Fern dumped the rubbish from last nights revelry into the river behind the Grinding Wheel Tavern. She’d been part of the morning cleaning crew for the past 15 years, and every morning was the same. Leftover food, broken bottles, buckets of vomit, and the occasional article of clothing too destroyed in a bar fight to be worth mending. Today was no different, and so Fern went through the motions without particular notice of what she was throwing out. Her thoughts were all on Taen, the new chef.

Six months prior, the old chef in the tavern’s kitchen had died during the dinner rush. Old Gumper fell face first into the fucking rabbit stew, they said. Of course, the rabbit stew was still served to the tavern full of hungry patrons. A dead man’s face wasn’t about to cost the owners a whole pot of perfectly serviceable food. But, as fate would have it, the stew wasn’t yet done, and neither were the side dishes ol’ Gumper had been cooking.

A young dwarf who had been working the morning cleaning crew with Fern for a few years, a sexy bastard named Taen, just so happened to be on hand that night. He jumped right in and started finishing the ol’ Gumper’s dishes. And the owners were delighted. Suddenly, the food coming out of the kitchens at the Grinding Wheel were no longer just serviceable; they were delicious. No one knew what young Taen’s background was other than the fact he was from Kelgrond Central, a place where only the wealthiest of dwarves or the poorest of beggars tended to live.

The methods of cooking and the array of spices that young Taen used led most to believe that he was the former cook for a wealthy family. Some said that he was some heir to a vast fortune just out to see how the other side lived before he assumed his place at the head of his family’s estate. But Fern didn’t care one way or the other. She’d been infatuated with Taen since his arrival several years ago. Although, after she had tasted his cooking that infatuation turned into a full blown obsession. No one had ever made Fern lose herself in a simple mutton pie before. Fern was, after all, a hard working and respectable dwarven lady. Taen, however, could melt her entire soul with one well-seasoned dish. It was unlike anything she had ever experienced.

"Better than sex, even," she thought to herself with a wicked grin.

The last lot of rubbish from the night before lay before Fern while she paused for a moment, thinking of Taen’s excellent food. Her stomach was rumbling happily when some movement in her peripheral vision caught Fern’s attention. Glancing over to find the source, she saw the night security crew leaving a side door and hauling several large packages, each wrapped in dark linens. Watching intently, Fern thought the bundles looked a bit suspicious. Whatever was inside, though, was none of her concern.

"Mind yer own business, Ferny," she reminded herself. The last time she poked her nose where it didn’t belong, she was almost fired. Reaching down to grab the bin nearest to her, Fern noticed some broken clay pieces that looked like they used to make small globes.

"Spellbombs?" Fern asked aloud, plucking some of the pieces out of the rubbish. And sure enough, upon further inspection, she saw the mark of a local wizard, Ningh. Dwarven wizards always left their mark out of foolish pride, and Ningh was a male, so that meant double the amount of asinine hubris. "Not yer concern, Ferny," she whispered to the wind. And that is when she noticed the blood.

Now, strictly speaking, blood was not an unusual sight in the rubbish bins at the Grinding Wheel. Fights often broke out late into the night, when the ale had taken control of the patrons. Once or twice a month there was a stabbing, which sometimes even ended in death. The Royal Army would be contacted, and a constable would be sent from Kelgrond to do an investigation. It was always the same; no witnesses, no arrest. It was all just a formality, really. The Queen didn’t give one ounce of orc shite about the good folk outside of her capital city.

But the bowl from which this blood leaked seemed more than slightly ominous, even with such an understanding of the Grinding Wheels history of bar fights. Because this bowl had something quite unusual about it. It had... hair. And when Fern dropped the bin back to the ground upon realizing this, the bowl shifted and rolled within. As it came to rest, two eyes and half of a nose stared back at the lady dwarf.

Her initial response was to empty her stomach violently into the same bin that held the head, or, well, part of a head. The sight of her vomit filling the empty skull while the eyes of a dead dwarf watched, made her even sicker. Once her breakfast was gone, and then her dinner, and then all the bile currently residing in her body, Fern screamed a shriek of pure horror.

The security detail from the night crew saw her and dropped their heavy burden to rush over and make sure Fern was okay. Upon arriving, the sturdy fighting dwarves immediately saw the cause of her distress. Burton, the head of night security, reached down with a gloved hand and pulled the macabre item from the rubbish bin. Fern’s vomit dripped from the grotesque remnant, causing her to heave once again, uncontrollably. While she kneeled prone in the grass, Burton tossed the dead man’s head into the river where it fell beneath the current and pulled downstream.

