"Thus, the Fifth Elder embraced them once more and spoke. 'For that my children have been given so worthless a thing, I shall give you another', and the Fifth Elder put a blessing upon the Children of Dusk and their line. With strange powers flowing through them, Githendril and Yisendril woke the ice and rock in the growing dark and built a great hall, the likes of which there was and is and shall be no equal. And so, weakened by the giving, the Fifth Elder lay down to rest and fell into eternal slumber. The first day was ended and the first night was come upon Creation."
-'Song of the Elders', Circa -1392 PC, Author Unknown.
***
All was shadowed in the dim light of the midnight sun, but the two elves huddled behind their rocky ledge had no trouble spotting their prey.
There'd been reports of a disturbance from the isolated holding of Feolduen and some of the neighboring Bjarmalander settlements: missing livestock, damaged property, and a lingering stench even the cold failed to mask. These were all signs that lead to one possible conclusion.
They were dealing with a troll.
Three trolls, as it turned out. The two elves had spent the better part of a week tracking their prey through the barren tundra of the Northern Plains until they'd cornered them against the foothills of the Amrothuilye, the great mountains at the Edge of Night.
It was boring, miserable work this deep into winter; they'd had nothing to eat but hardtack for the past few days and even the softest bedroll did little to improve upon the harsh cut of the frozen plain.
All of that was forgotten in the present moment, both elves focused on the task at hand. After so long with nothing to occupy themselves with other than riding and tracking the creatures, they were primed for action.
The smaller of the two elves, Alvanue, crawled to the top of their hiding spot for a better view. Silver hair whipping with the force of a coming storm, her keen eyes locked on their quarry a hundred feet ahead. Her nose wrinkled at the stench thrown back at her with the wind. She saw two hulking shapes dismembering the remains of a muskox, each easily forty stone heavy and ten feet tall, while the third lay down beside them.
The trolls' camp, if one could call it such, was littered with the frozen skeletons of half a dozen different animals and what looked like several humanoid figures. It was surprising that they had managed to make their home here for so long without detection, but then again, the winter storms had been much fiercer that season. When even Moon Elves struggled to make it through a winter squall unscathed accustomed as they were to the cold and the dark, it was easy to imagine how difficult it'd been for the nearby human refugees.
The trolls were completely occupied with mangling their stolen meal while their companion rested. It was the perfect time for Alvanue to make her move.
With a silent motion to her fellow tracker, she put on her pack and crept closer.
In more clement conditions, it would be ease itself to knock an arrow and fell the trolls where they stood. With the winds blowing as strong as they were towards them, however, she was like as not to take out her own eye as hit her target.
Edhalan, the second of the two elves, followed close behind as she edged around black spurs of ice and stone, drawing nearer to the unsuspecting beasts. If one had never seen a troll before, one could be forgiven for mistaking it for an exceptionally tall, ugly old man covered in hair, if seen at a distance. The difference would only become clear upon closer inspection: they had long, sharp teeth set in a twisted, pale-skinned face, and hungry yellow eyes. Long, leathery paws ended in three fingers tipped with black claws. Yellow-white fur, reeking and matted, covered them from head to toe. As one of the few predators in the hinterlands that matched ice bears for strength and direwolves for ferocity, they were considered all the more dangerous for their eerie intelligence.
Silthonduen had made an easy peace with the lowland packs in the past, those which bothered no one so long as they had enough to eat. In Alvanue's limited experience, their lowland cousins could be rather docile creatures, protecting the roads and open country from other animals in exchange for salted whale and metal trinkets.
These three must have been of the old stock, come down from their dens in the Amrothuilye to hunt. Hard winters tended to draw them out of the mountains in search of deer and...other sources of meat. These highland trolls, unlike the lowland packs, were nothing but trouble and posed a great threat to lesser fortified human settlements in the shadow of the mountains. As wardens of the land, it was her people's duty to root them out and extinguish them before the infestation spread and human casualties rose.
Alvanue and Edhalan circled round to a low rise not ten feet from the trolls, careful all the while to keep downwind of them lest they be scented too soon and spoil the hunt.
