Outside, rain poured down from a perpetually black sky laced with lightning while thunder rolled in a particularly ominous fashion. Framed in the doorway was a figure dressed in a dark cloak. He stepped into the inn and took three steps forward, making room for several other similarly dressed individuals to come in after him. Dark-cloaked minions spilled into the tavern, brandishing daggers, axes, and one particularly large jar of pickled herring.
Boglins! Eri thought—which was quickly followed by, "Are those pickled herrings? Gross.”
The Dark Lord's minions were small in stature, with dark, green mottled skin. Pointed ears rose like horns from the sides of their heads, and solid pitch-black eyes stared around the room. They wore no shoes; the sharp claws (talons?) made that impractical, just like gloves would never cover the wickedly sharp claws on their four-fingered hands either.
People used to laugh and joke around about boglins, never taking them too seriously, but since the Dark Lord had come to power, they had become much more dangerous.
The apparent leader, who had a long scar that slashed across his entire face from the base of one ear to the bottom of his chin on the opposite side, snarled and flicked a claw toward another boglin in annoyance. "Ah, see! I told youz today was Wednesday. We're not supposed to be heres 'til Friday." The boglin waved a hand across the room full of people. "Look at these helpless creatures. There's no hero heres. Bah! I knew I shouldn't have listened to youz. Youz worthless kragnunder!"
Their voices were hard to listen to. They were high-pitched, yet guttural, sounding like they perpetually had a wad of phlegm stuck in the back of their throats. Gross, really.
"No, master!" argued the other boglin. "'Tis today, I knows it. I marks it on meez calendar. 'Tis today! Must be. Maybe the hero is lates or maybe he in the back making poops."
The humans in the tavern, virtually all of them adventurers, stayed silent while the argument continued. While it seemed that they were staying out of the middle of things, these men and women were the type to bide their time, planning their moves until opportunity presented itself. Also, they liked to kill things, so they would only be sitting still for so long.
The leader raised a wicked-looking black scimitar toward the other creature: "Ahhhh, bogglenits! You knows nothing. Youz couldn't find your bongle with both hands and a torch."
The other boglin managed to look offended, and he hissed as he snapped back, "I finds my bongle. Don't needs torch. How I holds torch anyway with using both hands?"
The smaller boglin seemed honestly confused, and Eri could now see why most folks had trouble taking them seriously. If the situation weren't so dangerous, it would have been quite hilarious to watch the boglins interact with one another.
Scarface just waved his scimitar in annoyance and strode forward, looking more closely at the inn's patrons once again. When his dark eyes found the barkeep, he said, "Where's your hero, innkeeper? Where's the cowards hiding?"
All eyes turned to Big Mike. He still stood behind the bar polishing his (one and only) glass. He seemed completely calm and unconcerned. He stopped his polishing and calmly replied, "No hero here s'far as I know. You fellas gonna be buying drinks or food, or do you need some rooms? If you're not eating, drinking, or sleeping, ya best be on your way."
In the pregnant pause that followed his words, Eri could barely contain his excitement. The hero's advent was happening before his eyes, and he had a front-row seat. Actually… Now that he considered it, he thought it might be best to find a new seat in the back somewhere, or maybe he could procure a balcony seat on the second floor. One of those options would likely be best before he found himself caught in the crossfire.
Scarface didn't seem thrilled with the innkeeper's response. He clenched the hilt of his sword and raised it, pointing it at Mike. "Weez eat tonight, yes. Weez eat your flesh and suck the marrow…"
"Now let me stop you right there," Mike interrupted in a moderately commanding tone as he set his rag and glass on the bar before continuing. "First off, there will be no human flesh consumed in this establishment, and secondly…"
Mike casually placed one hand back on top of his glass.
This is the point that one might expect that Big Mike would nail the ugly boglin in the head before giving the whole group a good thrashing—hero-style, but that is not how events unfolded. Sorry.
Eri's inner fangirl was waving pom-poms right up until this moment. This moment could have gone so well, but things were about to go something like sideways and ruin Eri's celebratory mood.
Right when Big Mike should have gone ballistic on the Dark Lord's minions, a bright, cerulean circle opened up under his feet, giving the big man just enough time for his face to drop as he started to say, "You've got to b—," and then the innkeeper vanished into the portal.
(Cue the crickets.)
The portal zipped closed in silence. For several long moments nobody moved and nobody spoke. Everyone in the room needed a moment to process things. Eri's mind moved faster than most, so he had plenty of time to inwardly stutter and yell and scream before his eyes started looking for an escape route or a place to hide.
Scarface and the boglins were very confused, and it took quite a bit longer for the gears to start turning for them. The lead boglin lowered his sword, looking a bit put out, and then he turned toward the other boglin he'd argued with earlier. The smaller creature just looked back at him and shrugged. Scarface shrugged too and then turned back to face the empty bar, not noticing the missing patron.
Eri was no longer sitting at the bar. While the out-of-shape rodents in the boglin's heads were still climbing back onto their wheels, he had ducked behind the bar and crawled as quietly as possible toward the far corner where the shadows had pooled thickest. Once there, he tried to tuck into a tight ball and make himself as small as possible. He had some trouble because he was sitting on something hard and uncomfortable. He reached down and pulled it out.
When he did, he accidentally hit the object against something metallic under the bar.
*BONG! *
The sound rang out loud and clear like a bell, and it instantly silenced the soft murmurs that had begun in the rest of the room.
Eri winced and almost started to cry as he held up a heavy cast-iron frying pan in front of his face. He mouthed the words ‘I hate you’ at the oblivious cookware. Then, realizing that hiding was pointless at this juncture, he figured that his only option would be to try to take control of the situation and attempt to verbally outwit the boglins, which—honestly—didn't seem like it would be that difficult. In fact, this was a good turn of events. With Big Mike gone, someone needed to do something. Eri was not overly enthusiastic about it being him, but this was his opportunity to stand in the Dark Lord's way. Hopefully, it wouldn't be his corpse that blocked the path. Besides, everyone loves an accidental protagonist, right?
Eri's quick mind worked through all of this within seconds, and now he was ready to face the enemy… mostly. He slowly stood up behind the bar, holding the frying pan in his right hand while holding his left hand up in the air.
Every eye was fixed on him, human and boglin alike. Eri tried to think of something clever to turn the tide in his favor and remove the attention from himself. Coming up empty, he shrugged and said, "Welp. He's not back here."