Snoz heard the sheep’s bleating. At first, he couldn’t believe his pointy, goblin ears. There were no shepherds in Newtown, no one keeping grazing animals of any kind. They certainly couldn’t graze livestock inside the Wall. Outside the Wall, the livestock would just be eaten by the dinos. Meat in Newtown was imported through the Worldgate. This was too good to be true! Chef Grakltooth would be so pleased. Snoz smiled at the thought of receiving one of Grakltooth’s rare words of praise. Usually, Snoz’s Chef Master called him “stupid” and “louse”, but not today. Not if there was fresh mutton to bring to the kitchen.

In his eagerness to please his master, Snoz dashed into the alley with an uncharacteristic lack of caution. There, indeed, was a sheep, just rising from falling over. The sheep seemed frustrated and confused, but it wouldn’t be confused in a warm serving of shepherd’s pie, Snoz thought.

“Here; sheepie, sheepie, sheepie.”

Snoz approached the sheep, dreaming of a contented master and the smell of shepherd’s pie. He halted, though, suspecting something was wrong with this particular sheep. The sheep bared its teeth at him, as if it were a predator rather than a simple herd animal. Then, to Snoz’s great surprise, the ovine charged.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!”

Snoz fled the alley with the viciously biting sheep in hot pursuit. “Help! Help! Help!”

*******

Newtown was circular with the Wall around the edge. The Worldgate was the town’s centerpiece. From the base of the Worldgate ran the eight Avenues named after their compass directions: North Avenue, Southwest Avenue, East Avenue, and the like. The Avenues were like the spokes of a wheel. The Avenues ran from the Worldgate all the way out to  Wall Street, which ran along the circular Wall. In contrast to the eight Avenues were the seven Streets, which ran concentric circles around the town, connecting the spokes. Wall Street would have been 7th Street if it hadn’t been called Wall Street. The other six Streets, starting with the one closest to the Worldgate in the center of town, was 1st Street. It had the smallest circumference, followed by the slightly larger circle of 2nd Street, then 3td Street, etc.

Natasha, Deldric, and Espino were searching southern Newtown while Gayle, Hiln, and Rave searched the north, looking for the sheep Espino had named Shawn. Natasha often enjoyed the company of the boys, as she thought of them, when the two of them were getting along. When they weren’t getting along, though, they were a real pain in the butt.

De;dric asked a passerby, a young human of apprentice age, “Have you seen a sheep in town today?”

“A sheep? No,” then the lad looked like he just remembered something and added, “Funny you should mention that. The Rat-On-A-Stick just added mutton to its menu.”

Deldric and Espino looked at each other. “Uh oh.”

Deldric chastised Espino. “You know you’re supposed to watch your sheep, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid! And you try watching a sheep while the town is under attack and there are brain-thingy parasites to catch.”

“You know what could happen don’t you?” Deldric seemed smug. The gnome seemed to savor his moment of having the upper hand in the ongoing rivalry between them.

“Every first year student knows what could happen,” Espino retorted back, a little sulkily.

If the sheep died, that would break the transformation enchantment. The dead corpse would revert to its true form. What would seem for a moment to be the dead body of a sheep, would grow enormously and assume the shape of the dead body of a T-rex. This would probably be disastrous for anyone nearby at that moment.

Natasha, though not a mage, was an experienced and educated enough adventurer to also know what would happen. She cut off any further time-wasting bickering.

“Let’s go guys! The Rat-On-A-Stick isn’t far.”

*******

“That’s the way to take one for the team, Snoz!”

Chef Grakltooth was indeed pleased with his chef’s apprentice. Though bleeding profusely from many wounds, the little runt had led the largest, fattest, and most succulent-looking sheep that the goblin chef had ever seen right into his kitchen. While the sheep was unusually aggressive for its species, Grakltooth’s keen eye was sure that there were no signs of actual rabies in the animal. At least he wouldn’t have to put Snoz down and start over training a new apprentice.

When the rampaging sheep, a veritable one-animal stampede, had first followed Snoz into the kitchen, Grakltooth’s years of training in kitchen combat had kicked in. One swift, solid blow to the head with a cast iron skillet, and the sheep was down for the count.

“Snoz, bleed on your own time! Help me get this animal up on the chopping table”

“Yes, Master.”

Chef Grakltooth couldn’t believe his good fortune. Here was a real ingredient! Here was something to show these Newtowners what the Rat-On-A-Stick franchise could really do!

A few short years ago, Grakltooth had started his first Rat-On-A-Stick vending stand on the outskirts of a human town, in a world far from Jasmia, a town that tolerated (barely) goblinkind as long as they didn’t cause any trouble. That town was a waystop for adventurers to heal up and resupply between forays into what they referred to locally as a “dungeon”. (Humans could be so racist. Grakltooth had met some of the creatures who lived in that so-called “dungeon” and thought they were respectable beings.)

His vending stand served its namesake delicacy, Rat-On-A-Stick, seasoned as only Grakltooth’s mother could, except for one ingredient. Grakltooth’s mother had told him that some of the soft races like elves and humans would say that the secret ingredient in their family food was love. This, she said she was sure, was a big part of the explanation as to why those races were so pampered and soft and prissy. Grakltooth’s mother had said the real secret ingredient to cooking was authority. “Liking it is mandatory,” she would say to each of the copious offspring she had birthed over the course of her life.

While Grakltooth was enough of a businessgoblin and entreprenueur to realize that customers didn’t want to be told that liking something was mandatory, he still believed in cooking with authority in his kitchen. He was the best! His stuff was the best! If he knew it and cooked with authority, surely his customers would taste it.

The original Rat-On-A-Stick vending stand modestly prospered until Grakltooth was able to branch out across the lands of his homeworld. Eventually, some adventurer clients who had experience with the multiverse talked to him about Jasmia and Newtown. Grakltooth had dreamed for years of opening a real restaurant in a real city. The problems were that, as a goblin, his dream didn’t seem to have a place anywhere. Goblinkind would never appreciate fine dining nor respect a proper business establishment. Humans, elves, dwarves, and the so-called “civilized” races would never accept a goblin as a serious entrepreneur. Newtown was different, though!

Jasmia was a frontier. It was wild and savage, but with pioneers determined to tame it. Strong, independent, hardy folk were needed to carve something out of this wilderness. These were the kind of folk who believed respect was earned by one’s actions, not by who one’s parents were. It didn’t matter so much what a being looked like on the outside, but rather what they were on the inside. Maybe someday, Jasmia would be settled enough and safe enough that generations of easy living would make the humans and others here weak, short-sighted, and focused on petty politics, but that would be long after Grakltooth was dead and gone, he was sure.

This mutton was just what Grakltooth needed. Sure, Newtown could import meat from across the mulitverse through the Worldgate, but there was never any mutton, it seemed. If he could figure out where this came from…

The goblin chef was pulled out of his thoughts by Snoz’s voice coming from the front room.

“Hey, you can’t just barge around in here like that!”

Suddenly an elf boy and a gnome were in his kitchen, their eyes wide looking at the unconscious sheep in shock and dismay.

“Don’t kill that sheep!” yelled the elf boy.