"Be glad ye didn’t see the rest of ’em, Fern, me dear," Burton said in a hushed tone. "Somethin’ bad went down last night, and Ceean is missing. But don’t ye say a word, lass. The owners are keepin’ it quiet. Somethin’ like this could shut the tavern for a week or more with a Royal investigation. We could all be jobless, ye see?"

"She’s... missing?" Fern said between laboured breaths. Finding it difficult to form coherent thoughts at the moment.

"Aye, she wasn’t among the dead, but... well, me own bet is that the fine lady is just as dead by now. The sight of the humans and dwarves in her room, and the storage room directly below her broken floor, leads a dwarf of my intelligence to gather she was taken by some kind of monster. And monsters eat beautiful females, don’t they, lass?"

"I reckon," Fern said, her mind still reeling.

Burton stood, pointed to the bodies wrapped in the dark linens and barked, "Ok, boys, back ta the dirty work. Get ye back to them corpses and toss them in the river. Quickly, now, but be respectful."

His team quickly jumped to his commands and took care of the problem, once and for all. The dead dwarves and humans flowed quickly downstream, along with any evidence that they had been murdered in the Grinding Wheel. One of the security team, a worn and haggard dwarf with a face full of scars said, "Go be with the ancestors, and the Gods that keep them."

"Fern, dearie, don’t say a word about this, okay? For all our sakes," Burton said with a gentle pat on her shoulder. Then he marched off and joined his men to return inside and dump their gear. It was now quitting time, and those dwarves now would seek comfort in a few bottles before heading to their own rooms in the cellar for a long rest.

Alone once more, Fern finished throwing the rubbish into the river and tried not to think about what floated alongside the broken bottles and leftover bits of mutton pie. Thinking of that pie reminded her of Taen, and a grin crept back onto her sorrowful face.

Fern looked down at her hand, where she still held a broken piece of pottery with the mark of Ningh the wizard stamped into it.

"Hallo," a voice called from the back door of the tavern.

Spinning on her heels, Fern’s eyes met those of Taen, and she beamed.

"What are ye still doing here, Mr. Fancy Cook? Yer not on the morning cleaning crew anymore. Ye should be resting by now," she jokingly admonished him.

"It was a... long night. Crazy, in fact," he answered with a far off look in his eye.

"So I heard tell," she quietly replied. "Why do ye think someone would take her, Taen?"

"Dunno, but it’s no’ our concern, is it?" he said, a hint of regret in his voice.

"Aye, yer right. No’ our concern," she replied, and looked down at the broken piece of spellbomb clutched in her hand.

"What’s that, then?" Taen asked, peering over to get a look at what Fern held.

"Oh, ’tis nothing. Just a pretty rock I found by the river. Gonna take it to me father, I think. He collects nice rocks, ye see."

"Ah, right good of ye to visit yer da’ still. Mine is back in the city and, well, let’s just say I’m not welcome in his home these days. But I miss him. And me ma’, ta be honest," he admitted, kicking at a loose patch of grass.

"Weel, I’ve got more ta do inside, Taen. Thanks for chatting with a lowly cleaner," she said with a wink.

"Hell, Fern. You know I don’t think that. Not at all. Hey, what say I cook ye some dinner later. At the end of yer shift, and before mine’s ta begin. Sound nice to ye, then?"

Fern looked back at the broken piece of pottery, and then hastily shoved it into the pocket on her apron. "Yes, that would be quite nice, actually," she replied, sounding a little unsure.

"Great!" the young dwarf exclaimed. "I’ll make ye that mutton pie yer so fond of. Better than sex, I think ye once told Ceean?"

"Ye weren’t supposed to be privy to that, ye know. Anyway, we can have that meal once I return from, umm, me father’s house, that is," she said, keeping up the lie. "It’s quite close, and shouldn’t take long. And I know I’ll be hungry for yer cooking then, Taen."

It wasn’t a complete lie. She did mean to go somewhere after her shift, but just not to her father’s house. Ningh the wizard might just have some answers to the questions rolling around in Fern’s mind; answers that she desperately needed to make sense of the horror she had witnessed that morning. And with the hope of having those answers, the promise of Taen’s cooking and, from the way he was looking at her, maybe even more than just a meal...

Fern looked back at the handsome and devilishly talented cook and murmured, "Very hungry, indeed."

Next Chapter: Awry