Merchant Crab

Druma and his friends were on a beach.

He did not know which beach this was, and he did not particularly care. There was sand beneath his feet, sea stretching all the way to the horizon, and plenty of open space to walk around without bumping into things. As far as the goblin was concerned, that made it a good beach.

Of course, the line of strange text that appeared in front of him actually confirmed that it was Star Beach, the correct place for his objective, but Druma wasn’t sure how to read that yet, so he just dismissed it as something unimportant.

Maybe it was some attempt at selling him something. All the time he had spent working with the merchant crab had conditioned him into thinking that most things he did not understand were probably some veiled attempt by someone to sell something to someone else.

“Bouldy, Blue, look! We on beach now!” the excited goblin said to his friends as he pointed toward the shore.

The drake looked around with a mildly unimpressed expression, while the golem nodded with a smile as he placed one hand over his eyes and scanned the horizon.

“Friend?”

“No,” the greenest of the three said. “Druma don’t think boss is here.”

He gazed toward the long stretch of white sand that hugged the blue shore.

The beach extended far in both directions, bordered by patches of vegetation and rocky outcroppings. Gentle waves rolled toward the shore, washing over the pale sand before retreating back into the sea with a soft, rhythmic hiss. The sky above was clear and bright, and the sunlight glittered across the water in countless tiny flashes.

“Does Bouldy see sir wizard somewhere?” Druma asked.

The construct squinted his eye-orbs while meticulously scanning each section of sand ahead of them.

“Friend?” he said, pointing a rocky finger toward a patch of tangled sticks and algae sitting on the shore.

Druma hopped up onto the golem’s shoulder to get a better viewpoint of what he was pointing at.

There, standing on the sand, next to the mess of reeds and strands of seaweed, was a baggy black robe that appeared to be currently occupied by a person.

Perhaps even a wizard person.

“Maybe that sir wizard?!” exclaimed the goblin.

Druma hopped down from Bouldy and ran down a small dune, leaving his travel companions behind before they could do anything about it.

The goblin knew Tweedus usually wore more flashy colors than plain black, but he did not want to give up hope so easily. Maybe it was the wizard’s laundry day?

Yes, that would explain it. Tweedus was there on the shore to wash his other robes. That was definitely it.

The robed figure ahead seemed to hear Druma as he approached and turned around.

It was not Tweedus.

The first thing Druma noticed was the hair—brown, ending around the shoulders.

The second thing he noticed was that she was a girl and young.

Both were things the goblin knew Tweedus was not.

And the third was that she looked very confused.

The woman stared at the approaching goblin and her expression changed.

Not into fear, exactly. More like surprise mixed with several rapidly forming questions.

“You’re a goblin!” the drenched adventurer exclaimed.

Druma’s eyes widened and his chest puffed out proudly.

She knew what Druma was. That had to mean she was very clever. Druma liked clever people.

At least the ones who were nice to him.

Those were the kind he needed to help him in his mission.

“Yes, yes!” the goblin said. “Hello!”

The woman blinked.

“You can talk?” she said. “This just keeps getting more confusing. I thought you were going to be some kind of tutorial enemy.”

She had a slightly nasally voice, and despite her clear confusion, her tone hinted at someone used to being quite sure of herself—perhaps even a little bit arrogant.

“This is clearly some sort of fantasy world,” the young woman continued, more to herself than Druma. “I… I must have died, judging by that speeding truck I remember coming right for me as I crossed the road. And now I’ve reincarnated into a new world, that must be it.” She paused before groaning. “Oh, dear lord, I’ve become a cliché! I even had a piece of breakfast toast hanging from my mouth when I crossed the road!”

Druma kept staring at the adventurer, unblinking, and without understanding half of the things she was talking about.

Suddenly, she pinched the flesh of her own arm.

“No. This isn’t even a dream. I need to figure things out quickly, before some—”

Bouldy’s heavy footsteps caught her attention as the golem came running toward them with Blue gliding above him.

“What the hell?!” the woman exclaimed. “A giant golem and a small dragon attacking me right on the starting beach?! What kind of hellish fantasy world have I reincarnated into?!”

Druma tilted his head and then raised both hands in front of himself.

“No, no! We friends!”

The adventurer looked back down at the goblin, one foot standing back as she frowned.

Bouldy and Blue arrived next to Druma and stopped by his side, the golem smiling and giving a friendly wave while the drake gently landed on the sand without much sandy fuss.

The newcomer observed the trio for a moment with a gaze of suspicion.

“A goblin dressed like a wizard, a smiling golem, and a blue miniature dragon,” she said more calmly. “Are you like… the welcoming party here?”

