by Ember Lane
“Why?”
“Take a hundred of you to kill a troll. It’d tear the four of you limb from limb before it stood up an’ yawned. No, it’s gotta be just you.”
“But won’t I just get…”
“Torn limb from limb,” Digberts said. “Most certainly. But you can’t die, being one of those players. So, you can wear her down until she just gives up and leaves.”
“Bam splat,” said the harpie. “Bam splat, flattened with the troll hammer. Respawn, bam splat, respawn. She’s got to get tired sooner or later.”
On the face of it, the plan was sound. Lincoln couldn’t fault the logic. He looked around to see if he had any chance of making a run for it. That was assuming he could slip his bonds with fifty odd pairs of evil eyes staring at him. Nope. He was screwed.
“So, I just get killed over and over until the troll’s dead.”
“Tha’ there’s the plan. Whaddya think? Sound plan? And if yer vanquish the troll, yer can pick a mate from any of my girls.” He swept his arm across the branches of the trees.
“Any of them?” Lincoln asked, and he immediately wondered why his mouth had even considered asking the question. A few dozen pouts and postures followed as the harpies did their best to catch his attention. “Even…” And he pointed at the harpie standing on his chest.
She grinned from pointy ear to pointy ear and turned side on, drawing one leg up and down the other, seductively. Lincoln wondered when his mouth had gotten a life of its own, or whether he was drugged, or if he’d gone insane.
“My name is Marngs,” she purred and blew him a kiss. A gob of her spittle landed on his chin.
“Marngs,” he repeated.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Digberts protested. “Yer can’t be havin’ Marngs on account of her being spoken fer—betrothed, if you will—to me.”
“No Marngs,” Lincoln said.
Marngs stamped her feet. Lincoln coughed and scowled in pain. “He-can-have-me-if-he-wants-to-Digberts-yer-scumbag,” she shouted quickly.
“No-he-can’t-yer-mine-yer-daft-orc,” replied Digberts.
They squared up to each other.
“Hang on, hang on, I haven’t even fought the troll yet. I might die-die, and then you won’t have to worry.”
“True,” said Digberts, backing away, but still scowling at Marngs. “See, yer fanciman doesn’t wantcha. He’d rather die-die than lay with yer.”
Marngs looked like she was going to explode. She glared at Lincoln, leaning close, one of the ends of her wings curling around his throat. “What’s wrong with me?” she asked, her fangs bared, spittle flying.
Lincoln looked up into her yellow eyes, their beady, red pupils staring down. He felt her wing tighten around his throat.
“Nothing?” he ventured.
“So yer fancy me?” she asked, but not really. Lincoln had a feeling it was a demand. He feigned a withering smile.
“Of…of…course?”
The pressure on his throat eased, and she sat back on his chest. “Then it’s set. We’ll be married.”
“Married?” Lincoln said, his voice flying up an octave or ten, and for some reason, his eyes searching out Digberts’ reaction to the news.
“A wedding!” Digberts cried. “I loves me a wedding. Yer'll bring some of that fine ale yer men were talkin’ 'bout, wontcha?”
Assuming it was morning, Lincoln wondered how the day had gone wrong so quickly. Marngs was swooning on Lincoln’s chest. Several of her harpie friends had settled on various parts of his body, and it seemed he was to be betrothed to the two-foot-high, winged gnome or harpie, whatever Marngs was. There didn’t seem to an upside to the day, apart from the opportunity to get bam splatted by a troll hammer.
“Of course, I’ll probably die before I get to wed you,” he told Marngs.
She clasped her wings together and held them over her heart. “But then,” she screeched sadly, “at least I would have loved and lost, and your kind respawn anyways. Don’t try to trick me, Lincoln Hart.” She opened her wings and prostrated herself on his chest, embracing him and sobbing.
“'Tis a movin’ sight to behold, so it is,” said Digberts.
Lincoln looked at him. “But she’s your love.”
Digberts shook his head. “Glad to be rid of her. She’s a damn psychopath, let it be known.” He turned away and roared to the crowd of surrounding gnomes. “Haul him back in, and let the mating begin.”
