It was a cold night over the pond, a short ti after the crab’s return to his ho, but by the crackling fire of the glowing hearth at the center of his bazaar it was warm and cozy, like a tender embrace from a dear friend.
And a dear friend was exactly whom Balthazar was waiting for as he sat by the edge of the fire pit.
Madeleine, his favorite baker—and human—in the whole world ca to join him with a large plate in her hands.
“Right, as promised, here's your plate of butter cookies, Balthazar,” the girl said as she sat down opposite of the crab. “It’s not much, but it’s what I could whip up on such short notice. I’ll make you so proper pastries later. Now go on, it’s your turn to do as promised—I want to know everything that happened while I was gone!”
Balthazar smiled from ear to ear. Or he would have, if he had any of those. Being a giant crab, he was not burdened by such unnecessary appendages.
Smooth and sturdy—those were the two best words to describe his body. The peak of evolution. Nature’s perfect lifeform. Without any of those flaws commonly seen on the bodies of less evolved species, such as humans.
In fact, the only human-like trait one could find on him was the fancy golden monocle held precariously in front of his left eye. But that was not part of his anatomy, it was rely a fashionable gadget, befitting of such a unique crab—a rchant crab.
And an expert rchant at that. Owner of his own bazaar and accomplished trader of goods with several employees under him—although he usually preferred to refer to them as friends. Because that was who Balthazar was, a kind and generous businesscrab.
Lately.
Most of the ti.
With a few exceptions.
“Oh, these sll so good, Madeleine!” Balthazar said, looking at the plate of cookies in front of him with eyestalks stretched forward.
Standing on no ceremony, the hungry crab chomped down on the first butter cookie, which produced a satisfying crunch as he bit into it, along with a plu of steam from its freshly-baked interior.
“Oof! Ah! Hot! Hot!” the rchant exclaid.
“Be careful, you silly crab!” the baker warned, stifling her laughter. “They’re still hot!”
“I know!” Balthazar said, ignoring both warning and common sense as he went in for a second bite. “But I’ve missed your baking so much! Ow!”
Madeleine smiled and chuckled with earnest warmth on her face.
“And I missed watching how much you enjoy them. It just never gets old,” she said. “But don’t think that will distract from our agreent! I’ve made you a plate of cookies, so go on, catch up on everything I’ve missed while I was gone! I bet your adventures in the last couple of months could fill a whole book!”
Balthazar cocked an eyestalk at the young woman as he worked through chewing the burning contents of his open mouth.
“A book about the travels of a rchant crab?” he said with irony in his tone. “Pfft. Who’d ever want to read that!”
“!” exclaid the blonde baker. “So start telling what you’ve been up to out there. Starting by how you’ve gotten yourself out there. I never thought I’d see the day when you’d set foot outside your little ho!”
The crab puffed himself up. “Well, after you were taken by that dragon, I just knew I couldn’t sit idly by waiting for soone else to go and rescue you. It had to be . So I put on my big crab pants and set out to—”
Balthazar stopped mid-sentence as he watched the girl holding back a fit of laughter behind her hand.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, mouth half open in annoyance, exposing crumbs and chewed bits of butter cookie.
“Sorry! It’s just that I started picturing you wearing pants and it was too funny,” Madeleine responded between giggling. “I wonder if they’d have eight pant legs or just two really large ones for each side.”
The rchant frowned and swallowed the rest of his cookie before crossing his arms.
“If you’re just going to be laughing at , I’m not going to tell you anything!”
“Sorry! Sorry!” the baker said, toning her giggling back down to a smile. “Please continue. Oh! Have you visited Ardville yet?!”
“I have,” Balthazar said, uncrossing his arms and taking another cookie from the plate. “It was the first place I headed to once I left the pond with my guys and your archer boy.”
Madeleine tilted her head down in a cute show of disappointnt.
“Aw, I had hoped I could be the one to show you around my hotown one day.”
“Don’t worry, you still can,” said the chewing crab. “It’s not like I got to see much of the place. I had to run away shortly after arriving.”
“Oh?” said the girl. “Why? What did you do?!”
