***

“Climb faster, Bruce!” Antoine commanded over the mercenary’s strained grunting. “I’m so close to finally reaching him.”

The muscular thug reached for the next protruding stone on the sheer rock wall, the light of the sun reflecting off his glistening bald head as thick beads of sweat ran down to his forehead. Strapped to his back by several ropes was a smaller man, barking orders while contributing with nothing to the climb but extra weight.

“He’s up there, I know it!” the disgraced guildmaster angrily exclaimed. “We can’t let him slip away! Faster!”

“Why don’t you climb yourself if you’re not happy with how fast I’m going?” the merc muttered between grinding teeth.

“Because I’m paying you,” Antoine replied with a caustic hiss.

He had no time or patience to put up with servants talking back. Not when he was so close to reaching his goal. The crab was close, he could feel it in his mustache.

After weeks chasing the creature’s trail all over the continent, the human merchant had finally caught up to him. He could not let him slip between his fingers because a stupid thug was slacking off on the job.

It had been days since a local on some backwater road told them he had recently seen a crab wearing a backpack walking toward the city of Marquessa. Antoine wasted no time heading that way, hot on his trail.

By the time they reached it, the locals were busy filling the streets with their celebrating and cheering for their mangoes. Chanting and drunkenly singing about “Marquessa’s Hero” who saved that year’s harvest. Likely just another idiotic adventurer who had completed some quest. Nothing the merchant cared about. All that mattered was finding Balthazar. Finding the damnable crustacean that ruined him.

Once Antoine and his goon managed to find a local still sober enough to string two words together, they learned that the crab had been spotted heading to the docks. But by the time they got there, the ship he was on had already sailed.

After pushing through a crowd of workers that were busy rescuing several people who had fallen into the water for whatever reason the merchant could not give less of a rat’s tail about, he started asking where that boat was headed.

It didn’t take long or too many gold coins to learn from one of the locals that the ship belonged to some retired captain and that it was sailing toward some nearby cliffs off the coast to the north.

What the crafty crab wanted from such dangerous lands, Antoine did not know, but so long as he did not perish there before the former guildmaster could get his vindication, it did not matter.

“Stop bouncing me so much!” the merchant said, his short legs dangling wildly as he complained.

Bruce groaned, muttering something unintelligible under his breath as he kept slowly climbing the side of the mountain.

Antoine was no stranger to hiring from the underworld when he wanted things done quickly and quietly, which was why it didn’t take him long to source a band of local pirates docked at Marquessa’s bay. Their captain claimed he was one of very few that also knew the route to where the other ship was headed, and for a large enough sum of gold, he’d take the trip.

The merchant paid, digging into his quickly dwindling money reserves that he had managed to keep hidden from the authorities back in Ardville. If it meant he’d get the crab, no price was too high. He would have his revenge, even if it cost him his very last coin. That was all that mattered to the merchant lord now.

“Hey… oof… How come we didn’t have to deal with any fairies on the way here?” Bruce asked as he pulled their weight up past another row of rocks. “Every corsair on that ship kept telling me we’d get swarmed by them the moment they sensed humans setting foot within their forest.”

“Eau de Oignon,” Antoine replied.

“What?!” exclaimed the merc.

“It’s a special fragrance. A perfume, you uncultured lout! The pirate captain told me it was guaranteed to repel any fairies in a large radius around us. Apparently it’s a trick he learned from a local bandit chief long ago. Fae are extremely averse to its smell. Cost me another bag of gold, but it seems to have done the trick.”

“A bag of gold to smell like unwashed armpit… Great,” groaned the climbing thug. “And I’m the one who has to put up with it now.”

“Shut it, merc!” said the merchant. “You will put up with whatever I say because that’s what I’m paying you for.”

“Sure… Until you run out of coin,” Bruce muttered under his breath.

With one last strained grunt, the bodyguard finally reached the cave entrance on the side of the cliff, the one Antoine was certain he had seen a figure of a crab flying into earlier from the beach.

“Quickly now! He has to be down there somewhere!” the smaller man told the other as he freed himself from the ropes and made haste toward the tunnel ahead.

Bruce snarled quietly but followed, wiping the sweat off his shaved head with his hand.

As they delved deeper into the mountain, the pair started hearing something strange.

