By the time I finish making Moleman’s birthday gift, it’s five minutes to his birthday and he has knocked on the door several times asking to be let inside. But perfection is hard-won, and I can say with certainty that I am now a victor. Of all the leathers I’ve tanned, this is the best. Of all the items I’ve crafted, this is the best. In short, this single leather glove, crafted using dragonhide I can’t even recall snatching, which I’ve tanned and softened myself, is perfect. I’ve made a few gloves under Fr. Moonlight’s care, but this is the best one I’ve made so far. The leather is soft like fresh skin, the dragontooth button for the back has been intricately carved to look like a curled-up dragon, and the color itself is a nice light blue.

He’s gonna love it. I’m sure of it. And using a bit of fancy fabric from a dress that was in my inventory, I’ve successfully made a little bag for it, too. Of course, it would probably have looked best in a box of some sort, but carpentry has never been my forte. Not that I used to be much for sewing, either. Hm… Well, if I could learn sewing, why not woodworking?

…Not right now, though. At the moment, I need to let Moleman back into our room, which I do with a cheeky smile. He doesn’t look too happy to see me. As a matter of fact, he looks really tired. “Happy birthday!” I tell him, to lighten the mood somewhat.

He doesn’t smile. “Thanks.” Craning his neck a little, he takes a look in the room. However, I cleaned up after myself, so there are no clues to infer the nature of my gift from. “Right, good,” I hear him mumble under his breath. He turns back to me, and… Okay, yeah, he’s in a bad mood. I can tell instantly. “I appreciate making a gift and all, but couldn’t you have done this earlier? I’ve explained before that sleep is important to me, and you know how early we have to get up tomorrow. This really isn’t…” He sighs and moves past me into the room. “We have a lot of people depending on us.”

“Oh. Y—yeah, of course.” My shoulders fall slightly. “Sorry. I tend to procrastinate sometimes, but…” That’s no excuse. “I should have thought ahead. You’re right.”

His expression softens. “Thank you.” Which is good to hear and all, but there’s still something bothering him. Even more so, he’s still in a bad mood. If he goes to bed like this, he’ll wake up in a bad mood, and then he’ll have to spend his entire birthday in a bad mood! I absolutely can’t let that happen.

While Moleman turns his back on me to unbutton his vest, I pull the birthday gift out of my inventory. A small blue pouch with a pink bow. I’m not sure where I learned how to make such pretty bows, but it really pulls together the overall design. With the present in hand, I stride up to Moleman’s back, holding it out. “Happy birthday, Moleman!”

“You already—” but once he’s turned around, he sees what’s in my hand. “What is…?” He blinks at it, his sleep-deprived mind soon making the connection. “Oh! It’s… Are you giving it now? But it isn’t—”

“It is,” I say slyly.

He doesn’t seem entirely content with my answer. “Well, sure, but… Wouldn’t you rather give this at the party?”

“It’s my gift, and I’ll give it whenever and however I please,” I say, grabbing his one hand and shoving the soft package into it. While he’s reeling from the full-frontal assault, I smile teasingly. “So? Aren’t you going to open it?”

His expression shifts in a matter of moments, moving from clear reluctance all the way to modest resignation. He knows there’s no refusing this gift. Especially since I’ve spent the past few hours working on it. Rejecting my gift is no longer socially acceptable, and so he gives a weak chuckle, moves over to the bed and takes a seat. I follow along, sitting right next to him as his tired hand moves to undo the bow and open the little satchel. He pulls out the little glove. He stares at it for a moment. Then, he lays it down on his lap before searching the satchel again.

“Ah, no, no,” I say, “that’s it. There’s only one.”

“There’s only one?”

“Yup. ‘Cause you only have one arm!”

“I only have one usable one, but I still have the other arm, so it’s not like a full pair of gloves would’ve been superfluous or anything.”

Hm. Uh. Uhhh… Oh. Oh, wait, yeah, he’s right. “Hmmmm…” I hum aloud. “Well, it’s fine. Put it on, put it on!”

He doesn’t seem too excited about it, but he still lays the glove flat on his thigh before carefully slipping his one hand inside, pushing his hand against his leg to fully thread it on. Then he notices the button on the back, which is pretty much necessary for ensuring the glove fits properly. He turns to me. “I am physically incapable of buttoning this. You do know that, right?”

