Holiday Special #2 - A Rogue and The Merchant (Patreon)

To those that celebrate any of the holidays for this season, I hope they treat you well. Merry Christmas. Happy Imminent Hannukah. And may you all enjoy every other celebration.

And don't worry AJ, I scheduled this a bit ago!

Today I have a short story to share with you all, one that gave me back my confidence in my ability to write. Without the characters you're about to meet, Ranthia might not have been allowed to escape beyond the ideas stage.

The story is set in a generic D&D-ish high fantasy setting, and I think that's all the lead-in I have to share. I hope this is a satisfactory treat!

A Rogue & The Merchant

By CrimCat

At last, they came into view.  It had been a long journey from the capital, but everything had been so worth it, and she had even arrived in time.  The next challenge would only begin that night, and the day was still young.

Of course, none of her party members recognized her.  She was decidedly unsure if that was disconcerting or flattering, but she muscled through that and strode toward the increasingly, visibly uncertain group.  Their minds clearly struggling with the concept of the young woman in front of them.

“Well, I’m back!”  She struck a pose, aiming for cute but instead landing somewhere closer to untrustworthy and aggressive.

“Fra-?!” Dorla got interrupted by a sharp elbow from Junathon.

“Hail has rejoined the party!”  She threw up a victory sign with her fingers, it was something she had seen in a stage show as a child and had always been fond of.  It used to be mortifying to be seen doing it, but now it felt like it fit like a glove.

“Eeee!  I can’t believe it; you look so great!”  Dianaphina—or Anaphi, as she preferred to be called—has promptly seized the other girl in a fierce hug while she enthused.

“Great enough to change your mind abo—…”  And that was all Hail managed to get out before Anaphi stuck a finger uncomfortably deep into her cheek, a rather unambiguous warning sign to drop it.

Anaphi was an elf, not that you would know it from her behavior.  She was a cleric in service to a totally legit and not at all made up Goddess of Platonic Hugs, Hugsy.  While her faith was dubious, her divine spellwork was beyond question and, admittedly, she did give just about the world’s greatest hugs.  As nearly always she wore the simple yellow sundress that she insisted was her holy vestments.

Dorla still looked speechless.  She was one of the party’s two frontliners, a gnome that most people mistook for a dwarf; due to her burly build and fondness for full plate armor with a tower shield on one arm and a battleaxe in her other hand.  Not that she was geared up at that point, instead she wore a baggy, rough-spun cotton jumpsuit that looked wildly uncomfortable.

Junathon looked pleased for Hail.  He was the party’s other frontliner, a half-orc that was lean, graceful and nimble.  He, as always, was dressed in fine clothing that would suit a noble’s soiree, though it was enchanted to provide what he needed.  His beloved partner rapier was sheathed at his side, as always.  He also seemed marginally put out that she had not adopted one of her other candidate names, Meteor, because he had looked forward to calling her ‘Meaty’ for now on.  That was one arrow dodged.

Graphile was curled up atop the three-foot-tall iron golem or living armor or whatever it was that she created, and looked at Hail with a distant, half-awake stare.  She was an artificer, though she had been cursed by an ancient artifact that turned her into something that looked like the lovechild of a bird and a caterpillar.  She was unphased by the change though, especially since it gave her more hands to work with; no matter how creepy they might be to watch in action.

Hail, herself, was all smiles.  She had taken the opportunity between the last challenge round and this one to stay in the capital and use the vast majority of her share of the treasure from their stunning victory over the (absurdly) evil black dragon, Childeater.  Seriously, that was what he called himself.  Getting her body permanently transfigured had been dangerously expensive, but the human rogue was beyond happy with the results.  Her new leather armor fit her new body like… well, like it was made for her, which it was.  That was coupled with her only two treasures she kept from the dragon’s hoard, a pair of grey, silken gloves that provided a huge amount of Spider Climb use each day and the short sword sheathed behind her back; a powerful magical blade that looked like a blade-shaped slice of a blizzard when drawn.

Junathon had the grace to wait for Anaphi’s celebratory hug with Hail to end before he cleared his throat.  In theory Graphile was the party leader, but she had largely ceded day-to-day operations to him; it gave her more time to nap.

“Did they let you gear up in the capital for this one?”

“No, they even erased the parts of your letter that said what this challenge would entail and replaced it with a note that it would ruin the challenge to let the news leak where I had external sources.”  Hail made a face as she shared this news.

