***

  “Climb faster, Bruce!” Antoine anded over the merary’s strained grunting. “I’m so close to finally reag him.”

  The muscur thug reached for the protruding stone on the sheer rock wall, the light of the sun refleg off his glistening bald head as thick beads of sweat ran down to his forehead. Strapped to his back by several ropes was a smaller man, barking orders while tributing with nothing to the climb but extra weight.

  “He’s up there, I know it!” the disgraced guildmaster angrily excimed. “We ’t let him slip away! Faster!”

  “Why don’t you climb yourself if you’re not happy with how fast I’m going?” the merc muttered between grindih.

  “Because I’m paying you,” Antoine replied with a caustic hiss.

  He had no time or patieo put up with servants talking baot when he was so close to reag his goal. The crab was close, he could feel it in his mustache.

  After weeks chasing the creature’s trail all over the ti, the human mert had finally caught up to him. He could not let him slip between his fingers because a stupid thug was sg off on the job.

  It had been days since a local on some backwater road told them he had retly seen a crab wearing a backpack walking toward the city of Marquessa. Antoine wasted no time heading that way, hot on his trail.

  By the time they reached it, the locals were busy filling the streets with their celebrating and cheering for their mangoes. ting and drunkenly singing about “Marquessa’s Hero” who saved that year’s harvest. Likely just another idiotic adventurer who had pleted some quest. Nothing the mert cared about. All that mattered was finding Balthazar. Finding the damnable crusta that ruined him.

  Ooine and his goon mao find a local still sober enough t two words together, they learhat the crab had been spotted heading to the docks. But by the time they got there, the ship he was on had already sailed.

  After pushing through a crowd of workers that were busy resg several people who had fallen into the water for whatever reason the mert could not give less of a rat’s tail about, he started asking where that boat was headed.

  It didn’t take long or too many gold s to learn from one of the locals that the ship beloo some retired captain and that it was sailing toward some nearby cliffs off the coast to the north.

  What the crafty crab wanted from such dangerous nds, Antoine did not know, but so long as he did not perish there before the fuildmaster could get his vindication, it did not matter.

  “Stop boung me so much!” the mert said, his short legs dangling wildly as he pined.

  Bruce groaned, muttering something unintelligible under his breath as he kept slowly climbing the side of the mountain.

  Antoine was ner t from the underworld when he wahings done quickly and quietly, which was why it didn’t take him long to source a band of local pirates docked at Marquessa’s bay. Their captain cimed he was one of very few that also khe route to where the other ship was headed, and for a rge enough sum of gold, he’d take the trip.

  The mert paid, digging into his quickly dwindling money reserves that he had mao keep hidden from the authorities ba Ardville. If it meant he’d get the crab, no price was too high. He would have his revenge, even if it cost him his very st . That was all that mattered to the mert lord now.

  “Hey… oof… How e we didn’t have to deal with any fairies on the way here?” Bruce asked as he pulled their weight up past another row of rocks. “Every corsair on that ship kept telling me we’d get swarmed by them the moment they sensed humaing foot within their forest.”

  “Eau de Oignon,” Antoine replied.

  “What?!” excimed the merc.

  “It’s a special fragrance. A perfume, you uncultured lout! The pirate captain told me it was guarao repel any fairies in a rge radius around us. Apparently it’s a trick he learned from a local bandit chief long ago. Fae are extremely averse to its smell. e an of gold, but it seems to have dohe trick.”

  “A bag of gold to smell like unwashed armpit… Great,” groahe climbing thug. “And I’m the one who has to put up with it now.”

  “Shut it, merc!” said the mert. “You will put up with whatever I say because that’s what I’m paying you for.”

  “Sure… Until you run out of ,” Bruce muttered under his breath.

  With o strained grunt, the bodyguard finally reached the cave entran the side of the cliff, the ooine was certain he had seen a figure of a crab flying into earlier from the beach.

  “Quickly now! He has to be down there somewhere!” the smaller man told the other as he freed himself from the ropes and made haste toward the tunnel ahead.

  Bruarled quietly but followed, wiping the sweat off his shaved head with his hand.

  As they delved deeper into the mountain, the pair started hearing something strange.

  “Is that… some kind of music?!” the merary said.