My mind goes blank. Ah. Uh…

I reach out, grab his hand, and carefully do the button. Fits like a glove! Damn, what a relief. Smiling, I lean out again. “What are friends for?”

He slowly pulls his hand back, looking at the front and back of the glove, at the button. But rather than happy, he looks confused. Downright suspicious. “It fits really well.”

“Of course it does. I—”

“And the material…”

“Dragonskin. Not sure where—”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“The quality and make of this thing is really staggering.”

I wipe at my nose to hide my bashful smile. “Thank you. It took—”

“Where did you get this?” His face suddenly turns to me. There’s something new and dark in his eye. “You couldn’t have afforded this. Did you hurt someone? I’m sure we can put it right, or at least pay their family. Who—”

“I made it,” I say. It’s a little hard to retain the smile on my face. “I measured your hand while you were sleeping, and then I made that glove. For you.” I smile at the way his body relaxes. “Nobody got hurt.” A chuckle leaves my lips. “I mean, would I really do that? Hurt someone, all for a glove? No matter how fancy the glove, I wouldn’t do something like that.”

His gaze falls to his lap. To the glove adorning his hand. He flexes it once, twice, and then buries his head in his hand. “Shit. Shit,” he hisses as his hand clenches into a fist. “What the hell is wrong with me…?” Leaning back out again, he stares down at his open palm. At the light blue glove. “Over a glove. A dumb little…” He shakes his head. “No. No, that’s not…” He looks at me. I don’t like it, but the first thought that pops into my head is that for once, maybe for the first time, he looks pathetic. “That’s not what I meant. This glove, it isn’t—”

“I know,” I say easily. I pat him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I understand what you meant.”

“Thank you, I…” His lips twist into a frown, but then, just as quickly, quirk up into a smile that doesn’t look right on him. He chuckles bitterly and something manic and wild usurps his face. “You certainly think more of me than I do of you! What a great friend I am, huh?”

I keep my smile on my face. Nice and even. Just like he’s done for me, so many times. “Yeah, you are.”

He gives a little hiccup, and his face falls again to look at his lap. At the glove. I follow his gaze to it. It really is a nice glove. “Why can’t I just…” I can’t quite catch the rest of what he says as he devolves into grumblings about everything he’s done wrong, but it seems to be about how he’s the worst person on Earth and has no right to try to teach me anything when he’s so flawed himself. If I wanted to be annoyed, I could mention that we aren’t technically on Earth, so he can’t be the worst person there. However, I’m more interested in being merely irritating at this moment.

So, ignoring his dumb muttering, I grab his gloved hand, hold it up to him, and ask in the most innocent tone I can muster, “So, what do you think?”

His REDdened, frantically moving eyes bounce between his gloved hand and my sweetly smiling face. He takes two, three breaths. More confused than anything, he says, “It’s… lovely?”

“And?”

“I… I really like the color. And it fits perfectly. It’s… you said it was dragonskin, which is…” He gulps weakly. “I read that dragonskin… one of the reasons it’s so expensive, aside from the obvious, is because it’s one of few materials you can cast magic wearing. So, it’s… I won’t have to take it off to do magic. I can wear it, always.” He turns his hand over to look at the back, at the intricately carved button. A brief look of worry passes over his face. “Did you…?”

“I carved it myself,” I say, nodding.

“It’s lovely,” he says. “The glove is… it’s wonderful. Thank you.” He almost looks as though he’s about to cry again. “I’ll cherish it.”

I break into a grin—a fully honest one. “You’d better! That thing took me, like, seven hours to make! Not counting the whole finding-material ordeal. But, yeah.” I pat him on the back again. “You’re welcome.”

And for almost a full minute, he doesn’t respond. He just sits there, staring at the glove, gently flexing his fingers. In the end, I grow tired of the silence, so I say something that’s been on my mind for a little while now.