Edhalan unstrung his bow and tucked it away in favor of the short sword at his hip. Meanwhile, Alvanue reached up to what might look to anyone from modern Earth like a gun holster. A little something Alvanue had...invented herself, it was strapped tight over her armor, not in any danger of sliding across the snow slick metal or limiting her range of movement. She pulled two Silverwood wands free from it, one for each hand, and looked over to her partner. Silent words passed between them as the wind howled over that benighted waste. Finally, he nodded.
Quick as the raging winds, silent as death, they vaulted over the slope and began their attack.
One of the beasts was felled before it could even realize there was a threat. The wet plop of its head hitting the icy ground was what alerted the other to their presence.
It stared at its fallen packmate, stunned, before turning to the two elves with murder in its hateful eyes. Roaring in rage, it raised a severed ox leg high in the air and charged them. Alvanue fired blasts of violet lightning from her wands at it but the troll blocked them with its impromptu bludgeon. The already mangled limb exploded in a shower of burnt flesh and smoking bone, doing more harm to the two elves than it did the creature.
Shaking the gore from his armor, Edhalan swung his sword in a low arc as he sprinted forward, aiming to gut the beast in one swing. To his detriment, he was too focused on his form to notice the shaggy arm rushing straight for him. Ducking much too late to avoid it, he was slapped square in the face by the trolls open handed paw, his nose crunching audibly. The usually graceful elf flipped head over heels with the force of the strike, landing in a snow drift a good seven feet behind him. He was lucky. If he hadn't been thrown back, the troll could have crushed his skull like an egg.
On any other occasion, Alvanue might have laughed at the sight of her comrade being laid low in such a spectacular fashion. Regrettably, she had no time to do so. She still had an enraged troll and its miraculously still sleeping packmate to deal with, and now she was facing them alone.
With the loss of her teammate, she had to think a little more strategically than she'd otherwise planned. Unfortunately, strategy had never been her strong suit. As her sire had often described her, she was 'an elf of action and little else'. He didn't mean it as a compliment. She faced her snarling opponent, purple eyes locking with yellow, as they sized each other up. Keeping her distance, she tried to weigh her options.
Edhalan was down for the count which nixed any pincer attack she might have employed. The wands she was using were not the best quality, but they should have enough power left to fire off a few more charges of Visandri's Lightning Bolt, or something of equivalent strength. After they were drained, she'd have to tap into her own mana reserves, a dangerous prospect this far from home, and make use of the two blades secured to her thigh. She could continue like this and lead the troll away from Edhalan while he recovered, but that still left him at the mercy of the sleeping one should it wake up. The sound of roaring jolted her from her calculations.
It seemed the troll had grown impatient with her, and so saved her from making the first move.
It fell forward on all fours and started galloping straight at her. The earth shook as it thundered across ice and stone. Alvanue gritted her teeth, hopping from foot to foot as she stared her opponent in its hateful eyes.
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"Come on," she snarled. "Come and get me."
She waited until the last possible second before rolling out of the way, sliding to a stop in time to see the stupid thing run headfirst into a piece of rock jutting up from the earth she hadn't realized was behind her. It collided with a sick crack before collapsing back into its rump.
"Huh. I guess that works."
The troll sat dumbly where it had fallen, shaking its head and lowing in pain. Knowing an opportunity when she saw one, Alvanue flicked both wands at its exposed neck, a string of curses spilling from her lips.
"Visandri's Lightning Bolt! Withering of Riselad! Nimara's Burning Touch!"
Crackling bolts of energy the color of a bruise arced between her and the thing, setting her hair on end. The troll, slow to react and still recovering from the blow to its head, was flattened against the dark stone, dingy mane burnt to nothing and flesh turned to ashes under the force of her spells. It didn't even have enough time to scream before Alvanue's magic had cut a smoking line through its neck and its ugly head was rolling across the earth to join its packmate. Dark veins of putrescence traced through the charred stump of its neck and crackles of static electricity flashed blue from its gaping mouth.
