Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

Author:Matt Dinniman [Dinniman, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dandy House
Published: 2021-01-06T06:00:00+00:00

16

The Silk Road was set up like a farmer’s market. It was a long, mostly-empty room with a single row of stalls. An eclectic mix of items filled the tables, but there was room for five or six more rows of booths.

“This room is mirrored down on the next floor,” Mordecai said as we entered. Donut sat on my shoulder, bouncing her head to the music that still pulsed through the wall. “Eventually both this market and the next one down will be packed with merchants. Not too many are out yet.”

We walked past shops selling black, bubbling potions and round, magical items called “Spider Shields” that cost 200,000 gold. An eclectic mix of races manned the booths, from short goblins to tall, robed figures with four sets of pincers.

A single booth sat in the back of the room, surrounded by five or six empty spaces. I knew exactly what the booth sold as we approached. Multiple notifications floated in the air over the items on the merchant’s tables.

“There’s a double-sized booth normally set up next door to that one, but it won’t appear until the fourth floor. Those guys sell trap supplies. In the meantime, I wanted to make sure you were aware this was here,” Mordecai said. “The proprietor is a little odd, but she’s harmless. Now give me 500 gold so I can check out that alchemist over there while you browse.” He paused. “You two need to make a good impression on this woman because you’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

This store was called Hobgobs and Boom Sticks. I examined the proprietor.

Pustule. Hobgoblin – Level 30.

She was the first living hobgoblin I’d seen face to face. She stood about six feet tall, and she looked mostly like the hobgoblin sample I’d seen during race selection: a large, muscular goblin that got clobbered by the ugly stick. She had an open sore on her cheek that bubbled with black and green ooze. The pus ran off her face, down her shoulder, and stained her shirt, which was a threadbare, pink graphic tee featuring a unicorn wearing sunglasses. She smelled of rot and sickness. I swallowed. I still held the bottle of cheap bourbon in my hand. I took a drink to get the smell out of my sinuses.

“Carl,” Donut whispered. “She’s ugly. Like really ugly.”

“She also has excellent hearing,” the hobgoblin said, her voice surprisingly feminine. I winced. “Are you in the market for explosives tonight?”

Her tables held multiple boxes of both goblin dynamite and hobgoblin dynamite, along with smoke bombs, detonators, and several odds and ends I’d never before seen, like flat, pancake-like explosives that were basically claymore mines. The yield and stability of the mines was impressive, though they cost 5,000 gold each.

She also sold barrels of gunpowder and a few other chemicals, most of which I already had plenty of. A case of goblin dynamite held 25 sticks and cost 500 gold. The hobgoblin sticks were 20 for 2,000, which was highway robbery.

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