The rest of her party looked horrified.  This made Hail nervous, not that the outbursts from her party helped.

“Oh, that’s not good at all!”  Was Anaphi’s contribution.

A profanity-laden little tantrum was Junathon’s seems-out-of-character-but-is-actually-his-usual-response-to-problems outburst.

Graphile shifted some of the feathers atop her head in a way that seemed disgruntled, somehow.

“Well, we’re fucked, that means you won’t be able to help out with the hunt.”  Of course, Dorla was the more direct, clear-headed one.

“Wh… what do you mean?”  Hail had already lost the battle with her panic and floundered in it.

Her party explained.  This challenge was to recover a special vine that could be found deep in the swamp beyond the town.  A swamp that existed because of a curse on the surface of the world, which enforced corruption and rot upon all that entered the area.  This was problematic, to say the least, because it would cause any normal footwear to rapidly fail, even ordinarily enchanted boots.  Only specialized boots made from plant and animal matter recovered from this swamp could resist it.

To make matters worse, as Graphile put it, this was a town of less than 200 people.  Now it housed the town’s population plus an onslaught of over six hundred adventurers.  The supply chains were not just strained, they were annihilated.  The boots had long since become impossible to find.

Hail immediately put herself to work.  Sure enough, every market stall and shop had long since sold out.  One cobbler had even fired a crossbow at her when she tried to ask, or at least he shot a bolt into the mangled doorframe next to her head; a damned clear demand to leave.  So just buying the boots normally was clearly not an option, just as her comrades had told her.

But Hail also had experience with information gathering, or at least more experience with it than the rest of her party; she was sure she could find something.  And she did, a sort of pop-up black market that formed in the cellar of the cheese merchant’s shop.  (Putting aside, with difficulty, the question of how a town with less than two hundred people can possibly support a full-time merchant specializing in cheese and only cheese with such a large building.)

She even found a man selling a pair of these special boots.  There was just one problem.

“You want TEN platinum coins for one pair of used boots!?”

It was something beyond daylight robbery.  Hail barely had a single gold coin left.  Even with their relatively newfound wealth, she doubted her party could scrape together half that princely sum.  Also, used footwear is always disgusting.  To add insult to injury, the boots would have been a touch too large, even if she could afford them.

“Wait, is he selling a pair of swamp boots?”  A dwarf came over at a jog.  He ended up buying the boots right then and there, after deciding that they would be uncomfortably tight on his feet, but he could put up with it.

The timing was such that Hail would have suspected it was some sort of con, if not for the fact she recognized the dwarf from the last challenge.  She knew her party was a bit less experienced than most of the adventurers competing for these challenges but was still stunned to watch someone casually throw away that level of wealth for ill-fitting footwear that would be of little to no value after that challenge.

She left the not-quite-legal market, dejected.  But a local youth across the road made sure to catch her eye almost as soon as she was out.  The girl—maybe about 10, it could be hard to tell with Halflings—flashed a series of hand signs in thieves’ cant.  Hail paused in uncertainty but responded in kind.

Decision made, she followed the local girl through the town streets and down the sorts of ill-formed alleys that crop up when a village slowly grows into a town with no real city planning.  The girl had claimed to know a merchant that still had a few pairs of boots.  Which reeked of a scam, but Hail had very few options left, unless she wanted to ride on Junathon’s back and ruin his footwork even more than the murky terrain already would.

Hail was especially nervous about the fact that, when she asked the girl what she wanted in return for this information, the girl had simply responded that she wanted to see what would happen.  That was never a good sign.

At last, the youth pointed down a particular alley and hung herself around the corner to watch what was about to happen.  Hail gathered her nerves and squeezed around the youth and found herself in a surprisingly clean and orderly, though tiny alley.  An alley that led to a dead-end, where a little pop-up shop of sorts had sprawled itself out.  Various items were set up, but at the center of the display at the very end of the alley, past a large pillow, were six boxes of boots.  Boxes with the insignia of the psychotic cobbler with the crossbow and the pictograph that this town used for its swamp boots.

Perched atop the box with a pair of boots perfectly in her size, based on the notations on the box, was a cat.

“So, you have come to Cat to buy boot.”  A surprisingly masculine, rumbly voice came from the feline as he tapped a paw on the box beneath him.

