A Troll in the Chetwood

Keldean has gotten a bit braver over the last year. Mostly this is false sense of security due to his age, but then, there hasn\'t been much news of trouble lately either. He has a horse, he\'s older, and he\'s nowhere near the Last Bridge or the Shaws where the truly scary things are. So, why would the Breelander youth stress a slightly longer visit out to the Chetwood to see his friend? The sun has set and it\'s dark, but the road is easy enough to follow by the stars.

The teen walks his mare along the woodsy path, familiar enough now that he\'s unconcerned with getting lost finding his way to the Great East Road.

[Ollie(#15066)] There is a little flickering light glowing in the darkness among the trees just off the main road. Oddly enough, it seems to be - swaying? Moving at least. And it\'s quite high up about head-height to the young Bree man.

Oliver, fired with zeal to find MEN and set things on fire, has (for some unknown reason - mysterious indeed are the ways of trolls) left the perfectly good forest in the trollshaws, to come to this forest here. Possibly, he thinks, there are men here who will run in a north-easterish direction, and maybe, if he is lucky, he can eat some of them.

Keldean steps out into the road, reins in hand. He looks both ways along the road, west and then east. When he sees the swaying light approaching, the teen tilts his head curiously. Generally trouble doesn\'t announce it\'s presence with lights, and having company on the way back wouldn\'t be a bad thing.

Suddenly, his mare catches a scent on the wind and rears back with a loud whinny. Keldean\'s horse has never been the most stalwart mount and it\'s all the teen can do to keep a hold on the reins as he struggles to get the beast under control. \"Whoa! Stop!\"

[Ollie(#15066)] But so far, he has seen no sign of Men... Oliver is getting a little depressed, and not a little gloomy. Just then - how lovely - there is a high-pitched whinny, and the troll perks up. \"Ponies!\" he says to himself, and picks up his pace. There is a bit of attendant destruction with this increase in speed and change in direction - some trees are missing a few lower limbs, some bushes get squashed - minor, really, for the hope of such a reward.

Din-Elen, named in Sindarin as \'Silent Star\', is anything but. The mare rears again, and this time the skinny teen falls back as the horse throws him aside. Keldean instinctively wraps his arms over his head for protection, trying to roll out of the way. Free now of it\'s master, the mount gallops away down the road and young man climbs to his feet again, staring bleakly off into the darkness. Then the sound of the disrupted foliage draws Kel\'s attention and he turns about, seeking the light in the distance.

Only, it isn\'t nearly so far away now!

[Ollie(#15066)] Oliver thunders towards Keldean (or actually, his horse, being as that is what the troll is chasing) the light swinging wildly. If the teenager can see it isn\'t a lantern, but rather the glow of a fairly good-sized fire burning in what seems to be... a kettle? Hung from a rope slung about Oliver\'s shoulders, it bobs about his midsection and reflects up his stony skin. It\'s a fairly unnerving sight - a twice-man-high steamroller painted with luridly dancing reds and oranges in the black night.

Keldean has never had the greatest instinct for fleeing. Where some fight and others run, the farmer\'s son from Archet simply stands frozen in place in the middle of the road, terror on his face.

It\'s a troll! A troll where there shouldn\'t be a troll! When Ollie is nearly upon him and becomes at the very least a threat of trampling, the Breelander still stands, staring in horrified shock. Finally he makes a belated, panicked run for the treeline in a rush to get out of the way.

[Ollie(#15066)] Oliver is in hot pursuit of the pony, his mouth watering already at the thought of lovely crunchy heads, and hot sweet flesh when something - a rabbit? - darts in front of him towards the bushes. But no - for a rabbit, it smells most enticingly of Man.

By the time the troll has come to a stop and turned around, snuffling eagerly at the air, inertia has carried him some ways down the road, and he has to lumber his way back. But it\'s so hard to remember just exactly /which/ spot of the forest he burst out of!

Keldean stumbles over a thick tree root, stumbling to the ground once before he jumps up again and races to a thick-trunked oak. He leaps up, reaching for a branch, and pulls himself up with remarkable agility. Is it the best place to go? Probably not, but he\'s certainly going to try to climb higher than the troll can reach. And so the young man scrambles up, uncaring if his fingers and palms get bloodied from the bark of the tree or small, sharp twigs. His breaths are in ragged gasps as struggles to suck in air past the terror that\'s constricting his throat.

[Ollie(#15066)] Funny rabbit... it\'s climbing a tree. Oliver pauses, interest piqued - as well as his stomach, perhaps! He strokes his club with his palm, and takes a step closer practically on the tree now. \"Hey, Rabbit,\" he says. And his nostrils flare snuffling the air - a light glints in his eyes. \"It\'s a mens,\" he rumbles. \"Little mens...\"

Keldean continues trying to climb higher, moving around the thick tree trunk to put it between him and the troll. \"Uhh.. no! Not really. I\'m a wight! I\'ll haunt you if you don\'t leave me alone!\" Keldean says in his best imitation of the voice of the wight that had plagued him for so long. \"You best not bother me, troll! I\'m from the barrows and I\'ll never give you rest, even after you\'re dead in the ground.\"

[Ollie(#15066)] Ollie grins, showing craggy jagged teeth. \"Smells like mens,\" he says, and reaches up with his free hands. \"Maybe feels like mens....\" The glow from the fire that burns in the pot splashes strange shadows and leaping orange lights across his face deepening the cracks and wrinkles. \"Maybe tastes like mens,\" he continues, a sudden note of hope.