“Is that… some kind of music?!” the mercenary said.

“Hush! There’s movement up a—”

Before Antoine could finish his sentence, a blinding flash of light came from the end of the tunnel, followed by a powerful blast that threw both men back several paces.

***

Ruby stood amid the wreck that used to be Tweedus’s workshop just moments before, her exquisite scarlet robes covered in dust and a few purple feathers. Shreds of paper still swirled around the room as the enchantress quietly removed her tinted glasses, her twitching eyes fixed on a spot on the floor. After so long, she knew she had come closer to reaching the answers she desired now more than ever.

The other birdwatchers were scattered around the room, some still trying to regain their wits, others searching the remnants left in the wake of the high wizard’s spectacle.

“We’ve looked everywhere,” a girl’s shy voice said from nearby. “They… they’re really gone.”

“It doesn’t matter, Amber,” Ruby said placidly, without taking her eyes off the floor. “He was never going to join us. But we got what we came here for.”

The woman in red leaned down and picked up a large brass cog from the floor.

“Is… is that the missing ring?” the young birdwatcher asked, a tinge of amazement in her voice.

“Indeed,” replied the enchantress, her green eyes scanning the runes inscribed on the metal surface of the ring. “With this we can finally complete the Amil Astrolabe and find this world’s source. We are so close now.”

“Ruby,” a deep voice called.

Jasper walked into the chamber, dragging the bodies of two unconscious men behind him, both with glowing purple shackles around their wrists and ankles.

“I found these two snooping around outside,” the brown-skinned man said, letting go of their collars.

The enchantress walked around the remains of a still twitching coffee table with the brass cog in her hands and took a better look at the passed out intruders.

“I know this one,” she said, staring at the smaller of the two, who had a ridiculous pencil mustache. “He was a merchant in Ardville. Balthazar’s nemesis, in fact. Last I checked, he had escaped prison there.”

“You suppose he has been tracking the crab for some old-fashioned revenge?” said Jasper, crossing his arms.

“Perhaps,” the lady in red said. “Amber? If you would…”

Seeing her mentor gesture toward the unconscious man, the young birdwatcher hurried to his side. Reaching into her satchel, the girl retrieved an alchemy bottle filled with a green mixture and uncorked it before passing it under the former guildmaster’s nose.

“BLARGH!” Antoine yelled as he inhaled with a big sniff and his eyes snapped open.

“Easy,” Jasper said, placing a firm hand on the man’s shoulder to prevent him from standing up.

“What is the meaning of this?!” asked the merchant, his wide eyes darting from his magical restraints, to the adventurer standing over him, and then to the chaotic mess all around them. “Who are you? Some more of that crab’s cronies? Where is he?! I am sick of chasing that beast. Take me to him, now!”

Jasper looked down at him with a cocked eyebrow. “You’re giving out a lot of orders for someone in shackles.”

“You seem to have a lot of animosity toward Balthazar,” said Ruby, pulling the small man’s attention to her before he could get another word out.

“Of course I do!” Antoine spat with brazen spite and hatred to his tone. “He ruined my life. My career. Everything I’ve built in that stupid town. A stupid crab undid years of work. I need… I deserve to see him pay for it all. It’s you, you idiotic adventurers who can’t see you’re colluding with a monster! A creature that should be nothing more than fodder on the side of the road.”

The enchantress paused, looking into the angry man’s tiny, beady eyes with interest.

“Hmm, yes, I see.” She stood back straight and looked at her apprentice. “Amber, could you please prepare a cup of tea for our friend here? To soothe his nerves.”

“Tea?” said the mustached local. “About time someone starts treating me with due respect and proper manners!”

The young girl looked at her with no small amount of surprise on her face. “You… you mean a cup of tea as in…”

“Yes, dear. Exactly the tea you are thinking of,” the scarlet woman calmly stated, placing both hands behind her back.

“I like it with a few drops of lemon juice, and hold the sugar,” the pompous merchant said, still sitting on the floor with hands and feet tied together.

“Ruby,” said Jasper as he approached her. “A word, please?”

The two adventurers moved a few steps away amid the wreckage of Tweedus’s workshop, starting a conversation in hushed tones.

