The three humanoids entered the hall. They looked… odd. Their skin was a pale color; not white, but a light peach. The two men had dark hair, cropped short, while the woman had hers long and a dirty straw-like yellow. One of the men, the more slender one, wore a long, coarse, burgundy robe that looked hard to move in, while the other —someone who had probably made some mistake during their bear to humanoid transformation— wore a heavy metallic plate that covered his chest, but had his feet clad in lather and arms bare. He noted with some distaste that the large, stocky man’s arms were covered in untended fur. How come he wasn’t in pain?

And were those round ears? He touched his own pointy ears in reflection. Why would these strangers have such weirdly shaped ears? The color of their skin and the asymmetry of their faces had made him suspicious but now he was reasonably sure that they were probably a different race than him. Staring at their genetic misfortune, he started to feel a bit better about his own appearance, despite how unfamiliar it was.

But why were these humanoids here? And why were they so armed? From the bedroom, he had assumed this place was his home but perhaps he was wrong? Perhaps, he was the trespasser? Regardless, these three didn’t seem like the owners of a place such as this.

The larger of the men stepped forward as he unsheathed his falchion sword and shouted intelligible words at him.

Not wanting to believe that the screens held some prophetic nature, he left the knife on the arm of the throne-chair and stood up empty-handed. He tried to look as nonthreatening as possible, though with his nightwear on, it was difficult to look anything but.

“I am unarmed,” he said, though he didn’t think he would be understood. The male humanoid shouted something angry in response, before looking at the other man. The long-robed one spoke something in what seemed a horribly butchered phrase from another language that he still couldn’t recognize.

Screens popped up on the side, but he ignored them.

“I can’t speak your language. But I have no weapons. I can’t hurt you,” he waved a little as he felt ridiculous keeping his hands raised so long. The female’s skin turned blotchy with pink under her eyes, such that he wondered whether she had some odd disease. He took a step back but the large man immediately started waving his sword threateningly and shouted indiscriminately at both him and his male companion. The shorter of the two men held on to his stuff tightly before bowing his head and mumbling some gibberish.

Immediately, he felt a tingling upon his skin before it disappeared as another screen popped up.

He lowered his hands and stepped back. Did that man just do something? The caster looked ill and pasty as his —spell, enchantment?— words were interrupted. He raised his staff and yelled in a fearful tone before the large men started walking purposefully towards him.

Seeing where this was going, he raised his hands again. “Wait! Wait, this is a misunderstanding!”

The large men broke into a sprint, surprisingly fast as he slashed his sword.

He ducked, evading without really knowing how, before running backwards.

“Wait!” he shouted. “I am not trying to hurt you!” The man slashed again, forcing him to flip sideways. A screen popped up. He dodged again and jumped away feeling pain on his left arm. The man pursued him, unheeding to his pleas and yelled explanations. He ran and once he gained some distance, he spared a glance at the other two. The woman was hiding behind the slender man as she cheered her companion on, while the other kept his staff on his direction at all times.

His attention was soon taken. His opponent charged once again, dealing a downward strike to the floor, granite chips and stone dust flying through the air.

They wanted him dead. The man jeered and thrust.

They wanted him dead and they didn’t care. He couldn’t remove the image of that woman cheering as her companion vied for his blood.

Why?

He had acted polite and passive. He had no weapons and wore only some flimsy sleepwear. That robed man had done something first, and he hadn’t reacted to his weird chant. Looking at the man before him, slashing diagonally, air cutting from the force of the motion, he broke into a run towards the throne.

He had been so stupid, so naive.

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Why would they trust a foreigner? Why would he trust them but in idiocy as well? Reaching forward, he almost grabbed the dagger, but fire suddenly covered the throne, and he had to jump back. The robed man was chanting, flames appearing from his staff and being thrown in his direction. He couldn’t win against that. Not with a sword-waving maniac after him as well. But just as his hopes dashed, the swordsman yelled at the other a command and the robed man stopped chanting. The woman cheered again.

Ah, he thought, that’s why. Pride. This was all a showmanship of pride. A way to reinforce this man’s arrogance with a weaker opponent and an adoring audience.

