by Logan Jacobs
We dove behind the dirt wall, but Ariette and I peeked our heads around the corner to see who we were dealing with.
The footsteps crunched along the floor of the tunnel, and we waited with bated breath as two huge figures stomped into the light of the green flames.
They were goddamn trolls.
The first was about ten feet tall, with slimy green skin and stringy brown hair that grew in strange patches on its head. He had a huge nose, covered in warts, and wore a baggy, ripped up t-shirt that went all the way down to his knobby knees. His bare feet were disproportionately huge, with grotesquely thick soles and long, yellow toenails. He was sickly skinny and walked along with a strange gait that reminded me of a horse.
The second figure was a foot shorter and much fatter. There were two huge lumps on its chest that made me think this troll was female. She had no hair at all and brown skin that was lumpy and slimy. Just like her partner, she didn’t wear shoes.
For some ungodly reason Gerk, the male troll, decided to have a moment of clarity at the mouth of the tunnel we’d hidden in.
“But like, I just don’t get it,” he said. “If I wanna eat some human, why can’t I eat the human?”
“It’s all politics, I’m telling you--” the fat troll started to say, before Gerk slammed his hand against her shoulder.
“Freeze,” he hissed in an extremely loud whisper that wasn’t really a whisper at all.
Slowly, his grotesque head turned to stare straight down the tunnel, directly toward our hiding spot. Ariette and I ducked back into our side-tunnel, and I heard the troll make a loud sniffing sound.
“Do you smell that?” Gerk continued in his whisper-hiss.
“Smell what?” the other troll blurted out loudly.
“Shut up, idiot,” Gerk hissed back. “Do you really not smell that? It smells like human.”
“Human? In these tunnels?” the female replied. “There haven’t been humans here since … wait, I smell it!”
The echoing sound of the creatures’ footsteps began to reverberate off the tunnel walls, and I motioned for my team to make a break for it.
“Alright, how big of a problem are these trolls?” I breathed in Maaren’s ear as the six of us padded along, in search of another offshoot.
“Um, what do you think of the term ‘cannibalistic monsters with their own personal magic shield?’” she asked as we headed down the first turn we came across.
“That … that sounds really bad,” I sighed.
Just then, a high-pitched voice rang out behind us. “Fresh meat!” the female troll squealed, and then heavy footsteps began to advance on our position.
“Motherfuu--we need to go, now!” I commanded, and my entire team took off into a sprint. “Now, when you say shield, do you mean like, we can’t use our magic on them at all?”
We turned around another corner and sped up in unison. Nobody had any idea where to go in this labyrinth, so we all followed Danira as she zipped around corner after corner and brought us deeper into the mountain.
“More like your magic will bounce off them and smack right back to you,” she answered breathlessly. “Think the ‘ol ‘rubber and glue’ argument in school.”
Just then, the figure of the female troll stepped out into the tunnel opening in front of us. Her dark skin turned a sickly green in the light of the never ending flames, and she licked her chapped lips with a white, slimy tongue.
We all pulled up as quickly as we could and whipped around to run in the other direction, but Gerk was already there. He had his hands on his knees as he sucked in a few huge breaths and looked at us with wild excitement in his eyes.
“There’s the human,” he wheezed out and took a sniff in the air. “And you brought friends! Let’s see … elves … and a dwarf. Well damn. I’m tryin’ to watch my calories, and dwarves are mostly fat.”
My team and I drew our weapons. Even though these assholes were immune to magic, they were perfectly able to be taken down by a blade or a bullet.
“Half dwarf, actually,” Kalista growled. “Also, how rude.”
“Not really,” Gerk replied with a nasty smile. “Just statin’ the facts. Although, the fat content does make you taste all the better … ”
The troll made a move on Kal, and I unloaded three shots at his chest.
As the bullets left my gun, Gerk turned into an impossibly fast blur of motion. He dodged the bullets so quickly it almost looked like he had just disappeared into thin air.
“They can phase in and out like the minotaur?” I asked Maaren.
