Yes, yes, I know. I've been gone for a while and havent updated shit. I know you are all mad at me, more than likely, but I've been busy thinking up a couple of new concepts. I hope you enjoy my new story, and find it in your heart to forgive me.

-NetherscreamNordune

The whip cracked out, biting into his flesh and causing him to cringe. Florian collapsed to his knees with a groan, his chains drawing taut as he cradled his bleeding wrist. He could see droplets staining the dry, red earth below him, but whether they were tears or blood he could not say. Through teary eyes he looked up to see his master standing over him, coiling his whip around his arm, his breath reeking heavily of alcohol. "And you'll get another if you don't get this whole dam' field done by sundown. If you try to run, boy, I'll take those pretty little hands off, too." Janos unsheathed a dirk with his free hand, wickedly curved and caked with dried blood, waving it in front of his face. Florian tried to scrabble away in the dirt as his wide eyes followed the dull saw-like edge of the knife, but his shackles held him firm. Janos chuckled grimly, watching the expression change on the boys face. "But you already knew that, right?"
His eyes narrowed at the cowering boy as the silence lapsed. "What are you, dumb or something? Answer me!" He stepped to him without warning and kicked him in the ribs, hard, the iron toe knocking him on his side with a grunt and a cloud of dust. He grinned, showing a partial row of yellow teeth. With that he spat on him and turned. Florian watched from the ground as he walked off, back into his shed, slamming the door behind him. He stared after Janos for a long time, trying to decide whether he should live or die.
Dying would be easier, he knew. All he had to do was lay there, the earth beneath his head, and close his eyes. If Janos didn't find him sleeping in his field and kill him, the fever would- For days now the fever had been burning through Florian, turning his bowels to brown water and making him shiver in restless sleep. Each morning found him weaker than the day before, and laboring in the fields wasn't helping him. It won't be much longer; he had taken to telling himself.
If not Janos or the fever, then starvation surely would kill him. Janos fed them less and less every day, keeping more bread for himself and selling the rest to buy his wine. Stealing and eating anything that sprouted from the earth of Janos' farm earned him thirty lashes—he learned that the hard way, and was hesitant to ever do so again. The occasional crow landed on the farm, but was too quick to be caught, so Florian took to throwing rocks at them. But he had no strength in his tiny limbs, and was weakened even more by labor and fever, so when the rocks finally did strike true the crows simply quorked in annoyance and took to the skies. Of rabbits and rats there were none to speak of, for even they abandoned the desert-like land.

