by SJB Gilmour
Resisting the urge to growl, Sarah dashed forward as quickly and as quietly as she could. What was a troll doing here in Crete? And what next? Goblins? Trolls? Right then if a dragon or a giant had appeared, she would not have been much more surprised. She sniffed around until she found the source of the foul odour. Startled at being discovered, the troll jumped out with a fearful shriek. It held its claws out open, terrified.
Sarah thought very quickly. The troll had to have been there for a reason. So close to the sea? Such a damp environment? Why was that troll there? It didn’t seem to be on the attack.
Then Felix burst into the cave with a furious roar. He landed next to Sarah in an absolute rage. His grey eyes were glowing with a steel-blue light. His hackles were raised fully and his muzzle was flecked with foam.
‘Confiniouso!’ Sarah barked at the troll. If she had just cast the Magaeic spell for a containment orb, everything would have been fine. Unfortunately for the troll, Felix had arrived at that very moment and in his rage, had cast his own spell. He barked in pure anger and blasted at it with a bolt of sizzling lightning. The bolt punched a bullet-sized hole through Sarah’s containment orb, which gave her a sharp, stabbing pain in her temples. Not slowed by the orb, the lightning shot through and hit the troll squarely in the chest.
There was a bright flash of light and the troll exploded into bucketfuls of steaming, greenish goo that splattered out to cover the inside of the containment orb. A disgusting squirt of the goop spurted out of the hole in Sarah’s orb to splash against the cave wall. Then the muck inside the orb slowly began to drip down the sides of the shimmering barrier. Only the troll’s legs from the knees down remained intact. They stayed upright for several seconds then they too fell to the ground. Sarah let her containment orb disappear. A great splash of exploded troll gore slopped out of the bottom of the orb. Of course, this meant it splashed all over her.
Sarah shook her now very sore head with a disgusted whine. ‘Great. Just great,’ she muttered. ‘How come every time I get in a fight, I get covered with crap?’
She turned to Felix angrily. ‘Next time let me handle it instead of bursting in like some sort of hero. I really wanted to find out what that thing was doing here. It wasn’t trying to hurt us. Couldn’t you see that? It was scared!’ She sighed and muttered to herself. ‘When Angela finds out I’ve blown up another troll inside a cave, she’ll kill me.’
Felix too shook as much of the greenish troll goop from his coat as he could, but it didn’t make him much cleaner. With the goblin blood and the troll gore matting his fur, he was awfully mucky.
‘My apologies,’ he said finally. ‘Had I known you were merely trying to contain the beast, I would not have assisted. I do not trust trolls at all. They turn and attack every chance they get, Golden Mane.’ He frowned in discomfort at the state of his mane.
A few minutes before, Sarah was enjoying Felix’s manner of speaking. Now it was beginning to irritate her. ‘First the goblins and now the troll… I had everything under control. I wanted to question it, idiot! Now look what you’ve done. It’s been blown to bits. Now we’re going to have at least three trolls to deal with instead of one.’
Felix cocked his head to one side. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She means, you stupid young wolf, that dismembered trolls regenerate,’ a new voice said scathingly.
Sarah gave a startled yelp and spun around to see the oddest-looking woman she had yet laid eyes on. Dressed in a simple peasant dress and sandals, the woman was quite petite and very pretty, were it not for the hundreds of writhing snakes that adorned her head in place of hair.
Chapter Seven
‘The only ways to destroy a troll are to burn it, which I don’t recommend because the smell is absolutely awful, or to melt it,’ the snake-headed woman said. She stepped further out into the cavern to face Sarah and Felix.
‘You would be Medusa,’ Sarah said calmly. ‘I thought you’d be bigger.’
‘And you appear to be every bit as stupid as your messy boyfriend,’ Medusa spat at her. ‘At least he has the sense to be afraid.’
As soon as he had sensed Medusa, Felix yelped and spun back around, refusing to face the gorgon.
Sarah cocked her head to one side and looked at Medusa curiously. ‘Why should I be afraid of you? You don’t look all that dangerous to me.’ She wagged her tail briefly and sniffed at Medusa. The feminine scent she had detected when she first entered the cave was definitely coming from the abrasive gorgon. Medusa hissed furiously and swore at Sarah in Ancient Greek.