“Not exactly,” the hunter grunted. “They can just travel really fast in short spurts. I probably should have mentioned that.”
The blur of green stopped directly in front of us, and Gerk’s ugly mug appeared again. He reached out for me clumsily, but Maaren struck out with her axe and chopped his hand clean off with a sickening crunch. The detached hand flew over my head and landed somewhere behind me with a wet thump.
The troll let out a yelp and pulled back as dark black liquid gushed from his stump of an arm.
“What did they do to your beautiful hand?” the female troll gasped, and I heard her footsteps come toward us from behind.
“Oh no ya don’t, fugly,” Kal hissed. “Hi-ya!”
My attention was focused on Gerk, but I knew the rest of my team could handle the other troll. For now, Maaren and I needed to finish what we’d started with this guy.
The troll turned back into a blur of motion and reappeared right behind Maaren nearly instantaneously. He grabbed her by both arms, his bloody stump tucked into her armpit, and wrenched upward like he wanted to break her in half.
Luckily, Maaren was no pushover. As she was lifted into the air, the hunter landed a solid donkey kick against Gerk’s knee. I heard the snap of bone as the troll’s leg twisted back at an unnatural angle.
As Gerk screamed in pain, I took aim and tried to shoot him between the eyes. I squeezed off a few shots, but he was too quick. The troll blurred out for a moment, dodged my bullets, and reappeared directly in front of me.
I threw a wild haymaker, but my enemy’s massive arm moved, and he blocked me with one hand. He wrapped his clammy remaining hand around my wrist as a wide smile spread across his face.
“Let’s go for a ride,” he cackled.
Before I could react, Gerk took off using his magic. The walls of the tunnel turned into a green and brown blur as my body rocketed forward, still in the troll’s grasp.
If I didn’t act quickly, I was going to be one-on-one with a deadly troll.
I summoned all my strength into my lower body and rammed my feet into the back of Gerk’s legs.
The troll gasped as he fell forward, and we tumbled to the ground in a messy pile of limbs. The world went topsy turvy as I rolled across the dirty floor of the cave and smashed into the wall with a hard crash, just underneath one of the bowls of green fire. I pulled myself to my feet just as the troll did the same.
Both of Gerk’s knees were jutting out at odd angles now, but he still managed to prowl toward me with hungry eyes.
My gun must had tumbled out at some point during our collision, because it wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I was gonna have to improvise. I reached above me for the only weapon I had left: the green fire. A sharp, searing sensation hit my palms as I yanked the bowl off the wall and turned to the troll. Without another moment’s hesitation, I chucked the entire thing at Gerk.
The troll’s eyes went wide, and he tried to move out of the way, but his legs were much too messed up. The bright green flames collided with his chest and instantly leapt onto his skin. In a matter of seconds, the troll’s body was turned into a ten-foot tall emerald torch. Gerk let out a long, keening wail as the fire crackled and popped across his tender flesh. Soon, the troll was no more than green flames around a skeleton that quickly turned to ash. Then the troll’s massive body collapsed into a heap of dust.
As soon as my adrenaline started to wear off, I realized just h
ow much my hand hurt. I stared down at my palm, which had turned a bright red from the burn, and then I looked back at the heap of ashes that had been Gerk. I was immensely thankful the metal bowl was the only thing I touched.
Just then, the shriek of the female troll brought me back into the situation at hand. I looked up and saw the monster was swinging wildly at Edora and Kalista. Ariette was directly behind the troll with her sword drawn and at the ready. In a single motion, the blonde elf jumped up into the air, swung her deadly weapon through the air, and relieved the troll of its head.
The creature’s noggin rolled off its neck as a geyser of gore sprayed up into the air. The troll’s body stumbled for a moment, and then it fell to its knees and finally fell forward with a hard thump.
“Take … that!” Ariette huffed at the troll’s head as she wiped off her blade with her t-shirt.
“How the hell are trolls immune to magic?” I asked Maaren as we all took a breath and re-centered ourselves.
“Evolution,” she and Edora answered in unison. Maaren shot the Unseelie a glare before she turned back to me and continued.