Hail had heard of beings like this.  Theories varied, some said they were the products of a deranged wizard’s experiments, others claimed they were ex-familiars that had outlived their companions; what was clear were there were animals out there that were roughly just as intelligent as any other sapient being.  And apparently the rumors were true that at least some of them adopt strange speaking mannerisms to try to con people into underestimating their intelligence, she would have to keep that in mind.

Hail’s skills as a rogue also made it obvious that the feline had been on the pillow until moments before, yet now he was on the only pair of boots in her size?

“How did you know what size I wear?”  She had to ask.

“Cat heard her footsteps.”

That was maddeningly unhelpful.  Footsteps only really indicated one’s weight, which had little to nothing to do with the size of their feet.  The cat, however, seemed disinclined to elaborate.

“Fine, er… Mr. Cat, how much do you want for the boots?”

“Just Cat.  But what a question!  What use does Cat have for coin?  …None, not one!”  His voice really would be attractive—if she were into masculine tones—which was disconcerting coming from an ordinary tabby.

“…Coins buy food,” she tried though the cat seemed unimpressed, “…Okay, fine.  What do you want for the boots then?”

“Hmmm, for one such as you…  No, no…  But yes…  Yes, that will do nicely: A mission.  Woman shall bring mouse from bakery of North end of town.”  A proclamation from the regal feline.

“…Okay, that should be easy enough.”  Hail consented and bottled her confusion.

“Alive!  Mouse to not be harmed.”  The tabby hurriedly clarified.

That would make things more challenging, but Hail still had confidence in her abilities.  How hard could catching one mouse intact and unharmed be?

Mission accepted, Hail made her way back through the alleys and toward the Northern end of the town.  She was keenly aware of the sneaky but relatively inexperienced youth that followed her from a distance, but that was fine.  The girl’s price was the satiation of her own curiosity, after all.

Once she found the only bakery on the Northern end of town, Hail confirmed with the owner that there was indeed a mouse in the bakery.  It was the only one and the woman seemed indifferent to the prospect of its removal.  Though she did seem bemused in a fatigued sort of way that strongly suggested that Hail was not the first to attempt this mission.  The baker evaded any questions related to other attempts, however, and returned to her dough.

Hail found the mouse hole easy enough but confirmed that this would be of no help.  There was no way she could get even her slender arms through and angle them around the bends to try to grab the rodent directly.  No, a trap was in order, one that could capture the mouse alive and intact.

The supplies for the trap proved easy enough to gather, they only cost her a few coppers.  A small basket from a local shop with some low-grade scrap metal the blacksmith gave her for weight, a robust string purchased from the cute but very married seamstress and a perfect little stick she found on the ground next to a tree; it all came together quickly.

Then she had to make her way back to the cheese merchant’s shop where she had to pay entirely too much money for a small wedge of soft cheese.  All the hard cheeses, along with most other food that could keep for a week or longer had long since sold out in town.  This had driven up the price of the more perishable food items as well, but it still stung to shell out two silver for a tiny little wedge of young soft cheese.

Then it was back to the bakery to bait the trap and wait.  And wait.  And wait.  After an hour, the baker finally took pity on Hail and gave her one world-shattering bit of advice: Mice actually had little interest in cheese and something like peanut butter would work far better.  Hail was not proud of the frustrated scream she responded with.

But she felt justified, after all, the day was nearly done.  She had barely more than an hour left before the challenge would formally get underway and the adventurers would be let loose into the swamps.  She needed those boots desperately.

Her mind jumped to a terrible, easy solution: She could steal the boots.  She was good, she was sure she could even manage to pull off a theft from that cat.  …But no, she forcedly rejected the idea with every fiber of her being.  Being a petty thief was something that was Frank, Hail on the other hand was a proper rogue in a party that had become serious contenders for being crowned the royal crown’s official adventurers on call: those who would have first dibs on future ruins discovered and other high profit opportunities.  Hail would be far more than Frank ever was, better in every way.

Her determination seized anew, she set out again to find peanut butter.  Fifteen precious minutes later she instead paid another precious silver coin to buy a small bag of peanuts that had gotten damp and half rotted, along with poorly carved mortar and pestle.  With less than an hour left she hurriedly mashed the relatively few peanuts that had not yet succumbed to rot.  It was crude peanut butter and barely a thumb’s worth, but it would do.  Hopefully.

Hail reassembled her trap with the new bait and waited around the corner, with bated breath.  The ne’er-do-well youth entered the bakery half an hour later, chewing at a strip of dried meat and wholly immune to the baker’s scowl.