“Nothing!” pleaded the rchant with a shrug. “I was just minding my own business, buying bread, as a crab does, when suddenly this weird kid showed up, saying he was my biggest fan and how he wanted to co along with , and a bunch of other nonsense.”
“Hmm,” the baker said, looking up in thought. “Was he a boy with ginger hair called Taffy?”
“Yes! Wait, you know him?!”
“Yeah… Not personally, but he’s always been a strange one. Not harmful, though! How co you had to run out of town? Don’t tell you pinched the poor boy, Balthazar!”
“Of course not. I’m a civilized crustacean,” the crab said as he loudly chewed on the second cookie with his mouth open. “But after he made a big ruckus about being in town, a bunch of other townsfolk started getting all riled up and trying to get a piece of too. It was pretty odd, actually. Like sothing was… affecting them.”
Madeleine giggled. “Yes. You. You’re famous now! Little Ardville isn’t used to seeing celebrities very often.”
Balthazar rolled his eyestalks.
“I really don’t think it was just that,” he said. “But anyway, after we made it out of your town, Rye and I caught wind of a lead on the dragon’s whereabouts, and that was when we split up on the road and your favorite archer set out to the village the dragon had supposedly been seen at.”
“Mhmm,” said Madeleine, taking a cookie for herself and nibbling on it gently as she gave the crab her undivided attention. “What about you? Where did you go?”
“I…” Balthazar started, before realizing what had co next during his journey.
Star Beach, the place where new adventurers first arrived on Heartha and where they’d gain their access to the magical scroll that gave them access to the system.
It was there that the rchant found a freshly marooned adventurer from whom he purchased a new Scroll of Character Creation in order to regain his access to the system.
It was also on that day that, unbeknownst to the crab, a new adventurer arrived in that world. One that was not ant to be accepted by the system, but that thanks to Balthazar’s unwitting interference, entered Heartha with far more awareness than adventurers were supposed to have.
Ren would go on to bla this mysterious rchant he never laid eyes upon for his arrival and scrambled mories. He swore vengeance on his new nesis and made it his sole focus to beco strong enough to confront the villain of his own story.
But all of that was entirely unknown to Balthazar, who had left the beach on that day with a clear conscience and content for having regained his system access to help with the goals of his travels.
However, the details of his visit to the beach were probably best left out of his report to Madeleine. He was still unsure how he could ever explain his peculiar circumstances regarding the system to anyone. Especially considering he barely could make sense of them himself.
“I… went to the beach,” the crab finally said.
“You… went to the beach?” the girl repeated, raising an eyebrow as she lowered the cookie she was about to bite into. “You set out on a journey to rescue from a dragon and to bring your best friend back to life and the first thing you do is… go to the beach?”
“Uhh… yes!” Balthazar awkwardly said. “I had crab business to tend to, alright?! You wouldn’t understand!”
The baker exhaled with resignation and shrugged as she resud nibbling on her cookie. “Alright then. I just hope you had fun playing with a beachball, collecting conches, or whatever it is that was so important.”
“Anyway, rember Tom, the rchant skeleton?” the crab continued, eager to move on from the beach stop. “I went to visit his dungeon. You know… to see if he could be of any help.”
The sitting crustacean went on to tell his human friend about his adventure in Tudor’s Hall, all the friendly skeletons he t, about Montgory, the giant sli he befriended in the depths of the dungeon, and even about the two adventurers who were betrayed by a higher-level ice mage down there.
“So anyway, that was how I single-handedly defeated the cryomancer without so much as laying a pincer on him,” the rchant concluded, swelling with pride after a highly embellished battle story.
“Oooh,” the attentive baker whispered as she listened to her friend’s tale.
“After we left Tom’s dungeon, I t up with your boyfriend again,” Balthazar said.
Madeleine shot up on her seat and her cheeks turned a few shades redder.
“Rye is not my—”
“And from there we got back on the road after learning the lead on the dragon was no good,” the crab continued, ignoring the girl’s fluster. “We even t a real bridge troll! Not a bad fellow, all things considered. I hope he got to see the ocean like he wanted to. Anyway, we eventually made it to a place called Condor.”
The rchant did his best to justify their stop at the old ghost town where the Birdwatchers had their headquarters without any ntions of anything to do with world systems and mind-wiped adventurers.
