The Mimic Becomes a Merchant King

Once they drew near to the coast of Arcadia, Coin made a point to pull in toward an isolated dock just a short distance from the seaside town of Kwart, and only did so under the cover of night. That gave them the privacy for Colony to pull her extra mass up from beneath the waters, forming it into a great wagon laden with trunks and luggage.

She still could not part too far from the rest of her mass, lest it dissolve or calcify in the absence of her brain. Ultimately, Coin had suggested that the wagon angle would work on land, at least for the time being, and she could potentially keep her severed mass alive within the distance of a city the size of Sentinel.

Coin, with some reluctance, bought a horse from a nearby farmer and hitched the steed to Colony's wagon. And. After emphasizing how vital it was that she did NOT eat the horse, the two set off on the winding roads back to Sentinel. The boat, Coin reasoned, would be safe on the dock, and he would pay people to retrieve it for LeBon and take it to a larger port when he made it back home.

"So I should only eat people if they attack me? And if nobody else is around to see me do it?" Colony asked. Her tone was wary, but her face was devoid of expression.

"Ideally," said Coin.

"Tiptoeing around like this, hiding your true self... I do not understand how you manage it. Or why you care so much. If people knew the truth, and tried to kill you, you could easily deal with them."

Coin sighed and fixed his gaze to the rocking road ahead of them. This was going to be harder than he hoped, and his hopes were low to start with. "And where does that end?" he eventually asked. "People get scared and attack me, I kill them. More people get scared because of that, and more people attack me, so I kill them too. It's a cycle, Colony. One that would only end with me, or everyone around me dead."

"You and your attachments," Colony said in a low voice. "I still can't quite grasp it."

"You will. Just... give it time and try to do what I suggest." He couldn't be too forceful with Colony. Not when he still had no grasp of her temperament, or the full scope of her power. Getting her mad or upset could be cataclysmic.

But, well, this was the best option he had to hand. He could hardly have ignored Colony indefinitely, not if she was intent on coming to Arcadia. Fighting her head on likely would have been suicide. At least this way he could make a better person out of her, potentially. Though he'd need help from the others.

Domajor could teach her all about etiquette. Pearl could guide her through the arts, find a passion for her to enjoy. And Essine-

The thought of the kobold sent a sudden jolt through Coin's whole body. He had not dwelled on her this past while, so engrossed was he in the Colony matter that he couldn't afford to. But now his mind was drifting back to their kiss.

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What did THAT mean? Well... he wasn't an idiot, or at least he liked to hope he wasn't. He had an understanding of what romantic relationships were, he even grasped why people put such stock in them. But was he capable of such feelings?

He thought of Essine. Her kind eyes, her warm and caring personality, the gentility of her touch... yes, in many aesthetic ways she was attractive. Even if many humans would likely think him mad for those beliefs. And when he thought along those lines, well, yes... he quite wanted to be close to her. And he had the capacity to do that in the way a human would.

And then he thought of Pearl, too, a woman who was also conventionally very attractive, and he cared for her company too. Well... he'd feel bad if she felt left out of things. And, being a mimic at heart, he did not initially see any issue with being greedy.

"Coin," Colony said, suddenly rousing him to attention.

"What?"

"Goblins."

The word, spoken very matter of factly, was followed immediately by an explosive burst of gunfire that sent a series of ball bearings racing through the treeline on either side of the road. The horse whinnied and shrieked, but most of the shots were aimed squarely at the two mimics. Coin, on a reflex, hardened his flesh but still felt a few bullets tear into his chest.

Colony, conversely, had curiously raised a hand only to gasp as a ball bearing blew of her fingers clean off. She stared at her hand in surprise, smoke rising from the stumps until she willed them to regrow.

"Ah. Hand cannons. I see."

Coin jumped from the seat of the wagon, trying to draw attention from the horse, and landed with a skid on the dirt track. "Good grief," he uttered. "They love their roadside ambushes." That was on him for not being more cautious. But it was concerning that the goblins had masked their scents, preventing him from even sniffing them in advance.

They came from the distant shrubbery. Two small groups, howling as they raised cudgels and axes overhead. Their armour gleamed in the sunlight, beams of light shining with blinding intensity as they struck shards of mirror threaded through their plate.

Coin winced, but through the glare he could see a backline of goblins reloading their hand cannons. He raised a hand, his promethium ring growing warm under his glove. He was already preparing to launch a bolt of lightning from his palm when something rushed past his head, like a great booming gale in the heart of a raging hurricane.

One moment a crowd of goblins was racing his way. In the next they, and much of the ground and shrubbery behind them, had been blasted into a great crater that spanned at least three dozen meters in diameter.

Colony stood a few paces from the wagon, waves of heat radiating from her outstretched hand. Of the goblins there was no trace, as if every particle of them had been scorched from existence by the sheer power of whatever Colony had hit them with.

Her mouth was moving, but Coin heard no sound from them. It was only at that moment that his ears were ringing intensely. Colony's magic had blown his ears out, and the process to repair the damage took a few seconds.

"-rrible creatures. I never liked them before I evolved. Foul tasting, not even worth eating," Colony said, slowly turning to face the goblins on the other side of the road. "Let's deal with them quickly."

Coin nodded, eventually managing to rise properly to his feet. The goblins, he could see, were left briefly frozen in shock, looking at the massive crater Colony had hewn into the earth. They had thought they were dealing with random travellers. Now one of them had unleashed a burst of magic potent enough to down even an ogre.

This may have been an error on their part.

"Maybe... try something less destructive this time," Coin said as he drew near his fellow mimic,

Colony side-eyed him, air continuing to smoke and ripple around her hand. She sighed. "Very well."