Fever; hunger; exhaustion. They were his constant companions, with him every hour of the day, and in time he began to think of them as his friends. Soon enough, one or the other of those friends would take pity on him and free him from his endless misery so that he could die and be forgotten, replaced by another slave a week later. Or perhaps he would try to run for his freedom, like his mother. Janos had made a sport of it, hunting her through the forest with his pack of snarling dogs. When he finally caught her, he slowly peeled off ribbons of her flesh like the skin of a potato. It was a long, drawn out death, only barely worse than his own fate. He threw down a flap of skin in front of Florian and Everett, and told them "Let that be a lesson to you." Her blood, dried and brown, still dotted the blade of his knife.
His thoughts dissolved as he heard hastened footsteps approaching. Everett was on him then, wrapping his arms around his brother protectively. He was wearing oversized boots, a plaid shirt and faded overalls, a matching pair of Florian's clothing. "Come, now," He said as his brother quivered in his arms, "don't cry." Florian cried anyway, choking sobs wracking his scrawny body as Everett helped him sit up. "Let me see, it's probably not that bad." Everett rested his hands on his brothers' smaller ones. Slowly, he pried off Florian's blood-soaked fingers to reveal a purple welt snaking up from his wrist, across his palm, curving up and ending near the base of his index finger. Dark blood flowed freely from the wound. The sight of his own blood shocked him more, and his face grew even paler than it naturally was. He opened his mouth in a cry of anguish as tears streamed down his cheeks. "He whipped me, Everett! What did I do? Why did he hit me?"
His brother said with a sigh, "You didn't do anything wrong. He's just drunk. You know that Janos can be that way when he takes to the bottle." Everett's brow furrowed as he rolled up his sleeves, revealing his own long line of overlapping welts criss-crossing up and down his arms.
Everett stood, looking around him and Florian. Outside of the plowed earth of Janos' farm endless dirt and patches of crabgrass, with a dozen trees here and there, spread as far as he could see to the south and north over the dry land of Westfall. The occasional hill broke up the landscape, dotted with tiny farms and grain-towers. To the west the land gave way to an endless ocean, the sky slashed with wispy clouds. To the east was a simple dirt road that stretched lazily to the north and south, a thick wall of trees on the far side. A wagon slowly rode up that dirt road, heading north. The dwarf driving it, wearing a giant floppy farmers hat, was completely oblivious to the two young slaves. Soon, the wagon was gone, disappearing over a low hill.
Everett shook him roughly. All kindness in his brother's eyes was gone. "You know that we need to harvest these pumpkins, Flo, unless you want Janos to whip you again. Get up." He pulled his younger brother to his feet roughly. Everett stared into Florian's eyes, so like his own, the younger boy wiping his tears away with the back of his hand. Florian gasped, "Why don't we leave, Everett? I hate this place. I do not know what it feels like to be happy."
Everett looked angry, the way he always did when his brother asked rhetorical questions. "You know damn well why we can't leave," He said, gesturing at the rusty iron ball and chain shackled to Florian's ankles, "He'll cut our hands off if he even hears us talking about this. Imagine us without hands. How will you work? How will I work? You treat the farm well, you know that Janos will let you go free before your twentieth nameday. He's not bad, he just wants you to do your job."
Florian, pouting, squeaked, "I don't want to wait until then. And why do I have to wear these shackles and you don't?"
His brother shrugged offhandedly. "Because I'm eighteen, a man grown," he said, puffing out his chest, "I know my place, my responsibilities, and I do my job. Besides," he said, his eyes downcast, "There is nowhere for us to go without being fugitives. We are bound under lawful contract. He bought us, he feeds us, and he keeps us alive. Janos knows that you're too immature to realize that. You have growing up to do," He finished, pointing at him. He tucked a lock of black hair behind his ear as he turned away, heading back to the other side of the farm.
You're only three years older, you damn idiot, Florian thought, biting his lip. He frowned as he bent over, wrapping his thin fingers around the nearest pumpkin root. How dare he tell me that I have growing up to do? He pulled it free from the red earth, stuffing it angrily in his burlap sack, thinking I hate Janos. I hate this place. I hate Janos. I hate pumpkins.

Before long, the sun began to set. I hate Janos. I hate Everett. I hate Janos. I hate myself.

