Editing Around the Dinner Table (section)

===Dinner===
Dinner was quiet except for the sounds of eating, the occasional grunt or approving sigh, and the tinkling sounds of utensils against porcelain. Tony's prediction of just soup and a salad proved correct as people pushed their plates away early and herbal tear and bone broth were served along with a selection of sweets.

Except for Brecca.

"What?" Asked Brecca when she noticed Wyncit watching her cut into a rolled chicken breast.

Wyncit smiled. "You seem to be hungry."

Brecca thrust her knife at Wyncit. "Ha! Unlike you, I just spent the last four months in the jungles of Palmheart tracking down that escaped demon lord!"

"Oh dear," Mae said. "All by yourself?"

Brecca speared a piece of chicken with her fork, and shoved it into her mouth. Chewing, she closed her eyes. The others looked at each other, then back to Brecca and waited.

"Well?" Asked Tony.

Brecca opened her eyes and stabbed at Tony with her knife. "Give me a second to chew." She reached out and took a small swallow of wine from her glass. "Spell created meals are so monotonous. Lots of it, but the same thing over and over again. The gods only know three meals: oatmeal porridge with bread and water, pea soup with bread and water, and beef stew with bread and water." 

She cut another small portion of chicken and ate it. Melted yellow cheese flowed out from where it had been stuffed in a hollow in the breast. The others sipped from their cups and waited for Brecca to finish chewing.

"Well?" Tony finally asked.

Brecca looked down at her half-finished chicken breast and sighed.

"Fine," she said, laying her knife and fork to the side. "So I'm in Silverstone visiting Ru Bae Ya. Girls' weekend out. Something about a hot springs spa and lots of shopping. When this halfling paladin of Obad-Hai named Flynn finds me and tells me King Garin ordered her and her adventuring company into Palmheart to find the demon lord, and she needs a guide. Tony refused to leave the restaurant, Mae was back home, Wyncit was at the university knee-deep in writing books with Twyncit, Leardon was missing, Ru Bae Ya was being Ru Bae Ya, and all she can find is me. So, no girls' weekend for me. We teleport back to Terastra, and I find Makai at the palace with the rest of the Halfling Brigade."

"Wait," Tony interrupted. With a smile he asks, "The Halfling Brigade?"

"Yes!" Brecca answered. "Flynn's adventuring company is called the Halfling Brigade. You got a problem?" 

Tony shook his head. "No. Just didn't know that. All halflings, I take it?"

"No! There's a gnome in the group, too."

A confused expression came over Tony. "Then why the Halfling Brigade?"

"Because!" Brecca answered. "Don't ask me, I'm not a halfling."

Tony shrugged his shoulders. Brecca looked down at her formerly hot dinner and sighed. "So we head to the ziggurat," Brecca continued, "where the demon lord came from and start to track it. Took us four months to finally find it. Three and a half months of that was getting lost." Brecca crossly looked at Wyncit and stabbed at him with a finger. "You are coming with me, next time. If I have to get lost in the jungle, so do you!"

"What did I do?" Wyncit asked in a confused voice as Mae chuckled.

"Don't ask, Wyncit," Mae replied. "Just accept it's your fault and apologize."

"I'm sorry?" Wyncit said in complete confusion.

"Not accepted!" Brecca announced.

"Well," asked Tony. "You find it."

"Yes!" Brecca continued. "We find it. At a place called Monkey Gorge. Why is it called Monkey Gorge, you ask?"

"Because it's full of monkeys," Tony answered quickly.

"Because it's full of monkeys! So turns out the demon lord wasn't a demon lord. It was just a regular demon. A barlgura. Big ape demon. He was gathering all the apes of Palmheart to make his own Kingdom of the Apes. Decided the monkeys would be good slaves for his apes. He had the monkeys and apes making a castle when we found him. Note: monkeys and apes make bad castles. Long story shorter, Makai and the gnome druid make a pact with the monkeys to attack the apes while we deal with the barlgura and if we win, they get to stay at the gorge and throw poop at anyone canoeing through it." 

With a smile, Mae said, "Fair deal."

"We thought so," Brecca responded. She turned to Wyncit. "You may want to put that on your map. Poop-throwing monkey gorge. So, the monkeys attack the apes. The apes chase the monkeys. No more apes near the demon. Then we walked in and Makai banished it. Easy peasy. The end."

Brecca went back to eating her cold dinner. "This is good, cold. What's next?"