Mating? Lincoln studied his stats to check his luck attribute hadn’t been stolen. “Heave!” rang out. He felt his arms snapped rigid and he slid a few feet into the cave. “Hang on!” Lincoln shouted from the cave.
“Back out,” he heard Digberts say.
“Heave!” and his legs were nearly torn from their sockets.
Back out in the morning sun, all the gnomes and harpies gathered around.
“Well?” said Digberts.
“Shouldn’t I, you know, kill the troll before I…celebrate?”
Digberts scratched his head. “That’s one way of looking at it,” he said, taking off his cap and whacking it on a nearby rock before popping it back in place. “But, equally, yer’ll not get to enjoy the delights of Marngs if yer die, now will yer?” He leaned closer. “Wouldn’t want yer missing out, now would we? In he goes, lads.”
“Heave!”
Lincoln slid back into the cave.
“Hold on!” he shouted.
“Heave!”
Back out in the morning sun, Lincoln tried to loosen his bonds, flapping around like a landed fish.
“What?” said Marngs, clearly getting impatient.
Lincoln summoned up all his courage. “I’m…I’m a…I’m a…I’ve never been with a female before. I’m…nervous, yes, nervous. Let me sort out your troll problems and then I can relax and…” His words trailed off as he saw Marngs’ smile beam down.
“Oh how sweet,” she swooned. “Heave!” she shouted.
“No!” Digberts held his hand up. “We’re not going to be hurrying a first love.”
“Why not?” Marngs asked.
“Exactly,” Lincoln agreed.
“Have some respect, woman! My words are final,” Digberts stamped his feet.
“I’ll…” said Marngs, clearly in a fluster, but then fluttered back up and settled on a branch and sulked.
Digberts crouched close to Lincoln. “Now, the troll, whaddya know about them?”
“Nothing really, are they big?”
He felt the ropes around his wrists loosen and then come free. He pushed himself up. All the gnomes were gathered around in a semicircle. Lincoln sat back against the top of the tiny cave’s entrance, looking out and over his captors. A single gnome looked back over the throng. He was a good three inches taller than the others and wore green clothes—olive green, and much finer than the band of renegades in front of him. His brown hair spread out from a wooly hat like a rowdy mop, draping to a long, pointed beard. He looked like Lincoln would have imagined a poor man’s ranger to look, with a quiver full of arrows poking out over one shoulder and a bow slung over the other. He barged his way through the crowd.
Gnome… Name: Crags. Level = unavailable. Status = Hostile
Looking Lincoln up and down, the ranger stood, legs apart, hands on hips. “Crags Trollhunter at yer service,” he said. “If yer wanna know ‘bout trolls, I’m yer gnome.”
Lincoln furrowed his brow. “Trollhunter? I thought you were allied with trolls?”
Crags winked at him. “At the moment, but that could change. Now, trolls, they’re about fifteen feet high with tiny heads. Their fists can throttle yer with one squeeze, their feet can kick yer over a mountain, but you won’t get that close. Know why?”
“Bam splat?” Lincoln ventured.
“Bam splat,” Crags confirmed.
6
Troll Hunting
Lincoln could see no way out. According to Crags Trollhunter, the gnomes and harpies had drugged and then tied up companions. How these little two-foot
-high folks could cause such mayhem was beyond Lincoln’s understanding, but he had to accept it as fact as his day hadn’t gone well. Not only was he betrothed to a hideous-looking harpie; he was also tasked with evicting and/or killing a fifteen-foot troll with a hammer of a size to match. He couldn’t help but think his short and long-term plans for the game had gone off the rails a little.
Now, Crags and Lincoln were walking along a pathway, tree branches forming a tunnel overhead. It ran along the side of a hill and toward the troll’s lair. Behind them, the gang of gnomes and harpies jigged and flew excitedly along. One thing really didn’t add up about it all. If, as Aezal, Grimble, and Ozmic had inferred, the gnomes only appeared when you summoned them three times, how come they had a pre-prepared problem—being the troll—for the summoner—being Lincoln—to solve?
“Ah well, it’s like this,” said Crags. “Gnomes and harpies follow the path of chaotic magic.”
“Chaotic magic?”
