Doomed to Die in 3 Minutes

Elves Have Zero Chill

How did it come to this? I knew I was a magnet for bad luck but it hadn’t been half a day before the next bizarre event had decided to force itself into my life. I was taking cover behind a barricade of collapsed wagons that-!

WHISH! THUD! Splinters flew off the caravan I was hiding behind.

Another arrow had buried itself into the side of the vehicle.

Fuckin’ elves! Who had ever heard of bandit elves? All sorts of projectiles hailed around me, embedding themselves into whatever they could find and pierced it with power and hate.

“This is for taking away our women with you dumb thoughts of freedom and equality! Your stupid philosophies turned our own people against us! Pay with your blood and women!”

Especially elves as pissed off and transparently petty as these.

Look, if they think the freedom the women get in the human settlements of this world is something to get mad over, they are really out of touch.

Okay, I’ve met elves before. For the most part, yeah, they tend to be more on the conservative side but they also value harmony and life. Many I’ve met were open-minded enough to not rage at imagined slights. Though, I had been warned of such behaviour from the elves I met.

If you’re immortal of age, it makes it harder to be open to things. Imagine living thousands of years and not changing your mindset in any way at all.  On top of that, many elves do not leave the forests they are born in unless necessary, so stubbornness is actually quite a common trait.

“The forests of elves are the most beautiful sights you can ever see. You should see them if you get a chance. Just… don’t try to talk to too many people.” 

Memories of a very similar and very exasperated look on faces all saying similar lines. Obviously, you should never paint a whole species with one brush. Still, it looks like I’m being assaulted by the people I’ve been warned of before. So these are the worst of the worst of the elves? Damn.

Well, I think I am the reason why things had gotten so out of control. Well to be accurate all I did was drop a match on a barrel of dynamite. Still, pretty bad. All I did was try to settle things peacefully and this happened!

After everything calmed down back at Resort; the city where I was the big damned hero of yesterday, I hired a carriage to take me out of the country of Mega and head towards Giga and eventually to reach the frontier. Then after a normal and boring ride with this train of baggage… the moment we got into the roads that went through the forests this s**t happened.

Out of nowhere elves leapt down from the cliffs above and kidnapped several women and some of the caravan guards in the blink of an eye. They had bounced back up the cliffs with the use of what seemed to be bouncy and stretchy vines wrapped to their limbs and had come in like pirates of the sky.

We didn’t have any time to react before they started to shoot arrows at us and tactically killing targets. It was horrific. I ran for cover the moment I could move and hid as the c*****e unfolded.

Look, a monster is one thing. People? They are another. The malice of mortals is unmatched.

I tried to reason with them. I really did. Tried to be rational. That nothing good would come of this. 

If they really wanted to make some sort of negotiation well, they already took enough to make negotiations. If they kept it up they’d just become a heavy problem for the local government and get stamped out. 

It didn’t go over very well. They started screaming their hearts out. My simple comment that admittedly was amplified by my magic had set them off. They just let all their frustrations go loose at that moment.

They began to spill out their entire deal while keeping us at gun, I mean bowpoint. 

Apparently, almost all of their female population had up and left them completely one day, at first it was just a few gradually leaving, and then they were gone.

The catalyst had been some flirtatious human bards and some new arrivals of the fictional variety. New people, new books, new ideas about freedom and romance.

Setting a flame hearts that had forgotten or given up on it. The grass is always greener on the other side. It’s probably not going to go well for them but, hey...

They had been fed up with thousands and hundreds of years of figurative cages. 

A lot of other societies in this world of Data were progressive in comparison. 

Not as good as back home on Earth but enough that it really made a difference. 

A stifling pool of regret, rage and passion had been the straw that broke the camel's back.

“Fornicate yourselves and die you infinite libido primates who are good for nothing but mating!”

More arrows volleyed from above and I clutched my body close hoping to reduce the chance of being hit. I had once heard that male elves rarely get s****l desire, it’s sort of a seasonal thing and also why their population is relatively small despite being blessed with eternal youth. 

This was why despite their long lives and power that elves never overran the world's population. Pure elves were incredibly infrequent. Seems like it was the truth... or at least half of one.

