Terry took Nat’s hands, his palms dry as talc. “Are you having a good time?” he asked.
“I’m having an amazing time,” she replied, squeezing his grip. “What about you, handsome?”
“I’m great,” he said, “and I’m going to be even better once we figure out a way to get home.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I mean, once we’re done taking care of business.”
“Business?” said Terry, letting go of her hand. “There is no business. We’re finished here. Drensila’s dead. Job done. Now we find a wizard who knows the right spell and get magicked back home.”
At first, the gang were sceptical that Drensila was really done for. “Where’s the body?” they’d asked, but the journey to the bottom of the Durkon Chasm was a perilous one, and the elven council had assured them that the blow Cleaver dealt the queen, combined with her plunge into the abyss, would have spelled her downfall for certain.
“I’m not talking about Drensila,” said Nat. “I’m talking about Clive.”
“Clive?” Terry snorted. “Clive’s gone. Let it go.”
Cleaver chimed in. “Not a good idea, mate. You and me both saw what that tosser’s capable of. A dog like that needs putting down.”
“What are you two talking about,” asked Terry, growing frustrated. “We beat the big boss. Now we go back to the real world. That’s the deal, that’s how it works.”
“This is the real world,” said Nat. “As real as ours is anyway.”
“No,” insisted Terry. “The real world is homework and central heating and TV on demand. This is just a fiction we've been living in too long.”
Nat gnawed her lip. “I want those things too, Terry, but leaving Clive here would be as bad as letting Drensila run amok.”
Terry raised a finger to cut in, then stopped, the fight leaving his eyes. “You’re a stubborn one, Lawler,” he said, his expression softening, “but I reckon I can talk you around...”
His hand went in his pocket.
“What is he up to?” Nat wondered.
Terry dropped to one knee.
Nat gasped. “Please,” she said, “don’t joke about that—”
—but he pulled out a ring. Not a prop ring or a piece of costume jewellery, but a real, honest-to-God engagement ring. With diamonds and everything.
He presented it to her. Nat didn’t know what to do with herself. Having a sword in her hand didn’t feel right though, so she slid Cleaver back into his scabbard.
“Well, what do you say, Nat?” asked Terry, slipping the ring on her finger to find it a perfect fit. “Will you marry me?”
Silence came crashing in. The fiddles stopped playing and a crowd of adoring faces began to gather around.
“Where did you get this?” Nat asked, admiring the ring on her hand, which was shaking like a leaf.
“I had it on me when we went to the woods that day,” he replied, looking back at her with puppy dog eyes. “Back in Epping Forest.”
Her nose crinkled. “You mean… you were going to propose to me at a LARP game?”
“Well, rings are a long-standing tradition in the fantasy milieu.”
Neville rolled up and whispered in Nat’s ear. “He’s talking about Lord of the Ri—”
“—Yeah, I got that,” she said, cutting him off. “I just saved a fantasy land from an army of trolls, give me some credit.”
She turned back to Terry, eyes wide. All this time she’d had it that the only reason her boyfriend had dragged her along to his little game was to make up the numbers. But no. Apparently, he’d set the whole thing up just so he could propose to her.
“I had it all planned out,” he explained, “or at least I did before we wound up in this la-la land. I’d squared it with the GM to have you play a succubus in the last encounter: a sexy demon that paralyses men and drains their life force by kissing them.”
“Wait, so you figured pimping me out to Clive was going to get me hearing wedding bells?”
“No, see there’s more to it. Before the encounter started, the GM would tell you to go after me specifically, and I’d make sure you caught me with my guard down. We’d lock lips and you’d reckon you had the better of me, but then I’d unfreeze and tell you my character’s immune to paralysis and level drain. See, I’d only been letting you kiss me because I liked it! You’d get in a tizz of course—call me a bullshitter—tell me you wanted to see it in writing. That’s when I’d show you the proof: my character sheet listing all my special immunities. I’d hand it over, you’d unfold it, and wrapped up inside you’d find that... the ring on your finger.”
