I woke up to chanting.
Which, in a dungeon, is never the noise you want to start your day with.
It wasn't evil chanting. No blood. No sacrifice. Just five kobolds gathered in a semi-circle around the flame pit, mumbling what sounded like a bedtime story and passing a gourd of soup like it was divine nectar.
I stared.
They didn't stop.
One of them noticed me, paused, and whispered, "Sovereign's Breath protect you."
I turned around and went back into the tarp shelter.
Quicktongue found me five minutes later, face-down in a basket of half-folded relay sheets.
"You okay?"
"No."
"New disaster?"
"No."
"Old one?"
"Worse."
She leaned on the doorframe. "Ah. The ritual thing again?"
"They're singing about soup, Quick. Soup."
"It was a good soup."
"They said it was blessed."
She nodded solemnly. "It was very good soup."
Apparently, culture had decided to speedrun itself while I wasn't looking.
In the last two days, Ashring had accidentally invented:
