‘What is the meaning of this?!” demanded Grakltooth. “Do you know who I am? I am a GREAT chef doing very important culinary work!”

     He looked down at the sheep.

     “And this fine imported sheep arrived through the Worldgate today from…um…uh…where did it come from, Snoz?”

     “From an alley begind Third Street, Master, I found….”

     “You found a shortcut down an alley.” Grakltooth cut off his too truthful apprentice. “How efficient of you to find the fastest way to get this precious meat here. I meant what world did we import him from? Before you picked him up at the Worldgate.”

     Snoz, not the most quick-witted goblin, nevertheless seemed to finally catch on. “Oes, Master. The world the sheep came from is Oes.”

     The sheep in question stirred and moaned slightly, but did not seem to fully awaken.

     “Funny,” said the gnome, “today's shipment from Oes had to be cancelled because the Worldgate was shut down during the dino attack today.”

     “And one of the dinos is right there!” The elf boy excitedly indicated the semi-conscious ovine.

     “Nonsense!” spluttered Grakltooth. “Ridiculous!”

     “I'm a mage,” insisted the elf boy. “I turned one of the T-rexes into this sheep.”

     As if on cue, the sheep moaned again.

 Grakltooth looked the boy over. “A mage's apprentice perhaps.”

     “Could an apprentice do this?”

     With a quick gesture and the utterance of a few eldritch words, the boy pointed right at Snoz, who suddenly screamed and was transmogrified onto a sheep before Grakltooth’s very eyes. Now, there were two sheep in his kitchen.

     “I believe you. Let's talk.” Grakltooth assumed a smooth, businesslike manner.

     Baaaaaaaah!

     “Quiet, Snoz, or I won't ask him to turn you back.”

*******

     Natasha had followed Deldric and Don Espino into the Rat-On-A-Stick. When the boys had seen a freshly written chalkboard sign out front that read: “NEW! Mutton dishes!”, they had sprinted ahead. Only a couple of booths over to the side were occupied. Otherwise the dining room was empty. The boys dashed straight into the kitchen, leaving their warrior chaperone behind.

     Suddenly, Natasha heard a voice from her past, a voice she had hoped to never hear again.

     “You have a nice community here, comrade, but I think you and your business, your family, too, would do even better in our world, in the Union of the Social Sorcerer’s Republik.”

The speaker was facing away from Natasha, addressing a late 20’s looking human man across the booth. Both sipped on hot, steamy cups of something that Natasha thought must be very popular to be desirable to drink even in the jungle heat.

The younger man, whose face Natasha could see, looked back at the speaker dubiously. “We just got here and just earned our official Newtown citizenship. And there are all kinds of adventurers here who are interested in buying from my store.”

The first speaker continued, undaunted. He set down his cup on the table for emphasis and moved his head to lock eyes with the younger man, his voice growing smooth and kind, even fatherly. “I have been in your store, comrade. It is very nice, yes. Too nice for this place. Yes, there are adventurers here, that is true, but this a small town, and small towns like this one often don’t make it here in Jasmia. I have heard of this Lunchmeat place, for example.”

Nathasha knew everyone had heard of Lunchmeat. Lunchmeat was the ruins of a town not unlike Newtown, but without such a sturdy wall of joint gnomish-dwarvish design. A few journals found in the rubble there by the original explorers who had scouted out the location for Newtown had discovered the town’s history, but not its proper name, so the Newtowners had christened it Lunchmeat, as in lunch meat for the dinos. Those poor people never had a chance. With an inferior wall and with no Worldgate such as Newtown had, Lunchmeat had been dependent on arrangements for regular visits from individuals who had their own plane-traveling magic. According to the journals, one scheduled visit was missed, then another, then another. Without supplies, ammunition, medicine, food, and other necessities, Lunchmeat had finally succumbed to dino attacks.

Newtown and its neighboring settlement, the ostentatiously named Paradise City, had patented gnomish-dwarvish walls, and of course Newtown had the Worldgate.

As the no doubt desired worried expression crossed the young merchant’s face, the older, Social Sorcerer continued.

