“A fortune!” Antoine said, his eyes wide and filled with deranged hatred. “I’ve spent a small fortune trying to get rid of you, an insignificant crab! How can you be so difficult to get rid of?!”

Balthazar stared the rival merchant up and down. He looked like a mess. His usually immaculate outfit was wrinkled and disorderly, one part of the undershirt tucked into his pants, the other not, his cuffs undone and loose. It looked both as if he hadn’t slept in days, but also as if he had slept in those clothes several times.

One might think the crab almost felt sorry for the man, but no, he absolutely did not. Not even a little.

Hard to, on account of all the sabotaging, undermining, lying, petty revenge, and, of course, attempted murder. Quite the bummer, that last one.

“What are you doing here, Antoine?” the crab asked. “Sending hired goons to do your dirty work not cutting it for you anymore? You wanted to come down and have a go at it yourself?”

Balthazar knew the pompous merchant was in no way the type to get his immaculate and perfectly manicured hands dirty, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t hope for a shot at giving him a pinch of his mind in a more close and personal form.

A high level dark mage might have been too much for a crustacean to handle, but that sorry excuse of a merchant? That the crab knew he could handle in a one-on-one, and he’d like nothing more than to finally get a chance at it.

However, as he looked up the dirt path leading down from the road, at the man standing there, looking mad and deranged, Balthazar saw an even better opportunity present itself.

“I wanted to watch,” said Antoine, his eyes bulging out of his red sockets. “I needed the satisfaction and closure of finally seeing myself rid of you, crab. But you somehow had to thwart my plans once again! How difficult can it be to get rid of a goddamn crab on the side of the road?!”

“What can I say?” Balthazar said, making sure to put enough sass and smugness into his voice to drive the man even crazier. “I’m just a very persistent crab, and very good at what I do.”

Antoine clenched his trembling fists. “You’re no merchant! And now somehow you thought you could craft some trade deal with the mayor, right under my nose, and I would sit idly by without doing anything? I knew I should have gotten rid of you long before this. You’re nothing but a disgusting wild animal! A freak of nature who somehow gained some semblance of sentience and decided to get in my way! Ruin my perfectly laid out plans!”

“Get in your way?” the crab said, one eye stalk raised higher than the other. “I never even knew who the hell you were until you came down here to threaten me, and I didn’t even care about you until you started sending trouble my way. You really must think you’re the center of the world, don’t you?”

“I didn’t make it to guildmaster of the merchants by being humble, you dumb crab!”

“No, you made it to guildmaster by backstabbing your best friend,” Balthazar shot back.

“Hah! Tristan?” the other merchant spat. “He was never anything but a foolish dreamer. A dunce! He got what he deserved. No wonder you two found your ways to each other. You should have left him to drink himself to death by the gutter where he belonged.”

Balthazar shook his head slowly. “What is wrong with you? What could possibly make you do what you did to your childhood friend?”

“He didn’t deserve it!” Antoine yelled out, the derangement coming out of him like an ugly monster clawing through his voice. “I was the brains, I had all the smarts, I always did all the legwork, put in the hours, and then he’d just show up, smile and charm everyone up and get all the praise. It should have always been me picked by the guild! If they would not see that, I’d have to make them see it. Make them see what a fool Tristan really is. All it would take would be a little push, so I pushed. I pushed, and it felt right! He deserved to be humiliated in front of everyone at the Mayor’s house. To get all at once the feeling I felt for years being by his side, always seen as the lesser businessman, the secondary character, the one no one wanted to converse with or even acknowledge.”

“So that was it, envy?” said Balthazar. “You threw your only friend into the mud because you wanted to be the only one left? Instead of bettering yourself, you decided to pull your partner down?”

“Shut up! What do you know? You’re just a crab. You cannot understand anything!”

