The pulsing crystal moss. Hidden behind Widow Meadowsweet's shed. Draining the life out of nearby bryophytes. Possibly related to lurking gnome-things. Definitely not on the brochure for 'Quiet Retirement Dimensions (Class III: Mostly Harmless)'.
My lukewarm, inadequate tea offered zero solutions. Caffeine levels were insufficient to brainstorm effective countermeasures against parasitic energy crystals, let alone generate the motivation to actually implement them.
Plan A remained firmly in place: Ignore it. Hope it went away. Maybe the gnome-thing was just charging its infernal device and would move on once its metaphysical batteries were full. Perhaps the crystal moss would spontaneously crumble into harmless dust. Maybe a particularly enthusiastic badger would eat it. Unlikely, but preferable to direct involvement.
Plan B? There was no Plan B. Plan A had to work. Because Plan B invariably involved effort, risk, potential exposure, and interaction with beings whose grasp on reality was tenuous at best. Plan B was unthinkable. Unacceptable. Antithetical to the entire retirement project.
So. Ignore the pulsing crystal moss. Focus on immediate, manageable annoyances. Like the lingering scent of misplaced enthusiasm Elara left behind. Or the lumpy Hero Cushion judging me silently from the counter. Or the simple, soul-crushing fact that I existed here, now, surrounded by escalating levels of absurdity.
Maybe some light tidying? Real tidying this time, not Elara's 'junk geomancy'. Reversing her 'optimization'. Restoring the natural, chaotic order of neglect. A futile gesture against entropy, perhaps, but a familiar one.
I started with the 'aggressively sorted' nails. Mixed them back into a single, undifferentiated pile of potential tetanus hazards. Much better. Moved on to the 'emotionally categorized' pottery shards, re-integrating the moderately sad with the utterly devastated. Restored balance to the ceramic angst matrix. Felt marginally less irritating.
This small act of imposing my preferred brand of chaos was almost… soothing. Almost.
A hesitant knock at the door shattered the fragile calm. Not Elara's frantic scrabbling. Not Grumbleson's important thumping. Not Borin's deliberate rap. Softer. Uncertain.
Peeking through the knothole revealed... Farmer Giles. A nervous-looking man whose primary contribution to Oakhaven society seemed to be cultivating turnips of exceptional blandness. Currently twisting his shapeless hat in his hands, eyes wide with worry.
Oh, stellar entropy. Not more agricultural problems. Had Petunia the Picky Pig developed a sudden aversion to bruised apples now? Was I expected to mediate?
Reluctantly, because ignoring him might lead to him weeping outside my door, attracting Gregor's attention, I opened it a crack. "Yes?"
"G-Guardian Bob?" Giles stammered, flinching slightly as if expecting me to unleash a steely glare. "Beg pardon for disturbin' yer... uh... guarding."
"What is it, Giles?" I sighed, leaning against the doorframe. Projecting maximum 'don't have time for this' energy. Usually ineffective, but worth trying.
"It's me prize turnips, Guardian!" Giles wrung his hat. "Finest patch this side o' the creek! But... there's a shadow on 'em! A blight! Spreading fast!"
Turnip blight. Thrilling. A microscopic fungus or bacterium causing vegetable decay. Hardly a matter requiring mystical intervention.
"And," Giles lowered his voice, glancing around nervously, "Gregor the Storyteller says... he says you battled the Goblin King with naught but a glare! Froze him cold! Maybe... maybe you could just... look at me turnips, Guardian? Glare the blight away?"
He wanted me to glare at fungus. To replicate a fabricated feat from a lying storyteller to cure a common agricultural disease. The sheer, weapons-grade stupidity of the request left me momentarily speechless.
My silence, naturally, was misinterpreted. Giles's eyes lit up with desperate hope. "Would you? Oh, thank 'ee, Guardian! I knew Gregor weren't just makin' it up!"
"Giles," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "Blight is caused by spores. Fungus. Not by lack of intimidating glares. Get some wood ash. Or copper salts, if you can find them. Apply it. Cut away the affected parts." Basic, primitive fungicide knowledge. Possibly inaccurate for Aerthosian turnip pathology, but better than ocular intimidation tactics.
Giles blinked. "Wood ash? Copper salts?" He looked confused. This wasn't the magical solution Gregor implied. "But... your glare?"
"Is for expressing profound disappointment in requests involving turnip ophthalmology," I stated flatly. "Now, if you'll excuse me."
I started to close the door. Giles, however, seemed to experience a revelation. "Ah! I see!" He snapped his fingers. "A test! You're tellin' me the mundane solution to see if I'm worthy of the real magic! Wood ash... copper salts... symbolic ingredients! While you secretly apply the silent warding!" His face shone with relieved understanding. "Thank 'ee, Guardian! For the test! I'll fetch the ash right away!"