  “Hush! There’s movement up a—”

  Before Antoine could finish his sentence, a blinding fsh of light came from the end of the tunnel, followed by a powerful bst that threw both men back several paces.

  ***

  Ruby stood amid the wreck that used to be Tweedus’s workshop just moments before, her exquisite scarlet robes covered in dust and a few purple feathers. Shreds of paper still swirled around the room as the entress quietly removed her tinted gsses, her twitg eyes fixed on a spot on the floor. After so long, she knew she had e closer to reag the answers she desired now more than ever.

  The other birdwatchers were scattered around the room, some still trying tain their wits, others searg the remnants left in the wake of the high wizard’s spectacle.

  “We’ve looked everywhere,” a girl’s shy voice said from nearby. “They… they’re really gone.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Amber,” Ruby said pcidly, without taking her eyes off the floor. “He was never going to join us. But we got what we came here for.”

  The woman in red leaned doicked up a rge brass cog from the floor.

  “Is… is that the missing ring?” the young birdwatcher asked, a tinge of amazement in her voice.

  “Indeed,” replied the entress, her green eyes sing the runes inscribed oal surface of the ring. “With this we finally plete the Amil Astrobe and find this world’s source. We are so close now.”

  “Ruby,” a deep voice called.

  Jasper walked into the chamber, dragging the bodies of two unsen behind him, both with glowing purple shackles around their wrists and ankles.

  “I found these two snooping around outside,” the brown-skinned man said, letting go of their colrs.

  The entress walked around the remains of a still twitg coffee table with the brass cog in her hands and took a better look at the passed out intruders.

  “I know this one,” she said, staring at the smaller of the two, who had a ridiculous pencil mustache. “He was a mert in Ardville. Balthazar’s nemesis, in fact. Last I checked, he had escaped prison there.”

  “You suppose he has been trag the crab for some old-fashioned revenge?” said Jasper, crossing his arms.

  “Perhaps,” the dy in red said. “Amber? If you would…”

  Seeing her mentesture toward the unsan, the young birdwatcher hurried to his side. Reag into her satchel, the girl retrieved an alchemy bottle filled with a green mixture and uncorked it before passing it uhe fuildmaster’s nose.

  “BLARGH!” Antoine yelled as he inhaled with a big sniff and his eyes snapped open.

  “Easy,” Jasper said, pg a firm hand on the man’s shoulder to prevent him from standing up.

  “What is the meaning of this?!” asked the mert, his wide eyes darting from his magical restraints, to the adveanding over him, and then to the chaotic mess all around them. “Who are you? Some more of that crab’s ies? Where is he?! I am sick of chasing that beast. Take me to him, now!”

  Jasper looked down at him with a cocked eyebrow. “Yiving out a lot of orders for someone in shackles.”

  “You seem to have a lot of animosity toward Balthazar,” said Ruby, pulling the small man’s attention to her before he could get another word out.

  “Of course I do!” Antoine spat with brazen spite and hatred to his tone. “He ruined my life. My career. Everything I’ve built in that stupid town. A stupid crab undid years of work. I need… I deserve to see him pay for it all. It’s you, you idiotic adventurers who ’t see you’re colluding with a monster! A creature that should be nothing more than fodder on the side of the road.”

  The entress paused, looking into the angry man’s tiny, beady eyes with i.

  “Hmm, yes, I see.” She stood back straight and looked at her apprentice. “Amber, could you please prepare a cup of tea for our friend here? To soothe his nerves.”

  “Tea?” said the mustached local. “About time someoarts treatih due resped proper manners!”

  The young girl looked at her with no small amount of surprise on her face. “You… you mean a cup of tea as in…”

  “Yes, dear. Exactly the tea you are thinking of,” the scarlet woman calmly stated, pg both hands behind her back.

  “I like it with a few drops of lemon juice, and hold the sugar,” the pompous mert said, still sitting on the floor with hands aied together.

  “Ruby,” said Jasper as he approached her. “A word, please?”

  The two adventurers moved a few steps away amid the wreckage of Tweedus’s workshop, starting a versation in hushed tones.

  “Are you sure about this?” said the tall man. “We’ve never eveed the co on a local before. The effects are already hard to predi adventurers, who knows what it could do to a native of this world.”

