Trolled: The Complete Saga (The Trolled Saga)

by D. K. Bussell

  Clive offered her a frozen half-smile. He knew all too well that Carnella was plotting against him, awaiting the moment that his defences were down and she could pry the rod of power from his clutches. He didn’t let on though; not while the deposed queen still had her uses. Only when his monster was big enough to eclipse the sun would he grind her puny, broken body into its flesh.

  As he thought of this he was struck by a tight knot of pain above his left eye. He strangled a yelp. The pain was getting worse. It felt like a splinter in his brain.

  THEY SAY EVERYONE is the hero of their own story, but Drensila the Black knew better. Hers was a horror story, and she was its monster.

  Now, thanks to Nat Lawler, she was a monster without a home. She’d been walking in a straight line for days, one foot in front of the other, no path in mind, no destination to speak of. She knew precious little of the land she traversed – its roads, its rivers or its townships. To her, the land was an abstract thing; not a place but an empire. Its features were of no interest to her, nor were its people. The only thing that mattered was that they were hers to rule.

  Now the land had turned against Drensila. Forced her to roam upon it aimlessly, suffering the elements, a friend to no one. Even her once-mighty army, the scattered remnants of which she’d spy at a distance as she meandered across the countryside, were a threat to her now.

  She’d been walking for three days before she had her first run-in with her former soldiers. She was climbing a hill when she heard sharp screams from the other side, then saw figures appear over its brow. Halflings. Hundreds of terrified halflings, running in her direction. After that came the trolls, five of them, ink black, emerging behind the fleeing figures like long, sundown shadows. They were in no rush. They were taking their time, keeping up with the halflings in slow, easy strides.

  Drensila’s hand instinctively went to her rod of power. Only when she found it absent did she remember that it had been stolen from her, and that the trolls were no longer hers to command. Slavery and loyalty, she began to realise, were two very different things.

  One of the halflings, a young female, grabbed Drensila by the wrist and attempted to draw her into the fleeing crowd. “You have to run, miss!” she shouted, unaware of who she was helping.

  Drensila resisted. “Let go of me!” she commanded.

  Then, over the halfling’s head, she saw one of the trolls slip a bolt into his crossbow. The halfling turned and saw it too.

  Too late.

  The troll loosed his bolt. It was aimed at the largest target on the field—Drensila—but she wasn’t the one to feel its brunt.

  The halfling took the bolt.

  Stepped into its path to defend a perfect stranger. A brave, selfless act performed by a person no bigger than a child.

  Drensila felt the halfling go slack in her arms. Watched the life drain from her eyes.

  Rage boiled inside Drensila, lacing her veins with fire. She saw the trolls coming for her. Saw the expressions on their faces as they realised who they were confronting. She balled her fists and turned the fire inside of her into ice.

  With a banshee’s howl, Drensila unleashed a ferocious barrage at the trolls—an assault of icicles that struck her targets like spears of cut glass—blasting them, pulverising them, shredding them, until there was nothing left but a cloud of acrid spores, dancing in the breeze.

  Drensila took a breath and felt her rage replaced with an icy numbness. All was still. She looked at the body of the halfling coiled at her feet and thought about sacrifice. It was a thing she’d never had cause to contemplate until today. Her life inside the walls of the citadel had kept her from having to consider such notions, but outside of it she was able to see with fresh eyes. To view the world in another light. To question the life she had led. She recalled the Durkon family motto:

  “If you don't have it all, you have nothing.”

  There was nothing about sacrifice there, only winning. Winning at all costs. That was the maxim by which she had lived. The throughline of her story.

  Evil was the family business, and young Drensila had proven herself nothing if not an over-achiever. What had it all been for though? There was a great paradox to her life’s work: she despised her mother—hated the woman to her very core—and yet what had she done to rebel against her? Yes, she’d exorcised Carnella’s mortal soul to a dire hellscape called The Nether, but she’d followed in her footsteps despite all that. Flown her banner, fought her enemies, taken up residence in her bedchamber. All her life she’d lived in a cage of her own making, a jailer to herself, and why? Was it simply because evil was all she knew? Had her upbringing fated her to end up this way?