“I may be just a crab, but I’m glad I at least didn’t end up like you. I may have some faults, but one thing I’m glad I’ve come to learn is to value my friends, even when it doesn’t feel so easy. You’re a bitter, lowly man, Antoine.”

The guildmaster spat on the floor.

“Bah! I don’t need moral lessons from vermin. You may have fooled all those stupid adventurers, you may even have tricked that old idiot at the tax office, but you will never trick me! I know my worth!”

“Your worth?” Balthazar repeated. “What is a coward who hires three bandits to plant stolen goods into my place worth?”

“And I’d do it again, except I’d hire better goons! This world belongs to those willing to do what it takes to win.”

“Like hiring a witch to turn an innocent lady into a toad because she doesn’t want to do your bidding?” the crab threw back. “Is that what it takes for the likes of you to win?”

Antoine pulled his head back and wagged a finger at Balthazar, his mustache twitching angrily under his nose.

“Henrietta. Oh, that one still has it coming too. Shame she wasn’t here to catch a piece of that roof on her head. All she had to do was do as she was told. Twice! And both times she had to disobey. First when I told her to sell me her place, and the second when I told her to disrupt your business. You’d think after so long locked in a cage she’d be more eager to stay in line, but no, I should have known, lower-class scum like that woman never learn, that’s why they belong at the bottom of the barrel.”

It was taking more and more of Balthazar’s willpower to not walk up to the man and give him a strong pinch with his iron claw, but the crab knew what he was doing. It would be worth it.

“For someone who thinks so highly of himself,” said the crab, “you really seem to have no problem breaking all the laws. Hiring criminals to plant evidence, bribing and corrupting people, blackmail, extortion, paying to have someone cursed, even hiring a mercenary to destroy someone’s business and kill them. Your greed really knows no boundaries, does it?”

Antoine laughed. Not a laughter of satisfaction, or even mockery. It was a loud, unnerving laughter of someone who seemed to have forgotten whether he should laugh or cry. The cackling of someone desperate, who just doesn’t care anymore to maintain appearances.

The laughter of someone who finally broke.

“Rules and laws are made to keep the rabble under control. They are merely obstacles for the right people like myself to navigate around on their way to success. You call it greed. I call it ambition. I did all of those things and many more, and it’s not right that it’s by sheer bad luck that you keep getting away with being a stone in my path!”

Balthazar looked at the poor excuse of a man with disdain.

“Yes, well, you’re not the first to make the mistake of seeing me as a stone they could step on. The thing is, it wasn’t luck you were lacking, Antoine.”

“Really?!” the other merchant said, throwing his arms open. “Then what is it you think I lack, crab?”

The golden merchant smirked slightly.

“You lack friends, for example. People who truly care about you and that you can count on in your time of need.”

Antoine scoffed loudly.

Balthazar ignored it.

“You wouldn’t understand that, I suppose. Something else you lack is charisma, clearly. To be liked by others even when you’re not even trying. Not an easy feat, but not being an unabashed ass would have helped. Nobody’s perfect, but very few of us are completely unredeemable if we at least try. You just never cared to, I guess.”

The small man looked at the crab with contempt, as if his every word was disgusting to him.

“But,” said the crustacean, “more importantly right now, you lack one vital skill. A very basic one.”

“Do I? And what’s that?” asked Antoine, his neatly plucked brow furrowing with suspicion.

“Peripheral vision.”

He looked at the crab in confusion.

Balthazar nodded towards the top of the path behind Antoine, and the man turned.

Abernathy, the official from Ardville, stood by the edge of the main road, a livid expression on his face, his two town guards behind him. A few paces off to the side stood Tristan and Henrietta, looking down the path at the scene that had just unfolded with a mix of disapproval and disappointment on their faces.

Antoine’s breathing trembled, and his mouth opened, but only a shaky stammer came out.

“Mister Antoine,” Abernathy said in a firm tone as he began walking down the path. “Save your breath. You have said quite enough already. We heard everything. Every damning word.”