Druma scratched the top of his head under his wizard hat. He wasn’t sure what she meant, but “welcoming” and “party” sounded like nice things he enjoyed.

“Sure!” he said. “We are! Me Druma, this Bouldy, and that Blue. What is miss’s name?”

The adventurer narrowed her eyes at the trio.

“I’m not telling you my name. I don’t trust you yet.”

The goblin’s ears sagged slightly. “Oh…”

“So,” the young woman said, mind clearly racing behind her gaze. “Your job should be to introduce me to this… place, right? What’s it called anyway?”

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Druma scratched the side of his face while looking up as he tried to remember. What was it that Balthazar and the others always called the world?

“Heartha!” he suddenly exclaimed enthusiastically. “That’s it. Druma remember now. World is called Heartha!”

“Right…” the young woman said. “That’s a start. Now, I imagine there’s some kind of… tutorial? Some kind of introduction to give me? Anything at all?”

The goblin looked at Blue and then at Bouldy, who gave him a shrug.

“Druma dunno,” he said with a shrug of his own.

The newcomer smacked her palm on her forehead in exasperation.

“Great,” she said. “I died, I got reincarnated into an unknown world, and my introduction to the locals is a group of useless creatures with the collective IQ of a doorknob.”

Druma was still unsure what most of what the human said meant, but he was beginning to feel bad for not being able to help her with… whatever it was that she was going through.

Then something caught the goblin’s eye—a glint.

“Maybe miss should check shiny thing over there?”

The adventurer lowered her gaze to the green creature again to find him pointing a finger toward something half-buried in the sand a few steps away from them.

𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

It was a bottle, with an unnatural glowing spot around the neck, demanding their attention from a distance.

“Huh…” she muttered while approaching the mysterious object. “Maybe not so useless after all.”

The girl picked the glass bottle up and the shiny spot immediately disappeared, leaving just a plain glass bottle with what appeared to be a rolled-up scroll tucked inside.

“Intriguing,” she whispered while carefully analyzing it.

Druma grinned, feeling happy that he had managed to be of some help to his—hopefully—soon-to-be new friend.

“Good, good! Maybe you can help Druma too! Does miss remember seeing…” He paused, frowning at her with concern. “Miss? You alright?”

The new adventurer was now standing with her mouth half-open, gaze distant, bottle still held in her hands but seemingly no longer important to her.

A milky white layer began washing over her eyes as she continued staring at nothing in particular, her brow slowly rising like someone remembering something—or perhaps forgetting it.

“Miss?!” Druma called, approaching her and snapping his fingers twice in front of her face.

In a blink, the fog vanished from her eyes and they settled back down to focus on the goblin.

“Huh, what?” she said in a much more gentle tone than before. “What happened?”

“Druma not sure,” the goblin replied with a shrug. “Miss feel alright?”

The newcomer blinked a couple of times, gaze wandering around as if seeing the beach and ocean for the first time, and then she smiled.

“Yeah… Yeah, I feel fine. Great, actually. What were we talking about?”

Druma felt confused. The woman was suddenly acting very differently. But the goblin had to focus on his mission. If she said she was fine, he should believe her. It was the polite thing to do anyway.

“Druma ask miss if she see funny talking crab around here?” he said. “Or maybe if miss see funny talking wizard around here too?”

“Hmm? What?” said the distracted human, gaze still wandering on the horizon. “Crabs? Wizards? No, sorry, I haven’t seen anyone other than you guys since I got here. How did I get here anyway?”

The goblin glanced up at the golem, who awkwardly glanced back at him with an expression of someone who was just as clueless about what was going on as his friend.

“Druma not sure. Miss say something about something called truck, and something about reincard… reincarve… reincarna—”

The adventurer suddenly tucked the bottle with the scroll still inside it into her robe’s pocket and threw her arms up.

“Ah, it doesn’t matter!” she exclaimed with an excitement that startled the goblin. “Look at this place! It looks wonderful! I can’t wait to explore it and go on adventures!”

Without so much as looking back at them, the girl ran toward the wet sand, holding her robe above her ankles as a wave washed something orange and spongy ashore.

“Oooh! What’s this neat little thing?”

A starfish lay immobile on the sand by the adventurer’s feet, looking harmless—until the very moment she leaned down to look closer at it and the creature launched itself toward her.

“Mffhahtf!” yelled the girl from behind the starfish stuck to her face.

“Oh no!” Druma exclaimed, rushing toward the stumbling human.

The goblin tried his best to reach the being clinging to the girl’s face and pry it off, but his height and her panic made his task difficult.

“Friend!” said Bouldy.

“Huh?” Druma said while hopping to try and grab the starfish. “Bouldy see these before?”

