Erevan was having a terrible, horrible, not good, very bad day. He was stuck on yet another job as a bodyguard, bored out of his mind and with no beer in sight. Even worse, this time he had to babysit with someone else. He was far too sober for this crap. Erevan sighed despondently as he frowned down at his worn leather boots. He was used to doing things on his own, it had been over 25 years since his last “team up”. The things he did for beer-money...
It felt demeaning somehow to be reduced to bodyguarding a random merchant when he was already well over 50. Then again, looks were deceptive. The ranger was acutely aware of the fact that to others he must look like he’d be in his early thirties. Half-elves might not live as long as elves but compared to humans they led very long lives.
Erevan chanced a subtle glance at the guy on his right. It was the man he was sharing the work, and subsequently the reward, with. The other guy was quite short for a man, his skin pale and fair which clearly marked him as Luccan. He was dressed in black leather armor, with black undershirt, gloves, pants and boots. He looked old enough to be an adult, but young enough to not be nearing middle-age yet. But then again, who knew? Erevan had always been bad at judging others' age. On top of his head was a wild mop of shortly chopped sandy brown hair and a black bandana covered his nose and lower face. Weird.
Erevan quickly averted his gaze, feeling self-conscious. What if the guy was judging the way he was dressed? He thought of his own tattered yet lovingly tended to leather armor covering his tan skin, showing the years it had served him well. Would the guy think that his clothing choices were odd? Would the stranger think badly of Erevans unkempt light brown hair as it fell slightly over his eyes? The faint outline of the thin, old scar on his left cheek? Or his barely pointy ears?
He tried to casually run his hand through his hair in order to surreptitiously untangle the worst knots. Perhaps the bandana was a new dum fashion statement? It was a perfect example of just how out of touch he was with human trends. He hated being away from the forest and being with people. What were you supposed to do in situations like these? Should he just ignore him? It nearly made him growl with frustration as he was definitely not a fan of the insecurity that always seemed to bug him around people. What if the guy took his quick look as an invitation for small talk? He nearly shuddered at the thought.
Erevan gazed longingly at the lush forest by the edge of the farmland he was currently standing on. It didn’t help that they were so close to his childhood home… No, don’t think about it, focus on the job. The yellow demonic eyes, their stare menacing and cold, flashed through his mind as he cleared his throat. He absentmindedly scratched the brown stubble on his chin and put on his best gruff manly man scowl. The one he knew could be intimidating for those who didn’t know him. Which was basically everyone.
Sometimes he wished he was fully human just so that he could grow a full beard to hide behind.
Suddenly he got an odd feeling in his gut, something felt… Wrong. Something was wrong. His sharp pale blue eyes were drawn towards the ruins of his old home and the feeling grew in intensity. Someone was messing with the remains of his family, he was sure of it. The insight came with the suddenness and clarity of a lightning bolt. He couldn’t explain how he knew this, yet he was sure. Erevan didn’t trust a lot of things in this world but he trusted his gut. His scowl deepened as he began to quickly make his way towards the woods, ignoring the high-pitched “Hey!” of the guy behind him.
There were not many things on this earth that could compete with beer in a matter of importance but this was definitely one of them.
The brisk walk soon turned into a stressed half run as a feeling of urgency joined in. Ugh, feelings. They were so not his forté. The half run took him fast into the forest where his feet fell into an easy, graceful choreographic dance together with the roots, bushes and odd rocks. Despite not being so close to the ruins in decades, his footing was sure and steady. This was his element. Whoever decided to mess with the remains of the Order were in deep trouble.
After approximately a mile he was close to a clearing, and there it was, the pathway between the trees, visible even after all this time if you knew what you were looking for… He stepped onto the pathway only for something, someone, to crash into him.
The stranger landed on their ass with an audible “OOF”. He was a peculiar looking fellow, thinly built with long dark brown hair - dark as the bark of an oak tree - slipped into a low ponytail. His skin was a hue of copper, his ears were pointy and his clothes shared a color-palette with the woods. An elf!
Erevan blinked. There hadn’t been an elf in these ruins since… Since Erevan lost his second family. Some of his ire was soothed by the ache of familiarity in the features of the stranger. That’s not to say he wasn’t still irritated to find a stranger here of all places - just not murderous any longer.
“What exactly are you doing here?” he demanded in a low growl, deepening his scowl as his nostrils flared.
“Woah dude, calm down,” he heard a surprisingly high-pitched voice call out behind him. Turning back he saw that the guy he was sharing the guarding job with had followed him. The guy was listening to them curiously, without even an ounce of shame. Erevan glared at him, and then turned his fiery stare back to the elf who was still sitting on the ground. The elf appeared dazed after his impact as a very stoppable force coming in contact with the immovable object that was Erevan Stormwind. That was also when he noticed that the elf was clutching something close to his chest, his clothes rumpled and dirty.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“What’s that?!”
“Oh this? Ha ha, nothing, nothing to see here,” the elf said awkwardly, trying to look innocent and immediately utterly failing. All the while not-so-subtly stuffing some sort of box, the thing he’d been clutching as if his life depended on it, into his backpack. “Just a regular elf doing regular elf things, which is, you know, quite… Regular.”
There was a moment of silence before he cleared his throat and added, “For an elf that is.”
Erevan raised a disbelieving eyebrow before menacingly hoisting the elf up by his collar with ease. This earned a small squeak from the stranger.
“I said: What. Are. You. Doing. Here.”
“Look, I can’t tell you that, but it is important. Like, life or death -important. So, um, could you please let me down?”
The elf looked nervous and yet surprisingly sincere. Not that Erevan would let that fool him. He had been naive in his youth, but no longer. Ereven narrowed his piercing eyes in suspicion while releasing his hold abruptly. The elf landed on his feet, wobbling a bit but quickly regaining his footing.
