It tasted like monitor lizard meat, like chicken but a little gummy. However, thinking about hookworms made my stomach turn, but my cutscene state just kept eating the meat, dutifully shoveling it in.
"Then the giants that taught us so much just suddenly vanished," Toni said, his voice dropping, now laced with a surprisingly deep melancholic tone. "We barely noticed it at first because we were living with abundance of food; we had peace and harmony." He paused, his gaze fixed on the dancing flames of the campfire.
"Then humans along with the elves came along." His tone became dead serious, every trace of hang-loose attitude momentarily gone, replaced by a stark, almost ancient gravity. "They said that the giants had desecrated and conquered their lands." He swallowed another chunk of worm meat, a visible gulp, as if steeling himself for an unpleasant memory. "They told our ancestors that they were looking to unite all sentient creatures against the colossal, bloodthirsty invaders. At first, our elders were dismissive because the giants helped us build our young society, and because it was against our belief that giants were helpers not warmongers. Thus, they didn't want to join the coalition to take down the giants. Until one day, one of our caverns was attacked and reduced to nothing but a crater. Not a single troglodyte was spared." The memory seemed to physically deflate him. "Then, after that, a messenger from the coalition came and told us that another cavern had fallen. We reached a crossroads. Our elders were divided; some agreed, and some wanted to maintain the status quo. The humans and elves made an ultimatum that if the giants came for us one day, they would turn a blind eye. Our elders were forced to agree, and as members of the coalition, they tasked our people to mine ore for the cause. Some, though, didn't agree, but in a state of panic and with the directive of the new allies, they were banished by the council as exiles and traitors, never to return to our home caverns. Among them was my tribe, the tribe of the pale." He handed me a drink from his bag, a strangely ornate, ceramic bottle. My puppet state took it without a thought, and we began to cheers and drink beside the crackling campfire that Troglobro created. It tasted unmistakably like blueberry, I had to guess. But the unmistakable hint of bitter pale Pilsen made me decide we were drinking blueberry beer.
"Our tribe suffered immense loss to the monsters and elements of the outside world. We, the pale ones, are especially weak under the sun, which made our exodus a lot more difficult. After months of searching, we found our new home: a ruin of an unknown ancient race. We called our new home the 'Caves of Despair'." He held his head with sadness with his right hand as he sipped the unknown cocktail we'd been drinking, his hunched form conveying deep melancholy. "Our new home was never the same; we were despairing over what happened to our kin and us for the following millennia," he explained, his voice low and mournful. "It was called 'Caves of Despair' to remind our tribe of the loss of our former identity and the constant conflict with the other inhabitants of our new home. It was like a return to our barbaric way of life."
"Fast forward to the future," he said, suddenly sounding upbeat, shaking off the somber mood like a wet dog. Whoa, I thought that's a new and alien term in this seemingly olden kind of world. Toni's got modern lingo, too? Interesting. "Before I was born, the inhabitants I had mentioned before that we have been in constant conflict with our tribe were the swamp dwellers called the red-garbed Gnolls, the cutthroat goblins of the mountain caves."
In my cutscene state, I found myself speaking, "So where are you in all of this?"
He smirked, a quick, almost cheeky flash of his crooked teeth. "I'm about to tell you that, look who's impatient!" he laughed, a deep, resonant sound. "After centuries of fighting," sparks danced and hissed from the cracking wood of the campfire, suddenly pulling, warping my world, spiraling inward with dizzying speed.
Light surged inward, violently pulling the new view into sharp focus. Now, I'm inside Toni's body when he was younger, but somehow I can see through his non-existent eyes for some reason. It was a battlefield, raw and chaotic. I can feel the adrenaline pumping through Toni's body, the icy droplets of rain from the night sky chilling his skin, a potent cocktail of fear and savage courage surging in the mix. A blinding lightning flash illuminated dog-faced humanoids with searing eyes, their forms covered in various kinds of weapons and armor with blood-red linen clothes underneath, dotted across the other side of the muddy, rain-slicked field.
`General Awareness:`
`Gnoll:`
`Description: Dog/hyena faced humanoids. Savage and bloodthirsty.`
Barks and howls, guttural and chilling, pierced the darkness as the Gnolls surged forward, their momentum met by hissing growls from behind us, laced with a surprising spike of bravado. One particularly large Gnoll leaped in front of us. A giant sword arced down in a furious slash, which we dodged with a left side roll. Its weapon hit the ground with a sickening splash. We did a floor spin and jumped, thrusting our spear forward. It dodged at the last minute, the blade grazing its furry cheek and causing it to stagger back. It taunted us with what sounded like a gurgle wrapped in dog rage. Then three fireballs zipped from the Gnolls' side, blazing through the wet air, hitting various parts of the battlefield, throwing several troglodytes to the ground, their forms sprawling. A sharp, urgent hissing order came from the back, which was met by snarling responses by each troglodyte. One troglodyte with chainmail, a buckler, and a shortsword went beside us and hissed, a silent, grim acknowledgment. The command was to go by pairs, I thought, they're organized, that's cool. Whoa, wait, organized? This is intense.
Also, watching it all unfold in front of me was surreal. Man, I'm beginning to heart x3 this Isekai world.