Balthazar’s mouth twitched and mumbled something unintelligible as he slept. Deep within the crab’s shell, a dream played out in his mind. It was fuzzy and disjointed.
He was by the shore of his pond, but there was no trading post. No shelves, tables, crates, or random junk either. He saw no one else around him, no goblin, no golem, nor signs of any humans.
His claws and shell were back to being their usual gray chitin, and he felt threatened, as if he was in danger.
In the dream, Balthazar looked up at the gloomy dark sky that seemed to herald an incoming storm, and he saw a mass of black dots descending from the clouds. They were birds. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them.
He felt agitated, but unable to move, as if his legs were stuck to the ground.
Paralyzed in his nightmare, the increasingly panicked crustacean looked around for any form of help he could find, but there was nothing.
The creatures were all identical, practically indistinguishable from one another, as if reflections from one single source, diving at him with great speed. Yet, they also appeared to take an excruciatingly long time to reach him, as if every time he looked at them again, they were further up and back to the start of their descent, repeating a torturous loop of impending doom the crab could not escape.
Balthazar wasn’t even sure what would happen once they finally got to him. No bird had ever actually physically harmed him. Despite that, they always brought a feeling of danger within, of a threat, that they were a bad omen.
He just wanted out of there, but his legs wouldn’t budge, and there was nothing he could do but watch.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a loud screech echoed around him. Looking back up at the approaching flocks of dark birds, he saw a larger blue figure dash through the air among them.
“No, get away, they’re dangerous!” Balthazar tried shouting, but no sound escaped his mouth.
Gazing in horror at the scene above, surprise replaced fear, as the winged lizard started shooting jets of fire out of its mouth, burning away several of the birds with each exhale.
“Yes!” the crab shouted, thrusting a victorious pincer to the sky, his voice audible once again.
Soon the few birds that remained dispersed, flying away in a frenzied retreat, leaving the drake as the sole ruler of the sky above the pond.
Still unable to move, Balthazar continued celebrating the avian defeat he had just witnessed, when a set of words appeared in front of his vision, blurry and hazy.
[Add Blue to your Party?]
[Yes | No]
He looked past the letters at the majestic blue creature hovering above, flapping her golden wings as it looked down at him.
And then his dream slowly began slipping away.
***
The sun was already fully above the horizon and morning had begun by the time the crab woke up. Despite having done it all his life, sleeping in the sand again felt odd, but he couldn’t bring himself to move the baby drake off his pillow after she had fallen asleep on it the previous evening, so he allowed her to rest there for the night. But only that once, definitely a one-time thing.
Shaking off the sand on his shell, Balthazar felt groggy and slightly dazed. He couldn’t tell if it was due to not being used to sleeping like that anymore, but his body felt as if he had spent the whole night in a state of tension, and he was unsure why.
Carefully approaching the entrance of his tent, he took care not to make any loud noises before checking in on the tiny drake left sleeping in there the previous night.
As he peered inside, his eye stalks stood up when he realized the purple cushion was unoccupied.
Rushing inside, the crab looked frantically around and under everything within the small enclosed space for any signs of the baby, but found nothing.
The creature was not inside the empty jar of cookies, or in the basket full of scones, not even hiding behind the plate of pie. He lifted the heavy wooden cover serving as a floor that disguised the hole underneath, but in there all he saw was the same old scroll and his other belongings, no signs of any blue being.
It had only been a few hours, and he had already managed to lose the baby. He began wondering why he had ever agreed to look after it in the first place. Who would think a crustacean would be a good fit to look after a newborn?
His was the story of a merchant crab, not a nanny crab.
A knot formed in his throat as he imagined Madeleine’s reaction once she found out. He could lose his supply of pastries!
Balthazar rushed out of the tent and looked around. Druma was on the other side of the bridge, already working on hammering nails to some wood. Bouldy was hunched over the water, trailing the tip of his finger over the water as he played with the fish.
“Oh no, no, no,” the crab said, with increasing worry. “Where could it have gone, damn it?”
Hearing the crisp sound of a twig breaking, Balthazar looked up just in time to see a blue blur dropping from a tree branch and dive towards him.
With a quick yelp and a jump back, the startled merchant avoided the landing drake.
Except this no longer looked like the same creature as the day before. It had grown, now being nearly the same size as a large dog, its scales a deeper shade of blue that resembled the color of a sapphire, and the teeth that filled its mouth were much sharper.
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“How the hell…”
On a hunch, Balthazar tried looking at it through his monocle again.
[Level 16 Juvenile Drake]
“But why did you—”
As if a pocket of water inside his shell had just popped, a quick hint of a memory washed over him, only partial, but enough to make him recall something he wasn’t sure was a dream, or just his imagination playing tricks.
Pulling up his status page, he checked his party.