“Indeed. Chaotic magic thrives when a random act happens that leads to a random problem being proposed. You see, there was no way we could have known you would summon us, but we just happened to be walking right by at the time. It was like a little lamp blinked on in Digberts’ mind. It’s the portal, so it is. Since we stole it, we turn up anywhere and everywhere.”
“The portal?”
“The chaotic portal,” Crags Trollhunter confirmed. “Put it like this. Have yer never gone to bed and everything was going to plan, then yer wake up, find you’ve been wiped out?”
“Go on.” Lincoln had, numerous times—in other games, of course.
“Chaotic portal,” Crags said, and winked. “It was probably us.”
“So you weren’t on your way to confront the troll?”
“Oh yes, we were as soon as the portal opened; I sniffed her on the air. We’d have had to have had it out with her, even though it would have destroyed the peace and there would have been all-out war.” Crags pounded his fists together. “Then I tell yer, Crags Trollhunter would have been in demand—so he would.”
“You almost sound excited. What’s that smell?”
“Excited? Of course I’m excited. Trolls are quite…sparse, well, in this land, anyway.”
“And gnomes?”
“Thousands of us little buggers.”
“So the war would have been a bit…”
“Sporadic,” Crags confirmed, and winked. “That’s where I come in.”
“Troll hunter,” Lincoln said.
“Indeed.”
“What is that smell?”
“Troll stink,” Crags confirmed.
“So our troll is close?”
“About a mile away.”
Lincoln wondered how hard it was to hunt a troll, but only briefly. Nothing about his morning made particular sense. What he really had to figure out was how to kill a fifteen-foot-high troll and then escape a wedding with a two-foot-high harpie. So far, he’d come up with nothing. Other than those two immediate problems, it was turning into quite the fine day. Finequill had told Lincoln that it was autumn, and yet there seemed little evidence of it in the trees. They were brimming with shades of green and birdsong. A fine day indeed, that was if you ignored the obvious.
He followed Crags over dribbling brooks, around rocky outcrops, and through tranquil clearings. Every now and then, the mob stopped. Sometimes they ate, sometimes they fought, and sometimes they danced to tunes belted out on tiny fiddles. Lincoln felt like he was a giant on his way to confront a demon or a dragon, on behalf of a cowering village, except the gnomes and harpies weren’t cowering in the slightest. They were acting like they were on their way to a summer fair.
The stench of the troll was soon all about Lincoln. It clung to the insides of his nostrils, sunk into his deadman’s coat, was trapped in his hair, his cap, and his mouth. Rotten meat mixed with molding vegetation, and sweat. The accumulated stink of giant troll crap hung like a low cloud. Crags Trollhunter clearly didn’t have his work cut out as troll hunting appeared to be little more than following your nose.
“We’re getting closer,” Crags told Lincoln, and winked.
“How can you tell? Smell getting thicker? Tracks?”
“Nope, she’s hiding in the cave over yonder.” He pointed. “Could be a dungeon, hard to tell.”
“A dungeon? Like a loot-filled dungeon?”
Crags shook his head. “Hardly likely. Hasn’t been a new dungeon since the shamans all turned themselves to stone, so we’ve looted near enough all of them. Got to get them shiny trinkets,” and he winked. “Shiny, shiny.”
“Shiny, shiny,” Lincoln mumbled, not at all enthused.
“So, do you have a routine?”
“For?” Lincoln asked.
“Killing trolls. Do you need to warm up? Oil your bowstring? Sharpen your broadsword? Whaddya need? Show us yer weapons.”
Lincoln held his hand over his sack and brought out his copper dagger.
“That’s it?” Crags asked. “That’s all you need to take down a fifteen-foot troll?”
“Yup,” said Lincoln, deciding that if he was going to die repeatedly, he might as well go down as that man. Crags announced his findings to a very impressed crowd. Marngs flew up to Lincoln and gave him a peck on the cheek, and Digberts bowed low.
“It’s official,” Digberts said. “Chaos magic rules. Only chaos magic can bring us a hero from a simple band of travelers. I see yer not strong on magic, but I’ll still give yer a spell of yer choosing. Do yer want a light spell or a dark spell?”
While he didn’t know the difference, Lincoln decided he’d more than likely need magic that worked in the dark, given that the troll was in a dungeon. “A dark spell,” he answered. The sound of swiftly inhaled breath rang around.
