When there was no immediate response from the room, Eri had time to notice that the minion off to his right side seemed unable to hold himself perfectly upright, portraying something akin to a drunken sway.
Is he drunk? Eri wondered. Hmm… I dub thee… Wigglesnitch.
Eri liked naming things. It helped him feel he was more in control of a situation when he could slap a moniker on the elements within it. He attempted to paste on his most winning smile. "So… could I interest you gentle-boglins in… not murdering everyone?"
Am I showing too many teeth? Eri wondered as he tried to maintain his facade of cheerfulness.
A dagger clanged off the pan, filling the air with a musical sound.
DING!
The blade sent sparks skittering across the floor as it passed near Wigglesnitch. The unsteady boglin yelped when the dagger passed close to his feet and fell backward into a barrel of pickles, freeing the salt-infused cukes from their dark, briny prison as the container cracked open.
Yup, definitely showed too many teeth.
The air was thick with tension (and the smell of pickles), and one of the boglins nudged another and tried to whisper, "Is that the weapons from prophecy?"
Boglin's either weren't very good at whispering, or that particular minion just didn't understand the concept because the whole room heard the question, including Scarface, who hissed and said, "No youz kidget! That's no weapon."
"Yeah, you bogglenit," said another boglin, "that's a shields." The boglin that said this happened to be right next to Scarface. The boglin boss straightened slightly and smacked the boglin on the back of the head.
"No, think and use brains. It's a foods pan. For cooking. Not for shielding." The bigger boglin shook his head and mumbled something under his breath as he turned back toward Eri and his frying pan. As he did, a glass flew over the boglin leader's head and shattered against the far wall. Scarface looked back at where the glass had hit and then turned back to look at Eri with a confused frown creasing his already ugly face.
Eri would have face-palmed himself, but he was right-handed, and he still held the frying pan in that hand. That seemed like a terrible follow-up to his last failed attempt to get out of his current mess.
He felt so stupid. After witnessing the skill with which the barkeep had thrown the glass, he figured that it might be a magical weapon of some kind, so he had thrown it as hard as he could at the lead minion. At least, that had been what he was trying to do. He had always been terrible at throwing things.
Eri stumbled a bit over his words as he said, "No… now. Now that I have your attention, we can discuss our collective concerns—agreed?" As he finished speaking, he lowered his hands to his sides (slowly, because he didn't like how that boglin with the gargantuan jar of pickled herrings was looking at him).
Scarface hissed, blowing thick phlegm halfway across the room, "Concerns? Yes. Yes, I haves concerns, human. The big man was the hero, yes? Where you put him?"
Eri's eyes widened a bit as he responded, "Oh, no. No. That wasn't… No." While expressing this series of denials, his hands moved involuntarily, bringing the frying pan up to chest level without even realizing he was doing it.
CLANG!
Another dagger struck the frying pan and bounced backward, sailing high into the air. Everyone's eyes followed the dagger, including the poor boglin who had to watch it land point-first in his left foot, pinning it to the floor.
Eri couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for the poor creature, so he quietlyand silently gave him a name: And you will now be known as* Gashnot*.
Then several things happened at once:
• Gashnot howled and began to stomp his not-stabbed foot while flapping his arms. • One of the small groups of adventurers in the room had finally decided to act. Approximately half of the humans in the room drew their weapons and attacked the nearest boglins, taking several of the creatures by surprise. • The rest of the humans in the room who had not been in on the plan jumped in right after. • The exception to this was the man with the mandolin who was hiding under a table taking mental notes for a future bardic composition. • Eri briefly wondered where the serving girl went. • Wigglesnitch realized that he had landed on something edible and began stuffing pickles into his mouth.
In the chaos, Eri planned to slip away, but he looked up to see that Scarface still had his black eyes locked onto him. The large minion slowly began to stalk toward Eri.
*Crap! Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap! *Eri thought as he began backing away before bumping into the bar.