‘We are not as dim-witted as you say,’ Felix growled, still refusing to face her, ‘and at least we can keep civil tongues in our heads.’
‘You can turn around, Felix,’ Sarah told him. ‘Its powers don’t work on werewolves. Didn’t you see that too?’
‘There aren’t many seers who can detect my movements, foolish wolf,’ Medusa told her scathingly.
Ignoring Medusa for the moment, Felix turned to Sarah. ‘They don’t?’ he asked, surprised. He cautiously looked around, wagging his tail very nervously.
‘Do I look like I’m made of stone?’
‘No, you’re not made of stone,’ he remarked happily. He turned fully to face the glowering Medusa. ‘You’re right. It’s smaller than I expected too.’
‘It?’ Medusa demanded, her voice going up an octave. ‘It?’
This was too much fun, Sarah thought. ‘Of course,’ she replied to Felix conversationally. ‘Technically, gorgons are a type of demon, which makes us immune, in human form or otherwise.’ She grinned at him playfully. ‘If you find yourself starting to stiffen up, let me know. About the worst it can do is swear at us.’
‘It seems to be quite adept at that, at least,’ Felix sniffed. He too was grinning now.
While Medusa was bridling and swearing at them, Sarah went on. ‘You do know Medusa here and her sisters were once human females don’t you?’
‘They were?’
Sarah wagged her tail and padded slowly to one side to allow Felix to take position beside her so they were both facing the angry gorgon. ‘See, apart from the snakes on its head, this one would be quite a pretty human. That kind of beauty wasn’t very common three thousand years ago. Pallas Athene didn’t like having competition in the beauty stakes so She cursed them. Medusa and her sisters lost their looks and became gorgons. She made them as ugly on the outside as they are on the inside.’
Sarah peered at Medusa curiously as she tried her spell on them again and again. Normally, anyone she caught looking at her to see her true ugliness, she would instantly turn to stone. The spell simply bounced off Sarah and Felix as if it was no more than an unpleasant odour.
Frustrated at her failure to petrify the two werewolves, Medusa snarled, ‘So you know your history, big deal.’
‘That must be quite frustrating,’ Felix observed, watching Medusa with his steel-grey eyes. ‘I would not like to have something like that happen to me. In fact, I am sure I would rather be a she-wolf before I was one such as that.’ He grinned. He too had noticed just how annoying Medusa found being referred to as “it” or “that.”
Medusa was not grinning. She was becoming angrier every time either of the impudent werewolves so casually taunted her.
‘You owe me one troll,’ Medusa growled. ‘That was my prey.’
Sarah was surprised. ‘You were hunting that thing?’ she asked. ‘What for? They taste awful.’ She was also curious. ‘What was it doing here anyway? I mean no sane troll would go anywhere near an island like this.’
Medusa made a face. ‘Who cares why it was here or what it was looking for,’ she sneered. ‘It was mine and that’s all that matters.’
‘I am unsure if one can actually own a troll,’ Felix argued meticulously. ‘They are sentient beings. They might be unpleasant, but they are not chattels. Any attempts to enslave a troll usually result in failure.’ He wagged his tail playfully. ‘And if they do regenerate as you say, we have actually done y
ou a favour. Soon there will be more.’ His pedantic tone only served to irritate Medusa even further.
Medusa howled in pure rage. Her eyes began to glow with unholy green fire and the snakes on her head hissed and snapped angrily. She created a ball of pure green energy in one hand and hurled it at Sarah. The ball of demonic fire struck her harmlessly and bounced away. It exploded several metres further inside the cave. In the light of the explosion, Sarah noticed a terrified Alf cowering in the shadows. He had covered his huge bovine eyes with his hands and was whimpering with terror.
‘Look,’ Sarah said to Medusa bluntly. ‘We didn’t come here to interfere with you or whatever disgusting thing you want to eat. We came here to find him.’ She nodded at Alf.
Now Medusa grinned. ‘Even better,’ she said wickedly. ‘You’re right. Trolls are not the most flavoursome. Minotaurs are much more tasty monsters.’
‘I’m not a monster!’ Alf protested, beginning to lose some of his fear now he was with two creatures that were obviously immune to the gorgon’s powers.
‘Shut up, you moron!’ Sarah snapped at him.
