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An experimental drawing I did of Pedrin and Ophelia from my preview of the story I'm writing. Pedrin is one of the people that are from the blending of orcs, goblins, werewolves, and human that took place in Laxaria.

Here is a link if you missed out
Ophelia learns about Trolls“Little sister, there is something you should come and see,” The tour guide grinned, “I think you’ll find this very interesting.”“I’ve really had about enough for the evening,” Ophelia sighed, the blur the day was becoming a bit overwhelming. She wanted to retire back to the hotel and regather herself, but her escort was still trying to drag her along on this whirlwind of a tour. Subtle hints seemed to bounce off him like pebbles tossed at a stone wall. “No, you’ll want to see this, most visitors will never get to see a ‘mountain king’ alive!” Pedrin flashed his big wolfish grin widely.‘Mountain king’ The term made her pause, “You mean a troll?” Ophelia’s eyes widened, “They have one here?”“It’s being transferred to an Academy somewhere in the Islands by the Rosencrantz, I thought you would want to see it considering where you are headed. A group has gathered at the port quarantine, but they are only allowing a limited viewing. I used our diplomatic pass to get us access. You really must come!” There was an eagerness in his insistence. He was genuinely eager to see this himself. “If we hurry, they will let us see it!”They took of down the narrow city streets at a quick trot all but fully running, Pedrin’s cape flapping around behind him was a hazard, so Ophelia kept to his side as they wove through the people, carts, and bikes in the busy stony streets. Her mother had told her that she had been taken to a zoo that had a troll on display when she was a little girl, but she had no memory of this other than of covering her eyes in childish terror. She was unsure if she had ever opened her eyes or if she had and then actively forgotten what she saw. “I’ve heard that they are almost extinct,” she panted “They still live on in wild places like the far Artic and taiga forests as well as in a few preserves these days but the memory of them is in everything, that’s why the towns here have walls, and the country homes are built underground. The golden crossed disks along the roads and on the steeples were also to keep them away.As if evoked deep brass bells rang through the town from ancient churches and clocktower gates. “The bells! They hated the bells,” she laughed.“Yes, that’s right,” Pedrin stopped and produced his identification to a guard posted in front of a large set of loading doors, “good news for us though, we’ve arrived just in time!”They walked into the large dimly lit cargo bay where a huge metal shipping container sat in the middle of the floor. There was a small crowd of people gather about ten feet away but in the dim lighting having just entered from the sunlight it was hard to make out who the other attendees were. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the few dimed red lights of the bay, the initial thrill of the jog to the building was now becoming a nervous fear as they pondered what they were about to see. Pedrin’s hand drifted to his sword, a tic that Ophelia had noted whenever he felt apprehension. A survival driven reflex in all likelihood, one that may have saved the soldier’s life in previous situations he had faced.There was a hushed silence as the shield of the left side of the container opened revealing a panel of metallic glass running the length of the container. A hulking figure was crouched in the shipping container. At first glance it did look oddly human but as it stood up all of the monstrous divergences from the familiar anthropoid design become horrifically evident. The head was oversized with a huge lopsided nose and small close-set eyes that caught and reflected light like a nocturnal beast. A hard calcified knot was on the left side of the head and down the back preventing the creature from turning its head and causing it to pivot at the torso to leer at the onlookers. The whole body was riddled with tumors and skin tags that had vague and disturbing suggestions of being unformed or diminished structures that were alien to familiar forms of life. Some of these boils grew in what looked like a fractal pattern of organization others were cancerous chaos that hung as flabby sacks among course randomly knots of oily hair that were matted together by the filth and puss that incrusted the beast’s body. Thick tangled hair thankfully obscured the thing’s groin from more that grotesque suggestion of shape. Another messy mat of hair, somewhat like a beard obscured its mouth apart from a tusk like tooth that protruded from the lower jaw and slipped in and out of a gap in the hair that was impacted with gore from whatever it had eaten. The troll swung viciously at the crowd with a huge twisted left arm. Scaly gnarled rock like tumors had so overtaken the limb that the creature clearly had only limited use and flailed the hard structure like a club. In place of a hand were a mass of blunted and cracked claw like spikes erupting at numerous random angles. The bangs of the arm connecting with the enclosure sounded more like stone being slammed against it than flesh.“The left arm is over crusted with sun damage,” said Pedrin in a hushed voice. “It must have used the arm to shield it’s self during partial sunlight exposures,” the announcement had pulled Ophelia from her entranced horror of the beast and back to her companion.“They knot up like that where the sunlight burns them. It twists their flesh into stone. They aren’t things meant to survive in the light. They belong to the dark,” He looked to be fighting back a great deal of internal dread while standing steadfast against the creature’s banging and groaning. Ophelia could tell that Pedrin’s cometary on the troll’s appearance was part of the mental wall he was putting up to contain his fear. She herself had used this mental tactic, using scientific analysis as a mental refuge to distance the mind from the horrific. She reached up and took his hand in hers, not as much for her own since of security but because she knew that letting him feel protective would embolden him. He started slightly at her touch. He took her hand firmly and looked down to her. The look he wore showed that he was planning to offer her encouragement, but on seeing her more collected and sympathetic look in her violet eyes he realized it was her comforting him. He lent her a small thankful smile. The Troll was more than four meters tall when it stood up. While it clearly couldn’t get through the container the onlookers all backed away as it thrashed at them. When the thing realized it couldn’t assault the crowd it curled into ball against the wall of the container and began making gurgling mumbling wet hateful sounds that were obscenely close speech. The sounds carried all the hate and venom of a wraith reciting a curse. Tiny eyes darted from the shadowed mass like little coals of red and green fire. Ophelia found the troll deeply loathsome; it wasn’t capable of speech but those garbled sounds, the sucking and snorting were as much of similar mockery of real peoples that it made the creature thoroughly repellent. This monster was descended from the demons who’s tomb she was traveling towards. That a lineage of peer level intellect could degenerated into such a foul bestial creature filled her with disgust. That distant alien corruption that made this foul thing was in the lines of her own heritage. There are worlds that would look down on Nephilim like herself and people like Pedrin with the same revulsion. The flame of sapience was what elevated beings like themselves above monsters like this, yet here in this being those abhorrent divergences that they wished for others not to see in themselves we amplified in this soulless being in the most monstrous of ways. The troll was an incarnation of ugliness inherited and foul things hidden within ourselves. “An Orphan of the dammed!” said a regrettably familiar voice.Ophelia looked up at the purple robed Rosicrucian Scholar standing beside her and saw that it was Dr. Holzah. He had a smug bemused smile under his thick moustache and a haughtily cocked eyebrow under his dangling black forelock. “Ghastly, isn’t it?” he grinned, “Still I thought it fitting to give you an opportunity to see this creature, given your intended goal. The demons of Mu left these unwanted things up in the North to be rid of them, but what monsters spawned such a horror? Isn’t that what you intend to investigate…”“Op Sec, please Doctor,” interjected Pedrin, “please show her some professional courtesy,” he stepped boldly between Ophelia and the Scholar. “Oh, but this is a professional courtesy! I am the one who approved inviting you to his viewing, I thought it might lend perspective to her pursuits,” Dr. Holzah chuckled.More psychological games from the Rosencrantz, Ophelia found this move direct than some of the other stunts they had pulled so far. Did he really think this would put her off her goal by showing her a scarry monster or was this some veiled insult? His chiding comment was oddly close to her own thoughts. That likely wasn’t a coincidence given their proclivities toward psychological manipulation. However, she could play games too.