"Eh, suit yerself." Brutrumukk said. "That just leaves more fer the rest of us." the frown that had been forming on the half-elves face creased the sides of his mouth, guess it was true what folks said about the bugbear.

"Here I thought you were different big guy." Gabe muttered under his breath as he shook his head, at least Jub seemed different but he wasn't sure where the little guy would stand on his friend eating people.

"An eye for an eye," he said after having a spoonful of stew, like he were quoting something "Or so we said on the streets of Waterdeep. We didn't go around eating thieves." it was moral code, when someone took something you took something.

A life for a life or an eye for an eye "Now I am going to take what was stolen but nothing more," the bard finished his stew and whispered his thanks to the innkeeper before turning in his seat to look at the bugbear.

"Let's not go around eating those who do wrong, besides we'll be taking back something worth more than rabbit! Beer!" he slapped the furry brute on the shoulder before getting up and looking back to the old innkeep "So miss, how bout that bath?"

Jub nodded in silent agreement as Aurora mentioned the benefits and handiness of the Prestidigitation spell, but conspicuously stopped doing so when she started getting into a debate with Brutrumukk about whether or not they were going to eat the rabbit bandits. He knew that she wasn't going to get anywhere with that argument, after all. He did, however, decide to point out something that he had noticed about the bugbear. "Given how much we've had to eat today, I'm surprised you're still hungry," Jub said between mouthfuls of his own meal. "Are you ever full, or is your stomach some bottomless void?"

Brutrumukk gave an apathetic shrug as another one of his companions turned their nose up at the thought of eating the Bunny Brigands. Brutrumukk wasn't entirely sure why they were taking issue with this. It's ok to eat normal sized non-talking rabbits that haven't done anything wrong, but eating human sized rabbits that can talk and engage in banditry isn't? Brutrumukk could not for the life of him understand the logic behind that. But he wasn't about to argue with them though. The fewer people to share the meat with, the greater share of meat he'd get for himself.

"Given how much we've had to eat today, I'm surprised you're still hungry," Jub said between mouthfuls of his own meal. "Are you ever full, or is your stomach some bottomless void?"

"Bugbears are bigger than most other folks." Brutrumukk explained. "So o' course our stomachs would be bigger than most other stomachs too." Of course, there was more to it than that. But metabolism, the effect regular physical exertion has on it, and all that other theoretical knowledge wasn't Brutrumukk's strong suit, so he wasn't aware of those reasons.

The innkeeper, Tsu Harabax, gave a gentle smile when Brutrumukk complimented her cooking. When he asked about meat, she answered "Oh no. I never had meat to begin with. I am not really fond of hunting,"

She continues as she waved a hand over a nearby pot full of soil, "Besides, I consider myself a better gardener than hunter," After she waved her hand over the pot, a plant rapidly grew from a seed, to a sapling, to a small plant that rapidly grew a bright red bell pepper.



When Gabriel asked about the bath, Tsu answers him, "Ah, that's right. Pardon my rudeness," She nods upstairs and she informs him, "The bath is upstairs. It's in the room at the end of the hall. The rest of the rooms are bedrooms,"

After Jub and Brutrumukk talk about the bugbear's eating habits, Zavakri speaks up, "Actually, that would be because of metabolism. From what I remember from my one course in the study of living beings, that's when the body turns the food a bloke ate into energy. With how big you are, Brutrumukk, it would make sense that you have to eat more in order to have enough energy to even move about,"

She then shrugged, "But alas, my specialization is in Astronomy and magic. I am not as much of an expert,"

The sight of Tsu casting her spell on the pot of soil caused Brutrumukk to pause in his eating and watch intently as the seed within the pot grew into a bell pepper over the course of six seconds. As the innkeeper turned to address Gabriel's inquiry, Brutrumukk got up from his seat and walked over to where the bell pepper was. Druidcraft. Brutrumukk recognized the spell. He knew it well. It was a spell his mother knew. She tended to use it more for its weather prediction and fire making than its plant growing, but even so, Brutrumukk hadn't seen that spell since he'd last seen his mother cast it. Seeing it again now... it made him feel strange.

