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

It was the first time all day that the goblins had been shocked into silence.

Brinetown was as tumultuous as the rest of the Downs, but where the great rocky ruins prevented you from seeing much of the expanse of Grimsgate while standing in its streets, Brinetown sloped inexorably to the shore by way of narrow, jagged alleys composed entirely of stairs, like stony tributaries converging on the sea.

Light blue kingdoms of algae ruled cracks split by the incessant saltwater breeze, and domed mudbrick dwellings glistened with brine on jutting limestone terraces. Despite the dour gloom of the Downs, Brinetown was the brightest of the districts, lit not only by strings of coloured lamps, but by flecks of sunset glittering off the waves.

And in case you were lost or had forgotten where you were, gulls cruised high above, reminding everyone in their squealing tone of the nearby presence of water.

"That's a big river," Dreeg observed, dumbfounded.

"That's not a river, you idiot," said Knife-Chewer. "It's a lake."

"A sea, not a lake," Durza countered.

Knife-Chewer snarled. "Of course I see the lake!"

Durza's fist rattled off the back of his head.

He spun and kicked her in the gut, and she threw herself at him. Their scuffle shattered a painted clay pot outside an open doorway, scattering its shards down the endless stairway. They might've tumbled after them if Ironbone hadn't pulled them apart.

"It's the sea, like Durza said," Stump explained after peace had been reestablished. "It's filled with salt and treasures from the city."

"Ghosts, too," Morg added grimly.

Pebble-Crusher gulped. "Spirits?"

"Aye, 'n dead gods."

"Grumul?" Yeza wondered.

"Not him," said Stump. "Another. The one whose powers I have."

Whether through terror or wonder the goblins fell silent again, at least long enough for them to descend the breezy heights of the border of Hogg's Hollow to Brinetown's bustling, waterlogged core.

Salt Square was aptly named. The white stone terrace on which it rested seemed to exhale its stores of rotting fish and salt. Stalls of shellfish were erected next to sellers of polished, underwater finds and clothes of mosshair. A grummox ambled by, its saddle clanking with jars of finely ground brackane—the sporegrain of Brinetown—and barnacle crusted tonics of dubious make. Tattered sails suspended from poles were stretched across the market, shielding it from the constant sea spray.

"How do we find Pog?" Stump yelled over the din.

Morg shrugged. "We ask around. If he's here most days, someone's bound to know him."

"Dog?" said the first one they approached, an older one-eyed human with long, greasy hair, who owned fewer teeth than fingers, of which he was missing several. He stood behind short stacks of crab cages. "Lot a' dogs 'round here. Mangy beasts always eyein' me catch."

"Not dog. Pog," said Stump.

As if his mind worked at half-mast, the man nodded several seconds after the correction. "Ah. Ya wanna speak to Red-Belly Ghrok, down by Netlace Court. He's got a few cogs for rent, though it'll cost ya brightly."

"Pog," Morg hissed. "Pog, y'old goat."

The old man was amused by the insult, if he heard it at all. " 'Pologies. If only me ears were as sharp as me sight. Frog. Ya should have said so. They've got some for sale over at—"

Next they came to a seaweed-green lizardfolk flanked by two heavily armoured mercenaries behind a table of lockboxes housing dyed shark tooth necklaces and pearl bangles.

"Pog was here an hour ago," she explained. "Was probably picking someone's pocket or selling his faulty creations judging by how quickly Shesska chased him out of the market."

"Faulty creations?" said Stump. He was besieged by the kind of knowing glare often reserved for visitors unaware of a peculiar local custom. It was a look he'd been all too familiar with since first coming to the Downs.

"Wonders, he calls them," she derided. "It'll be a wonder the day any of his wares actually work."

Shesska, patrolling the low-walled edge of the square, recounted finding Pog hawking a contraption of welded copper and sea glass. He attempted to trade his junk device, which he described as a self-lighting lantern, to an oblivious trader out of Guttershine. Shesska warned him about the scam, then only minutes later found him scampering around a fishmonger's stall with what she called "the squint of thieves." She chased him to the wall, where he climbed over and descended the drop from the terrace to the sharp boulders below.