Hissing sounds and bratty howls of cheap and unjustified anger sang out of the madmen cloaked in black hoods and with their faces obscured by dark bandannas.

You could only tell they were elves because of their sharp knife-like ears and their compound eyes of various colours. Right, elves in this world were, well not all of them but the battle suited ones were part insect too. Truly the oldest species around and some of the most annoying.

“My wife left me for a goddamn human boy! Then my daughters were whisked away by beast primals and when we tried to get them back they refused to come home! My only son was pinned down by some perverted human woman and dressed up as a girl and he liked it! It’s all your fault! Your species is downright degenerate!”

Wow. I want to cry that I might die at the hands of these idiots.

It’s pretty clear that elves of all variants may be… are very sexually repressed.

I don’t know all the details of their society and upbringing but damn is this annoying.

Today just happened to be an unlucky year for them and that cloud of negativity decided to f**k me the first moment it got. At this rate, their arrows full of indignation will just bore holes through the layers of wood defending me and the few remaining stragglers.

That or they’ll just keep shooting until the whole barricade we set up in nothing but sawdust.

Or maybe one of the bungee jumping elves will beat down the last of our guards and just shank us to death with knives in a fit of rage.

I could try to just leave all by myself. It would probably be pretty easy. I’ve beaten worse odds in my life before… maybe like five times total? However, if I do… the hostages will be killed.

That’s why none of the other passengers of the warriors had just up and ran.

Every family was missing a member, mainly the wives and daughters or infant sons of the travellers. The crazed bandits had made it very clear that heads will roll should any of us try to run. We were free to fight back though. They had some issues they needed to cut through and wanted to prove they could be “bad boys” like their former lovers wanted.

This is so f****d up on so many stupid levels.

They are thousands of years old and yet they’re acting like fourteen-year-olds after being rejected by their crush. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad, pathetic and terrifying.

I can’t go flashing my best works without thinking either. If I start casting something they might just say f**k it and kill the hostages and bail or if they figure out my spells aren’t much better than mirages they’ll just fill me with holes before I can even say another vowel let alone a word.

I guess I had the option of trying to stealth my way to the hostages and rescue them that way?

Why me? Why am I always in these situations where I have to risk my life and do things I don’t want to do? This feudal world was truly cruel, everyday was a misfortunate adventure.

Or… I could try and cast doom on all of them? I’d really rather not though.

It always left a bitter taste in my mouth whenever I killed a member of the races or a creature which very clearly had the capacity for developed empathy.

On top of that, I’m not sure if I can cancel the spell once cast or if I could affect multiple targets at once. I didn’t try that out yesterday because, well I didn’t want to kill anyone or anything without thinking. Killing a living thing… is not easy. In this harsher world, it sometimes was necessary, but I can’t just use it as my first option every chance I get, right?

Even if that worked all that’d happen is a double hostage situation and with how pissed off these guys are… they’ve already lost everything and threw away what sanity they had left. 

The better and braver option would be to weather the storm of arrows and free the prisoners and book it out of here.  ...I’m really just making excuses, aren’t I? Okay. Middle road.

Here I go. I’ll just do both. I inhale a deep breath to ready myself for what would come next.

Honestly though if this works I might also enjoy it a little due to how effective it will be, if it works.

“Supreme Spell: Doom.”

I focus my mana and stretch it out to every elf I could sense and see around me. My right arm feels a burning sensation for a flash of a second.

Then all across my exposed right arm were small ink-like timers.

03:00

Twenty-five separate miniature timers had embedded themselves across my skin as if tattooing my arm in a countdown to the executions of heinous death row criminals.

My lips crack into a cruel smile and the elves suddenly stop their assault as they realise something had just gone very, very wrong. They began to hiss again out of confusion and fear.

Why does it have to warn people when I use it? It’d be so much better… but I guess it has its advantages too. Please, don’t let me die day one. 

Dammit. They probably know what I just did in detail. I’d rather take Terrors over them any day if that’s the case. Okay gotta think fast or I'll have more holes than Swiss cheese!

What character would be best to play to save the day?