Merchant Crab

“What’s your secret?” Balthazar whispered to himself. “How are you getting in their good graces so easily, you ugly green croaker?”

The grudge-filled crab peered through his spyglass once more, his mouth twisted into a frown as he observed the toad across the road, sitting atop her booth, cheerfully chatting it up with a pair of adventurers.

He had twisted and turned inside his shell, racking his brain trying to figure out what could possibly be her trick to win the stupid humans favor so easily, but nothing made sense.

A spell, a magical item, some hidden skill. He couldn’t figure out a sure answer for it, and it was only riling him up even more.

Adventurers were barely even stopping by his bazaar since she arrived, and if Balthazar did not figure something out quick, his clientele would be reduced to nothing.

“How dare she?!” he grumbled, ducking behind a boulder to make sure none of them saw him spying. “Setting up business right outside a busy area to take advantage of the passing adventurers in order to trade junk at a profit. That’s just dirty!” The crab snapped his right pincer angrily. “That was my whole shtick!”

Raising his eye stalks over the rock, Balthazar checked if the two adventurers were still there.

“Thanks, Henrietta!”

“See you later, have a nice day!” the adventurers yelled, waving at the toad as they left.

“Pfft, they never wish me a nice day when they leave,” the crab begrudged.

Just as soon as the other two walked away, a new adventurer came down the road, strolling her way from the town gates.

“Damn it, they just don’t stop coming today, do they?” Balthazar complained, bringing the spyglass back up to one of his eyes. “Come on, come on. Maybe this one will ignore her and turn this way.”

The crab’s hopes were swiftly dashed as the amphibian merchant called out to the human adventurer, and, much to his dismay, the woman stopped and approached her.

Balthazar groaned and rolled his eye stalks before focusing back on his spyglass.

The adventurer wore long, fancy vestments of multiple folds and colors. She did not look like the fighting type, so Balthazar’s guess leaned towards a magical type, and one with deep pockets, judging by her attire and accessories.

In less than a minute, the two of them were already happily chuckling away at each other like they were old friends exchanging the latest juicy gossip.

“She’s a slimy frog, and you just met her!” the incredulous and exasperated crab exclaimed to no one that could hear him. “How are you already so cozy with her?!”

Redoubling his attention, Balthazar watched as the toad said something he could not hear from the distance he was at and then pulled her Bag of Holding up onto the counter. Propping the bag open, she peered into it and with a suddenquick movement shot her long tongue inside it.

“What the…”

With another quick move, the toad pulled her tongue back and stuck to the tip of it came a blue potion bottle, which she skillfully placed on the wooden surface.

The adventurer was smiling and nodding as she retrieved a few gold coins from her purse and placed them in front of the toad. She said something unintelligible and took the mana potion.

“Eww, her sticky tongue was just touching that!” the disgusted crab said. “But then they look at me sideways for grabbing a cookie with the same pincer that was counting their money. Who can understand these idiots?”

Just as with all the others, the adventurer waved at the toad as they said their goodbyes, all smiles and niceties.

“Bye-bye, honey! Good luck with your butterfly collection,” Henrietta said to the woman as she walked down the road.

Balthazar felt his stomach turn. Even with the high tolerance for sweetness he had built up through copious amounts of pastries, there was only so much he could take before feeling sick.

“Blah! How can she keep that act up so well?” he asked, throwing his tongue out in disgust. “Pretend to care and like them like that? How is she not barfing up yet?”

He looked through the spyglass again, sizing up her market stall. It was simple, not very big, and crudely assembled, but still far beyond something a mere toad could have built on her own. Balthazar wondered who helped her setting it up.

“Surely there’s someone else behind this toad,” he mumbled to himself. “I just don’t believe a toad popped up out of nowhere and started doing business with a stall, coin, items, and even a Bag of Holding just like that. There’s got to be more to this.”

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He had no answers, and all he wanted was for her to go away from his road.

The obsessed crab pondered on what he could do to rid himself of the toad, but all options led back to the same problem: she was already too beloved by the adventurers, and any action he took against her would almost surely turn him into a pariah.

“And I don’t even know what a pariah is, damn it!”

Bouldy could have easily smashed the entire stall, but now that Balthazar had overextended himself and attempted to do that in front of everyone, he could not risk doing it anymore, as it would immediately be linked back to him.

He also considered having Blue torch the whole thing up late at night when nobody was around, but the stall turning up burnt to the ground in the morning would also be too obvious. Everyone knew the crab had a pet drake. He would easily be caught with the motive and the smoking snout.

“No, it has to be something else,” he pondered to his buttons that he did not have. “Something that would rid me of her without being linked back to me.”

As if a lantern had lit up above his shell, the crab snapped his pincer and ran down the path and around his roofed platform, searching for his goblin assistant.

“Druma! Come here,” he called, spotting the small worker rummaging through a few crates.

“Yes, boss?” the goblin answered, running to the crab, wizard hat bouncing up and down on his head.

“I got a very important task for you,” Balthazar said.

“Boss can count on Druma!” the other said, standing to attention like a soldier responding to a superior. “What boss need Druma to do?”