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It was there that he t Ruby, the enchantress and leader of the mysterious adventurer faction. She tasked Balthazar with retrieving a special astrolabe ring to finish a strange artifact they possessed. The details and importance of it and the crimson woman’s machinations were mostly lost on the crustacean, who only cared about finding Tweedus, the old wizard who could help him bring Bouldy’s core back to life. Luckily for him, that sa loony wizard was the one who had the item the Birdwatchers sought, leading to an agreent between the crab and the adventurer—the location of Tweedus’s ho in exchange for convincing him to give up the astrolabe component.
Unfortunately, the group’s stay in Condor was not all easy deals and progress. The secretive faction trying to uncover the truth behind the world’s system also pulled back the fog covering up Rye’s mories, making him aware of having a previous life before arriving there and becoming an adventurer. The effects of it all made the young man leave, striking out on his own in an attempt to settle his thoughts before figuring out what to do next.
“So yeah, Druma, Blue, and I kept going without him,” Balthazar said after being as vague as he could about the archer’s departure.
“Oh,” Madeleine said with a sad tone. “I wonder what got into Rye to just leave like that.”
“Err, you’d have to talk to him about that,” said the rchant, looking up at the smoke billowing from the fire pit. “But between you and … I think he just felt my constant detours were slowing him down from tracking you. He was just really worried about you.”
The baker frowned slightly and shook her head. “I’m sure Rye wouldn’t think that about you guys, co on.”
“Anyway!” Balthazar exclaid with a clack of his pincers. “I t a ghost after that.”
“You… what?!” Madeleine blurted out, widening her green eyes at the crab.
“I t a ghost. And a zombie!”
After regaling his baker friend with the tale of how he t Sir Edmund and his zombified body, Ned, Balthazar realized his plate of cookies was now more than halfway empty, a fact which greatly saddened him. Good things just never seed to last.
Unlike sidequests, which seed to go on forever.
“Then I arrived in the city of Marquessa,” the rchant said.
Madeleine’s eyebrows rose in surprise and amazent. “The big city on the other side of the continent? I heard so much about it from travelers who passed by Ardvile. I always dread of visiting it one day! How was it?”
“Very distracting,” Balthazar said with a roll of his beady eyes. “I wasted days looking for a fancy lady’s stock of fruit.”
The young woman looked at him with visible confusion.
The crab went on to tell her his misadventures in the city of Marquessa. How he t Olivia, the mayor’s niece, when she was smashing a jug of milk over a mugger’s head in an alley. How he ca to et the mayor herself and how she asked for his assistance in uncovering the truth behind the city’s stolen supply of mangoes. And of course, how he t a little street urchin by the na of Suze, who was as clever as she was slippery.
“Hahaha! I think I’d like this girl! I hope we get to et soday,” Madeleine said with great amusent at her friend’s story of how the little kid fleeced two gold coins from the crab in exchange for a 30-second tour of the city hall.
The baker cocked an eyebrow at the crustacean as she realized he had gone quiet and his eyes fixed on the ground.
“You’re alright, Balthazar?”
“Yeah, yes… I just don’t know how to tell you this, but…” the hesitant crab said with the tone of a kid who had been caught with his pincer in the cookie jar.
“You’re worrying now,” said Madeleine. “What happened?”
With a deep breath and an even deeper sigh, Balthazar confessed his sins to his friend.
He told her about the bakery he found while in Marquessa, about the owner, Lady Margo, and how he had consud several of her pies, on more than one occasion, with great delight and little to no regret.
“I… I don’t get it,” said the young woman, staring at the rchant with a blank stare.
“I know, how could I?!” the distraught crab exclaid, averting his gaze. “I’m sorry, Madeleine! I swear your baking was and still is my favorite, but it had been weeks since you were gone, and I missed a good pie so much!”
“What do you an, Balthazar?” the girl said, blinking in confusion a few tis. “Is that why—”
“I had never tried a mango pie either, so the temptation was too great for !” the ashad crustacean loudly continued over his friend’s words.
Madeleine shook her head. “Wait, you thought I’d be upset because you had soone else’s pastries?”
