Godsforsaken

Chapter 16: Rock And Troll

Once we got underway I noticed that the forest felt far more benign than it had the day before, leading me to think that the reason the forest had felt evil had been the presence of the Dark Young and the cultists. Presumably they had been trying to corrupt the place a bit at a time to make it into a proper base of operations but now the influence had ceased and the forest had reverted back into being a place of life.

Unfortunately that same change had also brought back all the animals that had been strangely absent the day before and we had to kill three boars whose paths we had accidentally crossed. Worse still was when had to drop one of the boars for a small pack of hungry wolves to leave us alone. Still, I vastly preferred nature red in tooth and claw to nature twisted and blackened by Outsider corruption.

In the afternoon we finally found our way to the small village of Hero's Rest, a place that seemed quaint and pleasant and fairly unremarkable except for the fact that the Great Hero Albrecht was apparently buried here.

Albrecht had been a legend, a Hero who had slain a dozen Dark Lords, prevented a civil war, and rooted out a cult of the King in Yellow that had been trying to turn one of the great cities into a city of the dead and this quaint little town had been both his birthplace and his final resting place. I had a lot of respect for him and as a child I'd always listened with rapt attention when the bards were telling of his deeds, but I hadn't known where he'd been from and so stumbling upon his old home was a bit of a pleasant surprise and quite fascinating as well.

By all accounts Albrecht had been the real deal, a truly good man despite being a Chosen One, kind of like Selene. Even after all I'd seen in my career I still respected the man quite a bit, especially since I wasn't too far from reaching the same milestone of a dozen slain Dark Lords. Of course I was pretty sure no god would come down to bestow the title of Great Hero on me anytime soon, but that's life.

By the way, that's almost a dozen Dark Lords slain by my hand. If we're counting assists then I was well beyond two dozen already. And for the record, the one I'd fought together with Alisha's Chosen One counted as an assist, even though I wasn't modest enough to pretend I hadn't done most of the work there. The Chosen One had technically been the one to land the finishing blow as it'd been literally impossible for anyone else to do so, so the kill counted as his, not mine.

The only inn in Hero's Rest prided itself on taking care of Chosen Ones and I was happy to learn that they didn't just claim that. All the inns we'd been to on our journey had given us free lodging and the best food the house had to offer, but the inn here went a step beyond and the people working there seemed actively thrilled to have us. Though, to be fair, the barmaid did mention that part of it was that they wanted us to get rid of the Dark Lord before the bugger got the idea to raid their village.

Either way, after getting a room and resting a bit we still had some time before dinner so we went to the market to sell the boar meat and some of the stuff we'd taken off the cultists. When I handed the rapier over for appraisal the merchant immediately asked where I'd found it and I told him about the group of cultists.

“Oh dear”, he said. “That does not bode well for Lord Valerius.”

“Who?”

“Lord Valerius is the ruler of our little village. He is of Albrecht's line and the only one of his siblings who chose to rule rather than become an adventurer. He went out in the direction you came from two days ago, along with several members of his household. This rapier looks exactly like the one he used to carry, so I fear he and his companions fell prey to those cultists.”

I frowned, though I did not share my suspicion with him, namely that this Lord and his retainer had been the cultists we'd killed. It was something I didn't want to think about much. One of Albrecht's descendants had ended up worshiping an Outer God? Did he care nothing for his ancestor's legacy?

I willed myself to calm down and instead chose to just be happy nobody tried to arrest us for trying to sell goods of their local lord. What a way to go that would have been. Come to slay a Dark Lord, get thrown in the stockade instead.

“Maybe they were just mugged and are alive and well”, I offered and he nodded.

“I hope so.”

He took the rapier from me and gave me a sum of mun I was frankly shocked by until he explained to me that if Lord Valerius truly was still alive that he would be willing to pay an obscene amount to have his weapon back and if the Lord was in fact dead then this weapon was an important relic and thus very valuable.

With all the extra mun in my pocket I bought a little something for Selene and only once I'd bought it did I realize that I truly wanted Selene to stick around, maybe even travel with Alisha and me. Just leaving her after we'd fulfilled our contract was something I didn't even wish to think about.

**

Dinner was a feast. There was no other way to describe it. For the main course we had roast venison with red wine gravy, slow-cooked cabbage with chopped bacon, and sweet and sour lingonberry jelly to cut through all the richness. Before that had been a light salad topped with bacon-wrapped goat's cheese and for dessert we had an oven-baked pancake stuffed with raisins soaked in sweet liquor. The barmaid proudly informed us that these were the same dishes that Albrecht had eaten whenever he'd set out on a quest and whenever he'd come back from a successful quest.

