(Couple disclaimer's, first I am sorry for lack of formatting. I'm posting this from my phone while on a long vacation. I'll fix it when I get home. Second, you are hereby warned that this content gets fairly graphic, as in violent. If you're squeamish, well...you're warned. Enjoy.)
In this long since ventured land, with a heavy breath Zaiss Kromwell finishes climbing the hill. It was long and steep, and in preparation for possible dangers, he left Boo, his horse, down below at the base. Not that these mountains were anything but perilous. At the top of the hill, a clearing with a dug pit meant for a fire is centered near a large and gaping jaw of a cavern. Trampled leaves are in abundance at its entrance, stretching a good twenty feet tall and likely over thirty wide. His sword is then drawn slowly, as he quietly steps forth with promise. If it is what he thinks it was, danger would lie here, and certainly within may lie the treasure he seeks. His right hand thumb clutches his sword, but reaches past the hilt and under his ring finger to privately call upon his beloved’s spirit to guide him from where he left her.
Quietly past the pit and facing the abyss of darkness on the overcast day, light only barely shining through the trees upon the precipice already. He holds his breath, closes his eyes briefly and opens his ears and nose. The wind from behind, but for a solid minute nothing ahead, and no discernible fresh scent of good or otherwise. No clattering, no huffing of a sleeping behemoth, no grunts or shifting, silence. He does not smile, for he is not stupid. Perhaps the cave is abandoned, but that would likely mean it is empty. Perhaps the beast that called this place home died long ago, which would make him lucky. Perhaps it is still there, too deep to be heard cooking a broth and waiting for some fool to wander in and become dinner. It matters not, he came all this way and was not leaving without checking everywhere. Zaiss Kromwell will not return home without his prize.
Lighting a torch, he softly enters the cave, holding it aloft to illuminate his path. This may be tougher than the goblin trove he encountered some weeks ago, but it would not be impossible. He’s played a part in something similar before, but not alone. Much to his joy, it does not appear very deep as he glides past a jagged boulder stuck out from the ground. The faint light from outside covers most of the belly of this hole, and with what appears to be an abandoned cauldron tilted over on a wall collecting dust, it would appear unlikely that the master of this house remains. His sword and torch remain out, and a glint beneath the debris catches his eye, then two, or even three. Zaiss nearly chuckles, not able to believe his luck, an empty troll horde.
He approaches the glint and tosses the torch into a nearby pile of sticks, leaves, and dust to light a brief living fire as he uncovers the treasure. His eyes do not deceive him as he uncovers the very first of four weapons, buried slightly in the shadow of time within these naturally bored walls. The hilt of an elvish make longsword, inlaid with blue and white gems that are paired with an inscription he certainly cannot read, and sheathe to match. He cannot help but to whisper to himself, “I told you I would find it...” He quietly calls out to the one who had suggested him to search in these lands.
However before he can marvel at it or even the rest of his findings, a large thud sounds, followed by the sound of rushing wind behind him as a great force approaches him without time for reaction. A massive club fashioned of a great fallen tree slams squarely into his chest. The wind is knocked from him, but his sword hand was steeled, and he carries it with him through the air as he is flung back neatly into the boulder near the entrance with a wallop. His back collides with the rock and for a moment he slumps, gasping for air, but the adrenaline pumps through him as he becomes immediately aware of his newest plight as the thunderous sound of hulking feet approach him. A horrid, guttural shriek echoes through the cave, and thinking quickly he rolls forward just as the monster approaches him, narrowly avoiding as it cracks the club down where he was by sliding just between its legs.
His sword sings as he comes out of the roll, twisting out of his movement and slashing at the back of the mountain troll's legs, severing some tender flesh on its calves. This, of course, does not stop it from turning to face him, bringing its club with it in a distinct backhanded strike. Trolls are big, and another hit could be his death, but they are slower than him. Zaiss slings his blade down over his head on the monstrosity’s wrist as he ducks just in case. The troll howls and the club leaves its fingers, flying across the cavern with a thud somewhere deep within, and staggers back as Zaiss grunts, bringing the sword in an uppercut across the beast's belly. Zaiss smiles as he finds himself doing quite well, expecting the exhaustion to come after he takes it down, and with his few moments of unadulterated time, he unleashes a flurry of swings at the creature’s legs. All is looking up.
Zaiss overextends however, trying to take his foe down in a single combination of cuts and jabs, and a vice clamps around his head. He cries out as his temples are pressed and he is lifted with ease off the ground, a large thumb curled over his eye socket. Zaiss swings his sword desperately, but is stopped as his arm is grabbed. Expecting it to break he struggles to save his good arm, but he fails to meet the troll's intent, and learns this in a rather quick and visceral manner. The troll curls its thumb more, and its untrimmed fingernails digs into his eye, gouging it almost immediately. Zaiss shrieks in pain as he loses his vision to a crimson rain, and he begins to leak much more than tears from one side of his face. He brings the sword up towards his head, knowing if he is not careful he may end himself, but he has to get free, or it will surely crush his skull.
Luckily the tip and blade sinks firmly into the side of the troll's palm, striking a nerve, forcing it to release him. He clatters to the ground from its grip, and even as the pain surges across his eye, he stands and arms himself with his long dagger. As he jabs at the great enemy’s knees, it plucks his sword from its hand like a splinter and drops it. Arming itself with a large jagged rock it breaks from the walls of its home, the troll brings its attack from his blinded side, knocking him to the floor, breaking bits of rock off as it impacts with him, further turning the stone to a dangerously sharp implement.