“Just like how viruses become immune to vaccines,” the hunter answered. “Trolls are a virus, and our Hands are the vaccine. Really annoying, huh?”
“That’s putting it lightly,” I said. “I’m guessing no one knew there were trolls in this mountain?”
“This isn’t their territory.” Danira shook her head. “They wouldn’t be here, unless …”
“Unless they’re helping the Phobos,” I pointed out. “I swear, everyone that’s not a Seelie is helping these guys out.”
I didn’t know much about trolls, but I had learned one thing about the nasty creatures, they were on the side of whoever promised them the best prize. During the first war, that had been the Seelie who allowed them to stay out of the nether realm.
Gerk had mentioned he wanted to eat humans. I was sure that was part of whatever the Phobos had promised them.
“Okay, new question,” Edora piped up. “How the hell do we get out of here? I’m not in the mood to waste any more energy fighting magic resistant trolls today.”
“That is a very good question,” Kalista replied as she wandered down the tunnel, now buried deeply in her thoughts.
I glanced around at the maze around us. While outrunning the trolls, we’d turned and twisted around so much I couldn’t even remember which way we’d come from.
“So is she going to answer me or just wander around like a mental patient?” Edora demanded as she stared at Kalista.
The curvy dwarf peeked down a tunnel before she spun in a circle and stared up at the ceiling.
“She’s thinking, give her a moment,” Ariette replied.
“How long is a moment?” Edora shot back. “Time is of the essence, here.”
“Look, Edora, Kal’s the smartest person I’ve ever met,” Maaren said diplomatically. “If anyone’s going to figure out how to get us out of here, it’s her.”
“I may be deep in my own brain right now,” Kal muttered, “but don’t think I didn’t hear that.”
The dwarf leaned forward and put both of her hands on the wall with her eyes closed. Kal had the Hand of Sight, but it surely wasn’t powerful enough to get us all the way out of this deep cave.
“I’ve got it!” Kalista leapt back with a gasp and snapped her fingers as she spun around to face us. “Who’s got a comms tablet with them?”
“I do,” Ariette started, “but I don’t think we’ve got a map of the tunnels in the archives, Kal.”
“We don’t.” The dwarf shrugged and held out her hand.
Ariette wrinkled her brow as she dug in her knapsack and then fished out a sleek black tablet. Kalista snatched it from her grip quickly and opened up the back panel of the computer to reveal the inside wiring.
“Don’t break it!” Ariette exclaimed, but Kal ignored her completely.
The dwarf grunted as she dug her hand into the device and pulled out a tiny bundle of bright green, yellow, and red wires. “Okay, I’m going to need absolute silence,” she whispered. “And I mean absolute. Like, nobody can talk whatsoever. Not even a single whisper. I’m serious, now.”
“We get it, Ka--” I started, but then I was cut off by a quick shush.
“What did I just say, Milton?” Kal hissed. “Com-plete si-o-lence.”
I made a “zipped lips” motion with my hand and stepped back to watch the dwarf work her magic.
Maaren and Danira watched Kal curiously, while Ariette crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow skeptically. Meanwhile, Edora rolled her eyes and paced up and down the tunnel as she looked at the criss-crossing turns.
Even our breaths were silent as we watched Kal work her magic. She fidgeted with a few of the wires, cutting them in half and then splicing them back together.
If I’d learned anything about the dwarf in my time on the team, it was that she was the most brilliant computer geek I’d ever met. If anyone could figure out how to rig this thing, it was her.
There was a tiny click as Kalista slipped the back panel back into place and turned the tablet. Then, she took a deep breath and pushed the power button.
“Now, there is a one in one-hundred chance this thing is gonna explode,” she warned. “If it does, it’s been an honor serving with you all. These last few weeks have been--”
“It’s already on, Kal,” Ariette sighed and pointed to the glowing screen.
A smile lit up the dwarf’s face and she nodded to the screen excitedly. “Alright!” she cried out and held up the screen triumphantly. “Now we’re in business!”
The image on the screen was dark black, with purple lines that criss-crossed and squiggled all over it.
