepherd’s pie with his bare hands, shoving a scoop into his mouth.

The stitchgal saw him choking through the reflection in the mirror. At first, he coughed, irritated. But when his throat wouldn’t clear, he hit his chest, as if to dislodge something in his throat. Except there wasn’t a foreign object blocking his airway. He throat was swelling and closing up.

He stood, panicked. He was wheezing and clutching his throat with one hand, and pointing at it with the other. The stitchgal stared at him through the reflection, realizing what was happening.

But she did nothing to help him.

He staggered and fell to his knees, clutching at his throat. The veins protruded on his face and the vessels in his eyes burst. He collapsed to the ground, foam bubbling out of his mouth.

Then he grew still.

Dead.

Nom, the son of a bitch, had poisoned Wint’s only son.