The Keep Hall

Once inside, Prince Guttercup and his entourage are led to the Keep Hall, where The Citadel’s personnel take their meals. Just now the crowd is light, with a handful of soldiers at one table, a gathering of pages at another, and some assorted politicians tossed in for zest.

The group is directed to a table and told that their pies would be ready momentarily. A second set of guards come to relieve the first, who return to the gate. After a short wait, a member of the wait staff returns with two half-pies, one apple, and one cherry. This is what was on hand, and as he goes on to explain, more are in the oven.

Lumpy’s fingers weren’t nearly as nimble as Quelci’s or Ershadt’s. He didn’t possess Ershadt’s imagination and quick thinking for improvising creative theft techniques, and likewise lacked Quelci’s ambitious and well executed plans for lining her pockets. Sure, when the score was over and done with both Quelci and Ershadt would give some paltry amount of their loot to be split between the three gnomes, but they nearly always kept the biggest portion of their “findings” for themselves. In the end, the pockets that held the money kept the money, and this meant Lumpy regularly found himself on the shit end of the stick as far as whacking up the loot went. Lumpy was much more likely to employ brute force in his thievery. Much less likely to pick pockets to buy sweetrolls and much more likely to tackle the sweetroll stand itself to the ground, scoop up the rolls off the street, and run away pushing and shoving as fast as his gnome legs would carry him. As Lumpy entered the citadel, any ideas about smashing and grabbing left. It would never work here.

It was this notion that caused Lumpy some concern as he thought back to only a few moments before when Ershadt broke out the chocolates at the gates, and offered them to the guards. Ershadt never gave anyone anything. Least of all money, but chocolates so fine (if a little smushed) were a very close second, and certainly not to the bigfolk. Ershadt only ‘gave’ things away when he fully intended to have something much better for it later on, and chocolates immediately told Lumpy that Ershadt expected the score was going to be pretty damn sizable. The only problem, Lumpy thought to himself, was that Ershadt’s plans didn’t always work, and he was likely as not to get the three of them kicked out with his scheme and without the meat pie Lumpy so valued.

When he was sure none of the bigfolk were watching, Lumpy grabbed the curtain Ershadt had draped around himself, and pulled his fellow gnome in close. “If you screw Lumpy out of mmm-muh-meat pie and gravy,” he stammered, his voice quiet enough that only he and maybe Quelci could hear “Lumpy hit you until y-you - Look. Different.” Lumpy released Ershadt’s curtain and pretended to be helping him straighten it. Lumpy would likely not leave the citadel with much in the way of valuables, but he made it clear that Ershadt dicking the meat pies would not end well for him.

When the fruit pies came, Lumpy received a slap on the back of his head. He looked at Quelci, confused and then annoyed as she commandeered an entire half pie for herself. If she believed for a moment that Lumpy wouldn’t eat a pie she’d simply put her hand on, she was sadly mistaken. Lumpy had eaten things Quelci wouldn’t put near her feet, much less in her mouth, and if they were back in the forest with these pies she’d do very well to not end up with her hand licked clean of sugary fruit filling when the pies were gone. Lumpy didn’t use cutlery. In fact Lumpy hardly ever ate at a table. But he was royalty now, and royalty use cutlery.

“Meat pies!” Lumpy said loudly to the member of the waitstaff that brought the fruit pies. “And g-g-guh-gravy. Big jug of gravy. Meat pies, and lots gravy!” Lumpy spoke loudly, and made a point of saying the order twice, just in case these bigfolk were hard of hearing. He was taking exactly no chances that there wouldn’t be both meat pie, and extra gravy. Lumpy had yet to lay claim to his portion of the fruit pie, but as nice as sweets were, meat pie was far more important.

After only a few minutes, Lumpy didn't give one lukewarm mouse fuck about the fruit pies his other two gnome compatriots were eating. He stayed completely quiet, and only occasionally looked around. Otherwise his eyes were locked on the door that the person who was meant to bring him his meat pie left through, a door that presumably lead to the kitchen. This was the calm before the storm.

Lumpy looked around. Everyone he could see was eating, drinking, some were laughing and having nice conversation. The tiny giant looked at the empty place-setting in front of him. Everyone had what they wanted but him. Lumpy was being left out. He was being intentionally excluded because he was a gnome, and to the big folk that meant he was small, stupid, and completely forgettable. Even the ridiculous get-up he was wearing did nothing, the bath had meant nothing, greasing his hair had meant nothing, he was still just a gnome, and that meant he could be overlooked. These and many more angering thoughts swirled in Lumpy's head as he waited in complete silence. The big folk knew he wanted meat pie. He'd practically screamed it at them. No one was that hard of hearing. They were doing this on purpose. Lumpy was seething.

