"It was strange. When Gemma lost grip of her sword we all sort of floated for a second, it was a dark place full of strange pink lights. Suddenly it was like gravity turned on, even for Gemma and I. Everyone was screaming and somewhere along the way down Frida lost grip on my leg...
Remorse Of An Adventurer II
Tangled Paths
By DaringDangerCoda: The Stone Forest, Part Two
* Frida *
"Ow." My entire body hurt as I forced my eyes open. "Hilda?"
"I'm alright." Hilda groaned.
"Us too!" Alfur's voice came from Hilda's direction and was accompanied by one of Twigs' barks. Above me was what looked like a dark forest, but all the trees had this deathly gray color. I leaned forward.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"I have no idea. I just remember falling, then… this." Hilda said.
"That felt a lot like the time we fell through the outside nowhere space." I recalled the strange gravity, pink lights.
"So, we could be anywhere!?" Hilda exclaimed. "What about Kelly and Ms. Oket?"
"I lost my grip on Kelly inside that void, they probably ended up somewhere else. We need to focus on surviving anyway, they'll be fine."
"Lucky them, they can fly." Hilda scoffed. "All we have is this weird forest."
"I'm not even sure it is a forest." Alfur said. He and Adeline were still riding on the back of Twig.
"Wait, weren't you supposed to be with David?" I asked Adeline.
"Well you see, I jumped off of him inside the apartment during the chaos, when that monster scared him and he fell over. I didn't want to be left behind and I grabbed the first thing I could, which ended up being your sock." Adeline scratched the back of her head.
"Hey there's a light over there!" Hilda pointed to a slight glow, like that of a fire flickering. We all began to move as I took the lead. The hill we were walking along had a strange texture, an unnaturally smooth stone. I came around to look at the fire, and immediately stopped and motioned for everyone to do the same.
"Trolls." I whispered. There were eight of them, gathered around their fire. "New plan, we find a place to hide and sleep for the night." Everyone nodded as we moved away from the Trolls.
Day 1 07:00
"Frida I'm thirsty." Hilda moaned, not yet fully awake.
"Trolls need to drink water too, I think."
"So if we follow the Trolls we might find water!" Alfur smiled.
"Unless the Trolls kill us." Adeline said, which prompted a stare from Alfur.
"The sun should be up soon anyway." Hilda spoke between two yawns. Although inappropriate, Adeline was correct. Today would be a slow day until the Trolls petrify.
Day 1 12:00
"Shouldn't the sun be up by now?" Hilda groaned as we moved behind a shallow rock wall.
"I'm starting to think we're underground." Alfur said, writing notes in his report.
"A cave that looks like a forest." I looked around us, the ceilings would have to be incredibly high up. My eyes trailed back down to our rock wall which had some sort of worm moving across it.
"Look at that guy, he's eating the rocks!" Adeline appeared to be making a drawing as she looked on from Twig's head.
"You know, we've seen a lot of these little guys, and they aren't afraid of us. They must not have natural predators." I said.
"Maybe they made this cave?" Hilda thought out loud. Suddenly Twig yapped, whole body pointed like an arrow ahead of us.
"Twig's got something!" Alfur said.
"Go on, show us the way boy!" Hilda smiled as the animal set forward in a purposeful but careful pace.
"Do you hear that?" Hilda announced ahead of me. "Water!" I opened my ears a bit more and caught what sounded like a waterfall splashing in the distance, finally after who knows how many hours without it.
"Wait wait wait!" Hilda held her arm out in front of me right before we turned a corner. I joined her in peeking around the cold rock serving as our cover.
"Whoa." I whispered quietly as I took in the scenery, the first bit of sunlight I'd seen in days peeking in through a hole incredibly far above, where water came down in a waterfall into a pool filled with trolls washing themselves and wrestling in the water.
"The water must be refracting enough of the light to keep them from turning to stone." I noted.
"I've never seen this many Trolls at once." Hilda's voice carried the same awe. Both elves were scribbling away on their notepads from Twig's head.
"There's a stream going off behind those rocks, all we need to do is move around the outside-"
"Frida" Hilda poked me.
"What Hilda?" As I turned I followed her eyes to a small Troll matching her stare. It was no bigger than either of us.
"Baba!" It yelled as Hilda put a hand over its mouth. The ground shook with a Trolls' signature thunderous footfalls as a full sized Troll, one which reminded me of the time where the Bellkeeper threw his sandwich at one, rounded a rock and locked eyes with Hilda.
Hilda looked from the Troll to what I presumed was its' baby, before ripping her hand away in fear. "He's okay, see!"
My ears rang as the Troll roared and everyone scattered. I ran back the way we'd come, along the rock wall. The trolls' earthshaking footsteps threatened to throw me off balance.
