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This story starts from another perspective

We were exhausted, fallen to the earth, awake after a long sleep.

Suddenly I was grasped, pulled from the earth where I was dispersed, and forced into an axe along with my twin.  From there I was an observer.

The troll who found us had awaken.  Some charm he had cast a long time ago had pulled at him and he responded.  I could tell he was ragged, he had been harried and outcast for some time.  But he was strong, and from the way he spoke and postured when the came upon other trolls, he had been a king.  With the new power in his axe, he quickly became a war leader for a troup of other outcasts, though he was still wary of other trolls, though he had those who followed after his banner.  He did not contact them, wanting the victory to be his, to come back with the ancient scourge's head as a rally point.

He was hunting something, and whatever it was, it began where he found us.

We tracked through the sky path and came to earth, though warily, as we were in a city of men.  A huge city.  I had been to Paris and I had been to Rome in its day, before the coming of the white Christ.  This city had buildings that reached for the sky and roads with gigantic chariots.  The troll did well to be careful of these men.

The path led to a home guarded by fu dogs.  "A sorcerer" the troll king spat.  When he spotted the sorcerer's leman, he laughed -- a shapechanger.  "What kind of weakling is bound by that simple sort of imagery" he snarled.  "The dogs must be his strongest power, if he was taken by a shapechanger -- and one that had not yet found the strength to drain and slay him".  The troll and the two spriggins who followed him laughed, though the brindle cats we had found were not so haughty.  Brindle cats usually follow after the prey and feed on corpses, so I paid their feelings little attention.  I couldn't tell if the troll thought of them as followers or spare food.

The did serve to keep whoever was dogging his heels even further back than they would have been.  I could barely sense whoever followed him.  Many had lost place or position in the old struggles and would follow after even the scent of power.

He was careful not to come too close to the dogs.  His armor was old on his body, with rents, and the enchantments flickered weakly.  He had been hard used. Once he had ruled in the far north in Europe until he had decided to expand his holdings to Normandy.  There the elves had raised up a mortal bearing poisoned iron against him and those chaos creatures he had embraced for power, foul and twisted creatures, nightwalkers and undead.

The battle had been long and he had hazarded too much, so lost almost everything.  He had fled across the frozen northern route to the new world, and had lived as an outcast there, dreaming of revenge and eating the heart of the mortal who had been the keystone of his destruction (or so he babbled in his dreams. He was the source of his destruction, and the architect of it was an elf lord -- but one who would always remain outside of the reach of someone who had fallen as this troll had.  A dream of revenge against some mortal who had been locked away by an enchantment had sustained him, but now that the mortal was back inside of time, that dream had come to life and motivated him).

His first play had seemed to make sense.  The mortals in that realm had embraced chaos.  The English invaders had not.  It seemed natural that the one thing the locals would not be strong against was undead chaos.  How was he to know that the shidhe he went to war against held an ancient treasure forged for just that combat and that the Shidhe disdained the mortal sorcerers rather than tutored them?

After all those bitter years and all those misgivings, he found his prey, but years had given him cunning.  He might despise the sorcerer, but the dogs made him wary and he was averse to risks.  He tracked a path the young mortal (for surely he seemed too young to be the one who had broken the hosts) and set an ambush on a wooded path where the mortal often walked, without trace of arms or armor.

That was when the troll, his spriggins and cats struck.

What I saw seemed to be four young children, scarcely youths, one who rang in my heart -- it was she I had guarded in my long dreams.  The troll burst out, our forms wrapped around his axe, giving it power.

The boy jumped into the air, in the salmon leap, a sword appearing from nowhere into his hand, and he struck, piercing.

One girl was enveloped in snow flakes and cold, the other in fire and light.  The troll was riven and blasted, the sword burning him with iron poison he could not resist.  The spriggins would have fled if they had lived.  The cats scattered, though there was a falcon that harried them from the air with shards of ice.

And that was how I returned to Marie as her bow, her weapon of choice and her friend.

Well.  You can guess it was a surprise.  We were walking with Jean and Marie to school, taking the shortcut through the forested glen behind Ariel's house when this ragged giant troll jumped out, his axe burning with dragon power.  I'd never seen such a thing.  Jean reacted as if someone had asked him to take out the trash.  His sword was in his hand and he leaped over and past the swing of the giant axe, striking a deep blow into the troll's neck.  Where Jean struck there was a blast of chaos burning magic and a great rent of iron poisoned flesh peeling back.  The blow pierced the troll through and severed the major artery in the neck, the iron reek penetrating straight to the heart.

"Arkanak, my old foe" was all Jean said.

Ariel took one spriggin in mid-air, freezing it solid and then breaking it into chunks.  I enveloped the other in flames as my sword struck it.  Ariel's falcon spotted some brindle cats lurking behind, and with a screech of rage dove at them, ice blasting from its wings.

