Elven Merchant Association Headquarters, third-floor council chamber.
Five people sat around a long table, piles of ledgers spread across its surface. The tea in the pot had gone cold twice over, yet no one remembered to refill it.
Vera stood at the end of the table, holding a ledger heavy enough to kill a cat. She flipped to the pages marked in red ink.
"Grand Elder, this month's revenue report."
Elvin sat at the head of the table. His half-elven blood made him look like a middle-aged man in his thirties, though he was actually nearing two hundred. He took the ledger and skimmed it, his finger stopping on a figure.
"Why did shipments of enchanted materials in the southwest drop by thirty percent from last month?"
"It's not just the southwest." Vera turned to the next page. "Ore wholesale in the east, medicinal herb agency sales in the north, port transport insurance... they're all falling."
The council chamber fell silent for several seconds.
The elderly elf on the left, Green, the association's chief financial officer, cut in. "Could the Human Merchant Association have stolen our business? Those bastards started undercutting prices last year."
"We checked." Vera opened another small booklet. "The Human Merchant Association's revenue is falling too, by even more than ours. They sent someone over last week to ask about it—they thought we were pulling something behind their backs."
"What about the Orc Alliance?"
"Orcs?" Green curled his lip. "Those muscleheads can't even understand their own account books."
Elvin raised a hand, cutting off the argument.
"Have you found out where the customers went?"
Vera pressed her lips together, flipped the booklet to its last page, and pushed it before Elvin.
Only two words were written there.
Goblins.
Elvin stared at those words for three seconds, then