That might've been overkill. Just a bit, she thought to herself.
Pausing a moment to catch her breath, Alvanue took stock of things. Two down, one to go. She herself was unharmed while Edhalan was still lying crumpled in the snow pile he'd been slapped into.
Most people would be worried after someone took a hit like that, but she knew he was made of tougher stuff. His nose was most definitely broken but it would be shameful for an elf to be killed or seriously injured by something so minor as the hit he'd taken. He'd be hurting when he woke up, his pride more than anything, but it was nothing a good ribbing and a healing draught couldn't cure.
The wand in her left hand was fried, the pale wood gone smokey and the tip sparking with manaburn. Annoying, seeing as she would have to carve more when she returned home, and they were time consuming to bind, but that wasn't important at the moment. The righthand wand still felt like it had a good bit of energy to it, so she dropped the dead one and replaced it with a dagger.
Thus rearmed, she approached the last of her targets.
She stepped gingerly over the corpses of what looked like a human shepherd and one of their flock to crouch down next to the prone body of the third troll.
It was larger than the others, most likely female. They tended to put on more weight to better feed their pups. The fur was more gray than white, a common feature among lowland breeds. It was strange to see trolls from the plains and those from the mountains interacting.
Tentatively, she struck out with her dagger to knick it with the tip of the blade. The creature did not move. Emboldened but still wary of a trick, she pushed it on its back with the tip of her boot.
And she realized why it had not reacted.
The thing had been gutted, most likely by the two trolls she and Edhalan had dispatched. A territory war, a show of dominance or just simple hunger, she did not know why they had done it, but it was still disturbing to see. Trolls rarely harmed their own kind, even the bloodthirsty beasts from the mountains. The body was not frozen stiff, so it had been killed recently. Maybe even in the final hours when she and Edhalan were closing in on the trolls' camp.
Its face was wizened and discolored with windburn, the mark of an old female in its second or third decade, probably of an age with Alvanue herself. This creature had already been at the end of its natural life when it was butchered. By elven standards, Alvanue was still considered a child even at 34 years of age.
With gentle hands, she slid the troll's milky white eyes closed and patted a hand on the part of its chest that had not been ripped open.
"Sleep well, old girl," she said, and made the Elder Sign in respect. If it was from one of the packs her family patronized, it deserved a proper burial. The humans wouldn't do it, conflating it with the beasts that had killed their clansmen, and so she did it herself, piling rocks on top of it to keep scavengers from getting to the body.
She was interrupted in her ritual by the strange cooing of something to the poor creature's right. From where she had pushed its body, she could see that the troll had been lying atop a narrow crag in the rocky ground. Easy enough to miss, even with her sharp vision, except for the hint of movement she could detect in the gloom.
Reaching a hand in, she felt something soft and warm and grabbed hold of it. She slid the thing out of the hiding spot to better see what it was and froze.
She could not say what she had been expecting to find, but it was definitely not a troll pup, dangling from its back foot where she held it in the air.
The little troll, its fur brilliant white with youth, gurgled at her with its pink, toothless mouth. It continued to dangle there for a moment longer before Alvanue collected herself and held it more securely in her arms. She looked down at it before turning her head to look back at what must have been its mother.
She stayed like that for a while, the pup making happy noises in her arms and while she stared contemplatively at the cairn covering the gored remains of the female. The groaning from behind her as Edhalan pulled himself free of the snow was what eventually snapped her back to the present.
The dark-haired elf sat up woozily, a hand pressing delicately into the bloody skin under his nose.
"Morning, sleepyhead," she said. "Took you long enough to wake up."
"Guh," he said intelligently.
"Don't worry, I took care of the other troll for ya."
She stood and grinned at him. Edhalan glared up at her and cradled his head in his hands.
"I still got the first one, that means we're 1-to-1," he said.
"2-to-1," she corrected smugly, motioning at the pile of rocks. From the cairn, one clawed paw poked out.
His eyes widened as he realized what she meant.
"Wha- That doesn't count! I was knocked out!"
