Merchant Crab

“Never mind, we found fairies…” Balthazar said, dropping his shell and rolling his eyestalks.

The crab and his companions gathered closer together as the specks of light formed a circle around them. Like small shiny sprites dancing in the air, more and more of the fairies appeared from the darkness of the dense forest.

Blue snarled, displeased and with smoke blowing out of her nostrils, but Balthazar made a calming gesture with his claw in front of her as he cautiously looked around.

“Easy, girl. Let’s not start any trouble if we can avoid it.”

Standing between the two of them, Druma clutched his staff with both hands, eyes darting around as the specks of light continued to grow well into the dozens now.

“Boss has plan, right?” the scared goblin asked in a trembling voice.

“Sure,” said Balthazar. “I always have a plan. My plan is to improvise.”

One of the larger glowing orbs, about the size of an apple, came closer to him. As it approached, the crab’s eyes started to make out the shape of a tiny, vaguely humanoid figure within the bright light. What looked like a miniature version of a woman with rapidly fluttering wings on her back and a body covered in flower petals in place of clothes looked into the merchant's eyes.

The fairy opened her mouth and started speaking. Or so Balthazar assumed. All he was hearing was a kind of high-pitched rhythmic buzzing, like an insect he had never heard before.

The tiny creature frowned and started buzzing at him faster. As she did, all the other fae around them seemed to grow increasingly restless, moving about faster and more erratically.

“Druma don’t think fairy is happy with boss,” the green assistant said as his legs started to tremble. “Druma don’t want to be trapped inside tree forever like he hear in stories when Druma was little.”

Balthazar looked around nervously. Tiny or not, there were a lot of them, and he could tell they weren’t exactly rolling out the red carpet for him.

Wait! I got exactly the thing for this!

Pulling up his system screen, the merchant selected one of his newer skills.

[All-Tongue]

[Skill - C tier]

[Requirements: 40 CHA, 20 INT]

[Cost: 5 mana]

[For 15 minutes, your tongue can reach anyone’s ears. No, gross, not like that. Sentient beings will understand your words no matter their language.]

Perfect!

After activating it, Balthazar looked at the fairy again and tried to speak.

“Hellooo,” he said, rolling his words very slowly as if that somehow would help him be better understood. “I am Balthazaaar and I cooome in peeeace.”

The winged sprite frowned at him again, but this time it seemed out of curious surprise, rather than anger.

“You speak the fae tongue?” she asked.

“Ah-ha! I do! Now. Apparently,” the crab said with a mix of pride and surprise.

“You are a crab,” said the fairy. “A creature of water. Yet you also spoke in the language of humans. And you smell of them.”

All around him, Balthazar heard buzzing among the other fae, except this time it wasn’t unintelligible buzzing, but rather hushed whispers of disapproval.

“Oh, yeah, those pesky humans,” the crab loudly exclaimed. “Always getting their stench all over everything. I ran into a couple of them on my way here. One of them even smelled like onion, if you can believe that. Anyway, I’m clearly not a human, as you can see. Not a big fan of them either.”

Druma scooched closer to Blue and whispered, “Why is boss buzzing too?”

The drake shrugged with a confused expression.

“And yes,” Balthazar continued, “I speak crab, fluent human, and have been working on fairy language lately too. That’s just me, a very polyp… a very poly-igloo… poly… A very well-spoken crab!”

The fairy hovered in place, unblinking, staring at the crab with an expressionless face.

“I hope you are understanding me fine,” the crustacean said. “I’m told I can speak your language fairly well.”

The crab held for a reaction, a frozen grin on his face. The fairy closed her eyes and let out a long, exasperated sigh.

“Sister,” one of the other sprites said, coming closer and becoming fully visible too. “Please let me try to communicate with the crab.”

“Yes, sure, go right ahead,” the first fae said dismissively, turning and fluttering away while muttering under breath. “This crab sounds as dull as an adventurer…”

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The second one turned to Balthazar. She was slightly smaller, had pale pink short hair, and was wearing rosy petals around her body.

“Hello!” the crab greeted. “Nice to meet you, I’m—”

“Whatcha want?!” the fairy unceremoniously asked, placing her hands on her hips.

“Oh, uh…” the befuddled crab said. “Straight to the point, alright. I’m looking for someone. I came a long way to find him and I was hoping you could point me in the right direction.”

“We ain’t tourist guides, shell-boy,” the tiny humanoid exclaimed in a high-pitched but impressively confident voice. “You should turn around and buzz off before we treat you like we would a human, know what I'm sayin’?”

The fairy turned around and started flying away sassily with her nose up and arms crossed.

“Please, I’ve come too far to turn around now!” Balthazar hurriedly said as her glow started disappearing in the darkness.

“Sounds like a you problem,” she replied without turning around.

“I’m trying to save my best friend!”

“Same thing every other adventurer on a quest says. It’s always a friend, a princess, or some villager’s pet.”

“If you could just tell me where to find a guy called Tweedus I’d be off and never bother you again!”

The glowing sprite suddenly stopped just as it was about to fully disappear between the trees.