The rush hit me, emotion and force making the world go red and black, and then it was over.

Whoa.

I recognized the two dragonsnakes that had dissolved into the earth when we found the twins and they recognized Marie. She took one up as a bow and the other wrapped itself into her aura.

We were so alert, and so on edge that we almost all blasted the poor pooka who ran into the clearing.

Jean suddenly cried out with joy -- it was an old friend.

Turns out that at least some of the sidhe had felt bad about how they had used him.  At least this one loyal one had, and had searched for him ever since he had returned to the mortal realms, out of loyalty and care.  When the magic prison broke, the pooka was on his trail almost as fast as the troll, and had followed them, holding back until he could be of use or make contact.  The attack was over with so fast that the pooka failed to arrive before the fight was over.  It was overjoyed to see Jean alive and he it.

Made for quite a story when we got home.  Dad spoke to the dragonsnakes at length, laughing with a roar at something they said.  Seems they had mistaken him for some sort of sorcerer and saw his relationship with mom as proof that both of them were so weak that even a spriggin need not fear them.

Though I wondered were Mom was.

Dad told me that we had guests, but that he had told Mom not to eat too many of them.

Well, turns out that in the area North East from where we were, the troll lords had been fighting.  It had gone on for a long time, and the land was frozen and wasted because of it.  It did not look like peace was going to come.

Then Arkanak, a leader of a large faction, went over the line (without realizing it, of course).

Next thing you know, Mom had swooped down and gathered up all the faction leaders.  They were all in our dining room, wrapped in chains of fire.  Arkanak's faction looked especially chastened.  Mom doesn't like people messing with her kids and you can definitely say that Arkanak had done that.

Even worse, some of the skalds had gotten wind of what he was up to, and most of the chieftains were on a hunt after Jean, as part of some heroquest pattern to prove their rightful kingship.

Except all the paths led through Mom.

And she wasn't happy with them.  She was ready, willing and able to eat every last troll in North America, masters, skalds, chieftains, berserks and all.  She even had both dragon-trolls wrapped up in fire and tightly constrained.  It was a crowded dining room (the crowd kind of spilled over into the great room that it opened into).

We walked in with dad behind us, and you could see the light go out in the eyes of those bound.  I think they didn't realize that it just wasn't some rukh they had somehow run afoul of.  Seeing him they realized that it was "the" rukh and that even if they had somehow come together and taken the rukh, they would still have to face him.  The sword of severance was bare in his right hand, his cloak in his left, the fu dogs at his heels glowed with eldritch light and they weren't the ones who guarded the front door.  I recognized them as creatures of deep magic, princes and kings.

This mess wasn't something the trolls could escape by a back door or magic or even by uniting.  Grey smoke, that evil old wyrm, fouled itself, though Dad cleared the mess away without a blink.  None of them were ready for final judgment.

Now not everyone in that group knew exactly what was up, but they could tell that it was serious.  Mom wasn't masking her power and Dad, for the first time in my life, actually looked scary to me.

One of them, a master of hyrthgr, rose up in all his power, linked to his host.  The fire didn't even flicker that held him as he gave everything that he and his host had.  His eyes went black with the deep power and the chains didn't show any change at all.

"If it were that easy, would I still be here?!" Grey smoke [aka Grey sHADOW] the wyrm hissed.  "We aren't cut off because they don't care, not because they can't do it" his voice graveled out as he eyed the sword of severance.  Fear was a green and yellow fire threatening to overwhelm him.

Mom looked right at him "If I was going to eat you, I'd have done it."  "But as for that idiot, with the blood of oreads on his hands" and suddenly the fire took the hyrthgr master and he was ashes and dust floating in the wind.  The entire host that followed after him and that linked to him was gone as well, consumed completely by flame, never to walk this world again.

A ripple went through the room.  None of them had had their site blinded and most could sense what had happened.  It was about to get worse as Mom summoned up balefire in rings of black heat around her.  It was a lot.  More than any of them probably imagined possible. They sure never expected to see that much in vision, none the less in person. In a story it would have been so excessive no one would have believed it.  She would reach out and summon it and then let it go, bring more back and let it go. All of them together, if they gave their lives, could not have summoned a tenth of what she was bringing up, and not over and over again. It was a display of raw power intended to draw the eye and chill the heart and it worked. Not to mention, she was really angry and that is just how Mom gets when she is really angry. She wasn't doing it for the effect.

They could see utter destruction.

"Now" my dad said, "who wants to challenge my house?"  

This was it.  They had bound themselves into a pattern to throw their weight against Mom and dad (you know, she is "Mom" when she gets like this, and she was really "like this" right now if you know what I mean) when they thought the target was one isolated mortal boy.

But the pattern was still there.  You could tell that several of them still wanted to kill and eat Jean, not because of who he was, but only because it represented a claim to kingship.

"There is another choice" he said and threw the body of Arkanak into the middle of the room.