Nat looked at it and began to tear up. Her voice came out chipped, like an old mug. “That might just be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” she croaked. “It’s definitely the nerdiest.”
“So, what do you reckon?” he said. “You wanna grow old and weird together?"
How could she say no to that? Her mouth began to form a word and then—
—The ground started to rumble. Fear ripped through the room as dust shook from the rafters. Metal platters bounced from tabletops and landed on the ground with a sound like cartoon dustbins. What was this? An earthquake. An attack? The end of the world?
The black marble floor cracked apart and tendrils crawled from between the gaps. No, not tendrils, tree roots. A trunk followed them. A trunk with a face.
“Hello,” said the tree in a voice not unlike the actor, Sir Anthony Hopkins.
“Groot’s back!” cried Ashley, welcoming Elderwood to the party.
Nat couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “But... you died,” she noted.
“Only to a fashion,” the sage old tree declared. “Death isn’t permanent to one with roots as deep as mine. I just needed time to regrow is all.”
Terry coughed. “Not that it isn’t great see you again, but you’re kind of stealing my thunder here...”
“Don’t be rude,” said Nat, then to Elderwood, “can I offer you a drink of something? I’m thinking water?”
Elderwood laughed. “I’m fine, thank you. I do have something for you however...”
Emerging from the fissure he’d created came a snarl of tree roots that writhed up and interleaved to form a door-sized portal. In violation of all laws of physics, the centre of the portal began to glimmer, then the picture within switched to reveal an opening to another place. To the way home.
“Go and be well, Chosen One,” Elderwood declared. “Your duty here is done.”
Nat’s head tipped to one side. “What about Clive?” she said, and turned to the rest of the spectators. “The guy’s making things move with his mind and luzzing fireballs about. We’re just gonna let that slide?”
“Do not concern yourself with him,” said the talking tree. “He is a weed that will wither and die.”
Nat knew better. Didn’t she? Did she really have it in for Clive, or was she using him as an excuse to stay in this place? Her eyes flicked to where Eathon had been standing, but he was gone. Terry caught her glance.
“You’re looking for him, aren’t you? For Eathon.”
“No,” Nat protested, quite unconvincingly.
Terry’s lips parted in a silent, ah. “That’s why you really want to stay here, isn’t it? So you can hang with Elrond Hubbard and his frigging tree cult. This isn’t about Clive at all.”
His face. Nat could hardly bear to look him. All that time she’d spent calling the shots, and now, in this moment of truth, she found herself stuck. A woman torn. She did have feelings for Eathon, there was no denying it. She’d buried them—told herself she was Team Terry all the way—but she’d known the truth from the moment she locked lips with the elf in Drensila’s minaret.
Terry hung his shoulders, defeated. “Tell him congratulations,” he said, and made for the portal. “Big surprise, the guy with the six-pack wins the girl.”
“Tel...” Nat cried, but he already had his back to her.
Terry stopped at Elderwood’s portal and gave the
tree a solemn nod. “Take me home,” he said.
Ashley protested. “Come on, bruv, don’t be like that.”
“Yeah,” said Neville, trying to lighten the mood. “Don’t go back to the dust bowl, Dorothy.”
Terry was insistent. “I’m leaving,” he told them. “There’s nothing left for me here.”
Elderwood turned to Terry with a creak. “Very well, human, but know that if you choose to return to your homeworld, there will be consequences. I cannot allow you to share the secrets of this realm. The moment you set foot on Earth, you will lose all knowledge of The Broken Lands.”
“Fine by me,” he replied. “Scrub it all.”
Nat was speechless; knocked sideways by emotional whiplash. She didn’t have the words to convince Terry to stay, nor the heart to say them.
She slid his ring from her finger and pressed it into his palm. “Hold onto it,” she told him. “For me.”
Terry begrudgingly took the ring, then turned and stepped through the thin membrane that separated this world from its other.