“I don’t think you should invite the mayor to your birthday party,” I say. “Or any of the other aristocrats.” He looks at me like I suggested to host the party on Venus. But this piece has to be said, and if he won’t, then I will. “I mean, you hate them, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say—”

“Okay, maybe not hate, but if you had the choice, you’d rather hang out with alligators.” To that, he says nothing. “So, like… why make a big deal out of this? I know this is meant to serve as a combined your-birthday-and-Christmas party since you’re apparently born on the same day as our Lord Jesus Christ, but that’s no reason to have people you don’t like in attendance. You already know that they’ll spend the whole evening either complaining that you chose to serve human food or that you only served goblin food. They’ll try to lobby you, push you into politics, belittle your human friends for their language… It’ll be dreadful. So, skip ‘em. Seriously.”

“I can’t just—”

“You can,” I say, “and you really should. The plague going on is one thing, but having to grovel before a bunch of nobles? No wonder you’re feeling like this.” Thankfully, he doesn’t question what I mean by that last part.

He falls silent for a few seconds. I’m tempted to speak, but I can tell that he needs the silence to think. After a few moments, he turns to me again. “You know what? You’re right. The mayor won’t like me canceling the day before, but…”

“To hell with him!”

He chuckles. “To heck with him. Yeah. To heck with the lot of them!”

I laugh, and he does too. We look at each other, smiling.

“Thanks, Kitty,” he says. “What would I do without you?”

I hum. “Solve world hunger?”

“I doubt that,” he says. But we’re both smiling again, and now the night is good.

But even when things have turned for the better, we do still need to sleep. Or, at least, Moleman does. So I help him remove the glove, make a silly joke about how I can get him the other glove for Christmas, and then we head to bed. A good end to a fairly good day.

Soon, Moleman is asleep, and once I’m certain that he’s in a deep enough sleep, I head out. One time, he caught me while I was heading out, but that time I had actually been headed to the library for some reading, so I’d been able to stave off suspicion. Now is a bit different.

Clad in my BLACK panther hide, I effortlessly slip out of the mayor’s estate, fully unseen and unknown. Since the curfew has been lifted, I pause on the way to dress in a goblin disguise. But I need to be careful. People are still a bit antsy, not that they have any reason to fear me in particular anymore.

It only takes about twenty minutes to reach the little shack I’ve designated for this task, the road which I took giving me ample time to pick up a few diseased rats to bring along. Lucky me, I even found a diseased corpse in an alley! Of course, I had to dissect it or it wouldn’t fit into my inventory, but still a good find.

Once I arrive, my little friends are more than happy to receive, squeaking and screeching with joy. If it hadn’t been for my excellent night vision, I’m sure the sight of a few thousand rats all piled atop each other in the far end of the shack, squirming and wriggling and scurrying over each other in an attempt to get at the tributes I’m throwing at them would’ve been a strange sight indeed. Even with night vision, they still look more like gray balloons tied together with worms than anything with a spine and whiskers. Based on my most recent calculations, there should be approximately four thousand rats in here. At the moment, terrified by my consciously exuded killing intent, they’re all squished up in one corner. This is done for a reason.

See, with them all removed from the floor, it exposes the sicklier rats—the ones partially or fully paralyzed—that is, in the second or third stage. Those who are too sick to move are useless, so I eat them and produce a few new, fresh rats. But the ones that are only semi-paralyzed go into my inventory.

Yes—that’s a discovery I’ve made recently. Unlike normal living beings, these rats—since they were made by my flesh and skill—are counted as part of ‘me’, which means that I can put them whole and alive into my inventory. Neat, huh?

Anyways, I tear apart a few of the overly diseased rats and feed them to the rest of the horde. Then I use half of the corpse to create more rats and the other half to feed the ones that are already here.

When I leave the shack, I do so with a few dozen in my inventory. Over the course of the coming few hours, I move through the city, depositing them in waterways, homes, food pantries, kennels, orphanages… Any place that might need a touch of plague.

It’s highly effective.

<9 788 infected.>

Nice! I’ve been shooting for around 10k infected, which would be twenty per cent of the whole, but I’m starting to think closer to 20k, or even 25k might be a better bet. I mean, it shouldn’t be long until Moleman figures out some kind of vaccine or whatever, at which point it won’t matter how many are infected.

…I only hope it won’t be too soon. Really, if I got to choose… A few more weeks. That’s all I ask for.

No matter the price.