A structure began to emerge from the fog after a few hours of fruitless search down the trail. As they drew closer, they saw it was a bridge where the outline of a tall, muscular figure stood at its center. The site of the figure made them all stop.
“Should we…try and talk to it?” said Ruthrrien hesitantly, not yet eager for another fight having only just recovered.
“Well we have to do something,” Gelwyn replied sarcastically, “the path leads to that bridge”
“You’re rather mouthy, why don’t you try?”
“I’m not the most diplomatic.”
“Well neither am I,” she huffed with annoyance. “Bunch of cowards,” she thought to herself. “What about you creepoid?”
“I don’t know if its a good candidate yet,” the dwarf replied with a sneer.
“Well go kill him and find out. That’s what you do isn’t it?”
“Barbarian would say that,” piped Gelwyn.
“Shut it, pipsqueak.”
“You’re the muscles around here,” Ainz said with a grin.
She glared at him.
“And the most willing,” chimed in Lucerin.
“Bunch of filthy cowards…” she said grumpily in a low voice as she took a few steps forward.
“Hey!” she yelled at that figure.
It straightened and turned, moving towards the side of the bridge as it replied in a garbled language no one understood. As the fog cleared, its features came into full view. Pale green skin rippled over a large muscular frame, its arms overly long and hanging near its massive feet, its legs as thick as tree trunks. A squashed, oval shaped head sat atop its shoulders, thin jet black hair falling thinly about it’s angry face. It barred its jagged yellow teeth with a threatening growl.
Lucerin cursed. “It’s a troll! Cut its head off quickly!” rushing forward and aiming a firebolt at it from the palm of his hand that hit the troll square in the chest, burning its skin.
Gelwyn fired off a similar magical attack in quick response, but now it realized it was under attack, and dodged the second bolt. Ainz summons his skeleton in one breath, while chanting a curse in the next, which seemed to have no effect.
Ruthrrien was wary of running up to attack right away after hearing the dread in Lucerin’s warning and decided to test the brute’s toughness and speed with a few well aimed javelins. It dodged the first, but the second caught its shoulder, green slime-like blood trickling from the wound.
The troll grunted angrily and yanked the javelin free. Her eyes widened with horror as she saw the wound heal quickly. Tossing the pointy stick aside, it rushed towards her, slashing its long black claws at her chest. She dropped and rolled free as a lightning bolt from Lucerin hit it square in the face, causing it to roar in pain.
Another roar echoed in reply, the brown bear that was once Gelwyn now charging forward. With it’s great teeth, it tore into the arm of the angry troll, and slashed its leg with a swipe of her giant claws. It staggered back some, only to receive another swipe at its other leg from the bony skeleton that had joined the fight.
As it gashed the side of the bear, and batted the skeleton back, Ruthrrien felt the thrilling rage of battle well up inside her. All thoughts of caution vanished as did the pain from her injuries as she rushed in with her great ax, leaping up to take a swing at its head. It dropped one knee to avoid decapitation as her blade caught tore a great wound in the arm he used to block her. She rolled as she landed, but just as she came back up to face it again, another figure appeared from the other side of the bridge.
A hulking red skinned tiefling rushed over the bridge towards the troll. It leapt into the air and swung its giant, stone-like arm at the troll’s head, knocking it clean off its feet with the heavy blow. While the troll was still down, Gelwyn the bear sank its teeth in and ripped at it’s chest with her claws. Still it clung to life until a distant chanting from Ainz caused a ghostly hand to appear around the trolls neck, squeezing the life from it.
The Whitney Scott 