Lumpy raised his fist and pounded on the solid wooden table in front of him three times, each blow hard enough to make the plates on the tabletop jump. "MEAT PIE!" he thundered. "MEAT PIE AND GRAVY!" the words roared up from the gnome's chest with bass. The angry gnome refused to be overlooked like this. The big folk would not ignore him.

Qelci was so full of pie she could barely move, and the child's princess dress that she had liberated was fairly straining at the seams, and still the meat course hadn't arrived. Lumpy had a good a point. Whre was the meat? Qelci, despite being overstuffed, looked around shiftily from side to side, then clambered up onto the table, standing to her full height (which was not very big) and smoothing down her dress. She adjusted the bosom of her bodice and flicked back her hair, then took a deep breath.

Yelling at the top of her voice, which was surprisingly loud for such small gnome, Qelci addressed the serving staff of the citadel and anyone else who was listening. “My son, the Noble Prince Guttercup The Forty Fifth of Shaftwood Grove requires the pie of meat, and shall not be ignored by you filthy big people peasants! We demand at once to receive the pies of finest meat and thereafter to immediately be taken to an audience with your empress of the furry ears as my son is the chief candidate for her suitor and bridegroom! Do not treat us gnomes with disrespect or I will royally shank you in the kneecaps! AT ONCE! WE ARE ROYALTY YOU KNOW.”

Qelci then stood down from the table, hoping she had made her point, and then emitted a loud burp as she patted Lumpy on the back. It didn't escape her notice to see Ershadt sidle stealthily from the room. Where was that little sneak off to? She wondered, making a note to follow him out if things got overly violent in here.

Inspector Zurt was no guard of the Citadel, his job was to oversee the daily operation of the Black Tower. However, keeping everything orderly and neat was a skill set he excelled at, and he found the state of the Keep Hall anything but that as he slithered into it. Something was causing a great racket, and Zurt had no intention of allowing it to continue. He had come here to deliver his monthly report to the Empress on the Black Towers current status, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t first going to put a stop to whatever debauchery was currently occurring.

The two gnomes, Qelci and Lumpy, were quite easy to spot, given all the yelling and screaming they were doing. Perhaps they’d hear the sound of his metal tentacles grinding against the stone floor as Zurt made a beeline towards them, or perhaps they wouldn’t given the unholy ruckus they were causing. The Inspectors two beady red eyes glared at the two gnomes, although his primary focus was on Lumpy, whom from the looks of it had broken off one of the legs of the table and pushed it over. Absolute filth. If there hadn’t been other onlookers in the hall, Zurt would have considered turning the gnomes into mincemeat and having the cooks use that to replace the food they had ruined. Instead, he would have to settle to for something less traumatic for onlookers.

“What are you two degenerate lifeforms screaming about? I don’t know what filthy pigsty you were raised in, but this behavior will not be tolerated in Isra, especially inside the Empress’s Citadel. The two of you better come over to me right now and explain yourselves."

Zurt’s metallic voice was quite unpleasant to listen to, rough and jarring on the ears, it was loud enough for both the gnomes to hear even had they been screaming at the top of their lungs.

Lumpy seemed bent on starting an all-out brawl with the bigfolk as he threw an overhand jab at the side of a random bystander trying to pass between the tiny giant and a nearby table. "I'M - I'M GUH-GONNA SHIT YOUR MILK!" he roared angrily at the person as they simply kept moving after his quick punch. Lumpy's princely facade was now completely gone.

The inspector's words came to Lumpy as he was mid way through a violent yank on another table leg, it breaking off in the gnome's hands. He held the small end of the table leg in both hands and swung it about aimlessly, hitting nothing of real note in his blind outburst with his improvised wooden maul. As the meaning of the words registered with the gnome, he looked in the direction of the harsh, metallic sounding voice. It was only now that he laid eyes on the giant metal octopus. If Lumpy wasn't immediately scared out of his rage at the sight of the inspector (which he was), he would have found a way to belittle the metal octopus for asking a question that he'd literally been screaming the answer to at the top of his lungs.

"Break out!" he shouted to Qelci as he took off running along the wall that held the door she was headed for. At nearly a flat sprint, Lumpy's stolen princely cloak flapped behind him as he ran, his feet pounding against the stone floor of the Keep Hall. As he neared the door, Lumpy flung the table leg in the general direction of the inspector, but the odds of it making even a dent in the metal beast were extremely low, even if it did somehow hit its intended target.