“What unique experience, you must have pulled some strings to arrange this. I’m impressed your leadership approved of you putting on this little show for us. It is quite insightful,” Ophelia said in a seemingly demure tone but with a look that was more obviously patronizing. “This troll is not nearly so frightful a thing as one might have expected, quaint as a biological curiosity though,” Dr. Holzah looked vaguely annoyed by her nonplused reaction. “This must be quite a thrill for you as well Sargent Pedrin,” Dr. Holzah said to her escort, “have you told the little lady your own encounter with the old hill lords? It’s quite the campfire tale.” “No, I haven’t,” he glanced over to Ophelia, her calm reaction steadied his reflexive bristling, “But I will be sure to tell her all about northern natives,” Ophelia smiled, the comment was a bit on the nose, but she was still proud of how he had responded. Realizing he had hit a wall Dr. Holzah moved on to pester several other members of the Archeological team who were also in attendance at this viewing. “Bravo Sargent,” whispered Ophelia nudging Pedrin’s side with her elbow. “I’d have preferred to knock him down,” he growled lightly giving Ophelia a conspiratorially smile. “Amusing as that would have been, you still got rid of him. They think they are so sly, but they are really just bothersome,” she muttered, the grumbling sounds the troll made now seemed oddly relatable. “The Rosicrucians?” Pedrin enquired, “have they been troubling you like this the whole time you’ve been here?"“They started this before we even left,” she sighed, resigned to the idea that this annoyance would be a persistent feature of the expedition.“I can report this to the Ispatian Academy. I’m sure they could do something about it,” concern creasing his features. “No, they always do just enough to walk the line without giving anything to formally complain about,” she said suppressing her annoyance, “If we said something about this, they would say that this was a favor and try to paint us a being ungrateful.” “I got you, I’m all too familiar with their obnoxious mind games,” he snorted, “how would you like to stop by a brewhouse? I think I’d like a drink and a smoke to clear this, northern stench, from my nose before I escort you back. Someplace cheerful to put us in a better mind before dreaming.”“That sounds great, I could use something to clear my head up from this…If you don’t mind my asking, what was that he said about your ‘encounter’ have you seen one of those in the wild?”“Yes, I ran into one on a hunting trip, it is indeed what I would call a campfire tale,” his face darkened, “you sure you want to hear about it?”“Only if telling it to people helps more than hurts you,” she replied. “Ha, that’s and interesting expression,” the old soldier smirked and cocked his head in a doggish way, he was not accustomed to emotional accommodation, he seemed to find this adorably thoughtful, “A troll story in a brewhouse would be about as authentic a local experience as you could have in Laxaria,” “Let’s go, the air has become a bit thick in here,” she frowned, a foul reek had started to fill the quarantine from the troll’s container. The old hill devil glowered and burbled menacingly as its hateful eyes squinted beneath the gnarled left arm it held over its head. Dr. Holzah was slinking about the crowd no doubt murmuring things to the other members of the expedition present at the viewing that were as repellent as the troll’s stench. He was currently looming over Helen, Alan, and Barnabas, but she felt they could hold their own ground without her assistance. She regarded the troll for a final time, it glared at her, a living nightmare that didn’t belong in waking world locked and mocked in the confines of its cage. What remained of the lineage to the false gods of Mu was the hate it held for nature and God’s children. Sargent Pedrin adjusted his sword and pistol at his belt and cast a final distasteful look at both the troll and Dr. Holzah. He placed the hood of his cape over his head and opened the door for Ophelia as they left the quarantine. The night air of the city felt much more refreshing as they both cleared the odor of troll from their noses. While Ophelia considered herself an introvert, the laughter, singing, and other raucous playful activity of the crowds was a refreshing and oddly comforting change from the previous atmosphere. She found her appetite quickly returning as well as they wove through the crowded streets in the direction of the hotel. They stopped in at a Brewhouse of Pedrin’s selection. It was lit in cheerful golden light, and the walls had been overlayed with wooden paneling that was a cozy change from the concrete, bricks, and paving stones that made up the city streets. The drinking hall was busy with local patrons, who laughed, howled, slapped tabletops, and clinked tall drinking steins together in the boisterous manner of their people. A small band was playing in the far side of the hall consisting of pan pipes, skin drums, and a tall reverberating base string instrument. The lead was a deep flutelike instrument that was oddly reminiscent of the tones and rhythms of a wolf’s song. Always an ethologist, Ophelia wondered if this related to the lycanthrope heritage in many of the local people. Already present on the table were a bowl of smoked pine nuts, and a bowl of rosemary and parsley which Pedrin indicated as being for before the meal and after the meal respectively. Ophelia was unfamiliar with the local cuisine so deferred to the soldier to order. Drinks arrived first, a small shot of honey brown liquid was identified as an aperitif, it tasted more like medicine than a beverage. It was thick syrupy and powerfully sweet with and overpowering assault of unfamiliar herbal flavors and a throat burning kick of alcohol. It did clear the remaining unpleasantness of the troll away. This was followed by a very pleasant and mellow pear cider that was much closer to her own tastes. Out of curiosity she inquired about the large steins that he and most of the others were drinking from. Pedrin identified it as a turnip beer brewed with hops, wormwood, and rabbit blood which was locally popular with his people but probably wouldn’t be to her liking. She thankfully abstained. For the meal her guide had selected a varied sampling of different foods so that she could sample different dishes and decide which she enjoyed. There was a pottage of cooked cabbage, apples, and currants that she really enjoyed as well as the hearty potato noodles. Pedrin had a folded pastry that was stuffed with pork and yams that Ophelia found too smoky tasting. The roasted duck was deliciously prepared with crisp skin and tender savory meat flavored with apples, onions, and herbs. She noted that meaty and earthy flavors prevailed in the local fare which Pedrin said was from a long tradition of cooking food over open fires. She now imagined the taste as a legacy of the soldiers and hunters that Pedrin’s people had descended from when they had come to the gloomy primal forests of Aslar. A cold dark wet place full of boars, apes, and bears. The sound of the troll in the shipping container gurgling, and croaking came back into her mind, she thought of how chilling it would be to hear those noises coming from the woods where one of those huge beasts lurked wild and unrestrained under the tall dark pines.“Well, little traveler, are you still keen on hearing me tell my story?” Pedrin asked as he ordered another drink and prepared his pipe.Ophelia was rapacious enthusiast of ghost stories and dark folklore, the evening and the unusual meal had cleared much of the original thrill, and she was eager to for bit of fright to stir her mind while the memory of the monster was still fresh. The atmosphere of the city and the rustic demeaner of her guide would frame the tale in an incomparable way. “Yes please,” she replied, sipping her cider as she picked at the last of her meal.Pedrin ordered apple dumplings and a sharp apricot brandy as he prepared his pipe with a mixture of mullein, sage, and nicotiana rustica. Lighting it with a sulfur match his pipe sent up long weaving tendrils of aromatic smoke.“My father was never keen on the old customs he was too city for that. So, he never was so close to my Opa as I was. My Opa was a right rustic old Orc, strong touch of the wolf about him too. He lived up north close to the opening of the Glosson steppe lands in a dug-out house buy a snow melt stream. Beautiful country up there, a wild place. I wish you had time to go and see it. I can’t do it justice by just describing it too you. The land was teeming with game, we have big grazing bears, wild boar, and hares the size of ponies. The woods and fields bloom so thick with flowers up there in the spring and summer that the ground is more pinks, red, and blue than it is green. The water there is so clear and clean you can get on all fours and drink from the streams. The air is full of songbirds, sapphire beetles, and jewel flies. I still make it up there whenever I can to go hunting with my uncle and cousin. The place touches us and calls to us like it does my Opa, something lent to us in the blood from the old man,” Pedrin beamed as he described those far wild places. The woods and pastures were painted in Ophelia’s mind with the brush of his nostalgia so vividly that she felt a call for it too.