Behemoth (The Jharro Grove Saga Book 6)

by Trevor H. Cooley

  Matthew snorted. “An opening salvo only.” He looked at Deathclaw. “Do you think you could do that a few hundred times more? We wouldn’t even need the rest of the army.”

  Deathclaw simply held out his hand. Smiling, Matthew placed the wooden orb he had prepared onto the raptoid’s palm. Deathclaw turned to Xedrion.

  “My part is done,” he declared. “You do the rest. Now I go to join Justan,”

  * * *

  The first wave of trollkin troops left KhanzaRoo later that same morning. Six thousand strong they marched, many of them with metal weapons retrieved from the Mother’s midden. Others with stone spears and bows and arrows make by trollkin smiths. Hand-picked from the ranks of devoured warriors, they had spent the last several weeks training under the supervision of reborn captains and generals of the Roo-Tan and Mer-Dan armies.

  Roughly one in twenty of these trollkin had been given a special gift from Mellinda herself. Deep in their chests burned a kernel of power. In the heat of battle those kernels would ignite, transforming the trollkin in random and frightening ways.

  This unique use of the transformative power of the Rings of Stardeon was an invention of Ewzad Vriil’s that Mellinda had found both effective and wasteful in the last war. Ewzad had taken tiny aspects of the multitude of monsters he was working on and weaved them into his kernels of power. The results had been dynamic and horrific when activated. He had turned his human soldiers into otherworldly beasts that were devastating on the battlefield.

  However, power deposited into most creatures by the rings faded over time. Unless recharged by magic, beasts that had been mutated or in some way changed by the rings would lose cohesion and collapse in death. A kernel of power inserted into a human being would dissipate in only a few weeks, leaving them unharmed unless activated. But if a human had been mutated by the kernel of power, their death was assured. They would melt as soon as the magic faded.

  This is where trollkin were superior subjects. Mellinda had learned through extensive experimentation that troll flesh did not behave the same way that other flesh did when affected by the power of the rings. She had first noticed this during the war when Ewzad had mutated trolls at her request. These modified trolls had held onto the rings’ power and did not dissolve even upon death. They even transmitted some of this power into later generations of trolls.

  The trollkin reacted to the rings in similar ways to regular trolls. Each change she made to a trollkin body with the rings was a permanent change. She did not have to touch them with the power on a regular basis, which meant that she was free to use the rings in whatever manner she chose without consequence.

  The kernels of power that she had placed inside the trollkin that headed into battle that day would not fade after time. The changes they made to the trollkin bodies would be permanent. Each new marvelous beast would be able to continue to battle long after the first assault and the regenerative properties of their bodies meant they would be able to take far more damage than any normal transformed beast.

  Mellinda herself stayed behind in KhanzaRoo, confident in the abilities of her commanders and in the faithfulness of the troops. She was not able to keep track of their thoughts as she had done with her armies of the past, but their fervor made them predictable. The Mother was under attack and that was something that no trollkin could abide. Their religious dedication to their goddess would ensure that they would fight on despite the odds against them.

  This gave Mellinda the opportunity to sit back and continue to create. Each day that the war lasted, new trollkin would be birthed, giving her more bodies to throw at Aloysius and the Protector. Eventually their forces would fade and she would be triumphant. The Mother would move onto the Grove and her legacy would be fulfilled.

  Mellinda had never been happier, but within her Arcon was becoming more and more disgruntled. He had fooled himself into thinking that his situation would soon have an end, but it was growing harder to hold on to that illusion. She was in her element, relishing every step towards victory and with each new day that passed Arcon grew more certain that he would never get his body back.

  * * *

  When Tarah and Willum stopped the first night of their journey she discovered that she could no longer reach Djeri. There was some kind of block keeping her thoughts from getting through the bond. She pushed and pushed at it but, try as she may, she could not get through.

  She became certain that this was the second part of the dream coming true. Djeri was in danger. The only thing she could come up with is that Mellinda herself was somehow blocking his access to the bond.

