carl@fire

Everything was not going according to expectations for Neale.

He was a flexible man, even if he was also a very calculating one. He'd calculated out the night in advance, correctly predicting the winner of each auction as well as the rough amount of the winning bid.

Right up until Carl had shown up.

Yes, that had been quite the surprise. A barefoot man with a magical spear and a skeleton walk in the main entrance of the Creature Marketplace.

It sounded like the beginning of a joke.

Neale wasn't one to value anything solely by its appearance, however. A certain amount of caution was required in his profession, lest he be prematurely succeeded as his predecessor had been. It would not do to accidentally anger someone of sufficient means or power.

He'd been skeptical at first, but that was natural. He'd seen many, many things in his eighty years of life, and it had tended to be the case that those who didn't wear shoes also didn't possess coin.

It had also been the case, however, that those without shoes did not casually walk around with staggeringly powerful magical relics, animated skeletons, and the ability to create and destroy any amount of coin at will.

That was the thing that had puzzled him. The artifact weapon could be explained if the man was a pawn of someone more powerful. The skeleton… Well, necromancy was frowned upon for the obvious reason, but it was mostly disused as a result of how weak it was in the face of so many who were faithful to the Goddesses.

But the coins…

He'd been over the scene in his mind dozens of times, but he couldn't determine how the man had done it.

There had been no magic used.

It wasn't that he'd concealed the spell. No, Neale was quite familiar with such tactics considering that he employed similar spells regularly.

It also wasn't the case that he'd failed to detect the magic because the spear had covered it up. Neale was used to dealing with highly-unstable magic and artifacts. He'd been surprised to see and feel one in the main entrance, but he was still able to discern magical energy with the utmost clarity.

How had he done it?

The question vexed Neale. He loathed it when he was unaware of something that had occurred within his domain.

So, too, had it vexed him when Isemeine Charus had somehow managed to appear in the same booth that he'd taken this Carl to. The fourth princess had come to him just that afternoon to deliver the most valuable item in the entire kingdom, but he'd never expected her to return after her obvious revulsion at even the nondescript storage rooms that the royal family preferred to meet in.

But what she'd brought…

Neale wasn't precisely certain what it was, but he had a number of guesses. None of that was important, of course. What mattered was only knowing enough to tantalize the bidders at the auction. All other details were superfluous.

He'd spent most of the day seeing that it was properly prepared. It had to be cleaned first, naturally. It was obvious that its previous owner, known to be the third of the outworlder Heroes sent by the Goddess of Light, had used it just prior to her delivery, and it would not do to sell something in such a state.

The issue of the previous owner was another matter entirely to Neale. It had been delivered in a manner that was distinctly different than the method in which royalty usually made deliveries—usually by sending him a message and having him create a portal into the castle basement to surreptitiously retrieve whatever they wished to be rid of. Not only that, but by the fourth princess herself? That spoke to him of a scandal brewing, though time would only tell what it might be.

Such matters concerned him only in the capacity that they related to his business. Would having the fourth princess disgraced lead to an uptick in coin spent? He would never personally cause such a thing, but it paid to keep an ear open and a finger on the pulse of the royal court. If the beautiful fourth princess were to rise in the court, for example, perhaps he would begin to sell more of the large-breasted, blonde long-eared females to permit nobles to live out their fantasies. So, too, might he sell such products if she were to fall even lower; many nobles might harbor a secret fantasy of taking advantage of such a girl, though surely none would dare to do so with a member of the family in the highest favor of the twin Goddesses.

Neale was simply adjusting his business to fit the demand of his buyers. Currently, it seemed, wide-hipped and large-breasted long-ears with pink hair were on the rise for females, and their apparent age could withstand quite some variation. As for the males, the younger-looking the better, and little else mattered. He didn't expect the latter trend to be one which ever changed, though, as ever, it irked him that the males of the species were so passive prior to their training, barely even capable of achieving or sustaining erections until years of intensive conditioning had taken effect. It was clear that this was the reason why the creatures existed in no great numbers, and why finding…

Ah, but he was growing distracted once more. The fourth princess had played the kingdom's wealthiest man for an utter fool, skillfully manipulating him into his own downfall when he wagered his every last coin to purchase the same item she'd brought in earlier that afternoon.