  “Seems like a good opportunity to find out,” Ruby calmly said. “I was sidering Balthazar before, but now it’s bee clear we ot t on his cooperation anymore. And you know the rules. A local who is not on our side is against us by definition.”

  Her old friend frowned with an expression of worry.

  “Yes, I uand, but still. The sequences of giving a formu meant to awaken adventurers from a mind fog and stimute their sense of self-awareo a local are pletely uable. It could bee… problematic.”

  “I’m ting on it,” the woman calmly stated as she ed the lenses of her gsses on her sleeve. “We have a lot of work ahead of us ohe astrobe is ready. We ot risk having a wildcard such as the crab getting in our way. Setting some trouble loose on this system to run interference while we work would be useful, and if at the same time it keeps Balthazar distracted, eveer.”

  Jasper looked at her with , but she knew he would still follow her lead regardless. He always did.

  “Miss Ruby?” Amber called. “The… the tea is ready.”

  “Excellent,” the red entress said, turning back to the fallen mert as she put on her red-tinted spectacles. “Now, Mr. Antoine, let’s talk about what you desire most…”

  ***

  “BLARGH!” Balthazar excimed as he jolted awake on the cold stone floor.

  He was in a cave, but not the same one he remembered being in before his gastric mill tly yanked from the inside and tossed through a swirling tornado of pure disfort.

  “Hey, you. You’re finally awake,” the blurry figure of a man wearing a wizard hat in front of the dizzy crab said. “You were trying to cross the border, right?”

  “W-what?” the founded crusta said. “What border?!”

  “Bah, never mind,” said the old wizard. “I always wao say that to someone as they regained sciousness. It was way funnier in my head.”

  Balthazar looked around as his vision cleared up. He was in a cave, right by the entrance, with a forest outside and an e sky above.

  Druma was hunched over by a rge rock, coughing and hurling out his breakfast. Blue sat nearby, doing her best to remain upright as her head and eyes spun around.

  Meanwhile, Tweedus stood in front of the crab with both hands in his bathrobe’s pockets, looking perfectly normal.

  Or at least as normal as an elderly man with deranged eyes and in purple plush slippers and a big wizard hat could look.

  “What the hell happened?!” Balthazar asked, rubbing the top of his shell as he tried to stand back up without stumbling. “What did you do?”

  “Teleportation spell!” the are wizard said with casual amusement.

  “Wait, what?! You… teleported us out of there? Where are we now?”

  “Great question!” Tweedus excimed.

  The wizard stuck his finger in his mouth and then held it up in the air as if feeling the dire of the wind.

  “Hmm…”

  After a few seds he rubbed his index and thumb together while looking closely at them, the er of his mouth twisted in a pensive expression.

  “Uh-huh…”

  Stig his crooked nose up, the old man started loudly sniffing the air around him.

  “Ahh…”

  Suddenly, he dropped his hands and ko the ground and pced an ear against the dirt, listening close with one eye closed.

  “Iing…”

  Balthazar stood rooted in pce, dumbfounded as he watched the adventurer.

  “Well?” the crab finally asked. “Where are we?”

  Tweedus stood back up with a crazy smile on his bearded face. “No idea!”

  Balthazar smacked the back of his pincer against his own fa exasperation.

  “How the hell did you teleport us away but somehow didn’t know the target destination of the spell?!”

  The high wizard shrugged. “Teleportation magi be quite random and uable. You’re supposed to trate on your destination for about an hour while eling the spell. I just skipped the b parts, though!”

  “I…” the mert said before pausing and rubbing his eyestalks. “Alright, so maybe just teleport us away again, but with a proper target destination this time?”

  “Haha!” Tweedus ughed. “No do, crabiru! That spell costs a buttload of mana to cast and has a one-week cooldown. I ain’t telep anywhere again for a while.”

  “Great… just great,” said the frustrated crab. “Wait!”

  Reag into his backpack, Balthazar pulled out his map.

  “This thing should show us where we are on the ti.”

  “If we are still even on Mantell!” the wizard added with an uling amount of amusement.

  “Right…” the crab said, moving his eyes back down to the map. “And hang on, won’t Ruby still be able to trace us through this thing?”

