Nargi snatched Grishar away from the door and out of the way as the man in the robe finished his spell. Nargi had encountered mages before. Not a lot, but he knew what they were capable of. They’d never escaped a town with a mage with every raider intact. Nothing happened though. No fireballs flying, no chain lightning bursting from the doors. It didn’t even start to rain.

Being the idiot he was, Grishar looked at Nargi like an angry kid that had just gotten his candy taken away by an elder. He dropped himself to the floor to escape Nargi’s grasp and stuck his head around the heavy door again. What it revealed was horrifying. It was the sound of hundreds of people chanting a spell. Were they ALL mages? By the Lord in the Sky, they needed to run NOW!

Nargi reached for Grishar’s hand, hoping to pull him out and make a swift getaway, but Grishar dodged him, and instead walked back into the building chanting his own personal spell. “Good day to you, humans on Banesil! We civilised! We mean you no ham! This Nargi, I Grishar. Good day to you! We give gold for stufsies and talki, very civilised! We mean you no ham!”

Nargi didn’t hesitate for a second, He needed to save his friend from the probable inferno that would follow. He ran towards Grishar and tried to pick him up, but he just danced around happily, moving too fast for Nargi to catch him. “GRISHAR!” Nargi yelled at him.

“This Nargi, I Grishar. Good day to you!” the kobold went on happily. Then he heard the door close behind them and Nargi’s head snapped around. Two muscular men with large axes were advancing slowly. They had blocked their exit and were now coming for them. They weren’t really a threat for the duo, but they had something in their eyes that Nargi had never seen on a human.

“WE MEAN YOU NO HAM!” he heard Grishar shout, anger in his voice. He had noticed the men too. Nargi looked around and saw more armed men coming at them slowly from all sides. They all had the same weird look in their eyes as they circled the duo. There was no fear, no anger, nor passion, there was something else. A kind of soullessness you’d hardly find in conscious beings, like they were empty inside except of determination. These people would not stop at words…

All the while the rest of the people: women, children, elderly, kept bowing down and chanting, it was like something out of this world. In all of his countless raids, he had never encountered anything like this. He decided to try one more time, even if it was no use, he HAD to try. He really didn’t want to fight his way out of this one. He took Grishar’s hand and lifted it up, stretching his other hand towards the ceiling.

“WE COME IN PEACE, PLEASE FORGIVE US FOR INTERRUPTING YOUR CEREMONY, WE REALLY DO NOT MEAN YOU ANY HARM. PLEASE PUT THE WEAPONS DOWN AND TALK TO US!”

That seemed to have the opposite effect. The circle of armed men advancing took the shouting orc as a signal to charge. Nargi let go of Grishar’s hand quickly as a couple of axes penetrated his thick skin. Grishar had already dodged upward and was jumping off Nargi’s shoulder as soon as the first axe hit bone. Nargi screamed in pain and trashed around, smacking four men backward in one fierce swipe, two of them leaving their weapons stuck in Nargi. Blood spatters flew around and Nargi couldn’t say whose they were. The tiny kobold was doing some damage too, flinging his knives about and spinning between his assailants like a whirlwind. Nargi grabbed the two axes out of his chest and threw them to the ground.

“STOP FIGHTING US!” he yelled, in a last attempt to stop the bloodshed.

It was to no avail. There were at least 30 men attacking them with axes and however fast Grishar was, so far he’d only taken out about 4. Nargi parried an axe and hit a man in the nose with a force that made the neck snap. Nargi cringed. This was NOT what he wanted. But he didn’t want to die either. He couldn’t hold himself in any longer, they’d not only kill him, but Grishar too. He had to save Grishar, even if it meant killing the armed humans. It wasn’t like he hadn’t killed a shitload of them before.

He kicked one away, slamming into another. Then split another one’s head open by slamming his own axe straight into his face. As soon he was free of the flurry of axes directed at him, he turned to grab Grishar. They were going to make a run for it NOW.

“Grishar, on me!” he shouted. It sounded like an actual commander would sound.

Unfortunately, the little shit didn’t listen. As Nargi struggled forward to grab the kobold to get the hell out of this situation an axe buried itself in his back and he felt the air being sucked out of his lungs. Blood came up as he tried to continue breathing, but more axes buried themselves in his back as he struggled to stay upright.

“NARGI!” he heard Grishar yell in the distance as he trashed around to keep the axes at bay. Then the door burst open and Nargi was sure this was death.

For death had come to claim him in the most beautiful way, life just wouldn’t be capable of.

Fire spread through the room FAST as the villagers screamed in agony. In the middle of it all walked the most beautiful maiden, hair deep red as the flames themselves, slender figure adorned by a beautiful metal cuirass, shining red in the heat. She had a beautiful kind of determination on her face, a completely different one from the men that had attacked them. Hers was passionate, fierce, manic even. Her perfectly formed lips were pressed together tightly, one side of her mouth curling upwards in an insane half-smile as the jets of flame steaming from her hands roasted everyone in sight.

The smell… The screams…

The woman.

Everything faded to the background as her green eyes turned on him. Expression in her face never changing. It was as if she was an envoy sent by the lord in the Sky. The sun itself descending on earth to come and claim him.

She walked up to Nargi and held out one hand. It had stopped oozing fire, but she was still actively shooting fireballs at people from the other. The building was now completely on fire.

In a trance Nargi took her hand and managed to stand upright. He looked in her eyes, waiting to be engulfed by the warmth of the beautiful sun. But her eyes were still strikingly green and revealed nothing of the coming afterlife as she pulled his hand slightly to lead him out of the building.

As she turned her hear to look away from him towards the doors, the enchantment broke and Nargi realised what was happening. The elf had come to save them. Nargi’s head jerked to the side and his gaze got caught by Grishar sprinting out of the building. Thank the sky-lord he was okay.

The elven woman led him outside, but as they had hardly set four paces out of the building she, gave Nargi a push forward, turned sharply and raised her hands. Nargi stumbled a couple of yards back and flames engulfed the entire structure. Flames that went up higher than the tallest trees in the forest and the heat they emitted was excruciating. The building collapsed into a pile of ash in mere seconds. All the humans had still been in it.

Children had still been in it.

Nargi fell silent in shock. He felt like an orc again. Raiding villages, killing men, sometimes women, and leaving the killing of children to his brethren. While he had never had the heart to massacre children, he had only begun to make an issue out of it the last couple of raids. Him and his morals. It wouldn’t change.

Today he had left the massacre to others as well. He hadn’t stopped her, and she had smiled doing it, not in the same way his brethren would have, but she had smiled all the same.