“A dark spell it is,” said Digberts, his teeth clamped. “Ne’er saw that in yer.”
“Well…if it's bad I’ll…” Lincoln said quickly, but Digberts was wagging his finger.
“No changing yer spell. Tis a powerful, dark spell I’ve given ter, and I’ve altered it so you’ll only need the 10 mana you have.”
Congratulations! Digberts has given you a dark chaos spell; the spell of slumber. This spell costs 10 mana and reactivates every minute when your mana has refilled for a random amount of time. Caution: Doesn’t work on trolls—that would be too easy.
Congratulations! You have opened up the skill Magic. You have level 1 magic and will be able to cast low-level spells.
“What does it do?” Lincoln asked, wondering why he’d been given a spell that was clearly no use to him in his current predicament.
“Ah!” said Digberts. “That’s the beauty of chaos magic. You’ve no idea what the spell does, or how long it lasts for. How d’ya think we got to be here?”
“So,” Lincoln said. “You just happened to magic yourself right by me and my companions…”
“At the exact same time you said gnomes?” Digberts interrupted. “Not quite; the portal opened about five minutes before. Chaos.” He winked. “That’s the key. We appeared and we could have gone in any direction, but we found you, eh? Anyway—the troll. Get on with it. It won’t kill itself.”
Lincoln’s gaze settled on Crags, the troll hunter looked like he was on the edge of his nerves and clearly ready to press on. The rest of them seemed to have settled in for the morning and were sitting, laying, eating, and dancing around. Lincoln took a breath. There was no way out. Unless…
He looked at his menus until he came to a small tab marked Respawn. He checked his current respawn point. It was still set for Finequill’s, Hatch End, The Shambles, Brokenford. Now, he thought, where to set it? He certainly didn’t want to respawn in The Shambles and be taken by the king. Deleting Hatch End, the reset prompt came up. It gave him a five hundred yard radius. A little map sprang up showing him the surrounding area. He left it hanging, and followed Crags along an overgrown trail, if it was a trail at all. Crags forged on with the branches and brambles snapping back in Lincoln’s fa
ce.
“I wouldn’t leave it hanging,” Crags called to him, looking around briefly. “You’ll end up somewhere random, and random ain’t good.”
Chin tucked in, Lincoln battled through the low foliage, eventually bursting onto a path littered with bones, scraps of cloth, and dollops of crap. Looking one way, he saw that it wound away into the shadows of the forest, the bones getting sparser, the path getting swallowed by the trees. The other, it fattened to a bell-shaped clearing of bloodstained mud and rock, and more bones piled high on either side of a cave entrance.
“If random isn’t good,” Lincoln suddenly asked. “Why do you follow chaos magic?”
Crags shrugged. “Because its fun,” he simply said.
“Fun,” Lincoln muttered, his attention now consumed by the sight in front of him.
The cave looked odd. It was too regular to be natural, arched like a tunnel, and though much of the surrounding rock was covered in draping grass and trailing ivy, Lincoln thought he could make out crafted stone, the seams of fashioned bricks bound by mortar. He wondered if this was what a dungeon was like in this land, or if it was a dwelling of one type or the other. Its entrance was around twelve feet high and the same wide. The stench was even more overpowering this close and came in wafts, almost like some unseen giant was breathing in and out. He took out Alexa’s sack and emptied its contents into his sack, then he wrapped it around his nose and mouth. Lincoln stepped back into the foliage.
“Well, go on,” Crags said.
“Thinking,” muttered Lincoln.
He knew he couldn’t best the troll, not with his little copper knife or even the ax, but strength and brawn weren’t always the answer. He pulled up the respawn map again. Now, he could see the cave, or whatever it was. It appeared to tunnel into a small hillock, though its depth wasn’t shown, just a few feet shaded in. Lincoln guessed that this was the range of the respawn. He tapped his fingers on his lips.
“Okay,” he said, and jumped across the path. He pushed his way through thick ferns, nettles, and brambles until he reckoned he was about level with the side of the hill. Turning toward it, he was thankful that the undergrowth thinned and soon the ground angled up becoming a grassy slope. Once he judged he was above the cave, he sat on the grass and studied the ground under him. His divination skill took over.
