kids

and when you learn what

titles

some people just have the knack

vignettes

This week's prompt is:
rot

Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term.

Monster Hunter Bloodlines

Monster Hunter Bloodlines by Larry Correia

Monster Hunter International book 8

It opens with an auction. Owen and his team are interested in something sold there. MCB is interested in someone coming to buy. A thief arrives.

The consequences involve a con with a lot of people in costume, a bar, a small store where the clerk has been read in, a witch-hunter, much discussion of the value of the thing for various ends, a siege, an orc baby-sitter, and more.

thieves

They agree with the current customs. They consent with an impure age. Their principles have a semblance of right-heartedness and truth. Their conduct has a semblance of disinterestedness and purity. All men are pleased with them, and they think themselves right, but you cannot enter into the Way of Yao and Shun with them. For this reason they are called "The thieves of virtue."

-- Mencius