Zaiss wheezes as he is knocked prone again, and begins to fidget with his off hand for the sword he knows to be nearby. Zaiss will lose more of himself as the troll grabs his legs in one hand in one massive swoop, and uses the rock to begin bashing the hand reaching for the sword with the jagged rock Though many pieces of his hand break immediately, Zaiss is unfortunate enough to feel one by one until three of his fingers are severed from him. He wails in pain, using the dagger to try and jab wildly at his foe, the dread of death beginning to sink in and addle his decisions. His vision half impaired and the pain starting to set in from the numerous wounds and the tossing of his body around the cave, he does not hit anything, and much to his dismay the rock leaves his one hand alone to violently crash into his other mid-thrust, knocking his dagger clean from his fingers.
The troll, gathering its prey to be disarmed, lowers itself unto his restrained legs, and picks one to set in its mouth. Its teeth sink in just under his knee, and with a sickening crunch and a loud snap, off it comes. Zaiss screams again, both in pain and now in fear. His mind begins to race to what he left behind as his life expectancy becomes shorter and shorter. His friends, his horse Boo. His beloved, for whom it is that he came to be in this place. It is not hatred, malice, nor anger that draws his right arm so effortlessly over his body as his leg is devoured. It is not fear nor hope that finds his discarded sword and wraps his fingers round the hilt. It is not vengeance nor absolution that raises it aloft, the tip held downward as he sits up with a last effort. It is his love that does this, and love that brings the sword down upon the troll's head.
The first stab seems to shock the abomination, but Zaiss does not wait for its reaction. WIth what remains of his strength and then some, he raises it from between the troll’s eyes and sinks it down again, and again, and again. He stabs at it so hard and wrathful that his blade, weakened by a few wayward rock-fisted hits of the troll's fury, breaks off in the skull of his enemy. This is when the sounds of his leg being mangled and gnashed are replaced by the dripping of liquid and a battle won. Zaiss drops the broken sword and crawls quickly, knowing he has moments, nay, seconds until he passes out from the loss of his own blood and dies from it. No one knows where he is, no one is coming. Quickly as he can, he crawls to the earlier lit fire, and with reckless abandon he swipes up his torch and sears his leg without a moment's pause. The pain and shock takes him quickly, and his last breathless seconds are spent hoping and praying that his hand is held to his wound long enough to burn it shut. As his working eye flutters to a close, he finds himself wishing to wake, as painful as it may be.
In pain he does waken after a long, ethereal dream of lights of white and gold, silken cloths dancing in the wind, and a faint glint of two blue eyes. He jolts up and grunts, then he screams. Desperately he looks to his leg, and exhales in relief as he finds his patch job, whenever it was that he had done it, was good enough. Unsure of how long it had been, he glances with his working eye to his left hand, where his index finger and little finger have been lost entirely, and his middle finger is half of what it was. With this loss he is not saddened, as his ring finger, and the ring upon it still remain alongside his thumb. Though the bleeding has mostly stopped, he still wraps his leg in his cloak to protect from grime and dirt. He’s stopped leaking, but the ordeal left him a bloody, shaking mess, and yet he shall remain. Weakly he crawls to retrieve his dagger past the fallen behemoth. With some struggle he rehouses his own weapon, and with little care for the gargantuan corpse he left behind, he spits upon it in hate for what it took from him before slowly dragging himself back to the cache of weapons.
As he lays his good hand upon the sword he came for, he whimpers in his humbled state, “I get it now…”
He gathers the four weapons, not caring to examine the others, and with them tucked beneath his arm with now three fingers less, he uses his bruised but functioning hand to pull himself along, inch by inch. This is, as one might imagine, purely exhausting, and he does not make it far before needing rest. At the mouth of the cave, not too far from where he felled his foe, he leans himself up against a wall and heaves in his breath. He lets his good eye lean closer to closed as he rests, able to see the sky, still gray in this far off land, beset by a framing of wild, unkempt trees. Birds chirp, crickets are a noise that are absent, but without the sun, it’s impossible to tell when it is. After some recuperation, Zaiss gathers himself again, and drags towards the hill, battling himself on whether to carefully climb down, or simply risk more injury and roll his crippled self back to his horse. That decision would not come easily, and it would rival his thoughts on how the hell he is to rise to his horse, assuming it did not simply break free from the rope and leave him behind.
It matters not, in fact, he may even think as such to himself. He would not come all this way, find what was lost, and best a troll just to starve, creeping along the road. He would make it. He must make it now. As he reaches the top of the hill and looks down its daunting slope, he huffs, “I’m coming…” And begins his descent.
Opting for safety, he finds himself grasping at roots and swinging himself lower, pushing sometimes with his only leg, and driving himself ever so slowly down the hill. Though this he did not know, it was morning when he began; and with the careful pace he takes, it no longer is when he topples over the last steep incline before hitting the ground over a foot and a half drop. He grunts as he lands with the sheathed weapons atop him, and smiles as he hears a faint nickering. His eye opens after the fall and he spots Boo, sort of hiding behind a tree, still tethered where he hitched her. From here it is an arduous hardship. One by one he has to pull himself up by the horse's saddle and fasten his findings to his mount, then lower himself down a bit to do it all over again. Accounting for the amount of times he fell, his inability to hold onto things with only two fingers, his empty and battered stomach, and the space he had left to safely store things on his horse, it takes longer than he’d like. Starving, wounded, surviving on sheer willpower alone, he slowly and miraculously manages to lift himself up onto Boo with a heavy cry of pain. Leaning forward on her probably more than he should, he clicks his tongue to urge her forth, simply cutting the rope that bound her to the tree with his dagger as they go. The rope he leaves behind being the least of his worries. Onward he travels, in hopes that soon he may find some respite, lest this all be for nothing.
