Thrice-Damned Gnomish Explosives

All he'd been thinking about was escaping the band of irritated Orcs, while simultaneously cursing the fondness that Gnome artificers seemed to have for powerful explosives.

Staggering through smoke, the ground burning the soles of his bare feet, Ercan couldn't tell where he was even going. He wasn't a warrior, didn't have magic powers, or even know how to read very well.

Nine Hells, he was still trying to figure out how he'd even come to be in this situation in the first place!

While struggling to run through a patch of briars, the wood elf collided against the chest of a figure stepping out of a shadow. They raised a staff that began to glow red.

And so Ercan, an underaged elf from a family of no consequence whatsoever, quickly scrabbled across the ground until his back hit a tree and-.

"AAAAAAGGGHHHH!"

CRASH.

A flat surface buckled under him just before he hit the ground. The back of his head smacked hard against what felt like stone.

"BLOODY HELL!" someone shouted.

A woman shrieked. "Oh my god!"

Another voice let out a high-pitched scream before yelling, "you're not supposed to use actual magic in the game, Lucifer!"

"I didn't do anything!" a man – Lucifer? – insisted. "I just rolled the bloody dice thing!"

"What number did it land on, a six-six-six?!"

There was a pause. "Err… it's a twenty?"

"No! Don't touch that, Ellen," a different woman said, growling, "it's probably cursed or something!"

"What do we do?" Ellen asked, her voice shaking. "Oh, god, I don't-. I said to make a perception check, Lucifer, not cast an interdimensional portal!"

"I didn't cast anything! I barely even rolled the bloody die!"

Ercan groaned, trying to roll over on to his side before he gagged on the vomit starting to gurgle its way into the back of his throat. He didn't care about the voices still yammering away over his head, he just wanted to curl into a ball until the pain went away.

Someone gently placed him onto incredibly soft bedding, then began removing his clothes. Ercan felt weirdly detached from the rest of his body. His head felt like it'd quadrupled its size since landing.

"Shit, these look bad," Not-Lucifer male voice said, clearly worried. "He needs a hospital, but-."

"They'd find out he's not human and then lock him up in Area Fifty-One or something." Ellen sounded just as anxious. "What're we supposed to do, Dan? This never happened with Rae-Rae when she plays with us."

"Maybe it's a Lucifer-specific thing," Dan said, "I mean, he is one half of the Demiurge."

"Maze and he are just as confused as us, though."

A wet cloth touched Ercan's upper left bicep and fire seared through his flesh, making him whimper from the pain.

"I'm so sorry," Ellen whispered, running her fingers through his hair, "but we have to use the antiseptic to clean your wounds or they'll get infected."

The four people were talking in another… room, probably. A fifth voice was added to the group. They all sounded confused and uneasy.

Truthfully, though, Ercan couldn't bring himself to care about them. He was just so relieved not to be dead, and… sore. He was in so much fucking agony. Especially his feet and lower legs. They felt like they were still on fire.

"Well, then the air over the coffee table kinda started… glowing? Like, a full-on portal type circle, just opened up over our heads." Ellen was saying from the side of the bed. "It was making this hella loud 'ssskkksssshhhsskkshhhhskkkshhhhsss' noise and made my ears pop, and then, WHAM!" She hit what sounded like a wooden table. "This dude slammed down on top of the table, breaking it, and… then I told Lucifer to text you for bandages, 'cause, I mean, he's bleeding from all kinds of cuts and stuff."

The new woman didn't respond at first. Then she gave a sort of non-committal grunt of, "Uh huh."

There was an odd rustling sound before Ellen said, "Thanks."

"Yeah."

Ercan heard Lucifer's voice coming from closer than before.

"Just so we're all one hundred percent clear," he said, "I had absolutely nothing to do with the portal. It's literally impossible for me to rip a hole in space-time without the Flaming Sword, and that's locked safely away in Mum's universe now." He added a wary, "I'm still not entirely convinced that she's not some sort of interplanar sorceress, however."

The room was dark when Ercan realized that he'd come back to full consciousness. He tried to open his eyes, or at least move a little bit, but a hand on his right forearm made him go still.

"It's alright, you're safe. We're not gonna hurt you."

He grumbled something, not really sure if he was speaking in Common or Elvish, before passing out again.

Scooting into a sitting position against a large stack of pillows was excruciating, but Ercan just wasn't comfortable on his back. He was alive, though, which was better than being a lumpy trail of scorched viscera on some random forest floor.

A tall… humanoid figure walked up a set of steps near the right of the bed. "Ah, you're awake. Wonderful!" It looked like he was smiling, and he tilted his head. "May I ask how you're feeling?"

"I… uh…." Ercan couldn't make out much of the humanoid's face outside of the dark hair and dark eyes. However, he could feel that the 'man' was far, far more powerful than anything he'd encountered in his life. "What… what are you?"

"Beg your pardon?" He came closer and sat in a chair nearest to Ercan.

"I don't mean any disrespect, truly," the elf wanted that to be clear from the outset, "but I-I can sense that you're n-not… not a human." He flinched. That wasn't very polite, in all honesty, but Ercan didn't know how else to explain it.

"Yes, well, that makes two of us," his host said, not sounding very upset. "Now, if what Miss Lopez told me is correct, you're an Elf, yes?"

"A wood elf, yeah."

"Pleased to meet you, mister Wood Elf, I'm Lucifer Morningstar. The devil." He held out a hand toward Ercan.

Not sure what he was supposed to do, he squinted at it. "I'm Ercan the Half-Blind."

"Half-blind?"

"Everything past my elbow is all blurry and loses depth perception the further away it is," he explained. "I usually wear spectacles, but I lost 'em."

Lucifer the Devil put his hand down onto the bed. "We'll have to remedy that, then. I'll schedule an ophthalmologist appointment right away."

"What's opp…thlaal…mologist? Is that a Gnomish thing?" Ercan didn't like the sound of it, whatever it was. "It's not an explosion-maker is it, 'cause that Orc encampment violently disagreed with those last night."

"That's just the term used for our eye specialists," Lucifer said with a slight bemusement in his voice.

"Oh." He paused. "And, thank you."

"Are you hungry?"

Ercan took a few seconds. The idea of food didn't make him queasy, but his stomach wasn't exactly enthusiastically clamoring for it either. "I could try to eat something, I suppose."

"Are your species vegetarian by nature, or do you have any dietary limitations I should be aware of? We don't have elves in this world; they're a made-up people commonly found in folklore or fictional stories here."

Elves were made up? "How can there not be elves, but you still have devils?"

"You mean Devil. Singular," Lucifer said, rather proudly. "That's me. There are demons, but they're not allowed to pass the boundaries of Hell. Well, no demon apart from Mazikeen, but she's been my friend ever since humanity passed the Homo habilus afroensis phase of their species development."

Ercan figured he must've looked pretty confused by the statement because Lucifer then started to explain what a species was, something called 'evolution,' and 'darween-ism.' All he could do was nod or shake his head wherever it seemed like the appropriate response.

In the meantime, he decided to shove the developing existential crisis into the back of his mind for later.