Alf had never met Sarah before and had absolutely no idea who she was. He was glad she and the other werewolf were there of course, but that didn’t give her the right to be rude! He forgot his fright and stood up angrily. He held one massive hand up, palm out so that he could not meet Medusa’s angry gaze and glared at Sarah indignantly.
‘Who are you to tell me what to do?’ he demanded.
‘She is a Golden Mane, you fool!’ Felix retorted. ‘You should be grateful for her presence. Trapped in a cave with a gorgon and a troll would not have been the safest place for you.’
‘I was doing alright!’ Alf blustered.
Sarah shrugged. Perhaps because she was feeling angry and just a little irrational, she decided to call Alf’s bluff. ‘Okay,’ she told him. ‘You take care of the gorgon then,’ she challenged and stood to one side to allow a clear path between Medusa and the minotaur.
Medusa grinned to herself. ‘I’m surrounded by fools,’ she said confidently. ‘This should be like taking candy from a baby.’ She bent and picked up one gory troll foot. ‘Catch,’ she snapped at Alf and threw the twitching foot at him.
Instinctively, Alf held both hands out to catch the foot. As he caught it, horror dawned on his face and he glanced up to look directly at Medusa. In one awful second, he was turned into a stone statue.
‘I assume you can reverse that,’ Felix observed casually to Sarah. ‘It might be hard to carry that thing back to The Labyrinth. And there will be an explanation to Lord Tor for us to make.’
‘If I can’t, I should be able to get Medusa here to undo the spell,’ Sarah said with a meaningful glare at the scowling gorgon. She took a few steps forward. Now, she allowed her hackles to rise and her voice to be much more serious.
Medusa did not need much encouragement to respond in kind. The air around them began to flicker with sparks. Medusa’s eyes began to glow again. Sarah’s own eyes also began to glow, but hers shone with the pure golden power of Wolfenvald, while Medusa’s were green and evil.
‘You may be immune to my touch, foolish wolf,’ Medusa grated, ‘but you’re not immune to rock. I saw you with those goblins!’ She produced another green fireball and hurled it at the roof of the cave directly above Sarah. The ball exploded with a thunderous detonation and the cave began to collapse on top of the two werewolves.
Before Sarah could say, ‘As a wolf, I am,’ Felix barked a quick spell. ‘Confiniouso!’ A shimmering sphere of pure force appeared around them as he created his own containment orb. The rocks and dust from the collapse covered the sphere but did not penetrate it.
The two wolves had to wait for several minutes for the dust to settle. When they could finally see through the containment orb Felix had erected, Medusa and the stone statue of Alfred the wayward minotaur, were gone.
‘Brilliant,’ Sarah muttered sourly. ‘Just brilliant.’ She glared at Felix. ‘Will you stop barging in like that?’ she demanded angrily.
Felix sniffed. ‘You are being irrational,’ he said in the same calm manner that had annoyed Medusa so badly. ‘I did not see you about to stop those rocks from falling on your head. You’ve already sustained injuries from rocks.’
‘That was while I was human!’ Sarah snapped. ‘A bloody mountain could fall on me in this form and I’d be alright. Why didn’t you just put that orb around yourself?’
Felix gave an embarrassed whine. ‘I didn’t think of that,’ he confessed.
‘Ooh!’ Sarah snapped and stormed through the shimmering orb. Felix winced as his spell was so easily broken. Then he sighed and began to follow her.
‘Just bugger off!’ Sarah growled at him angrily. She was in the wrong and now feeling more than a little embarrassed, but she could not help but be angry with the Grey Mane.
‘Where would you have me go?’ he asked quite calmly. ‘And why are you so upset all of a sudden? This is a side of you, Sarah Kopernik that I have not seen before. Do you get angry often? Is this a she-wolf thing?’
That was it! Sarah whirled on the grinning werewolf furiously. ‘See this,’ she muttered angrily and barked ‘Ichtumblat!’
Felix was suddenly transported back to The Labyrinth.
Alone in the dusty cave, Sarah growled furiously. Thunder boomed overhead and sparks flickered and sizzled as they ran up and down her body. Her eyes were glowing with golden fire, increasing with light and heat as she worked herself into quite a temper.