He sidestepped another thrust, surprised at his own speed and flexibility. His opponent was obviously stronger; he could feel the difference in their strength in the air like a sixth sense, but he was faster. However, he was not going to last long if he stayed in defense. Who knew when the audience decided to become involved again?

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the knife thrown on the floor by the power of the flames, charred black. Trying not to think of the implications of what fighting back meant, he kept dodging, getting more cuts each time and waited. As soon as he saw an opening, he ran for it, but the pale man, out of some instinct or something else, threw his sword at him, with a weird level of accuracy, forcing him to duck out of the way. Distracted by the pain on his ear, he didn’t see the man jump at him bodily, so by the time he tried to scurry forward, he was being dragged by his foot across the floor.

Panic eclipsed his mind as he desperately tried to free himself from that unflinching grip, hitting with his other foot backwards, trying desperately to hold on to the stone tiles, skin burning and breaking under the friction.

“Now, now...” the man said condescendingly, and he didn’t even notice that he could understand the words, the popping screens long gone ignored at the sound of his fast-beating heart and the smell of his sweat and fear.

The man easily dragged him despite his struggle and then his hand moved to his pouch and his captor suddenly had a dagger in his hands and all he could think was: I am going to die. I am going to die. I am going to die.

The man made to stab him and out of some unconscious desperation he grabbed the bare blade with his hands, the unforgiving steel cutting through one of his palms, and the pain struck so loud that for a moment he saw white as the larger man laughed. In the background he could hear feminine shouts and grumbled urging and the man laughed more and more and kept stabbing downwards, ignoring his hands and his own relatively insignificant strength, and he didn’t know, he didn’t know when but suddenly, he could hear nothing but the sound of his heart beating in fear. In fear and contempt. Contempt for why, why, why; why couldn’t he live? Why could this man? Why could he? Why could he?

He spit on the man’s face. In surprise and outrage, his killer let go of him, the dagger stabbed back on his palm, pain alighting anew, as the man moved back. All instinct, he rolled to the side and jumped back. The man cursed behind him. “You ----!”

He ran and grabbed both the man’s sword and his blackened knife, the latter’s still-hot handle burning on his skin. He stood toward his opponent, hands barely holding on to both sword and knife together in one grip, and he went for the attack. Unsurprisingly, the man’s armor and his body’s fortitude easily blocked the sword. The man used his larger figure to bodily push him and grabbed one of his wrists. In the struggle they both fell on the floor, sword meeting the ground with a loud clank.

He didn’t know if he had planned for this. He didn’t know if he had known how, but all he knew was that the man that wanted to kill him was on top of him, and he was so very afraid, and he stabbed with the knife at the man.

Silence. Not a scream or a groan of pain. He stood there, eyes wide, as drops of blood dripped down the blade and on his cheek. Suddenly, he could no longer hold the knife, as the man’s weight fell on him fully, all movement ceased.

The knife’s 8-inch blade had stabbed cleanly through the eye.

“Rogan!” the robed man shouted and woke him from his stupor.

He pushed the body — of his murderer, his victim — away and limped toward the throne. The other man, stopped his run and suddenly chanted, sending flames at him, and he barely dodged those, skin singed more than a bit. His throat tightened and his chest felt too small, the fear bouncing inside the walls of his head with the mantra: this one I cannot defeat, I can’t win, I can’t win.

“Tanner, help ---- !” the woman, now beside the body, shouted and the man looked back, and he took the moment and ran. More shouts behind him, he opened the secret door and closed it just before a barrel of flames could burn him. Not knowing how to make sure they couldn’t enter, he couldn’t decide whether to physically push back at the door or try to move the wardrobe to block the possible entrance in enough time for no one to enter. To his utter amazement and later-tearful gratitude, the door melted into the wall to be replaced by smooth unbreakable stone. He fell on the floor, hurt and in pain and so thankful, so very thankful.

“I’m safe,” he said aloud, as if those words could make him believe it. He couldn’t recognize the word for ‘safe’ on his lips, and he laughed a small, helpless laugh that somehow dimmed the image of blood —blood on his hands, blood on the blade— at the back of his thoughts.

“I’m safe.”