"He's still down there, I gather," said Morg, who knew the area from his time at the Tackled Hack. "The Sift, they call it. It's where thieves 'n scoundrels make their—eh? where ye goin'?"

Stump had left the dwarf's shadow and waddled to a stall of odd looking sea bugs that were pickled, spiced, and wrapped in seaweed.

"Buying a gift," he called over his shoulder. He remembered how starved he had been when stumbling on the Knight Inn for the first time, and he imagined, if Pog was down on his luck and searching the market with "the squint of thieves", that all he really wanted to steal was another day at life.

Armed with his purchase, Stump followed Morg down a series of winding stairs to a patchwork of rickety boardwalks cobwebbing over and around the Sift, a labyrinthine corridor of tide-carved rock and sand from market to sea.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"As I was sayin' 'fore ye walked off, petty criminals 'n such build their nests here. Homes 'n shops," said Morg.

They left the safety of the boardwalk and descended into the stony maze. Wet sand squelched between their toes, and the clamour of the market gave way to the ghostly whistle of saltwater wind tunnelling between rocks. It was a corridor of barnacles, thick patches of dead seaweed, and chalk-inscribed symbols etched into stone in a language of shapes and glyphs.

Narrow turns led to lean-tos over campfires, and driftwood shelters. The haggard inhabitants offered directions to Pog's home—for a small fee. Six copper later and they came to an eelskin curtain drawn between boulders.

On one of the rocks was written, in coloured chalk:

POG'S WIMZICAL WUNDERS

No reefunds

Morg was about to step through when Stump grabbed his wrist.

"Don't scare him," he said, then called, as gently as possible, "Pog?"

The curtain rippled, then settled again.

Stump took a careful step, then placed his shellfish roll in the sand. "It's Stump of the Nobodies. We're here to help you find Blinky, and we've brought food."

There was a patter, and the bottom of the curtain lifted around four metallic fingers. Like a timid creature they probed the sand, then poked the pickled offering. When no danger presented itself, the fingers stiffly closed around the roll and yanked it out of sight.

Moments later a corner of the curtain peeled back to reveal the curious wide eyes and sandy fur of a taurean child.

"I thought they were my friends," explained Pog.

He was seated on an overturned bucket in the middle of his weatherworn grotto, nibbling on the wrapped shellfish. Beside him rested the curious device he'd used to snatch it. Four iron fingers dangled from the end of a fishing pole, attached by string and rope.

It wasn't the only contraption. Around him the whimsical wonders of his home decorated the space between boulders. Some were small, compact pieces of rusted iron with unclear functions, while others were bulking monstrosities. A barnacled helmet with a visor of sea glass sat askew near a pipe running up a rock to a funnel beneath a mushroom fibre wet net, where moisture was stolen from the air and slow dripped into a bucket below. Crumpled in the sand beside it was a suit of armour stitched from ten or twelve materials.

"You're sure it was them who stole Blinky?" inquired Stump, though his attention was snagged by the oddities around him.

Pog nodded sadly. "I wanted to take him with me when they threw me out, but they wouldn't let me. Said Blinky was one of their own."

Morg looked silly sitting on a small turnip crate, like a stone balanced on a pebble. He leaned forward and said, "Is it yer blink mouse or is it a communal sort o' pet among the Scrap Gulls?"

Pog returned a confused look.

"That's yer old crew, yeh? The Scrap Gulls?" Morg pressed.

"Oh," said the oxfolk, appearing to understand. "Yes. But I was the one who found Blinky and brought him in. He was mine. That's how it was. We shared what we could, but our own finds could be claimed."

"Why did they make you leave?" said Stump. He turned at the sound of a scuffle beyond the eel curtain where the goblins waited, but relaxed when Ironbone's voice won out.

Pog lowered his head. "Don't matter. I don't want back in. I just want Blinky."

"And we're here to help you find him," Stump assured, sensing a wall in the boy's mind constructed of unresolved emotional trauma.

Morg, lacking the graceful touch required to navigate such a wall, barrelled into it head first. "If ye pissed 'em off, me 'n my associate here need to know why if we're goin' lookin' for these thieves," he said.