He wasn't a fighter. He was a reader. A thinker. As far as he was aware, he didn't do the whole "fighting to the death" thing very well. There was no way that he could take down a boglin. Scarface might not be very large, but he was big for a boglin, and as he drew closer, Eri saw that his adversary was actually a little taller than he was. Perfect. Great. Wonderful.
Scarface bared his teeth and snarled at Eri like a rabid wombat (and if you think this is not an apt description, then you've never seen a rabid wombat in close quarters before).
Another boglin and human that had been fighting nearby suddenly slammed into Scarface from the side, breaking his focus for a moment. Eri wasted no time and promptly hopped up to sit on the bar, and tucked in his knees, arms, and trusty frying pan, before rolling backwards. He surprised himself by landing on his feet. After an exceedingly brief self-congratulatory moment, Eri shot toward the door behind the bar.
Once in the dimly lit back room, he squinted his eyes and searched frantically for a back door, but he did not see one.
Is there no back door? Well… that's problematic. Eri silently noted.
The only potential point of egress that he could see was a small window set high on the back wall that let just enough moonlight in for Eri to see that he was going to die a brutal, terrible death. But that window was just too tiny.
Eri whipped back around and then looked down at the frying pan in his hand. Why was he still holding it? It had actually come in handy. Twice, actually. It made a decent shield, although it was a bit heavy and was making his hand ache. He shifted the pan to his other hand and then swiftly moved to take a position just inside the door he had come through but off to one side. His only option was to surprise the boglin leader with a pan to the face before slipping past and running out the front door.
Bringing his right hand up to join his left, Eri clenched the handle of the frying pan with both hands. The pan shook violently because his hands were trembling so badly, but he managed to maintain his grip. He noticed that there was a large dent in the bottom of the pan. The daggers hadn't done that. It must have been there before. Eri let out a quiet half-laugh, and he whispered to the pan, "It's just you and me, bud. Let's make some pancakes."
Eri shook his head at that truly terrible line, glad that there was no one else in the room to hear it, and he felt just a hint of heat from the handle of the pan. Also, the pan seemed to have a dull glow to it. He blinked rapidly. His senses were all over the place. Likely because of the adrenaline and the whole "being about to die" thing he had going on.
Just as Eri was beginning to think he had been forgotten, Scarface burst through the door, making it fly off its hinges and nearly hit a chicken on the other side of the room. The poor creature narrowly avoided being squished against the far wall.
The fear-filled fowl managed to escape the door and fly out of the way just in time, spraying its feathers everywhere. While making its escape, it inadvertently flew right into the face of the serving girl, who had been hiding, unnoticed, in the back corner. The face full of chicken made her release a brief YELP! before she wrapped her hands over her mouth and tucked herself back into the shadows.
Eri didn't have time to pay much attention to the chicken or the girl because as soon as he saw the boglin, he reacted, or the pan did. Honestly, it was a weird thing. It was almost as if the pan set things in motion. Strange.
The pan flew up with Eri's hands still latched on to it and smacked the minion square in the face. Eri could both hear and feel the crunch of the boglin's nose getting pulverized. He winced sympathetically. Scarface's feet continued forward while his head abruptly reversed direction and went backwards. The boglin went from vertical to horizontal before gravity sent him crashing to the floor.
He hadn't meant for that to be quite so… effective.
Worse, it had actually felt kind of… good. Which was mildly alarming. He was fairly sure that he wasn't supposed to feel that way about such extravagant violence.
Eri let out a breathless, surprised “ha” before moving to flee from the room and head back into the main tavern. Although he did not intend to do so, his right foot came down on the boglin's face, and he could feel the bones crunching further as he continued out the doorway while yelling, "Sorry!"
Unknown to the young scribe, a harried chicken rushed after him, pausing only to scratch and peck at the injured boglin's eyeballs for a moment before continuing on. The young serving girl stayed right where she was. Smart girl.