Neale wondered whether the entire day had been a meticulously-crafted plan. Isemeine Charus was known to be a bit strange; she could engage a conversation regarding nearly any topic without seeming out of place, regardless of how intellectually demanding or specialized it might be. He distinctly recalled an occasion when he'd attended a royal banquet and overheard her debating the merits of varying styles of crop rotations in great detail. He also recalled a separate occasion when he'd overheard her attempting to explain to the Arderne family's hopeless son a method by which she expected she could make a boat travel more quickly than a steamcar.

Yes, it was all quite fascinating how steam could be pressurized to spin a turbine, but the substantive benefit for Neale had been when he realized that Tomas Arderne was yet another one of those broken nobles. True, gifting a long-ear to someone was considered a tremendous honor for them, especially one as pretty as the Arderne family's Delsanra—which Neale recalled selling at auction for a noteworthy six point-four million coins—but it was not always a good thing to do.

He'd seen it countless times over the years. A human boy or girl would be given one of the marketplace's creatures too early, before they'd fully developed, and they would fall into the pit of endless self-gratification that only perfect obedience could provide. They pretended interest in other humans, but it was nothing more than an extension of that same mechanism; once they'd had their fill, they moved on to the next one that caught their fancy.

Neale had washed his hands of such things long ago. Sure, he'd tried copulating some number of times. He'd imagined that perhaps it was a flaw in his partners early on. He'd tried women, men, girls, boys, the long-ears, the sea-dwellers, and even a dwarf on one occasion.

No, it wasn't his partners.

He just wasn't particularly interested.

That made matters considerably easier for him. Who better to run the Creature Marketplace than someone who held not even the slightest of interests in any of its merchandise?

Unfortunately, not everyone shared his enlightened mindset.

Reynard Arderne was one of those people at the opposite end, someone who'd fallen so far into the pit of self-gratification that he couldn't even recall not being in that pit.

It didn't particularly matter to Neale, of course. He didn't care about the tendencies and mindsets of his patrons. It was something to watch, certainly, and something to know, but it was purely business. By knowing, he could fit their tastes more effectively.

Providing the perfect product to the customer who desired it the most was satisfying for Neale. It wasn't that he especially enjoyed seeing their expressions of joy and gratitude. It was more like fitting pieces into a puzzle. The satisfaction of deciphering exactly where a piece was best placed was one of his greatest joys in life.

But Reynard Arderne was a man who was unlikely to ever be satisfied again.

"She can't do this!" the wealthy man screamed drunkenly, his face purple, as he stormed through the back hallway of the marketplace.

Neale had decided to indulge him. Offending him at this point could result in a loss of coin in the future, of course, but he still held out some small sliver of hope that someday he might come across the piece that would fit the man's life perfectly. He'd come so very close to it with the well-proportioned long-ear he'd put out that night for the express purpose of allowing Reynard to acquire it—despite those buffoons soiling it just prior to the auction—but his plan had overlooked the impossible-to-predict coming of the fourth princess and her excoriation of not only Reynard, but seemingly the entire kingdom.

He understood her perspective, of course. More than that, he agreed with her. It was disgusting to watch so many fall into the abyss of self-gratification—and so easily, too! But the Creature Marketplace would go on with or without him, and he did enjoy his little matchmaking puzzles.

She'd ruined a perfectly good setup that he'd spent years engineering. The long-ear had started off a bit too thin to truly replace the man's hourglass-shaped Delsanra, so he'd prescribed the treatment of bearing a considerable number of offspring to remedy that situation. A spell could have done it, certainly, but Neale preferred the more natural methods, relying upon simpler spells to restore the long-ear's insides to their natural state—who would wish to purchase used goods, after all—for the buyer to enjoy. Additionally, this method gave him new pieces to find places for.

