“To conclude,” Will said, “there’s just one more thing I want to do before we leave. I think we ought to have at least one more lifer on the team. So when we go to Sheerhome for supplies, I’m going to stop by the slave market.”

Bee’s brows shot up, and she regarded him with mild disbelief.

“Relax. I’m going to buy a slave to free them, obviously.”

“Oh.” She relaxed. “Could’ve said that.”

“And then they’ll be so grateful that they’ll work practically for free. Win-win.”

“Ah. Altruistic as always, babe.”

Mongrel was picking food out of his teeth, fingers muffling his speech. “You thinking Explorer?”

Will nodded.

“Good idea. We could use a replacement for Kiddo.”

“Who’s Kiddo?” Bee asked.

“Just the guy we had helping out before you,” Will explained. “Buck cut his head off, as it happens.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“Eh, he wasn’t around that long. You learn not to get too attached to freshies pretty quick.” He tapped the table with a knuckle. “Right, anyone want to come with me to the slave market tomorrow?” When no one replied, he continued. “Fair enough. I’ll go on my own, but in that case, you’ll have to be fine with whoever I pick.”

“What’s it matter?” Mongrel asked. “Explorers are all the same anyway. Go nuts.”

*****

The slave market was located just outside the city proper, a whole host of tents set up along a wide strip of shoreline, packed with shuffling, chain-laden slaves, silver-tongued slavers, and heavy-handed taskmasters, along with a smattering of potential buyers, mostly Artisans in need of cheap labor.

Will wandered among them, glancing at the lined-up slaves. All the ones with tags on their collars were for sale, with the tag’s color and imprint indicating their owner and Profession.

It was an overcast day, with angry gray clouds and an intermittent drizzle to really bring out the fun.

He avoided the high-end stock, in no particular mood to be upcharged, and headed towards the more… well-used offerings. He found himself at the tent of a slaver who had about twenty slaves lined up, their bruised and battered bodies telling him that they had been taken from the mines. Their skin was red with how hard they had been scrubbed to get them clean before putting them up for sale.

Will saw seven Explorers among them. Explorers made for good work slaves, if quantity was your game. Not only were they plentiful, but there wasn’t much to explore inside a mine, meaning there was little chance of them leveling up and getting ideas of resistance or escape.

The slaver was a Level 7 Artisan with a large belly and a patchy beard, wearing an intricately patterned robe and many rings on his stubby fingers.

Will was about to ask him about one of the Explorers when someone inside the tent caught his attention. An enormous figure sat cross-legged on the sand behind a table that was comically small for him, clad in rags cobbled together into a short robe. He had dark-green, leathery skin, stretched taut with hulking muscle. He was bald, with a wide brick for a forehead, a pink tongue stuck between his teeth as he slowly scratched out letters with a pen that looked positively toddler-sized in his ham hands.

“Is that a troll?” Will asked, nodding towards the creature.

The slaver glanced back, then broke into a shrewd grin. “Quite the curiosity, isn’t he? You can take a better look if you’d like. Don’t worry, he’s not dangerous.”

The slaver motioned him inside, and Will stepped up to the troll. Even sitting down, he was of a height with Will.

On his arm glistened eight amber crystals, along with a Profession symbol—the quill and flowing ink line of a Scribe.

Now, that is a curiosity.

Only humans could gain access to the Concord. It was not possible for a creature such as himself to have a sheet. And yet, there he was.

Just to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him, Will used Identify on the troll.

Troll

Level 8 Scribe

He was legit.

“What’s your name?” Will asked, ignoring the slaver hovering by his shoulder.

The troll broke away from his task and looked up at Will with small, squinty eyes, half-hidden under the shelf of his forehead. “Hello, sir,” he said politely. “I am Gug. I am a Scribe. I am good at writing things. Would you like to buy me?” The way he spoke, along with the forced smile when he finished, suggested that he had memorized the lines by heart.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Will could sense more than see the slaver nodding encouragingly to his chattel.

“But most importantly, I am a genius,” Gug stated proudly, grinning with his tongue between his large, blunt teeth.

The slaver hissed a silent admonition to the creature. Evidently, he had gone off-script.

Will couldn’t help but return his smile. “That’s very impressive, Gug. I’ve never met a genius before.”

The troll swelled with pride. “Heh.”

“Would you mind telling me about your abilities?”

The troll frowned so deeply that his eyes really did disappear. “Uh… I’m a genius?”

“Yes, well, as you can hear, he’s a little eccentric,” the slaver cut in. “But he writes and speaks perfect True Tongue, and can take diction accurately for letters and the like. He’s polite, mild-mannered, and obedient. Never had a problem with him myself. And, well, look at the size of him! Despite being a Scribe, he could certainly be put to manual labor should you wish it.”

“What are his abilities?” Will asked, speaking more pointedly when addressing the slaver.

The slaver threw up his hands in a vague, noncommittal gesture. “He has the basic Scribe abilities, along with Message.”

“Okay…? What else?”