Brutrumukk was pulled from his thoughts suddenly when Zavakri brought up the specifics of metabolism. "Met a bowl-ism?" Brutrumukk asked in a confused manner once Zavakri was done talking. After a moment, Brutrumukk just shrugged his shoulders at that. "Book people say the weirdest things sometimes." Brutrumukk cast one final glance back at the bell pepper before turning away from it, walking back to his chair, sitting down, and finishing his bowl of stew.

"All that talk o' rabbits just now 'as me thinkin' about that lot what we met by the bridge" Brutrumukk brought up to everyone present as he pushed his bowl away and pilled his plate of pie closer. "They wanted our memories of the best thing what someone ever gave each of us, yeah? We stopped 'em from doin' that, but now it's got me wonderin'... What is the best thing what someone's given each of us?"

"Best thing I've ever been given?" Jub paused in his meal and tilted his head to one side. "Well, now, that's a tough one. While the most important thing I own is, of course, my spellbook, I wasn't exactly given that." He frowned. In truth, he had received very few gifts in his time, and none of them were particularly noteworthy. They had been either things like food or money, interchangeable things that you didn't hold onto for too long. Jub's ears were drooping slightly as he was starting to think he'd have to admit to his new friends that he didn't have any fond memories like that...

... then he remembered Gabriel giving him his bag of pixie dust back at the Carnival, the bag he still had among his belongings. It had been a small thing, and he'd forgotten it not long after, but it had been nice to get given something like that out of the blue.

Of course, he wasn't sure how comfortable he felt admitting that to his companions. They might make fun of him. He opened his mouth to lie and say he couldn't think of anything but instead... "Well, there was that pixie dust Gabe gave he me at the carnival," he said. "That was pretty nice." Once he realised what he had just said, his face flushed. "Ha ha... wow this is really good food, ma'am, what's your secret?" he quickly said before proceeding to stuff with face with food, praying to whatever gods were currently listening that his friends would ignore what he just said.

"The pixie dust Gabe gave you?" Brutrumukk said. He chuckled at that. Though it was a warm sort of chuckle, devoid of any malice. "I'm not sure whether I should find it sweet that you think so 'ighly o' Gabe's gift or if I should be pissed off at the world fer not bein' nicer to you sooner... Ah what the 'Ells, I'll go with both."

Aurora was glad to see that Gabe agreed with her disposition of the bugbears plans to eat the bunny bandits, though Brutrumukk still seemed set on the matter. Know the argument would likely be futile,
Rory took the bowel of stew offered, breathing deep to smell it. While consisting more of vegetables and grains, it would be filling none the less. After eating her fill of the stew, the elf did try some of the plum pie enjoying the pastry.

When the conversation shifted to the inn keeper being more of a gardener, Rory looked over to see Tsu using magic to help the plant grow. She only recognized druidcraft from the few interactions she had with some of the grounds keepers that her family had employed. What surprised the elf was the change in the bugbear's tone and asking what was the best thing everyone had been given. Aurora set the fork down as she listened to Jub explain that the bag of pixie dust Gabe gave him was the best thing. She felt a bit bad that Jub felt embarrassed by the matter.

"Brutrumukk does have a point. Though I think sometimes it isn't the gift itself that matters as much as the intention. A sincere gift tends to always be better for all involved. On top of that, you shouldn't feel uncomfortable if that truly was the best thing given to you. Even the smallest of things could mean more than what some folk think." She paused a moment and looked over to Brutrumukk, who appeared to be less intense as usual. "What about you? What was the best thing you were given?

After he finished speaking, Brutrumukk became somewhat lost in thought for a time. Only recovering when he realized that Aurora had asked him about the best gift he'd ever received. "The best gift I ever got?" Brutrumukk said. "I got that a long time ago. So far back that gettin' it's actually the earliest memory I can think of. When I was about three years old, me mum an' me dad were part of an 'ost. Only it weren't doin' so good as it used to be, so me mum an' me dad decided to get a bunch of other bugbears together an' lop off some 'obgoblin 'eads. I don't remember much of 'ow it went, but I do still remember seein' me dad club the 'ost's warlord to death at the end. After he chopped the 'ead off, 'e let me play with it whenever it weren't on a spike. It was me favorite toy fer a long time." Brutrumukk then looked contemplative for a moment before speaking again.

