Daffy continued wringing her hands atop Obbie’s scrubbed cooking table, occasionally glancing over her shoulder at the door.

Obbie watched her with a raised brow as he finished pouring them two steaming cups of peppermint chamomile tea. “I already told you they won’t be coming in. Did you see how exhausted they were? Plus I sprinkled quite a bit of ground up valerian root in their food. And in their desert. It’d be a miracle if Man Chop woke up before winter. He ate a bowl of that fat merchant’s dinner, and I’d been generous with the amount in his for obvious reasons. Ben’s a fraction of his size…”

Daffy looked back at the fairy, her mouth twisted in a fretful knot. “I know, but… Obbie, is this really alright? They were some of our first customers, and business has definitely picked up because of the big magic scent around them…”

“You do realize there won’t be a business anymore if Pesch Goldbry gets angry with us and takes away his funding, right?”

Daffy let out a soft whine of distress.

“Look, sure Pesch Goldbry is known for running successful businesses. Yes, he also has a reputation as a bit of a con man. Yes, he is surrounded by muscled capable goons… With biceps I could sink my teeth into…” Obbie trailed off momentarily before giving his head a shake. “But! It is well established that if you are a business partner with him, he is good to you. I’ll send him a pigeon to let him know that the witch is here.”

“Her name is Spidena! And you can’t! Who knows what he wants with her!” Daffy objected heartfully.

Obbie slowly seated himself, his hands wrapping around the clay mug. “She might have done something bad to him, you know. She doesn’t seem the type to be completely innocent.”

“What could she do? She can’t even navigate a trip to Kintel when she knows three different magic types!”

At this Obbie scoffed. “It is funny. She seems to have a knack for anything involving memory with her incantations, potions, and spells. She told me what she was best at when we were negotiating how they would pay. She offered a glamor spell as payment for their stay here, but obviously you have me, so there is no point in accepting that.”

Daffy’s brows furrowed. “You never use glamor to help the inn.”

“Sure I do. Have you not noticed that despite the farm animals outside it never smells like manure?” Obbie blew on his tea and gave it a tentative sip.

Daffy paused at this realization, then shook her head and continued. “Man Chop will be sad if Pesch takes her.”

At the mention of Benthrop Hozel, Obbie stilled. A thoughtful expression overtaking his fine, sharp angled features. “Yes. It’ll be interesting to see what Man Chop does. I think we should make sure Pesch gets Spidena while Ben is still sleeping. Even though Pesch wanted to meet him, that wouldn’t be in our best interest.

Daffy blinked. “Why? Why are you only protective of Ben and not Spidena?” She paused. “No! You can’t have him! I really want he and Spidena to be together!”

Obbie cleared his throat and avoided her gaze. “Man Chop is cute for a human—and I’m almost willing to bet money they won’t ever get together.” He ignored Daffy’s scowl. “But no. The reason it’s a bad idea to agitate our dear Man Chop is that he has unstable magic in him.”

Sitting straighter in alarm, the wood nymph gaped. “What? I thought he was a dodder! Was he lying?”

Giving a chuckle of disapproval, Obbie lowered his tea cup back down to the table. “No. The idiot put something inside of himself. He obviously did it without any help, and most likely illegally, so it’s only a matter of time before he does something stupid.”

“Oh no!” Daffy gasped in shock. As her wide eyes searched Obbie’s face, her shoulders slumped sadly. “Do you think Spidena knows that he has unstable magic?”

The fairy looked uncharacteristically somber as his mind sifted through the topic, then shook his head. “Man Chop himself isn’t generating natural magic from his soul. Unless he uses the thing in his wrist, the magic won’t show. I only recognized it because I’d seen something like it before. Only the ones I’d seen had been installed correctly.”

The wood nymph was openly confused and growing frustrated by the ambiguity of Obbie’s words. Seeing this the fairy sighed. He hadn’t really wanted to oust Man Chop—letting things unfold while being the one knowing everything was far too much fun. However, if Man Chop made any idiotic decisions it could put the inn or its guests at risk. And so, Obbie told Daffy just exactly what the very foolish human they’d come to know had done to himself.

*

Ben opened his eyes with significant difficulty.

He could tell by the warm sunshine on the arched wooden door to the room that he had slept most of the morning away.

Damnit. Obbie is going to say because I slept through breakfast he doesn’t have to give me food like the tricky pain-in-the-ass fairy he is…

Ben briefly marveled that in a matter of a few weeks somehow being in the company of a pretentious fairy and a matronly nymph wasn’t even the strangest thing about his life.

And here he had thought stealing from the military had been the most thrilling thing that would happen to him.

Sitting up with a grunt, Ben noticed Spidena’s limp arm dangling from the bunk over his.

Grinning, he at least was glad that he could torment Spidena and accuse her of laziness once she was awake.

Cracking his neck by first leaning it to the right and then to the left, Ben shifted forward on the narrow bed so that he could stand and proceed with stretching. It hadn’t been the first time he’d fallen asleep before even taking his boots off, and so nothing struck him as particularly strange about his restful night.

Though upon doing so, he realized he smelled quite rank, and so he decided to go see about any showers or nearby ponds that he could possibly alleviate the stench.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Glancing once over his shoulder at Spidena, he stifled a laugh at the intense storm of black wavy hair that almost seemed to be smothering the witch as she slept.

