Trolled (The Trolled Saga Book 1) Read online

  Terry scanned the remaining candidates. He had a choice of Ashley or Nat, and the decision seemed pretty obvious. At least it did from where Nat was standing.

  “Hmmm,” he said looking left and right.

  Nat did her best to meet his eye but he skimmed right by.

  He clucked his tongue. “I think I’m gonna go wiiiiith… Ash.”

  Ashley did a fist pump and launched himself into Terry’s arms. “Respec’, bruv.”

  Nat was irked to say the least. “What the hell?” she seethed. “You dragged me all this way just to reject me in front of your friends?” She felt like she’d been picked last for the hockey team, except that would never happen, because she played hockey like a goddamn boss.

  “It’s not that,” Terry explained. It’s just that you’re… well, kind of a newb.”

  He’d been careful to explain the term to Nat in advance. Apparently the sobriquet was reserved for newcomers to the game, who were paradoxically considered less cool than a guy dressed like an oversized pixie.

  Clive moved things along. “Alright then,” he said, “we have our players. That leaves me and the girl to monster.”

  “I have a name,” Nat declared. Again she looked to Terry, who she found checking his rubber ear tips in the van’s wing mirror, utterly oblivious to her plight.

  Clive sneered. “What’s the matter, Yoko? Do you need to be on your boyfriend’s team?”

  This was obviously his way of getting under her skin, and Nat was buggered if she was going to give him the satisfaction. Reaching into the back of the van, Nat selected the largest weapon she could find: a vicious double-headed battleaxe.

  “Let’s do this,” she said, slapping the weapon against her palm, eager to deal out some well-deserved drubbings.

  *****

  DRENSILA THE BLACK whirled from her chair and blasted Gilon with a bolt of lacerating frost. Every synapse of the elf’s body screamed in protest as a glacial chill like hornet stings and shark’s teeth cocooned his body in ice. He tried to cry out, but all that emerged from his mouth was a frigid, ghostly vapour.

  From the prison of his body, Gilon could do nothing but silently scrutinise his quarry. This was the first time he’d seen Drensila the Black in the flesh, and it surprised him how harmless she looked. Though she wore the attire of a wicked sorceress—dressed as she was in a cobweb-patterned gown, with jet-black hair piled atop her head and fixed in place with a pair of onyx pins—a casual passer-by would hardly have regarded her as a threat. Despite her fearsome reputation, Drensila the Black was a mere slip of a girl, doe-eyed and south of thirty. Gilon was puzzled. How could a guileless face such as hers possibly belie the foul temperament for which she was infamous?

  Drensila shook her head, disappointed. “Honestly, this must be the worst assassination attempt in the annals of murder,” she joked. “You really do put the “s” in “hitman.””

  Gilon attempted a grimace but failed. He tried to flex his fingers but they remained cemented to the hilt of his frozen blade. Drensila reached out a hand. “I like your sword,” she said. “Why don’t you let me have it?”

  Gilon felt the enchanted weapon slipping from his hold, pulled by an unseen force. As Drensila worked her sorcery it began to wriggle free, working its way from between his fingers. Soon it would be lost for good. He summoned everything he had. Every fibre of strength left in him. Just as the sword was about to pass by his fingertips, Gilon let out an almighty roar and his icy shell cracked apart. He grasped hold of the sword, vice-like, and stepped from the shattered remains of his polar shell. “Shut your mouth, witch,” he yelled, his husky-blue eyes boring into Drensila like skewers. “I’m going to make you pay for what you did to my kind. Driving us from our homes. Massacring us like animals. Bringing us to the brink of extinction.”

  “There is that,” Drensila admitted. “Though in truth, my only crime was carrying on the family business. It was my mother who started all the massacring.”

  Gilon found her levity repugnant. “Your mother rots in hell,” he spat.

  “Close, but no cigar,” Drensila replied.

  She stabbed a thumb at the chamber’s stained glass window and Gilon saw the image of the Night Queen frozen in the leadlight pattern. Carnella the Cruel, trapped as if in an invisible prison, her paralysed fists pounding unheard against the other side of the glass.

