Balthazar’s mouth twitched and mumbled something unintelligible as he slept. Deep within the crab’s shell, a dream pyed out in his mind. It was fuzzy and disjointed.

  He was by the shore of his pond, but there was no trading post. No shelves, tables, crates, or random juher. He saw no one else around him, no goblin, no golem, nns of any humans.

  His cws and shell were back to being their usual gray chitin, and he felt threatened, as if he was in danger.

  In the dream, Balthazar looked up at the gloomy dark sky that seemed to herald an ining storm, and he saw a mass of bck dots desding from the clouds. They were birds. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them.

  He felt agitated, but uo move, as if his legs were stuck to the ground.

  Paralyzed in his nightmare, the increasingly panicked crusta looked around for any form of help he could find, but there was nothing.

  The creatures were all identical, practically indistinguishable from one another, as if refles from one single source, diving at him with great speed. Yet, they also appeared to take an excruciatingly long time to reach him, as if every time he looked at them again, they were further up and back to the start of their dest, repeating a torturous loop of impending doom the crab could not escape.

  Balthazar wasn’t even sure what would happen ohey finally got to him. No bird had ever actually physically harmed him. Despite that, they always brought a feeling of danger within, of a threat, that they were a bad omen.

  He just wanted out of there, but his legs wouldn’t budge, and there was nothing he could do but watch.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a loud screech echoed around him. Looking back up at the approag flocks of dark birds, he saw a rger blue figure dash through the air among them.

  “No, get away, they’re dangerous!” Balthazar tried shouting, but no sound escaped his mouth.

  Gazing in horror at the se above, surprise repced fear, as the winged lizard started shootis of fire out of its mouth, burning away several of the birds with each exhale.

  “Yes!” the crab shouted, thrusting a victorious pio the sky, his voice audible once again.

  Soon the few birds that remained dispersed, flying away in a frenzied retreat, leaving the drake as the sole ruler of the sky above the pond.

  Still uo move, Balthazar tinued celebrating the avia he had just witnessed, when a set of words appeared in front of his vision, blurry and hazy.

  [Add Blue to your Party?]

  [Yes | No]

  He looked past the letters at the majestic blue creature h above, fpping her golden wings as it looked down at him.

  And then his dream slowly began slipping away.

  ***

  The sun was already fully above the horizon and m had begun by the time the crab woke up. Despite having do all his life, sleeping in the sand agai odd, but he couldn’t bring himself to move the baby drake off his pillow after she had fallen asleep on it the previous evening, so he allowed her to rest there for the night. But only that once, definitely a oime thing.

  Shaking off the sand on his shell, Balthazar felt groggy and slightly dazed. He couldn’t tell if it was due to not being used to sleeping like that anymore, but his body felt as if he had spent the whole night in a state of tension, and he was unsure why.

  Carefully approag the entrance of his tent, he took care not to make any loud noises before cheg in oiny drake left sleeping ihe previous night.

  As he peered inside, his eye stalks stood up when he realized the purple cushion was unoccupied.

  Rushing ihe crab looked frantically around and under everything within the small enclosed space for any signs of the baby, but found nothing.

  The creature was not ihe empty jar of cookies, or in the basket full of ses, not even hiding behind the pte of pie. He lifted the heavy wooden cover serving as a floor that disguised the hole underh, but in there all he saw was the same old scroll and his other belongings, no signs of any blue being.

  It had only been a few hours, and he had already mao lose the baby. He began w why he had ever agreed to look after it in the first pce. Who would think a crusta would be a good fit to look after a newborn?

  His was the story of a mert crab, not a nanny crab.

  A knot formed in his throat as he imagined Madeleine’s rea once she found out. He could lose his supply of pastries!

  Balthazar rushed out of the tent and looked around. Druma was oher side of the bridge, already w on hammering nails to some wood. Bouldy was hunched over the water, trailing the tip of his finger over the water as he pyed with the fish.

  “Oh no, no, no,” the crab said, with increasing worry. “Where could it have gone, damn it?”

  Hearing the crisp sound of a twig breaking, Balthazar looked up just in time to see a blue blur dropping from a tree brand dive towards him.

  With a quick yelp and a jump back, the startled mert avoided the nding drake.

  Except this no longer looked like the same creature as the day before. It had grown, now being nearly the same size as a rge dog, its scales a deeper shade of blue that resembled the color of a sapphire, and the teeth that filled its mouth were much sharper.

  “How the hell…”

  On a hunch, Balthazar tried looking at it through his monocle again.

  [Level 16 Juvenile Drake]

  “But why did you—”

  As if a pocket of water inside his shell had just popped, a quick hint of a memory washed over him, only partial, but enough to make him recall something he wasn’t sure was a dream, or just his imagination pying tricks.

  Pulling up his status page, he checked his party.