Pog bristled. "I didn't piss them off. They're jealous."

"Jealous o' what?"

"My makes."

"Yer wares?" Morg scoffed. He looked askance at a rod topped with a copper pincer, like the claw of a crab. "I don't mean to accuse, but 'em sellers up in Salt Square don't think much o' yer toys."

The bucket tipped over as Pog bolted to his feet. "They're not toys," he challenged. "I made them. They're magical. Or... they're going to be. Not all of them work, yet."

"Those we talked to seemed to think none o' them work."

"They're stupid."

Morg chuckled. "Might be. But I've heard me fill o' high tales, 'n I know ye can't be old enough to have earned yer first level yet."

Pog puffed out his chest, still fuzzy with oxling fur. "I'm nine," he said. "For taureans I'm almost a man."

"Aye, but not a man just yet, 'n with no access to the system ye got no focus in Enchantment, which means yer little pile o' junk here is just that." He stood, and started for the curtain. "High tales, like I said. Let's go, Stump, 'fore the lad leads us into the claws of a trap company. Or worse, the Ocelots." He reached for the curtain, but stopped short at a sudden burst of light.

In Pog's hands was a double forked candelabra, as fine in make as any from Peaktree Manor, but greened by a life on the seafloor. He worked a copper winch he'd attached near its base, and flaring from one of its fitted bulbs was a bright yellow light. But there was no flicker of flame, and no bubble of heat.

Stump didn't need to inquire to know he was staring at a lumen.

"You made that?" he said, surprised.

"I did," said Pog, but the pride in his tone was hedged by nervousness.

Morg edged away from the curtain and appraised the device with a scrunched brow. "How's it work?" he wondered, swallowing his earlier doubts.

"I don't know. They all think I'm lying. The guards in the square and... my friends. But it works, and I made it." He held the candelabra before him like a storm lantern, letting its light skewer every shadow in his home, illuminating the full metallic glory of his haphazard inventions.

"Why don't you just show them that it works, like you showed us?" said Stump.

Pog shook his head. "It doesn't always work," he admitted, lowering the light to the sand. When he placed it by his feet the lumen dimmed and vanished. "I don't fully understand it, but it must work because of where we are in the shroud, so close to the Bright Queen. I told Blinky that if I could prove it to others, that we wouldn't have to fight for scraps anymore. We could make real glimmer. We could leave this place and never come back."

Morg scratched his beard ponderously. "Ye told yer blink mouse...?"

"Leave and go where?" Stump asked.

Pog turned to a circular platform at the back of his shop, hammered together out of driftwood and ship planks. Around it, scattered on broken bar stools and brine chewed shelves were trinkets and memorabilia fished from the sea.

But it was the badge that caught Stump's eye. Even with its colour bleached by salt and sea spray, he recognized the inscribed towers above the sea, crowned by the phases of the sun and moon. He'd held an insignia just like it only days ago, and even before Pog answered, he knew the two of them shared the same dream.

"The Amber Bastion," said the oxfolk. "If I can show them my device, they'll take me in, won't they? But I want Blinky to come with me. I need him. Apart we're both stuck on this side of the Blightwater, but together we can travel anywhere." He stared longingly at his carved platform. "That's what this is for. I can't finish it without Blinky."

Morg stirred in the corner of the shop. "Yer lamp might work, but makin' a teleportin' device usin' a blink mouse? That magic's out o' reach, even for Stump."

It was difficult for Stump to disagree, but only two months ago he was a frightened little goblin living in a cave in the woods, and now he was a slayer of kings, a wielder of light magic, and was in communication through his dreams to strange beings of unknowable power. He didn't know how to begin imagining where Pog's story might one day take him.

He spared a cursory glance at the other devices—the set of armour and helmet, the pincer rod, a dagger attached to a metallic arm, and realized whatever powers Pog intended for them would not be reached through the magic of Lumenurgy.

"And after the Amber Bastion?" said Stump. "Where will you and Blinky go next?"

The taurean child shrugged as if his answer had been obvious all along.

"To all of them. All the dead gods."