  “Family can be such a bother, can’t they?” confided Drensila. “My mother tortured me all through my childhood. Maybe it’s why I turned out this way. You know what she told me one time? “I should have dragged you out of me before you were born and strangled you with your umbilical cord.” That’s what she told me.” Drensila threw up her hands. “Mothers!”

  Gilon’s fist gripped the hilt of his sword and the weapon hummed keenly.

  Drensila went on, unperturbed. “People think my mother died of old age, but do you know what really happened to her? I’ll tell you. I waited until I was old enough to get my revenge and I took it. I didn’t kill Carnella the Cruel. Death was too good for her. I trapped her in that window using the magic she taught me—turned her into glass as a basilisk turns its prey to stone—and there she remains, sealed in The Nether. Trapped in a pitch-black, ice-cold nothingness.”

  Drensila regarded the window with pride, brightening at the memory of damning her mother to eternal torment.

  “Enough,” ordered Gilon. “You will suffer for the atrocities you have committed.”

  “That’s a shame,” muttered Drensila. “It was so nice having someone to talk to.”

  Her magic was depleted, but that didn’t matter. In a single, smooth motion she tugged one of the onyx hair pins from an airtight sheath in her topknot and flung it in Gilon’s direction. The elf struck out like a cobra but he was too slow. The pin tunnelled through the air and embedded itself in his chest. He pulled the dart free but the damage was already done.

  “How do you feel?” asked Drensila, grinning ear to ear. “Is the venom working its magic already?”

  Gilon’s felt his muscles go slack and his mind begin to fog. As he staggered to and fro, Drensila moved over to the wall and tugged on a chain. An oubliette slid open on the floor, and from the hole emerged a giant scorpion, five feet tall.

  “This is Stinger,” she announced, stroking the creature’s amber-coloured carapace. “Stinger was my mother’s pet, but I took him as mine the day I claimed her throne.” She delicately touched the needle tip of the scorpion’s tail, flaunting his tameness. “Stinger donated the venom that’s working its way through your veins as we speak. Well, as I speak...”

  Gilon’s throat tightened and he found himself unable to respond. His thighs turned to jelly and he became quite unable to move.

  “Next comes the fever,” remarked Drensila. “After that there’s blurred vision, paralysis... then comes the really bad stuff.” She opened a drawer in a bedside dresser and produced a tiny crystal vial. She held it in her palm and let it rock there precariously, causing the philtre within to slosh from side to side. “Without this antidote you’ll soon begin sweating blood, then finally the poison will react with your bones and dissolve your skeleton from the inside out. By the time you hit the floor you’ll look like a big pile of red porridge.” She smiled again, replacing the vial in its drawer and sliding it shut. “Sorry about that.”

  Gilon’s vision swam. Red sweat beaded his brow. He was dying.

  “Go fetch me his sword,” Drensila commanded of her scorpion.

  On her order, Stinger began to scuttle in Gilon’s direction, his monstrous claws clacking as he went.

  The elf’s knees buckled and he felt himself about to fold. “Drensila,” he croaked, forcing a few last words from his windpipe.

  “Yes?” she replied, cocking her head to one side.

  Gilon managed a smile. “Say hello to your mother.”

  And with that, he forced himself to full height, took a dive and went crashing head-first through the minaret’s stained glass window, fr
eeing the angry soul within.

  Drensila’s scream followed him all the way to the ground.

  Chapter Two: Variant Rules

  CLIVE UNLOADED THE last of the gear from the van. He slammed shut the doors and bolted on a heavy-duty padlock, as though a thief might happen by looking to steal the pair of fuzzy twenty-sided dice hanging from the rear view mirror.

  “I still can’t believe you talked me into this,” Nat told Terry.

  “Just give it a try,” he begged, the dimples on his cheeks making him look positively cherubic. “Don’t be my mum on holiday, refusing to talk to the locals and eating in British cafes because “at least they serve proper food.” Get into it. Commit to the fantasy.”

  Nat groaned. He was right. She could attempt to make an effort at least. It certainly couldn’t make things any worse.