  “Oh, give it here,” Tweedus said, taking the map and lig his thumb before rubbing it on the er of the part. “There, all clear now.”

  “Uh… thanks,” Balthazar hesitantly said, making sure to take the map back by the er that didn’t have saliva smeared all over it.

  Spreading it open, the mert looked for where his current location’s dot was.

  “There!” he excimed, pointing his pi a mountainous area on the map, close to the northwestern coast of the ti. “Holy tart, you sent us all the way back to the other side of Mantell!”

  “Hmm… This pce rings a few bells,” Tweedus said as he walked to the cave’s entrand sed the horizon with a hand over his eyes.

  “Are you sure that’s not just tinnitus from the teleportation?” the crab said.

  “Aha! Look, across the valley,” said the old man, pointing to a nearby mountain.

  Balthazar stepped out of the cave and sed the area too.

  Down from the hill they were on, trees filled a rge valley, and across that stood a huge rocky mountain. Squinting, the mert spotted man-made pilrs surrounding a rge entryway at the base of the mountain.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “That’s the entrao the Golem Fe,” said Tweedus. “Looks like I still remembered where it was after all!”

  Hope burst through the pool of frustrations filling the crab, making his eyestalks stand up. It was right there, what he had been seeking that whole time, a way t his best friend back to life. What he desired felt closer than ever now, just a valley’s distance away.

  “That means we go in there aore Bouldy’s core, right?”

  “Sure,” the wizard said, walking bato the cave, to the spot where they had arrived. “Just gotta follow the instrus on the golemancy guide and that core will be good as new.”

  Kig a few pieces of broken wood aside, the adventurer picked up his copy of Golemancy for Dunces off the floor and ha to the crab as a panicked purple chi shot out of the rubble and fluttered away.

  “Boss, boss!” Druma called, skittering to the crab with his copy of Simple and Totally Safe Are Spells for Newbies that the wizard had gifted him in his hands. “ boss keep Druma’s book safe too, please?”

  The mert stored both books in his magical backpad then looked up at the wizard.

  “I… should probably thank you. And also apologize.”

  “What for?!” the grinning mad wizard said.

  “We… I led those birdwatchers right into your home. I trusted that entress and she used me to get to you. I should have knower, but all I was focused on was finding you to figure out how to get my golem back.”

  “Bah, nonseweedus said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It happen to the best of us. Ruby’s always been a ing one anyway, so don’t feel too bad. You weren’t the first and you won’t be the st local she uses to get what she wants.”

  “But what about the astr? We left it behind. I’m sure they’ve found it by now.”

  The old man chuckled. “So what? I was using that thing as a paperweight anyway. I don’t care. Let them have it. It’s not my problem anymore.”

  Despite the wizard’s words, Balthazar still let out anh.

  “What about your home? It was wrecked, and you probably ’t go back to it anymore. All because of me.”

  “Pfft!” excimed the human. “I was bored with that pyway. Good excuse to move and find a new abode for myself! I o get ba the field anyhow. Been hearing tales about an a hero called Semmel. Big legend from ages past, apparently. It’s bugging me, because I had never heard about him until retly, and I’ve been around for a long time, hah!”

  His words faded into background noise as Balthazar stopped paying attention to his ramblings. Even after all the old man’s reassurances, one more thing was still b the crab.

  “If… When I repair Bouldy’s core, how will I use it? The boulder I used to make him in the first pce is gone, smashed to pieces under an avanche.”

  Tweedus twirled his white mustache with a fihinking.

  “As far as I remember, the fe has plenty of raw materials to create golems with. You just use the refed core on them.”

  “But…” the worried crusta started. “The boulder I used was… special to me. It art of what made Bouldy who he was. Wouldn’t me using the core on a different thi in a golem that isn’t the friend I knew anymore?”

  The wizard chuckled. Not the usual boisterous, lunatic ugh, but a more ear and f one.

  “Don’t worry. The core isn’t just a power source to the golem, it’s also its heart, and brains. And actually, it’s all other vital ans too, but that’s beside the point. The point is, who yolem friend was isn’t in the rock making up its body, it’s in the core—the heart and memory of the struct.”

  A faint smile appeared on the crab’s face. “Really?”