The azure troll squatted, motionless, in the crook of a great oak tree, a thick layer of leaves keeping her hidden from prying eyes. She bit her lip with sharpened teeth as she studied the human through binoculars. He is too old, she thought to herself, that won't do...well, maybe… She shifted her weight with catlike balance, gazing through the binoculars across the road and to the farm, her invention able to see every detail of the young human. He was thin and lanky, with small mounds of muscle and a thick mop of black hair. His flesh was heavily tanned, covered with a sheen of sweat; he had the beginnings of facial hair dotting his square jaw, as well. He wore faded overalls far too large for him, even though he was almost six foot in height. She seemed pleased to be working the earth, harvesting some type of strange orange fruit, the fruit round in nature and about as large as her head.
She pulled out a small notebook with her free hand, dropping the binoculars and letting them dangle from her neck on a leather thong. Pulling out a pencil, she thumbed it open to a blank page and scribbled strange fruit. Orange and round, about ten inches in diameter. Plump, probably poisonous. Has a thick, brown root. Beside it, she drew a small sketch of the strange fruit. She paused, then scribbled May be a vegetable under her notes. She put away the pencil and paper, snatching up her binoculars again and scanning the farm.
The huntress noticed the second human then, a frail and sickly thing that hobbled oddly as he picked the fruit, as if one of his legs were damaged or crooked. Or shackled, she realized. He was smaller than the other human, in both height and muscle, and seemingly younger. He seemed upset about something— his thin brows were knit together in a frown. He had the same hair as the other, thick and black and ear-length, but his skin was alarmingly pale and white. He seems to be about the right age, she thought with a smirk. They are brothers. If not, cousins. She watched them until the sun set and the humans slowly made their way back to their shelter, dragging their sacks of fruit behind them.
It's dark enough for me to move. She checked once more for any sign of humans—there was one, a cloaked human riding horseback and coming south on the road towards her, torch in hand, sword and horn hanging at his hip. He's a sentry, she realized as her eyes locked on the horn. He was wearing boiled leather with bits of mail over it, and a black hood. Of his face, she could only see a black beard. The troll huntress held her breath as he passed under the branch she hid in, no more than twelve feet directly under her. She could feel the heat of his torch.
The horse passed under her and before long, he was past, and disappeared to the south over a low rise of land. She waited patiently, forcing herself to count to five thousand. When she was sure he wasn't coming back, she yawned. Bone-tired, she smiled to herself as she lifted the binoculars over her head, careful to move the leather thong around her tusks. She stuffed the binoculars in her backpack and leapt from the branch, down to dry earth far below, her violet dreadlocks trailing behind her.
She landed silently, looked up and down the road. She crouched and stuck her hands into the thick bushes that surrounded the base of the tree, parting it. The albino panther was inside the bush at the base of the tree with her maw resting on her paws. She opened one eye, regarding the huntress coolly through the gap in the bush with one red eye. The huntress reached in and ruffled the sleek white fur on her head, smiling with pride at how silent her companion had grown. If a horse could pass that closely without noticing her, she was practically invisible. A mound of red gore and pink bone lay beside her in the brush, the bloody remains of some type of squirrel or rabbit that the panther felt the need to turn inside out, even though she was just fed.
She must be bored, she thought. I hope she doesn't go making trouble with the humans. Ala'na stretched her long limbs, weaving her fingers and lifting her hands over her head. She yawned with jaw-popping force and stood there, staring at her panther, who stared back at her. Scratching her side, she realized that she'd never seen a panther blink. She put the thought aside for another day as she turned away, walking briskly towards the farm. She tied a bandana around her lower face and around her tusks, masking her.
As she approached the plowed earth of the farm she crouched low, skirting along the edge of the clearing, all in black leather, knife in hand, goggles on her head, hammer hanging from her belt, longbow strapped across her torso. Her panther trailed behind her, prowling silently across the earth. She reached the door of the shack after some time, grinning wildly with the prospect of a human guinea pig. Her back was against the wall as she thumbed though the quiver that hung from her back, silently counting her shots. The panther took a seat behind her, her eyes scanning the field for signs of trouble. She prayed silently and eased open the wooden door with her free hand, and then looked though the doorway.
Through her night vision goggles she could see three humans sleeping there, their bodies rising and falling slowly with relaxed breaths. The largest human—although smaller than herself—was sleeping on an old bed, the other two on the floor in the fetal position. The youngest human was shackled, as she had guessed, to a ball and chain. Other than the bed, a rickety table topped with scraps of bread and meat, and a wooden chair with a whip coiled on it, there was no furniture in the room. A stack of the strange fruit was in one corner, with a barrel next to them. The huntress sniffed, and guessed that it was alcohol—the human sleeping on the bed reeked of it, and a rusty knife was near his hand. All of this she analyzed in a split second.
Drunk, and armed. There is no way that I can take them without a fight. Her knuckles tightened around the knife as she entered and crept across the room, as silent as her panther. As a member of the Horde, she harbored no love for humans—or drunks for that matter. The stench of the man's breath amplified as she neared him. She gripped his rusty knife and moved it out of his reach, placing it silently on the table next to the whip.

Then she cupped a hand down over his mouth and slit his throat as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