\"Of.. of course I smell like a man! I possessed one with my wight magic! If you kill me, though.. I\'ll be free as a ghost once more and then I will haunt you forever because you\'ll be the one that released me. Better to-\" Keldean grunts when Ollie clips his leg, wrapping his arms tightly around a branch to keep from falling out of the tree. \".. to not bother me, foolish troll! Have you been to the Barrow Downs? Have you heard the stories?\"

[Ollie(#15066)] Oliver shakes his head. \"What\'s downs?\" he asks, stretching up on tiptoe to try and see if he can\'t get a hold on this strange rabbit-wite-man. \"Tasty? Got sheeps?\" A sudden flash of pride alters his face. \"Ollie gots majiks!\" he boasts, and rattles off a cantrip: \"Dirdendaale!\"

\"The downs are where the ghosts are from.. but.. we are -wights-. We can haunt you, and slowly make you go mad! Nothing will be tasty anymore, my magic will make all of your food taste like ash.\" Keldean is just reaching for a higher branch when Ollie\'s fingers bump him. He starts to fall, yelling wildly in fear, his arms flailing. He manages to grab onto a lower branch and hangs, gasping for breath to slow his racing heart as he looks around for another limb to climb to.

[Ollie(#15066)] \"Dirdendaale,\" Oliver says lovingly. \"Dirden....\" A sharp look up. \"Ghosts? Dark things?\" And then the boy slips. Interest, magic, downs - all are forgotten in a sudden stab of greed. The troll lunges up, grabbing for Keldean.

The youth yells in alarm when troll hand wraps around his leg. Tenaciously, Keldean hangs onto the branch, the treelimb bending against the strain. \"Let go!!\" Not the wisest thing to yell so far as the physics of trajectory are concerned. \"Yes! Dark evil things! You\'ll hear my voice in your head! I will torment you!\" There\'s a panicked note in his voice that wasn\'t present before.

[Ollie(#15066)] Dark things... Oliver stops to think, hand still firmly clenched about Keldean\'s ankle. On the one hand, there is the old dark thing which spoke to him and told him to watch the bridge. There is no bridge here, but he was told to eat anyone he liked - which he generally did anyways. On the other hand, is a different, newer \'dark thing\' which says - bring them to me. On the other hand, he, Oliver, was hungry. Now. And he had let the pony run away. On the other hand, there was the possibility, remote but there, of still a 3rd \'dark thing\' as evinced by this man-smelling thing. Oliver gives a little tug, the better to help his thoughts.

The next tug is enough to weaken Keldean\'s grip on the branch, and it lashes upwards as the tension is gone. The teen reaches out wildly as he\'s falling again, and ends up wrapping his arms around the troll\'s wrist. Not the safest, but better than falling eight or nine feet down to the ground. He clings for a moment, then says in a shaky voice, \"Let me help you instead! Then I can haunt other people and you can eat them safely. Wouldn\'t that be better? I\'m skinny anyway! This body is all sick and small from me haunting it. You don\'t want to be sick and small too, do you? That\'s what will happen if I haunt you.\"

The next tug is enough to weaken Keldean\'s grip on the branch, and it lashes upwards as the tension is gone. The teen reaches out wildly as he\'s falling again, and ends up wrapping his arms around the troll\'s wrist. Not the safest, but better than falling eight or nine feet down to the ground. He clings for a moment, then says in a shaky voice, \"Let me help you instead! Then I can haunt other people and you can eat them safely. Wouldn\'t that be better? I\'m skinny anyway! This body is all sick and small from me haunting it. You don\'t want to be sick and small too, do you? That\'s what will happen if I haunt you.\"

[Ollie(#15066)] \'Sick\' means nothing to the troll. He has never been sick in his life, and has no idea what it means. But \'small\'. Now that is a worrisome thing. And \'eat\' resounds a loud chord in his whole being. He ponders this man-thing wrapped about his arm, and considers. The club is dropped so that he might prod Keldean with a forefinger, with an eye towards checking just how skinny he really is. \"Snack?\" he asks himself.

Keldean is a bit taller since the last time he ran into Ollie, and he has more muscle, but he\'s still fairly bony so far as men go. \"Ow! Stop!\" He gasps as the trollish finger jabs into him. \"You can\'t make a snack of me unless you -want- to be haunted! And if that happens you\'ll be under my control, just like this man was. I control him now, and .. see how skinny he is? He used to be big and strong! That\'s because his food doesn\'t taste good anymore.\"

[Ollie(#15066)] Oliver\'s craggy brow wrinkles perplexedly. Food doesn\'t taste good? What a bizarre concept! \"Food good,\" he tells Keldean firmly. \"Food always good.\" But this matter of hauntings and skinniness and warring Dark Things is too much for his small brain to cope with in one short night. With one hand, he fumbles for one of the many sacks tied about his person, finding one that feels fairly empty and stretching out the mouth in preparation to stuffing Keldean inside to deal with later.

\"No! It won\'t be! It will all taste bad! Horrible!\" Keldean argues quickly, his fear fighting the facade of authority he\'s trying to put on. \"Put me down on the ground and I\'ll show y-.. No!!\" The sudden protest is rather muffled because that\'s then the young man is getting stuffed into the sack, which likely doesn\'t smell too grand given the things Ollie carries around.

[Ollie(#15066)] Bad food. What a silly idea. WIth the man-thing safely tied up in the bag and lashed once more to Oliver waist, the troll heads off in search of somewhere safe to consider all that he has learned. He will need a goodly while for it better go back to his bridge, where he can be fairly assured of no interruptions, easy dinners, and shelter from the sun close at hand.