>>5318733What you do see is the not-kobold, the creature you jestingly call ‘The Junior Novice’, is not in its cage. Rather, the Novice Fleshweaver is leaned over its sedated form, injecting a syringe of some unknown concoction into it when you enter. To your discomfort, she is faintly vibrating with rattling laughter. It’s… A little creepy.
You clear your throat, and she stands immediately, setting down her syringe and whirling about: “I said NONE were to— Ah. You lived.
“I did,” you confirm. “Did YOU survive the last day, though? You look terrible.”
“Yes, well, rest won’t make me appear to be a dark elf with swollen mammary glands, so I suppose I will never appeal to your sensibilities,” she sniffs, quick with a retort. “Not that you’d know it, by how frequently I catch you ogling my—”
“Glowie was injured,” you interject.
You reach for the disguised female who has shyly hidden behind you, away from the manic alchemical prodigy’s mad laughter. You gently shove her toward the Novice, who looks her over.
“What is she wearing?” she asks “Why is her midriff exposed? That is a modification of MY midriff, you know. You ought to ask a female before you expose her to such public indignity.”
“Only we three know whose midriff that is,” you sigh. “And anyway, her old cloak was soaked through with blood.”
The Novice looks at you with surprising concern—enough that you’d almost think she LIKES the insect-princess, or at least values her continued existence.
“Take off the clothing,” she orders Glowie, and the amulet.
She does so, exposing first the beautiful, squeezable curves of her egg-laying hips and thick tail, and then the… Unique charm… Of her natural for. You look away, trying not to remember the last time she was thus exposed to you, and what came of it.
“She seems perfectly fine,” the Novice eventually concludes. “You say it was one of the beads on your magic necklace which did this?”
“Yes,” you say, “though it was… Used up in the process. It shattered.”
“Well, none of the other charms on that necklace feel to me as if they have restorative properties. It must be some sort of magic multi-tool, a collection of stored spells. It’s a good thing that you got lucky and used the correct one, or who KNOWS what would have happened to the worm?”
“It wasn’t luck,” you say. “I am no fool.”
“All evidence to the contrary,” the Novice says.
You sigh.