"Frida!" Hilda suddenly jumped over the rock wall and tackled me out of the way, the ground solid against my arm as we landed, dust filling my vision. The Troll roared again as she picked me up with a hard tug on my arm. We picked up speed fast as stone trees began to blur as I passed by them.
Hilda hooked a sharp right and promptly halted as we ran into a dead end of sheer stone faces. As the Troll entered view Twig growled from somewhere, prompting the Troll to turn away from us. I began down an alternate path and I realized it was pulling a wooden cart of vegetables and other assorted items.
"I have an idea." I smiled and pointed as we dashed to the cart and dove into the massive pile of junk, which enveloped us in darkness, hidden in plain sight.
The troll slowed down, probably looking around as Hilda peeked out. Suddenly some object moved around as Twig jumped in past Hilda.
"Nice job boy!" She whispered.
"What, no thanks for me?" Alfur joked.
"That." Adeline froze. "Was amazing!" She whisper yelled as she pulled out her notepad.
"Hopefully this takes us somewhere where there are less trolls, not more." Hilda said.
"We just need to wait for the right moment." I assured, hoping they couldn't hear from my voice how I really felt.
I was unsure how long that right moment took. An hour, two? How was I to tell in a place where the sun never came up? Either way, everyone's eyes opened suddenly as the atmosphere changed.
The cart stopped and the sounds of the troll rummaging caused all of us to shrink ourselves as much as possible until it stopped.
Hilda poked her head out of the pile a bit. "Frida!" She motioned and I joined her, and immediately the outside air struck me; the smell of evergreens and the wind on my face that had been sorely absent. I turned a bit to see where the Troll had gone. It was handing out food at a nearby troll fire.
"Wait, that's Trolberg!" I nearly spoke too loud as I looked past the trolls and down the mountain.
"You mean that stone forest is this close to the wall?" Alfur gulped as Twig joined us.
"That's less than a day's walk home!" Hilda said excitedly.
As if to dampen our mood a roar echoed across the windswept mountainside, even causing the trolls at the fire to turn. A two headed troll had come over the ridge, with an angry entourage.
"I didn't think trolls had a leadership hierarchy." Adeline noted down, poorly timed as her comments often were.
The trolls stormed down the hill, slamming into the group of trolls at the fire fist to fist.
"This is our moment Hilda, let's run to the treeline there!" I pointed away from the brawl. Without another question we jumped to the ground and ran like we'd never run before meters went by in a blue as Hilda dove into a bush moments before I joined her, branches and leaves scraping me.
"Man those guys are such a bully." I turned to see Hilda watching the Trolls fight, the two headed one pulling food out of the others' hands, before he went for our former hiding spot. "Wait, where's Twig!?"
My eyes locked on to the deerfox, somehow lodged in the cart of junk that was being wheeled back into the mountain. Hilda dashed forward before I could move. I stumbled after her without a second thought as she returned to the stone forest, and the same darkness soon came for me. I turned a corner and I could no longer see Trolberg behind me. I also could no longer see Hilda ahead of me.
* Hilda *
I inched along the ground, following the trail of vegetables falling from the cart, as the two headed bully dragged it along without a care. He pulled his new treasure into a cave. I guess it was still a cave anyway, a cave within a cave.
As I approached slowly I watched the troll lay down and close its eyes. I'd always assumed they slept while they were turned to stone. Tiptoeing I danced around piles of random junk, cameras, old pictures, jars, and food.
"Thanks for coming back, Hilda." Alfur whispered as I pulled myself up onto the cart, and lifted a sack of something heavy free of Twigs' tail. As he jumped down I took Alfur and Adeline onto my shoulder.
"Now we just need to get back out of here." I whispered, but as I turned for the cave opening the troll rolled over in its sleep blocking the way forward. "Damn it!" I balled my hands into fists.
"Language." Alfur scolded.
Twig was already working as I turned, sniffing along the walls and piles of things, before he whined and pointed his antlers to a shelf high on the wall, with another opening in it.
"Nice." I smiled as I shimmied up the endless clutter, trying not to knock anything loud down.
I got my hand around the shelf and pulled myself up, promptly hitting my head on an adjacent shelf. "Oh no." I whispered as the sound of something rolling caught my attention and I turned to watch a bottle roll from the shelf I'd hit, down to another below it. From there it went almost cartoonishly, shelf to shelf, knocking thankfully light objects down, before finally reaching the other side of the room, falling, and shattering onto the sleeping troll. I closed my eyes, but no roar came.
Peeking, I saw no movement from the Troll, and after my heart skipped another beat, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and pulled myself up, leaving a trailing hand and sleeve for Twig to bite down on.
Crash! Suddenly something gave and the room seemingly began to drain as though it were water. Gravity took me as the load bearing pile gave out from under the shelf. Everything blurred as we rolled downward into the whirlpool of solid objects, only for something to grab my free hand. I gathered my senses and saw that Frida had pulled us out of the torrent of junk into a small alcove.