  “Yes,” said the old maurning the smile. “So long as you repeat the same feelings and thoughts you used to create it the first time, you will get your friend back. You just gotta pour your heart into that core the same way you did before.” His face turned into a frown. “You do have one of those, right? I’m pretty bad at biology.”

  Balthazar let out a small ugh, equal parts amusement and relief.

  “Yes, as I’ve been made to see, it seems I do.”

  “Great! Oh, and before I fet, yonna need one of these.”

  The wizard shoved one hand into the pocket of his bathrobe, rummaging deeper and deeper until half of his arm was gone i. After some mumbling and groaning, he finally pulled his hand out, revealing a brown hexagon about the size of his palm, like some kind of thick medallion made of rock.

  “What is that?” asked the crab, examining the small glyphs etched onto the artifact.

  “It’s a Golemancer’s Mark!” Tweedus answered. “Press the middle to activate it once you’re ihe halls of the fe. Without it the guardians of the fe will see you and your panions as intruders and attack you on sight. Trust me, you don’t want that. But hurry up once you’re in there, the mark expires after thirty minutes!”

  “That sounds unnecessarily arbitrary…”

  “Yep! That’s golemancers for ya!”

  “Alright, but ’t you, I don’t know, give me a couple of extra Marks, just in case?”

  “Pwah! Balderdash! Ridiculous!” excimed the wizard. “What makes you think I’d have any reason to carry more than one Golemancer’s Mark in the pocket of my bathrobe?!”

  Balthazar stared sck jawed at the old man for a moment. “Why… why would you even be carrying one of those in there at all?”

  “Bah! Just remember to be in and out of that p less than half an hour, will ya?”

  “Wait a mihe mert suddenly excimed. “You’re not ing with us?”

  “Me? Oh no, no, I’m not.”

  “Oh… Why not?” the slightly disappointed crusta said. Mad as the old wizard was, Balthazar would still feel more fident if they had him around while going into those apparently dangerous halls.

  “Because this is something you o do yourself, my crabby friend,” Tweedus said, pg both hands on what closest resembled shoulders on a crab’s shell. “Because this is your journey. Because you o plete this task through your own means. And mostly because I don’t feel like going.”

  “Oh…” the crab awkwardly muttered.

  “Alright!” the old man said, suddenly g his hands together and making the mert jump in pce for fear of being teleported again. “This has been fun, but I think I’ll be going now. Gotta start looking for a new pce to crash and start w on crafting myself a new vinyl colle!”

  “Hey, wait!” the traveling crusta said, suddenly remembering his reason to be out there. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a big red dragon and where it might live, would you?”

  “Dragons?!” the slightly deaf mage repeated loudly. “I haven’t heard anything about dragons in ages! And the st one I heard about was a bck-scaled ohat wao eat the world or some dragon-ego nonsense. I pletely fot to ever check ba that. Wonder if he ever succeeded…” He paused, stroking his beard thoughtfully before suddenly shrugging. “Anyhow, ’t help ya!”

  Bewildered by the bizarre adventurer as always, Balthazar turned in pd just waved as he watched the old wizard in fluffy slippers shove both hands in the pockets of his purple bathrobe and start walking down the hill. “Uh… bye, I guess.”

  “Good luck out there, Bartholomew,” Tweedus shouted from dowh. “Toodle-oo!”

  “It’s Baltha… Hmph, never mind,” the crab muttered, waving a dismissive pincer as he turned around.

  His two panions stood by, ready and waiting for the crab’s move.

  Stariily at the ground, Balthazar took a moment to sider everything that had just happened. He sailed through dangerous waters on a ship, was airlifted by fairies to the side of a mountain, and then tly teleported halfway across the ti by a crazy wizard. All in a day’s work.

  Long gohe days when the mert would think watg an adventurer bei into space by a giant was the craziest thing he would ever see.

  After everything he had witnessed ahrough during his time traveling, now he was truly vinced he had seen it all.

  That was it.

  Nothing could faze or surprise him anymore…

  “Hello, Balthazar,” a voice behind the crab said.

  The startled crusta jumped forward, letting out a surprised yelp as he turo face who had just spoken.

  “What the hell are you doing here?!”