“I need you to take this.” The crab reached into a nearby crate and took a small wooden box with a sliding cover, barely larger than a matchbox, and gave it to the goblin. “Now go look around the grass and find some bugs, big ones. Things like centipedes, termites, slugs, the more disgusting the better. Put them in that and get back to me when you’ve filled it.”

The goblin looked down at the box and then back up at the crab, an ugly expression of disgust on his face.

“Eww, Druma no like bugs. Why boss need nasty things?”

“Seriously? You’re the most backwards goblin I’ve ever heard about,” Balthazar said. “Don’t worry about it, just collect a few bugs and I’ll tell you the rest after. Go, go!”

Leaving the unwilling assistant to his task, the crab hurried back to his watching spot.

As he popped his eyes over the boulder, he spotted yet another small group of adventurers gathered around the toad, happily trying on rings, putting hats on, and checking her selection of potion bottles.

“Curse you, foolish idiots!” he said. “I’ve got all that stuff too, and it doesn’t come with toad spit all over it!”

The increasingly manic crab continued watching as adventurers came and went, some buying, a few selling, shiny gold coins being exchanged right in front of him, none being spent with him. His ire and jealousy growing and gnawing at him in such a way he had even skipped his mid-afternoon tart.

Balthazar never skipped his mid-afternoon tart.

“Boss, boss! Druma got bugs boss want!”

“Shhhh! Keep it down!” the agitated crab said in an angry whisper.

“Sorry, boss,” the goblin sheepishly said, lowering his voice. “Druma has bugs for boss. What boss gonna do with bugs now?”

“Me? No, no, it’s you who’s going to do something with them.”

Druma looked with reluctance at the closed box in his hands, his frown quickly spelling worry.

“That Henrietta across the road doesn’t know you yet,” Balthazar continued, ignoring his assistant’s expression. “I want you to take a couple of coins and go to her, pretend you want to buy some refreshments or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Just keep her distracted, and then, when she’s not looking, dump all those bugs around her stand, make sure they get everywhere. I want that stall to look like a bug nest. Once you do, just get out of there quick so the next adventurers who come by get a nasty surprise.”

The goblin looked at his boss with a befuddled expression. “Why boss want to do that?”

“Because that stupid frog is taking our jobs, Druma!” the manic crab exclaimed, his eyes widening towards the goblin. “Do you want to become an unemployed goblin? In this economy? No, you don’t! Now get out there and do what I told you! And don’t leave through the main gate. It would be too obvious!”

The goblin hesitantly walked away, cradling the small box in his hands, as Balthazar turned his attention back to the spyglass and the rival merchant on the other side of it.

Tapping his foot impatiently, the crab watched as his assistant approached the Toad Stand from down the road, the box of bugs held behind his back.

“Yes, there you go, Druma. You can do this,” Balthazar whispered, eye stalk firmly stuck to the smaller end of the spyglass.

Too far away to hear their exchange, he watched as the toad greeted the goblin, who was looking sheepish and shy as he responded to her.

“Come on, little guy, don’t be so conspicuous! Act natural.”

They continued exchanging words back and forth for a while, the amphibian looking endearingly at the goblin, who slowly seemed to grow more confident and talked to her with a wide grin on his face.

“What the hell is taking so long?” muttered the impatient crab. “I told you to distract her, not have her adopt you.”

Henrietta smiled and said something to Druma, before hopping to the other end of the stall, where a small keg stood, surrounded by a few cups. Pushing one cup under the tap, the toad began filling it with a clear yellow liquid.

“That’s your chance! Bug her place!”

Balthazar watched with anticipation, but the goblin kept the box tucked in the back of his pants as he took the cup and sipped from it with a big smile on his face.

“What are you doooooooing?” the deranged crab howled under his breath.

The other two exchanged a few more words and smiles before the goblin left, hopping away with a happy grin on his face.

The fuming crustacean got down from the boulder and circled back to where his assistant was coming from.

“Druma!” Balthazar yelled, startling the gleeful goblin who was scampering his way into the bazaar with the cup still held in his hands. “What the hell? You didn’t do any of what I told you to do!”

“Sorry, boss,” the assistant said, ears sagging as he looked down. “Toad lady too nice, she offer Druma free lemonade, don’t even take coin. Druma couldn’t put bugs in her stand. Druma feel bad to be mean to nice toad.”

“Even you, Druma?” Balthazar said in a defeated tone of someone being stabbed in the back.

“S-sorry, boss. Druma bring some lemonade for boss…”

“Do I look like I want her damn lemonade?”

“Druma is sorry,” the goblin said, with a guilty look in his eyes. “Druma no want to make boss mad. Druma think toad lady maybe is just nice.”

Balthazar took a deep breath and brought a pincer up to his face.

“No, no, I’m not mad at you. It’s not your fault. It’s her, she’s the problem. I should have known her trickery would be too much for you. You’re no match for whatever cunning scheme she has going on.”

“Boss not mad at Druma?” the small goblin asked, perking up slightly.

“No, buddy, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have sent a goblin to do a crab’s job,” Balthazar said, angry determination flaring up in his eyes. “If I want something done right, I need to do it myself.”

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