"Any day, your last day might come. You can't hide, you can't run?" Finley said. "It's a pretty terrible slogan. But if that's what you want to run with, we can do that."

"What I'm trying to get across here is that the zombies could easily spill over to here. Probably the only reason that they haven't is because we destroyed the death knight that wielded the gate card."

"And we're also assuming that none of their powers are the same as the others," Finley said, putting the sign up reluctantly. The lettering was fine, but he wasn't sure that he agreed with the message. He didn't like a hard sell.

Finley and Valerie, along with a few people that needed some shore leave were heading into Yellow Tail. The first order business was to establish contact and see about buying some land or renting a space. This way they could have a physical location for their shenanigans.

Finley wasn't entirely sure with the way that Anthony was going about this, but the two had been together for a while. Eventually someone was going to wonder why an elf, a dwarf and a human were all working together. Sure, there were commingled communities where there was a melting pot of races, but aside from the Tinkers, they were few and far between.

The mostly wooden one- and two-story homes poked over the outer wall of the city. Thick bamboo mixed with large green leaves to provide the roofing.

Inland, there was a strong tree coverage as most of the jungle towered over the outer walls. Several city blocks of distance were between the walls and the jungle, the space having been clear cut long before. Deep grooves and scratch marks on the reinforced wood let Finley know to not let his guard down. There was a singular large tree in the center of town that shaded a great mass.

As they got closer to the docks, a lizard folk guard waved. Gigi bleated from behind Finley, because of course she did.

"Steady girl," he said. "We don't need to give away our secrets right now."

In his pack, he carried a set of clothes for her. They had decided to let her stay and go for him until she was needed. No one would suspect her of being a double agent. And she might be able to get some good information. However, there was another thing that he hadn't considered.

"How much for the goat?" The guard asked.

"She's not for sale. Hard pass," Finley said.

"That's rather unfortunate."

The yellow tailed guard was in full battle garb, which turned out to be a loincloth and a spear. Finley still wasn't sure how to tell the difference between male and female lizards, absent the mammarys. He hoped to figure out soon.

"You are sure that we can't sell her, Finley?" Valerie said.

Gigi bleated louder.

The guard raised a scaly eyebrow.

"Did that goat just call you a dirty name?" he said. "Because that sort of sounded like-"

"Do we need to show any papers to get in?" Finley said.

"Uh, no but..."

The guard looked lost.

"Then may we enter?" Valerie said.

"Uh yes. Wait, apologies, where are the five of you coming from?" he said. "I've had my eye on the ocean for a while and you didn't dock here so? I would have noticed and elf, a dwarf, three humans and..."

Gigi bleated loudly.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! I swear!" He said, clutching his spear.

Having never seen a goat intimidating a city guard, Finley was impressed at what she could do with so little.

"Gigi, it's okay. He is at work. He didn't mean anything by that," Finley said.

"Please don't turn the lizard folk into a steak," Valerie said, patting the pygmy goats’ horns.

The guards’ eyes went wide.

"Right this way. Please check in with the...guild? Are you all adventurers?" he said.

"No, we are a diplomatic envoy from the Iranian Kingdom," Valerie said. "Pardon my not knowing this, but is there an Irumian delegation here? Or any dwarves?"

"There's a small dwarf neighborhood by new town. That's on the jungle side," he said. "I don't know about official delegations. I can direct you to the captain of the watch, and she can get you an audience with the chief."

"Please do," Valerie said.

They left with a few directions.

----------------------------------------

"I can just set up anywhere?" Finley said.

"So long as you can pay the tribe what you owe them," the small lizard folk said.

Before they went to see the captain of the guard, or the chief, they spent some time at the market. It was mostly the difficult customers and lizard folk vendors, though there was the single elf and two dwarves selling things in the back. Finley made a note to talk to them at the end, but first it was going to talk to all the lizard folks that he could. Thankfully most of them spoke common, as it was the trading tongue.

One offered a common language card in trade, which Finley accepted. He had grabbed five of them when prompted and all it cost was one uncommon card.

"But again, I have to pay someone before I sell anything?" he said. "Or a percentage? What is keeping me from opening a shop outside Yellow Tail?"

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Probably the dinosaurs?"

Brianna took that moment to interject.

"I know that I'm hearing this wrong. Did you just say terrible lizard?" she said.

"Terrible lizard, dinosaur, whatever you call them. They're what keep us inside the tribe’s area. No one is stopping you from setting up shop outside, but then you won't have the protection of the tribe. They're also a major part of our trade. My mother's mother grew up on dinosaur meet and so do I."

"But like, large? Maybe feathered? Eats enlightened beings our size?" Brianna said.

"Should I be worried about this?" Finley said. "I feel like I should be worried about this if you're mentioning it again."

The lizard folk chuckled.

"Of course! You should be worried about it! No one wants to be eaten."

Gigi bleated contempt, before coming to the side of Brianna.

"Oh! How much for the goat?" He asked, looking closely.

"She's not for sale," Brianna and Valerie said.

"If you are going to cook her, let me know because those haunches..."

Gigi bleated surprise and scrambled to between Finley’s legs. He gave her a knowing pat.

"There's a good girl," he said. "They don't mean it."

"I think we've gotten all we need here," Valerie said. "How about we leave Mister-"

"Mister Tally," the small lizard folk said.

"How about we leave Mister Tally before Gigi causes another incident."

Mister Tally gulped.