“Now if you don’t mind…”, the elf started as he began to walk past Erevans larger form.
Erevan held his palm out, stopping the scrawny stranger none too gently, “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Ummm, guys? We got company,” the guy behind him spoke up, the bright voice sounding more serious now.
Erevan and the elf followed the gaze of the third male back towards the clearing, where there were a small group of…
“Kobolds,” Erevan spat out. “Great.”
The small, scaly creatures faintly bearing a resemblance to the dragons of the old world were carrying dinged, rusty shovels and buckets in their claws. Their tails were swishing from one side to the other as they set down the buckets in the middle of the ruins. The kobolds were not the most common sight so close to human settlements, as they usually preferred to stick to deeper woods where they preyed upon the weak and helpless. They were known as a selfish bunch, even amongst themselves. And yet, the kobolds in front of them were clearly preparing to start digging. But why and what for? Not that it really mattered in the end as they had earned their death sentence by defiling the place.
“Not on my watch,” Erevan snarled as he reached for his bow, the strange elf momentarily left on his own devices.
An arrow flew from his bow, as natural as breathing, and struck its target true as the human and the elf began to prepare for battle. The kobold was dead before it hit the ground. Erevan grabbed the next arrow from his quiver and notched it as the other kobolds realized they were under attack.
As his second arrow penetrated the eye of another kobold, he could hear the elf muttering under his breath, voice slightly trembling as if he wasn't used to violence. Great, of course it has to be a mage.
A few more kobolds fell as the guy who’d followed Erevan ran forward, engaging the last members of the group to a lethal dance. It was slightly irritating as it made aiming a third arrow that much harder. Unless of course he was willing to risk impaling the human as well. He did consider it for the briefest of moments. Erevan had never been much of a teamplayer, and the few times he’d tried he’d ended up on his own anyway. Still, shooting a near stranger was a waste of a perfectly good arrow. His musings were cut short as the guy’s sword sliced through the last kobolds sternum, a guttural scream escaping from its lips.
“They were going to dig. Here,” the elf uttered, face pale and eyes widening in some sort of revelation. Meanwhile, the human swiped his sword with care through the grass to clean out the worst of the dark red blood on it before making his way back towards them.
“That can’t be good,” the elf continued in a low voice, clearly talking to himself.
“You don’t often meet kobolds like this out in broad daylight, it does seem suspicious,” the other guy agreed.
Erevan grunted noncommittally as he walked to fetch his arrows.
“We should follow them, see what they’re up to,” the guy said casually. “I’m Hama by the way,” he added as he looked at the elf.
Right, that was his name.
“And make sure they never lay a scaly toe in this place again,” Erevan continued as he stalked back, his blood boiling with rage. How dare these creatures try to desecrate this sacred place. Speaking of…
Erevan turned the full heat of his glare at the elf once again.
The elf in question licked his lips nervously while locking eyes with Erevan, brown meeting blue. “My name is Nalion. Uh, hello.”
The elf raised his hand in a small, awkward wave. There was a heavy, pressing silence as the ranger mulled over his choices. The stranger was an elf after all. Maybe he deserved a chance, considering he hadn’t tried to run away while Erevan had been defending the remnants of his old home and family.
“Erevan,” he grunted after a while, neither dropping his glare nor letting go of his bow. Elf or not, if this Nalion showed himself to be an unsavory character his fate was sealed.
“Jeez, what's got your knickers in a twist?” Hama exclaimed, with a twinkle of mirth dancing in his gray eyes. “Come on now, let’s get this over with!”
Erevan turned his glare towards the shorter man again as Nalion looked unsure.
“Why would you want to do that?” Nalion asked, curiously cocking his head on one side. The mage was striking a faint resemblance to a dog - eager to understand while not quite following the reasoning.
“Hey, it seems like a cool adventure, anything beats dull guard-jobs. Besides, adventures mean treasure, and maybe chances to gain some valuable knowledge,” the guy said as he wiggled his eyebrows, eyes gleaming with an emotion Erevan couldn’t quite decipher.
“OH, so you’re a scientist as well?! What’s your field of study? How long have you been collecting information? Have you written any interesting books? Oh, getting the human perspective on things is fascinating, your species lives such short lives and the way you hurry through them most humans don’t even seem to bother with proper scientific rigor but of course there are exceptions, perhaps you are one of them, oh, you have to tell me everything, absolutely everything you know!!” The elf cried out in pure joy while frantically rummaging through his bag for a bottle of ink and a quill. He ended up taking out several tattered notebooks as well, each with a title longer than the last.
Nalion shuffled through them at an impressive speed that left Erevan almost no time to read the titles, carefully penned down in Elvish. The last notebook, which Nalion didn’t shove back in his bag, bore the title of Humans and Their Curious Habits and How They Differ from the Elven Culture. The elf proceeded to open the notebook with such enthusiasm that he almost accidentally ripped some pages out.
Hama looked mostly amused as Nalion continued his rambling whilst simultaneously jotting down points in the notebook in a surprisingly small and neat handwriting. It seemed as if he was attempting to fit as much information as possible within each page.
Erevan groaned inwardly. Great, he was going to be surrounded by even more people. He groaned again, externally this time. This is what he gets for trying to do the right thing and give the trespasser the benefit of the doubt. Why did he do this to himself? They were just going to end up being awful. And on the off chance they were actually decent, the insecure part of him was whispering how he was just setting himself up to be judged and found wanting. He couldn’t wait for a bit of peace and quiet to pour out his heart in his diary again. Erevan had a feeling he would be needing that outlet a bit more than usual if he was going to be stuck with these people.
He bet they didn't even like beer.