  Drensila thought not. There were villains and there were heroes in this world, and to live in it was to take a side. Presented with a choice between black and white, she’d made her pick. Made it her name even. And yet Drensila the Black no longer felt deserving of her title. It struck her as inappropriate now. Fraudulent even. Drensila the Black was no such thing. A candle had been lit. The dark little space inside of her was growing a soul.

  She buried the body of the halfling, then she continued to walk, one foot in front of the other, no path in mind, no destination to speak of.

  Chapter Five: Random Encounters

  NAT AND HER team had been gone from the citadel for two days, leaving Ashley and Neville to warm the benches in their absence.

  They were on lookout duty, and they were not happy about it. Perched on the citadel’s parapet wall, the brains and brawn of the Ongar Four stared dolefully over the ramparts at a vista that offered them nothing. The landscape beyond the Durkon Chasm was barren and featureless, making their job about as exciting as watching someone else watch paint dry. Even a passing dragon wouldn’t have enlivened the monotony, were such a thing to even exist.

  “...How about Stronghold Keep?” suggested Neville.

  To pass the time, he and Ashley had taken to dreaming up new names for the Citadel of Durkon, their home from home.

  “Nah, man,” replied Ash, “boring as.” He thought on it, then snapped his fingers. “What about “Fort Knoxxx,” with three X’s?”

  “Why three X’s?”

  “‘Cause it’s bangin’, yo!”

  Neville rolled his eyes. “Why not just call the place “Come-a-lot” and have done with it?”

  Ashley snorted. “What d’you wanna call it then, bruv? Castle Gayskull?”

  Neville almost chuckled but couldn’t quite manage it. That it should come to this: two of the team’s star players, relegated to the sidelines while their captain took her ringers to the the big match.

  “I don’t even get why she’s our leader no more,” said Ashley, seeming to read Neville’s mind. “Girl already did her Chosen One bit? Now she’s just a bird with a blade, innit?”

  “Tell me about it,” Nev agreed. “We get boxed out while the guy who’s literally been living under a rock gets to go gallivanting?” He shook his head at the injustice of being substituted for Tidbit.

  Some more time passed and Ashley let forth a long sigh. “I should’ve said a proper goodbye to her. To Gal.” He’d been reflecting on his behaviour during her departure. He’d been too angry at Galanthre to bid her a fitting farewell, offering little more than a curt nod as she blew through the citadel gate. Now all he could wonder was, what if something’s happened to her?

  “She’ll be alright,” said Neville.

  He thought back to the fight he’d had with Nat at Bludoch Dungeon, before they came here. He’d been able to make it up to her before she set off in search of Clive. What if it was too late for Ash to say his sorries? “She’ll be alright,” Nev repeated, doing his best to sound genuine.

  Ashley bobbed his head absent-mindedly, then suddenly froze. “You see that?” he asked, pointing to the thin crease of rock that crossed the Durkon Chasm and led to the citadel gate. “Is that... people?”

  Neville boosted himself up in his wheelchair. Yes, those were people al
right. Hundreds of them, swarming across the ridge in their direction. “Sound the alarm!” he shouted, and a bell began to peal in the courtyard below.

  “What we gonna do, fam?” asked Ashley, drawing his sword.

  “Let me think, let me think,” Nev cried, sweating like a glassblower’s arse crack.

  The figures were getting closer. So close that he was able to make them out for what they were. He mopped sweat from his brow. These weren’t soldiers marching on their fortress, they were simple villagers: men, women and children, unarmed and weary. What’s more, they stood around three feet tall, making the dwarves seem statuesque by comparison.

  The displaced halflings approached the threshold of the citadel looking like the doomed souls from a Bosch painting.

  “What do you want?” Neville yelled down from the ramparts.

  “Beggin’ your pardon, master,” called an elderly figure with a mop of charcoal grey hair, “but since the citadel no longer belongs to Drensila the Black, we come seeking sanctuary.”

  Nev turned to his companion and shrugged before turning back to the waifs and strays. “What happened to your homes?” he asked.

