by R A Oakes
Looking at the scorched stone cottage and the charred tree limbs, Raven thought, Mother does tend to have that effect on things. But then she ripped her eyes away from her home as she noticed movement off to her far right. Catching her breath, Raven whispered, “Look over there.”
“Where?” Dynarsis asked.
“Near that giant boulder.”
Only 150 yards away, at least a dozen cloaked trolls were gathered on the edge of the forest. Almost fainting from fear and shock, Dynarsis croaked, “I thought there were only three of them. Where did the rest come from?”
“How should I know?” Raven whispered with an edge to her voice. She hadn’t expected to be facing so many trolls and was fighting to master her own feelings of anxiety. Hoping to frighten three trolls with her flames was one thing, but an entire dozen of them? With her heart pounding, she tried to calm herself by taking a deep breath and letting the air out slowly. It didn’t help.
“What do we do?” Dynarsis asked, his voice trembling.
“Let’s get a little closer.”
“Did you say closer?” Dynarsis asked, looking at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“Yes,” Raven said, grabbing Dynarsis by the arm and dragging him along the path until they reached the edge of the forest. Now, they were only about 50 yards from the trolls who were looking at them in amazement, not having expected any other humans to be stumbling by, certainly not such young, tasty-looking ones as the two who’d just arrived.
Lying unconscious on the ground were the two little girls, and a female troll was in the process of complaining that there was barely enough meat on their bones to make a pot of soup. However, upon seeing Raven and Dynarsis, the female troll smiled, licked her lips and said, “Problem solved.”
Picking up the children, one under each arm, the female troll walked slowly towards Raven and Dynarsis and said, “Are you looking for these girls? I don’t know what these male trolls were thinking when they stole them, but you know men. They have no idea how to plan meals. If you’d take them back to their parents with my apologies, I’d very much appreciate it.”
As she was approaching them, Raven and Dynarsis began backing into the open field, placing themselves under the security of the sun’s direct rays. They knew that nothing could hurt them on a day like today, but Raven was confused over the whereabouts of the three troll kidnappers. Having abducted the children in broad daylight, Raven figured the trolls would certainly have turned to stone, though how the trolls had survived long enough to escape was confusing, so she asked, “Where are the statues of the trolls who captured the children?”
“You must have passed them in the woods. Three stone trolls back there a ways, as hard as granite,” the female troll said, pointing at the path.
“There were no stone trolls along the path.”
“Well, they weren’t exactly on the path. They were off in the woods somewhat.”
“We didn’t see any.”
“You need to look closer, they’re there.”
“I don’t think so,” Raven said, while wondering why the trolls were all wearing cloaks, never having seen anything like that before.
“Oh well, what does it matter? Here, take these children back where they belong,” the female troll said, smiling and holding up the two unconscious girls.
“Raven, she’s walking in the open sunlight now,” Dynarsis whispered. “She’s away from the tree line and is exposed to the sun!”
“Why aren’t you turning to stone?” Raven asked, shocked that the female troll was alive and holding a conversation with her.
“Me? I like the sun. It’s very healthy, and I always take a stroll after lunch.”
“You haven’t had your lunch yet, have you?” Raven asked, seeing that the girls appeared uninjured, at least from a distance.
“I’ll be having a nice lunch very shortly,” the female troll said. “Anyway, there’s so much room in this field, why don’t we all just spread out a bit?” Then, putting both little girls under her left arm, the female troll pointed at the male trolls to her right and with a sweeping motion indicated for them to flank the humans. And she repeated the same motion with the trolls on her left.
When Raven saw the trolls were trying to encircle them, even though they were all exposed to direct sunlight, she panicked and pointed the palms of both hands at the troll on her far left, cutting loose with two blistering streams of flames. It was a terrifying sight for the trolls, and even their female leader was taken aback by the display of firepower, but she also noticed Raven’s weakness. The flames only extended outward for around ten feet, and the trolls were at least twice that distance away from the girl.
“Wow!” the female troll said. “That’s impressive. Really impressive.”
But after a brief hesitation, the trolls on both sides continued to get closer, and Dynarsis unsheathed his sword and stood side-by-side with Raven. However, upon seeing this, the female troll was anything but impressed and said, “That sword’s kind of big for you, isn’t it?”
Angered at once more being undervalued due to his size, Dynarsis lost his temper and began lashing out at the air around him, swinging his sword back and forth with little effort. As soon as he did so, however, he regretted it, knowing he’d forfeited the element of surprise.
“My, my, what a display of swordsmanship,” the female troll said smiling. “We’ll have to give this warrior a wide berth.” But now knowing the capabilities of both of the young warriors in front of her, she shouted, “Charge!”
“Quick, Dynarsis, let’s both attack the trolls on my left. If we head in the same direction, maybe we’ll keep from being in the middle of the fight.” That having been said, Raven raced towards the male troll on her far left and blasted him with flames from both hands totally engulfing the creature. Then, with his cloak on fire from head to toe, the troll struggled to get it off and turned to stone the instant he was touched by sunlight. This gave the rest of the trolls pause, and the charge was momentarily halted, at least until the female troll shouted, “Don’t stop now, you fools! They can’t get us all! Charge, charge, charge!” As the male trolls were closing in on the two humans, Raven glanced at the little cottage off in the distance and shouted, “Mother, help us! Help us!”