“Hol’ up,” the fairy said as she flew back to look at the crab. “You know Tweedus?”

“Well… yes,” Balthazar replied with a shrug. “That’s why I’m trying to reach him.”

“Ah! Ha-ha! Why didn’tcha say so sooner?” said the fae as she slapped her own leg. “A friend of Tweedus is always welcome in our forest.”

“Wait, you know him too?” the confused merchant asked. “But I thought you fairies weren’t very fond of the races of men.”

“Sure, but Tweedus ain't a man.”

“He’s not?!”

“No,” the fairy said, looking at the crab like he was the crazy one. “Tweedus is a wizard.”

Balthazar stared at the tiny creature with his mouth half open for a moment.

“But that’s not… He’s… You know what? Never mind that. If you know him then you must know how I could get to his home, right?”

“Yep!” said the fluttering sprite.

“Alright, great!” the enthusiastic merchant said.

A few seconds passed with no sound made other than the idle buzzing of fairy wings in the air.

“So…” Balthazar eventually said. “Are you going to tell me how to find him?”

“Nope!”

The crab dropped his shell in frustration as he pinched the space between his eyestalks.

“Any particular reason why?”

“Sure,” the pink-haired fairy said.

“That reason being…”

“You haven’t paid us tribute. What, ya think we runnin’ a charity here, salty boy?”

“Of course…” the annoyed crustacean muttered as he pulled the strings of his coin bag open. “You’re lucky this is so important and I don’t have time to haggle. How much do you—”

“Ewwww! Nah, nah!” the fairy exclaimed as she saw the shiny gold coins Balthazar was pulling from his bag. “We don’t want no stinking human money!”

“What do you want then, fairy?!” said the merchant, feeling at his wit’s end.

“We take tribute in the form of gifts, treasure, trinkets. Actually valuable stuff, not something like… gold. Ew. And the name is Rada, so you’d better start using it, big guy.”

“Alright, fine, fai… Rada,” Balthazar said, throwing his pincers up in agreement. “A trade of goods. I can work with that. No problem. I’m a merchant after all.”

Pulling his Backpack of Holding down, he started rummaging through it as the other glowing fairies all around him buzzed and chattered with curiosity.

“I’m sure I’ve got something here that will do it for you. What about a… potion!”

The crab pulled a bottle of bright liquid from the bag, holding it up for everyone to see.

“Blah!” said Rada. “Human poison! We don’t want that crap anywhere near us.”

“Fine, fine. Picky clients,” the traveling merchant mumbled, shoving the bottle back in his backpack and searching for something else. “Maybe a… butter knife? You guys could probably use it as a javelin or something.”

The fairy looked at the dull knife the crab was holding with her arms crossed and a disapproving scowl. “Filthy human tools.”

Balthazar rolled his eyestalks and returned to his rummaging.

“Some sandals? Uh… probably a size or two too big, now that I think about it. Jewelry? No, human-made garbage, blah, blah, blah. Maybe I could offer… wait, no, not giving you any of my pastries. Even I have my limits. ”

The merchant kept on searching as the fae watched him pull and toss aside items from his magical backpack.

“An inkpot?”

“No.”

“A stick vaguely shaped like a sword?”

“Nope.”

“What about…” The crab dipped his eyestalks into the bag. “Why the hell do I have a chair in here?!”

He continued pulling item after item with growing frustration as nothing seemed to convince the fairy. Cutlery, lightly used napkins, a fingerless glove, a palmless glove, an unexplainable amount of corks, a witch’s wig…

“Wait!” Rada shouted, pointing at the last item the merchant tossed on the ground. “That right there!”

All the other fae floating around suddenly became much more agitated, buzzing with awe and excitement.

“This thing?” Balthazar asked, holding up the hairpiece with a cocked eyestalk.

A few paces behind, Druma leaned closer to Blue again as they continued watching the crab buzzing unintelligibly.

“Why boss keep evil witch hair?” he asked with a tinge of disgust on his face.

Once more, the drake shrugged with a weirded out expression.

“That is like… genuine hair from a witch, ain’t it?” Rada said with wide eyes.

The merchant glanced awkwardly at the wig held in his pincer. “Right… it… sure is!”

“Witch hair is, like, super valuable to us faefolk!” the rosy pixie said. “We would love it if you offered us a strand of this treasure of yours as tribute.”

Balthazar looked at the tiny, shiny eyes of the fairy and then at her buzzing sisters all around.

“A strand? Sure.” With a swift snip of his pincer, the crab cut a lock of black hair from Velvet’s wig. “Now can you please just tell me where Tweedus is?”

Rada received the small strand of hair into her arms with an elated smile and eyes that seemed on the verge of tears.

[Tribute accepted]

[You have reached level 23!]

[You have gained a boon: The Fairy’s Favor]

[When you need it most and expect it the least, the fairies will favor you with their good luck.]

The hell is that supposed to mean?!

“Yo, pinch meister,” the fairy called, snapping her minuscule fingers in front of the crab’s eyes. “Come with me. We’re gonna show you the way up to Tweedus.”

Balthazar’s eyestalks frowned with concern.

“The way… up?!”

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