The girl again communicated through hand signs, she had yet to speak in Hail’s presence.  She asked what Hail was doing.  Hail tried to sign back the rather convoluted message that she had set up a trap to try to capture a mouse for the cat; troubled by the fact that several components of that simple thought were not captured in the standard hand signs for some strange reason.

The girl then lazily pointed near Hail.

Hail followed the gesture with her eyes.  It was her bag of peanuts, those that had proved too rotten to use in her peanut butter.  Just before she dismissed the bag as unimportant, she noticed movement from within.  With every ounce of stealth she had learned in her career as a thief-turned-rogue, she adjusted herself to peer into the bag.

Incredulously, it contained a mouse that gorged itself happily on rotten peanuts, shell and all.

Hail, with difficulty, suppressed her primal need to scream in frustration.  She took a moment to steady herself before she put her dexterity to use and snatched the bag.  She squeezed it shut, then stuffed it into a more durable leather bag from her belt, before the mouse could get a chance to chew through the cheap, half rotten peanut bag.

“Thank you!”  She called out generally to both the youth and the baker while she sprinted out of the shop.  Time was nearly up.  She ran with everything she had and took shortcuts where her dexterity allowed it.

The cat was alarmed by her sudden, vaulting arrival from the rooftop of what smelled like either a brothel or an inn favored by the horniest of adventurers; she was in far too much of a hurry to have actually checked its sign.  He demonstrated his alarm through a couple of very subtle, easy to miss indicators: A loud hiss and poofed out fur, especially the tail.

Hail gave an awkward half-bow, half-curtsy, half-stumble of apology, before she held up her leather bag and triumphantly announced that she completed the cat’s mission.

“Oho, woman proves her worth!  Go on, let it out right here before Cat.”  The tabby recovered his calm demeanor with impressive alacrity, not that Hail appreciated it.

The ratty peanut bag was freed from her leather bag—thankfully the rodent hadn’t chewed through and gotten rotten peanuts loose in her good bag—and with no small amount of trepidation, Hail set the bag down in the designated position in front of the cat’s pillow and opened it.

The mouse’s head poked out.  Hail—inwardly—did a fist pump followed by a happy dance that reached her actual feet just enough that it nearly toppled her over.

The mouse looked at the cat.  The cat smiled, as much as a cat could smile.  Hail braced herself for a violent display of the food chain in action.

The mouse hopped out of the bag and, to Hail’s disbelief, climbed the tabby and perched atop his head, and squeaked a rant of squeaks borne from what seemed to be righteous indignation.  The cat laughed in response, good naturedly.

“Apologies, old friend.  But Cat needed a most worthy opponent for this nice, new woman to prove herself against.”

More squeaks.

“Of course, Cat will make it up to the bravest mouse Cat has ever known!  A feast of the finest fish guts and spoilt vegetables shall be yours later tonight!”

Hail tried her hardest to keep the disgust off her face.  She had no idea if she succeeded.  She did not.

“But yes, first Cat must uphold Cat’s word!  For the woman who has newly found herself, Cat presents to you these finest of wares!”

The tabby hopped up and strode over to the box of promised boots.  He nuzzled the box affectionately, before he pressed his forehead against the box and pushed it over to Hail.  Bizarrely the mouse also ‘helped’ and braced its weight against the box from the back of the cat’s head.  Had Hail been in a better state of mind, she would have found the sight adorable, if uncanny.  Instead, she felt nervous.

The cat’s word was good, as it turned out.  Within the box was a pair of those special swamp boots, clean and new.  They fit as expected and were comfortable enough, for new boots.  Hail did have the good grace to thank the cat, but he waved it off as a bargain struck and fulfilled.  Not that she could make heads or tails of such a bargain, but her mind was done.

She donned her boots and ran for the Western end of town where the challenge would begin.  …Or rather, had already begun, as it turned out.  But her party had waited for her and were delighted to see that their decision to wait had paid off.  The five of them made their way out into the swamps, together.

The next morning, they would return with one of the vines in hand.  Obtained in large part through Hail’s efforts, to the extent that was questionable if the party would have succeeded without her.  There were still more rounds of challenges to go, with plenty of competition still qualified to go further, but they had come one step closer to their dreams.

All thanks to their rogue and a most unusual merchant that she met and would never forget.