“Are you sure about this?” said the tall man. “We’ve never even tested the concoction on a local before. The effects are already hard to predict on adventurers, who knows what it could do to a native of this world.”

“Seems like a good opportunity to find out,” Ruby calmly said. “I was considering Balthazar before, but now it’s become clear we cannot count on his cooperation anymore. And you know the rules. A local who is not on our side is against us by definition.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Her old friend frowned with an expression of worry.

“Yes, I understand, but still. The consequences of giving a formula meant to awaken adventurers from a mind fog and stimulate their sense of self-awareness to a local are completely unpredictable. It could become… problematic.”

“I’m counting on it,” the woman calmly stated as she cleaned the lenses of her glasses on her sleeve. “We have a lot of work ahead of us once the astrolabe is ready. We cannot risk having a wildcard such as the crab getting in our way. Setting some trouble loose on this system to run interference while we work would be useful, and if at the same time it keeps Balthazar distracted, even better.”

Jasper looked at her with concern, but she knew he would still follow her lead regardless. He always did.

“Miss Ruby?” Amber called. “The… the tea is ready.”

“Excellent,” the red enchantress said, turning back to the fallen merchant as she put on her red-tinted spectacles. “Now, Mr. Antoine, let’s talk about what you desire most…”

***

“BLARGH!” Balthazar exclaimed as he jolted awake on the cold stone floor.

He was in a cave, but not the same one he remembered being in before his gastric mill was abruptly yanked from the inside and tossed through a swirling tornado of pure discomfort.

“Hey, you. You’re finally awake,” the blurry figure of a man wearing a wizard hat in front of the dizzy crab said. “You were trying to cross the border, right?”

“W-what?” the confounded crustacean said. “What border?!”

“Bah, never mind,” said the old wizard. “I always wanted to say that to someone as they regained consciousness. It was way funnier in my head.”

Balthazar looked around as his vision cleared up. He was in a cave, right by the entrance, with a forest outside and an orange sky above.

Druma was hunched over by a large rock, coughing and hurling out his breakfast. Blue sat nearby, doing her best to remain upright as her head and eyes spun around.

Meanwhile, Tweedus stood in front of the crab with both hands in his bathrobe’s pockets, looking perfectly normal.

Or at least as normal as an elderly man with deranged eyes and in purple plush slippers and a big wizard hat could look.

“What the hell happened?!” Balthazar asked, rubbing the top of his shell as he tried to stand back up without stumbling. “What did you do?”

“Teleportation spell!” the arcane wizard said with casual amusement.

“Wait, what?! You… teleported us out of there? Where are we now?”

“Great question!” Tweedus exclaimed.

The wizard stuck his finger in his mouth and then held it up in the air as if feeling the direction of the wind.

“Hmm…”

After a few seconds he rubbed his index and thumb together while looking closely at them, the corner of his mouth twisted in a pensive expression.

“Uh-huh…”

Sticking his crooked nose up, the old man started loudly sniffing the air around him.

“Ahh…”

Suddenly, he dropped his hands and knees to the ground and placed an ear against the dirt, listening close with one eye closed.

“Interesting…”

Balthazar stood rooted in place, dumbfounded as he watched the adventurer.

“Well?” the crab finally asked. “Where are we?”

Tweedus stood back up with a crazy smile on his bearded face. “No idea!”

Balthazar smacked the back of his pincer against his own face in exasperation.

“How the hell did you teleport us away but somehow didn’t know the target destination of the spell?!”

The high wizard shrugged. “Teleportation magic can be quite random and unpredictable. You’re supposed to concentrate on your destination for about an hour while channeling the spell. I just skipped the boring parts, though!”

“I…” the merchant said before pausing and rubbing his eyestalks. “Alright, so maybe just teleport us away again, but with a proper target destination this time?”

“Haha!” Tweedus laughed. “No can do, crabiru! That spell costs a buttload of mana to cast and has a one-week cooldown. I ain’t teleporting anywhere again for a while.”

“Great… just great,” said the frustrated crab. “Wait!”

Reaching into his backpack, Balthazar pulled out his map.

“This thing should show us where we are on the continent.”

“If we are still even on Mantell!” the wizard added with an unsettling amount of amusement.

“Right…” the crab said, moving his eyes back down to the map. “And hang on, won’t Ruby still be able to trace us through this thing?”

