Aiclath jumped back, hissing at the sight of his kind’s mortal enemy. 

The nayser were dressed in iron armor, overlaid with fur. Two held sharp curved swords, one had an enormous battle-axe, and the last held an Augmented Plasma Blaster, a popular laser weapon. Their stench reached his nostrils even there.

Each elf in the tavern slowly turned to stare at the nayser, who grunted.

“Orcs?” whispered Quill.

“That’s the human term,” Aiclath replied. “We call them nayser. Pigs.”

Quill snorted. “Pigs? Your ancestors must have been really petty to name their direst enemies pigs.”

Aiclath glared at him. “Stop insulting my ancestors. They look like pigs were given humanoid bodies.” Quill held his hands up in surrender.

There was a sharp pew the leader fired. A bolt of pure energy hit the barkeep, who fell back, dead.

“We can’t talk about this?” asked Quill. Another bolt flew over his head and buried itself in the wall behind him. “Right,” he muttered. “We can’t ever talk about these things.”

Aiclath ignored the neterdu and summoned two tiny balls of purple fire, which he flung at the nayser. The bolts hit the orc with the axe and exploded, blasting off the creature’s head. Viscous black blood covered the floor, and the head landed on someone’s salad. Quill looked shocked.

“I’ve always heard about the power of the Shadows of Nyx, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in person.”

“Glad to hear it,” grunted another voice. Aiclath and Quill looked over to see who it was.

It was the human from earlier, with his sword drawn. He stabbed forward and it slipped through the neck of another nayser.

Quill sighed. “Now that everyone is attacking, I have to put myself in danger, right?”

“It would help a lot,” replied Aiclath as he crushed the skull of the third nayser.

The chief looked about in disbelief. His entire troop had been killed in a matter of minutes by an elf and a human. He roared and fired his blaster. Quill calmly drew a shortsword and blocked the shot, before slicing the orc open from neck to belly. Slimy diseased-looking insides covered the floor. The neterdu turned to the human and bowed.

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said. “What did you say your name was?”

A loud boom rattled the windows and drowned out the human’s answer.

“S’cuse me?” asked Quill

“Kynge de la Roche.”

“You guys, we can probably get acquainted later,” said Aiclath. “I think these guys were just a light distraction.”

Aiclath had been wrong about many things. There had been the time where he nearly set the house on fire because he mistakenly believed that cook was synonymous with burn. Then there was the time he was thrown into the village jail because he shot man with an arrow, thinking he was a deer. And there was the time he ruined a duck because he thought it was a chicken.

Sadly, this was not one of those times.

They ran out into the street and were joined with the reptilian pitortu. It flicked out its tongue and licked one eyeball.

“Oh, yes,” said Kynge. “Everyone, this is Thrushk Gratlik, an escapee from the Pit of Slime.”

Aiclath gently turned his head towards a demonic horde ravaging the city. Kynge’s mouth formed a small moue.

“We can get acquainted later, I guess.”

Smoke drifted towards the heavens as flames threw themselves up. Bloody and unrecognizable corpses lay in the streets. Dark figures moved among the dead, silencing those who moved or cried out. A great dragon, with dark purple scales, clawed at a tower, throwing it down.

“Truschka salck unter*” hissed the pitortu.

*Titans save us.