King of the Goblins 2—Chapter 37

We kept our pace a bit slower after that, as everyone was on the lookout for trolls. I wanted to stay true to my word, at least as much as possible. There were innocent trolls. There were also assholes that I planned on setting on fire, but there were innocent ones.

“Remember, we only attack the warriors,” I said. “No one touch any women or children. If they attack you first, you can defend yourselves, but otherwise I want to focus on killing their king.”

“Well, isn’t that honorable of you,” Silvy said.

“So, the language spell you cast on me was troll magic?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Kind of. It’s a type of tribal magic used by several different races. Did that troll woman claim it was troll magic?”

“Yeah, she did. And she said this King Jack guy had the spell cast on him as well.”

“Tracks,” a soldier called out. A second later he spoke up again. “Nevermind. They’re everywhere.”

“Alright, we should be getting close,” I said, just loud enough for the soldiers to hear me. “Keep your eyes open and let the rest of the party know when you see something. Remember the hand signals?”

Each of the soldiers raised their left hand and gave me the signal for “yes.”

“Perfect. Let’s get this done, fellas.”

After an hour of walking, the troll city came into view. The wall of logs that surrounded it did a great job of helping the entire place fade into the land around it. It was still too far away to tell, but I thought I could climb the wall without any real trouble. 

As we drew closer, I motioned for the soldiers to shrink the size of our group. I hoped that would make it harder for us to be detected. 

Eventually, we saw the trolls. Men and women, even some children, all walking around the area immediately surrounding the city.

I liked kids, which was especially good considering I was going to have a lot of them. I wasn’t one of those people that said babies looked like aliens. I thought they were all beautiful in their own way, and absolutely precious when they reached the toddler stage and started talking. Honestly, I couldn’t wait to be a dad.

All that being said, holy shit those troll kids were ugly. They were somehow fat and lanky at the same time, with round stomachs and skinny arms and legs. Their faces were like a Disney-fied version of an adult troll face, which is to say a fucking nightmare. I suddenly wasn’t so sure I wanted that troll woman to name her kid after me any longer.

But then I reminded myself that they were kids. They were sponges for knowledge, and were innocent until they were taught to be assholes by people like this King Jack guy. Those kids deserved to grow up in a better world. A world without tyrants.

“This way,” I said, motioning for everyone to start moving slightly to our left. South, I thought.

“Do you want me to come with you when you sneak into the city?” Althidon asked. 

“I don’t want to risk any of you,” I said. “When we’re done we’ll burn down his palace, and we’ll probably have to fight our way out after that. But I’ll kill him myself.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” he asked.

“King Jack is human,” I replied. “My blood magic will make short work of him.”

Althidon nodded. “As long as you’re certain. I just don’t want any kind of repeat of last time.”

“Trust me, I understand,” I said. “And besides, if I—”

A goblin soldier screamed from behind me, and I turned around just in time to watch him die.

A massive troll had the goblin man in his huge hands, and he brought the soldier up to his mouth and took a bite like he was a chicken wing. The troll bit him right on the side of the face, his teeth crunching through goblin bones like they were a crunch taco shell. The goblin soldier convulsed as blood poured down in a flood, and the troll jerked his head to the side, tearing half the soldier’s head off. He threw the rest of the body to the ground and laughed around a mouthful of bone and face meat.

“Troll, behind us!” I said, raising my spear. 

The goblin soldiers were ready in a heartbeat. All of them, spears up, circled the troll. While this troll wasn’t wearing any armor, I noticed he was especially huge. Probably one of the warriors.

The soldiers lunged with their spears, trying to poke the troll full of holes, but his gray-green skin was thick and hard to penetrate. They barely managed to break the skin in a few places. It was like trying to stab a rhinoceros. The troll laughed at our attempts and cursed at us, calling us pathetic, and pests.

I stepped up with my spear raised, but reached out with blood magic. These trolls were resistant to it, but I did my best and tried to pull blood from his brain. He shook his massive head and roared in anger, then swung his hand around, knocking spears aside.

Silvy was suddenly next to me, chanting in a language I didn’t understand. She was going to do something with troll magic. I had seen a few days ago how devastating it could be.

The troll grabbed onto a spear and snatched it to him, yanking a goblin soldier with him. He moved shockingly fast for such a large beast. 

The soldier didn’t stand a chance. The troll stomped on him, then reached down and grabbed an arm and pulled. He tore the poor soldier’s arm off and threw it at the others. The soldier screamed in agony, but he died shortly after that.

Gallu was suddenly there. Her face was a mask of fear, but I felt her draw magic into herself. A gout of flame blasted from her upraised palm and slammed into the troll’s chest. 

The troll beat at the flames and immediately stumbled backward. Gallu kept up her attack, and flames rose from the ground beneath him, burning his legs. The skin on the troll’s thighs bubbled and he tried to scramble away. Gallu set his clothes on fire after that.

One particularly brave soldier rushed the troll and rammed his spear right into the back of the monster’s knee. He put enough force behind his attack that it actually penetrated. The troll roared in pain and stumbled, sinking to a knee. He tried to push himself back up, but one of Taranath’s arrows suddenly sprouted from his eye.

“Hey, I found a soft spot!” Taranath said as he nocked another arrow. 

The second arrow took the troll in the side of the head, but didn’t fully penetrate. Still, it left a bloody gash on the troll’s head.

“I don’t understand how their skin can be so damn tough,” Taranath said as he snatched another arrow from his quiver. 

The troll shouted obscenities and one of Taranath’s arrows went right down his throat. Immediately after, a wave of fire burned him again. No one could survive that, not even a troll. He fell to the ground, and a few moments later, died.

I immediately checked my party for injuries. Two of my soldiers had died hard deaths, but no one else had been injured. The soldier that had stabbed the troll in the back of the knee turned out to be the young soldier that had asked me for sex advice. Well, I told him I’d put in a good word for him, and he definitely earned it.

Tressi pulled water from the air and smothered the troll with it, trying to keep the smell of char and burned flesh down. Trolls had keen senses of smell, so we wanted to avoid that at all costs. After that we hurried from the area, putting as much distance as we could between us and the corpse.

“It’s over that way,” I said in a loud whisper, pointing to the far right part of the troll city wall. Even from that distance I could see the peaked roof of Jack’s palace above the wall. 

Even after facing down a troll, I found myself a bit nervous at the thought of confronting this Jack fellow. I knew everything would be fine—he was human, so my blood magic would obliterate him. But something about it just made me nervous.

We came across several more trolls, even a group of them, but we managed to steer ourselves around them. Tressi, Silvy, and Gallu used magic to change the direction of the breeze so the trolls couldn’t smell us. I thought I was going to have nightmares about trolls sneaking up on me after that incident.

The troll city grew closer and I grew more nervous. Silvy could sense my discomfort and reached out, taking hold of my arm. 

And then, we were there. The land surrounding the city wall had been cleared for a hundred feet, so we all hid in the treeline. Thick logs had been driven into the ground, making a wall that I hoped wouldn’t be too hard to climb. The roof of Jack’s palace was there, looming over the rest of the city. A tall flagpole rose from the side of the roof, with a banner waving in the breeze. It was blood red with a black skull. How fucking cringey.

“Are you ready?” Silvy asked. She gave my arm a squeeze.

I grabbed the shadow stone and held it in my palm. “Yeah, I’m ready,” I said. 

“Sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Althidon asked. “There might be others to deal with in there.”

“The floors look more human-sized, at least from here,” I said, pointing at Jack’s palace. “He probably did that on purpose, so the trolls have to bow and scrape for him. I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

And with that, I popped the shadow stone in my mouth. It was time.