The golem nodded. “Friend!”

“Good, good!” the goblin said while trying to climb the human’s back. “How to get them off then?”

“Friend,” Bouldy said with a shrug.

“What Bouldy mean, Bouldy don’t know?!”

“Friend?” the construct said with an apologetic expression.

“What?!” the goblin said while using all the strength in his fingers to try and pull the spongy being off the girl’s skin. “Druma like dancing a lot, but Druma don’t think that help here!”

The little green guy, seeing his attempts to brute force the problem fail and the human’s flailing beginning to falter, decided it was time to switch his strategy and use his head to think.

He looked at Blue, who sat on the sand staring at the whole scene with eyes wide but doing nothing to intervene.

Asking her to shoot fire at the killer starfish was not a good idea. It would probably burn the girl too, and that’s no way to make new friends.

If Druma’s fingers were too small and weak to pry it off, Bouldy’s hands suffered from the opposite problem—they were way too massive to grip the fleshy face hugger or do anything that wouldn’t likely end with the human being severely hurt.

So the only solution left was obvious.

Magic.

The aspiring goblin wizard hopped off the newcomer as her body began to falter from the lack of oxygen.

Druma thought back to all those humid mornings working by the pond, and how often he’d get a little electric zap from touching metal things around the bazaar. They didn’t hurt a lot but they sure made him pull his hand back right away.

Maybe a little shock is what the starfish needed to get off the girl’s face too.

He connected all his fingers together, forming a cage with his hands, and placed all his focus on making magic.

And after a moment, it worked.

Small sparks began crackling within his grasp, and even though this wasn’t his first time using that basic spell , the goblin still felt the same wonder and excitement as he had every time before.

“Little zap!” Druma said as he shoved his palms against the back of the orange creature on the girl’s face.

Its five appendages stretched out as the jolt of electricity coursed through its spongy flesh and the starfish dropped from the adventurer’s face, falling on the sand and writhing around violently.

“Gah!” the girl screamed as she desperately gasped for air.

“Miss! Miss!” Druma said. “Is you alright?”

“Oh my lord,” she said, eyes wide from the panic and breathing still fast. “You saved me. You saved my life!”

The goblin’s eyes went big like two saucers.

“Druma did? But… Druma just make little magic spark to scare nasty star away.”

He looked down at where the killer starfish had been a moment before, only to find the creature quickly retreating back to the sea with flailing arms and a small scorch mark on its back.

The adventurer placed her hands on Druma’s shoulders, still panting.

“I should have known from your hat and cape. You’re a wizard! Thank you so much for saving me!”

Druma felt his face getting hot.

An adventurer had just thanked him for saving her life and recognized him as a real wizard.

The joy he was experiencing was so great that the little green fella did not know what to say or do, except stand there gawking at her with watery eyes.

“Please,” the smiling young woman said. “Will you teach me magic? I’ve decided I want to be a mage too. Will you be my tutor?”

The goblin’s jaw nearly dropped.

“Druma? Teach miss how to make magic?” he said, flustered and flabbergasted. “No, no, no. Miss don’t get it. Druma just apprentice. Druma not good at magic yet. Not like sir wizard!”

“Sir wizard?” the girl said. “Who is that? Is that your master? Can I meet him? You think he will take me as his student?!”

Druma felt overwhelmed by the whirlwind of things happening in his head.

“Druma don’t know. Druma is looking for sir wizard too. Druma and friends need sir wizard to help with—”

The goblin’s gaze went up to the sky and he gasped.

There, far up in the clouds, he spotted a small dot.

It was tiny and hard to see, but he was certain of what it was.

A wizard in a bright purple robe and with a long white beard fluttering in the wind, riding on some kind of pink carpet.

“Sir Tweedus!”

Druma broke free from the adventurer’s grasp and ran toward the shore with eyes fixed on the fast-moving dot above.

“Huh?” the girl said, turning to follow the goblin with her eyes. “Sir Tweedus? Is that the name of your mentor?”

Druma tried waving his arms, but Tweedus was too far up to see that.

The goblin tried to think quickly. The arcane wizard was flying toward the continent fast, and if he didn’t do something soon, they would lose him.

He glanced back at Blue. No, that wouldn’t do. She could fly up, but not even she was fast enough to reach him before he was gone into the clouds.

He needed to do something now. Something that would get the wizard to notice them instantly.

Magic was always the answer, but making a little fire and smoke wouldn’t be fast enough, and a few tiny sparks would never be noticed from that far up.

He knew what he needed to do.

Druma grabbed his arcane staff from his back.

He was going to need something bigger and louder to get Tweedus’s attention.