It had seemed to work, too. Neale was gratified when the final bid for the female he'd been carefully cultivating for over two decades suddenly jumped by over two million coins for the final bid. That was the sign of a perfect match.

But then Reynard had been crushed by his defeat in the subsequent auction. It was an auction Neale had never expected him to grow so invested in. He should have won easily, then perhaps sold it to a buyer outside the kingdom—a resourcefulness Neale admired—or simply kept it for the novelty.

The princess had played her part perfectly, and Reynard had seemed to find that final item to be an even more perfect fit than the one Neale had taken his time to painstakingly prepare for him.

"She's within her rights as a citizen of age to place bids," Neale said quietly, reciting the rules that he was positive the other man was aware of.

He wasn't upset with the princess. No, he was certain she had some reason for her actions. If anything, he would have liked to spend more time with her. It would be wonderful to speak with someone else who was able to see past the vices of the flesh, even if only for a short while. His lecture to the guards during the penultimate auction had not been the first of its kind that he'd given, and he fully expected that he would again be forced to take measures to prevent such occurrences. It happened every five years or so. Just after everyone had forgotten what happened to the last of his employees who defiled his merchandise outside of the periods of time which were explicitly set aside for such things.

He raised his finger to his chin. Perhaps he needed a new method of discouraging that sort of conduct. The crabs were fine. They had always been quite reliable, and well worth the trouble of keeping around solely for this purpose. But he was beginning to wonder if they weren't quite fearsome enough.

He'd have to think on it.

"No! She can't possibly have that much coin!" Reynard Arderne shouted, seeming quite hysterical now. He stumbled, falling against the wall. The seadevil-long-ear hybrid he'd brought scurried over and propped him up, bringing him to his feet.

That was one of Neale's creations that he was most proud of. He'd believed for some time that there was untapped potential within those seadevils, despite their fierce, inhuman exteriors. Their appearances had such variety, though! It seemed that there was endless capacity for variation. If only figure out some way to harness it…

He had, naturally. He'd managed to acquire a pair of males which were just humanoid enough to be able to breed with a long-ear female. The cleanup afterwards had been messy—seadevils were carnivores to their core, even when it came to mating, it seemed—but the experiment had borne results.

Well, not immediately. Some adjustments had to be made after he'd received a moment of divine inspiration from the Goddess of the Dawn—not that he was especially pious, of course—and the first round of offspring had gone to the crabs, but after a mere thirty years he was now able to reliably produce a few that could be sold each year. They still couldn't speak, lacking the necessary organs, but they were unique enough to capture the minds of a number of patrons, and that was what truly mattered. It was a happy coincidence that the Goddess-designed collars worked on them as well, keeping them docile and filling their minds with lust. Neale wasn't too certain why a man would want to put himself inside one of his obviously-inhuman creations, but making it easier for them to do so by providing sufficient lubrication was part of what made those creations so valuable.

Neale snapped back to the present, his mind moving rapidly through a number of topics as it tended to do when faced with tedious tasks. "She must have that much coin," he said. "The penalty for declaring a false bid, according to the law, is to repay ten times the amount of the bid by any means possible, as decided by me. You know this, Reynard, and so must she. There is no possible way she would make a bid if she did not have the coin for it."

Of course she wouldn't. Isemeine Charus wasn't an idiot. If he'd ever doubted it previously, he certainly wouldn't now after how beautifully she'd manipulated the cunning, resourceful Reynard Arderne.

"But then how?" Reynard asked. He grew violent suddenly, throwing the hybrid female against the wall and brutally mauling its exposed chest. "How. Can. She. Have. That. Much. Coin!"

Neale sighed. It seemed the man's mind was unable to function as long as an obedient female was nearby. He'd seen this before, too.