“It’s a place full of danger though, feral mouccs everywhere in those woods, I think you folks call them entelodonts, horse sized pigs with crocodile mouths that will gobble you up before you can scream. You have to listen for the hill apes and jays to alert you when a drove is around. The ruks, those big grazing bears, are dangerous too, most of the time you can walk close enough to tap one on the nose and it will pay you no mind but if they think your after one of their cubs, they will smash you like and egg and not think twice about it. Big sort of mongoose up there too called a glutton or a bone breaker, only about half the size of a man but will trail you and try to get you when you sleep. That’s all part of the romance of the place though. Wouldn’t be so lovely if it wasn’t wild and dangerous. All my best memories are of that land. Half grew up there, except for school. I’m no soft towny I’m a country man and I add with pride I’m a sharp hunter.”“When my cousin and I came of time to become men, my uncle took us up to Opa’s place for a coming-of-age hunt. We were going to hike a week North and bring down an actual glosson one of the big mammoth boars. This is only permitted on special terms, but we got the proper license, and this was going to be our man making hunt. We had to pack in everything on our rucksacks. The pace we trekked was hard, but Opa kept laughing at us any time we thought to complain. The man was unstoppable. I kept thinking about how the way back that pack would be even harder with meat, pelt, and tusks to haul back. That country though, It just got more beautiful as we went north. The wildlife got more abundant we saw flocks of birds like clouds, we found an old Temgin camp with stone arrowheads, we even got treed by a drove of mouccs one evening that kept us up in the pines until dawn. We also saw feral horses, lot of people will say there aren’t any left up in that country, but I’ve seen them myself,” declared the Orc. “This fella’s telling you tales Missy?” intruded a lycanthrope waitress as she topped them off with more brandy, “feral horses all got gobbled up by beasts in the wild lands ages ago he’ll be telling you he saw trolls up there next. Can I get you some coffee if you plan to tell her tales all night?”“Aye, get us some coffee and get gone,” he grinned, “Like you’d know anything about the wilderness city girl! You couldn’t tell a spruce from a steeple.”“I’m wild enough,” she said with a flash of her teeth. She flicked her tail at him as she left. “Please, excuse Aronia she’s an old friend,” chortled Pedrin, as his story resumed. “So, we got into a rhythm of the trail, hiking from morning to noon, then we would forage for food and set up camp. We had to eat and be hunkered down for night because we had to sleep in shifts watching for predators. We ate what food was left from dinner at dawn and started trekking again. The nights were so bright it was hard to sleep. We had timed the hunt with the waxing moon. We found a wallow on the fifth day and trailed it to a small herd of the beasts on the sixth but we waited, the moon was gibbous but not yet full and so we stalked them and picked our target waiting for until the right time. The seventh day we woke in unison, something was hungry and urgent between us, more so than the normal call of the lunar tides on our kind. We jumped up and took our spears and blades the fatigue of the trail and the soreness in our feet and shoulders had vanished. We didn’t speak at all that day as we hunted the old monster boar. We harried it through a field of glacier rubble and monolithic rocks and cut it off from its kin. It was an old great hoary boar with double curved tusks. It seemed ancient as much a feature of the land as the boulders of the glacier scared valley. We fille it with our spears until was slow and blood foamed around its trunk and tusks, Smell made us wild when we finally brought it down, we killed it with stones. It was only then that we all began to shout and howl, Our Opa anointed our heads with the glosson’s blood and gave us each one of its great tusks. We were so ecstatic that we built a great fire as we processed the mammoth boar’s body. That was foolish of us. We were too caught up in the revelry to be thinking about where we were. At first a few mouccs and gluttons began to snuffle in the dark around the fire be built at the kill. However, none of them came close to us that was a warning from nature that we should have marked. I thought they were intimidated away by our jubilation, or the fire, or some primal reverence but that is not the way of nature. What we did notice was when those scavengers departed and the whole valley scrape fell silent apart from the crackle of the fire.That’s when we heard it, from up in the mountain, the great booming roar of a hill lord. They aren’t usually that far south we were still statue leagues from the northern taiga but that didn’t excuse our carelessness. There was no mistaking that sound, dread swallowed my heart. We had to abandon most of the boar. There was no time to recover the pelt or preform the honor rights we owed to the prey. A katabatic wind was pushing down the glacier scar valley and we could smell that horrible creature on it. I took the tusk with me, I was just too stubborn to leave it. The thing was as long as my leg and sharp, it sliced my shoulder open as I ran with it. We got to a hill and looked back to see the troll as it crested the ridgeline and looked down at us. We were out in the open standing on a hill which silhouetted us along its crest. We paused and locked gazes with the thing. It was still a mile and a half away, but nothing has ever chilled me like seeing that figure staring at us. It was a forest troll, I’d say roughly about the size of the one we saw at the quarantine. This one was in far rougher shape, even more sunburnt, and it had a huge tumor on the right shoulder almost like a second head. We all paused their staring at each other and then it turned and looked back where it had come from. And we saw the other troll that had been chasing the first one!”“Another troll?” said Ophelia incredulously. “Aw poor little leveret, he is telling you that troll story ain’t he?” interrupted Aronia, who had returned with their coffee and more brandy. “Took your time with it, or did you wait to pounce at a bad time on purpose?” He teased. “Well, ‘suse me for bringing you and the lady fresh made instead of the dregs,” she retorted, “You don’t tell me when to come or go!” She set the drinks on the table as she and Pedrin, made little flirtatious growls at each other. “So, there were more of them?” Ophelia encouraged, trying to rekindle the tale after the disruption. “Was it a troop of the things?”“No, no it wasn’t, this other troll was one of the big mountain trolls. An old Larde Jötunn, as folks say not like the forest troll, this other one was huge like a part of the mountain. It looked around the crag at us and the first one and made a low awful sound, I felt it more than heard it like it was speaking through the ground and the rocks. For how long, I can’t say we were all just frozen there. It was like the earth and time had stopped and were holden their breath. Under the bright mother Moon in that glacier scar. Four men on the hill, troll on the ridge, and mountain king at the peak. Then the titan turned and left,” Pedrin breathed as a sigh. Remembering that part of encounter had stolen his bravado and the primal reverent fear of it was in his eyes. Ophelia knew from that look that this story was genuine. “Why did it go?” she asked. “My Opa, who knows more about them than I, figures it must have been chasing the first troll’s troop for a long time. The big ones love eating smaller trolls it must have chased them through the mountains from some place far north and eaten all but that last one. It didn’t come out of the crags because one that size couldn’t cross open country in the summer. There was not enough cover from the sun for one that big. They can only get so big and old by being careful about that kind of thing. It must have left to get back to the last place it could shelter before the dawn. Trolls are doggedly persistent about tracking prey when they pick them. With the big king finally of its back the forest troll looked back to us on the hill. It started sniffing, I could hear it even that far away it had smelled us, and the boar kill. The thing probably hadn’t eaten the whole time the other had been chasing it. The troll started shuffling down the rock to the glosson’s carcass and we ran. We moved double time until the sunrise, but we were all so shaken that we went on further. We only stopped when the sun got high and began to ravenously eat and drink. Opa said we weren’t rid of it. That troll would get the smell of us as it glutted on the kill and would likely hunt us now. We fortified a cleft with a fire and rough-cut wooden spears we only had a small game