I do not sleep untroubled, it is a fitful slumber where I constantly imagine I have awakened to find something terribly wrong. I have somehow missed work for a week, perhaps I cannot contact my family, perhaps something is wrong with my pets, perhaps I am reliving something from earlier in my life but twisted wrong. As such I feel far from refreshed when I jerk awake at the sensation of feathers against my back.
The alien limbs flare out and shove the blanket mostly away from me before hitting the wall and I barely avoid shoving myself off the straw mattress I was 'resting' upon. It takes me long moments to remember where I am, why my bed is a straw mattress and why I have wings. I remain half convinced that I have not yet woken up. Dragging my fingers through the unruly main of my far too long and far too red hair helps focus a little before I then fussily straighten feathers with muscle memory not at all my own.
Sadly this bizarre state has a reality absent from my unfocused half dreams and it fails to end as I scrub my face and hands before getting dressed into my stolen garments once again, apparently honoured by being given a private bedroom in my host's tiny castle. There are obvious signs that the cramped chamber belongs to somebody else, somebody absent, I got the impression that Grigoria has two children and that the eldest of them is currently absent and I was given her chamber to sleep in.
Two hours later I have been gifted a very lethal looking poleaxe and have spent far too long trudging through farmland and pastures while the four with me alternate between walking and leading their rangy horses. The weapon in my hands is all polished wood and gleaming steel, a broad axe blade counterweighted by what I can only describe as a meat tenderizer and capped with a near foot long spike atop a five foot pole, steel strips set flush into the wood ensure reinforcement for the last two feet of its length whilst a nasty looking spike weighs the butt.
Somehow, I seem to handle the heavy weapon as if it was an extension of my own body and without thought, I hold it in a way that seems to impress the quasi professional soldiers accompanying me. A quartet who seem all the more martial now that they have had time to prepare for battle.
Gregoria, the landed knight who rules this little territory, is almost entirely clad in steel. She is still wearing her brigantine from before, dozens of steel plates riveted to an exterior layer of velvet over her torso. This is worn over layered and padded linen whilst her limbs are clad in articulated and intricately overlapping steel, the fabric beneath woven with mail that covers her armpits and groin to ensure there are literally no gaps in the metal coverage apart from the eye slits of her helm, though she wears the visor up for now.
I can sense a certain presence from the black lacquered steel, a subtle pressure, when I peer very closely I can discern impossible to describe and glowing runes somehow set into the metal. Her son Markos is wearing very similar gear that emanates a less forceful presence and lacks as much in the way of black lacquer or brass ornamentation though he is similarly clad in steel.
I rather wish I was clad in steel.
The other two accompanying us are distinctly less protected. Photios, the middle aged sergeant? He is wearing a brigantine of similar design over mail, solid metal protecting his elbows and knees along with plated gauntlets and a similar helm to his employer, though lacking that pressure of magic. His legs are unprotected below the knee outside of layered fabric and thick leather boots. Conversation before we set off has established he is the head of Grigoria's household when not looking grim and cradling a crossbow.
Ioulia, the final member of our party, is a muscular woman in her mid twenties who is apparently responsible for the horses. She is also six foot tall and built like a brick shithouse, though fighting is very much a part time thing for her? She is wearing layered and quilted wool, a helmet, gauntlets, then linked iron rods along the outside of each of her limbs. I can only suppose that this is much cheaper than the more comprehensive protection of the others.
All four of them are on rangy looking horses with the two fully armoured individuals having two handed swords and lances, the others with lighter spears, one handed swords and either a crossbow of javelins. We are patrolling through the evening twilight for trolls and I actually find that keeping pace with the horses is surprisingly easy.
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Some mental conversion of measurements has established that I am roughly six foot nine inches tall and I suspect that I weight close to three hundred pounds with a distinct lack of body fat outside of that require to provide a weirdly idealised female figure. It is hard to judge though given I have no idea how much wings weigh. Also I am focusing on that kind of thing rather than the real implications of my being in a weird fantasy medieval world in a body not my own. Certainly my sense of 'power' remains barely increased after some hours of fitful sleep, whatever I did to incinerate those soldiers was apparently a long term drain and not something I plan to repeat.
