At the base of the hill, between the reeds in the marsh and the bulbous formations of lichen encroaching on the sandy path, a very small man in a crimson robe crouched on the ground, muttering to himself. Well, he wasn’t exactly a man - he was too small, and to any human onlooker may have looked like a reflection on a surface of water moments before a stone broke its surface. But there he was nonetheless, now crouching down low.
“Nyctaretuse, the grey gaurd will skadlaw me silly if they know I’s let you through the portsal again. And it’s no use anyways, the ol’ man’s at the bottom of the sea by now,” said a low voice, gruffness neatly masking an anxious twang. But if anything, the small robed figure, just small enough to ride an adult fox, increased the frantic urgency of its search, now scuttling on the ground in a movement not completey unlike that of the hermit crabs scuttling into their holes.
The creature’s companion was slightly bigger, in dark blue robes that may have been handsome once but were now patched - deftly in fact, but patched nonetheless - so much so that much of the robe was entirely a different mottled brown color than the original hue. Unlike the slightly crooked but conelike headwear Nyctareutuse had perched seemingly precariously atop his greasy scraggles of hair, this second, stockier gnone wore a leather cap with earflaps, and a pocket in the back, within which he stored snacks, and his best shooting marbles. His name was Nautilus, and he felt he’d never quite lived up to it and worried not infrequently that he never would.
“If the Nocturn calls us to counsel again I,” began Nautilus, having accepted his partner in conversation to be quite unwilling and now speaking almost entirely for his own benefit as seemed more often than not to be the case, “I’m not sure I can cover for you again. I got docked fourteen oysters for complicity and Danya wouldn’t speak to me for a week, I told yeh that, di’inah?”
But Nyctareutuse wasn’t even pretending to listen. He’d begin to chuckly to himself, his boney hands deep in the sand, appearing to have found something. His sinewy forearms flexed beneath the rolled up sleeves of his robe seized, as if grabbing hold of something beneath the surface of the sand.
The mud below them writhed and bubbled and then erupted, causing both gnomes to tumble backwards onnto the sandy path, Nautalus’s curly hair internerwiting with the fibers of the lichen.
“Faye damn it Nycta ye right twat!” Nautilus cursed, wiping mud out of his eyes. “You meant to awaken a demolyth did yeh?”
But Nyctareutuse was laughing manically know as the enormous crustacean that had risen from the mud rose to tower above them.
“I have been summoned and by the code of the sea I have answered but know this,” the enormous creature gurgled and spat, its carapice creaking and grinding where barnacles protruding from it like armor. “If ye summon in ill faith I will know and I will drag you into the circle of the deep your kind know as the Arbitrage.”
At this utterance, Nautilus turned to run. The crab god shot out the smaller of its two claws and clamped it around the gnome’s ankle, who squealed in pain as he was dragged back across the hole-studded sand to where he had formerly sat.
“I would never do that,” whispered Nyctareutuse calmly, and for a moment all was still but the wind whispering through the reeds. The smaller gnome’s eyes glistened in the sliver of moonlight.
Nautilus’s heart beat in his chest several times quite loudly and then the crustacean demolyth walked forward, slowly and almost gracefully. “Then speak your terms,” it said, it’s mandibles somehow forming words of common gnomish, or perhaps this was an illusion, Nautilus thought, and the words were spoken directly into his minds. But how then, could they be certain they heard the same ones? Nautiluse’s eyes widened at the thought.
“Keep yer blood magic, demon! We diddernt summon yeh, you twas a fallen tree yeh hallucinerted as a knock on yer door -“
Nyctareutuse, often Nic for short, covered Nautilusus mouth with his muddy palm, the talisman’s tethered to his wrist jangling softly.
“We summoned ye in gooth faith and in clear intention,” Nautilus said in a voice as calm as his eyes were wild, and the wind began to pick up. “And the terms with which we have-“
“Ain’t a we it’s just ‘im the unhinged bastard!” Nautilus wheezed, winded still from struggling against the claw from which he’d been released, and Nic kicked him sharply in the stomach, winding him once more, only to continue in an even calmer voice with eyes just as wild,
“And the terms with which we have summoned you are simple. Bring us the starstone of the arbitrage and we shall deliver yeh the hand of the princess.”