gun and a big revolver as firearms, we didn’t use them on the boar because that hunt was meant to be a natural primitive thing, I wouldn’t chance it again without some better weapons. We were the ones hunted now. We had found a cut in a riverbank too narrow for it to get through and built a fire. At the narrow point. We knew we should sleep while there was day light but even after a night of running, we couldn’t steal any. We kept a small torch to light the fire and waited. Still as statues, silent as the grave we waited as the sun went down. We waited as the waning mother moon climbed the sky. In the small cold hours before the dawn we finally dared to think that perhaps the mammoth boar had been enough, or that the beasts of the field had let it off. Weariness even made closing my eyes to find that much needed sleep a temptation. When we heard the thing sniffing. Branches broke and brush crackled as it smelled for us. A night and half a day of running as a lead and it still caught up. The big filthy nightmare tumbled to the mouth of the gap and tried to reach in. We lit the fire at the gap, put two spears in him, and plugged him will all six shots of the fifty-caliber revolver for it. God the thing screamed and flew into a tantrum. Roared and thrashed and started knocking over trees and throwing rocks. We reloaded and got ready for the next hit and when it went for us again got six more shots, three spears, a magazine from the game gun, and a jar of lamp oil for his trouble. The lamp oil caught blaze as it pulled it’s arm out through the fire. The things beard and body hair caught fire and it rolled and roared as it tried to put itself out in the stream. Almost would have almost been funny if I wasn’t a breath form death and about to piss myself. Well then, the old devil got an idea. It grabbed one of the trees and ran at the gap. The branches broke and shattered everywhere cutting and slashing us all up. Then it kept jamming the gap with the tree trunk and screaming. We tried to dodge it, but we all took hits. When it stopped and reached in again, we all hit it with the camp axes, and I put the boar's tusk into the brute’s eye. None of this was enough to kill the damned thing but that wasn’t the point. The point was to keep it hurt and mad enough to get it caught out into the light. That was the only way to hurt it enough to finish the thing off. We had to buy our time the troll started going at it with the tree trunk again broke my uncle’s ribs and busted my knee in a way that never did get right again. As I get older it has started getting worse, I felt it on our little jog today. We had to keep on like this until the lights of dawn started to glow in the east and the grey of starlight began. It stopped and looked at the sky behind it and oh, was it mad now thrashing and kicking over trees furious that it’s prey would see the light again. It lunged at the gap again more desperate and angrier now but that just let us really lay into the brute with ax, spear, and shot. It was like striking stone and wood, but it felt good to knock every chunk and chip off that disgusting thing. The old bugger finally tried to make a break for it and go find a place in the woods to hunker down. Opa let it get a distance and then shot off after it. Well, I thought he’d lost his wits. But then he stopped a ways from the mouth of the gap and he started chanting. It took a bit for me to make it out, but the old goblin was shouting scripture at the thing or sometimes just saying the names of God and the Angels. That made the thing turn heal and charge back at us again. Opa popped back in just before it could snatch him. We all caught on to what he’d done and started doing the same. The troll screamed and tried to shove itself into the gap so hard that it partly ripped off that second headlike growth on its shoulder. The tumor burst and my cousin got so sick he vomited, it was putrid I had forgot how foul till today I was about to do the same as the blood and puss from the tumor splashed me with hot stinking filth. When the troll got him pulled him outside. When the troll stood up the sun had crested, and the beast started to sizzle and burn in the light! “So, you turned it to stone at the last moment?” said Ophelia skeptically. “Wish that was how it played out little lady but no. the sunlight was still fairly weak, and it takes a long time in the full sun. The burns calcify that’s what makes that hard armor on the things. It even offers them some protection from light for the really big old Jötunn. Trolls have to be badly burnt all over to become immobilized. The brute started biting and gnawing my cousin’s leg until Opa put out its other eye with the revolver and started ringing a bell. It was a little golden church hand bell and when the troll heard it, he flung my cousin off into the brush.My uncle went after his boy of course what parent wouldn’t and this left Opa and me with the blinded raging troll. I have never seen a thing in more completely in the grip of anger as that creature. Like the way a brat throws a tantrum with no regard to how absurd a spectacle, they make of themselves. It floundered and kicked and bit anything it could grab, busting its own teeth on stones. All the while it sizzled and knotted over as Opa and I would shout hymns, sacred names, and holy verse. That kept it trashing around as it burned. We lost our voices and took to tossing the bell back and forth as we lead it into a meadow. Even then it was fully noon before the creature was too petrified to move. I have never felt so close to death myself as I did then. I was filthy, cut, and bleeding as soon as it was done all the weariness hit me at once. The fatigue of the flight and fight combined with the lack of sleep dulled all my thoughts and senses. My head and body ached, and my eyes had that awful, cracked dryness that long lack of sleep causes. Opa had a black eye that swelled closed he coached me through cutting it to let enough blood form the bruise to see. When both his eyes opened, he took my head in his old hard hands and said, ‘If that didn’t make a man of you nothing else will!’ God, I love that grizzled old wolf.We found my uncle and cousin back by the cleft in the creekbank he had bandaged him up and splinted his leg. We all washed off in the stream, it was cold snowmelt and I thought I would freeze but had to get that reek off me. Then we built a fire before succumbing to exhaustion. I woke up wondering how I was still living. The area around the stream looked like a tornado had struck it. My cousin had the worst of it. We had to haul him back on a skid which made that trek back far harder than the one out. He had to spend weeks in hospital to get over the infection that set in where the thing had bit him. He lost his foot to the rot, but you should hear this story as he tells it. My Opa and I went back in the fall and busted up the troll’s body into gravel with picks and hammers and buried it under a mound topped with a stone cut with a crossed disk. I had thought that a wicked thing like that would be shunned but nature, but fall weeds and nettles were already growing up round it. In death it was just a stone now. ‘Nature forgets things by eating them’ Opa told me. So that’s my troll tale I’m one of the few living people to have had an encounter like that. Most folks have never even seen one alive. Guess that makes me privileged in a way, but sure didn’t feel like that when it was all happening,” Pedrin concluded as he tossed back the brady in a single gulp. “That is quite a story,” agreed Ophelia as her imagination returned her to the brewhouse, there was an empty coffee cup and a half-eaten dumpling in front of her. She sipped the brandy slowly letting the flavor and the burn work to full effect. “You’ll have a tale or two to match when you get back from where you are heading,” he chuckled.“I would hope not nearly as grand as all that,” she laughed nervously. “Aye, I hope it to be not nearly so beastly but just as wondrous to tell is what I meant,” corrected Pedrin seeing how the remark had shaken her, “If you do encounter difficulty in your journey the best advice I can offer based on my own experience is this. Never give up no matter how dire a situation may seem. You mind and body will tell you that you can’t far before your limits are actually reached. You will always be astounded a what a person can survive.”“Thank you, that helps,” she smiled sweetly making, her escort grin gladly. They returned to the Hotel and said their goodnights to each other. Ophelia was impressed with how untouched Pedrin seemed after the sea of drinks he had imbibed during dinner, but he was still sharp. She bathed in the rooms rather whimsical fish shaped porcelain tub and settled into the large empty bed she read a while from the book of Job musing on the account of the Behemoth and the Leviathan. She lay there a long while in the dark looking at the ceiling still wide awake. It wasn’t the coffee or the sounds of the city. She was thinking about how even in the modern world it was still possible to have encounters with monsters at the edge of the map. Past the known was the shadow in both the world and in the mind, a place to which she was now heading....

