My Servant Is An Elf-Knight From Another World

Chapter 1

Stupid rat, I thought, walking past the narrow alleyway, but another ruffling noise stopped me in my tracks again. That was when an empty, folded tin can hit me in the face.

Okay, now it’s a stupid dead rat. 

I picked up the can and walked into the alley, all the while muttering silent profanities at my dwindling luck. Saw one of those huge green rusted metal dumpsters at the side, so I took the can, got into a stance, and did my best Michael Jordan impression. 

In it went, any second I anticipated the sweet satisfying sound of clattering metal as it hit the bottom to emerge, but it didn’t. I heard a dull thud instead.

“Ow.”

And an ‘ow.’

“Who goes there?!”

Then also a ‘Who goes there?!’ but now I’m just getting privy with the details.

Like a rabbit appearing from a magician’s hat, a woman's head popped out from the garbage flap.

Naturally, I was left staring away in surprise. Not everyday you see a woman's face with a banana peel clinging atop her head, staring at you from the garbage bin, especially when said face had a rather prominent frown plastered on her lips.

I attempted to blink back my shock. 

“You’re a pretty big rat,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.”

Surprisingly the only thing stranger than the encounter was her appearance. Her face was lined with sharp, sleek edges and her eyes gleamed like green gems. She was also paler than most people I’ve met and her hair was colored a stark, pure white.

Young, maybe around my age it looked like, but quite possibly the strangest thing about her was the odd shape of her ears. Sharp, long, and narrow ears. Almost like knives. 

Almost like an…

"Are you cosplaying an Elf?"

I saw her eyebrows twitch and that was when I knew I'd stared for long enough.

"Cosplaying? I know not of that word, but I am indeed an elf," she said, a haughty tone to her words. “Now state your business here, oddly-worn traveler or be off on your way at once! The inhabitants of this strange world reek dreadfully with the stench of malice as repugnant as Azamoth himself. I suggest you make haste before time itself befell upon you with a fate most dire.”

Did I say her ears were the strangest thing - I wanna take that back now, actually. I felt like I just got lectured by Edgy Shakespeare.

More and more, the desire to simply walk away proved a tempting thought. But I stayed where I was in spite of it. Chalk it up to morbid curiosity or something.

“Why are you in the dumpster?” I asked.

The rain continued pattering on our heads and I noticed that she was as drenched as I was, if not, even more. Yet while I had a home to go back to, I had a sneaking suspicion that she was a different case entirely.

“Stifle all sound, traveler. A ravenous monster lurks the very ground you stand upon. I’ve seen the monstrosity with my very eyes. Loudly it growled as it sought to satiate his appetite, the earth rumbling in its wake, a thundering monstrosity of both sight, sound, and smell if there ever was one.”

“Right,” I tilted my head. “Are you high?”

She furrowed her brow and stared up to the sky. “I do not understand. My feet lay firm on solid ground, the sky remains beyond reach of me. Whatever do you mean by that? Explain yourself, traveler. My patience is not to be tested!”