(Book One Complete!) Friendly Neighbourhood Goblin (Mercenary Company LitRPG)

One day.

One day to shop, one day to prepare. Upon accepting the Peaktree Manor quest, old lady Maven and her daughter returned to the Knight Inn for a quick stop to remind the Nobodies to be at their farm after dusk the next day.

So it was Stump found himself dragged around the Downs on the heels of Reema, with a lengthy shopping list and clanking sack in tow. They'd already paid a visit to Timberwall's Timberstall, mostly so she could peruse upgrades for the inn—she purchased a dark wooden table that still carried the earthy whiff of the Shadowlands.

"Portentous Finds is first, I think," said Reema, eyeing an unrolled parchment as they walked. "Sunless Sundries after that, then the Withered Forge to pay a visit to Ugg, and maybe Hammer's Pinch if he doesn't have what we need, or if Brass overcharges like last time. We can finish off at the Amber Vial if we've got any silver left."

"Think we can get all this?" said Stump. He divided his attention between keeping up with her quick strides and skimming a copy of the list.

An adventurer's pack, a set of armour and shield, two vials of antitoxin, two hunting lamps, and six ounces of mossbark oil. "This might be a little more than five silver," he added, then noted the sack of wares over Reema's shoulder. "Are those for trade?"

She glanced down at him as they turned onto Withers Way and were greeted by the ping of hammers and hiss of smelting. Heat billowed from a nearby forge, dispelling the gloomy chill.

"It's for our first stop. Sometimes Elmee parts with some glimmer for the things I bring to Portentous Finds," she said. "Dependin' how she's feeling that day."

"She's tough to barter with?"

She hesitated. "Not as such. Just odd."

Between the smokey haze and Reema's swift pace, Stump found himself nearly out of breath. "Odd? Odd how?" he wheezed.

"It'll be easier if I show you."

The shop looked no different than any other. They had taken a modest road spun off Withers Way, the clamour of workmen fading behind them. There was a drop in elevation, followed by a rise again to another main road. Portentous Finds stood at the bottom of this dip, shouldering two leaning shacks on either side. A chipped sign displayed the name over a field of what long ago might've been blue.

A bell announced their entrance.

"Ahhh, Reema," said a human woman with brown and silver hair lancing directly out of her scalp, like an explosion had recently taken place. She removed her glasses and looked up from the book she'd been reading. "I've been expecting you."

She sat behind a desk burdened by clutter, and between two precarious stacks of books, loose parchment, and other rectangular shaped knick-knacks. On top of one of them balanced a wiry bird cage. The mimicaw, ruffling its feathers and cocking its head, echoed the doorbell.

"Bright Queen shine on you, Elmee," Reema beamed. A puff of warmth escaped her and settled in the air, laying the groundwork for further charms. She navigated over a series of scattered objects and set her sack on the already strained desk. "I barely recognize anything from my last visit."

Stump followed close behind. His goblin eyes chased the darkness to the corners. There were many windows, but an abundance of stacked wares and oddities denied the light entry.

Elmee gently grasped Reema's hands. She smiled. "And may you have a long and winding road to Chrona's kiss," she said, and then looked beyond her. "I see you've brought your goblin friend."

"Bright Queen shine on you," Stump repeated, wincing at how Grumul might feel about that. "Glad to meet a friend of Reema."

Elmee waved him up to the desk. She leaned forward for a closer look, sending an astrolabe and several unidentifiable chunks of metal tumbling. Her face was a strange blend of wrinkles, grey eyebrows, and the warmth and colour of youth. "Likewise. It's been a long time coming, hasn't it?"

Stump looked up at Reema, who shrugged. "Has it?" he said.

Elmee made a vague gesture of the hand suggesting the explanation would take far too much time. Instead she closed her eyes and breathed deep. The air hummed the same way it did before the wagon exploded. Hummed the same frequency before Germott turned invisible, or Stump cast a lumen.

She knows magic.

When Elmee opened her eyes again, she smiled. "Long way from your tribe, aren't we?"

"How…" Stump faltered. He looked to Reema a second time only for her to repeat the shrug. That's not Lumensa's gift.

"Must be quite the achievement to survive the Wildrun, Stump, shortest of goblinkind." Elmee's smile widened mischievously.

Stump's ears curled. How could she know? "What skill is that?"

"Though my homeland is far away we share the same well of time," she said. "And Chrona draws us all from it. She allows me a drop or two of her powers when I am parched, but Chrona, ah… Chrona sees all."

"Sees all," parroted the bird. It pecked at the cage. "Sees all."

"Hush, Mort," Elmee said. She sank into her chair and grinned at the bulging pack. "Now, let's trade."

Reema spilled its contents. Most of it was junk—old plates and cups and spoons, but some were copper and bronze trinkets Morg had found in the woods. All of it looked like it would be right at home amidst the Find's incongruent inventory.

"More bowls?" Elmee complained, turning one over in her hands before tossing it over her shoulder.

"Last time the bowls went for a good price," said Reema, offended.