Description
An experimental drawing I did of Pedrin and Ophelia from my preview of the story I'm writing. Pedrin is one of the people that are from the blending of orcs, goblins, werewolves, and human that took place in Laxaria.

Here is a link if you missed out
Ophelia learns about Trolls“Little sister, there is something you should come and see,” The tour guide grinned, “I think you’ll find this very interesting.”“I’ve really had about enough for the evening,” Ophelia sighed, the blur the day was becoming a bit overwhelming. She wanted to retire back to the hotel and regather herself, but her escort was still trying to drag her along on this whirlwind of a tour. Subtle hints seemed to bounce off him like pebbles tossed at a stone wall. “No, you’ll want to see this, most visitors will never get to see a ‘mountain king’ alive!” Pedrin flashed his big wolfish grin widely.‘Mountain king’ The term made her pause, “You mean a troll?” Ophelia’s eyes widened, “They have one here?”“It’s being transferred to an Academy somewhere in the Islands by the Rosencrantz, I thought you would want to see it considering where you are headed. A group has gathered at the port quarantine, but they are only allowing a limited viewing. I used our diplomatic pass to get us access. You really must come!” There was an eagerness in his insistence. He was genuinely eager to see this himself. “If we hurry, they will let us see it!”They took of down the narrow city streets at a quick trot all but fully running, Pedrin’s cape flapping around behind him was a hazard, so Ophelia kept to his side as they wove through the people, carts, and bikes in the busy stony streets. Her mother had told her that she had been taken to a zoo that had a troll on display when she was a little girl, but she had no memory of this other than of covering her eyes in childish terror. She was unsure if she had ever opened her eyes or if she had and then actively forgotten what she saw. “I’ve heard that they are almost extinct,” she panted “They still live on in wild places like the far Artic and taiga forests as well as in a few preserves these days but the memory of them is in everything, that’s why the towns here have walls, and the country homes are built underground. The golden crossed disks along the roads and on the steeples were also to keep them away.As if evoked deep brass bells rang through the town from ancient churches and clocktower gates. “The bells! They hated the bells,” she laughed.“Yes, that’s right,” Pedrin stopped and produced his identification to a guard posted in front of a large set of loading doors, “good news for us though, we’ve arrived just in time!”They walked into the large dimly lit cargo bay where a huge metal shipping container sat in the middle of the floor. There was a small crowd of people gather about ten feet away but in the dim lighting having just entered from the sunlight it was hard to make out who the other attendees were. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the few dimed red lights of the bay, the initial thrill of the jog to the building was now becoming a nervous fear as they pondered what they were about to see. Pedrin’s hand drifted to his sword, a tic that Ophelia had noted whenever he felt apprehension. A survival driven reflex in all likelihood, one that may have saved the soldier’s life in previous situations he had faced.There was a hushed silence as the shield of the left side of the container opened revealing a panel of metallic glass running the length of the container. A hulking figure was crouched in the shipping container. At first glance it did look oddly human but as it stood up all of the monstrous divergences from the familiar anthropoid design become horrifically evident. The head was oversized with a huge lopsided nose and small close-set eyes that caught and reflected light like a nocturnal beast. A hard calcified knot was on the left side of the head and down the back preventing the creature from turning its head and causing it to pivot at the torso to leer at the onlookers. The whole body was riddled with tumors and skin tags that had vague and disturbing suggestions of being unformed or diminished structures that were alien to familiar forms of life. Some of these boils grew in what looked like a fractal pattern of organization others were cancerous chaos that hung as flabby sacks among course randomly knots of oily hair that were matted together by the filth and puss that incrusted the beast’s body. Thick tangled hair thankfully obscured the thing’s groin from more that grotesque suggestion of shape. Another messy mat of hair, somewhat like a beard obscured its mouth apart from a tusk like tooth that protruded from the lower jaw and slipped in and out of a gap in the hair that was impacted with gore from whatever it had eaten. The troll swung viciously at the crowd with a huge twisted left arm. Scaly gnarled rock like tumors had so overtaken the limb that the creature clearly had only limited use and flailed the hard structure like a club. In place of a hand were a mass of blunted and cracked claw like spikes erupting at numerous random angles. The bangs of the arm connecting with the enclosure sounded more like stone being slammed against it than flesh.“The left arm is over crusted with sun damage,” said Pedrin in a hushed voice. “It must have used the arm to shield it’s self during partial sunlight exposures,” the announcement had pulled Ophelia from her entranced horror of the beast and back to her companion.“They knot up like that where the sunlight burns them. It twists their flesh into stone. They aren’t things meant to survive in the light. They belong to the dark,” He looked to be fighting back a great deal of internal dread while standing steadfast against the creature’s banging and groaning. Ophelia could tell that Pedrin’s cometary on the troll’s appearance was part of the mental wall he was putting up to contain his fear. She herself had used this mental tactic, using scientific analysis as a mental refuge to distance the mind from the horrific. She reached up and took his hand in hers, not as much for her own since of security but because she knew that letting him feel protective would embolden him. He started slightly at her touch. He took her hand firmly and looked down to her. The look he wore showed that he was planning to offer her encouragement, but on seeing her more collected and sympathetic look in her violet eyes he realized it was her comforting him. He lent her a small thankful smile. The Troll was more than four meters tall when it stood up. While it clearly couldn’t get through the container the onlookers all backed away as it thrashed at them. When the thing realized it couldn’t assault the crowd it curled into ball against the wall of the container and began making gurgling mumbling wet hateful sounds that were obscenely close speech. The sounds carried all the hate and venom of a wraith reciting a curse. Tiny eyes darted from the shadowed mass like little coals of red and green fire. Ophelia found the troll deeply loathsome; it wasn’t capable of speech but those garbled sounds, the sucking and snorting were as much of similar mockery of real peoples that it made the creature thoroughly repellent. This monster was descended from the demons who’s tomb she was traveling towards. That a lineage of peer level intellect could degenerated into such a foul bestial creature filled her with disgust. That distant alien corruption that made this foul thing was in the lines of her own heritage. There are worlds that would look down on Nephilim like herself and people like Pedrin with the same revulsion. The flame of sapience was what elevated beings like themselves above monsters like this, yet here in this being those abhorrent divergences that they wished for others not to see in themselves we amplified in this soulless being in the most monstrous of ways. The troll was an incarnation of ugliness inherited and foul things hidden within ourselves. “An Orphan of the dammed!” said a regrettably familiar voice.Ophelia looked up at the purple robed Rosicrucian Scholar standing beside her and saw that it was Dr. Holzah. He had a smug bemused smile under his thick moustache and a haughtily cocked eyebrow under his dangling black forelock. “Ghastly, isn’t it?” he grinned, “Still I thought it fitting to give you an opportunity to see this creature, given your intended goal. The demons of Mu left these unwanted things up in the North to be rid of them, but what monsters spawned such a horror? Isn’t that what you intend to investigate…”“Op Sec, please Doctor,” interjected Pedrin, “please show her some professional courtesy,” he stepped boldly between Ophelia and the Scholar. “Oh, but this is a professional courtesy! I am the one who approved inviting you to his viewing, I thought it might lend perspective to her pursuits,” Dr. Holzah chuckled.More psychological games from the Rosencrantz, Ophelia found this move direct than some of the other stunts they had pulled so far. Did he really think this would put her off her goal by showing her a scarry monster or was this some veiled insult? His chiding comment was oddly close to her own thoughts. That likely wasn’t a coincidence given their proclivities toward psychological manipulation. However, she could play games too.