As we ate I told the girls what the merchant had told me about the rapier and shared my suspicion with them.

“Do you think the entire village is under their thrall?”, Selene asked.

“I doubt it”, I replied. “If it was I'd have been murdered the moment I mentioned that we'd killed cultists. Moreover, if they'd had the entire village under control they wouldn't have needed to sneak a full day's walk away from here to practice their rituals. Not to mention that your Sense Evil skill would be screaming at you if that were the case.”

“Alright, that makes sense”, she said.

Alisha was staring at me and asked: “Is it always like this? Do you always need to be this suspicious in your dealings with villagers?”

I shook my head and replied: “Honestly, I usually go years without even having to worry about cultists, much less actually see any. But yes, unfortunately, being a suspicious bastard is part of being a mercenary. If you think your Chosen One refusing to pay me was bad, trust me, it's far from the worst a Chosen One has ever treated me. Leaving me behind surrounded by orcs while running away takes that crown.”

Her eyes went wide. “You're exaggerating, right?” She stared at my calm expression. “Right?”

“No, not at all. How did he put it? 'My mission is too important for me to die here.' The irony is that by the time I'd fought myself free I found him surrounded by a group of goblins who'd already stabbed him with poisoned spears a dozen times. Had he stayed we would have beaten the orcs and then I could have protected him from the goblins. Instead, he died a slow miserable death while I was busy fighting my way through to him.”

Selene asked: “What happened then? To the Dark Lord I mean.”

I scoffed. “What do you think? I went and killed the Dark Lord myself. I couldn't very well leave the guy to terrorize the people.”

“Well”, Selene said, “at least it's good to know that if I die you'll still take care of the Dark Lord for me.”

I smiled warmly at her. “I have no intention of letting you die and I know you're smart enough not to ditch us and run ahead.”

“You got that right.”

**

The innkeeper had given us a smug look when he'd given us the room, probably seeing a beautiful woman to either side of me, and assuming, not entirely mistakenly, that there was something going on between us so of course we ended up with a single double-sized bed instead of separate beds. However, this close to our goal we had no intention of actually doing anything with the nice big bed except sleeping. I ended up with the two girls to either side of me, Alisha to my right and Selene to my left, the two of them holding hands with their fingers laced over my chest and I wondered what exactly I'd done to deserve these two wonderful women but then decided not to question my good fortune and simply enjoy it. Whatever the future held I was hoping this would not be the end of us.

The next morning we set out, well fed and well rested, in the direction of the Dark Lord's castle. If everything went according to plan we'd be able to reach it late in the day so we knew it'd be best to rest up beforehand and attack in the morning of the following day.

The path wound its way through a shallow gorge. A generous person might have called the terrain mountainous but I just called it hilly. The sheer cliffs on either side made me assume the place had been a quarry once upon a time and loose rocks were visible atop the sides. Had the Dark Lord's castle been any closer there would have probably been orcs up there preparing to roll down said rocks to crush any would-be heroes but we were still a few hours out so that was not yet a concern. It did tell me that Hero's Rest was a phenomenally tough place to take down should the Dark Lord ever decide to attack it. Not that that would happen though, since we were about to put an end to him and all his plans.

It took us until early afternoon to find the first sign of the Dark Lord's influence. A ruined watchtower stood in our path and a group of orcs and goblins, outfitted with the same gear as the scouting party from a week ago, had taken up residence. Some were staring out of it and others were patrolling around it.

“Let me guess”, Selene began, “it's finally time to use the Gjallarhorn miracle for its intended purpose.”

“Exactly”, I told her. “We need it for the assault on the castle but we were going to rest up until tomorrow anyway so there's no reason to do this the hard way.”

Alisha added: “And after the Gjallarhorn, how about you use the ice storm and I pepper them with air lances?”

I whistled. “Going all out? Sure, I'm fine with kicking back and watching the fireworks.”

“Not so fast, lazy bones”, Alisha said, though her voice made it clear she was teasing, “we need you to kill any that try to flee.”

“Sure, but with this kind of fortified position I have no doubt you'll be able to wipe them out yourselves.”