“Is that a map of the mountain?” Danira asked in amazement.
“Yep,” Kal nodded proudly as she pointed at a tiny white spot near the bottom of the screen. “And that is our exit. We’re over here.” The dwarf pointed at a cluster of tiny red dots near the upper left of the screen.
“So we follow the map and get out, good,” Edora grunted.
The Unseelie snatched the tablet from Kalista’s hand and marched back down the tunnel with her head tilted to the side curiously.
Kalista cocked her hip and let out a small chuckle as she calmly watched the red headed Unseelie wander down the tunnel. None of the rest of us moved. The dwarf let Edora walk until she was about to turn to her right, and then she cleared her throat casually.
“Hey, Edora, that’s the wrong way,” Kalista chuckled.
Ariette and Maaren stifled laughs as Edora swung back around casually and shrugged.
“Of course,” the Unseelie said as she made her way back to us. “I just wanted to make sure you could read the map.”
“Riggghhttt,” Kalista drawled out before she snatched the tablet out of Edora’s hand. “We need to go in the complete opposite direction.”
The six of us turned around and headed back into the tunnels, careful not to step on the trolls’ bodies as we did so. We walked for a few minutes, and the little red dots on the screen made slow progress toward the exit.
“So are you going to explain to us how you did that, or not?” I asked Kal as I gestured toward the map.
“It’s basic coding, Milton, come on,” she chuckled. “This way, guys.”
We turned down a significantly darker tunnel. The fires were few and far between, and the air was much colder.
“Yeah, HC, come on,” Ariette echoed sarcastically. “Basic coding, of course.”
“How did I miss it?” I laughed back. “I must have slept through that class in college.”
“In all seriousness, though,” Kal finally answered, “our comms tablets have heat-sensing functions built into them, so I rewired the tablet to locate each of the bowls of Never Ending Flames. So the purple lines are technically heat signatures, but since there are fires along the walls of the tunnel every few feet or so, it works the same as a map. Simple.”
“So simple
,” I agreed half-heartedly.
I was immensely grateful for Kalista’s brain, but I still had no comprehension of just how she worked her magic. All I knew was, we had a way out.
We wound through the tunnels and turned corner after corner for what felt like hours. The air surrounding us bounced from cold to warm and back again as we traveled through the tunnels, and I wondered just what caused the fluctuation in temperature. But finally, when my feet had started to become sore and my back ached from all the walking, a soft glow irradiated from the end of the tunnel. At first I thought it might be another one of the Never Ending Flames, but then I recognized the white glow of moonlight. As we drew closer, we could see the light was shining in from a hole in the ceiling.
We all stopped just before the hole and craned our necks to stare up at the moon and the stars that danced in the night sky above.
“The nether realm.” I gasped aloud.
There it was. Right on the other side of that tiny hole in the ceiling was another dimension, a dimension where the Phobos had set up their base of operations. The site where I was to have my final battle with the forces of evil. Now that I saw it in person, the entire thing felt surreal.
“Let’s camp right here for the night,” Danira muttered quietly. “The nether realm is not a place I want to venture into in the dead of night.”
“Not a bad idea, commander,” Kalista added. “Plus, I’m exhausted. This big brain takes a lot of energy, you know. Appreciate it.”
“We do, Kal,” I chuckled and pulled the small dwarf in close.
I planted a kiss on her soft forehead gently, and her whole body shook with the giggle she let out. She shuffled her body closer to me and stroked my arm sleepily, and for a second, I actually wondered if she’d fallen asleep right then and there. But then, the dwarf popped back up, threw herself to the ground, and rifled through her backpack until she found a can of food.
“I’m also starved,” the dwarf announced as she stabbed a pocket knife into the lid of the can and tore through the thin metal.
The team camped there for the night, surrounded by the soft glow of moonlight and the warmth of each other. We all took turns on guard duty, just to make sure no more trolls came up on us while we slept. In the morning, we’d venture into a realm I’d only heard horror stories about, to find a group of radical terrorists who had spawned even more horrific stories themselves.