“What unique experience, you must have pulled some strings to arrange this. I’m impressed your leadership approved of you putting on this little show for us. It is quite insightful,” Ophelia said in a seemingly demure tone but with a look that was more obviously patronizing. “This troll is not nearly so frightful a thing as one might have expected, quaint as a biological curiosity though,” Dr. Holzah looked vaguely annoyed by her nonplused reaction. “This must be quite a thrill for you as well Sargent Pedrin,” Dr. Holzah said to her escort, “have you told the little lady your own encounter with the old hill lords? It’s quite the campfire tale.” “No, I haven’t,” he glanced over to Ophelia, her calm reaction steadied his reflexive bristling, “But I will be sure to tell her all about northern natives,” Ophelia smiled, the comment was a bit on the nose, but she was still proud of how he had responded. Realizing he had hit a wall Dr. Holzah moved on to pester several other members of the Archeological team who were also in attendance at this viewing. “Bravo Sargent,” whispered Ophelia nudging Pedrin’s side with her elbow. “I’d have preferred to knock him down,” he growled lightly giving Ophelia a conspiratorially smile. “Amusing as that would have been, you still got rid of him. They think they are so sly, but they are really just bothersome,” she muttered, the grumbling sounds the troll made now seemed oddly relatable. “The Rosicrucians?” Pedrin enquired, “have they been troubling you like this the whole time you’ve been here?"“They started this before we even left,” she sighed, resigned to the idea that this annoyance would be a persistent feature of the expedition.“I can report this to the Ispatian Academy. I’m sure they could do something about it,” concern creasing his features. “No, they always do just enough to walk the line without giving anything to formally complain about,” she said suppressing her annoyance, “If we said something about this, they would say that this was a favor and try to paint us a being ungrateful.” “I got you, I’m all too familiar with their obnoxious mind games,” he snorted, “how would you like to stop by a brewhouse? I think I’d like a drink and a smoke to clear this, northern stench, from my nose before I escort you back. Someplace cheerful to put us in a better mind before dreaming.”“That sounds great, I could use something to clear my head up from this…If you don’t mind my asking, what was that he said about your ‘encounter’ have you seen one of those in the wild?”“Yes, I ran into one on a hunting trip, it is indeed what I would call a campfire tale,” his face darkened, “you sure you want to hear about it?”“Only if telling it to people helps more than hurts you,” she replied. “Ha, that’s and interesting expression,” the old soldier smirked and cocked his head in a doggish way, he was not accustomed to emotional accommodation, he seemed to find this adorably thoughtful, “A troll story in a brewhouse would be about as authentic a local experience as you could have in Laxaria,” “Let’s go, the air has become a bit thick in here,” she frowned, a foul reek had started to fill the quarantine from the troll’s container. The old hill devil glowered and burbled menacingly as its hateful eyes squinted beneath the gnarled left arm it held over its head. Dr. Holzah was slinking about the crowd no doubt murmuring things to the other members of the expedition present at the viewing that were as repellent as the troll’s stench. He was currently looming over Helen, Alan, and Barnabas, but she felt they could hold their own ground without her assistance. She regarded the troll for a final time, it glared at her, a living nightmare that didn’t belong in waking world locked and mocked in the confines of its cage. What remained of the lineage to the false gods of Mu was the hate it held for nature and God’s children. Sargent Pedrin adjusted his sword and pistol at his belt and cast a final distasteful look at both the troll and Dr. Holzah. He placed the hood of his cape over his head and opened the door for Ophelia as they left the quarantine. The night air of the city felt much more refreshing as they both cleared the odor of troll from their noses. While Ophelia considered herself an introvert, the laughter, singing, and other raucous playful activity of the crowds was a refreshing and oddly comforting change from the previous atmosphere. She found her appetite quickly returning as well as they wove through the crowded streets in the direction of the hotel. They stopped in at a Brewhouse of Pedrin’s selection. It was lit in cheerful golden light, and the walls had been overlayed with wooden paneling that was a cozy change from the concrete, bricks, and paving stones that made up the city streets. The drinking hall was busy with local patrons, who laughed, howled, slapped tabletops, and clinked tall drinking steins together in the boisterous manner of their people. A small band was playing in the far side of the hall consisting of pan pipes, skin drums, and a tall reverberating base string instrument. The lead was a deep flutelike instrument that was oddly reminiscent of the tones and rhythms of a wolf’s song. Always an ethologist, Ophelia wondered if this related to the lycanthrope heritage in many of the local people. Already present on the table were a bowl of smoked pine nuts, and a bowl of rosemary and parsley which Pedrin indicated as being for before the meal and after the meal respectively. Ophelia was unfamiliar with the local cuisine so deferred to the soldier to order. Drinks arrived first, a small shot of honey brown liquid was identified as an aperitif, it tasted more like medicine than a beverage. It was thick syrupy and powerfully sweet with and overpowering assault of unfamiliar herbal flavors and a throat burning kick of alcohol. It did clear the remaining unpleasantness of the troll away. This was followed by a very pleasant and mellow pear cider that was much closer to her own tastes. Out of curiosity she inquired about the large steins that he and most of the others were drinking from. Pedrin identified it as a turnip beer brewed with hops, wormwood, and rabbit blood which was locally popular with his people but probably wouldn’t be to her liking. She thankfully abstained. For the meal her guide had selected a varied sampling of different foods so that she could sample different dishes and decide which she enjoyed. There was a pottage of cooked cabbage, apples, and currants that she really enjoyed as well as the hearty potato noodles. Pedrin had a folded pastry that was stuffed with pork and yams that Ophelia found too smoky tasting. The roasted duck was deliciously prepared with crisp skin and tender savory meat flavored with apples, onions, and herbs. She noted that meaty and earthy flavors prevailed in the local fare which Pedrin said was from a long tradition of cooking food over open fires. She now imagined the taste as a legacy of the soldiers and hunters that Pedrin’s people had descended from when they had come to the gloomy primal forests of Aslar. A cold dark wet place full of boars, apes, and bears. The sound of the troll in the shipping container gurgling, and croaking came back into her mind, she thought of how chilling it would be to hear those noises coming from the woods where one of those huge beasts lurked wild and unrestrained under the tall dark pines.“Well, little traveler, are you still keen on hearing me tell my story?” Pedrin asked as he ordered another drink and prepared his pipe.Ophelia was rapacious enthusiast of ghost stories and dark folklore, the evening and the unusual meal had cleared much of the original thrill, and she was eager to for bit of fright to stir her mind while the memory of the monster was still fresh. The atmosphere of the city and the rustic demeaner of her guide would frame the tale in an incomparable way. “Yes please,” she replied, sipping her cider as she picked at the last of her meal.Pedrin ordered apple dumplings and a sharp apricot brandy as he prepared his pipe with a mixture of mullein, sage, and nicotiana rustica. Lighting it with a sulfur match his pipe sent up long weaving tendrils of aromatic smoke.“My father was never keen on the old customs he was too city for that. So, he never was so close to my Opa as I was. My Opa was a right rustic old Orc, strong touch of the wolf about him too. He lived up north close to the opening of the Glosson steppe lands in a dug-out house buy a snow melt stream. Beautiful country up there, a wild place. I wish you had time to go and see it. I can’t do it justice by just describing it too you. The land was teeming with game, we have big grazing bears, wild boar, and hares the size of ponies. The woods and fields bloom so thick with flowers up there in the spring and summer that the ground is more pinks, red, and blue than it is green. The water there is so clear and clean you can get on all fours and drink from the streams. The air is full of songbirds, sapphire beetles, and jewel flies. I still make it up there whenever I can to go hunting with my uncle and cousin. The place touches us and calls to us like it does my Opa, something lent to us in the blood from the old man,” Pedrin beamed as he described those far wild places. The woods and pastures were painted in Ophelia’s mind with the brush of his nostalgia so vividly that she felt a call for it too.