  “Our village was set upon by a giant and demolished. We few are all that remains.”

  Hungry infants cried out among the flock of refugees, begging for food.

  “Oh my days,” gasped Ashley, and called down to the elf manning the portcullis. “Get that door opened up, blud?”

  “Wait,” instructed Neville,” belaying the order.

  “What you playin’ at?” Ash begged.

  Neville spoke under his breath. “We don’t know these people. How can we be sure they’re not bad guys?”

  Ashley sucked his teeth. “What you gonna do, fam? Turn them around? Call their mothers hamsters and fart in their general direction?”

  “Look, I get it,” said Nev, doing his best to keep things calm, “I’ve got as much sympathy for a disenfranchised minority as the next guy, but the fact is we were given a responsibility to guard this place.”

  “What you telling me, bruv? Migrants Go Home?” Neville tried to interject but Ashley was on a tear. “These ‘fugees need our help. I mean, what if them dwarves had shown us the door?”

  “But where would we put them? Where’s their food going to come from? I’m just being practical.”

  Ashley threw up his hands. “What’s the problem? What we ain’t got we’ll buy. We got mad dollar, yo.”

  They did possess a surplus of money, that much was true. The Durkon coffers had been raided and a handsome bounty unearthed.

  “Come on, Nev,” Ashley pleaded, gesturing to the unfortunates below. “They’re only liccle.”

  Nev sighed. Ash was right. The time had come to pay it forward.

  “Raise the portcullis,” he cried.

  NAT WAS BEGINNING to think they’d never catch up with Clive. Three days they’d been walking parallel to those giant footprints, and still no end in sight.

  The landscape had changed dramatically as the party travelled far beyond their familiar surroundings and deep into uncharted territory. Having long since departed the blighted wastes from which the colossus had emerged—its dusty winds stinging their faces like the fallout from a nuclear winter—they crossed over to verdant, rolling fields enamelled with colourful wildflowers. Songbirds with oil-slick plumage soared and sang sweet music as they flitted from tree to tree.

  Nat poised Cleaver on her shoulder and stopped to take in the lay of the land. Their surroundings reminded her of the Earth she knew, only as it was when it came out of the box – its factory setting, before it got smothered in tarmac and choked by pollution.

  The party pressed on, but after a couple more miles, Nat was beginning to feel it in her knees.

  “Can we stop for a bit?” she asked.

  Galanthre shook her head. “We’ll never close the gap if we don’t make haste.”

  Nat knew she was right, but she was exhausted. She leant up against a fallen tree to take some weight off her feet. As she caught her breath, she noticed something sprouting from the dead tree’s trunk. A tiny conifer grew there. Its seed must have found purchase in the tree’s bark and found a way to thrive. Nat stood up. If that little guy could find a way to stick it out, so could she.

  The travellers plodded on, the sun slowly setting as they pursued their quarry. The elves walked ahead while Nat and Tidbit brought up the rear. The dwarf managed to keep the pace despite his diminutive stature, energised by a feeling of boundless wanderlust.

  “In’t it incredible out ‘ere?” he remarked.

  Eathon replied with a bewildered head shake. “How do you people spend your entire life in a hole anyway?”

  Tidbit frowned. “Ahl ‘ave you know this in’t ma first time aboon groun’.”

  “Is that so?” said Eathon, feigning interest.

  “Too reet. Many's t' time ahd ‘ead oop top for a recce.” By way of proof, he reached into his knapsack and pulled out a trophy obtained during one of his scavenges. “See this?” he asked, proudly waving a short length of fluted wood. “Ah foun’ this int’ yonda glade. Ah believe it t’ be none otha than a treant's tongue.”

  “Well aren’t we the little magpie?” Eathon replied, taking the item and studying it. He rolled the piece over in his hand, scrutinising it minutely. “So, you say you believe this to be the tongue of a living tree?”

  “T’ very same,” Tidbit exulted, puffing out his chest.

  Eathon handed the dwarf back his prize. “This is a shoe horn,” he announced, stifling a chuckle.

