My name is Pignob. I was at a bar having a drink and I was tired, cause the bar is all the way up a mountain. But there was a man at my table, and we were having an argument. At least I think we were having an argument. He was being loud and I was being loud back, but I wasn’t trying to kill him. Usually that means an argument.

“Mirrors don’t eat people!” the man yelled.

“It’s not a mirror! It’s a shield!” I yelled back, shaking my shield at him.

“No, it’s not a shield either—you just put handles on the back!” he yelled again, but louder.

This was true, I did put handles on it. It made it a better shield, and it was already a good shield. “It’d be a bad shield without a way to hold it!” I said.

The man didn’t say anything, he just stared at me. I’m pretty sure he realized I was right. But sometimes when I’m right people don’t like it.

“Listen, it’s not a mirror or a shield. It’s something else entirely! It eats things, look!” the man picked up a loaf of bread and threw it at my shield. Instead of bouncing off, the bread disappeared into the shield. Now we had less bread.

I had to stop to catch up. Sometimes when people talk and also do things, it can be hard for me to keep track. He said my shield was eating things, and he fed it bread. But it didn’t chew, and you need to chew to eat. No, wait, you could eat beer without chewing. No, wait, eating beer is called drinking.

“Hello? Did you fall asleep?” the man asked me. Now he interrupted my thinking and I struggled to remember where I was.

“No! It’s a shield! And it doesn’t eat things, ‘cause it doesn’t chew!” That sounded right. I stomped my foot to sound more right.

“What? Wait, wait, wait….are you dumb or something?” the man asked.

“Yes!” I shouted. It was a rude question, but I get asked it a lot. I learned to just say yes, cause then sometimes people are more patient with me. But sometimes they become mean. I can handle it when they become mean. They can’t.

“Great, good for me! I’m arguing with an idiot orc!” the man said. He waved his arms and laughed, and some of the people watching us laughed too. I didn’t know why they were laughing and I felt really hot all of a sudden. It didn’t sound like he was going to be patient. I didn’t say anything though, ‘cause I wasn’t sure he was talking to me.

“Okay, dumb little orc,” the man said. But he said it like he was talking to a little kid. He had that smile too, the one people give me when they’re going to be mean. “I know this is hard for you, so I’m going to speak slowly with nice small words.” That was good, maybe he wasn’t going to be mean after all!

The man leaned across the table, getting very close to me. In orc tribes that’s very rude. He put a hand on the side of his mouth like he was going to tell me a secret. I turned my head to him so he could whisper to me better. I was very curious what secret he was going to tell me. But instead of a secret he just yelled loudly in my ear. I don’t know what he said, it was too loud. Everyone started laughing, though.

This was getting out of hand, I was confused. I looked around for my friends while the people laughed. I was pretty sure violence was the answer, but I needed to make sure it was okay. If you’re not sure about doing violence, it’s always best to double check with people who you know are your friends. I saw my friend Melissa, she was watching from the crowd and not laughing. She was staring really hard at the man who yelled at me. Melissa was my friend, and very nice to me. She was an elf lady, and very tall and very pretty. But pretty like an orc is pretty. Her face had lots of scars, lots and lots! She was missing some of her mouth too, but still talked okay. She still dressed like an elf though. No one’s perfect.

Melissa looked at me, but still looked angry. Was she mad at me? Did I do bad? No, wait, she did the little nod. Melissa knew what I was going to ask her when people stopped laughing, and answered my question before I asked it. I had no idea how she did that. The little nod meant it’s okay to do violence.

Now, violence is my specialty. I’m very big, bigger than most people and even bigger than most orcs. I’m also very strong and fast. Tough too, I’m also very tough. I can do a lot of violence, or I can do a little violence. Melissa said doing the violence is okay, but how much? I looked for more friends and saw Kilgore. He was actually standing right next to Melissa, but I didn’t notice at first. He was a human and a magic man and was also very nice to me. He did a shrug, that meant how much violence was up to me.

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Now I had to wonder, how much violence should I do? The man had been mean to me, that much was clear. He made fun of me, I think. And he yelled in my ear, that was really bad! Especially after telling me my shield wasn’t a shield, and I didn’t even ask him. He had sat at my table and started asking me questions. I didn’t remember what they were, but he’d started it.

I decided how much violence to do, but then I needed to find the man. He had left my table a few minutes ago while I was thinking. I picked up my shield and looked around, jutting my tusks out so everyone knew I was angry. When I looked at people they started pointing toward the bar and making themselves look smaller.