She was annoyed at Felix for his having let her prey escape. She stopped mid-growl, embarrassed and furious with herself. Imagine a wolf being so angry, she thought. She changed back to her human self. When she had been upset as a human, she usually found peace in her wolf form. Being upset as a wolf and then changing to human meant her mood became far worse than it had been before. Of course, the wounds she had sustained from her knocks and scrapes from the rocks returned now she was human again. She was grubby and very, very sore, but that did little to dampen her temper.
She needed to throw something. She began ranting and hurling rocks at the walls. She used every curse word she could remember from James’ vocabulary and then she switched to Trollish. When she had finished swearing, she looked around for more rocks to throw. Then she spied a twitching troll foot. She kicked it and several other pieces of troll into a pile outside the cave. Many of the gory hunks were quivering and beginning to regenerate. When she had all the gooey bits of wriggling gore together, she took a great deal of delight in throwing each one out into the ocean. As each lump of dismembered troll hit the water, it fizzled, boiled and melted away. Next she turned her attention back to the slain goblin spies Felix had killed.
Those bodies would not merely melt when they came in contact with water. Instead of melting them, she commanded them to ‘Pyros!’ the Magaeic word for “burn.” Using her power to reduce her enemies’ bodies to ashes was quite satisfying, she discovered. Finally, after perhaps half an hour of being really very angry, Sarah’s mood became sad. She sat alone on a rock unhappily and held her face in her hands. Then tears came and Sarah cried to herself for several minutes. She dug in her pockets for a handkerchief, but all she could find was a fairly grubby tissue. Miserably, she hurled the tissue away and wiped her nose on her sleeve. The gore from the trolls and the goblins had followed her change of form. As a wolf, it had been all over her fur. When she was human, the mess was all over her clothes. When she wiped her nose on her sleeve, she wiped more goop onto her face than she wiped snot off her nose.
‘Ahh, crap,’ she muttered to herself. Suddenly, the mess she was in and the way she had treated Felix seemed incredibly funny. The rolling thunder died down, and sparks stopped flickering about her. The poor wolf must be feeling very confused right about now, she thought. Unable to help herself, Sarah sat in the moonlight, messy and stinky, and laughed. She laughed until she thought her sides would burst.
‘I’m not sure if one can own a
troll!’ she laughed, mimicking Felix’s pedantic tone and laughed even harder. As she was giggling to herself, a large, shimmering enchanted elevator appeared. It landed perilously on top of a large, almost flat boulder that was just a bit too small. The door edge of the elevator hung over the rock. The doors slid open and Angela peered out.
‘Careful,’ Sarah called out to her as she wiped her nose again. Angela looked down at the empty space in front of her and then shot the control panel in the elevator a reproving look. She tapped one foot impatiently.
‘Oh alright,’ the elevator grumbled. Two large, stainless steel steps folded out of the underside of the elevator.
‘Thank-you,’ Angela replied in her most polite tone. She popped a small silver feather from Heirogryph Press into the elevator’s mouth and stepped out onto the rocks. She calmly looked Sarah up and down for a moment with one eyebrow raised. Blushing, Sarah hung her head and chewed her lip. For a long moment, neither spoke. Finally, Sarah looked up with a rueful grin.
‘Guess I stuffed up,’ she volunteered.
Angela smiled. ‘It’s nothing that can’t be undone,’ she replied confidently. She looked critically at Sarah’s messy clothes. ‘Playing again? You just got clean.’
Sarah looked down at her filthy shirt and pants. ‘Purgarito,’ she muttered. Her clothes shimmered for a moment then were suddenly fresh and clean. They even felt stiff as though they had just been taken off the clothesline. The sensation was very strange indeed. She shuddered. ‘Ugh, that felt weird.’
Now she was cleaner, she could see just how injured she was. Her shoulder hurt and she had scraped both knees and elbows quite badly when she’d fallen on the rocks. ‘Santicularus,’ she muttered at herself. Her scrapes and bruises tingled and stung and then disappeared.
Angela smiled again. ‘Much better, dear. However I’m afraid you’re not done yet.’
She reached into her pocket and withdrew her small, enchanted compact mirror. She handed the device to Sarah. Sarah opened the compact and peered at her frightfully messy hair and tear-stained (and troll gore-stained) face. She watched in wonder as the enchanted mirror did its work. Her face returned to its freckly best, and her hair was brushed clean and straight until it shone. Even her fingernails, which had been chewed and chipped and really quite grubby, were now clean and neatly trimmed.