How tiresome.

"I don't know that we'll ever find out," Neale mused. He'd questioned the idea himself, but in reality the expenditure from the royal family wasn't as much—only twenty four million. Spending that amount of coin to break the kingdom's wealthiest man—and the only one who could conceivably ever stand up to the royal family—seemed like a sound investment when Neale considered the matter.

Reynard began fumbling with his pants, then lowered them. He began thrusting frantically at the hybrid female, not even bothering to slot himself in.

Neale sighed again. Yes, it seemed he was quite broken now. He watched as the long-ear female reached in from the side to position him properly, the man too frenzied to even copulate successfully.

It was worse than he'd thought, but that didn't trouble him. He turned away and walked around a nearby corner, then signaled to the pair of guards at the end of the hallway. The croaking of the hybrid female mixed with the odd grunt from Reynard and a telltale squishing sound that those types of creations produced during copulation echoed through the halls.

"Both of you keep an eye on him," he said softly to the guards, gesturing at the deranged man who was copulating with the offspring of a seadevil in the hallway. "Ensure that he doesn't wander into any of the rooms, and try to lead him towards an exit. If you must, order his females to suck on him while you physically carry him off the premises." He looked at the man and woman wearing the reinforced suits of the marketplace's interior guard. "See that no harm befalls him, but I do want him gone in a reasonable amount of time. His purchases can be delivered to him, and he can pay at a later time. Understood?"

The woman nodded. "Yes, Mister Neale."

The man nodded as well, immediately taking up a post at the end of the hallway.

Neale gave one more look down the hallway—the long-ear was now crouched behind the still-standing Arderne, its face pressed up against his buttocks as he rutted away at the hybrid—and then shook his head as he strode down the hallway that the guards had been standing at the end of.

It was a tragedy of sorts, but that was the end that Neale had predicted would befall any man who had no way to limit himself.

He turned his mind to more pressing matters.

Cecil had been carefully instructed to wait near the stairs that Carl was likely to descend. Neale had personally directed the large man to them, and the prospect of a discreet exit never failed to appeal to those affiliated with royalty. He fully expected that the skeleton would be with him once more during his exit.

It was clear to him now that the thing had simply been an anchor for a teleportation spell. There had been no magic on it, so it was clearly no means of concealment, but by inscribing certain glyphs on the bones it would be possible to swap locations with it if one had roughly the same weight. No doubt the princess had remained tucked away safely in the castle until just the right time before she had been swapped in.

A masterful ruse. Even Neale could appreciate the effort that had gone into it. So distracted had he been by the outlandishness of Carl that he'd never factored in the possibility. It was something he'd have to take into consideration in the future.

But now he was somewhat confused. He'd given the guards waiting outside the secure storage room specific orders for one of them to fetch him the moment that Carl arrived outside. There should have been some time where the princess would celebrate her victory—as was only right for her to do, given the results—and then a short while as the castle mages, most likely Balan, switched her with the skeleton once more, and then Carl should have been well on his way to retrieve his winnings.

And yet.

The words of the large man echoed in Neale's mind. And yet, Carl was nowhere to be seen, nor had one of the guards come for him.

He tapped a finger to his chin, then murmured the short incantation that would open a portal in the nearby wall to the position just under a glyph in the hidden passage which led to the storage room. The wall vanished from view, replaced by the darkness of the sealed passage.

Neale stepped through, and the spell disintegrated behind him. He pressed his hand to the spot in the wall which activated the door to the passage. The wall opened up.

Neale stared.

The storage room was completely empty.

He stepped out of the passage, pressing the point in the wall that would seal it once more, then strode quickly to the heavy, metal door. He unlocked it with a flick of earth energy and pulled it open.

The pair of guards, looking surprised, turned around.

"No one has been here, correct?" Neale asked.

The guards shook their heads. They didn't have keys to the room, of course. It was the most secure room in…

Neale turned back to the room, staring at the panel of the secret passage.