I found the man at the bar. He was much smaller than me and wearing lots of leather armor. He had swords too, so he might be dangerous. I decided on more violence, ‘cause he had come over to me to be mean and had weapons. That usually means he’s a bully. I don’t like bullies. They’re almost always mean to me.

I grabbed the man by the shoulder and pulled him backwards really hard. I had my shield between us, so he fell back into the shield and disappeared like the bread had.

“Don’t yell at me!” I yelled at him. He probably didn’t hear me ‘cause he was already through the shield, But I didn’t know where the shield went so I decided to yell at him just in case.

I looked around for more people that might want to fight. Sometimes fighting one guy means you have to fight his friends too, but people seemed really scared. That made sense, I’m pretty scary.

I wanted to have more drinks, so I took the one that the mean guy had been drinking. Melissa and Kilgore had found a table to sit at, so I went to sit with them. Having friends means you always have a table to sit at, and that’s just great.

“Did I do okay?” I asked, sitting in an empty chair.

“You did excellent, Pignob, truly excellent,” said Melissa. She smiled at me with the mouth she had left and patted my arm. That made me smile.

“A quick note, Pignob?” said Kilgore. That meant he wanted to tell me something I could do better next time. He waited till I was looking right at him and listening extra hard. “Next time a little less violence would be more appropriate.”

“But you said I could choose!” I said.

Kilgore nodded, “I did, I did. But putting him into your shield may have been a bit too much.”

“Why? I didn’t kill him,” I said. Killing people was most violence I was allowed to do and reserved for special occasions.

“Well, we don’t know that, do we? We don’t know where the mirror goes. We need to assume it could be some place really bad.”

That was tricky. I guess people might die if they go in my shield. But if they did, I don’t think that was my fault. It was the fault of whatever was on the other side, and the fault of the mean man for making me do it. Still, Kilgore was smart. He was always reading books about magic.

“Okay, so putting people in my shield counts as killing them?” I asked, making sure I understood.

Kilgore nodded. “I think for now, let’s assume it does. If we find out later that it doesn’t, we can reevaluate.”

“Can I go look?” I asked. I really wanted to know where my shield went. So far Melissa and Kilgore told me no, ‘cause it was too dangerous. But maybe now it would be okay.

“No,” said Melissa, “we need to do experiments with other things first before we let you look. It’s too dangerous.”

I understood that. I set my shield up so I could look at it again. It was really big, just about as big as my last shield, which was as tall as me, just as wide too. Kilgore said my shield was called a “tower shield”. I could see my reflection in it too because it was a mirror first. We found it on a wall in the last dungeon we went into. The border was gold, but not real gold, just gold colored. Still metal though. Each side looked like wings that were connected to a tiny shape in the middle. The mirror part was clean even though the rest had been dusty. It was clean now too, even though someone threw bread at it.

“It’s got to be around here somewhere,” said Kilgore. He had gotten his big map out.

“The last three dungeons were all picked clean,” said Melissa. “I don’t want to spend forever searching with nothing to show for it.” When Kilgore and Melissa talked to each other, I had a hard time keeping up. They talked much faster and didn’t wait very long before they started talking again. “Let’s search along here next.” She pointed at the map, which I thought was silly cause we had already checked the map.

“Good idea,” said Kilgore. I guess it wasn’t silly. I should have known better. Melissa was very smart.

We were going into dungeons, which are big underground buildings where people sometimes forgot treasure. It’s a good way to get a lot of money, and cool things that are worth a lot of money. I love money. Money means I can be comfortable and not cold or hungry. Things that are worth money are sometimes nice to look at too.

“Pignob?” said Melissa. They were both looking at me. I had missed something.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“We’re going to explore this ridge here next, to try and find the dungeon. What do you think?” she was pointing at a look black squiggle on the map. I looked at the squiggle really hard, then at the rest of the map. It was mostly squiggles that meant mountains, and a few tiny squiggles that meant roads. There was a box that meant a building, and we were in one of the boxes.

“I think that’s fine,” I said. I couldn’t think of any reason not to go to one squiggle over another. But I liked it when they included me.

“Thank you Pignob,” said Melissa, she gave me another pat on the arm to let me know I did a good job.

“Let’s not waste any time,” said Kilgore, “I’ll hire a porter. Melissa can you check with the guide outside for directions?”

“Will do, chief,” said Melissa. She sometimes forgot Kilgore’s name.

“Pignob, can you pay for our food and drinks at the bar?” Kilgore asked me.

“Okay, Kilgore,” I said. Hopefully Melissa was listening.

I pinched a couple of gold coins from my money bag and walked to the bar. I had almost got there when the bartender yelled, “Please just leave!”

“Kilgore! It happened again!” I said with a big smile. Bartenders always like me.