“There are vast wildernesses on the borders of the Union of the Soical Sorcerer’s Republik also, my young friend, with wealthy adventurers who would appreciate your goods and services exploring it. The difference is, our capital city Peterswulf is no mere settlement. It is a safe, fortified city of civilized culture and education. Your children would attend wonderful schools! We have free public education for all children in the Social Sorcerer’s Republik. And your wife would appreciate a less…shall we say austere life?”

Natasha knew from the instant she realized that the Social Sorcerer was really there, that he was not some horrible flashback or nightmare, that she should get out of there before she was recognized. She found herself paralyzed though, with fear, with trauma, with memories, memories of this man and what he had done to her, and to her family.

Finally, she got herself together and forced herself to turn around and leave at a normal walking speed that would not make the Social Sorcerer turn around and look at her. The boys would have to handle the kitchen and the sheep without her

*******

“What are we doing out here again?” asked Gayle Garnetstar as she unbuckled her axe. “Is it always so hot in this world? I’m sweating into my beard. Eeeeew!”

Next to her Ravenwood offered her a handkerchief from his healer’s beltpack, which the dwarven warrior accepted gratefully.

“Apparently this goblin who owns the Rat-On-A-Stick is going to kill the sheep out here in this clearing. The body will transform into its true form, the body of a T-rex, out here where its sudden growth to tremendous size won’t destroy anything. The boys will harvest the brain parasite, and the goblin restauranteur will keep the T-rex corpse.

“For meat in his restaurant? How’s he going to preserve it? How’s he going to keep it from attracting scavengers out here?”

The healer shook his head. “I have no idea. But that’s often the case. Aren’t you used to our party and its by-the-eat-of-the-pants style of doing things yet?”

Gayle sighed and hefted her beautifully crafted dwarvish weapon. “You know, other adventuring parties have old people as their wizardly resource figures, or at least adults. Why do we get stuck with kids?”

“Deldric’s an adult for a gnome,” Rave pointed out.

“I have corns on my feet older than that gnome.”

Rave chuckled.

The human healer and the dwarven warrior continued keeping watch on the perimeter of the clearing in silence.

*******

Deldric was a little jealous of Don Espino’s lab-in-a-bottle. This had been earned during the elf lad’s graduation trials from the Great Magic Academy. With a single command word, Don Espino could transport himself, in a shrunken size, into the bottle where a fully furnished and supplied mage lab existed in miniature. It wasn’t just an alchemy lab, but completely set up for other types of magical experimentation such as necromancy, though Don Espino did not favor that particular dark art.

The young elf produced the bottled lab now, in its opaque form. Don Espino could change the color of the bottle on a whim, and even make it transparent, so he could see out of it while working and others could see in. It was in this lab, that they planned to contain and study the brain parasite, once they caught it.

Deldric, Espino, Natasha, and Bob all got themselves ready with weapons and tools to chase and capture the tentacled thing if it tried to escape once it appeared on the dead T-rex. As an attached parasite, it should, in theory, have transformed with its host under the effects of Don Espino’s sheep spell. It should appear again once the spell was over, with the sheep’s death. Of course, the sheep didn’t have to die. As the mage who cast the spell, Espino could simply end the enchantment any time he wanted. Having the T-rex returned alive, however, wasn’t something they wanted to deal with.

Chef Grakltooth had placed a cookbook, and not a goblin one, on a large stone. He was perusing butchery diagrams for less exotic animals than dinosaurs, trying to figure out how to apply them to a T-rex’s anatomy. From the goblin’s demeanor, it seemed he didn’t think it a very useful resource.

Grakltooth’s assistant Snoz, who had been returned to goblin form, was in town to hire porters to come get and to bring back to town as much harvested dino meat as possible before sundown, when it was estimated that the clearing, with its bounty of fresh meat, would become impossible to defend from the local wildlife.