  Tarah pushed her fear aside and focused on tracking Sir Edge and his group. She and Willum had started out only half a day behind the others, but they were making good time while Tarah and Willum were slowed by the process of tracking them. Fortunately, Edge’s group weren’t really trying to hide their tracks.

  Tarah finally caught up to them on the third day. They had just reached the edge of the Troll Swamps and she knew they were close when she heard a ruckus coming from the trees ahead of them. There was a loud crashing and splashing accompanied by a loud and familiar voice.

  It sounded like a general yelling at first, but became more clear as the voice came closer. “ . . . Dag- . . . Corn . . . fruit-sniffin . . . nose-pickin, turd-slingin’, son of a monkey!”

  Then bursting from the treeline in front of them in a hail of leaves came Rufus. The rogue horse’s enormous mouth was opened in a roar. His arms were raised and a huge branch was clenched in his fists, ready to swing. Clinging helplessly to his back was Lenny.

  Albert reared up, ready to bolt. Willum struggled to rein the warhorse in. Neddy snorted.

  “Hey!” shouted Tarah, her arms held out towards the rogue horse. “It’s us!”

  Rufus lowered the branch and went down on all fours. “Oh.”

  “Dag-blast you, Rufus!” Lenny shouted, slipping down from the rogue horse’s back. “I told you I was losin’ my grip. How’m I ’post to throw a gall-durn hammer when yer up on yer tippy toes and. . . Tarah?”

  “Hey, Uncle Lenny,” she said. “You left without us.”

  His look of shock swiftly turned to one of anger. “What in the dag-gum world’re you thinkin’?”

  “Uncle Lenny-,” she tried to explain, but he continued on.

  “Yer ’posed to be back savin’ the Grove! Didn’t I tell you to trust me?”

  Tarah nodded. “I took care of that part. I-.”

  He stomped his foot and shook a finger at her. “You’d better hightail it back there ’fore the sky starts fallin’!” he said, swinging around and pointing back to the north. “If you ain’t-!”

  “Would you shut your blasted hole for one minute!” she yelled. Lenny’s eyebrows rose, but his mouth shut. “Let me explain! I figured everything out.”

  She told Lenny what she had learned about her dream and when she told him how she had given up Esmine to save Djeri, his look gradually changed from outrage to approval. He and Rufus led Tarah and Willum back to the rest of the group where she was made to tell the story once again.

  They had stopped on a wide grassy bank just inside the swamps. A distinct acrid stench filled the air and a thick layer of troll slime coated the water around them. A swamp croc eyed them warily from within the water not far away.

  Everyone was more receptive than she expected. None of them gave her a hard time when she told them about the decisions she had been faced with and they were all sympathetic when they heard how she had been forced to give up Esmine. She then pulled her new weapon from where she had strapped it onto Neddy’s saddle.

  The Roo-Tan witch that had come along with Edge’s group eyed Tarah’s new Jharro weapon with a slight frown. She was an older woman with some gray in her hair. The ribbons in her braids were striped gold and green. “Your tree gave you a spear? No one gets a spear.”

  “Ooh! Can I see it, Pretty Tarah?” Cletus begged.

  Tarah shrugged and tossed it too him. “
I would’ve been happy with a staff,” she said as he spun the weapon. “It’s a bit longer than I like.”

  “That shall change as you come to learn your staff,” Jhonate assured her. She was dressed in a red leather breastplate and a pair of baggy pants with runes embroidered in the fabric. The pants had been a gift from Beth, though Tarah wasn’t sure what protections had been sewn into the embroidery. Sheathed at her belt was a white-handled dagger encrusted in rubies. Tarah had never seen her wear that before. “Either you will come to like the spear or it will shift to adapt to you.”

  “Thank you,” Tarah said. “Hopefully we’ll find time for you to teach me along the way.”