  Clive unscrolled a map and flattened it on the van’s bonnet. It was one of those “Here be Dragons” kinds, stained with tea and baked in an oven to give it a Ye Olde Worlde flavour.

  “This is a map of Gylaxibul,” Clive announced, proudly.

  “Gylaxibul?” Nat repeated. “Is that meant to be a place or a crappy Scrabble hand?”

  Clive failed to laugh. Hard.

  “That was a joke,” Nat pointed out.

  Clive sneered. “Thank you, but I don’t really enjoy humour.” He turned and addressed the others. “Right now you’re here, in Knighton Wood,” he said, aiming a skinny finger at the parchment’s southernmost part.

  Apparently Clive was the referee, or “Game Master” as it the job was formerly known. Nat wasn’t sure exactly what the position entailed, but from the way Clive conducted himself it seemed his interpretation was “hall monitor of fun.”

  He went on, tracing a finger along one of the map’s trails. “You’re journeying along the Emperor’s Road when you reach a fork in the path. Which direction do you take: left or right?”

  Neville and Ashley looked to Terry, the party leader, as he mulled over the decision.

  “I say we go left,” said Terry, tracing a western route.

  “Are you serious?” gasped Nev. “Left is death!”

  Ashley nodded in agreement, eyes wide. “Left is death,” he repeated.

  This was Nat’s first glimpse into the superstitious—some might say wilfully delusional—psyche of the fantasy roleplayer. It would not be the last.

  “Okay,” said Terry, nodding in agreement. “Right it is.”

  Clive rolled up the map and pinned it under his arm. “Very well,” he said, “then the die is cast.” He turned to Nat, condescendingly. “And before you say anything, it is “die,” not “dice.” He continued. “The campaign will now commence. You all know the rules: when I call “Time In” you’re in character, so keep it that way until the encounter’s over and I shout “Time Out.” When you’re in combat, pull your blows, and no head hits. Oh, and last but not least, no mobile phones.”

  Nat’s hand went to her pocket; a reflex action.

  “Did you bring a phone to my game?” Clive asked, icily.

  “Of course not,” Nat lied. “I left it at home.”

  “Come on, hon,” said Terry, grassing her up. “You can’t take your phone.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” butted in Clive, “I don’t want my players immersed in a story I’ve spent weeks creating only to be pulled out of it by your Beyonce ringtone.”

  “It’s Taylor Swift,” Nat replied, “and the girl is a goddamn treasure.”

  “Just stick it in the glove box so we can get going, will you?” Clive snapped.

  Terry shrugged at Nat as if to say “What are you gonna do?” and deposited his phone as ordered. The rest of the gang followed suit, including Clive, whose Samsung had a strip of duct tape masking its camera, the mark of a tin-foil-hat-wearing, swivel-eyed loon. Begrudgingly, Nat did what she had to, and snapped the glove box shut.

  “There,” she said, folding her arms, and Clive closed the passenger door, satisfied.

  Except Nat hadn’t stashed her phone, she’d only pretended to comply, like a mental patient hiding her meds under her tongue until the moment the nurse’s back is turned.

  *****

  DRENSILA’S MINARET HAD been transformed into a seething hurricane. The curtains billowed and the contents of the room swirled and eddied about at a rate of knots—candelabra, tallow candles and silver goblets dashing off the chamber walls—and among it all, shards of shattered glass, spiralling and shredding everything they met. At the centre of all this din and strife—at the very heart of the howling mass—emerged a figure, a human silhouette growing ever more distinct. Ever more corporeal. Ever more alive.

  The anchor keeping Carnella the Cruel in The Nether had been broken and she was beginning to take a foothold in the physical plane. Drensila screamed over the roar of the tempest, desperately reciting the words to a mystical incantation, battling for her voice to be heard over the shrieking cacophony. Fighting against the gale, she held her rod of power aloft and thrust it in the direction of her mother’s rapidly coalescing figure. At its tip was a crystal orb held in a set of demonic talons, and as Drensila continued to chant, so the crystal’s glow brightened. A shard of spinning glass tore by her face, narrowly missing her eye and painting her cheek with a blusher of blood. Drensila put the pain aside and continued her chant. The figure at the heart of the hurricane was almost solid now. It was the figure of an elegant middle-aged woman, naked, with her arms outstretched as if pushing through an invisible curtain.