The slaver sucked on yellowed teeth. “To be quite honest with you… I don’t know. He can be a little obtuse at times.”

The obvious subtext being: ‘I have no idea what this stupid son of a bitch put his points into’.

“A wise man once told me,” Gug announced without prompting, placing a fat finger to his forehead, “that you should speak when others listen.”

It sounded like gibberish. Will took a moment to think it over, only to come to the conclusion that, yes, it really was gibberish. He glanced at the slaver, who just shrugged with a nervous smile.

“What is it that makes you a genius, Gug?” Will asked neutrally.

The troll picked at his large, bulbous nose with his little finger, staring thoughtfully into the ceiling of the tent. “Well, I’m just really smart and good at thinking and stuff.”

“Naturally.”

“And sometimes I flash.”

Will frowned. “You flash? What does that mean?”

“Yeah, I go like ‘Whoosh!’.” He threw up his hands in an explosive gesture to illustrate… whatever he was trying to illustrate.

“Right.”

“It happens when I say ‘Brainstorm’.”

“Uh-huh.”

Brainstorm was a skill, but Will had never heard of many people using it. He couldn’t even quite recall what it did, but it had to be something cognitive, based on the name.

“Well, thank you for your time, Gug,” Will said. “I’ll be going now.”

“Okay, bye bye.”

He really was a freak show attraction, that one.

I want him.

The slaver accompanied him outside, where the rest of the slaves were still waiting exactly where they had stood before, eyes fixed on the ground.

“Well, he’s obviously useless,” Will said. “Where did you say you found him, again? I’ve never heard of a monster becoming a lifer before.”

“Well, he’s certainly special,” the slaver admitted in a weary voice. “I think he got taken out of the interior a while back, changed hands a few times until he ended up with me.”

“I see.”

Will returned to looking at Explorers, and ended up picking one nearly at random. Mongrel was right—they really were mostly the same. The one he picked was an unassuming sort, his hair shaved to a stubble. He was only Level 1, but that suited Will fine, because it meant he hadn’t had any opportunity to fuck up his build.

This one had Inventory and Dash in addition to the basic Explorer abilities, and from closely examining the leaves on his sheet, Will found that his attributes were distributed somewhat competently. He was a bit roughed up, but his teeth were all right, and he didn’t have the thousand-yard stare of a slave who had been worked past his breaking point.

“He’s yours for three thousand,” the slaver said, clapping the young man on the shoulder.

Ugh. Now comes the haggling.

I hate haggling.

Will laughed. “You are fucking delusional, my friend. I’ll give you a thousand.”

“I’d be out of business if I was running that kind of charity. How about this, I’ll do you two thousand. That’s a good deal, mister.”

Will shook his head. “Nah. Not happening. If I’m going to buy this miserable sack of shit for two thousand, I want a sweetener.”

“Whaddya want, then?”

Will nodded towards a Cook who was picking at her bloody, torn-up fingernails. “That one.”

The slaver grew livid at that. “You seriously think I’ll go for that? She’s a woman! She’s worth more than the Explorer in the first place! Nope, no way.”

“All right, then…” Will pretended to look around at the selection, then shrugged. “Ah, what the hell—I’ll take the troll off your hands. At least I can have him lug some shit around for me.”

The slaver smiled sweetly and clapped his hands together, clearly pleased at the prospect of getting rid of his problem child. “I suppose that’s fair.”

They shook hands, Will gave the man his money, and received keys to the slaves’ shackles along with deeds of ownership that Gug himself amended for the sale.

He led the two slaves out of the market, the troll catching plenty of looks. He was surely over three meters tall, towering high over even the most juiced-up brute.

As soon as they were on an empty strip of beach, Will unlocked the Explorer’s collar and shackles, then had the troll kneel down so that he could repeat the process with him.

“Thank you, sir,” the Explorer said, rubbing at chafed wrists. “You’re really letting us go?”

Will nodded. He counted up a few hundreds from his roll of cash and held it up. “You’re free to go wherever you please. I’ll even give you some money for the road.”

The man’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Really?”

“Really really. Or you could come work for me instead. Both of you, as free men. I’m planning a trip to the interior, and I could use the extra hands.”

“I’ll do it,” the Explorer said quickly. “I don’t care, just get me the fuck away from this place.”

The troll wasn’t listening, watching with great curiosity as a pair of seagulls fought over the sandy scraps of a dead fish. His mouth hung open, his fleshy lower lip protruding out.

“Gug?” Will asked. “What about you?”

Gug glanced over at him, then smiled, contorting his face into a mess of leathery wrinkles. “A wise man once told me: Every journey starts with breakfast.”

“Okay? It’s a little late for breakfast, but I’m sure something can be arranged.”

The troll’s smile widened. “Thank you. You’re a very very good friend.”

With their participation secured, Will decided to give them their bastard names there and then. The Explorer—whose actual name was Wesley—became Oatmeal, on account of his utter blandness. The troll, of course, only had one name that could suit him.

Gug the Genius.

He didn’t seem to understand the irony, the poor fellow.