Master Sergeant Donchaminar Kammick Nit’Sammish of the Cloven Peaks’ Clan, Medalled Hero of the Y’Sek Campaign, Hero of the Ghlow Kitchen Siege, and favorite son of his revered grandmother, was sweating profusely as his knuckles slowly turned and kneaded the massive dough ball on the heavy oaken slab table. It was a regular daily ritual for him now, after the attacks on the palace, to make extra bread every morning.

The orc chef had thrown himself between his staff and mindless monsters, holding the beasts off until soldiers, and the king himself, could clear out the beasts. But the battle had cost him dearly, and left him bedridden for weeks in the Leech Hall.

Healing had taken time. Was STILL taking time, he noted to himself as he shoved the dough forward across the floured surface of the table, and then heaved to flip the mass over. He patted the slab, watching carefully how far it rebounded, reclaiming its shape after the last pass of presses and stretches. It was not quite as elastic as he wanted it to be before he returned it to the proofing drawer to rise again.

With a groan of great personal despair, Donk straightened up, flexed his sore shoulders, and arched his back, eliciting a cascade of joint popping noises more akin to the sounds of a distant avalanche. A yawn escaped from his tusked maw, while he attempted to foil its flight by contorting his face in several different directions before just admitting defeat and allowing it to run riot over his face.

Widening his eyes and stretching his facial muscles, he gave his head a quick shake and set back to the work of moving the dough back and forth across the thick table. He smiled to himself as he worked. With this last round of dough finally at the correct elasticity, he opened the wide proofing drawer in the cabinet that backed up to one of the immense stoves near where he had been working. In two hours, he would pull them all out, and with the help of a few others of the kitchen staff, punch them down, separate all of the large balls into hundreds of smaller rounds of various sizes, and set them all to baking.

Breakfast would be served just before first light for the staff, and the few very early risers who resided in the palace. He straightened again and slowly stretched, looking at the play of his muscles under his now heavily scarred green arms. Most of the scar tissue was coming in a bluish tinge. He didn’t mind the blue tones so much. It reminded him of his father and his father’s people. His mother, grandmother, and the majority of her people were all of the green shades of orc tribes that lived in the mountains to the west.

His father’s tribe had once lived on the rocky coastlines to the far north.

Stretching and straightening his arms, his elbows cracked, and Donk smiled at the relief of the released tension.

“My arms hurt less today than they had yesterday, and they will hurt less tomorrow than they do today…” he mumbled to himself in affirmation as he finally heard the sounds of the first shift of the morning kitchen staff shuffling into the cavernous set of rooms that made of the kitchens of the Royal Palace of the Rhiadian Kingdom in the seaside city of Ghlow.

Lady Barda and Lady Morag entered together, chatting away in their quick, light, happily birdlike accents that amused Donk almost every day. The two women worked harder than almost anyone else in the kitchens, and never let any amount of work darken their moods. When they weren’t preserving fruits and vegetables, they were making gravies and sauces.

“My lovely blue twins, please see to this morning’s onion gravy, and red carrot salad!” The head chef called to them as they passed. The two bobbed synchronized curtsies to him, tittering to one another. He laughed. Their mood was often infectious.

Steen, Felmet, Summa, Karl, and Bogner were all old hands, most having followed him from Jibiril Keep with the King, and would arrive later in the day to take over managing the kitchens from him for the lunch and dinner shifts, handling the staff that would be coming in later as his loyal right-hands. Corporal Felmet would also be making up the weekly work roster for Donk's review, while Bogner and Steen would be handing in detailed inventories of the stocks, staples, and the larder.

An elderly man then strode in with only a slight hitch to his step due to age, the former master of these kitchens, Mister Cobb, was up and ready to go this morning. “Mister Cobb, if you and the pit boys would see to the sausage and the eggs.” Cobb paused, and looked at Donk wide-eyed. A smile came over the old man’s face when he saw that once again he would be asked to not only do demanding work, but that he would be in charge training some of the younger staff, and overseeing their work.

There was nothing so insulting to a master chef as being given make-work. “We also have two fine boars that have been dressed, but will need some talented butchering. Can you see to that, sir?”

Cobb’s smile brightened even more, as he said, “Oh, aye, Chef. I’m on it! I’ll pull Young Wald in to learn the cuts!”

“HA! Excellent! See to it!” Donk knew he was putting a good show on for the staff, but also knew that he would drop like a stone after he pulled the bread loaves from the ovens. The less they worried over his condition, the better they saw to their own duties.

Many of the early morning staff were rubbing their arms as they wandered in, letting Donk know how cold the predawn morning was outside, and almost to a person they visibly relaxed into the warmth of the kitchen air as they entered. A large kettle of tea was set on a small stove off to the side of the entrance, and many of the staff were taking small mugs of the tea as they entered. Jaina, a granddaughter of one of the older cooks, would be seeing to the refilling of the pot throughout the day, and brewing more tea as needed. She would also see to refilling all of the water pots in the kitchens that stood by each stove.

Several young boys would be coming in later to refill the woodricks with the split logs for the ovens. They did this chore twice a day, and for several of them, it was their first step to becoming “kitchen staff.”

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A matronly woman, Mistress Mollette, silvering red hair tied up in an elaborate bun, was covering her own head with a tight kerchief as she led a very thin woman of indeterminate age through the doors. Most in the kitchens called the woman Izzy. It was the closest she had been able to come in naming herself after she had woken from her injuries in the Leech Hall after the same attacks that had nearly killed Donk. With no other great clues as to who her people might be, or where, she had been taken in by the kitchen staff, and was regularly set to peeling and chopping. Most regarded her as “slow,” though Donk thought she was still recovering from the horrors she had survived.

