by Ross Hughes
The villagers screamed and scattered like cockroaches under light. The men rushed to grab their weapons, the women to grab their babies, the babies to grab their toys and teddy bears. Some fled Tamblin-Doon, heading east or west, avoiding Myrkvior Woods at all costs. Some barricaded themselves in their homes or hid in basements if they had them.
Conn just stared, open-mouthed.
His pa shouted him from the doorway of their house, “Conn! Get back inside now or the Trolls will get you! Hurry!”
Conn turned to look at his pa, then at Myrkvior Woods. His pa guessed his intent and lunged out of the house to grab him, but he was too slow. Slippery as an eel, Conn dodged his pa’s reaching hand and hared off north toward the mountain and the black pines.
“Conn!” he heard his pa shouting. “Conn, come back!”
Conn did not turn or slow, but he did shout over his shoulder, “Don’t worry, pa! I can save us!”
He ran up the mountainside, dragging himself up the steepest parts using the black trunk of the pines. His heart thundered in his chest, and his breath came fast and ragged, but he kept going as fast as he could. He collapsed in the thick snow a few times in his haste, but eventually he made it to the lightning-struck tree and passed it.
He started yelling at the top of his lungs then, “Driff! Driff! Where are you? I need your help! Please, Driff, answer me! Where are you?”
He ran and shouted, and ran and shouted, and was beginning to lose hope when he heard a faint sound on the bitter wind.
“Conn? Is that you?” a voice replied faintly from out of sight.
“Yes, Driff, it’s me! I’m over here, Driff! Over here!”
He guided the Faun with his voice, and soon the two were face to face.
Driff smiled his sad smile. “It’s good to see you again, Conn, but what is all this hollering?”
“Rock Trolls are attacking my village!” Conn blurted. “I need your help to kill them! You’ve got magic; you can do it!”
Driff frowned, his stubbly face severe. “Your fellow villagers would brook no help from me. And besides, I have told you I do not kill.”
“But you killed the boar to protect me! Killing Trolls to protect villagers is no different, surely! The Trolls are no more than beasts!”
“I am not sure about that,” Driff responded pensively, stroking his chin. “They exhibit some signs of bonding with one another on an emotional level – they live and hunt in families after all – and they often seem smart enough to avoid deadly confrontation. In my experience, they are cowardly creatures who will only attack when they think it safe to do so.”
“No, they are just animals made of stone! Everybody knows that!” Conn raged, feeling helplessness rise up in his throat like bile, burning. “You have to help us, please! People are dying down there!” He thought of the big, bearded man with the sword and he felt sick. “You have the power to save us! Please, Driff!”
Driff looked away into the trees for a long time, clearly torn, but then he looked into the boy’s eyes and sighed at what he saw there. “You are sure your fellow villagers will not kill me on sight?”
“I won’t let them,” said Conn stoutly. “You’re my friend.”
Driff smiled. “Very well. I will help you, my friend. Lead me to your village.”
Conn raced back to Tamblin-Doon with Driff on his tail, but by the time they got back the sun was up and the village was ruined. The majority of the little lodges had been knocked down and lay in heaps; bodies littered the snowy streets, the steaming blood surrounding them unnaturally bright against the pure white snow, eye-catching. The Rock Trolls were still shambling around the village; they did not move very fast, but fast enough to trap most of the populace between them. The boy and Faun could see twenty people stuck between the half-dozen Trolls, penned in like sheep by sheepdogs. The village had contained almost a hundred people at last count, Conn recalled sadly. It looked like the Trolls were playing with their food, like cats before a kill.
Conn was wracked by sobs then, and hot tears rolled down his cheeks. He sniffled after a few seconds and said, “Quick, let’s see if ma and pa are still alive!” Taking Driff by the hand, he dragged him toward the people pen. “Do something, Driff! Do something before they all die!”
Driff surveyed the scene grimly, the six Trolls plodding around the twenty or so people, prodding them, roaring at them and knocking them back if they tried to flee. As he watched, one man tried to dart between two Trolls, only for one of them to smash his ribs like kindling with a punch. Falling in the snow, he convulsed and coughed up blood and died.
Conn knew the man and screamed out at the sight, “Derrick, no!” His sobs returned then.
Driff drew himself up to his full height, waved his arms in arcane patterns and muttered ancient words in the language of magic, “Yololoyo!”
He pointed an arm at the Trolls and from his splayed palm flew a fist-sized, amorphous yellow globule of energy. Sizzling, the glob whizzed over the wreckage of a lodge and struck one of the Trolls in the back with a yellow splash. The creature of stone staggered forward a step from the impact, but otherwise seemed unhurt – as Driff had known it would be. He was not trying to kill them, but to scare them away.
The Rock Troll spun on the Faun then, let loose a bellow of rage and charged like an aged bull, slow and steady, destroying everything in its tracks. Whimpering, Conn hid a few steps behind Driff, ready to run. The Faun faced down the Troll, however, and gestured and spoke again, “Yololoyo!”
He pelted the stone creature with a little yellow blob, and then another and another, until they were shooting from both his palms as fast as Conn’s eyes could follow. Driff hoped the sting of them would make the Troll rethink its charge and turn tail, but he was wrong. The Troll ploughed on.