*****
EATHON TOOK LEAVE of the banquet hall the moment he saw the ring come out. Well, the moment he’d finished pounding his chalice of wine anyway. He was drunk now. Drunk and miserable. He’d avenged his brother and ended Drensila the Black’s reign, but it had brought him no joy. Not while Nat Lawler remained beyond his grasp. Not while her heart belonged to another.
He staggered down a cold hallway, tripping over furniture and heading nowhere much. He lurched, bounced off a wall, and had to put an arm out to steady himself. As the heel of his palm struck the brickwork, one of the stones sunk into a recess. An unexpected grinding noise snapped him out of his stupor; the sound of a section of wall sliding aside to reveal a secret entrance.
The entrance led to a staircase that dipped into darkness like a quill into a bottomless inkpot. Eathon’s hand instinctively went for his sword, but he wasn’t dressed for combat. He hesitated a moment, looked up and down the hallway to check that he was alone, then stepped through the opening to tackle the stairs. His footfalls were unsteady, his descent down the damp, stone steps made all the more precarious by the excess of wine in his belly. By some miracle, he managed to make it to the bottom without losing his footing. He found himself at the beginning of a short corridor with a row of iron-barred cell doors either side, gnawed on by rust and time but sturdy nonetheless. It was a dismal place, sealed off and lightless, but Eathon’s elf eyes allowed him to see well enough. He stumbled to the end of the corridor, casting looks into the cells lined either side, but found each of them empty. That was until he arrived at the last cell on the left.
From the darkness inside, came a vile, slurping noise. Eathon peered through the bars, careful not to get within grabbing distance. Inside the cramped cell he found a figure, emaciated and dressed in tattered rags. The prisoner was hunched over and facing the opposite corner with only the back of her head on show. Dark, greasy locks tumbled over skeletal shoulders. Her skin was the colour of curdled yoghurt.
“Don’t worry,” Eathon whispered. “I’m here to help you.” He spoke softly so as not to startle the poor creature, fearful that his voice—amplified by the darkness—might shatter the prisoner like brittle glass.
The gaunt figure slowly turned around to reveal the face of a middle-aged woman, beautiful once, but sullied by the cruelty of incarceration. The crone’s chin was slick with blood, and in her hands she clutched the carcass of a rat, the skin of its belly chewed back to reveal a ruptured ribcage. The stranger set down her meal and hid it behind her back, ashamed to be caught in such a state.
“Thank goodness,” she rasped. “You came for me.”
Carnella the Cruel grinned with bloody teeth.
Chapter Eleven: Fate Points
IN AN INSTANT, Terry Sloman walked into one portal and stepped out of another.
He was back where it had all started, on home turf, the humdrum wilds of Epping Forest. He took a weary look at his surroundings. The colours that enveloped him looked dim and brown compared to the vibrant palette of the Broken Lands, as though a child had been given its pigments and churned them together to make an ugly shit-smear.
Terry was struck by the sense that nothing here had changed. It felt as though his world had been holding its breath, waiting for him to come crawling back to it. He glanced over his shoulder to check on Elderwood’s portal and found it had already gone, its existence neatly erased. He reached into the pocket of his breeches and pulled out the engagement ring Nat had rejected. He decided he wanted that erased too, so he tossed it to the ground and kicked clods of earth onto it, burying it like a dog masking its waste. When there was no more ring left to see, he sloped off to find the nearest forest path and headed for home.
A dog walker with a golden retriever on an extendable leash happened by. The animal galumphed over to get a sniff of Terry’s peculiar clothes, but when her owner caught the haunted look in his eyes, she snapped the leash and yanked the dog away. Terry ploughed on, following the westerning sun until he arrived back at the car park where Clive had parked his van. He had to get rid of the clothes he was wearing. Had to erase every last trace of his journey and get back into his street clothes. Only the van was gone. In its place was a broken cordon of police tape, its scraps left flapping in the wind.
Terry turned and gave a nearby a tree a kick, then another. After that his fists came into play, battering the thing so hard he took bark off it.
