"Um, sorry, but the television is broken."
"Oh," I said, all emotion ripped from my voice.
I went back to my seat, and decided to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the time I had to wait before the contract was ready. Maybe I could have returned to my inn, but that would have been admitting defeat to all the people in here watching me for their entertainment. So I sat back down, and stared blankly at a wall.
You would have thought that I would get bored after five minutes of doing that, but that did not happen: I was a slave once, and I spent entire weeks simply staring at the roof of a cage without anything else to do. This was a war of attrition, and I was used to starving.
So ten minutes passed. Then an hour. At that point, most of the people who were laughing at me had already left, and the guild was even emptier now. When two hours had just elapsed, a figure barged into the Hunters Guild.
A rather rotund figure— short, about my height, with a thick, long grizzly beard. His skin was significantly more tanned than most of the Humans I had seen so far, and he stomped right into the room with his heavy leather boots, carrying a backpack full of metallic objects clanking into each other. It was almost as if he filled a sack full of pots and pans and sent it tumbling down a cliff. It was noisy, and he was noisy.
Because he was a Dwarf.
"Oi, which one of ya filthy Humans took me job? Do I have to spell it out for ya? That was my Chimera!"
People turned to face him, but no one said a word; the Dwarf scanned the lobby of the Hunters Guild, as whoever he stared at averted their gaze from him. I tried to shrink myself and make myself as small as possible— smaller than I already was— but that did not work. Someone must have already tipped him off as to who was the one to kill the Chimera, since he immediately began making his way to me.
"So it was you!" he shouted across the room, marching right up to my table. He loomed over where I sat, folding his arms and looking down at me. "Yer the lassie who thought it be a good idea to hunt my quarry, are ya?"
I stopped myself from instinctively reaching for my dagger, and answered slowly. "...so what if I am?"
The Dwarf frowned; he looked me over once, then twice, stroking his beard as he did. Finally, with a deep breath, he let out a hearty laugh.
"Hah, you’ve got quite the thick skin, don’t you?" he said just as loud as before, but without the accent from earlier. "Humans usually get intimidated when us Dwarves come up to them with our Dwarf speak, but you didn’t. So what are you then? A Goblin? A Half Dwarf? Half Goblin?"
He whispered the last part, leaning forward a little bit. When I did not respond, he just snorted.
"Well, you don’t have to tell me. Especially if it’s the last one. I hear they get treated even worse than Goblins, because they’re considered to be traitors to their species. So if that’s what you are, I don't blame you for wearing that mask over your face."
I tilted my head to the side, still remaining silent; I was certain he was fishing for information, trying to get some sort of reaction out of me, so I was not going to give him any. The Dwarf took a seat next to me, calling for a drink.
"Oi, you, fetch me and the little Missus some ale." Then he turned back around to me. "My treat," he said, giving me a toothy grin.
"Oh, uh, thanks."
At this point, the Dwarf had lost almost all of the accent he had before. You did not need to listen carefully to hear it, since it was still quite obvious, but it seemed like he was trying to speak in a manner that was actually comprehensible to a non-Dwarf by slowing down his speech and enunciating his words.
"So," the Dwarf said, pulling out a large book and putting it down on the wooden table with a thud. "What’s your name? I’m Gennady."
He pointed a thumb at himself, and looked at me expectantly. I put my hand out and started out a reply.
"Me—" I bit my tongue. He raised a bushy brow at that, and I quickly tried to rectify my mistakes. "Uh... me be glad to meet ya?" I said, trying to emulate the best Dwarvish accent I could.
I felt my entire body physically cringe at that; it was probably offensive— scratch that, it was definitely offensive. But it was better than giving my actual name to him; there was no point to all this secrecy if I told everyone who I was supposed to be, since all it would take was someone from the Church to ask a few questions, and they could very easily track me down.
Luckily for me, Gennady seemed to take it in stride.
"Hah, nice try. That’d have fooled any stupid Human. But Dwarves don’t shake hands, we just slap each other on the backs."
With that, I immediately braced myself, but it was too late. He brought an arm out and smacked me from behind. I nearly went headfirst into the table, suppressing a yelp as the sharp pain ran across my body. Ouch!
"How’s that for a Dwarven greeting, eh?"
"...do you need something, Mr Gennady?" I barely managed to ask the question, still rubbing at my back; his forearms alone were twice the size of my legs, so that