They could eat Arkanak instead.  It meant he wouldn't be coming back, regardless of what magic he had hidden.  Not after that sort of pattern.  But to do it, they had to make peace.

Suddenly it was clear to some of them.  You could see the fear start to drain out of them to be replaced by reason.

It was pretty basic.  They could make peace, take the substitute and end things right now, or, if they were lucky, Mom would eat them.  If not, she might do something really unpleasant to them.  The amount of balefire she was pulling in was getting really large.  Enough to consume several cities.  She was really, really angry and they could tell.  She really had too much balefire about her, even for her, and suddenly dad quelled it, all of it (zip, out like a light switch being flipped, I didn't know he could do that), and told her to calm down.

You can guess what effect that had on the group.  It didn't make them any calmer. 

Well, they needed some help and guidance, but they made a peace and took the substitution.  They offered hostages and dad laughed, though with gentle good humor, and offered to accept a return of prisoners instead.  They would give us whatever prisoners they had of ours, we would give them theirs (that is, everyone in our dining room would get to go home, even Grey smoke (Grey sHADOW), whom I suspected Mom would have otherwise had for dessert).  The step of offering hostages was normal, part of indicating complete submission, but it was pretty obvious that Mom didn't need hostages for good behavior.  If they broke their pact (assuming they could break the magic part of it, and I'm not sure they could), Mom would just eat them all.

Not to mention, no telling where we would keep hostages or who we would keep (can you imagine setting aside a few rooms for trolls in the house?!).  An exchange suited everyone much better.  It meant they all went home.  All of them.  It meant giving up very little.  In fact, it meant, it turned out, giving up just one prisoner, a half-human sidhe child.  They had no other non-troll faction prisoners left (though they gave up all of those to each other).  It had been a long and bitter war.

The peace would be sweet.  All of them could see it as better than the war and the north would finally be free of the bitterness in the cold.  Made me think of the war in Afghanistan. What if Mom just grabbed them all and threatened to eat them? I asked her. That suggestion got me glared at.  I don't see the difference, but mom and dad both did, so I decided to let it go.  

Which is how Robert-Etienne (who had strange ways of spelling his French and no English to start) came home to be with us, after being long captive in the bir bolg (a mist swamp where time doesn't really pass).  He had been captive with the trolls ever since the first attack back in Normandy had taken him, and was released into a world far different from anything he expected.

He was under dire curses, but dad showed him how to master them, instead of being mastered by them.  He also gave him a fu dog to help him with the nightmares.  What I didn't know until then was that dad doesn't just have the two fu dogs who guard the front of the house, he has an entire army of them who will come at his call.  Usually they rotate guard duty (they come to our house for a vacation [!] and because they like being near him), but there are a lot more than I realized ... (in Dragon Pass terms, consider them several 12-12-12 units, flying and intensely magical.  Distance attack is a magical phase attack, unit moves on top of attacked unit).

It was finally going to be a good Christmas for Robert-Etienne.

Notes

Amber's mom had been hunting Grey sHADOW for some time.  But for the conditions this occurred under, she would have finished him on the spot.  As it is, as a result of this magic pattern she was able to find him and if the peace breaks, will be able to hunt him down easily.  He knows it and has a strong personal stake in the peace.

There is one character left to add to fill the set out at three pairs.  I'm tempted to make the final character an oread or a werecreature, but need to work it out with Heather.

Side Box: The Characters so far as FRPG D2 derived characters Amber (nature spirit/rukh) Paladin Defensive Auras Fire Magic Special Skill Choice:  Shapechange/Fly Merc/Familiar:  Shadow Cat Weapon/Focus:  Light Sword Ariel (human) Cold Magic Club (Staff) Barbarian Special Skill choice:   Merc/Familiar:  Ice Falcon Weapon/Focus:  Rope Staff Jean (human/male) Amazon Javelin & Spear Skills (but on sword) Paladin Combat Skills Special Skill Choice:  Leap Attack Merc/Familiar:  Pooka Weapon/Focus:  Bitter Iron Sword Marie (human) Amazon Bow Skills Paladin Offensive Auras Special Skill Choice:  Shapechange/Mist Merc/Familiar:  Cold Poison Dragonsnake Weapon/Focus:  Gold Dragon Bow Robert-Etienne (half-elf) Were Shadow Disciplines Special Skill Choice:  Carrion Vine Merc/Familiar:  Fu Dog Weapon/Focus:  bladed chain Thalia/Indigo (Minoan) Assassin Martial Arts Necromancer Curses Special Skill Choice: Great Leap Merc/Familiar: Red Bull Weapon/Focus:  Kamasugari Parakile (Snow Dwarf) Axe Mastery/Throwing Axe Elemental Spells Special Skill: Merc/Familiar:  Frost Sprite Weapon/Focus:  Great Axe (throwable)