[Status]
[Name: Balthazar] [Race: Crab] [Class: Adept Merchant] [Level: 10]
[Attributes]
[Strength: 3] [Agility: 2] [Intelligence: 20]
[Skills]
[Charisma: S(+5)] [Medium Armor: A] [Speech: B] [Fishing: C] [Slashing Weapons: C] [Reading: B] [Imbuing: C]
[Party Members]
[Name: Druma] [Race: Goblin] [Class: None] [Level: 3]
[Health: 60/60]
[Attributes]
[Strength: 2] [Agility: 4] [Intelligence: 2(+2)]
[Name: Bouldy] [Race: Stone Golem] [Class: None] [Level: 30]
[Health: 500/500]
[Attributes]
[Strength: 40] [Agility: 3] [Intelligence: 1]
[Name: Blue] [Race: Drake] [Class: None] [Level: 16]
[Health: 150/150]
[Attributes]
[Strength: 8] [Agility: 22] [Intelligence: 5]
“Oh…”
Balthazar looked past the wall of text in front of his eyes, at the drake standing in front of him, winged talons on the ground, head low, black pupils narrow, as if studying him.
It seemed he had added the creature to his party without meaning to. Or did he? He couldn’t tell for sure.
And why had it suddenly grown to a full juvenile overnight? Intuition told him it must have been the strange system’s hand at play there, as usual. It couldn’t seem to make sense of the baby drake the previous day, but now it identified it just fine. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
There sure didn’t seem to be anything that the contrived system couldn’t do.
Except cooperate with Balthazar when he needed it to.
But the fact was, the drake was now in his party, and he couldn’t decide how to feel about it.
If someone had suggested him having a winged creature in his party just a few days ago, he would have laughed at them. The crab detested birds with a passion.
But a drake was not a bird.
Sure, it had wings, but similarities more or less ended there. And he couldn’t help but feel the idea of having a winged menace of his own growing on him.
If this creature had technically been hatched by him, was his responsibility, and now a member of his party, why not use that to his advantage?
He had to always put up with the feathery devils taunting him from high up, their ability to fly preventing the crab from giving them a piece of his mind, but now, with this, they wouldn’t be safe anymore, the tables would turn. Fiery justice could finally come down on them!
Balthazar began chuckling under his breath with mischievous intentions rising within him.
Blue frowned as she looked at him in his slightly manic trance.
“Don’t worry, girl,” the crab said, extending a pincer towards her head for some petting, “I think you and I are going to get along just fine.”
With a snarl, the drake snapped her jaw at his pincer in warning.
“Or maybe not?!” Balthazar quickly said, pulling his pincer back. “Why are you being so aggressive? I thought you were supposed to see me as some kind of parental figure!”
Letting out a small cloud of steam through her nostrils, Blue turned around and flapped her wings, creating a gust of wind that blew sand all over Balthazar’s face as she took flight.
“Pfah!” the displeased crab yelled, spitting out the grains of sand in his mouth. “What are you doing?! Get back down here!”
The creature circled in the air for a moment and then landed on a thick branch of the tree at the center of the pond. Scanning her surroundings as if looking for something, she let out a loud screech that spelled dissatisfaction.
“What’s wrong with you?” Balthazar asked, more to himself than to anyone else. “Giving me a lot of attitude for someone born just yesterday.”
He looked at her, and how she seemed to search for something in the area. And then the realization hit him.
“Of course! You must be hungry! I should have probably thought about that.”
Skittering across the bridge, the crab approached the goblin, who was holding the brim of his wizard hat as he looked up at the source of all the screeching.
“Boss,” Druma said, “is big bird angry?”
“No, just hungry,” Balthazar responded. “Or at least I think that’s what it is. And don’t call it a bird. That’s derogatory.”
The goblin squinted his eyes at the crab in slight confusion.
“Either way, I want you to drop whatever you are doing and get some wood and rope. I’ll need you to go outside and set some small traps around the grass outside the forest, for small prey, to feed Blue. You can do that, right?”
“Yes, yes, boss,” Druma said, nodding vigorously.
Gathering some planks, a small box, nails, and a few coils of rope, the goblin set off, scampering his way out onto the road.
Whatever had happened to the drake while Balthazar was still asleep had made her grow from a small newborn baby and into a juvenile drake in a matter of just hours. Going through all that without having a single meal would leave anyone grumpy.
Balthazar would know, he hadn’t even had his breakfast yet, and he was already feeling a sour mood growing in him. Or perhaps that was being caused by his ward’s attitude.
The little thing was just born and the crab already had a feeling she was going to be a handful. Which would be an issue, both because he had no actual hands, and because patience was not his strongest suit.
Up above, Blue continued scanning the horizon from atop the tree, snarling and occasionally letting out another loud screech, as if demanding something. Her eyes landed on the crab, with pupils narrow, and she shrieked directly at him.
Balthazar gulped and tried to recall whether the bestiary mentioned anything about drakes eating seafood.
“Druma better come back with something for her to eat soon, because I don’t want to train that thing while she’s on an empty stomach.”