“I tried so hard, but in the end it didn’t—” Balthazar froze, and his eyestalks shot up to the girl. “Wait, you’re not mad?!”
The baker chuckled. “No. Why would I be? It’s fine, you silly crab! It’s not like you have so exclusivity contract with . I’m actually glad you got to find and try new flavors in your travels!”
The rchant stared at his friend for a mont, befuddled by her reaction—or lack thereof.
“So you’re alright with having eaten soone else’s pie?”
“Of course!” said the Ardvillian baker.
“And that I enjoyed it too? Like… a lot?”
“Yes?”
More confused frowning from the crab before he relaxed his eyestalks.
“So if I ever got so mangoes from over there, would you be willing to try and make so mango pies too?”
“I’d love to!” Madeleine said with a wide smile. “I’m always eager to try my hand at baking new things, and I’ve actually never tried mangoes before. You know, they’re too expensive and hard to find on this side of the continent. Are they as sweet as I’ve heard?”
Balthazar bead up with a smile of his own at the baker’s response.
“Oh, so, so sweet! You wouldn’t believe the things they make with mangoes over there!”
The rchant went on to spend a considerable amount of ti telling his friend everything about Marquessa’s mango delicacies while munching on her butter cookies one after the other, crumbs flying everywhere with every excited exclamation.
“That’s it, then!” said Madeleine, slapping her knees with determination. “If you ever get so mangoes, I promise you I’ll try my best to make sothing as good as what you had in Marquessa! But you haven’t told yet, how did you recover their harvest?”
“Oof, that was sothing,” the crab said while grabbing one of the last few remaining cookies.
He went on for several more minutes, telling her everything about the bandit that slled of onions, the bewitched commander of the guardsn, as well as the other many colorful characters he t during his stay in Marquessa. From the charming guildmaster of the local thieves, Clovis, to the mayor’s right-hand and martial arts expert, Captain Leander.
All leading up to the night the crab and his group stord into Damask Manor to confront the one behind the scheming taking place in Marquessa.
“Velvet?!” exclaid Madeleine, eyes wide as she sat on the edge of her rock, both hands grasping a half-eaten butter cookie that she had forgotten to bite into for the past five minutes. “The witch that wanted one of your legs for so witchcraft thing?!”
“The very sa,” Balthazar confird.
The baker’s dislike for witches showed through as the crab told her about their epic confrontation. In the end, she pumped her fist and roared triumphantly as she learned of the witch’s defeat and the loss of her enchanted charm, which was the source of most of her powers.
“So anyway, the mayor gave the key to the city, I spent so ti getting my pincer kissed by the local rchants wanting to make trade deals with the city’s new hero, and I had so more mango pie. Good tis!”
“Wow, you’ve been busy,” said Madeleine.
“Sure have, but it made for a lot of good business for my bazaar in the future!” said the proud crustacean as he bit into another one of the girl’s treats.
“Sooo… When did you rember or Bouldy in the middle of all this?” the baker said with a cocked eyebrow.
“Oh, this was all still part of trying to find the wizard who could help figure out how to repair Bouldy’s core!” Balthazar quickly explained. “You see, I only stopped there for several days and did all this because I was asking for directions.”
The girl blinked blankly a couple of tis. “Right. That’s… quite the sidetracking.”
“Anyhow,” the rchant casually said. “After that I set sail north to find Tweedus in his lair up in the mountains.”
Madeleine listened with bated breath as Balthazar told her about his eting with the old loon and the appearance of the birdwatchers, followed by their confrontation over the astrolabe ring.
“Wait, what do you an, he flashed them?!” the young woman inquired.
“Not important!” replied the crab. “The point is, Tweedus cast so crazy spell or whatever, and we all got teleported away from his lair. Too bad that scheming enchantress and her group still got the component they wanted in the end, but the wizard didn’t seem too bothered by it.”
From there, the crab’s tale about his journey proceeded to the Golem Forge, with Madeleine gasping and clutching her chest as she heard the recounting of all the close calls Balthazar and his friends had with the constructs guarding the halls of the golemancers.
By the end, a small tear danced precariously in the corner of her eye as Balthazar recalled the mont his stone friend erged from the flas of the forge and ca to their rescue.