Driff decided to try to freeze the creature. “Chising!” he shouted, pointing a palm.
An azure nebula of icy energy shot from his palm and swamped the Troll, but it paid it no mind. Driff realised then that it was not easy to freeze stone. He had to dodge out of the way or be crushed by the rampaging Troll then.
As he sidestepped, he said, “Hummuhummshh!”
A gust of arcane wind whipped from his hand to flay the Troll, but it failed to budge it an inch, much less send it running. Driff cursed himself for a fool; he should have known the Troll was too heavy to blow over, but he was running out of offensive spells, growing desperate. The Troll was waving its arms around, trying to pulverise Driff, as he wracked his brain for a way out of his predicament. He just kept dodging. Eventually, though, one big, rocky fist grazed his shoulder and sent him tumbling down into the snow.
Panicking then like a cornered rat, seeing his doom block out the morning sun and stomp toward him, Driff cried out, “Elementera sciomboi!”
He threw out an arm, and this time a spear of brilliant golden energy sprang from his fingertips to lodge itself in the Rock Troll, impaling it straight through the belly. The Troll stumbled to a halt and looked down at the spear in time for the magical weapon to fade from sight amidst sparkles. It looked up again in time to take the next golden spear in the face, and then it toppled, lifeless, to the ground with a thud.
Driff rose to his feet, trembling with fear and power and excitement. Conn saw only his profile, but the Faun’s eye looked terrible; haunted and cruel. He advanced on the other Trolls, who had noticed him by then but were loath to leave their other prey.
“Begone from here, savage creatures,” Driff commanded in a loud, cold voice completely unlike his usual singsong tones, “or I will wreak bloody murder amongst you.”
The Trolls, of course, did not understand. Tiring of their game, eager to play with the newcomer, they began pounding the people in their pen to pieces with their massive fists.
Driff let out an animalistic shriek of anger and yelled, “Elementera sciomboi!”
Another lance of shining golden light materialised in his upraised hand, and he cast it
like a javelin at one of the Trolls, skewering it high in the back, just below the head. The Troll didn’t make a sound; it just collapsed, poleaxed, with a thump before the spear could even disappear. Seeing this, the remaining four Rock Trolls turned away from the remaining few people and bulled towards Driff, shaking the ground as they went.
The Faun stood his ground. He threw two more magical spears, and two more Trolls died. Then, they were upon him and he had no time or room for another throw.
He muttered different words, “Chising wo’oriss!” and a sharp, white sword made of sparkling ice appeared in his hand.
He evaded the Trolls’ charge and ducked under a punching stone fist. Then, he leapt and spun and lashed out with his ice-sword at the apex of his jump. The magic sword cut through the solid stone like it was nothing more than smoke, and one Troll’s head bounced on the ground a moment later. The last Troll came at Driff with a fury, having seen its whole family killed before its eyes, swinging its arms in wild haymakers that forced Driff to back away or be pulverised. Finally, learning the rhythm of the strikes and spotting his chance, the Faun skidded between the Troll’s legs and came up smoothly to his feet behind it. The Troll tried to swing around to elbow the Faun, but Driff had buried his white sword in its back before it could move far. Like the rest, it fell, inanimate, in the snow.
Driff looked up at the cloudy sky and screamed until his lungs were empty. He couldn’t precisely explain why he screamed, even to himself, except to say that he needed to. He turned then to see Conn watching him from afar. The expression on the boy’s face was not one of gratitude, but one of horror.
Nevertheless, the boy approached sheepishly, not meeting the Faun’s eyes, and said, “Y-you killed them.”
“I did what you asked.” The words came out harsh, biting – more so than Driff had intended.
Conn nodded and finally met Driff’s hard gaze. “You’re right. Thank you, Driff. Thank you for saving my village … what remains of it, anyway.”
He stood still, staring at the survivors, who were grouped together, hugging and sobbing.
“Aren’t you going to go and find your family?” asked the Faun.
“I already found them,” Conn said flatly, “while you were killing the Trolls. They’re back there.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “They’re dead.”
Though the boy was not crying now, Driff suddenly saw that he had been crying recently. His eyes were red and puffy, and his voice was croaky. The Faun didn’t know what to say.
“Can I come with you back to the Woods?”
Driff was taken aback by the question. He hated himself for what he had done, what he had become, and he had been planning to hurl himself from the mountaintop. Now, however, it appeared Conn had become his charge.
He tried to fend off the boy. “Wouldn’t you rather stay with your own people?”
Conn glanced at the survivors, then shook his head. “No. I’d rather stay with you. Can I come with you back to the Woods, Driff? Please?”
There was such sorrow in the boy’s voice that the Faun’s heart panged. “I’m not going back to the Woods,” he said.
“Wherever you go, can I come with you? I just want to leave this place. I don’t mind where we go.”
Driff sighed. “Yes, you can come with me.”
The two of them put the village of Tamblin-Doon behind them and wandered off out into the snow, into the wild.
So was born the pairing of Conn and the Faun, who would wander the world of Maradoum and the realms beyond and become legendary for their deeds of daring and heroism in later life.
Thanks for reading!
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