Hiln had been selected to do the actual sheep slaughtering. Deldric had stopped the sheep in time with his chronomancy. This, he said, was better than paralysis in two ways. Firstly, it was the most human thing anyone could think of, since the sheep/dinosaur would have no comprehension of its own death. Secondly, since the sheep was stopped in time, the sheep was fully propped up in a good position for Hiln to take its head with his greatsword in one smooth stroke. The idea was that Hiln would cut off the head and run, so as to avoid being crushed by the expanding mass of  T-rex corpse that would appear. Everyone else would try to get to the head as quickly as possible to retrieve the brain parasite.

Hiln counted, “One…two…three.”

The oblivious ovine’s head left its body and landed in the grass. Hiln turned around and pumped his arms and legs as fast as ever he could barely staying ahead of the expanding dead dinosaur.

A sheep’s head would have been hard to find in the grass, but a T-rex’s head, not so much. With Gayle and Rave still watching the perimeter, and Hiln many yards away panting, his hands on his knees, the parasite recovery crew ran in. They didn’t want that thing to get away as the first one had. Despite the guard’s reassurances outside the Town Hall, the Newtown City Council had no intention of returning that first specimen to the boys for analysis.

Bob the Brownie got there first. The familiar looked at his master. “It’s already dead, boss.”

“At least it won’t get away then.”

The gnome and elf quickly divvied up some specimen collection tools that Espino had fetched from his lab-in-a-bottle and got to work. Soon, after they vanished into the bottle and returned, they described the specimen as “on ice”. The rest of the group, unfamiliar with magical terminology, assumed that was a good thing.

*******

“Now remember, don’t read this book after dark. It’s not safe.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kazzandra hoped her customer would take her advice. The last customer who had not taken her advice was currently imprisoned in one of the Hells.

The bell above her door rang. She smiled at her departing customer and looked at the potential new ones coming in, an elf child, a gnome, a brownie, and a human. Strange mix. The human wore a sign Kazzandra hadn’t seen in a long time. His cloak was clasped with an adornment that signified the wearer as belonging to the Order of the Mystic Healers. Kazzie hadn’t seen one of their organization in centuries, and they were rare even then. Curious.

“Welcome to the Bibliophile’s Pile,” she crooned at them sweetly. She put all her customer service spirit into her voice to make up for what lacked in her face. She didn’t try to smile at them. She hadn’t tried to smile to anyone not of her own kind since she was a teenager. Most races of the multiverse thought the smile of a mentyl was a rictus face, too much teeth and gum, and very thin lips. There wasn’t much flesh on the faces of mentyls. If it wasn’t for their luxurious long hair, their heads would look even more skull-like. “How can I help you today?”

“We’re researching brain parasites,” the elf boy chimed cheerfully.

“That’s a strange thing for a…” Kazzie was about to say “little boy to be reading about”, but then she noticed the boy’s robes, his body language, his confidence, and how the clearly adult gnome, brownie,  and human seemed to expect this young one to lead. Kazzie knew how long elven childhoods could last. “...for an entire book to be written about,” she smoothly transitioned. “Perhaps there’s a section or chapter in a larger book on brain diseases.”

The young elf looked thoughtful. “That’s a good idea. Do you have any of those?”

“What exactly are you looking for?”

Here the elf and gnome, with occasional input from the brownie, gave an enthusiastic description of something they had found attached to the T-rexes that had attacked Newtown that morning. The mentyl’s blood ran cold.

“Where is this thing now?”

“In here!” The elf boy whipped out a large, orange ceramic bottle with a cork stopped on top.

Kazzandra recoiled. She couldn’t help it.

Her group of would-be customers all looked alarmed at her reaction.

“What’s wrong?” asked the elf boy.

“You said it’s dead now?”

“Yes, it’s dead.”

“May I see it?”

“You’ll have to come inside the bottle.”

*******

Bob thought the lab-in-a-bottle was just the greatest thing. He knew how much his boss Deldric wanted one. He secretly had a goal to get one somehow and give it to the boss as a present. It was all part of his plan to become a Legendary Brownie Familiar.

The mentyl woman turned down Espino’s offer of a tour of the lab and just wanted to see the parasite specimen. When Espino fetched it from his fridge, an upright standing box that kept things cold because an ice elemental was bound inside, her face looked even more deathly pale than it did before.

“You don’t need one of my books to identify that,” she said. “I can tell you what it is.”