Chapter 9
Zorya wasn’t home, but Aldwen had come to visit and was inside the cottage waiting for his friend to return, and the wizard most definitely heard Raven’s cry. Jumping up from the table where he’d been sitting and enjoying a cup of tea, he ran outside, looked off into the distance and felt sickened and overwhelmed by what he saw.
Raven was desperately shooting a sweeping stream of fire from left to right catching a few of the trolls’ cloaks on fire. But many were untouched and were barreling down on her in a blind rage, an anger so fierce and destructive that victims were often stunned and incapacitated by it.
“Run!” Raven shouted, and she and Dynarsis spun around and sprinted away while the young woman pointed her hands behind herself shooting streams of fire at the trolls who seemed to fear nothing.
Aldwen was standing in the cottage’s front yard, almost too shocked and dismayed to take action. However, he snapped out of it, gripped a small megentum amulet which he wore around his neck and screamed out an incantation at the top of his voice. “Tresdar uplanus anoquian crasandar!”
Raven’s mother was the wizard’s best friend, and he wasn’t about to allow Zorya’s daughter to be murdered by trolls. So, Aldwen squeezed the small amulet between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand with all his might and shouted the incantation again. “Tresdar uplanus anoquian crasandar!”
This time, however, he added a phrase that had been outlawed by the College of Wizards, a band of warrior mystics he belonged to, a phrase which he knew would double the strength of his incantation, though possibly with unforeseeable and unpredictable results. Nevertheless, Aldwen shouted, “Datero tomara infidnatum!”
A brilliant white light blasted out of Aldwen
’s megentum amulet with such intensity that it was burned to a cinder, and the light shot across the length of the surrounding field in an instant. Yet right before it reached the two humans, Dynarsis stumbled and fell, and Raven turned to help him. Then, everything stopped.
Having been hurled backwards from the force of the blast, Aldwen was flying through the air when he was suddenly frozen in mid-flight, suspended motionless a few feet above the ground.
As far as the trolls, they were frozen in mid-stride, and a double-bladed axe which one of them had thrown at Raven was also suspended in mid-air. Dynarsis was lying stock-still while a huge troll stood over him gripping a double-bladed axe raised high above his head. Even the intense blast of white light seemed frozen, all except for a jagged line that materialized a few feet behind Raven and Dynarsis, a ribbon of energy ten-feet-long and six-inches wide.
Soon, the jagged line began snapping and crackling with wisps of smoke seeping out along its length, and the ribbon split in two lengthwise, spreading apart and creating an oval filled with darkness. Next, prism light started swirling around inside the oval filling it with brilliant hues of purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. Suddenly, there was another explosion, and multi-colored shafts of light shot high up into the sky covering the field with an incredible display of power and majesty. Then, there was a clap of thunder, and the prism light, the jagged line and the oval it had produced all disappeared.
In their place were four figures standing behind Raven and Dynarsis. They were shrouded by a dense cloud of smoke which dissipated in the breeze revealing them to be three women and one man.
The women were dressed alike wearing black pants and blouses with black leather jackets and boots and, on their left hips, swords in black scabbards. The man was wearing brown pants and shirt with a brown leather vest and brown leather boots and two swords, one on each hip. Two of the women were about 5’ 9” tall with athletic builds, and the man was a little taller with a stocky medium build. The third woman, however, was in a league of her own physically, even though dressed the same as the other women.
To begin with, she was a female troll, but one dramatically different from anything anyone in this region had ever seen or heard of before. She had golden eyes and long golden blond hair, which was in direct contrast to other trolls who had gray eyes and wildly unkempt gray- black hair. She was 6’ 5” tall, which was normal enough for trolls, but she had an athletic build, and her skin was a golden tan, whereas other trolls were more cumbersome and had dull gray skin. And though she had a tusk protruding upward from each side of her lower jaw, they were considerably smaller than those of other trolls.
What also made her different was the quickness of her reflexes. When the jagged ribbon of light disappeared, she leapt at the troll standing over Dynarsis, kicked him in the chest and rocked him back on his heels. Landing with a resounding thump, he made a loud grunt, but only one, right before his cloak flew open and he turned to stone.
The golden-eyed troll’s companions could also move, which meant the blast of energy from Aldwen’s amulet was no longer frozen in time, and it struck one of the warrior women, the one who was their leader, with its full intensity. Stumbling against the girl in front of her, the woman grabbed an axe that had been thrown at the girl and flung it aside. Yet the amount of energy surging through the woman quickly became unbearable, and it burst from her launching thin shafts of prism light at all the trolls. And like arrows, the purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red beams cut them down.