  Tidbit deflated immediately. “Flippin’ ‘eck,” he groaned, “no foolin’?”

  “I’m afraid so,” the elf replied, cracking up now.

  Galanthre joined in too. “Never fear, little man,” she said, snatching up a stray tree branch. “I found you a treant’s sex organ.”

  Tidbit grumbled and tossed the shoe horn over his shoulder.

  “Don’t mind them,” said Nat putting an arm around the sulking dwarf. “You know, when I was a kid I thought I’d found a snake skin at the park by our house. I picked it up and showed it to my dad I was so proud. A big, long, ribbed thing it was, all slick and slimy.”

  “Wha’ did it turn art t’ be?”

  Nat pulled a face. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Eathon let out a whistle – one of those cool ones with the fingers. Nat looked up to see a hamlet in the distance, or at least what was left of one. The settlement had been razed to the ground, its cottages stamped flat, turned to matchsticks.

  The party followed the trail of giant footprints to the hamlet and inspected its ruins. Among the debris they found tiny, squashed bodies like hammered meat – the remains of a halfling militia brave enough to take up arms against the monstrous invader.

  “Poor guys,” Nat whispered.

  “Over here,” called Galanthre, pointing her companions to a set of footprints leading from the ruins.

  “By ‘eck,” stammered Tidbit. “They’re gettin’ larger.”

  The footprints had suddenly grown in size, as though the giant had taken a break to stop and strap on a pair of clown boots.

  Apparently, their big bad was getting bigger.

  “What the hell is this thing?” Nat gasped.

  “I don’t know,” answered Galanthre, “but now it’s big enough to do that...”

  Nat followed the elf’s finger to a passing waterway, just beyond the borders of the hamlet. The river was deep and at least fifty metres wide, and yet according the unmistakable footprints either side of it, the giant had crossed its banks in a single stride.

  “Yowzers,” Nat exclaimed, scratching her chin. She planted her sword in the ground and turned to Eathon. “Can you help me get these off?” she asked, pointing to her Uggs.

  “What for?” replied the elf.

  Nat shook a foot at him. “I’m not going to be able swim that wearing my boots, am I?”

  “Ye want t’ swim o’er the river?” asked Tidbit,
incredulously.

  “Sod that for a game of soldiers,” spat Cleaver.

  “They’re right,” said Eathon. “The river is far too powerful for us to cross that way. We’ll need to head upstream where it thins out and find ourselves a bridge.”

  Nat snatched up her sword. “Fine,” she groaned. “Let’s get going.”

  The party took off after her and headed along the riverbank for another mile until they arrived at a rickety rope bridge.

  “That will have to do,” said Galanthre, shouting over the roar of the passing water.

  “You ‘avin’ a giggle?” asked Cleaver.

  The fraying ropes holding up the rotten boards of the catwalk looked as though they’d struggle to support the weight of a starving gnome, let alone a party of five.

  She sucked in a breath and took the leap of faith, placing a foot on a splintered plank and shuffling along the precarious crossing, one foot in front of the other. Eathon went next, closely followed by Galanthre and Tidbit. Nat felt her legs tremble and tried not to look down, turning her head skywards to avoid the sight of the thundering rapids below. As she edged along, she noticed a weird blur appear above her, like a floater in her eye, but actually there.

  “What is that?” she asked, pointing to the blur.

  Eathon’s eyes widened. “Phanta ray!” he yelled, and shoved Nat aside, almost sending her into the drink.

  Nat felt a rush of air as the blur took form, coalescing into a giant, flying manta ray. The creature—whose camouflaged underbelly had allowed it to swoop down on them almost unnoticed—appeared in a flash.

  The ray slammed into Eathon, sending him over the side of the bridge and into the river, where he was immediately swept downstream by the current. Tidbit was shaken free by the impact also, and sunk into the water without a trace.

  In a fraction of a second, it had all gone sideways.

  As Nat and Galanthre attempted to recover from the disarray, the phanta ray climbed into the sky and circled around for another run.

  “I told you we should have swam!” Nat yelled.