“It’s a place full of danger though, feral mouccs everywhere in those woods, I think you folks call them entelodonts, horse sized pigs with crocodile mouths that will gobble you up before you can scream. You have to listen for the hill apes and jays to alert you when a drove is around. The ruks, those big grazing bears, are dangerous too, most of the time you can walk close enough to tap one on the nose and it will pay you no mind but if they think your after one of their cubs, they will smash you like and egg and not think twice about it. Big sort of mongoose up there too called a glutton or a bone breaker, only about half the size of a man but will trail you and try to get you when you sleep. That’s all part of the romance of the place though. Wouldn’t be so lovely if it wasn’t wild and dangerous. All my best memories are of that land. Half grew up there, except for school. I’m no soft towny I’m a country man and I add with pride I’m a sharp hunter.”“When my cousin and I came of time to become men, my uncle took us up to Opa’s place for a coming-of-age hunt. We were going to hike a week North and bring down an actual glosson one of the big mammoth boars. This is only permitted on special terms, but we got the proper license, and this was going to be our man making hunt. We had to pack in everything on our rucksacks. The pace we trekked was hard, but Opa kept laughing at us any time we thought to complain. The man was unstoppable. I kept thinking about how the way back that pack would be even harder with meat, pelt, and tusks to haul back. That country though, It just got more beautiful as we went north. The wildlife got more abundant we saw flocks of birds like clouds, we found an old Temgin camp with stone arrowheads, we even got treed by a drove of mouccs one evening that kept us up in the pines until dawn. We also saw feral horses, lot of people will say there aren’t any left up in that country, but I’ve seen them myself,” declared the Orc. “This fella’s telling you tales Missy?” intruded a lycanthrope waitress as she topped them off with more brandy, “feral horses all got gobbled up by beasts in the wild lands ages ago he’ll be telling you he saw trolls up there next. Can I get you some coffee if you plan to tell her tales all night?”“Aye, get us some coffee and get gone,” he grinned, “Like you’d know anything about the wilderness city girl! You couldn’t tell a spruce from a steeple.”“I’m wild enough,” she said with a flash of her teeth. She flicked her tail at him as she left. “Please, excuse Aronia she’s an old friend,” chortled Pedrin, as his story resumed. “So, we got into a rhythm of the trail, hiking from morning to noon, then we would forage for food and set up camp. We had to eat and be hunkered down for night because we had to sleep in shifts watching for predators. We ate what food was left from dinner at dawn and started trekking again. The nights were so bright it was hard to sleep. We had timed the hunt with the waxing moon. We found a wallow on the fifth day and trailed it to a small herd of the beasts on the sixth but we waited, the moon was gibbous but not yet full and so we stalked them and picked our target waiting for until the right time. The seventh day we woke in unison, something was hungry and urgent between us, more so than the normal call of the lunar tides on our kind. We jumped up and took our spears and blades the fatigue of the trail and the soreness in our feet and shoulders had vanished. We didn’t speak at all that day as we hunted the old monster boar. We harried it through a field of glacier rubble and monolithic rocks and cut it off from its kin. It was an old great hoary boar with double curved tusks. It seemed ancient as much a feature of the land as the boulders of the glacier scared valley. We fille it with our spears until was slow and blood foamed around its trunk and tusks, Smell made us wild when we finally brought it down, we killed it with stones. It was only then that we all began to shout and howl, Our Opa anointed our heads with the glosson’s blood and gave us each one of its great tusks. We were so ecstatic that we built a great fire as we processed the mammoth boar’s body. That was foolish of us. We were too caught up in the revelry to be thinking about where we were. At first a few mouccs and gluttons began to snuffle in the dark around the fire be built at the kill. However, none of them came close to us that was a warning from nature that we should have marked. I thought they were intimidated away by our jubilation, or the fire, or some primal reverence but that is not the way of nature. What we did notice was when those scavengers departed and the whole valley scrape fell silent apart from the crackle of the fire.That’s when we heard it, from up in the mountain, the great booming roar of a hill lord. They aren’t usually that far south we were still statue leagues from the northern taiga but that didn’t excuse our carelessness. There was no mistaking that sound, dread swallowed my heart. We had to abandon most of the boar. There was no time to recover the pelt or preform the honor rights we owed to the prey. A katabatic wind was pushing down the glacier scar valley and we could smell that horrible creature on it. I took the tusk with me, I was just too stubborn to leave it. The thing was as long as my leg and sharp, it sliced my shoulder open as I ran with it. We got to a hill and looked back to see the troll as it crested the ridgeline and looked down at us. We were out in the open standing on a hill which silhouetted us along its crest. We paused and locked gazes with the thing. It was still a mile and a half away, but nothing has ever chilled me like seeing that figure staring at us. It was a forest troll, I’d say roughly about the size of the one we saw at the quarantine. This one was in far rougher shape, even more sunburnt, and it had a huge tumor on the right shoulder almost like a second head. We all paused their staring at each other and then it turned and looked back where it had come from. And we saw the other troll that had been chasing the first one!”“Another troll?” said Ophelia incredulously. “Aw poor little leveret, he is telling you that troll story ain’t he?” interrupted Aronia, who had returned with their coffee and more brandy. “Took your time with it, or did you wait to pounce at a bad time on purpose?” He teased. “Well, ‘suse me for bringing you and the lady fresh made instead of the dregs,” she retorted, “You don’t tell me when to come or go!” She set the drinks on the table as she and Pedrin, made little flirtatious growls at each other. “So, there were more of them?” Ophelia encouraged, trying to rekindle the tale after the disruption. “Was it a troop of the things?”“No, no it wasn’t, this other troll was one of the big mountain trolls. An old Larde Jötunn, as folks say not like the forest troll, this other one was huge like a part of the mountain. It looked around the crag at us and the first one and made a low awful sound, I felt it more than heard it like it was speaking through the ground and the rocks. For how long, I can’t say we were all just frozen there. It was like the earth and time had stopped and were holden their breath. Under the bright mother Moon in that glacier scar. Four men on the hill, troll on the ridge, and mountain king at the peak. Then the titan turned and left,” Pedrin breathed as a sigh. Remembering that part of encounter had stolen his bravado and the primal reverent fear of it was in his eyes. Ophelia knew from that look that this story was genuine. “Why did it go?” she asked. “My Opa, who knows more about them than I, figures it must have been chasing the first troll’s troop for a long time. The big ones love eating smaller trolls it must have chased them through the mountains from some place far north and eaten all but that last one. It didn’t come out of the crags because one that size couldn’t cross open country in the summer. There was not enough cover from the sun for one that big. They can only get so big and old by being careful about that kind of thing. It must have left to get back to the last place it could shelter before the dawn. Trolls are doggedly persistent about tracking prey when they pick them. With the big king finally of its back the forest troll looked back to us on the hill. It started sniffing, I could hear it even that far away it had smelled us, and the boar kill. The thing probably hadn’t eaten the whole time the other had been chasing it. The troll started shuffling down the rock to the glosson’s carcass and we ran. We moved double time until the sunrise, but we were all so shaken that we went on further. We only stopped when the sun got high and began to ravenously eat and drink. Opa said we weren’t rid of it. That troll would get the smell of us as it glutted on the kill and would likely hunt us now. We fortified a cleft with a fire and rough-cut wooden spears we only had a small game gun and a