BECMI Chapter 316 – Trolling the Troll
-Ho, clever bastard be right behind the wall here, ready to hit something as it comes in.- The Mick could clearly see the massive feet making contact with the stone, a knee touching down, and one huge hand braced to support the troll as it made ready by the entry to the Forge Room. -Be a dear and give him something to jump the gun with, would you, m’darling?-
Fiery-haired Laurentine flashed him a smile, the flames of the Fire Shield setting off her long auburn locks. With a flourish and a gesture, a duplicate of the entire party sans flames separated from them and dashed up ahead and around the corner into the chamber, everyone else following carefully some ten feet behind.
The claw that came down was nigh on ten feet across, crunching through the illusion with a guttural, inhumanly deep, and very smelly roar sweeping through the illusion as the images all scattered in ‘alarm’.
Then the real crew came surging around the corner, and the savage glee of the troll turned into very sudden half-panic as the burning figures were upon it.
“Hrah!” Mick shouted, Laird turned into a thing of solid incandescent fire. He ripped a Power Attack through the wrist of the troll before it could draw its massive claw back, clambering right across its hand as he did so and half-severing the thing.
Kormac was underneath the arm on the other angle, one step behind him, and completed the cut with his own Firephased Blade. The claw of the troll flopped free as its oily flesh burned and bubbled, unable to heal the charred wound.
Chekwort stepped right up to the tip of the severed claw, the women swung in around the big furry Mountaire. He lifted his Crossbow up, centered it on a nose at least half as long as he was tall, and let it fly.
The bolt hit, kinetic transfer shattered the ball precisely among its fracture lines, and a spray of lava-hot alchemical naptha blew out in a very pretty set of fireworks, all over the face of the troll that was attempting to come to grips with all the flaming figures attacking it.
Then its face was on fire and the giant-dwarfing thing was blinded, just in time for all three women to invoke in tandem and let fly.
The Searing Rays formed a near-perfect triangle as they burned into the troll’s upper chest, boring deep holes as trollflesh blackened and gave way before them. Bone charred and fell to ash, and the troll screamed and tried to scramble back instinctively from the sheer amount of fiery damage that it had taken.
That scramble backward faltered awkwardly, as its forward foot had somehow in the interim managed to have its tendon cut by a burning Blade, and now flopped awkwardly at the end of its skinny leg.
It flailed instinctively at the burning figures in front of it, catching Kormac and sending him flying up across the room from the force of the hit… and its remaining claw exploded into retaliatory flames. Kavva alertly Featherweighted the Caer Forsaken, who let her magic pass through his Null and actually send him floating to the ground atop the dark and brooding mass of the Forge of Power, currently unfired and dark, although the troll had not bothered to damage it as yet.
The Mick, given the opening as the troll smashed its burnt fingers against the ground, trying to put out its flames, chopped Laird’s incarnate flame into the back of its bent knee and then split the length of its other calf muscle, precipitating a sideways collapse towards the forge as the brute tottered, nevertheless trying to lunge at him. Soak swirled and burned away as teeth as long as daggers snapped shut just shy of his skin, but the vengeful Fire Shield promptly exploded all over the troll’s burning, scorched face with more pain for it.
Kormac took that moment to come down from above onto the side of its head, his Claymore Cruath plunging deep into the troll’s temple as his entire plummeting weight drove it in with an impact that would have destroyed his ankles without Soak to take the hit.
The Mick stood still for just a second, and the second of Chekwort’s bolts flew in past his chest, finding a thoughtful home in the hole the women had bored in the troll’s chest for its pyroclastic load.
The Mick saw Jace bounce up the eye-wateringly smelly backside of the troll and go darting for its neck as the troll flailed, throwing Kormac off its head and away into a burning roll. The gesture left the side of its face further on fire, just in time to welcome the hyn coming in with Sword out for the back of its neck, and the Mick spinning in for the thrust through the throat.
Laird met Toze inside the throat of the troll, the explosion of flames blowing out the skin of its neck and laying its exposed and impaled spine open for examination by everyone. The cartilage burned away around the length of Toze there, fed by Laird’s point, and after a quick moment of shuddering pause as the body of the troll wondered where all its instructions had gone, the spine was eaten completely through and the massive head of the creature rolled off and away.
“Korm?” the Mick asked aloud, pulling Laird away and finally taking time to look around the room.
“Focus is taking care of most of it,” his fellow Caer, taller and broader, but thinner in build, said as he worked his arm slowly. The quiet dark-haired elfin Kavva was already moving to take care of the injury with her Healing Reserve, one of those Human Magicks that even she had to admit was unbelievably useful. It raised the appeal for Halcyon Magic to greater heights even among the usually less-than-motivated elves.