  [Status]

  [Name: Balthazar] [Race: Crab] [Css: Adept Mert] [Level: 10]

  [Attributes]

  [Strength: 3] [Agility: 2] [Intelligence: 20]

  [Skills]

  [Charisma: S(+5)] [Medium Armor: A] [Speech: B] [Fishing: C] [Sshing ons: C] [Reading: B] [Imbuing: C]

  [Party Members]

  [Name: Druma] [Race: Goblin] [Css: None] [Level: 3]

  [Health: 60/60]

  [Attributes]

  [Strength: 2] [Agility: 4] [Intelligence: 2(+2)]

  [Name: Bouldy] [Race: Stone Golem] [Css: None] [Level: 30]

  [Health: 500/500]

  [Attributes]

  [Strength: 40] [Agility: 3] [Intelligence: 1]

  [Name: Blue] [Race: Drake] [Css: None] [Level: 16]

  [Health: 150/150]

  [Attributes]

  [Strength: 8] [Agility: 22] [Intelligence: 5]

  “Oh…”

  Balthazar looked past the wall of text in front of his eyes, at the drake standing in front of him, wialons on the ground, head low, bck pupils narrow, as if studying him.

  It seemed he had added the creature to his party without meaning to. Or did he? He couldn’t tell for sure.

  And why had it suddenly grown to a full juvenile ht? Intuition told him it must have beerange system’s hand at py there, as usual. It couldn’t seem to make sense of the baby drake the previous day, but now it identified it just fihat couldn’t be a ce.

  There sure didn’t seem to be anything that the trived system couldn’t do.

  Except cooperate with Balthazar when he to.

  But the fact was, the drake was now in his party, and he couldn’t decide how to feel about it.

  If someone had suggested him having a winged creature in his party just a few days ago, he would have ughed at them. The crab detested birds with a passion.

  But a drake was not a bird.

  Sure, it had wings, but simirities more or less ehere. And he couldn’t help but feel the idea of having a winged menace of his own growing on him.

  If this creature had teically been hatched by him, was his responsibility, and now a member of his party, why not use that to his advantage?

  He had to alut up with the feathery devils taunting him from high up, their ability to fly preventing the crab from giving them a piece of his mind, but now, with this, they wouldn’t be safe anymore, the tables would turn. Fiery justice could finally e down on them!

  Balthazar began chug under his breath with mischievous iions rising within him.

  Blue frowned as she looked at him in his slightly manic trance.

  “Don’t wirl,” the crab said, extending a piowards her head for some petting, “I think you and I are going to get along just fine.”

  With a snarl, the drake snapped her jaw at his pincer in warning.

  “Or maybe not?!” Balthazar quickly said, pulling his pincer back. “Why are you being so aggressive? I thought you were supposed to see me as some kind of parental figure!”

  Letting out a small cloud of steam through her nostrils, Blue turned around and fpped her wings, creating a gust of wind that blew sand all over Balthazar’s face as she took flight.

  “Pfah!” the displeased crab yelled, spitting out the grains of sand in his mouth. “What are you doing?! Get back down here!”

  The creature circled in the air for a moment and then nded on a thick branch of the tree at the ter of the pond. Sing her surroundings as if looking for something, she let out a loud screech that spelled dissatisfa.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Balthazar asked, more to himself than to anyone else. “Giving me a lot of attitude for someone born just yesterday.”

  He looked at her, and how she seemed to search for something in the area. And then the realization hit him.

  “Of course! You must be hungry! I should have probably thought about that.”

  Skittering across the bridge, the crab approached the goblin, who was holding the brim of his wizard hat as he looked up at the source of all the screeg.

  “Boss,” Druma said, “is big bird angry?”

  “No, just hungry,” Balthazar responded. “Or at least I think that’s what it is. And don’t call it a bird. That’s derogatory.”

  The goblin squinted his eyes at the crab in slight fusion.

  “Either way, I want you to drop whatever you are doing a some wood and rope. I’ll need you to go outside a some small traps around the grass outside the forest, for small prey, to feed Blue. You do that, right?”

  “Yes, yes, boss,” Druma said, nodding vigorously.

  Gathering some pnks, a small box, nails, and a few coils of rope, the gobli off, scampering his way out onto the road.

  Whatever had happeo the drake while Balthazar was still asleep had made her grow from a small newborn baby and into a juvenile drake in a matter of just hoing through all that without having a single meal would leave anyone grumpy.

  Balthazar would know, he hadn’t even had his breakfast yet, and he was already feeling a sour mood growing in him. Or perhaps that was being caused by his ward’s attitude.

  The little thing was just born and the crab already had a feeling she was going to be a handful. Which would be an issue, both because he had no actual hands, and because patience was not his stro suit.

  Up above, Blue tinued sing the horizon from atop the tree, snarling and occasionally letting out another loud screech, as if demanding something. Her eyes nded on the crab, with pupils narrow, and she shrieked directly at him.

  Balthazar gulped and tried to recall whether the bestiary mentioned anything about drakes eating seafood.

  “Druma better e back with something for her to eat soon, because I don’t want to train that thing while she’s on ay stomach.”