Where the once gray walls had been, everything was black and covered in soot. When the knight stepped upon the soot, there was a cry, and he found him...elf in the midst of attack. The creatures were small and lizard like. They were kobolds and the swarming variety. The Knight was barely able to get his shield up before an onslaught of small stones, and spears bounced off of its shimmering surface. He drew his sword, a regular knight’s swords, and he began his counter attack. The air quickly. But the bonfire was all ready. It had to happen — their family bonfire was a tradition in the whole district. The Halloween bonfire. So she lit it. It was almost comical how seriously she took the task. Like it was some ancient ritual and had to be performed just right. Telling her it was just a bonfire didn’t help. It was special and she worked herself up into a bundle of nerves about it. I didn’t help matters. It was no big deal — throw a match at a bunch of dry wood and let it burn. But she. She moved the strap holding the gag inhis mouth and pulled out the wad of cloth. "Are you all right?"The first thing that Pat did was to take a deep breath. "Thank you," herasped. He blinked, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the light. "Ithink that I'm okay, but I have a headache like you wouldn't believe."He closed his eyes again as another pulse went through his head.Mary was already working on freeing his arms and legs. It took her a fewmoments to loosen the knots, the ropes were not. We went back to our base, but we did detour long enough to knock off four of the "gulls" to see how they tasted. We were going to have to do that eventually, so why not now?Everything in the galley was automatic, but it seemed appropriate to appoint Bixby as the cook. She gave me a dirty look, but did not argue, so I chose to ignore the look. She dropped the four gulls into the preprocessor and flipped the switch to start the process. The system was set to a normal time for eating, so the birds.