“Before you go, I need help with something,” Grom said, gesturing towards the taverns back entrance.

  “Sure,” Syril said.

  “You too Ellen,” Grom added.

  Bill was too inebriated to realize he was being excluded, and Linar didn’t care.

  Out back, Grom lead the two to the stable where all the horses stood in the furthest corners of their stalls.

  Inside, he went to the pile of hay on the ground, and said, “Get yer moldering asses out.”

  The pile rustled, and two familiar thugs crawled out. The wounds that had been fresh the last time the group had seen them had clotted, creating large scabs that their hair clung to.

  “How’d you get these here?” Syril asked.

  “Cloaks,” Grom said.

  “But why?” Syril said, sniffing the air disapprovingly.

  “They’re useful,” Grom said.

  “Their a lot of things,” Syril said, eyeing the straw. “What do you need me for?”

  “You know how to measure for clothes fitting right?” Grom asked.

  “I may be familiar with the skill,” Syril evaded. “Why?”

  “I want to get armor for these two,” Grom said. “Two meat shields would be nice to have.”

  “ Meat shield is right,” Syril said, pulling a handkerchief out and holding it to his nose.

  “Come on, they don’t even smell yet!” Grom insisted.

  “Yet,” Ellen said.

  “Good point,” Grom said.

  “What?” Syril said, “You ignore my concern, but listen when she says it?”

  “Yer always complaining about smells and messes. I have to block it out to keep my sanity,” Grom said.

  “Why don’t we remove all the... meat,” Ellen suggested.

  “How do you propose we do that?” Grom asked.

  “I might know a carrion beast or two,” she said.

  She cast a quick spell and a four eyed rat appeared on the ground beside her, exiting a rift.

  A wingless vulture appeared midair next to her, falling to the ground at an unnaturally slow speed, followed by another two headed raven.

  The raven flew up at immediately started for the zombies eyes.

  “Newt has grown a fondness for eyes,” Ellen said with the fondness of a proud parent.

  “Wait!” Syril demanded. “I can’t measure a skeleton.”

  All the creatures halted their feast, and Syril looked as if he already regretted his words.

  “Here,” Ellen said, pulling a measuring tape out of her back of holding.

  Reluctantly, seeing the value in the task Syril got to work.

  “Write these down,” he said to Ellen.

  “So,” Grom said, in-between Syril’s announced measurements. “Why doesn’t Newt ever turn into a newt?”

  “Why would he turn into a newt?” Ellen asked, jotting down another number.

  “Well, he was a newt, wasn’t he?”

  Ellen burst out into laughter.

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  “No, what ever gave you that idea?”

  “Umm, well, his name,” Grom said.

  “Newt is short for Newton,” Ellen said.

  “Why did you name him Newton?” Grom asked.

  “I didn’t name him—Oh!” Ellen began, having a realization midsentence. “I didn’t tell you! Newt is my grandfather.”

  These words brought both Grom and Syril to a dead halt.

  “What?!” Grom and Syril both shouted at once.

  “Yeah…” Ellen said, playing with her hair. “I didn’t say?”

  “No, you most certainly did not,” Syril said. “Why…how..what?”

  “Yeah… so, the bastard didn’t learn his lesson from the first deal he made with the fey, nor the one after that, or even the one after that,” she explained. “In the end, he was turned into a raven.”

  “So you made him your familiar!?” Syril asked.

  “Yeah,” Ellen said with a shrug.

  “Why?” Grom asked. “I thought you hated him.”

  “I do,” Ellen said. “So does Elsey. Its one of the few things we agree on.”

  “So why did you bind him as your familiar?” Grom asked.

  “Let me ask you this,” Ellen said. “Think about all the stupid bird has been through in the past few months.”

  She paused to let the pair reflect.

  “The bastard deserves far worse,” Ellen said.

  “You let him become the host of an outsider abomination!” Grom shouted.

  “Aberration,” Ellen corrected, “And he sold me and my cousin to the fey. What’s your point?”

  “What do your weird step-father-uncle fathers think of it?” Syril asked, now more intrigued than aghast.

  “They were… surprisingly cool with it,” Ellen said. “The way they saw it was that ravens don’t live that long, so I’m extending his life. And if he didn’t want to do it, he could have denied the connection. Elsey thinks he’s doing to as a penance, but… I don’t give him that much credit.”

  Syril quickly finished the measurements after that, and looked away as the three carrion beasts got to work rending and tearing the zombies free of all their flesh. Halfway through the process, the zombies collapsed, the magic that animated them failing.

  “Uh oh,” Syril said.

  “It’s fine,” Grom said. “I have a feeling my mysterious patron won’t mind raising them again with what we have in mind.”

  And he was right.

  After the disgusting work was through, Grom prayed for aid once more, and the piles of bones rose, reassembling themselves into shape. The sight was impressive, but not nearly as such as the fact that three small creatures completely stripped two adult humans of all their flesh, and they still seemed hungry.

  “How much of your grandfather do you reckon is still in there?” Grom asked.

  “Loads” Ellen said. “He was quite the gluten and enjoyed the strangest foods”

  ***

  The next morning, Syril woke to an expected surprise. While many would say an expected surprise was contradictory, in his opinion those people lacked imagination and the ability to accurately self reflect.

  While he knew what would happen the next morning when he donned the cursed belt, he wasn’t so full of himself—despite what Grom would say—as to claim to know what all that would entail.

  As was his usual to do, he woke groggily and made his way over to the chamber pot to relieve himself. It took a moment for his mind to catch up with the changes, and he did admit—if only to himself—that he did scream briefly. Once he recovered his wits, recalling his actions of the prior night, he thought through the new… logistics of the situation and finished his business.

  Next, he went to his wardrobe, also out of habit before realizing that too wouldn’t work. Finally, he broke fully out of his morning routine—skipping at least three steps—as he went over to the mirror.

  Now, no one had ever called Syril humble—except for Grom with heavy sarcasm—and so it was this already exceedingly high opinion of himself that made his next words all the more significant.

  “That is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.” He—or rather she—said.

  Her hand went to her mouth in the mirror at noticing the change in her voice.

  “I didn’t think it was possible for me to be any more fabulous,” she said, noting the disheveled look of unkempt blonde bedhead, “But wonders never cease.”

  As a connoisseur of all things beautiful, Syril spent some time taking in her new form in the mirror.

  “This is going to work far better than I thought,” she said. “But we need a name.”

  She went through some elven names in her head, playing with them all, but decided to keep it simple.

  Syril was not his real name, but one he had adopted when he’d forced to go on the run. He’d not even picked the name himself, but had bought the identity from a broker. Despite Syril having no real significance, her mind went to similar words as she went through options of the new identity she would form.

  Sylia?

  The Elven word for thistle. She thought that name would be perfect, a beautiful flower with hidden thorns.

  “Sylia,” she said aloud. “Sylia Silverglow.”

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