“Well, look who it is,” said a voice from behind.
Terry turned to find a pair of teenagers in tracksuits, the cherries of their cigarettes hovering in the dusk like fireflies. He recognised them as the two delinquents that had started on his group before they set off for The Broken Lands. Back when he carried a plastic bow and wore latex ear tips. Back when he was a different person.
“Where’ve you been, dickhead?” asked the larger of the two, swaggering over, chest puffed out.
Terry didn’t answer, just stared at the blood on his hands.
“They sent a search party out here looking for you lot,” said the weaselly one with the raisin eyes set too far apart. “Day after day, night after night. Must have cost a fortune.”
“Yeah, and whose taxes paid for that?” said the big one, as if he’d ever paid taxes in his life.
“Yeah,” agreed his crony, jabbing Terry in the ribs with his skinny index finger. “Well? What you gonna do about it, mate? You gonna pay up?”
Terry brushed his hand away. He’d had enough of their shitty attitude, not to mention the shittier smell of their Lynx body spray. He went to push by, but the two thugs refused to budge.
“Going somewhere, bruv?” sniffed the top dog. He grinned, showing a mouth of teeth like a half-demolished graveyard. “Not such a big man without your bird about, are ya?”
Blood surged through Terry’s muscles. Without thinking, he pulled back his arm and delivered a fist to the centre of the bully’s face.
Crack.
His nose exploded with a satisfying crunch and he dropped to his knees with tears streaming from his eyes.
“What was that for?” the stricken bully cried, his tees swapped for dees. “We were only mucking around, mate!”
Terry didn’t bother to stick around. He just walked by and took himself home.
*****
WHEN CLIVE SNYDER stepped out of the cable car and set foot on the far side of the Durkon Chasm, he didn’t run. He knew his enemies would assume that he would. Would take it for granted that he’d head as far away as possible to spare himself their wrath. But Clive knew he’d never outrun them. So he didn’t. He made camp. He made camp in the last place anyone would ever think to look for another human being. He made camp in the cursed burial pit from which Carnella’s troll army were born. The rancid cocoon that churned with an evil so putrid, so utterly loathsome, that it was able to give birth to a breed of living malevolence.
Despite his earthly senses telling him to steer well clear
of the old mine, Clive’s magical intuition told him to do just the opposite. To go there and harness its power. To make it his own. So, into the depths he descended, to a place that no living soul had seen in generations. A place of old meat and broken bone. He conjured a glow to light his way; a steady, red flame that sprang from his palm and illuminated the hideousness his surroundings. The stinking viscera that crept up the walls. The thick sludge of decomposing corpses that pooled about his knees. The body parts that bobbed to the surface, puffy and pale, like dumplings in a vile stew.
Still, Clive would not be deterred. Still he pushed on through the charnel house, refusing to blinker himself to its horrors. It was only reality after all. Stuff and matter. Malleable things that a man of magic could to bend to his will. His ability to do so was intuitive now. Effortless. He required neither incantations nor grimoires to transform the natural world. All he needed was imagination, and imagination was something he had in no short supply.
Escapism had long been Clive’s salvation. Every punch he’d taken, every cruel word spat in his ear, had transported him to a place like this. A place the bullies couldn’t touch him. A place where he held the power. And now he’d finally arrived. Arrived in an actual world of magic. Here, his imagination was no longer an escape hatch, it was a weapon. Anything he could dream up, he could make real. All he needed was time to recoup his power. Just a little more time.
Clive spent a week building up to his revenge. While his former allies celebrated a false victory back at the citadel, he manifested a real one. He plotted. He brooded. He raged. And after seven days of brewing, Clive’s hatred finally came to a boil. Gripping the Durkon rod of power, he channelled a blast of raw spite into the pit’s cancerous heart. Into the mountain of corpses that for decades had rained down from the shaft above. Into the mass of indistinguishable atrocities that provided the meat of the troll army.
Power Playing (Trolled Book 2) Page 10