“Oh, give it here,” Tweedus said, taking the map and licking his thumb before rubbing it on the corner of the parchment. “There, all clear now.”

“Uh… thanks,” Balthazar hesitantly said, making sure to take the map back by the corner that didn’t have saliva smeared all over it.

Spreading it open, the merchant looked for where his current location’s dot was.

“There!” he exclaimed, pointing his pincer at a mountainous area on the map, close to the northwestern coast of the continent. “Holy tart, you sent us all the way back to the other side of Mantell!”

“Hmm… This place rings a few bells,” Tweedus said as he walked to the cave’s entrance and scanned the horizon with a hand over his eyes.

“Are you sure that’s not just tinnitus from the teleportation?” the crab said.

“Aha! Look, across the valley,” said the old man, pointing to a nearby mountain.

Balthazar stepped out of the cave and scanned the area too.

Down from the hill they were on, trees filled a large valley, and across that stood a huge rocky mountain. Squinting, the merchant spotted man-made pillars surrounding a large entryway at the base of the mountain.

“What is that?” he asked.

“That’s the entrance to the Golem Forge,” said Tweedus. “Looks like I still remembered where it was after all!”

Hope burst through the pool of frustrations filling the crab, making his eyestalks stand up. It was right there, what he had been seeking that whole time, a way to bring his best friend back to life. What he desired felt closer than ever now, just a valley’s distance away.

“That means we can go in there and restore Bouldy’s core, right?”

“Sure,” the wizard said, walking back into the cave, to the spot where they had arrived. “Just gotta follow the instructions on the golemancy guide and that core will be good as new.”

Kicking a few pieces of broken wood aside, the adventurer picked up his copy of Golemancy for Dunces off the floor and handed it to the crab as a panicked purple chicken shot out of the rubble and fluttered away.

“Boss, boss!” Druma called, skittering to the crab with his copy of Simple and Totally Safe Arcane Spells for Newbies that the wizard had gifted him in his hands. “Can boss keep Druma’s book safe too, please?”

The merchant stored both books in his magical backpack and then looked up at the wizard.

“I… should probably thank you. And also apologize.”

“What for?!” the grinning mad wizard said.

“We… I led those birdwatchers right into your home. I trusted that enchantress and she used me to get to you. I should have known better, but all I was focused on was finding you to figure out how to get my golem back.”

“Bah, nonsense!” Tweedus said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It can happen to the best of us. Ruby’s always been a cunning one anyway, so don’t feel too bad. You weren’t the first and you won’t be the last local she uses to get what she wants.”

“But what about the astrolabe ring? We left it behind. I’m sure they’ve found it by now.”

The old man chuckled. “So what? I was using that thing as a paperweight anyway. I don’t care. Let them have it. It’s not my problem anymore.”

Despite the wizard’s words, Balthazar still let out another sigh.

“What about your home? It was wrecked, and you probably can’t go back to it anymore. All because of me.”

“Pfft!” exclaimed the human. “I was bored with that place anyway. Good excuse to move and find a new abode for myself! I needed to get back on the field anyhow. Been hearing tales about an ancient hero called Semmel. Big legend from ages past, apparently. It’s bugging me, because I had never heard about him until recently, and I’ve been around for a long time, hah!”

His words faded into background noise as Balthazar stopped paying attention to his ramblings. Even after all the old man’s reassurances, one more thing was still bothering the crab.

“If… When I repair Bouldy’s core, how will I use it? The boulder I used to make him in the first place is gone, smashed to pieces under an avalanche.”

Tweedus twirled his white mustache with a finger, thinking.

“As far as I remember, the forge has plenty of raw materials to create golems with. You can just use the reforged core on them.”

“But…” the worried crustacean started. “The boulder I used was… special to me. It was part of what made Bouldy who he was. Wouldn’t me using the core on a different thing result in a golem that isn’t the friend I knew anymore?”

The wizard chuckled. Not the usual boisterous, lunatic laugh, but a more earnest and comforting one.

“Don’t worry. The core isn’t just a power source to the golem, it’s also its heart, and brains. And actually, it’s all other vital organs too, but that’s beside the point. The point is, who your golem friend was isn’t in the rock making up its body, it’s in the core—the heart and memory of the construct.”

