I love voicing "little guys" and Pocket the Street Alchemist is just the most critterish kobold little guy and I love 'em.

So I'll do literally anything but my work :'D

No one can convince me the guy who wrote Viego wasn't in a middle of a Curse of Strahd campaign.

I eat the tentacle carefully,

as one does with conquered provinces.

Slowly,

so as not to appear emotional.

The char gives way with a soft resistance,

the kind no empire plans for.

Salt. Oil. Lemon.

A civilizing sequence.

Once, this limb may have conducted thoughts

large enough to bruise architecture.

Now it is reduced to protein,

to something that squeaks faintly

between my teeth.

Somewhere, an elder brain

misplaces a sensation

a pressure where certainty should be

and cannot account for it.

This is not cruelty.

This is administration.

I chew, patient and thorough.

There will be no monuments,

no tablets recording the loss of this curl of flesh.

History rarely notes

what passes through the mouth.

When I swallow,

nothing trembles.

The waiter refills my glass.

Still,

for the remainder of the meal,

the empire is smaller.