“I don’t think we have any bread on us,” Lucas replied though. “Unless you have some?”

“Any food item can count as bread for this symbolic gesture. All we need is to have a meal to split between us, to symbolize our mutual trust in each other, and you’ve brought one.”

Lucas looked over at Katie, who was still cooking the salmon. “Ah . . . it’ll be done soon,” he said, only to have Linnaeus shake his head.

“No,” Linnaeus objected, “that is not the meal you brought for me. That’s the meal you brought for yourself.” He then lifted one of his hands up to point at the two bodies Lucas had brought to bribe him with. “That’s the meal you brought me.”

At this point, Lucas could feel everyone’s anxiety. A collective set of breaths were inhaled and held. His party members were all staring holes into the back of his head, waiting for his response.

Monster Contract: Linnaeus’s Appetite.

Soaring above all the other sentient creatures that resided in the jungles he called home, Linnaeus’s arrogance grew to mountainous proportions before he ever reached maturity. However, whether it was the tree people, mankind, the mountain folk, the beast men, or the water tribes, all the people he met regarded him as lesser, their eyes filled with disdain that Linnaeus could see from a mile above the ground. Linnaeus grew to hate their beady eyes and judgmental tones, but then you came along and talked to him, not screaming or treating him like a foul monster upon first sight as so many before you did.

For this reason, he is willing to work with you if you can prove your belief that he is not simply a monster. Break bread with Linnaeus, and do so by eating the most favored piece from the body you brought for him to savor: the eye, uncooked. Do this, and you will have completed the contract.

Warning: If you do not break bread and eat the eyeball, then Linnaeus will consider you the same as all of the others who looked down on him and will attack you on sight in all future meetings.

Lucas frowned as he read the quest description. “The eyeball, eh?” Lucas said to no one in particular, staring down at Fiddle’s unconscious body. The two Were-Rats he had brought personally weren’t much different than any other humanoid, and the thought of eating Fiddle’s eye honestly made Lucas cringe and feel a bit queasy. For a moment, he debated if it might just be better to kill Linnaeus and go find another monster altogether, and it took every ounce of his willpower to prevent his body from betraying his reservations.

“Are you trying to decide which of them to savor?” Linnaeus asked, his sharp eyes studying each minute movement on Lucas’s face.