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The Forge of Power, now black and silent, dominated the room with its fire-channeling power, the ripple of earthpower moving through it quite obvious in his Tremblesense and in the static in the air. The chamber was large, with a massive vent above and doubtless air channels within the Forge itself, but all the workstations, anvils, and the like had been broken from their places and tossed haphazardly into the corners and walls to get them out of the way of the troll.
There were also a bunch of piles of troll turds, all waist-high, and quite a few white bones were visible in them. Cracked and shattered or bent armor was all over the place, and dwarven weapons blunted and broken by casual toying with them, gouges and cracks in the walls indicating where the troll had dashed the weapons to destroy them in mindless fun.
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“Vivisize it after the dwarves have had the chance to appreciate the size of their guests,” the Mick said shortly, stopping Laur from running a Vivic Wall of Fire the length of the troll carcass to Burn it away completely. He instead guided her to walk with him on a circuit of the Forge, looking up to examine it. “Detects up on this. Something’s wrong here, none o’ the Forges I been close to felt like this.”
“I think the troll might have twisted off the upper vent and then replaced it, Mick!” Kormac called out, having been standing on that very thing for a moment during the fight.
“It’s been breached there.” A gouge in the side of the curved furnace the size of the troll’s claw was clearly visible where Kavva was pointing.
The Mick’s Disk flipped out of his Masspack, spun itself into circular form, and was there for him to hop on and guide to a greater height, Laur just flying alongside him up the side of the thing.
He put his hand on the side of the Forge, measuring and sensing the interior, showing it in the Markspace for the Fellowship.
“That’s a remarkably precise alteration to the Runes on the interior of the Forge!” Eshauna spoke up warily for all of them, her novice studies of Cryptomancy showing results here. “If they fired the Forge up without fixing it, it could explode!”
The Mick eyed the cap-like top of the Forge, venting into the exhaust pipe above it. “That be too high for the troll to reach down and through it. The Forge were off and cold. Could something have gotten inside of there and looked around?” he wondered aloud.
The last member of his party was the dwarf-priest Korgi, one of the few Rukheim dwarves who had warily made his way to Erendyl. He’d promptly been thrown into the fight against the Bleaklands, where he’d quickly distinguished himself and made himself very useful to his fellows… even Zanzyrans!
While diplomatically he would have been a nice asset for smoothing things over with these dwarves, he had been specifically told to stay behind when the Mick was dispatched on this mission by none other than Commander Briggs. The dwarves here were going to see humans, elves, and hyn doing what they could not, and have it make a clear impression on them.
Thus, getting a second opinion meant relying on the locals. -Bestie, tell the dwarves the fighting’s over and they can come investigate. Make sure the Keeper of the Forge is among them.-
The Hound /barked his affirmative. They’d be here in minutes at most, doubtless chaffing to know what had happened at the sounds and cessation of fighting.
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The Fellowship busied themselves doing a whole lot of not much until the tramp of many booted feet slowed and cautiously advanced into the forge room, the many dwarven warriors and smiths there clutching weapons gaping at the size of the troll’s corpse and head laying there, blasted and burned and very much dead.
Dwarves were nominally hard to read, but losing their Forge to invaders, having to call on outsiders to clear it, and then seeing said ‘helpers’ standing around looking at the holy Forge was clearly making the dwarves very uncomfortable.
Before they could burst into a diatribe about the place being defamed and non-dwarves were not welcome here and other dumb shit, the Mick called out, not taking his eyes off the Forge his non-dwarven hand was upon, “Keeper! Ye’ve some multiple problems here!”
The Mick pretended not to notice the way the old dwarf-priest’s cheeks flapped and eyes bulged at the casual words from a human.
“You, you, what have you done to our Forge!” he burst out anxiously, instantly spotting the damage up high.
The entire team turned and looked at him with icy calm and a very telling moment of dead silence.
“I’ll give ye a chance to apologize for yer hasty words, knowing yer state o’ mind,” the Mick said in a very dangerous and startlingly rich dwarven accent. He didn’t take his hand off the Forge as he stared at the flustered dwarf and his helpers, all of whom were straightening up proudly and looked quite unwilling to say a damn thing.
“Those not of dwarf-blood are not permitted to touch the Forge!” piped up an underpriest, as Keeper Merkelbrocht straightened up stiffly and clamped his lips shut, embarrassed and unwilling to bend before outsiders.
Miklan McMikal roundly ignored him, simply staring at the silent dwarves and waiting. The silence grew deafeningly, as the corpse of the massive troll smoldered, and one of the fingers of its severed claw actually twitched once, spooking all the dwarves and making them jump in shock.
It also reminded them that these adventurers had just slaughtered these creatures without visible harm to themselves, creatures that had slain the Clanholder and the strongest warriors of the clan. Getting violent with them was likely to result in another immediate massacre!