  Jhonate’s presence with the group was one oddity Tarah didn’t understand. Tarah could see why Jhonate would want to be with her betrothed on this journey, but she wasn’t protected by a bond. At first Xedrion had wanted her to stay back and command the Academy force, but after a series of private arguments between the two of them, he had agreed to her request and put Hilt in charge of the Academy force. Tarah wondered if, like she and Lenny and Cletus, Jhonate had her own mission in mind.

  “Hey, Maryanne, watch this!” said Cletus excitedly. He spun the spear in a whir around his body, a move that Tarah had seen him perform with her staff on multiple occasions. But this time he ended with a flourish, jumping and spinning in the air and throwing the spear at the height of his jump, sending it into the water to quiver slightly as it pierced through the swamp croc’s hard skull.

  He splashed into the water and grunted as he lifted the twitching croc, partially out of the water. It was a thick beast and easily ten feet long at the tip of its tail. “I got dinner!”

  “Not bad, Cletus,” said Maryanne. The female gnome, who had been leaning against Fist while Tarah told her story, casually pulled her bow from her shoulder. She swiftly pulled two arrows from the quiver at her hip and fired them rapidly, both of them sticking into the croc’s left eye socket. “But we could have had it at any time.”

  Cletus looked at the two arrows, his grin widening as he threw back his head and sang, “Friendshiiip dinnerrr!”

  Lenny sighed. “And burn the gall-durn swamp down? How we gonna cook lizard without fire?”

  They found out the answer to that question a few hours later. They stopped for the night on a wide grassy island between two mangrove trees and the Roo-Tan witch, an experienced veteran by the name of Jasmine bin Prath produced a pot lined with a runed gray pottery.

  She sat the pot down at the edge of the island and reached one tip of her Jharro bow into the slime coated marsh water. She then pointed the other tip of her bow over the lip of the pot and a stream of clean water poured inside, filtered by the Jharro wood turned porous by Jasmine’s mental command. As the water hit the interior of the pot it began to swirl in a clockwise fashion, slowly heating as it passed each set of runes.

  Lenny watched the process in amazement. “How’re you doin’ that? Those ain’t elemental runes.”

  “Blessing magic,” she explained. “An old Roo trick. Each rune fortifies the water against cold. As the water passes multiple runes quicker and quicker it will heat to a boil. The trick is that you must keep the water moving. Once you stop, the runes will keep it hot for some time, but it will stop boiling.”

  “Lizard stew then,” he proclaimed and made Cletus help him dress and clean the gnome’s kill.

  Willum sighed. “Be ready for boiled everything for days.”

  Tarah approached Fist and Sir Edge who were standing next to one of the mangroves. The two of them were quietly gesturing and she realized that they must be communing through the bond. Squirrel was standing on Fist’s shoulder, nodding along with the conversation.

  Sir Edge was dressed differently than she had seen him before. He was wearing a red leather vest stamped with blessing runes and his brown hair, which he had been growing out since coming to Malaroo, had been braided in the local style. Red ribbons were woven into the braids that framed his face.

  “Sir Edge. Master Fist,” she said.

  “Just Edge,” Edge reminded her.

  “Me too,” said Fist automatically. He frowned. “But call me Fist.”

  “I’m worried about Djeri,” Tarah said. “For the last three nights I haven’t been able to get through to him.”

  “Why not?” Fist asked.

  “There’s some kind of blockage in the bond,” she explained. “I’m still able to sense his presence and the bond’s still pointed towards KhanzaRoo, but I’m afraid this means he’s in great danger.”

  Squirrel jumped over to her shoulder and patted her cheek, then reached into his mouth and produced a seed, offering it to her. She politely declined.

  Sir Edge rubbed at his chin. “Describe this blockage in the bond. Does it have a specific shape to it?”

  “A shape?” she said and tried to picture how it had felt in her mind.

  “Was it pinched?” Fist asked and the ogre mimed closing his hand. “Squeezed shut? Sometimes Deathclaw closes himself off when he doesn’t want to talk to us.” Squirrel chattered and he added, “And Squirrel too.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s like a blank wall. I’ve felt all over it, looking for some way through or a soft spot to push at, but there’s nothing.”

