Chapter 009 - Four Days and a Chicken Egg

# Chapter 9: Four Days and a Chicken Egg Squeeb awoke to the sound of wind biting the windows and the slow shifting of bodies across the stones. His vision came back first in blurs: the gnome’s hammer propped beside his cot, the tail of a Tiefling draped ever obstinately over a bench. Somewhere in the battered common room, Karissa was pacing—her steps crisp, deliberate, eager. A faint scab still darkened her jaw. He blinked, memory flooding back in icy flashes, and his claw closed around the grip of the pistol tucked beneath his blanket. The room, small and crowded as ever, felt suddenly too tight, as if the walls remembered last night’s violence as keenly as its survivors. Squeeb sat up, raising the muzzle, and levelled the gun at Karissa with hands still trembling from anger and old aches—as much warning as threat, the move was reckless and shrill. For an instant, there was only the hitch in everyone’s breath. A hiss of restraint—one of the others, perhaps Fergal, perhaps Ellette—cut in before disaster finished what the beach had begun. Words lost in the rush, but the point was made: the gun fell from Squeeb’s hand, landing on the floor with a clatter. The tension, however, clung to the rafters. Karissa, glittering with spite, met his gaze and did not look away. She whittled at him with words, sharp and persistent, never content to let pain or caution cool her tongue. Something in Squeeb snapped. He rushed her with sudden, unthinking malice—a desperate animal, cornered once too often. The knife, never more than an arm’s reach from his haphazard pocket, found her neck, slashing quick, bright, and shallow. A thin arc of blood painted her collar. The room roared anew. Karissa grunted, her limbs already sagging, and Squeeb, staring at the streak of red on his blade, lifted his chin and barked over everyone’s outcries, “Poison—I used jellyfish. She’ll not be moving, not for a while.” His voice was small but proud, even as her legs buckled and she dropped to one knee, paralyzed from the venomous kiss. It was then that Squeeb, with hands sticky and wild, produced a glass vial from the depths of his battered satchel—a little vessel, trembling with a swirling purple glow, corked and radiating arcane mischief. “Fizzle gave me this,” he declared with equal parts triumph and warning. Karissa sagged against the bench, lips ashen, eyes wide but unblinking. Fergal—silent until this instant—shouldered past the others, gently drawing the knife from her throat. He pressed rags against the wound, murmurings of comfort and half-finished prayers drifting over her as he worked. But there was no time for true medicine: Squeeb pressed the glowing vial forward, insisting—almost pleading—that the contents were the cure. “We have to—she has to drink,” he repeated, his words hard and disjointed. Fergal and Squeeb wrangled with the limp tiefling. Someone tipped her head; someone else pried open her mouth, the purple juice sloshing against her tongue and dripping between clenched teeth. There was a shimmer—the air near her face seemed to ripple and fold. Then, slowly, impossibly, Karissa’s limbs contracted. Her skin, in a sickly, dazzling blink, shrank into itself, flattening and hardening until all that remained, wobbling at the heart of the pile of clothes, was a single chicken egg. Silence overtook them. The shell, faintly speckled, glowed with residual magic. Steve moved first. Dropping to one knee, she gathered up the egg in careful palms. “No one touches her,” Steve growled, clutching the prize against her chest. “I swear it—I’ll protect her with my life.” The others, stunned, could do nothing but nod. The staggering violence of the morning had now left them with an absurd but undeniable reality: Karissa, for now, endured as nothing more than a fragile, spell-bound egg. Ellette, further off, felt a vague disquiet—internal, independent from the commotion around her. In the sanctuary of her mind, two familiar presences seemed to stir, threads of otherworldly conversation weaving together out of reach: Visidira, insistent and bold, and Radigan, subtler, their words threading just beyond her grasp. She pressed her temples and said nothing. Guidance came from somewhere—perhaps from Fizzle’s cryptic smile, or an old curse’s memory, or the spell’s own inscrutable law: Karissa could not return before four days had passed, neither sooner nor by force of will. Dispel Magic, Healing, all such artifice would fall short. Against jellyfish venom and goblin-brewed transmutation, even the strongest hands could only wait. The first night was restless. Steve, unwavering in her promise, made a nest by her bedside: a careful arrangement of hay and blankets, and, in the centre, the egg. She perched nearby with hammer in hand, eyelids resisting sleep. But dawn came, and with it mischief. A clutch of children, innocent and wild, crowded into Steve’s chamber as the rooster’s echoes faded. Small hands prodded the egg, shrieking laughter at every wobble. In their joy they jostled the stand, sending the precious cargo teetering. Steve leapt across the room, her outstretched fingers snatching the egg from the air before it could meet the stone. Chiding, huffing, she banished the children and set the egg back on its pillow with doubled caution. The second day dawned colder, and with it, a sharper fear. Steve woke to emptiness—the pillow was bare, the egg gone. She tore out of her chambers, wild with worry, and nearly collided with Big Guy in the great kitchen, his arms laden with a basket overbrimming with eggs. Flour dusted his shirt; the bench sagged beneath a dozen hens’ morning work. “Where’s my egg?” Steve demanded. Big Guy, befuddled, gestured to the basket. “Eggs for baking?” he asked. She inspected the lot, plucking each in turn; among white and brown and blue-speckled shells nestled one faintly humming, suspiciously perfect egg. Steve swept them all into her apron, pinning Big Guy with her most withering stare. “No eggs. Not for two days. Not one, or you’ll answer to me.” Big Guy, sensing the storm behind her small figure, nodded and slunk away, doomed to dry scones for the foreseeable future. She kept guard as best she could, but food was always in demand. By midday, Jess appeared at the door, her stride purposeful, her eyes set on the bounty in Steve’s baskets. “You’ve stockpiled half the chickens in Alexandria,” Jess said, hands on hips. “The kitchen’s in uproar.” “They’re not for eating!” Steve retorted, holding the baskets tighter. “You can’t have them.” After a short, heated exchange, Jess backed off, but not for long. She returned that evening, leaning into the doorframe with a quirked brow. “You ever think to just ask a wizard to dispel the spell, instead of frightening the cooks half to death?” she mused. Steve scowled, offering no answer. The third morning brought further chaos. Exhaustion overtook the gnome, and she collapsed on the rug in the egg-guarded room. When she opened her eyes, however, she found herself tucked in a bed, blankets drawn up to her chin. Her pillow, vacant. Elsewhere in the room, a scatter of broken yellow and pale shells glistened in the half light, yolk weeping onto the stones. Dread spiked. Steve sat up, searching frantically. Big Guy’s mop of hair poked above the threshold. “I moved you,” he explained sheepishly, “so you’d be more comfortable. Tripped over your hammer—didn’t see the eggs on the floor. Sorry.” He looked to the cracked shells, shame etched deep. Steve rushed to search the remains, her breathing tight, but the magical egg was not among the destroyed, nor was its shell in the mess. Relief and adrenaline warred in her veins. Four nights ticked by—four anxious sunsets, four careful watches, four fevered dreams left unspoken. By midnight on the fourth, those still awake cowered from the storms’ howling outside, the house heavy with anticipation. Then, with a sound like shattering crockery, a crash split the silence; from the nest of Steve’s blankets and broken sleep, a Tiefling erupted, screaming, wild-eyed and gasping—the curse undone at last, Karissa herself restored, though her voice shook with pain and rage in equal measure. For an instant, everyone forgot poison and grievance and monstrous eggs. In the hush that followed, even Squeeb watched in awe, and the gnome, haggard but triumphant, clung to her battered hammer and the knowledge that, however strange the vigil, her vow had held.