And so we got into position. I pulled out a greatshield in case any of the goblins inside the watchtower tried to get cute with bows or slings. By the way, I had no worries about the orcs having ranged weapons because orcs are notorious for their refusal to use any. About the closest they'll get is when they hurl spears or axes but most orcs look down on such tactics. But goblins? Sure, those evil little shits used every advantage they could. The arrow tips were probably dipped in poison or feces or something to make them even more dangerous.

Once I'd pulled out the shield Alisha hid behind me and Selene advanced, not caring about being seen. True to my expectations a few arrows came flying at her but Alisha simply batted them away with air magic while Selene carved a rune into the air and the painfully loud sound of the Gjallarhorn washed over us. Unlike last time, however, the sound blast was directed at a fortified structure and it hit the watchtower like a cannonball. Except the area it impacted wasn't the size of a tiny little cannonball, it was the size of a caravan wagon. Stones went flying, goblins went flying and landed in clearly lethal heaps, orcs were just about able to cling to the crumbling structure but were pelted with stones flying at them at lethal speed and finally the structure collapsed in on itself with a sound that outlasted the Gjallarhorn. But Selene didn't stop there. She went for the scorched earth approach to problem-solving and cast the ice storm right afterwards while Alisha summoned so much air magic that the butterfly wings lifted her off the ground. Levitating in the air she created dozens and dozens of air lances and directed them all at the ice storm raging around the ruin.

This kind of attack spell seemed completely beyond the pale but, as I expected, the moment the final lance hurtled into the ruin she crumpled and I only just managed to grab her before she hit the ground. This kind of effort was possible for a mage but it would leave them exhausted for hours. Though the fact that she didn't immediately fall unconscious after a spell like that was very telling as to how powerful she actually was.

Once the rubble stopped bouncing we got together and I congratulated the two of them on their accomplishment, but just as we were about to high five the rubble started moving and something made a noise that sounded like an irritated groan, except way too loud and deep. Then the rubble at the center of the ruin opened up and a creature clawed its way out. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at and by the time I realized it I'd already drawn my battleaxe.

“Troll”, I breathed. “Rock troll. This is bad.”

Trolls came in a couple dozen different breeds and all of them were nasty and dangerous. From their faces you'd think they were oversized goblins thanks to their huge hook noses and big bat ears, although a lot of trolls were so big and their ears so heavy that they actually drooped down. But the resemblance to goblins pretty much ended at the heads. Where goblins struggled to reach three feet in height, trolls started at eight and went up from there. They also usually hunched over like gorillas, with long arms and stumpy short legs, so if they ever stood up straight they'd be even bigger. And where goblins were all snot green, the different troll breeds varied in hue like a particularly shit-smeared rainbow. Trolls were omnivorous – and I do mean omnivorous, fuckers eat rocks if no juicier food presents itself – and the only reason they weren't as malicious as goblins was that they were too stupid to understand the concept of malice, though that didn't stop them from beating you until your corpse started making amusing squishing sounds.

This particular troll was a rock troll, a nasty breed that usually lived in the mountains or underground, and was about ten feet tall. More like twelve it it stood straight, really. I wasn't sure whether he'd been chained up in the watchtower, had been sleeping in the ground underneath it, or had been brought here by the orcs and goblins, but honestly it didn't matter.

The most distinctive feature of a rock troll were the stones that grew on its back, half of which were raw gemstones, sapphires in the case of this particular troll. Killing a rock troll could make you rich but managing it was no simple feat.

One of the reasons killing them was so difficult was that all trolls shared a phenomenally annoying resistance to magic. The joke among adventurers was that trolls were so stupid that they didn't understand the concept of magic enough to get why it should hurt, so it didn't.

“Selene”, I said, “grab your sword and join me. Alisha”, I looked over at her, “how long does your enhancement miracle last?” I had never actually noticed it ending so I needed to ask.

“Until I dismiss it”, she said. “I don't think there's an upper limit. Felix, what's so bad about trolls?”

“It resists magic so you need to play support”, I told her. “Toss an Enhance at both of us and then stand back and be ready to heal. If you want to try using offensive magic, focus on the eyes. I doubt you'll even be able to scratch it otherwise.”

“Well, alright”, she said and began invoking her miracle.

Once Selene and I were both enhanced we took off at a run. As we ran, three air lances overtook us and landed in the troll's face. The first it shrugged off, the second hit it square in the eye and although it didn't pierce the eye it did manage to piss the troll off, and as it reared up and growled the third one hit it in the chin and managed to cut its growl short by snapping its mouth shut.

