Reluctant Necromancer

We spent the next ten minutes or so going through all the bodies. Mostly it was more cores, but Ashley found a plant essence tucked inside the shaman I’d killed. She said she wanted to think about using it before she committed to it. Oliver said he wasn’t interested. Otherwise all cores, mostly smaller ones, from the goblin villagers.

On the far side of the village was a curtain of light. It was dim, but obviously similar to the curtain of darkness we entered through. My goblin minion limped through the light and disappeared. We didn’t even hesitate, marching in right after him.

On the other side of the light was a set of stairs leading upward. We climbed up warily. It felt like more stairs than there should be for just going up one block of the step pyramid. But what did I know? It just sucked.

I was breathing a little heavily when we got to the top finally. I looked back and Ashley just grinned at me. She was breathing normally and hadn’t broken a sweat. Meanwhile I felt like I might be swimming in mine. She was a monster.

The hallway stretched on in front of us for several dozen feet before twisting to the right. We followed the hall through several more twists and turns before arriving at another completely darkened entrance like before. I sent the goblin through and we waited a few moments before we followed through the curtain of blackness.

As I stepped through I bumped into the back of Mara in front of me. She brought her hand up and grabbed a hold of me before I could utter a word. She pulled me off to the side with a finger over her lips. John did the same for Oliver as he stepped through, and then Mara turned around and did the same for Ashley.

We were all huddled in a dark corner of a small room. It was only twenty feet across and was circular. In the center of the room stood three large trolls like the one outside the dungeon we had ran into. Thankfully clothed partially this time. They were wearing large buckskin pants over their legs, and decorative necklaces or whatever that hang down and covered most of their upper torso from view with overlapping strands of beads and what looked like bones, and feathers.

The trolls were tossing something between them as they all stood over a large hole in the ground while laughing and making a ruckus. There was no guardrail or anything to keep one safe from said opening. There was just a pit in the middle of the room.

It was about then that I realized what the trolls were throwing around to each other. My minion. He was fighting tooth and nail against the larger beasts, but they just shrugged him off and flung him across the pit to the next troll in their little game. They had already unarmed him, by literally ripping off the arm that had his little stone knife in it. Not that the tiny blade would have made much of an impact. I could see it laying in a pool of blood on the edge of the pit, still gripped in his missing hand.

I looked over at the others and noticed Ashley slowly maneuvering to switch out her army rifle for the big hunting rifle. There was some quiet jostling noises and clinking as she moved. I looked back at the trolls to see if they’d noticed.

Nothing. They were still tossing my goblin back and forth across the pit, laughing and howling the entire time. We were still safe. For now.

A few more quiet seconds passed. Then there was a deafening boom from nearby. One of the trolls’ heads snapped back and it dropped like its strings had been cut. With a gaping hole in the back of its head, it was dead before it hit the ground. I immediately dumped spirit energy into the troll. The remaining trolls dropped my goblin down the pit and turned to face the new threat. I could feel the spiritual energy get ripped out of the undead goblin once it passed the hundred foot mark from me. Apparently that’s why they couldn’t go further from me.

“Raising the troll,” I called out. “Don’t melt everything.”

I looked to my side in time to see Mara roll her eyes so hard it hurt my head. I laughed as I directed my troll minion to grapple one of the other trolls. He lunged forward and snagged the other troll around the legs, tripping him over before he jumped on top of him. That left one for us to deal with directly.

Mara fired one of her big beams of energy at his head, thankfully avoiding whatever essence or core he might have. But the troll managed to dodge her at the last instant. Ashley fired off a more hurried shot and clipped him in the arm.

Then John reached him and he leapt onto the troll’s chest and dug in with long, hooked talons he’d given himself. The troll let out a deafening roar and snatched at John’s body. He squeezed as he yanked John off of him, leaving long, bloody gashes in his chest. Before he could throw John, John shot spikes out across his entire body and the troll dropped him.

John staggered to the side, and Oliver rushed over to check on him. John fell to a knee, and Oliver caught him in his arms before he fell over completely. A soft glow flowed out of Oliver and into John.

The troll continued lumbering at us. He picked up speed as he came. Mara had another blast of energy prepared in her hands, but waited. I stepped between her and the troll, brandishing my spear. The troll didn’t care. I leapt forward and thrust my spear into his middle at the same time a bright light flashed over my shoulder.

I looked up and saw that Mara had been much more successful in hitting her target this time. The troll was missing his entire head. He just had a melted stump above his shoulders. He was also starting to fall forward and I had to dive out of the way to avoid being squashed by the giant monster.

There was a small thud next to me as the troll’s body slammed into the ground. The room was not quiet though. On the other side of the pit in the middle of the room, my undead troll was still wrestling with the final living troll. Both had large scratches and bite marks littering their bodies.

“I don’t know which is which!” Ashley called out.

“Mine is on top,” I quickly answered.

She edged forward, but didn’t seem to be able to find the angle she needed. Mara was breathing heavily behind me and didn’t seem capable of anything for the time being. Apparently that many large blasts of energy eventually did get to her. She wasn’t invincible. If anything she was like a glass cannon. She packed a wallop that allowed her to hit well above her weight class. But she was just as soft and squishy as the rest of us. Just as prone to exhaustion.

The glow off to our side finally calmed down and John got back up. He marched over to the wrestling trolls. He shifted one of his hands into a long lance. Then stopped nearby and bounced on his toes like a boxer waiting for the right opening. Suddenly he lunged forward and shoved his lance through the skull of what was previously the living troll. The fight came to an instant end except for a few twitches.

John yanked his hand out of the troll and shook off the blood as it transitioned back into an actual hand. I summoned up some spiritual energy and raised the second troll. He soon stood up. They stood side-by-side, both oozing blood from multiple scratch, bite, and both of their head wounds.

[Your party has killed: Valley Troll x 3]

“That wasn’t too bad,” Mara said happily as she finally caught her breath.

“What are you talking about?” I replied angrily. “John got hurt, you apparently wasted all of your energy on like two spells or whatever. We need to take a break. Rest. Recover.”

Mara held up her hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. I can…yeah, let’s take a rest guys.”

“Thank you,” I patted her on the back.

“Yeah. Sorry, I just want to get through this as fast as possible. I might have gotten caught up in trying to rush everything. And by the way, that was more than just two spells that tired me out.”

“All the more reason for us to rest for a while.”

“Grace is right, we could all use a break,” Ashley stepped up next to me. “It feels like we’ve been on the move for the last week straight with no breaks. An hour won’t kill us.”

Ashley pulled the core out of the headless troll and I pulled the ones out of my minions. No essences this time. Once we were done and Oliver had cleaned us all up we moved to the far corner of the room, where there was little to no blood sprayed across the floor. We all pulled off our packs and sat down.

I pulled out a snack cake package and Mara rolled her eyes at me. She was just mad that I shared the second cake with Ashley and not her. I stuck my tongue out at her as I handed it to Ashley who rolled her eyes and smiled at me.

She gave me a quick peck on the lips and then laid her head in my lap while she stretched out on the floor, ankles crossed. I ran my fingers through her hair and tried to ignore all the gore, dead and undead trolls, and everything else and just enjoy this quiet moment with my maybe girlfriend.