Requisite Meet-Cute Flashback Sequence

As all good romances start, when Skott first met Lamora, she’d tried to kill him.

It was a humid evening in the southern jungle, less than a week after a young Skott had fallen through that portal into another world. The skies were clear, which helped dissipate the alien land’s stifling humidity. Dusk brought a yellow-green hue to the sky. Despite this fair weather, a lingering haze of soot and smoke clung under the jungle canopy.

“Goblin hunt,” Skott muttered, “A goblin hunt. Not sure what I expected. Gotta find the portal back home.”

He could still hear the crackling of the fires. The screams. Skott shuddered.

The trees swayed despite the lack of a breeze.

“Huh?” Skott was thrown out of his revelry. Did trees shake in this world?

A figure emerged from a wall of bark. Whoever it was, they were wearing green body paint that blended right into the foliage!

“Hey, you’ve got to help—” Skott began, then ducked as the figure swung a machete at him.

A fierce war cry, bellowing deeper than anything a normal human was capable of. Though there was only one attacker, this primal scream made it feel like a dozen brigands were bearing down upon Skott.

Now, Skott had heard war stories thirdhand from various tropical environments. The trees had been speaking orcish, though he hadn’t recognized it as such. So Skott knew that this was likely some sort of guerrilla ambush.

“Aaaaah! You’ve got the wrong guy!” he said, hands up.

Still, the attacker swung that long blade at him. His attempt at surrender fell upon deaf ears.

“There’s a group of armed men just down the hill,” Skott said, trying not to be too loud. “Your screaming has likely alerted them already!”

Skott was modestly gifted in the realms of physical strength and endurance. This didn’t mean he was an expert fighter capable of turning the tables on an ambush. He ducked and dodged, but wound up jumping back directly into a tree. The green-tinted figure approached, blade at Skott’s throat.

“H-hey!” he said. “I just got here. I barely even know what’s going on.”

The attacker, Skott realized, wasn’t wearing green paint as camouflage. It was green skin. Everyone he’d met so far, with the pointy ears and the like, was a more Earther-standard skin tone. And of course, those porters from the mansion were covered head to toe in robes and cowls. He’d hadn’t thought of it at first, but it was as if his elf-like hosts were ashamed of even looking at them.

“Are you… with that settlement?” Skott’s skin crawled with goosebumps despite the oppressive heat.

The goblin hunt. That unarmed farming village had been inhabited by people who were, for lack of a better term, green. ‘Green-skins’, the elf-types had jeered the epithet as they set fire to random farmsteads and sicced dog-creatures upon the populace.

It wouldn’t have helped Skott’s case to call his assailant a green-skin. That would be rude, among other things. She’d probably stab him. Things were tense as it was!

“A high man?” said the attacker.

This figure's brow was furrowed. Stockier than your average human, but as Skott gradually came to realize, undeniably a woman.

She was just a tad older than Skott was, by his estimate. While he’d been yucking it up in high school and goofing off all summer, this woman had been engaged in guerrilla warfare.

“No, not a high man.” This lithe green-hued woman. “Lowlander? The elvan often use loyal indentured servants as porters. If I take this knife off your throat, will you call your masters for help?”

There wasn’t a lot of room left for Skott to shake his head.

“I ain’t with those jokers!” Skott said. “I mean, well, I was technically traveling with them. I didn’t know they were a lynch mob. Why do you think I’m walking through the woods here? I up and left.”

The woman’s blade pulled back slightly.

“Human, are you not? Certainly not orc, elvan, nor gob. If not a lowlander, what then?”

O-orc? Is that what this lady was? She looked the part. Tusks, or at least a heck’uv an underbite, protruded from her jaw. Muscular, but not so exaggeratedly to appear inhuman. And the skin tone was certainly orc-ish. He was in a fantasy world. Perhaps he ought to learn to live with such fantastical happenings.

A distant crackling of fire snuck in on the open air. A barn collapsed.

“Some people may still be alive down there,” Skott said.

“Can you lead us?” asked the orc.

Skott gave a nod. “Hell, I’ll lead you right through the back. Can you really do something on your own?”

The orc lady grunted. She insisted he cut through the forest.

+++

The smell of ashes grew more pronounced as they returned to the goblin village.

Historical Earth precedents ran through Skott’s head. Porgroms. The Omaha riot of 1919. Spartan ritual military deployments against their own slaves. Skott only knew the basic facts of most of these, mostly from skimming chapters of his history textbooks. His half-formed knowledge of events paled in comparison to coming into view with the full burning hamlet from a high, raised position.

It was a village that could be mistaken for some quaint Eastern European hamlet of centuries past. The buildings were shorter, fitting, given their inhabitants were, in fact, goblins. Farms and fields stretched into the horizon at the very edge of Aeirun’s central plain. Elvan mobs moved about in the ash-laden fields, burning any structures that remained. The village itself sat at a natural crossroads. As a town, it was the outgrowth of a market. Farmers from all around would bring their food here to sell to more populous areas.

The village itself was not yet on fire. Elvan – too organized to be a mob, truly—patrolled the perimeter. They appeared to be concentrating survivors of the surrounding farms intno town.

“Probably going to burn it down at once.” Skott ground his teeth.

He’d led his orc attacker/captor back through the back entrance to town. Through the jungle.

“No sign of that Auron fellow,” he muttered.

“Auron is here?” the orc said immediately.

Skott shrugged. “Know the guy?”

The orc woman scowled. She let out a whistle, easily mistaken for a bird’s call. There was a moment’s pause, then the foliage at their back began to move all at once.

All manner of orcs and goblins and an occasional human emerged in full camouflage. Their weapons were appropriate farm tools.

“I’ll explain my history with the tyrant king after we’ve rescued Gobhaven,” said the she-orc as a ragtag militia descended the hill.

A broad-shouldered, grey-haired orc brusquely shoved Skott aside.

“Wait,” he called out to the orc woman as she walked down towards the beleaguered village.

At some unseen signal, the other orcs and goblins broke into a run.

“Stick near me, if you think you can keep up,” said the dusky-voiced she-orc. “And should you betray us to the elvan, I’ll slay you myself.”

+++

Back in the modern day, Skott stood before the three children. Lamora sat to the side; she hardly needed the retelling.

Skott took a breath before concluding.

“And that, my dears, is how I met your mother…”