“Gildred is going to kill me,” Barnaby mumbled to himself. His wife had been on his case lately. “A whole day out selling potions door-to-door and not a single gold coin or dragon’s tooth to show for it.”

There was that house full of elves, likely students at the local bard’s college. They seemed interested at first, only to find the old alchemist’s brews to not contain any toad’s sweat and therefore they couldn’t get themselves drunk.

He remembered earlier in the day when he met a nice family of centaurs. They seemed polite enough as they let him go through his entire sales pitch. But as soon as they told him that they already were stocked up on transmogrification potions, he knew what that meant.

It was Darmano, the number one potion salesman in the realm. He got to them first!

Barnaby slunk home, his pack just as full as it was when he left in the morning. Perhaps he’d be lucky and be consumed by a swamp dragon or his soul harvested by a hungry blood wolf.

That’d be a better fate than disappointing his wife.