  It was at this moment that Drensila, with only a slice of a second to spare, completed her spell of binding. The crystal tip of her rod crackled and emitted a blinding ray of light which struck the woman and obliterated her, turning her into a shower of ink-black droplets that briefly joined the maelstrom before being sucked into the rod’s crystal, just as water disappears down a plughole.

  All was still again. Carnella had been banished once more to the astral plane where she could do no harm. Drensila lowered her arm, exhausted, a film of sweat on her brow. She turned to her scorpion, who had rooted himself to the ground during the storm and escaped damage by virtue of his armoured shell.

  “Get the elf,” she commanded wearily, and Stinger scuttled through the demolished window in pursuit of his prey.

  *****

  THE GANG LEFT the van behind and trudged into the woods. They carried on in an easterly direction for what must have amounted to a mile, trekking far from the beaten path. Between them they carried bags of weapons and inventory for the game ahead, which turned the walk into a major slog. Nat filled a thought balloon with all manner of curse words. She’d made the mistake of showing up dressed in Ugg boots, and her feet were already swelling up like puff pastries. She asked Terry why they needed to go so deep into the woods and was told they’d stand less chance of being interrupted by dog walkers and gawkers this way. That much was fine by her. She certainly didn’t relish the idea of being caught consorting with this pack of duds.

  That was mean and she knew it.

  Feeling bad, Nat attempted to strike up a conversation with Neville, who her boyfriend pushed along in his wheelchair. “Looking forward to the game?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he chirped. “I actually prefer tabletop roleplay to LARP—it’s a lot safer for someone with my disability—but it’s good to get out and about sometimes.”

  Nat smiled back. “I hear you. I mean, who wants to be sat in a chair all day?”

  Neville looked at her like she’d farted. “Say that again, but slowly.”

  She heard herself this time. “Oh my God,” she blurted, “I’m so sorry, I—”

  “—Don’t worry about it,” Nev cut in, laughing and holding up a hand to shush her. “You know, for a smart girl, you can be kind of dumb.”

  “Thank you?” Nat replied.

  *****

  GILON EXPLODED THROUGH the keep’s stained glass window, plummeting over the citadel’s battlements and into the chasm b
elow. The fall was considerable, and Gilon would surely have perished were it not for the cliffside trees that cushioned his terrifying descent. This was no chance salvation though, this was conscious intervention. The boughs of the trees that snagged Gilon sought him out, slowing his plunge and depositing him gently into a shrub at the foot of the chasm. He rolled onto his front and used his arms to push himself to his knees, the adrenalin from the fall working against the poison coursing through his system.

  Just then a low, disembodied voice echoed through the chasm. “Run,” it boomed.

  *****

  THE GANG WERE divided into two groups, heroes and monsters. The heroes, Terry, Neville and Ashley, were left at the start line, while the monsters, Nat and Clive, forged onwards to the game’s first checkpoint. After a short, boggy hike, the monsters arrived in a clearing and Clive did some mansplaining.

  “Okay, listen up,” he ordered. “The game we’re about to host is divided into what we call “encounters.” Your job today is to play a different role in each of those “encounters.” Are you with me so far?”

  Nat rolled her eyes. She was on track to graduate with four A-star grades next summer. This was failing to blow her mind. She nodded her head wearily.

  “For the party’s first encounter, we’re going to warm them up with a wandering monster,” Clive explained. “Here…”

  He cracked open a hand-bound leather journal and pointed to a scratchy ink drawing inside.

  Nat squinted at it and screwed up her face. “Why are you showing me a crab?”

  “It’s not a crab, it’s a scorpion,” he exclaimed. “A giant scorpion, one of the most fearsome predators in all of Gylaxibul.”

  “Well, it looks like a crab,” Nat insisted.

  Clive smashed the leather-bound book shut and swallowed his annoyance. After a brief moment of contemplation he went on. “We’re going to combine to play two halves of the scorpion. Naturally, I’ll be playing the front half.”