Then, the warrior woman looked up at the sun, breathed a sigh of relief and felt its healing rays recharging her and driving away her fatigue. After pulling off her boots, she shot streams of flames from the soles of her feet sending her skyward where she hovered about ten feet above the ground. Shooting less intense bursts of flames from the palms of her hands, which were pointed downward, she maintained her balance and moved amongst the trolls. The light arrows had disappeared but, as far as their cloaks, either the hoods had fallen down, the sleeves had ridden up or the fronts had flown open. And now over a dozen trolls had turned to stone, lying in the grass looking lifelessly up at the sky.
All the trolls were dead, except for one, the female with the golden eyes and the long golden blond hair, and the sun seemed to have no effect on her whatsoever. When the male warrior helped Dynarsis to his feet, the boy was still shaking from his close encounter with the creatures who’d murdered his parents, and he failed to notice the one troll who was still alive. But as Dynarsis looked around at the troll statues, his eyes swept the field, and he eventually found himself gazing at the golden-eyed troll.
At first, upon seeing her golden eyes, her golden blond hair and that she was dressed like the other warrior women, Dynarsis was confused and didn’t know what to make of her. But as he looked at her more carefully, he took note of her pointed ears, the claws protruding from her fingertips and the tusks protruding from her lower jaw and became hysterical.
“Troll, troll, troll!” he screamed as he went for his sword, yet it wasn’t in its scabbard. Desperately looking around, Dynarsis was relieved when he saw it on the grass by his feet. But before he could grip the hilt firmly, the male warrior stepped on the blade and said, “You won’t need that.”
Terrified at the prospect of being denied his only hope of defending himself from being roasted alive and eaten, Dynarsis was swamped by a madness that was always lurking on the edges of what little sanity he possessed. Letting go of his sword, he ran to the nearest troll statue and tried to take the double-bladed axe out of its hand. However, the stone fingers refused to give up the weapon, holding onto it tightly. Glancing around frantically, he saw a double-bladed axe lying on the ground and went for it as fast as he could, all the while keeping one eye on the female troll who he was sure would attack at any moment.
When Dynarsis picked up the huge axe, a weapon meant to be carried by a troll that would have been three times the boy’s own weight, the female troll smiled figuring she was safe from anything this child could possibly do. But she was wrong, for ever since Aldwen’s healing ointment had magically increased Dynarsis’ physical strength, he was as dangerous as a warrior twice his age and over twice his size.
Wielding the double-bladed axe with incredible ease, he twirled it in his hands and swept it through the air, the whole time glaring at the female troll with the golden eyes. If she was going to attempt to capture him, he wanted her to know that he would not go down without a fight.
Surprised by the boy’s ability to handle the weapon, the female troll cautiously put her hand on the hilt of her sword but kept it in its sheath. She almost went into a battle stance, but before doing so, she glanced at the woman who was her leader, the leader of a band of elite warrior women, as if seeking instruction. Her leader was the warrior who’d shot streams of fire from her hands and feet, and who’d hovered in the air while inspecting the trolls to be sure all of them were dead. She had since lowered herself back to the ground and was looking at Dynarsis with an expression on her face that seemed to indicate that she recognized him.
Quietly taking command, she nodded to the male warrior who slowly stepped between the boy and the female troll but kept his hands off his own swords. When Dynarsis saw the male warrior trying to protect her, the boy felt sick and asked, “How can you defend a troll? I know people think I’m crazy, but what about you?”
“She’s no danger to you,” the man said quietly.
Looking at all four of the adult warriors who’d appeared out of nowhere, Dynarsis’ greatest fear was that the humans all served the golden-eyed female, and that somehow she was a troll queen of enormous power. Then Dynarsis asked himself, Why would she help kill the other trolls? If she was their queen, why turn them to stone?
“Are you a troll queen?” he asked the golden-eyed female.
“Not a queen, but a princess,” she replied.
“A princess of trolls?”
“Yes, at least in my own village, but not of
a kind you’ve ever heard about before. We’re vegetarians.”
Dynarsis looked at Raven, and the girl stepped around the warrior woman with the flame-throwing ability and approached her friend and said, “I won’t let them hurt you.”
“But what can you do about her?” Dynarsis asked, pointing at the leader of the warrior women, a woman who seemed to bear a distinct family resemblance to Raven. “And why do you two look alike? She even resembles your mother.”
“Does she?”
“Yes, absolutely. And she can fly as well as shoot flames from her hands.”
“I don’t exactly fly, it’s more like hovering,” the leader of the warrior women said.
“Whatever it is, Raven can only shoot flames out of her hands.”
“Who’s named Raven?” the leader of the warrior women asked.
“She’s named Raven,” Dynarsis said, pointing at his friend who held her hands above her head with her palms pointed up at the sky and unleashed a stream of flames while looking at the female troll as a warning, just in case the troll did have her sights on Dynarsis. To further make her point, she said bluntly, “He’s not going to end up on anyone’s dinner table.”
“Like I said, I’m a vegetarian.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Dynarsis said cynically. “And the trolls who killed and ate my parents were probably vegetarians too, but I suppose they forgot once they got their claws on them.”