He scurried off, convinced he'd deciphered another layer of my cryptic methods. Leaving me staring at the closed door, wondering if it was possible for an entire village to suffer from collective Munchausen syndrome by proxy, only with magic instead of illness. They wanted mystical explanations. They craved them. Even when faced with perfectly logical, albeit boring, alternatives.
Before I could fully process the turnip blight debacle, another knock. Firmer this time.
Opening the door revealed Martha, the baker's wife. A stout woman perpetually dusted with flour. She looked flustered.
"Guardian Bob! Thank goodness! It's the roof! The bakery roof!"
Not another roof. Please, not another roof. My reputation as a mystical structural engineer was becoming a liability.
"Started leakin' somethin' awful this morning," Martha explained breathlessly. "Right over the kneading trough! Gregor was just tellin' us how you whispered a word o' power to your own sign, sealed it tight against the winds! Could you… could you whisper at my roof, Guardian? Just a quick word? Before the dough gets soggy?"
Whisper at her roof. To magically seal leaks. Inspired by Gregor's fanciful retelling of me hitting a loose hook with a stick.
My ability to form coherent, non-sarcastic responses was failing rapidly.
"Martha," I began, trying to marshal my dwindling patience. "Signs and roofs obey different physical principles. Whispering has negligible effect on precipitation ingress through degraded roofing materials."
Martha frowned. "Eh? Negli-what?"
"Find the leak," I said slowly. "Apply pitch. Or get some tin. And a hammer." I resisted the urge to add 'preferably one whose head stays on'.
Martha's eyes widened. Comprehension dawned. Or rather, another layer of profound miscomprehension. "Ah! Pitch! Tin! Hammer! The tools! Like your sacred hammer! Of course! You can't just whisper the power, you need the proper focus! The ritual implements! It's not just the word, it's the intent behind the tools!" She beamed. "Thank 'ee, Guardian, for clarifying the ritual requirements! I knew there was more to it!"
She hurried away, presumably to acquire ritual implements for her roof-sealing ceremony, leaving me contemplating the merits of permanent vows of silence. Maybe if I literally never spoke again, they'd stop twisting my words? Unlikely. They'd probably just start interpreting my breathing patterns.
I slammed the door shut. Leaned against it. Took several deep breaths, filtering out the Oakhaven stupid-particles as best I could.
This wasn't just isolated incidents anymore. Gregor's stories were actively shaping villager behaviour. They were coming to me expecting miracles based on heroic fantasy tropes, and my attempts at providing mundane, rational solutions were being consistently, instantly reframed as cryptic instructions for accessing the real magic they believed I possessed.
My attempts to lower expectations were actively raising them. My denials were being seen as tests of faith. My practicality was being hailed as ritual clarification.
This was spiraling. Faster and faster.
A sudden commotion outside. Shouting. Angry voices this time. Different from the usual market haggle or panicked cries.
Curiosity, that fatal flaw, compelled me back to the knothole peephole.
A cluster of village youths – the same ones who'd been impressed by my alleged compost-vanquishing technique – were gathered in the square. Armed with shovels. Not glowing ones, thankfully. Just regular, muddy shovels. And they looked… angry. Confronting Gregor the Gregarious, who was backing away nervously, his usual booming confidence replaced by sputtering indignation.
"...told us Bob the Guardian used compost! Special techniques!" one youth yelled, brandishing his shovel menacingly. "We tried it on Old Man Hemlock's other compost heap! Didn't repel nothin'! Just made our hands stink! You lied!"
Ah. They'd attempted applied compost combat. Based on Gregor's embellishments. And discovered, shockingly, that flinging decaying vegetable matter is not an effective deterrent against… whatever they were trying to deter. Probably badgers. Or aggressive chickens.
Gregor sputtered denials. "Exaggeration! For dramatic effect! Artistic license! Surely you understand storytelling!"
"We understand you sent us digging in muck for nothin'!" another youth shouted. They looked ready to apply their shovels directly to Gregor's person.
Part of me wanted to cheer. Just deserts. The peddler of misinformation facing the consequences of his own fabricated narratives.
But a brawl in the village square, potentially involving shovels and an irate storyteller, would only cause more disruption. More attention drawn to the 'Cult of Bob'. More reasons for Borin to look suspicious. More general hassle.
With a sigh that threatened to collapse my borrowed ribcage, I realised I might have to intervene. Again. Not out of civic duty. Not out of concern for Gregor's well-being. Purely out of self-interest. To quell the disturbance before it escalated into something requiring even more of my reluctant attention.
This required going outside. Again. Facing the youths. Facing Gregor. Untangling another knot of stupidity generated entirely by second-hand heroic fabrications.
My tea sat on the counter, mocking me with its inadequacy. Caffeine levels were critically low for this level of sustained annoyance management. This was going to be painful. Deeply, profoundly painful. And almost certainly misinterpreted. Again.