“Who the fuck is this new guy anyway?” asked Neleth, ever-suspicious. “What’s a high-level human doing here? You’re a fool for trusting him, old man.”
“Stand up and say that to my face, boy,” the dwarf said without raising the tone of his voice in the slightest. “See how that dagger of yours will fare against me.”
The elf didn’t reply but didn’t move his eyes away from his doctore. Seeing how the human wasn’t reacting in any way to what he was saying, he was going to have to get his answer from Yalfrigg.
“I know he hasn’t been planted by our dominus,” the dwarf replied, “because I know exactly why he’s here. He despises him as much as we do. And you all saw him fight. He hates demons more than anyone.”
“What do you have to say for yourself, human?” the orc asked. “How do we know you weren’t sent here by our dominus to spy on us? Who are you?”
The man did not immediately respond, but just as the orc was becoming frustrated at his silence, he sighed and looked at her for the first time.
“I am a killer,” the man said quietly and returned his eyes onto the fire. “I have slain demons and dragons. I’ve killed more than my share. I’ve played the role of the judge and the executioner far too many times. I have made orphans and widows. Decapitated the living ones with no more hesitation that I did swarms of undead.”
The elf sitting next to the man now shifted in his chair uncomfortably. The man’s soft voice was in stark contrast to his appearance, but not to his eyes. His eyes looked tired. Tired of the futility of everything. Tired of fighting.
“I have cried in pain and retched at the sight of a person’s innards,” he continued. “I’ve run in fear and lived to fight another day. I watched a woman sacrifice herself so that I could live and turned my back to her. I’ve made friends but even more enemies. The friends, I betrayed. The enemies, I’ve killed. But the enemies I made just before I was brought here are not yet dead, and I will not rest until I feel their blood on my face.”
“You still haven’t told us why you came here,” the orc said. “Not even your name.”
“My name is Alexander Rage,” he replied. “Or at least that’s the name I go by. Berserker. Dragonsbane. Battleforged. Traitor. I come from what some of you call the prime plane, or Midgard, or Di. And this is the story of how I came to this hellhole willingly.”
1
I am above
“The next big update will be released on the Friday two weeks after tomorrow,” our department lead told us. “This is our final sprint, people. Literally!”
I rolled my eyes at what he considered humor, while a few of the brown-nosers chuckled at their boss’s incredible joke.
“We are the number one company in CCGs and MMORPGs across PCs and consoles,” the corporate hipster continued. “This update will push our latest Collectible Card Game to the top. But we can’t do it unless every single one of us puts their one thousand percent into it these next two weeks.”
Every single one of us? I bet the fucker actually believed he worked as much as we did. Of course, in reality he would spend his weekend in the Hamptons, socializing his way to his next promotion while we ate pre-cooked meals from the deli downstairs before crawling back to our apartments for four hours of sleep.
“I know this is going to be a tough couple of weeks, but I believe in us. So let’s do it everyone!” He finished his small informal speech with a clap of his hands.
Quite early in my time with Hot N Spicy Digital, I had realized how easy it was to rank people based on their kiss-assness. That is, how much of a bootlicker each person was. There were other criteria like nodding when your supervisor explained their “vision” for the company’s future, but the ranks became clear when a person higher up on the corporate ladder said something that could be considered even remotely inspiring and you saw how fast said bootlickers started clapping with enthusiasm.
Sure enough, the three developers who’d spent the least amount of time actually developing and the most time answering emails and CCing people in on their status-update emails were the first ones to join the corporate kumbaya. I clapped with mocking enthusiasm as I shot a look at Leo, perhaps my only friend in this miserable place.
Leonardo DiFiore was a thirty-two-year-old stick of a man that was nothing like the stereotyped Italian-American mafiosos or fuckboys that were the only kinds ever shown on TV. His short hair looked messy in a way that could have been deliberately styled, and his brown eyes were magnified by the thick glasses he wore. He was, as always wearing dark neutral clothes that would never attract a second look. Though now that I thought about it, his accent was definitely heavily influenced by his family, and he had never told me what kind of business they were in. Maybe he was a nerdy mafioso?
Both of his parents had moved to the US when they were young, so he was born and raised in Little Italy. He’d grown up in New York and you could tell by the way he carried himself with an air of quiet confidence. That is, when his parents weren’t around. The few times we’d bumped into his mother or father, he’d turned into a clumsy anxious mess, even though they both seemed like lovely people.
Leo clapped even harder now, following each of the sounds escaping my hands with a louder, more sarcastic clap of his own.
Beat me at sarcasm? I drink a bottle full of sarcasm for breakfast every day.
I rolled my tongue and produced a high-pitched whistle that caught Justin, our department lead, by surprise.
“Yeah!” he shouted, and raised his hand
