Merchant Crab

Chapter 187: Baggage

“Well? Go on, tell me!” the anxious crab asked. “What do we need to repair Bouldy? A big hammer? Tears from a phoenix? Golem glue?!”

“Hmm… Mhmm… Uh-huh,” Tweedus mumbled as he read through the pages. “No, none of that. You just need to mend the core in the fires of a Golem Forge. Easy-peasy!”

“Alright…” Balthazar said. “Do you have one of those here?”

“Ha… Haha! Haaahahaha,” the wizard laughed. “Good one, crab. No, of course I don’t. A Golem Forge is a huge structure, several times larger than this cave.”

“Right, and is there maybe one near here?”

The old man slapped his knee and laughed again, even louder this time.

“Hah! Not a chance! There’s only one known Golem Forge in the entire continent.”

The traveling merchant scowled. “So you—”

“And its exact location has been lost to the ages.”

“I thought you said it would be easy-peasy!” the frustrated crab exclaimed.

“Easy is relative,” Tweedus said with a wise flair that didn’t convince Balthazar at all.

“Great. So I need to go to a forge, except there’s no one left that has been there to know where it is. Just… great.”

“Oh, I’ve been there,” said the wizard in a bathrobe. “Ages ago. Back when I was much younger. Ah, to be 80 years old and spry again…”

Balthazar threw his pincers out in exasperation. “Then you must know where this forge is, right?!”

“Nope.”

“What? How?!”

“Because I forgot where it was. It was a long time ago,” the old man said casually. “Like I said, lost to the ages!”

The crab threw his pincers down, feeling frustrated and defeated. Always a setback, never a straight path.

“Hey now, don’t feel down, crab,” Tweedus said.

“You don’t get it,” said Balthazar. “I to find this forge. I need to repair this core. To bring back my friend. It was my fault his core was destroyed. He was protecting me. I need to make it right. I need to bring him back. I… I miss him.”

The old adventurer looked at the crab with his bushy eyebrows twisted into an expression of pity. For a brief moment, his eyes didn’t seem as deranged or wacky like they usually did. ⱤἈɴồ????Εȿ

“Bah, don’t worry,” Tweedus suddenly exclaimed, returning to his usual loud and crazy tone. “I’m sure it will come back to me if we wait long enough. Why don’t you stick around for a bit while I try to jog my memory? Sit down, make yourself at home. We could… play board games, to pass the time! I’ve got a whole collection of them just gathering dust around here somewhere.”

The merchant looked at the weird man with a cocked eyestalk.

“Thanks, but I’m kind of in a hurry,” he awkwardly said. “Lots of things to do, plenty of places to go. How long do you think it would take you to remember?”

“Who knows! Maybe it will hit me in five minutes. Maybe I’ll be combing my beard in five years and suddenly remember where the forge is. There’s no telling!”

Balthazar exhaled loudly. “Argh. We don’t have five years!”

As he dropped his shell in frustration, the crab looked at his goblin assistant again, who was still grinning at the sight of his caped reflection.

“Well, at least you’re looking good,” the merchant said, before turning to the old man again. “Does it do anything?”

“The cape? Probably. Why don’t you tell me?”

The crab looked up at him with mild confusion. “Uh… how?”

Tweedus looked down at the crustacean, his brow furrowing. “Hmm… Wait, there’s something different about you since I saw you last, isn’t there?”

“Oh, you mean my golden shell? Yeah, that—”

“Nah, I don’t mean your tacky fashion choices!” the wizard interrupted. “I mean the nifty little monocle you used to wear. Where is it?”

“Oh, my Monocle of Examination…” Balthazar muttered, his eyes going down to the floor. “It… shattered and I lost it. Right around the time Bouldy was destroyed too. I miss that thing…”

“Bah, poppycock!” Tweedus blurted. “A crab wearing a monocle looks much more dapper!”

His long beard swung around wildly as the old man moved to a large chest at the other end of the chamber. After flipping the lid open, he leaned over the chest until the top half of his body was completely gone inside it, his slippers hanging precariously from his feet as he

“Uh-oh,” Balthazar said, turning to his companions. “Looks like things are about to get messy. Blue, take the front and get ready to flame on. Druma, you—”

“Druma help wizard make mean people go boom!” the goblin exclaimed with a determined look on his face as he vigorously shook his staff up and down with both hands.