A faint smile appeared on the crab’s face. “Really?”

“Yes,” said the old man, returning the smile. “So long as you repeat the same feelings and thoughts you used to create it the first time, you will get your friend back. You just gotta pour your heart into that core the same way you did before.” His face turned into a frown. “You do have one of those, right? I’m pretty bad at biology.”

Balthazar let out a small laugh, equal parts amusement and relief.

“Yes, as I’ve been made to see, it seems I do.”

“Great! Oh, and before I forget, you’re gonna need one of these.”

The wizard shoved one hand into the pocket of his bathrobe, rummaging deeper and deeper until half of his arm was gone inside it. After some mumbling and groaning, he finally pulled his hand out, revealing a brown hexagon about the size of his palm, like some kind of thick medallion made of rock.

“What is that?” asked the crab, examining the small glyphs etched onto the artifact.

“It’s a Golemancer’s Mark!” Tweedus answered. “Press the middle to activate it once you’re inside the halls of the forge. Without it the guardians of the forge will see you and your companions as intruders and attack you on sight. Trust me, you don’t want that. But hurry up once you’re in there, the mark expires after thirty minutes!”

“That sounds unnecessarily arbitrary…”

“Yep! That’s golemancers for ya!”

“Alright, but can’t you, I don’t know, give me a couple of extra Marks, just in case?”

“Pwah! Balderdash! Ridiculous!” exclaimed the wizard. “What makes you think I’d have any reason to carry more than one Golemancer’s Mark in the pocket of my bathrobe?!”

Balthazar stared slack jawed at the old man for a moment. “Why… why would you even be carrying one of those in there at all?”

“Bah! Just remember to be in and out of that place in less than half an hour, will ya?”

“Wait a minute,” the merchant suddenly exclaimed. “You’re not coming with us?”

“Me? Oh no, no, I’m not.”

“Oh… Why not?” the slightly disappointed crustacean said. Mad as the old wizard was, Balthazar would still feel more confident if they had him around while going into those apparently dangerous halls.

“Because this is something you need to do yourself, my crabby friend,” Tweedus said, placing both hands on what closest resembled shoulders on a crab’s shell. “Because this is your journey. Because you need to complete this task through your own means. And mostly because I don’t feel like going.”

“Oh…” the crab awkwardly muttered.

“Alright!” the old man said, suddenly clapping his hands together and making the merchant jump in place for fear of being teleported again. “This has been fun, but I think I’ll be going now. Gotta start looking for a new place to crash and start working on crafting myself a new vinyl collection!”

“Hey, wait!” the traveling crustacean said, suddenly remembering his other big reason to be out there. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a big red dragon and where it might live, would you?”

“Dragons?!” the slightly deaf mage repeated loudly. “I haven’t heard anything about dragons in ages! And the last one I heard about was a black-scaled one that wanted to eat the world or some other big dragon-ego nonsense. I completely forgot to ever check back on that. Wonder if he ever succeeded…” He paused, stroking his beard thoughtfully before suddenly shrugging. “Anyhow, can’t help ya!”

Bewildered by the bizarre adventurer as always, Balthazar turned in place and just waved as he watched the old wizard in fluffy slippers shove both hands in the pockets of his purple bathrobe and start walking down the hill. “Uh… bye, I guess.”

“Good luck out there, Bartholomew,” Tweedus shouted from down the path. “Toodle-oo!”

“It’s Baltha… Hmph, never mind,” the crab muttered, waving a dismissive pincer as he turned around.

His two companions stood by, ready and waiting for the crab’s next move.

Staring emptily at the ground, Balthazar took a moment to consider everything that had just happened. He sailed through dangerous waters on a ship, was airlifted by fairies to the side of a mountain, and then was abruptly teleported halfway across the continent by a crazy wizard. All in a day’s work.

Long gone were the days when the merchant would think watching an adventurer being sent into space by a giant was the craziest thing he would ever see.

After everything he had witnessed and been through during his time traveling, now he was truly convinced he had seen it all.

That was it.

Nothing could faze or surprise him anymore…

“Hello, Balthazar,” a voice behind the crab said.

The startled crustacean jumped forward, letting out a surprised yelp as he turned to face who had just spoken.

“What the hell are you doing here?!”