He made a note to himself that if she was still sleeping when he returned he would dig out her comb from her bag and hide it. Wolf wasn’t allowed in the inn, nor did he have any interest in coming inside, which meant there really was no one to stop him. So barring her waking up before he returned to the room, he solidified his plans.

Making his way down the shadowed corridor, Ben wondered if he could maybe needle Daffy to get his free meal. Gods forbid Obbie take it upon himself to find the most annoying task imaginable to make him earn it. Ben wouldn’t have minded chopping firewood or pulling weeds out of the garden, but whisking egg whites was a special kind of awful. His shoulders still ached from it…

Stepping off the soft hall runner that was a forest green with lovely yellow and white flowers dotting its pattern, Ben peered to the left to see if Daffy was behind the reception desk.

She wasn’t.

He then ventured a little farther into the dining room where the heavenly smells of bacon, coffee, and eggs wafted through the air.

Ben’s stomach rumbled hopefully.

Surprisingly, there weren’t that many customers sitting in the dining area—though it may have been even later in the day than Ben had realized.

He did eventually spot Daffy. The nymph was seated across from a human man wearing a smart brown suit without its coat with his back toward Ben. He sat with his forearms braced on the table. There was a particularly gruff looking woman glaring at Ben from the man’s left side and two other burly men sat beside her farther down the bench.

Ben raised an eyebrow and shifted his gaze to see that Obbie was sitting Daffy’s side across from the man in the suit.

It was the fairy’s countenance that tipped Ben off that something was wrong.

Obbie looked like his usual smug self, sure. But he was tense. He wasn’t moving with his usual flamboyant confidence, and he seemed to want to look anywhere but at the man in the suit.

Venturing toward them, Ben decided he wanted to avoid this crowd as much as possible, and so when he approached, he kept his face turned away, and his sights fixed on Daffy.

“Pardon me,” he called out.

Every head and set of eyes snapped up and over to stare at him.

The weighty aura of the man in the suit when he moved his attention to Ben almost made him flinch.

Daffy shot upward out of her seat. “Man Chop! Why are you—Where’s Spidena?”

Ben looked at Daffy like she had just thrown a handful of flour at him. “Uh. Sleeping. I was going to ask if there is a shower or pond nearby I could use to wash. Also, where’s Paulav?”

The man in the suit slowly rose from his own spot at the table, along with the muscled, individuals that he had apparently brought with him.

“You slept in the same bed as the witch?” the man growled.

“Erm. I don’t think bunk beds count.” Ben shifted a little away from the man, not quite meeting his demented gaze as the stranger utilized the additional three inches of height he had over Ben like a seasoned thug.

Ben knew he could’ve asked why it mattered to the man where Spidena slept, but swiftly decided he really didn’t care to know.

“Bath? Shower? Pond? Well? Pump…?” Ben ventured on while looking back at Daffy, and then at Obbie, who, oddly enough was suddenly smiling with his arms crossed and his eyes closed.

“There’s uh… ah… A pump out back if you don’t mind. I… I can arrange for a bath in your room—” A growl from the man in the suit made Daffy squeak. “After Spidena leaves, of course!”

Ben blinked. Then pressed his lips together, gave a curt nod to the scary folk, and said, “Pump it is. Good day.”

He took two steps and found a hand had shot out and grasped the front of his shirt.

Ben froze.

Years of his military training made him tense.

While he wasn’t quite trained in full on combat like he was willing to bet the man’s companions were, he did know how to put someone on their back when they grabbed him. While he was tempted to do this, he also knew that he was outnumbered.

Turning to get a proper look at the stranger who evidently knew Spidena, and had some kind of investment in her life, Ben opened his mouth to let them know he really, truly, and completely had very little to do with the witch that was voluntary, when Paulav and Conquestorov descended the stairs.

“Good morning, Ben!” Paulav greeted cheerily. “I must say, I haven’t slept like that in a dog’s age! Conquestorov was just telling me that there is a most magical pond located at his master’s home and it sounds breathtaking. I’m wondering if we should— Is everything alright?” The merchant’s eyes settled on the hand holding Ben in place. Paulav straightened, and suddenly the muscled friends of the man in the suit were reaching for weapons or balling their hands into fists as they took stock of the size of Paulav.

Ben cleared his throat. “I don’t really know what’s happening…” Oddly if felt like the room suddenly had less air to breathe and like it was terribly hot all of a sudden. “This customer seems to have a problem with me going to wash by the pump. I promise I won’t be getting naked in the front yard if that’s what you’re worried about, sir.”

A snort sounded from Obbie, which made the violent visitors shoot him the dirtiest of looks.

It was during this brief moment of distraction when the room suddenly spun around Ben. He felt like he was falling backward, and something jerked him back free of the man’s hold…

Then… Somehow… He was standing back in the closet-room with the bunk beds, where Spidena stood with her back pressed against the door panting heavily, and sweat shining on her forehead. Her wild eyes met with his as his hands came out to steady himself.

Stepping unsteadily away from the door, Spidena swallowed, then said with a great deal of panic, “We need to leave, now!”