“You guys will do nothing but stay back there,” the old wizard said, glancing back at them with wide, deranged eyes and a mischievous grin. “These fools came into house. They will dance to tune.”

Balthazar and his two friends stood back and watched with befuddled expressions as the elderly man arched back to crack his bones. With a pinch of his fingers, he lowered the mechanical arm over the strange music box, the needle at its tip coming in contact with the spinning black disc below.

The otherworldly music from before started playing out of the brass horn again, loud and thumping as the wizard bobbed his head along.

“Alright, let’s tussle, ya whippersnappers!”

“There’s a dozen of us and one of you,” Ruby said as her birdwatchers spread across the chamber. “You may be higher level than all of us but we still—”

“Too much talking!” Tweedus yelled as he clapped his hands together and several bursts of arcane magic flew out of his grasp.

The intruders braced for an attack, but none of the old man’s magic went to them. Instead, some spread around to random objects around the room while the largest portion of it flew up to the spinning ball hanging from the ceiling. The sphere mirrored the bright arcane shot into it all around the room, creating a light show that seemed to match the rhythm of the music playing over the battle.

“What just—” one of the birdwatchers started, but before he could finish his question, chaos erupted all around the room.

Chests suddenly swung open in a loud chorus. A closet projectile-vomited its contents, sending clothing flying everywhere. Piles of paper spontaneously burst into tiny pieces that rained down like confetti. Even the desk joined in by loudly slamming its drawers over and over along with the music.

Amidst it all, the elderly wizard in a purple bathrobe and slippers held his pointy wizard hat down as he danced in place, his movements like the maestro’s cues that conducted the orchestra of madness performing all around them.

“Contain him!” Ruby yelled to the others as they all did their best to steer clear of the furniture dance off taking place between a coat hanger and a coffee table.

Adventurers readied their weapons and spells, trying to concentrate between all the mayhem and circle in on the high wizard.

The swirling storm of chaos was causing countless system lines to pop up in Balthazar’s monocle, forcing him to take it off and store it safely in his pack. Both to save him a migraine and to make sure it didn’t end up broken on the floor like the last one.

Tweedus laughed loudly, standing a few paces in front of the crab with his back turned to him. The hem of his bathrobe flapped wildly in the wind that whipped through the room as he undid the rope fastened around his waist while the adventurers closed in on him.

“I cast…” the master of the arcane exclaimed as he spread his arms open. “Blinding Flash!”

The rope dropped to the floor and a mix of yells and cries from the intruders echoed around the cave as they collectively recoiled.

“Ah, my eyes!”

“Oh, lord, why!”

“I’m gonna be sick!”

“My poor innocence!”

“That’s just wrong!”

Stumbling and tripping, the birdwatchers pulled away from the wizard as they covered their faces and averted their eyes.

“Get behind me now,” Tweedus yelled to Balthazar and company as he cackled and tied the rope around his bathrobe again.

The visitors did as told while the mage began gathering a large amount of mana around himself.

On the other side of the room, the attackers, still recovering from the old man’s flashing, stood at the ready, hesitating at the sight of his charging spell.

“Hold!” one of them said, holding a closed fist above his head as he tried to avoid being slapped in the face by the pieces of paper and purple chicken feathers flying all around.

Tweedus smirked as the air crackled with energy and the magical wind swirling in the room picked up speed.

“That’s right, stay back, this one’s gonna be big!”

The red enchantress barged through the line of adventurers, her eyes wide as she readied her own spell.

“Don’t stand back,” she yelled to the others over the increasingly loud wind that drowned out even the music from the record player. “That’s not an offensive spell he’s casting!”

A circle of light appeared on the floor around the wizard and his guests as a speck of convulsing mana started spinning between them.

The old wizard let out one last laugh before shouting to the scarlet woman, “See ya around, Rubya!”

With a thunderous clap of his hands, the twisting blob of raw mana exploded into an expanding sphere of bright energy that made the room around the four of them disappear with blinding light.

Spiraling and spinning with no sense of which way was up anymore, Balthazar felt his body being abruptly pulled through time and space as his screams faded out, along with his consciousness.