Dobri found Mirstone in full lockdown. Now, he didn't know why that was, but that presented a problem with itself.
He had run out of bread, the trolls were still hungry, the small kitten was already looking at him so, as if the fact that Dobri had not found any food for it was a grave betrayal.
Which, he supposed it was, but the thing was, he had no way of selling his wares in the town.
No food for himself, much less for his cat.
"Please! Why is the town in lockdown?" Dobri yelled, using a loudspeaker rune to get his voice to carry to the guards who were aiming their bows at them.
"What, don't you know?" The guard said, as he let an arrow loose.
Only for one of the trolls to catch it.
"No, we do not," Hans, the oldest troll, yelled. "And if we don't get food soon, we will make you into food!"
The guard backed a bit away, hiding under the thick battlements.
Dobri didn't want his first trading trip to end like this.
He knew one thing for certain.
There was more than one entrance to the town. He just needed to find it.
"Sorry to have bothered you! We will be leaving now!" Dobri said, already looking for a tell-tale sign of a deer trail.
"What?" Hugo, the middle troll, asked. "But we haven't done anything!"
"Yet," Harald, the youngest and smallest troll, said. "Yet."
"And we won't do a thing!" Dobri said with a nervous chuckle. "We are leaving!"
He turned off the loudspeaker rune, turning to the trolls.
"We are going to go down the warren, to the Black Market! You will eat like kings!"
The trolls nodded.
"We are going to eat regardless," Harald told him, sizing him from head to toe.
The yet-to-be named kitten gave out a purr.
It, too, was going to eat regardless. Hoping that the trolls would keep it as a pet and feed it more regularly than its dead beat gnome owner did.
****
The Black Market was bathed in lights.
Vampires haggled over jugs with pig blood. Werewolves were buying medicine for fleas. Goblins were waving goblets made from skulls around, trying to entice someone to buy them.
A piece of their culture, a horrible omen to pretty much everyone else.
Dobri knew that he didn't have much to work with.
He still stopped the wagon before the only free space in the entire market and began to take out the magical robes.
For the silk was pretty, but it was just silk. He knew that it would not be able to fetch much.
The first person to come his way was another gnome.
Dobri blinked, as he saw him look at the robes so as if he were considering buying them.
The two gnomes kept their silence. Until Harald cleared his throat.
"Do you want to buy?" The troll didn't have high hopes. After all, the robes were normal-sized, and this was a gnome.
But Dobri was fascinated. It was fate that his first customer was a gnome! It was a good omen.
"Do you have something my size?" The man asked as he looked Dobri in the eyes.
"Yes!" Dobri yelled as he tapped one of the robes, and it shrunk to gnome size.
The gnome adventurer began to run his hand over the fabric. He nodded, pinched the edges, and looked at it from all sides.
"It is a good make," he murmured.
Dobri had no idea what the gnome would have said if he knew that they were made by someone who had only a high school diploma and had done a three-hour sewing course.
Without even managing to get a certificate in it.
"I would like five! Do they all come with cooling runes?"
It was an excellent question. The summer heat was relentless. Dobri knew that the cooling runes, the only thing the poor tailor could do, were going to be a massive hit with the customers.
But he was not ready to make them his only selling point!
"Yes! They are also made from…"
"No, don't try to charm me," the adventurer said. "I am just going to take them as pajamas. They are not good for anything else."
Dobri blinked. The customers around them began to chuckle.
The gnome knew that it was now or never. This could make or break him! He had to roll with the punches!
"Well, yes, obviously," Dobri began to bullshit through his teeth. "That is what they are meant for! They are all pajamas!"
The adventurer smirked but didn't protest.
He paid, took his five robes, stuffed them in his bottomless bag, and then stepped to the side.
"I want some pajamas as well!" A vampire said, as he parked himself by the wagon. "Do you think they can protect me from fire?"
Dobri didn't know how to answer such a silly question.
"The robes keep a person cool when the temperatures are about 100° C or lower!"
Or so the tailor had told him. Dobri was not brave enough to test that claim.
"Cool! The villagers keep on taking me out of my coffin and trying to burn me on the pyre! By the time I run off, my clothes end up burned!"
Dobri nodded. He knew that he had to show empathy, but he just didn't have it in him.
"Here, I want to buy 10!" The vampire was soon walking to another stall.
A Big Foot came to them, took ten of the robes, and placed a mana crystal on the counter.
Dobri was before a dilemma.
He could tell the being that he didn't want anything but money, but the being was going to eat him if he did.
On the other hand, if he began to take barter, his customers would try to get his wares that way.
"Before you do something rash," the Big Foot said, a translation rune on his neck translating his grunting. "This mana stone is good enough to make a bottomless bag out of."
"Don't you have money?" Dobri asked.
Keeping the tone polite.
"No. I can't hold a job, sorry. I just make this from my mana," the creature told him.
Dobri sighed.
"Fine."
He just didn't want to be eaten.