She no longer resembled the (barely) walking skeleton that had followed Donk back to the kitchens a month ago. Access to abundant solid food had done wonders for the woman. She might never regain a state of vigorous health, but she walked unaided now, and no longer had hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes. Izzy was well clothed in a blue dress, and smiled as she entered the room following behind Mistress Mollette. She rarely spoke to anyone outside of Mollette, Donk, and oddly enough, Felmet.

The elderly corporal was as kind to her as he was to anyone, and she had responded to that kindness by occasionally talking to the slender, older human man with her almost whispered words.

“Mistress Mollette,” he said with feigned dire gravity. “I do hope you will find the dough rising in the proofing drawers acceptable.”

The older human woman, brown eyes twinkling behind her tiny pug nose, cackled like a children’s tale forest spirit. “Oh! Chef, I doubt anyone here could do bread as well as what you have put up this morning, and you well know it.”

Beside her roommate and guardian, Izzy smiled nervously, her wide, catlike eyes glancing left and right to make certain no one was standing too close to her. Izzy had been very nervous of people standing too close to her since her awakening.

Leaning toward him she asked in a bare whisper of a voice, “Chef, what station would you like me to work with this morning.” As always, she spoke slowly, haltingly, and lacked certainty, as though her words were alien things scuttling from her mouth all higgledy-piggledy.

Leaning close, so he need not raise his voice and make her cringe back in fear as loud noises often made her react, Donchaminar replied as softly as his basso voice would allow, “You and I will be making the porridge this morning, Izzy.”

Her face lit up at his pronouncement. Izzy liked oatmeal. She told him that the scent of it was soothing, and the act of stirring the large cauldrons of slowly heating grain mash made her nostalgic.

When he asked her “Nostalgic for what, or for when?” she never knew how to answer, but after trying to find the memories in her thoughts, just let the thought go, and smiled sadly to herself.

Just before the noon hour, as he dragged himself into the large set of rooms reserved as the residence of the Palace Head Chef, Donchaminar slumped as he closed the door behind him. Just inside the front door to his chambers, he hung his apron on a hook, and then turned to sit on a large, comfortable bench he had originally bought and positioned specifically to sit on and remove his boots before he entered deeper into his “lair.”

He had dismissed the morning staff as the midday staff had arrived, and set to checking that each job was done and ready for the series of runners and servers that would be delivering and serving. Izzy had looked as tired as he felt now, and he made certain Mistress Mollette had her well in hand as they made their way back tp their own quarters. And then the Chef had spent another two hours meeting with his subordinate cooks. Mostly to check numbers, and confirm menues.

And now he was finally back "home," such that it was. Lush accomodations by almost anyone's meter, but some days he missed the mountains. His eyes drooped more, his eyelids leaden, as he sat on the bench.

Until he had survived the attack on the palace, Donchaminar had never before known he could be as fatigued as he was now. And it was every day, all day, and worse at the end of each day. Though, he might sometimes think it was torturous in the very early hours when he had to be up to begin the day, but by day’s end it was always worse.

The doctors and Masters of the Leech Hall had told him that the process of healing would take many months considering how badly he had been beaten.

How near to death he had come.

But he had trouble believing anything would be better ever again when at the end of every day the massive orc could barely summon the willpower and strength to wash himself and make it all the way to his sleeping chamber and bed.

Several days, in those first early days back in his own quarters, he had simply fallen asleep in the bath that had been drawn for him by the chamber servants assigned to him as the Palace Chef. Gibbs, and his two daughters, Baince and Caiya, had found him slumber in his bath, the water long gone cold. Waking him, Gibbs himself had been able to coax their massive patron from the bath to the bed in a befuddled haze of pain and fatigue, while the girls had focused on cleaning up the watery mess in the bathing room, rather than on watching, he was certain, a giant naked orc making his fumbling, stumbling walk to his giant bed.

Luckily, those embarrassing days were now behind him. Though, sitting here on his bench in the entry hall, he thought he could just slip easily into slumber. Pushing himself up, he wandered toward the bath. Knowing that Gibbs and the girls had taken the time to fill the tub, and that he hated the very idea of going to bed filthy, it rankled on his sensibilities, Donchaminar made it to the bathroom, and began to disrobe. Vest removed, and shirt off, he had just untied the waste-knots of his breeches as the light in the small chamber shifted and darkened.

The usual cheery glow of lamplight was overtaken by a red pall, and even the light of the noonday sun failed to bring any greater illumination through the thick glass windows placed high along one wall of the chamber that backed his large stone bath. Glancing about the room to see if he could decipher the reason for the shift of the light, a multitude of voices spoke softly in chorus from behind Donk, startling him, and making him almost fall to the floor as he spun to face… something.

Between himself and the door he had just come through moments before, an amorphous form of different and shifting hues of red light hovered.

Wide eyed, Donchaminar stared at the thing, and slowly asked, “What?”

“I must find the woman… she who brought blood for blood’s sake, and would see blood come again… the Bargain… “

Taking a shaking step toward the floating vision, his aches and fatigue now forgotten “What do you want? Who are you looking for?”

The light dimmed, and waivered, and began to fade before the composite of feminine voices said, barely audible, “...the Red Lady… the Lady of Blood...”

Finally as the mirage faded, with less a whisper than a whimper of "...the Bargain..."