The mustached man lost nearly all color in his face, going from raging red to pale white in one single gulp.

Standing directly in front of him, the older and taller man looked down at the guildmaster through his tiny glasses and shook his head.

“I would be lying if I said I didn’t know what kind of person you were all along,” Abernathy started, “but you were always very good at making it very difficult to trace anything back to you. As it would seem, all it took was one resilient crab standing up to you to drive you into incriminating yourself with a town official and two guards as witnesses. Well done.”

“But… he…” Antoine mumbled. “He’s a crab! You cannot possibly be taking his side!”

“It is not about taking sides, Mister Antoine,” the older man said, keeping the same volume but giving his voice a firmer tone. “You have committed numerous crimes. Serious crimes. That is unacceptable, and we have to show nothing but our gratitude towards Mister Balthazar and his associates for bringing them to light.”

Abernathy gestured towards the guards with his head as he placed his hands behind his back.

“What?” Antoine exclaimed as the spear-wielding guards moved to his sides and grabbed him by his arms. “What do you think you are doing? Unhand me! I am the guildmaster of the Merchants Guild! You cannot treat me like this!”

“You are a criminal being arrested, and you will be brought before the mayor himself after I present him with what I’ve heard here today,” the town official said. “Do not make your situation worse by making more threats.”

Picking him up off the ground like a child, the two much larger men carried the small merchant up the path to the road as he kicked and screamed.

“This isn’t over!” Antoine yelled as he passed Tristan and Henrietta. “You will pay for this humiliation! Mark my words! You cannot do this to me!”

The pair walked down the dirt path to join the tax inspector and the crab as the high-pitched screaming faded into the distance.

Abernathy adjusted his thin glasses and faced the gilded merchant.

“Mister Balthazar, I apologize we could not make it here sooner. I wish we could have reached you in time to help with the tragedy that befell your establishment. I admit, when we were approached by a talking toad at the city gates, I almost did not believe her claims.” He turned to the other two. “I owe you an apology for that too, madame, as well as to you, Mister Tristan. For too long, you were misrepresented and treated appallingly for your former associate’s scheme.”

A trembling smile formed on Tristan’s face, and he nodded gently. “Thank you. That… that means a lot.”

Seeing how hard his partner was trying to hold it together in front of the town official, Balthazar decided to make use of his greatest gift and started talking.

“No need to apologize to me, Mister Abernathy. I’m just glad you arrived when you did, at the perfect time to listen to everything Antoine has been doing to us all for so long.”

Abernathy turned to the crab again and nodded. “Just a shame we could not catch him before things got to this point.”

The old man looked up at the blown off gates and damaged roof of the bazaar and threw his hands to his sides.

“Yes, that’s too bad,” said Balthazar, “but you know, given the outcome just now, I think we’ll be fine. It’s just some damage, we can repair it and recover from it. At least nobody got seriously hurt. Well, maybe not nobody…”

“Needless to say,” Abernathy interjected, raising one hand, “whatever happened within your establishment was obviously all legitimate self-defense, and that is in no way being put up to question. Antoine and his hired mercenary brought this upon themselves.”

“Good to know,” Balthazar said with a slightly nervous chuckle. “Unfortunately, I’m not sure now is going to be the best time for us to discuss the whole matter of a trade deal that you were coming down here for. You know, on account of all the arresting and my place looking like a meteor has just crashed into it. Which is not too far from the truth, if you can believe it…”

“No, naturally, of course,” the man hurriedly said, shaking both hands in front of himself. “Do not be worried about that right now. You’ve got more pressing matters to take care of. As do I. I shall return to town now and ensure this whole Antoine situation is taken care of and the mayor informed of it. Then, at a more opportune time, we can have our meeting again.”

Balthazar turned to his bazaar.

“Good, that’s a relief, because as fun as all this wasn’t, now I also have to deal with the cleanup, and let me tell you, I am not handy with a broom at all.”