Elmee looked up at her while sifting through the pile. "That's the wrinkle with time, isn't it? Never the same twice. Bowls were needed once, now they are not. I foresee a pitiful harvest this year, therefore not much use for bowls. Poor resale value."

"But…" Reema glanced around the interior to gauge what the shopkeep might be interested in. "What about books? I've got two in there."

"Yes, I see," Elmee hummed, studying the spine of one of them. "Goldhush, A Pauper's Handbook: Fifty Recipes For This Surprisingly Diverse Sporegrain." She considered it, muttering under her breath. And somewhere even deeper than that, magic whirred. "I foresee a man whose name begins with 'G' paying me a visit tomorrow… no, the day after. He will be hungry. I'll pay you a copper for it."

"Two," Reema said without hesitation, then added, under Elmee's challenging stare, "Jin's gotten a number of tasty stews out of it."

The shopkeep mulled the offer with pursed lips. "One."

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Two."

"One."

"Two," chimed Mort.

Elmee kissed her teeth and glanced at the bird's precarious perch. "You're no help."

"Two, and you can take two of my bowls," said Reema.

Elmee gave an exasperated sigh. "I've already said my piece about—"

"They've got to put all those grains somewhere, don't they?"

The elderly woman regarded her over the rim of her glasses. Slowly Elmee surrendered to a toothy smile. "Once again you show a sharp mind," she said, wagging a finger. "Throw in one of those spoons and you've got a deal."

Another round of haggling ensued over the slim, beer stained tome of 'Floria's Ballads: A Bardic Guide for Inns Big And Small, Volume II', which net Stump and Reema another few copper. Six flagons, two carpets woven with Broadcap fiber and ironmalt, and one pewter bust of Umbralanus later and they net a total of fifteen copper—almost another silver piece.

By the end of it Stump's attention had been snared by a faint purple glow emanating from the other side of Elmee's desk.

"What's that?" he inquired as Reema shovelled the earnings into her belt.

"Oh, these?" The shopkeep pried open a stubborn drawer and revealed the source—two small oval stones, as white as pearls. "They're enchanted with Sonurgy. If you speak into one I could hear it through the other, even from some distance. Not as impressive as Chronurgy, mind you."

Sylas had used similar abilities on Seabrace. "How much for them?" Stump asked.

Elmee scoffed. "They're not for sale. Nor could you afford it if they were."

"What about for trade?"

She steepled her fingers over the desk. "What would you offer?" she asked in tones feigning disinterest.

"Papers," he said, then realized how that sounded with no further context. "Pages from a book, I mean. A powerful book."

Elmee cocked a nearly hairless eyebrow. "What kind of power?"

He thought back to the half dozen pages he'd stolen from Thrung. Although he managed to wrest Thermalurgy from it, and could now spend a focus point harnessing the skill if he wanted to, the rest of the scribblings made little sense.

"Magic," he said.

"Skillbook pages?" she asked, surprised.

Stump shrugged. "I think so."

"How many?"

"Seven or eight."

"How many skills?"

"Two. I learned Lumenurgy and Thermalurgy from them."

Elmee mulled the thought with a considered frown. After a moment she shook her head as if to dispel her own interest in the offer. "No, I cannot trade them. I foresee a figure of great stature purchasing them from me. Great stature and great power, from humble birth. I must keep them."

His ears dipped.

"However…" she went on, rapping her knuckle against the desk. "The future holds strong prospects for those pages. Yes, I will have them. But for glimmer, not the stones."

Stump stirred at the mention of money. Even a small amount would go a long way for his fledgling company. "Of course. I'm not too sure of their value, though."

He glanced over at Reema for direction, but the signature hum of the arcane drew his gaze back to Elmee, whose eyes were closed. When they opened again, she smiled. "You know where the full tome is," she said.

"I do," he said hesitantly.

"For the book I will give you a gold piece."

Stump almost staggered, and by the sound of Reema's gasp he was right to be flustered. Gold had barely been mentioned around him. It was the currency of the best companies, the richest nobles. It was so far beyond the earnings of his meagre venture that its very existence might as well be relegated to legend.

"Thats very generous," he said. "But I don't know if I can get it. It's in the hands of someone I'd very much like to never see again."

"Oh, but those are the ones whose paths we must cross," Elmee said. "As Chrona teaches, your past is your shadow. It's always there, clinging to your heels. You only need shine a light to see it. And your past, my friend, is very close indeed."

"Sees all," said Mort. "Sees goblin."

Elmee grumbled at the mimicaw. "You're very chatty today, aren't you?"

"Sees goblin! Sees goblin!"

"What's he saying?" said Stump, watching the creature flit about its cage.

Elmee was contemplating. She waved a hand at the bird's incessant cawing. "Alright, alright. I'll do it."

Mort calmed.

"Do what?" said Stump.

The shopkeep leaned forward with a mischievous glint in her eye. "Would you like to have your fortune told?"

"You mean… my future?"