So I trudge through arid fields, at the moment my armoured companions are all on horseback, we hear a scream in front of us. Spurs are wielded and the group surges ahead, I instinctively flare out my wings to catch at the air and charge after them with frankly inhuman speed, though I fall behind.
When I arrive? I see three hulking dark green figures who can generously be described as humanoid in the middle of a field of grass. One looked to be in the middle of tearing a goat in half, there is a woman in rough clothing running away and shouting, Photios is firing his crossbow into one of the others as it brandishes what looks like half of a small tree.
The bolt strikes home and the brutishly featured creature roars, Grigoria and Markos hold back as Markos starts to work on reloading the weapon and Ioulia rides forward. She casts a steel tipped javelin into another of the trolls and catches it in the outside of an arm to what seems like minimal effect, turning abruptly and galloping her horse to the side. I labour onward on foot, the three trolls seem concerned.
Another javelin, this time hitting the creature in the stomach and stumbling it, though Ioulia is now left with a light spear and her one handed sword as she brings her horse around. Whilst the monsters are obviously quick they simply cannot catch the horses and Photios then fires his crossbow once again into the unmolested but goat blood stained third troll. It sprouts a bolt from the side of it's head but mostly seems annoyed.
This is apparently the signal for Markos and Grigoria to spur their horses forwards with lances levelled and they each take an oblique approach, not frontally charging but heading past the two forward most trolls. Each is nearly impaled through the torso before the two fully armoured individuals peel off, Grigoria doing so neatly whilst Markos is clipped by a crude club, nearly falling from the saddle and obviously hurt.
Neither troll simply falls to the ground though both roar in agony, Grigoria smoothly unsheathes her longsword and I can see the blade glowing with light even as her son fumbles with his own weapon, is his right arm even working right now? His armour seems merely scuffed. I get within reach and lunge for the closest creature.
Instinctively, I flare my wings, gull flight feathers, I feel a purchase upon the air that launches me forward with inhuman force as I impale the leading troll's head with the spike of the poleaxe. The wooden haft simply shatters in my grasp and the creature collapses dead, I drop into a low crouch amidst flared pinions as my sword leaps to my hand with reflexes absolutely not my own.
Somehow I take in the situation. Photios is working to reload his crossbow, Ioulia, apparently the groom and wearing only light armour, circles with her spear levelled. Markos is feeling in the saddle with a half drawn sword and his mother Gregoria charges one of the injured trolls. She turns her horse at the last moment, the monster stabs with a wooden spear only for her to slide both the weapon and her foe's arm in a single slash, her glowing blade cutting through oak and flesh as if passing through water.
The third troll is sporting a crossbow bolt from the side of his, its? Whatever, from the troll's face as it turns to me with what looks like half a tree in its burly hands. It swings and a snap of my wings brings me backward with inhuman agility and speed before I flick my sword forward, it bellows as I neatly amputate two fingers from my new foe.
Ioulia charges in and grazes my opponent with her spear before galloping away on horseback, Grigoria keeps slashing at the trolls she is facing, forcing it back, the monster streaming and bleeding. Then something impacts her and she is thrown from her saddle, her enchanted armour holding firm though I wince a little at the though of what the impact does as she hits the ground and her horse flees.
Two more trolls surge from the hedge, the pasture 'fenced' with a dense line of brambles and piled stone that seems to leave no impression upon the thick skin of the creatures, one of whom just tossed what looked like a thirty pound boulder into the knight and cast her from her saddle.
Obviously I cannot afford to hesitate. My foe is reeling, missing two fingers, grazed by a lance, I step forward and cut at them. Low, they try to parry, high, I clip their face. Wincing they try to sweep their falteringly held club at me only for me to leap atop the weapon and lunge high once again. The monster falls with my sword buried in its head and I pull the steel blade clear.
One of the monsters is rushing for the downed Grigoria and nobody seems positioned to respond. I burn and the evening grey is abruptly turned to searing light as a ring of sun bright fire manifests above my brow. Everything is delineated by knife edged shadow, in the light, or cast into darkness.