“It was after this that we t with Rye again,” the rchant continued, after Madeleine took a mont to wipe her eyes with a tissue, and Balthazar did the sa to his eyestalks. Because he had gotten so cookie crumbs in them and no other reason at all, as he made sure to explain to her.
The tale continued, touching on Rye’s return, the Dragonslayer Greatbow he had acquired from so stranger dressed in black that he t during his own travels, and how they finally found the location of the lair Madeleine was being held in by the dragon.
Balthazar carried on, waxing poetic about his heroic feats, his bravery, and his outsmarting of the great red dragon, Beatrix LaFlam, in a battle of wits.
“Uhh… Balthazar?” Madeleine called after several minutes of the crab excitedly talking while propped up on the rock he had previously been sitting on, striking a valiant pose. “You know I was present for that part, right? You don’t need to tell about it.”
“Oh…” said the rchant, climbing down from the rock with a slightly surprised expression, as if he had completely forgotten about his surroundings. “I knew that. I was just… being thorough with my recap, for everyone else.”
The baker shrugged with bewildernt. “Who?! There’s no one else here but !”
“Err, you never know,” the crab said, attempting to disguise his embarrassnt. “I just wanted to make sure that if soone else did hear the story of my travels, they got all the right details.”
Madeleine scowled at him. Not a serious scowl of soone genuinely annoyed at another, but instead a playful one of soone partially amused at her friend’s shenanigans.
“Really? Because I’m pretty sure I don’t rember you clipping the wings of the dragon with one swift snap of your pincer as you claid there, mister.”
“You gotta be open to so creative liberties when telling a good story, Madeleine!”
The girl chuckled at her crabby friend.
“Sure. Now I’m wondering if you really defeated that commander by snapping his belt buckle in two and causing his pants to fall or if that was another one of your creative liberties.”
“Of course I did!” the flustered crustacean exclaid. “I would never make up sothing so ridiculous!”
“Are you sure? Because if there’s sothing I’ve co to learn about you, it's that you’re a crab with a pretty fertile imagination.” She smiled and winked playfully at him. “I’ll have to keep an eye on your tall tales, mister rchant!”
Balthazar’s eyestalks jumped. “Oh, that reminds ! I haven’t even told you about the cyclops I t.”
The evening went on for a while longer, the flas of the fire pit slowly turning to smoldering embers as the crab regaled his friend with the story of Brontus, the colorblind cyclops and aspiring blacksmith.
“And then he went his way, carrying the powerful tool of legend that I so generously bestowed upon him. I’m sure he will—”
The rchant paused, his gaze moving down from the stars above and to the plate his pincer was reaching for.
It was empty.
Balthazar’s shell slumped with disappointnt at finding no more butter cookies left.
“Hey, Madeleine, the—” he started, but as his eyes landed on the baker he found her fast asleep, curled up into a ball on the ground near the fire with her head resting on one of the bazaar’s many cushions.
A quiet and involuntary aww escaped the crab’s mouth as he placed the back of his pincers against the sides of his shell.
And then he frowned slightly.
“Wait,” he whispered to himself. “Is it just , or it’s starting to seem like everyone always falls asleep whenever I’m telling them the stories of what happened to ?”
Shaking the unimportant question away from his thoughts, the rchant quietly moved to a nearby shelf.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. After everything that has happened, she must be exhausted. She deserves so good rest.
Retrieving a thick blanket from his stock, Balthazar carefully moved next to Madeleine and placed it on top of her, doing his best not to wake her.
After all, she needs to be well rested in order to bake for tomorrow!
Nodding at the generosity of his entirely selfless act, the crab skittered away to the other side of the dying fire.
Sitting down near the remnants of warmth radiating from the hearth, he used his pincer to gather what few crumbs were left on the plate in an attempt to get one last taste of cookie.
And because I missed her, I guess. Balthazar finally admitted to himself as he shoveled tiny bits of baked goodness into his mouth.
Dropping himself back against a pillow, the crab’s gaze lingered lazily over the distant glow of the mountaintop above his pond as he slowly drifted off to sleep as well.
His trip might have been over, and he might have finally made it back ho, but Balthazar knew he was still far from being done with his adventures.
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