Chapter 2
They were faster, they were stronger. With a terrified whinny the horse fell too the ground about 10miles from Eastvale. Merrilynn had been knocked from it and it was only after she had gotten oriented again that she saw what had made the horse fall. An arrow was poking out from its left flank and bleeding heavily. She crawled towards the horse and tried to make it better, but she was too terrified to do anything. She was whispering too the horse when she heard something. It was someone or something coming closer.
Knowing that the forests around Eastvale were not always friendly she started to run as fast as she could, but she didn't get far. Before she knew it a net had fallen down around her. And laughter could be heard. This is where the terror really entered her mind, for it was not the laugh of a human. It was too deep and too rough for that. She knew that whoever had uttered the sound was definitely not from the Alliance.
She didn't dare to look around, especially not when she heard several footsteps surrounding her net. She may not have cared much for a hunter lifestyle; but her father had taught her everything she needed to know about tracking and such. She kept her eyes closed for what seemed like an eternity. But when she felt the net being removed from her she burst into a run again. A hand grasped her before she had even made a step. A big hand with long stretched muscles and only three fingers. She felt how she was passed towards a much smaller pair of hands, very much like a human hand, only that it was far harder than any of the hand she had ever felt, and it was cutting in her skin. Frightened, she dared not open her eyes, but she heard the voices talk around her in unearthly voices. She could not understand the language, but she knew it was about what they were going to do with her.
When they had made an agreement it seemed, she was pushed roughly against a tree and bound by her wrists. The humanlike hands were cutting deep in them as they fastened the bonds. Soon afterwards she felt the three fingered hand on her body again. It was touching, it was fondling, it was doing things that it should not be doing to her. She wanted to cry out, but she didn't know if that would edge the villains on more or not. When she felt cold metal on the front of her chest she stopped thinking.
They were going to kill her.
Wildly she started tugging at her bonds in the hope of finding a weakness in the tree or rope but all she got was laughter from all sides. As the blades started ripping through her clothes her eyes opened in shock.
That's when she saw them.
Trolls, three of them, four counting the one cutting her robes and one forsaken. They were all abominations, but in comparison to the Forsaken the trolls were beauty queens. The group of assaulters had a scary gleam in their eyes and she wanted to wrench her eyes shut again but the undead had forced a spell on her as soon as she had opened her eyes so that her body would no longer obey her. She knew he had been waiting her to do so. Her mind was forced to witness the undead violating her mouth and fondling her chest with his bones. She couldn't scream as the troll entered one oversized finger in her virgin passageway, breaking her. She couldn't cry as one of the other trolls roughly pushed the other one out of the way and was about to enter her and cause her more pain than she could possibly bear. Everything about a troll was big. And that really did mean everything. She was wishing for death now. She wanted death; she did not want to live through any more of this.
And then, inches before the troll could enter her, an arrow struck him in the heart, letting the thing keel over and die. The others made a quick escape, and Merrilynn was free from the mind control. The eye contact had been broken. But she did not have anymore energy to cry. She just passed out from utter shock.