Merchant Crab

Moss and cobwebs covered dirty, cracked walls of cobblestone, forming a dilapidated building that stood slightly crooked in the middle of a circular clearing, all the trees and greener grass seemingly too afraid of growing anywhere near it, leaving nothing but dead weeds surrounding the crypt.

“This can’t be the right place,” said Balthazar, eyeing the small mausoleum standing in front of him. “This place looks abandoned and like no one has lived here for ages.”

The crab paused, his eyestalks glancing up as he recalled the skeleton he was there to visit. “Oh, right, never mind that. Of course no one has.”

A few steps behind, Blue and Druma joined him past the wall of bushes and hanging ivy, both making their own expressions of disgust towards the destination they had arrived at.

Cutting and slashing some purplish weeds out of the way with his claws, Balthazar pushed forward and closer to the entrance, his party hesitantly following behind.

As he reached the two stone steps leading up to the double doors of the dungeon entrance, the crab spotted a plaque on the wall next to them.

Using his pincers, he cut some tangled vegetation to read what it said.

Adventurer beware.

Turn back now and leave this place, lest you forfeit your life to it.

Balthazar let out a half chuckle, half scoff. “Good thing I’m not an adventurer.”

He glanced back at the goblin and the drake, who were still eyeing the mausoleum with a mix of disapproval and uncertainty, before putting the back of his claws to the sides of his shell.

“Do you reckon I just knock?”

As he raised a pincer to tap on them, the tall granite doors of the hall suddenly rumbled and started slowly opening with the loud noise of stone scraping against the floor, followed by a cold dead breeze of wind blowing out of the space between them.

“Well, that’s dramatic,” said the crab, claw still in the air.

As the gates to Tudor’s Hall continued crawling open, the merchant rolled his eyes awkwardly.

“Also unnecessarily slow…” he bemoaned.

After what felt like a small eternity of waiting for the doors to finish their dramatic act, the rumbling ceased and a dark hall stood in front of the crab, who peeked inside with his two eyestalks.

A square room, empty except for two unlit braziers by the corners and the wide stairwell leading underground, was all he could see.

“Hello?” called Balthazar, but the only response he got was his own echo.

The crab pulled the front of his shell back out with a slightly disapproving expression.

“Tom, my friend, you really got to work on your presentation,” he said to himself. “I expected better from a fellow merchant.”

Turning around to his partners, the crustacean gave a shrug.

“Well, I guess down we go.”

As he prepared to take a step inside, Balthazar noticed his companions weren’t moving.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, turning back to them.

Druma was staring down into the hall and its stairwell with a worried expression as he held on to his magical staff, his elbows and knees trembling slightly.

“Druma don’t like dungeons,” he said with a shaky voice. “Dark and full of creepy stuff.”

“Oh, come on,” said the crab, “it will be fine. This is Tom’s place. You remember him. I’m sure there’s no danger inside.”

The goblin looked at his boss with a hesitant gaze, as if wanting to believe his words, but still unable to wrangle his own fears.

“Druma don’t want to go in, boss,” he said, gazing at the ground in shame. “Druma too scared.”

“Come now, you’re the bravest goblin I know!” Balthazar said to the only goblin he knew. “It should take more than a few unlit halls to spook you. You're the great vanquisher of dark mages, remember?”

The small assistant glanced up at the crab, a smile almost forming on his face but fading right away.

“The… the bad man,” he started with hesitation, “once took Druma to crypt just like that. Bad man said he want loot. Druma fall in hole. Bad man say he should leave Druma in hole.” His eyes grew watery, and he avoided the crab’s gaze again. “Druma think he would never get out. Long time pass. Silver man only come back and get Druma out because Druma have bag with loot he want.”

Balthazar stood without reaction for a second, before his eyestalks frowned.

“You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to, Druma,” he said calmly. “You stay out here, maybe keep an eye out on the road for Rye while I’m inside, and I’ll be back in no time, alright?”

The goblin wiped his eyes on his arms and quickly gave a few nods. “Yes, boss.”

The crab turned to the drake.

“And Blue, you will stay with Druma and keep watch with him, right?”

To his slight surprise, she simply gave a brief affirmative nod and followed the goblin.