big revolver as firearms, we didn’t use them on the boar because that hunt was meant to be a natural primitive thing, I wouldn’t chance it again without some better weapons. We were the ones hunted now. We had found a cut in a riverbank too narrow for it to get through and built a fire. At the narrow point. We knew we should sleep while there was day light but even after a night of running, we couldn’t steal any. We kept a small torch to light the fire and waited. Still as statues, silent as the grave we waited as the sun went down. We waited as the waning mother moon climbed the sky. In the small cold hours before the dawn we finally dared to think that perhaps the mammoth boar had been enough, or that the beasts of the field had let it off. Weariness even made closing my eyes to find that much needed sleep a temptation. When we heard the thing sniffing. Branches broke and brush crackled as it smelled for us. A night and half a day of running as a lead and it still caught up. The big filthy nightmare tumbled to the mouth of the gap and tried to reach in. We lit the fire at the gap, put two spears in him, and plugged him will all six shots of the fifty-caliber revolver for it. God the thing screamed and flew into a tantrum. Roared and thrashed and started knocking over trees and throwing rocks. We reloaded and got ready for the next hit and when it went for us again got six more shots, three spears, a magazine from the game gun, and a jar of lamp oil for his trouble. The lamp oil caught blaze as it pulled it’s arm out through the fire. The things beard and body hair caught fire and it rolled and roared as it tried to put itself out in the stream. Almost would have almost been funny if I wasn’t a breath form death and about to piss myself. Well then, the old devil got an idea. It grabbed one of the trees and ran at the gap. The branches broke and shattered everywhere cutting and slashing us all up. Then it kept jamming the gap with the tree trunk and screaming. We tried to dodge it, but we all took hits. When it stopped and reached in again, we all hit it with the camp axes, and I put the boar's tusk into the brute’s eye. None of this was enough to kill the damned thing but that wasn’t the point. The point was to keep it hurt and mad enough to get it caught out into the light. That was the only way to hurt it enough to finish the thing off. We had to buy our time the troll started going at it with the tree trunk again broke my uncle’s ribs and busted my knee in a way that never did get right again. As I get older it has started getting worse, I felt it on our little jog today. We had to keep on like this until the lights of dawn started to glow in the east and the grey of starlight began. It stopped and looked at the sky behind it and oh, was it mad now thrashing and kicking over trees furious that it’s prey would see the light again. It lunged at the gap again more desperate and angrier now but that just let us really lay into the brute with ax, spear, and shot. It was like striking stone and wood, but it felt good to knock every chunk and chip off that disgusting thing. The old bugger finally tried to make a break for it and go find a place in the woods to hunker down. Opa let it get a distance and then shot off after it. Well, I thought he’d lost his wits. But then he stopped a ways from the mouth of the gap and he started chanting. It took a bit for me to make it out, but the old goblin was shouting scripture at the thing or sometimes just saying the names of God and the Angels. That made the thing turn heal and charge back at us again. Opa popped back in just before it could snatch him. We all caught on to what he’d done and started doing the same. The troll screamed and tried to shove itself into the gap so hard that it partly ripped off that second headlike growth on its shoulder. The tumor burst and my cousin got so sick he vomited, it was putrid I had forgot how foul till today I was about to do the same as the blood and puss from the tumor splashed me with hot stinking filth. When the troll got him pulled him outside. When the troll stood up the sun had crested, and the beast started to sizzle and burn in the light! “So, you turned it to stone at the last moment?” said Ophelia skeptically. “Wish that was how it played out little lady but no. the sunlight was still fairly weak, and it takes a long time in the full sun. The burns calcify that’s what makes that hard armor on the things. It even offers them some protection from light for the really big old Jötunn. Trolls have to be badly burnt all over to become immobilized. The brute started biting and gnawing my cousin’s leg until Opa put out its other eye with the revolver and started ringing a bell. It was a little golden church hand bell and when the troll heard it, he flung my cousin off into the brush.My uncle went after his boy of course what parent wouldn’t and this left Opa and me with the blinded raging troll. I have never seen a thing in more completely in the grip of anger as that creature. Like the way a brat throws a tantrum with no regard to how absurd a spectacle, they make of themselves. It floundered and kicked and bit anything it could grab, busting its own teeth on stones. All the while it sizzled and knotted over as Opa and I would shout hymns, sacred names, and holy verse. That kept it trashing around as it burned. We lost our voices and took to tossing the bell back and forth as we lead it into a meadow. Even then it was fully noon before the creature was too petrified to move. I have never felt so close to death myself as I did then. I was filthy, cut, and bleeding as soon as it was done all the weariness hit me at once. The fatigue of the flight and fight combined with the lack of sleep dulled all my thoughts and senses. My head and body ached, and my eyes had that awful, cracked dryness that long lack of sleep causes. Opa had a black eye that swelled closed he coached me through cutting it to let enough blood form the bruise to see. When both his eyes opened, he took my head in his old hard hands and said, ‘If that didn’t make a man of you nothing else will!’ God, I love that grizzled old wolf.We found my uncle and cousin back by the cleft in the creekbank he had bandaged him up and splinted his leg. We all washed off in the stream, it was cold snowmelt and I thought I would freeze but had to get that reek off me. Then we built a fire before succumbing to exhaustion. I woke up wondering how I was still living. The area around the stream looked like a tornado had struck it. My cousin had the worst of it. We had to haul him back on a skid which made that trek back far harder than the one out. He had to spend weeks in hospital to get over the infection that set in where the thing had bit him. He lost his foot to the rot, but you should hear this story as he tells it. My Opa and I went back in the fall and busted up the troll’s body into gravel with picks and hammers and buried it under a mound topped with a stone cut with a crossed disk. I had thought that a wicked thing like that would be shunned but nature, but fall weeds and nettles were already growing up round it. In death it was just a stone now. ‘Nature forgets things by eating them’ Opa told me. So that’s my troll tale I’m one of the few living people to have had an encounter like that. Most folks have never even seen one alive. Guess that makes me privileged in a way, but sure didn’t feel like that when it was all happening,” Pedrin concluded as he tossed back the brady in a single gulp. “That is quite a story,” agreed Ophelia as her imagination returned her to the brewhouse, there was an empty coffee cup and a half-eaten dumpling in front of her. She sipped the brandy slowly letting the flavor and the burn work to full effect. “You’ll have a tale or two to match when you get back from where you are heading,” he chuckled.“I would hope not nearly as grand as all that,” she laughed nervously. “Aye, I hope it to be not nearly so beastly but just as wondrous to tell is what I meant,” corrected Pedrin seeing how the remark had shaken her, “If you do encounter difficulty in your journey the best advice I can offer based on my own experience is this. Never give up no matter how dire a situation may seem. You mind and body will tell you that you can’t far before your limits are actually reached. You will always be astounded a what a person can survive.”“Thank you, that helps,” she smiled sweetly making, her escort grin gladly. They returned to the Hotel and said their goodnights to each other. Ophelia was impressed with how untouched Pedrin seemed after the sea of drinks he had imbibed during dinner, but he was still sharp. She bathed in the rooms rather whimsical fish shaped porcelain tub and settled into the large empty bed she read a while from the book of Job musing on the account of the Behemoth and the Leviathan. She lay there a long while in the dark looking at the ceiling still wide awake. It wasn’t the coffee or the sounds of the city. She was thinking about how even in the modern world it was still possible to have encounters with monsters at the edge of the map. Past the known was the shadow in both the world and in the mind, a place to which she was now heading....