His eyes exploded open as he thrashed wildly, the red smile at his throat gushing crimson blood all over his body. He grasped and scratched at her biceps as she held him, her arms thin but strong like rope, he tried to bite through her hand, but she wore leather gloves, and finally he stopped kicking, his bloodshot eyes staring into hers as he died. She waited until his eyes dimmed, then removed her hand. Easy, she thought coolly.
Something slammed the back of her head. She blacked out for one instant, blinking wildly, dropping her blade. The human, She had time to think before she was hit again, and again, falling and spinning so that her back was against the wall of the shack to face her attacker. Roaring in his foreign tongue, he hit her again, clipping her temple-the world exploded in a flash of white light and everything spun. Dazed and confused, she planted her feet and lurched forward, bulling into her smaller attacker, causing him to stumble backwards.
She turned and leapt over the bed and the dead man, crouching on the other side of it, gritting her sharpened teeth. The human regained his balance, swinging the chair blindly in the darkness. She crept around the bed as he swung over and over again, her fists clenched, waiting for her moment. He swung and missed at an enemy that he thought was there, and she sprang forward, catching the side of his jaw with a lunging right hook as he tried to lift the chair again-his head snapped to the side and he went down in a heap of limbs in the doorway. She brought her hand to her scalp and gingerly pulled it away—it was wet with blood. Her thick backpack was the only thing that saved her from being knocked unconscious by the first hit.
She turned to the last human. His back was against the wall, tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyes wild with fear and panic. He couldn't see her in the darkness of the room, but he put his hands up over his head anyway, waving them wildly, clearly too scared to hurt her. Disregarding him, she produced rope from her pack and knelt over the human's unconscious form, beginning to tie his wrists together. She considered for a moment, looking back and forth from the unconscious human to the panicking one. The large one is too heavy to carry, she , she stepped over the unconscious human and neared the other, pulling her hammer from her belt in one smooth motion. She lifted it over her head-
And brought it down on the chain, shattering it into pieces. She stepped over the ball and shattered chain links, hooking the hammer around her belt and grabbing the human by his thin wrists. He thrashed and kicked as she wrestled him down with an iron grip. He yelled in a foreign tongue, high and shrill. She was still dazed from the blows to her head, but she was many times stronger than him, quickly tying his hands with a length of rope that she produced from her backpack. She tied his feet in a similar fashion.

She paused and stepped back, resting a fist on her hip. Tied up like a pig, his little mouth opened and closed furiously, but the meaning of his foreign words escaped her.
She went back to the side of the bed and snatched up her knife, wiping the blood off on the bed sheets and sheathing it at a hip. Returning to the boy, she bent at the waist and tried to pick him up, but he kicked and bucked defiantly until she grew impatient. She cuffed him across the temple harder than she meant to, knocking him out cold. She lifted him, slinging him over her shoulder like a sack of oats. Stepping lightly over the unconscious man on the floor, she took one last look at the dead one on the bed, ducked out the door…

…and found herself face to face with a loaded crossbow. Standing behind it was the sentry from earlier, his hood pulled back to reveal a bearded plump face, with beady black eyes and a fat bald head. He said something in a foreign language as her heart thudded in her chest. She didn't respond. His eyes narrowed as he stared down the sight of the crossbow, his finger slowly tightening around the trigger.
She flinched as a white blur knocked him off his feet and into the wall of the shack with a crash, the crossbow firing a bolt off into the night. Her panther hung from his throat, her claws ravaging the exposed flesh of his face, her feet scratching and tearing through the leather on his stomach. He screamed in wild panic, flailing his arms around and dropping the crossbow, trying to find the horn that hung from his belt. With no success, he brought his hands up instead, trying to guard his flayed face, but by then the leather over his belly was ripped away, and her claws raked through skin and muscle and guts. He stopped flailing and, with one last twitch, fell silent, his entrails spilled out on the earth around him.
The panther stopped worrying his face and leapt off him, arching her back and roaring under the night sky, her muzzle dripping with crimson. The huntress frowned at her, realizing that she would have to clean the blood and bits of skin off her later. She took off east, in the direction of the forest. She bounded across the dirt road with her long legs, smiling under her goggles as she imagined all of the things she could learn from the human body. Looking over her shoulder, she saw her panther following her into the forest. She trekked through the dark trees carefully, the branches snagging and pulling at her clothing as she passed. Finally, she came to the clearing where her mount waited. The raptor shifted uncomfortably under the saddle, his scales the color of lime, his eyes cautiously watching the troll approach, his tail lashing like a whip. She laid a reassuring hand on his head, looking into the beasts' eyes and smiling around her tusks. Breathing heavily as she caught her breath, she moved to his side, draping the human across the saddle. She hooked her feet into the stirrups and swung up into the saddle in front of him. She squeezed her legs together and whipped the reins. The raptor shrieked and was off, kicking up mounds of dirt behind them. Ducking low to the raptors neck, she grinned and thought, I have a new pet now, what luck!