"There are two other gift memories I can think of." Brutrumukk added. "They ain't the best gifts what I ever got, but since we are where we are, I feel like it'd be fittin' to tell you lot about 'em." Brutrumukk took a moment to eat some pie before continuing. "Me mum knew 'ow to tame axe beaks, so me old gang always 'ad a few o' those birds around. When I was eight, an axe beak chick took a likin' to me, I called 'im Chopper an' we were never too far from each other after that. Then one day, the little bugger wandered off while I wasn't lookin'. I went off to look fer 'im, but I 'ad no luck even after hours o' searchin'. Just as I was about to give up, this woman with white 'air, white clothes, an' a weird chicken foot tattoo under 'er eye appeared out o' nowhere." Brutrumukk paused then for another bite of pie before pressing on. "She asked me why I was lookin' so bothered. When I told 'er why, this weird smile appeared on 'er face an' she told me she could 'elp. When I agreed to let 'er, she used this magic whistle an' before you know it, Chopper came runnin' out the bushes like 'e'd never even left. When I looked back to ask the weird woman who she was an' why she 'elped me, I found that she'd vanished as suddenly as she arrived."

Brutrumukk took a moment to finish the rest of his pie then before recounting his second story. "After that, things when back to normal fer about three years." The bugbear continued. "Then a bunch of adventurers came along an' killed most o' me gang. When they found me though, they got all weird with each other about me bein' a kid. 'No we can't kill 'im! 'E's a child! It's wrong!' One of 'em said. 'That ain't no child, that's a monster. You really think it'd 'esitate like this if our roles were reversed?' Another said. I managed to sneak away while they were yammerin' on. As I escaped, I ran into that weird woman again. She 'elped me get away from the adventurers and led me to a big rock. She used magic to 'ollow it out, give it a secret entrance, an' make it a nice place to live in. This time, I managed to ask who the woman was an' why she 'elped me. She said that she was a Fairy Godmother an' then told me 'bout the Rule o' Recipe City. Then she vanished into thin air."

With his stories done, Brutrumukk looked back at Aurora. "So what about you?" Brutrumukk asked. "What was the best thing you ever got?"

Rory pulled a small worn leather bundle from her pack and set it on the table. "To answer your question Brut. These were probably the best thing I was ever given. My brother Alex gave them me when I was about fifteen." As she spoke she unrolled the bundle to reveal several lock picks, tension bars, a small mirror mounted on a handle, a file, pliers, and pair of scissors with narrow blades. A few of the picks look as though they have been bent or twisted some, while others look as though they were newer.
"I suppose more importantly he taught me how to use them. It helped when I needed to get out of the stuffy confines of the house. More than once I had been locked in my room until I could be more lady like." Rory picked up one of the picks looking over it carefully. It was one of the picks she had used to open the side door to the estate grounds that she and Xander left their home through. It had served her well that night and on a few odd jobs. There was a small split in the metal where it had twisted to far. She was honestly surprised that it had lasted as long as it had. Placing it back in the bundle, Rory realized she had gotten lost in the memory of the night she left home. She forced a half smile before resuming her tale after realizing that it probably sounded like a bad situation."Fortunately that provided lots of practice in opening locks. I'm not entirely sure my father and mother figured out I kept getting out. They even went so far as changing the locks on the door and windows at least multiple times in several months before resigning to the fact I would still find a way out." The smile slowly faded as the elf told her tale. "Anyway, who else wants to share what the greatest thing they got?" Aurora asked in an attempt to divert the conversation away from herself.

Stripped down to his breeches, the half-elf sat at the edge of the wood tub in a room with one small circular mirror listening to the muffled sound of conversation below as he absent-mindedly drew a bath.