“Huh. Good girl,” Balthazar whispered to himself, before turning back to the crypt’s entrance.

Stepping inside the cold and damp hall, the crab peered into the stairwell leading to the dark depths below.

“Hmm, I’ve read about these, but how do they work exactly?” he said, tentatively placing a leg on the topmost step.

Wary of the newly found concept of stairs, Balthazar slowly moved a second leg towards the next step.

“Alright, kind of awkward, but not terrible,” he said, slowly tilting his shell as he continued moving sideways down the stairs. “I could get—woooah!”

With too many legs mixed with too many steps, the crab tilted and tumbled forward, rolling down the stairs with an “ouch” and “oof” at every other step hit.

After what felt like way too many rolls and plunges, Balthazar finally landed face-first onto the cold stone floor at the bottom of the stairwell.

“Oow…” he moaned, standing up with difficulty and rubbing the top of his shell. “Never mind, I hate stairs. I’m never doing that again.”

Assessing his surroundings, the merchant realized he could not assess a thing, because everything was pitch black. Looking up, all he could spot was the small speck of light at the top of the stairs, from the now distant mausoleum entrance.

“Great, now what? There’s no way I’m going back up this way,” he said, placing his claws on his crustacean hips. “I guess into the dungeon it is, then.”

Reaching into his magical pack, the crab pulled out a wooden torch from his wares, along with a piece of flint.

Despite his lack of opposable thumbs—or any other fingers—Balthazar lit the torch with casual ease by snapping the flint with his pincer, producing a few sparks onto the flammable tip of the wooden stick held in his other claw.

As the orange glow flooded the immediate area around him, the crab saw that he was in a narrow corridor composed of old, mossy cobblestone walls. As he brought the light closer to them, several roaches and centipedes skittered away, quickly hiding in the holes and crevices of the old and ruined halls.

“Ew, would it kill you to do some housekeeping now and then, Tom?” Balthazar muttered to himself.

He tried to peer into the corridor ahead, but even with the glow from his torch, all he saw was a tunnel of stone leading into an unknown void.

“Hey, psst, anyone home?” the crab called out with a whisper, not noticing the contradictory nature of calling out for someone with a quiet murmur.

“Alright, I guess I’ll let myself in,” he said with a shrug. “He’d better not be out today. I don’t really want to sit here waiting for him to come back. I doubt this place even has any pillows.”

With his torch held high above his shell, Balthazar carefully pushed forward, squinting at the path ahead of him in hopes of spotting something other than moist walls and crawling critters.

Suddenly, the crab froze as the sound of clacking in the distance reached him, his antennae perking up and twitching as he tried to catch where the noise was coming from.

“Anyone there?” he said to the darkness around him.

His question was met with nothing but silence, only interrupted by the rhythmic dripping of water somewhere out of view.

Balthazar was no coward (according to himself), but the tension of being deep underground, in the dark, alone and unsure of whom—or what—was around him started to make his bristles stand as he questioned his recent choices.

Why the hell did I think this was a good idea?

Holding the flame a bit further, he realized the corridor ended there, opening into a much wider room with a slightly taller ceiling. Figuring there was no way but forward, he tentatively stepped into the chamber, trying to inspect what it had to offer.

“Are these… wooden boxes?” he muttered, approaching a brown rectangle that sat atop a stone slab on one end of the room.

As the light of the flame reached closer, its glow revealed the full details of the many boxes lined against the wall, from their carved edges, to the iron handles, as well as their epitaphs.

“They’re coffins!” said the crab, eyestalks standing up.

From somewhere behind him, in the dark recesses of the chamber, where the dim light of his fading torch could not reach, came a creaking sound.

Balthazar turned with a start, eyes wide as he peered into the darkness, trying to make out what the faint movement he seemed to perceive was.

“Is that you, To—Ah!”

A figure burst out of the void and into the light of the torch that the crab had just dropped on the floor in his sudden fright.

A freakishly tall skeleton with a grinning skull, much taller than Tom and wearing no suit, hat, or clothes at all, came charging towards Balthazar with a rusty axe held high as he cackled maniacally.

“HA HA HA HA!”