She had already begun to rifle through her desk, and moments later produced a deck of intricately drawn cards. "First you will choose your Umbralanus sign," she said, deftly scattering cards face-down on the table. Once they'd been dealt, Elmee dropped a cloth over a nearby glowcap, snuffing its light.

Darkness rolled into the shop, but the swirls on the back of the cards glistened silver and gold, like stars in the night sky, each one its own constellation.

Stump gazed on them, uncertain. "I choose one?" he said.

She nodded.

He hovered his hand over the desk. He had no way of knowing what was on the other side of the cards, no real direction to follow, but a strange sort of certainty caused him to avoid a number of them.

Not that one, he thought. No. That doesn't feel right. No. No.

He stopped. The card beneath his fingers was no more discernible than the rest. "This one," he said, almost as a question.

Elmee bent forward and flipped it over. She gasped. So did Mort.

"You have turned The Coil of Ashes," the shopkeep whispered, as though its utterance held great power.

A serpent was turned in on itself, almost a complete circle, flames whisking off its body, its wings crumbling into soot. On its tail was a second head, jaws open to the first, ready to consume it. Stump blinked at it with a touch of fear, though he didn't know why.

"What does it mean?" he said.

"Many things. For us to know we must illuminate our darkness with Lumensa's light." Elmee fumbled with a desk drawer, cursed under her breath, then set a candle in the middle of the table and lit it.

A dim glow bubbled over the cards, dispelling the starlight facade and throwing a hint of colour over the one Stump had chosen. Elmee bent low and squinted at it from multiple angles.

"Green," she muttered, then nodded to herself. "Green… with flecks of red…"

"Green! Green!" said Mort.

"Is green good?" asked Stump, looking up to Reema for support, but her brow was just as furrowed as his.

"Green is…" Elmee straightened with some effort, then sank ponderously into her chair. "Uncertain. The touch of red suggests a calamitous air about your coming days. A dangerous hunger, self-consuming. You will meet this dragon, and you will need to stop its devouring of those around it in its pursuit of sating an appetite which cannot be sated."

"A dragon," said Stump, eyes sparkling.

"A dragon," she repeated, as if nothing could be more mundane. "Not a real one. It could be a metaphor, but for what is up to you."

He deflated a little. "Oh."

"That'll be a copper, please," she announced with an outstretched hand.

"Copper…? Oh, I wasn't aware it would…"

Her fingers beckoned impatiently.

Stump reluctantly dug into his pouch.

They departed Portentous Finds after the exchange of glimmer, their sack nearly empty and their wallets slightly heavier. It wasn't as much as Reema hoped to make, but along with the roughly five silver Stump already owned she assured him they could make some decent purchases at their next stop.

"She's quite a lady," Stump said as they merged back onto Withers Way.

"Shrewd, isn't she?" Reema had gone back to looking at their list while they walked. "She's got good instincts, I'll give her that."

"And all that magic. Chronurgy, is it? Maybe I should've asked her when I'll become a copper company."

Reema looked up from the paper. "I'm not sure any of that was real, dear," she said.

Stump found himself resuming his jog to keep pace with her. "What do you mean? She knew about my past. The Wildrun. She knew about the book."

"She surmised about the book only after you mentioned pages."

"But that hum. The sound of magic."

"That was the bird, Stump. You didn't see him?"

He'd been too enraptured by her spell to pay attention to anything else. But she knew about my tribe, he thought. My exile. He supposed one could easily assume those facts about goblins if they knew enough about their culture. Goblins were always part of a tribe, and if they weren't there would only be a handful of reasons why.

She knew my name, too. But with the works of his company slowly spreading, maybe that part wasn't such a surprise.

"I'm not saying she doesn't know any magic at all," Reema continued, registering his disappointment. "But people like Elmee are quite practiced at convincing you there's a lot happenin' under their veil of parlour tricks. First time I met her she guessed my name was Roomi. It's quite a good guess if you're a fraud, but a terrible one if you're an oracle."

Stump couldn't deny the rush of disappointment. He wanted to believe Elmee held the power she claimed, but there was another part of him, the frightened goblin he'd once been in his old tribe, that was relieved at Reema's words.

Either way, the offer of a gold piece for the book was real. If he ever did return to his cave, the tome would be a good reward and the glimmer even better, but it wouldn't be the main reason. There was another tugging at his heart.

Yeza.

She was still there, trapped with Thrung, who was no doubt furious at Stump's escape. He'd always been a hateful creature, but the failure to slay his quarry on the Wildrun would have blinded him with vengeance. He remembered the goblin's lies at the trial, his command over fire, the burned half of his face and the other untouched. And his name, forged from his survival of the raid and granted by the matrons.

Fire-Spitter. A dragon with two heads.

Your past is very close, indeed.

Stump buried Elmee's portent in his mind and took comfort in Reema's caution. It was nothing more than parlour tricks. It had to be.

And still, as they traversed the metalworker's din of Withers Way and breathed the steam of red-hot smelters, Stump shivered.