The water was somewhat lukewarm, though it was cleaner than the muddy swill in the swamp outside the tavern walls, his thoughts wandered to the day he had before and the things he was most grateful for. His gaze swiveled to where his shirt hung, a small tug pulled at his lips as he cringed slightly remembering that his companion had kindly cast a spell to clean him up. Gabriel shook his head, muttering a few words and with a flick of his wrist steam wafted from the tub, the water much warmer than it was.

He was not going to live it down were his allies to learn that in his rabid lunacy he forgot that he himself was capable of using such a parlor trick, with a sigh the bard peeled off his breeches and threw them aside in an unceremonious heap, stepping into the tub and settling in to the tub slowly til the water rose slightly.

His thoughts wandered to what he most cherished in the days past, both chuckling to himself remembering how he lost the poetry contest against the gnome, and frowning as he recalled the few people that had joined them and left. One memory stuck out however that made him smile in the privacy of the bath, when Gabriel took part in the snail races with the elf. It wasn't really much to say it was a gift but afterward he enjoyed sharing a meal with the trueblooded lady.

And the bottle of liquor the minstrel had graciously gave him, that was the prize he had needed. Laughing, Gabriel recalled the song that the bugbear sang at the carnivals finale.


He hadn't joined in when the two had sang before, it was their song of course. However that song had stuck with him, and it was the greatest gift he had been given without either of the two knowing. Some keener ears might have heard the bard singing to himself quietly in the tub but he didn't care. He wiped a tear from the side of his eyes, and smiled.

Upon being asked what the best gift she received was, Zavakri raised her left hand to show the ring finger, where a beautiful ring rested. She answered the group, "Cor! For me, it would be this," She seemed to not opt to explain why, but instead listened to the others answer the bugbear's question and Brutrumukk answer his own question.

The innkeeper seemed especially interested in Brutrumukk's words.

Out of all of the party, Aurora can hear Gabriel's singing from upstairs.

When there is a moment, the innkeeper spoke to Brutrumukk with a smile and a cheerful laugh, "Ahhh! So you're one of Lady Zybilna's godchildren!"

When she is met with confused looks and questions, she explains, "The woman you just described, young bugbear, was Lady Zybilna herself!"

Jub had been finishing his meal in embarrassed silence, when the innkeeper spoke up. While he had shown some curiosity towards Brutrumukk's story, he hadn't commented. After all, weird and unexplained things happened all over Faerun. If Jub could find a spellbook in the garbage and something like the Witchlight Carnival existed, then why couldn't Brutrumukk have some fairy godmother looking out for him? It was only when the innkeeper identified the woman as Zybilna that Jub suddenly spat out the mouthful of food he had been eating and had to take a moment to recover.

"Excuse me," he said after a minute or so of spluttering. "What did you just say?!"

"Ahhh! So you're one of Lady Zybilna's godchildren!" Tsu exclaimed with a smile and a cheerful laugh.

"Zip-Ill-Nah?" Brutrumukk asked with a confused expression.

"The woman you just described, young bugbear, was Lady Zybilna herself!" Tsu explained.

"Excuse me," Jub spluttered after spit taking in surprise. "What did you just say?!"

"She just said that the woman what I was talkin' about is actually Zip-Ill-Nah 'erself." Brutrumukk repeated patiently. "Try to keep up, booyagh."

Jub had to restrain himself from shouting again, and took a deep breath. Clearly, the significance of this revelation was lost on Brutrumukk, so he'd have to break it down for him. "You remember that Misters Witch and Light named Zybilna as the archfey they worship? The same that Kettlesteam worships? The same archfey that used to rule this place before the Coven took over?" He looked around at the rest of the table. "Does anyone else find this all a crazy coincidence or am I finally losing my mind right now!?"