They made their way over to the center of the market. Then they found the stand that was being run by an elf. The elf in question, a tall and lanky fellow, ran a card shop. His variety was small, but he made up for it in volume. He looked intently at Finley. Valerie couldn't help but stare at the tall blonde elf, which was even more unnerving.

"Finley of the Tinkers," he said, holding out his hand.

"Tasha of the wood elves," he said. "So good to see another brother of the leaf, and so far from home. What brings you to these lands?"

Finley remembered that he was going to have to give the news. Either he would, or someone else would. He girded his conviction.

"Sunderland is a night inhospitable area," Valerie said. "My buyer here is looking for some quiet life. Things up north have been calamitous of late."

The elf paused to turn to Valerie.

"Calamitous? How so?"

"You might want to sit down for this," she said.

She explained the situation in Noveria. Then Tasha called the dwarves in the next stall over, and they asked questions. Then they sat down and closed their booths for the day.

Finley took that time to get Gigi her clothes and she turned into her wild shaped dwarf form. Valerie had her explain it.

The whole time he was kicking himself. He didn't know how to tell them about the bad news, and it stuck in his craw a little bit.

He felt responsible for the events, despite having nothing to do with the cause. They still didn't know the cause. Heck, they still didn't know where the legion was, but this seemed like the wrong time to ask the five dwarves that had crowded around Valerie and Gigi.

He knew that it was the wrong time to even ask where the legion was, so he just stood in the background as Valerie and Gigi went over their stories.

The tears flowed freely. Finley wished that he could say that it was going to be alright, but he couldn't know that. There was only today and surviving to establish a safe area there. Winter would end eventually, and then they could fully embrace Anthony's campaign.

"Finley?" The girls voice said, breaking him out of his navel gazing.

"Oh? What? Sorry, what did I miss?" he said.

Gigi held his hand.

"Are you alright?" She asked, drawing him in close. Their height difference made it, so she came up to his chest. Despite this, her strength was palpable. He could feel her holding back.

"The... I choked there. I didn't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything. This isn't your fault. We're not... We don't blame you for this. You shouldn't have to explain the news about how their families all died. That's not your problem. We can tell them. You?" She smiled. "Just keep running the show from the background."

He wept.

"I just wanted to tell them that it would be okay and-I can't even do that because it won't be okay. It's never going to be enough."

She pulled him in closer, waving off the rest of the group, still in discussion with the merchants.

Perhaps it was telling that a lifelong merchant would just close shop to hear about a tragedy. It said a lot that despite meeting five dwarves, Finley didn't even know what they sold. He knew that they were merchants and that they spent their time in this market, but they had all closed.

The group, closed very early for that day and brought them back to Tasha's house. There, Valerie explained what they had seen, from her parents turning to the events on the Quiet Sea.

It was well past lunchtime when food was brought around. In quick order, Finley felt like he had eaten his body weight in steak, to say nothing of the tea.

"This has to be the best reception that we could imagine," he said to Gigi. "We landed and we met some friendly souls. Sad that we had to give them this talk before, but the news from the homeland was important."

"It was necessary. We couldn't have not let them know. Especially if they were asking about it. Finley, you're the last Tinker. Rather you were the Tinker King until you started making some of us Tinkers. I'm still waiting for my card by the way."

She nudged him.

"Oh, your card? You'll get it soon."

"You're usually so lively and full of life. This whole depressive thing doesn't really feel like you."

He’d been cooped up in a boat for a long time. This was now going well.

He got uncomfortable with the Gigi and Valerie. He was not being pushed inside of the ship. All he was doing was making more cards. He needed a day like these where he met with a lot of new people to expand his horizons and work on himself.

In the end, the only person he had to blame was himself. He would have thought if he had thought what he should have. Thought, he would have predicted this. People were going to want to know about the news. He was going to want to have to tell them. And if his self-preservation kicked in, then he would let the lady dwarves handle it.

Heck, Valerie was a queen. In training, of course, but for all intents and purposes she was going to be one.

She just needed a few more subjects.

---

Tumble and Fen swam up on the side of the ship. Someone had added mesh lining around it, I'm clamping that lighting into a harness. Neither one had ever seen that exact set of the four. The two amphibious lizard folk decided that they were going to pause there for a for some reason, as strange to the ship did not want to park the boat out of the docks with the rest of the ships.

This was fine as it made it easier for them to steal from them. However, once they climbed up the side of the ship taking their bearings and decided to pop over.

Something stopped them. Neither one wanted to continue moving up. That was just something in the air that smelt off to them. Together, they both realized that perhaps this wasn't the best day for them to go through their lives. There was another loot to be had, and other dinosaurs that they could kill.

On top of the deck, a beast in Black sat there observing them. When they looked down, it had between five and seven shadows floating around it, just pulling light from the ambient air. It also appeared to have prehensile hands somewhere.

Both Iizard folk realize that for once our lives, they did not want to tangle with what it had to be an overpowered mob boss.

Tumble try to carry on as if nothing was happening. But internally, he screamed. And was not his best work. And now he's going to convince all the planters that the water and this continent worked a lot better.

The Eldritch beasts stared them down on blinking. Both now seriously considered their Fates. There was a small chance that they might end up being fed to the cat. Neither one wanted that.

They sat there for a long time, trying to get out of the courage to head up and over. After all? How bad could it be. It couldn't be that bad if the boat was still floating in the water.

“Do you ever get the feeling like we're going to be the part of a joke here?” He said, appropriately delivering the gravitas that it needed.

That was when the gravitas that they didn't need arrived in the form of a very angry human. But with lizard folk decided that this was a time to cut sling load and get out. That was when the net trap sprung.