  “Is there a color to it?” Edge asked. “When Artemus plugged the bond, he did so with frost magic.”

  Tarah shook her head. “It’s just black. A solid black wall across the bond.”

  Fist and Edge looked at each other and Edge said, “Then he’s definitely in trouble.”

  Chapter Twenty Five

  At the northern edge of the Troll Swamps the efforts of the combined armies were still underway. Their job was to distract the Troll Mother and all of her trollkin soldiers away from the small strike forces that had begun their search for her brain.

  Deathclaw’s opening salvo had been a huge success in getting the Mother’s attention. Mounds of trollflesh with multiple eyes and grasping tentacles sprouted up all over the area, searching for possible attackers.

  The combined forces allowed themselves to be seen while relying on the efforts of their trained witches to ensure their safety. With skillful weaves of bewitching magic they would paralyze small sections of the Mother, making her unable to attack them. This was one of the skills Durza had imparted to the witches at the Stranger’s bequest and it had become essential to the plan.

  Many barrels of a pepper solution were brought down to the water’s edge. Roo-Tan warriors sucked the solution up into their Jharro weapons and then went into the water. They pierced the Mother’s still-seeing mounds or if their weapons were long enough, simply stabbed downward, piercing through the muddy swamp bottom and into the flesh beneath.

  The solution was injected into the Mother’s body, sickening sections of her. Those tainted sections of her flesh were unable to heal damage. Working in conjunction with the Roo-Tan, the Mer-Dan forces then leapt in with techniques of their own. Their warriors slashed and chopped at the weakened flesh, cutting pieces away and throwing them up onto the banks to shrivel and dry.

  The demon troops all had their own ways of working. The merpeople used water magic to drain sections of the swamps to make her flesh easier to get to. The kobalds moved the earth that covered the Mother. The imps used a mix of fire and air magic to heat the water in other sections to a boiling point, cooking the flesh.

  This was all done over a large distance, twenty thousand combined troops working together on the front lines to take the Mother apart a piece at a time. It was an impressive attack, effective in its execution, but ultimately worthless as a tactic to defeat the Mother.

  The Troll Swamps covered hundreds of square miles and the Mother was under every inch. It would take many years of such intense effort to destroy the behemoth this way. Nevertheless, it served its purpose.

  The first Trollkin were sighted on the third day of the operation and when the overall numbers were announced, the leaders breathed a sigh of relie
f. The first wave of attackers numbered only six thousand. And as physically formidable as the trollkin looked, they were nothing compared to the might of the collective armies against them.

  There was celebration in the ranks as they prepared themselves for the incoming assault. The twenty thousand tired workers on the front lines moved to the back to let a similarly-sized fresh group of well-trained fighters approach.

  The only concerns belonged to the top two generals. Xedrion and Aloysius both knew well that Mellinda was not so simple minded as to think that such a small force would be enough. The counselled their commanders to act with caution. There was some sort of trick afoot.

  Charz was one of those waiting on the front lines. Joining the other bonded in a sneak attack on Mellinda was not a proper use of his skills. His size and heaviness made him a bad choice for an assassin. He needed to be in the thick of the fighting.

  As Aloysius had been giving out assignments there had been many suggestions by the different commanders on strategic places for Charz to be placed. But the rock giant had refused their suggestions. The front line is where he wanted to be. This is where he could expect an all-out brawl and that was the kind of battle Charz was made for.

  When the first trollkin came to the swamp’s edge he was there swinging. At ten-feet-tall, Charz stood head and shoulders above even the tallest of trollkin. His very first punch downed a screaming part-human with a hawk-like beak. His fist caught it squarely in the face, shattering the beak as if it were made of pottery and taking its feet out from under it, sending the powerful beast onto its back in the water, where it lay still.

  His laugh was a bit disappointed. These things were supposed to be tough. But there wasn’t time to worry about that. Another one was already in front of him. Arrows were sticking out of its body in many places. It was eight-feet-tall and almost as muscular as Fist. Its face was a nightmare of jagged teeth and it carried a spear.