Brutrumukk shrugged at Jub's words. "Eh, weirder things 'ave 'append since we got 'ere." Brutrumukk said. "It's just been one lot o' shenanigans after another from the moment we went through that mirror... Speakin' of..." Brutrumukk turned to address Tsu. "D'you know where we can find any alley corn?" The bugbear asked. "Before we came to this place, a pair o' clowns told us we 'ad to 'Find the alley corn an' free the Doormat Queen as last!'... Whatever that means. We've figured out that Zip-Ill-Nah's the Doormat Queen, but we still don't know nothin' 'bout the alley corn."

It seem that Gabriel was enjoying himself wherever he was. He seemed to be singing the sing from the closing of the carnival. The bard seemed to be in a rather cheery mood. The festivities last night were enjoyable, the snail races followed by the meal with Gabe. It had been awhile since Rory had been in such good company.

Jub's loud exclamation caught her attention as he explained to the bugbear that Zybilna was an archefey. Aurora was about as surprised as Jub was initially before thinking back on Brutrumukk's story. She didn't remember if she had even learned anything about the archfey that was apparently the bugbear's fairy godmother. Certainly there were other archfey, or even other fey creatures, that would favor a mortal. Though often enough those tales ended with the mortal in service to the Fey.

"It is strange in a way Jub, but I think it is more likely than my sister or I being an archfey as you suspected earlier today by the tower. Though I do remember being drawn to the carnival by a desire to find and get the thing I lost. Now that I think of it all of us lost something at the carnival before this last visit. All except Brutrumukk. The carnival just happened to be right atop his home." She pauses briefly trying to recall any of the conversation she had with Brutrumukk last night, specifically trying to think of if he mentioned losing something. "Perhaps this coincidence is more. Why else would the five of us be here?" She looked over to Tsu. "Would you by chance know what the cost of going to the carnival without paying for a ticket would be?"

After Jub explained the significance of the revelation of Zybilna's identity as Brutrumukk's Fairy Godmother, Zavakri seemed to close her eyes in thought. She listened to the discussion, and after Aurora asked her question, she spoke up again, "...It has to be the universe balancing itself out, by acting through us..."

Her eyes remained close as she explained further, "Remember what Sir Talavar said? About what happened to Zybilna? The Law of Time was violated,"

She turns her face towards the party and opens her eyes, revealing her eyes had changed again. Her irises looked like the faces of a clock again, golden background with numbers aligned and fitted perfectly around each pupil, the hands missing. She finishes, "And it is acting through us..." as her irises go back to normal.

Tsu answers Brutrumukk's question first, clearly confused as she scratches the top of her head to reveal a small ferret that pops its head out of her wild gray and white hair, "An alley corn...? I can grow corn on the cob for you, but I can't say it's an alley corn. There's no alleys in a tavern. Sorry, young bugbear, I'm not sure..."

She then looks to Aurora when she asked about the cost of going to the carnival would be without paying a ticket. She shakes her head, causing the ferret to skitter down to her shoulder and settle there. She answered, "I'm sorry, but I don't know that either,"

She knocks on the wooden wall of the inn as she explains, "This here inn used to be able to go everywhere in Prismeer when Lady Zybilna was in power. But now that the Coven is in power? Been stuck here in Hither ever since! Also, I never had any desire to leave Prismeer for the Material Plane anyways..."

When Zavakri spoke up Brutrumukk looked to the sorceress as she spoke her cryptic words and her eyes turned into clocks. "...Fair enough I suppose." Brutrumukk said with a shrug once Zavakri was done talking. "Workin' fer this Law o' Time better pay well though. Elsewise it's gonna regret stiffin' me."

When Tsu answered his question, Brutrumukk looked at her in confusion. "Corn on the cob?" Brutrumukk asked. "No no, that ain't what I'm talkin' about. I'm talkin' about alley corn. You know, eunuch corn what can fly?"

Zavakri did not answer Brutrumukk's words about pay.

Tsu on the other hand looked even more confused and she asked "A Eunuch Corn? What in Prismeer is that...?"

The party could see that she is visibly thinking it over and puzzling it out and they could hear her mumble to herself, "....Eunuch Corn, is it corn on the cob without the corn? But wait, if it's a Eunuch, then that would mean the entire cob is missing...right?"