Being affected by an enhancement miracle was an odd feeling. I'd been in the adventuring business long enough to get a feel for what my body was and wasn't capable of and the enhancement miracle turned most of those limits off. I could suddenly move my limbs faster, push off the ground harder, swing my weapon faster and harder and my thought processes were sped up to the point where it felt like I had all the time in the world to come up with the best place to attack and then to pick precisely the angle I needed to swing my weapon to hit that place.

Frankly, that's all that saved my life. What I had taken as the troll winding up a punch to hit Selene actually turned into a backhand slap at me that would have taken my head off had it connected and I had to scramble backwards to dodge but the attack had given Selene an opening and she used it for a diagonal cut over the troll's flabby belly and then kicked herself backward when the troll tried to grab at her. After scrambling back I hadn't been idle and had circled around the troll's back so once Selene had evaded the grab I chopped down on its outstretched arm with my axe. I didn't hack through the limb – it was as thick as the trunk of a young tree – but the axe did bite into the troll's arm several inches. A few more such chops and I'd take its arm off. It tried to reach for me with its left hand but Selene stabbed it in the side, trying to hit its heart. And then we all got a great demonstration as to why people considered trolls so monumentally stupid. Its left hand was still trying to reach for me on its right and then it turned its right arm to reach for Selene on its left, crossing its arms in front of its chest and grasping at empty air, unable to twist into either direction without twisting away from the other so it just stood there, grabbing at the air and looking frustrated.

Alisha used the opening to send an enormous column of air at the creature that hit it right in the face. Under normal circumstances the troll wouldn't have budged but off balance as it was it fell backwards and landed on its back. Alisha had drawn the perfect conclusion from her first volley, namely that while the troll may have been all but impervious to her air magic, it was not able to resist the force behind the spells and so instead of trying to pierce it she had simply used her magic to throw it off balance. As it lay there, another issue with rock troll anatomy became apparent: While the crystal hide on their back made them all but invulnerable from the back, it also made their backs extremely heavy so Selene and I each got half a dozen good hits in before it flipped over and righted itself.

It roared at us, clearly furious but also clearly slowing down from the blood loss, and it just gave up all subtlety and charged Alisha on all fours. Selene and I both ran after it and swung at its legs, cutting them out from under it – literally in Selene's case as her sword enchanted for sharpness cleaved clean through the troll's leg – making it tumble and fall off to the side. I almost managed to dodge out of the way but not quite and its heavy body crushed my legs. I screamed in pain, though not loud enough to be heard over the troll's own agonized scream. Selene took her sword and rammed it between the troll's eyes, finally killing it.

Then both of the women were at my side and pulled me out from under it. Good gods that hurt even more than that thing falling on me had in the first place. Thankfully, just seconds later Alisha's healing miracle fixed my legs back up and I thanked them both.

**

As it turned out the troll must have been fairly young as the sapphires only added up to around eight pounds, with the rest of its back still just normal rocks. Still, eight pounds of raw sapphire was a lot and would see the three of us through plenty of cold winters.

“What about the meat?”, Selene asked once we were done with the hide.

“Don't bother”, I told her. “Consistency is great but the flavor is just nasty. It's good nutrition if you're really hurting for food but we're not. If you want to dig for its liver be my guest, those sell for a bunch. We definitely want its teeth though.”

“Can I ask why you take teeth from every monster you kill?”, Alisha asked.

“Sure”, I said. “Alchemists need all sorts of monster ingredients and teeth are the most portable. There's also people who make charms out of them for those who want to pretend they've killed a big monster. And sometimes I just like taking trophies. In this case it's the middle one. Lots of people run around with troll tooth necklaces thinking it makes them look tough. To be fair, a troll tooth necklace confers a slight magic resistance but it's nothing I'd bet my life on.”

**

After we finished harvesting everything usable from the troll we looked for a good spot to overnight. We could already see the highest tower of the Dark Lord's castle on the horizon so we'd be able to reach it early in the morning and we needed to be well rested for it. We ended up making a hearty stew with most of our leftover meat and some vegetables we'd found the last two days and finally we decided on the watch shifts. I once again picked the middle shift and thankfully nothing happened throughout the night, though I had the feeling that something was watching me a few times during my shift. Once I even thought I saw something white out of the corner of my eye but when I turned to look it was gone. Somehow though, I didn't feel any danger at any point so I chalked it up to fatigue and once Alisha took over I fell asleep again immediately.