Opening my eyes, the first thing I see is a sword – a falchion, to be more precise – standing on the ground, covered in blood. I move away just from seeing that, or at least try to move away. Unfortunately, I am unable to move at all. I am unable to speak either. My lips move but no sound comes out. I can hear and smell things though. And neither has given me any comfort and the smell that enters my nostrils is that of death and rotting flesh and what I hear are the cries of people from all sides but the front. Soon, someone comes towards me, reaches out for the falchion and takes it out of the ground in front of me. That enables me to look what's in front and what I see is a big, fat elf sitting on a throne made of bones and looking like some kind of edge-lord demon boss of a video game.
I turn my eyes around him and Elven soldiers seem to be on all sides.
"Mortal," The guy on the throne starts spouting, "so you have finally awakened."
That makes it sound like I have awakened some mysterious power inside of me. All I have done is woken up after having fallen unconscious.
"Good, good!" He contemplates with his hand on his chin and a different guy comes in front of me. This guy is wearing black robes and a hat like the wizards I and Sung Li previously slew. The first thing he does is cast some kind of spell on me, which gives me back my voice.
"What the hell do you guys wants?" I ask.
"We want your life." The wizard casually answers. He bends over and looks me in the eye, showing me a face that looks like a machine instead of a human. Don't get me wrong! His face is human, but the structure is that the same you will see in the million Iron Man suits.
"I am sorry to say but you can't have my life." I say as if he was offering me a deal.
And so, he laughs. Obviously, he would laugh at that. When a mouse says to a cat, "I'm sorry but you can't have me for lunch," obviously the cat's gonna laugh. But,
"You know, wizard-guy," I am not the mouse here, "sometimes when a hunter get caged, the prey starts feeling too full of themselves. And that never ends well for the prey."
The wizard finds himself being dragged into the ground as if he was standing on quicksand. He cries for help and some other wizards even come and try to help him, but when they too start getting pulled in, they immediately let go and fall back. And so, the wizard who so casually told me that he wants my life is mixed in with the ground and is probably regretting ever being born right now, provided he is still alive.
"You-you fiend! What did you do to our brother?" Another wizard says so as he shots me a glare.
"See for yourself!" I just casually answer with that as the ground beneath him starts giving him the same treatment as his so-called 'brother' whom he abandoned as soon as his life started being on stake.
"Now then," I say, "I don't know what is binding me and making me unable to move but I would really like for you people to remove it."
I say as I turn my gazes from one wizard to another. They all collectively cast a spell and I prepare Earth Authority to suck them all in the ground in case their spell is to harm me in any way. As it turns out though, they do as I told them to and broke my shackles. Only after that did I become able to look back and see that I was being held here by iron chains tightly wrapped around me. Now, that's just mean!
"So," I get up, surprisingly finding not much problem in doing so, as I ask, "Who are you guys?"
As the big elf sitting on the throne looks at me, his face seems to give an amused smile. He says, "Before you ask us about our identities, shouldn't you introduce yourself, mortal?"
Hearing the far too boring and conventional line, I start drowning all the wizards around me into the ground. They all start begging for me to stop and so I do and repeat my question, "Who the fuck are you guys?"
"W-we are just a band of mercenaries. We were hired to kidnap you and all the villagers in that village and then kill some of them before you woke and then-"
"Enough of that!"
I get the gist of it. The next most important thing is-
"Who hired you?"
Knowing what may happen if they choose not to answer, the wizards don't dare waste any time as I question them, "It was a man named Niviks. He is a Frost."
Niviks? Seriously? The right-hand man of Cartel Hopkins?
Does that Cartel is behind this? Or is Niviks acting alone?
"How much did he offer you to take this job?"
"H-he didn't offer money." A wizard says and cries in pain. I glare at him to continue and he does so, "He offered us the entirety of the Nation of Temur."
Did he now?
"He told us that he had a plan to take over the entire planet and that when he does so, he will take Kidar and give us Temur to rule."
"Surely you guys didn't just believe him. You can't be THAT big fools, right?" I ask with a deadpan expression, expecting somewhat that they may just be that big fools. But,
"That is a question only I can answer, mortal." The fat elf sitting of the throne, who had listened to the whole conversation with amusement up till now, says so.
I glare at the wizards but they just either nod or say, "The leader said he could be trusted. We don't know why?"
And so, it seems I do have to change my target to this overgrown dark-skinned smirking bastard.
I release the wizards and they fall to the ground holding their legs in pain. Taking a glance to make sure they aren't trying anything funny, I look at the elf and say, "You wanted me to introduce me? Well, I'm Irium Glice. I am a human from the planet Earth and I will freaking destroy you if you ever try to play bondage with me again."
Seeing my tone and hearing my words, the elf laughs, not to mock but to say that he likes my style, and introduces himself, "I am Jom-e-wah, a dark elf and the leader of this band of mercenaries. You can just call me Jom though. I apologize for the way you were treated. None of us realized you were such a force to be reckoned with before. But, now we do. And so, I have a deal for you."
*****