"It totally counts, don't be such a whiner."
"It does not. That's hardly fair! I didn't even get a shot at it."
Still a little wobbly, he managed to pull himself up off the ground without falling over. He was in the process of knocking excess snow off his armor when he realized she was holding something.
"Alvanue, what is that?"
The pup reached up and started playing with a lock of hair falling over her shoulder, fascinated with the silvery strands.
"Hmm?" she said. "Oh, just a baby troll."
Edhalan blinked and shook his head as if to make sure he hadn't been knocked silly as well as unconcious.
"A...baby troll."
Alvanue beamed and turned to present it to him.
"Yep!" she said.
"Well, put it back!" Edhalan said.
"Where?" she asked and arched an eyebrow.
"I don't know, wherever you found it!"
She looked from its mother's body to the stormy plains around them.
"No."
"What do you mean 'no'?"
"I mean no, I'm not putting it back."
"Alvanue, there's no way you're taking that back with us." Trying to look serious and authoritative, he put his foot down firmly. "I forbid it."
"Oh, calm down, Edhalan. You're not the boss of me. What I say goes and I say the baby's coming with us," she said.
It did nothing to lessen Edhalan's ire that she was completely ignoring him in favor of mumbling nonsense at the happy little pup in question.
"Technically, his majesty is my boss and part of my job is to make sure you don't do something stupid like, oh, I don't know, exactly what you're doing right now!"
It was true that Edhalan, while a very capable elf in his own right, had only gone out on this mission because Alvanue was assigned it. His family had served under hers since the coming of the elves to Endrillond and he executed his duty with no small amount of pride. When he had been asked to serve as companion and guard to the young Silthondrim heir at the celebration of her tenth year, he'd felt nothing but honor as he pledged his loyalty to her. It was times like these, however, that he regretted ever accepting the position and considered pursuing a different career entirely.
"Well, what are you going to do with it? You plan on raising it? His majesty may spoil you rotten but this is most likely a step too far." If reason didn't work, he would try fear instead. His majesty Lord Githanduin was a good elf and an even better ruler but Edhalan could not see him tolerating a troll living under his roof.
Alvanue shrugged.
"I say tough shit, the old man'll get over it."
Edhalan scowled at her and said nothing, which she took as a victory.
Alvanue leaned down to grab some of the less ragged cloths left by the trolls' victims and wrapped them around the little pup. It was getting colder as the storm rolled in and besides, the people they had once belonged to had little use for them now. She marked the spot on her map so locals could come and collect their loved ones come springtime when the ice had melted some. Solemnly, she made the Elder Sign once more with Edhalan begrudgingly following suit. Whoever they were, their resting place deserved reverence.
They went to first one and then the other of the decapitated trolls, the one felled by Alvanue still smoking ever so slightly. Edhalan cut off the left ear of each and handed them to Alvanue. As she tucked them away into her pack, he brought his face almost nose to nose with one of them. He thought that they smelled even worse in death, no small feat.
"Why the Elders saw fit to make such ugly bastards, I'll never know," he muttered.
"I don't know, the little ones are pretty cute. Aren't you, little love, yes you are," Alvanue said and nuzzled into her chirruping pup.
Edhalan rolled his eyes and wound himself up for another stab at reasoning with Alvanue.
The lectures lasted the entire treck back to their mounts. She simply ignored him.
They'd tied up their snow deer in a little alcove protected from the wind and snow, far away from the troll camp. The animals could handle both the cold and the storm, but if the trolls had smelled the animals before the attack, the ambush would have been ruined.
The deer were too well trained to shy away from them as Alvanue and Edhalan came close, but they churned the snow with their hooves in agitation at the scent of troll blood and death on their riders.
Edhalan soothed them while his silver haired companion loosened their bonds, a hand rubbing slow circles on the spot between their pale antlers.
Once everything was in order, he hopped up into his saddle and took up the reigns. He waited while Alvanue made a hasty sling from the cloth she had salvaged and secured the pup to her chest. After that, they took off into the snow, the deer as quick as the coming storm.
It was time to go home.