"What happened?" I asked her.
"He had a trap door below his cave, his fault really." The trolls roar echoed as though responding to Frida's insult, and a hand reached down the trapdoor into our cave.
"Now or never." I took her hand and pulled her back into the avalanche, which carried us forward at speed, before shooting us out over the pool we'd seen earlier in the day.
Splash! Water overtook us as it absorbed our speed. Coughing, I surfaced, and pushed streaks of my blue hair from my vision. The two headed troll was yelling and swinging its arms as an upset toddler would.
Frida surfaced with Twig, as well as the elves, who clambered up my now wet clothing.
"Let's go." Frida said softly. I followed her to shallower water, then land. However, she stopped suddenly. I traced her vision right to the Troll from earlier, and its baby. She reached out and grabbed Frida by her shirt, and did the same to me after.
Struggling against the strength of an adult troll proved futile, and we'd resigned to dangling from its grasp as Twig kept pace a bit behind us, up until we entered another cave-within-a-cave.
"Baba!" The small troll cheered as it ran around the troll I presumed was its mother. She sat us down around a ring of rocks and held her hand out to it, creating a reddish-pink fire from thin air.
"Do we run?" I asked Frida. The troll returned with two wooden cups of orange liquid.
"I think… we can stay." She smiled. Twig stepped into the cave now as well, and the elves descended from my hair.
"This is good!" Frida smiled as she sipped the bright orange fluid. I followed suit.
"It's like…" I pondered for a moment. "I don't even know what it's like!"
"Like a fruity sunset." Frida smiled.
"What's that mean?" Adeline frowned. Elves and their exact descriptions and reports. I placed the cup down on the ground and lifted Adeline to the rim, where she sampled a single drip.
"You're right! I don't really have words for this either!" As I thought about the flavor and began writing the troll served Twig a bowl of food.
"This fire isn't giving off any heat." I turned to Alfur, inches from the flames. I reached out and observed the same thing. Adeline jumped forward and reached into the flames.
"Whoa!" She laughed.
"Baba!" The baby troll grabbed Frida's hand and took her away from the fire.
"Hilda look at this!" Frida gasped. I walked over as the little troll placed some blue grass or string on top of a rock.
"They're us!" Frida said. Indeed the troll had created three small stacks of stones. One had a black rock as the lower body, and a red one as the torso, with the blue string on top of its head. Another had a purple torso and a clump of black string for its hair.
"That's cute." I smiled.
Day 2
"Hilda!" I'd begun to grow used to Frida waking me up this way. The ground had been hard, even with the sleeping bags we'd been given. I rose slowly to sitting, to see everyone bent over something on the ground: the Troll dragging its finger in the dirt.
"What's going on?" I asked as I moved next to her.
"I think she's drawing a map." Frida pointed to the ground. There were various simple images, mountain shapes, waves, trees, etc. "I think we're here." Frida pointed at a cave shape, before moving her stick to the top of the map. "And that's Trolberg!"
I observed the map closer. "What's this woff mean?" I pointed.
"I'm not sure." Frida pondered. As we looked on, the mother troll balled a fist and blew on it, creating a mote of light that formed into a little woff.
"Whoa!" Frida and I said in unison. The little woff flew out of the cave and it hit both of us at the same time. "It's leading us out!" I grabbed my bag, which Twig and the elves jumped into and we began running behind the woff.
"Thank you!" Frida said, turning back as we rounded a corner. Frida's laughter filled my ears as I vaulted over a small rock mound and the woff rounded a sharp corner.
Slam! The woff was crushed under a massive troll fist as Frida and I slid to a stop. The two headed troll roared with increased and renewed anger.
"Other way!" Frida completed her 180 as I followed, grabbing her hand. Footsteps and roars echoed from right behind us as we took every corner we prayed would be too sharp for the larger creature.
"Here!" Frida dragged me into a particularly dark cave, full of those little rock-eating worms. "Oh no, it's a dead end!" I looked away from the worms at the infested cave, where Frida was feeling around the wall. The large troll entered the mouth of the cave and stopped. It looked down and moved away with a more nervous posture.
"I think he's afraid of the worms." I thought out loud. "At least we're safe in here."
"Maybe not!" I turned back to Frida, who was looking right at a massive pair of eyes, embedded into the wall. At least until that wall began moving. "Run!" Frida grabbed my hand again as we sprinted out of the cave and jumped down a hill ahead of us, where we slid rapidly. A shadow cast over us as a massive rock worm flew over our heads.
With a roar the two headed troll resumed chasing us, the entire stone forest seemingly shaking below us. We got to our feet and ran, dodging falling rocks
"Ah!" Frida gasped as she lost her footing and pulled me with her into a wave of falling gravel.
Thud. We stopped rolling after a few seconds and I brushed myself off. We seemed to be at the bottom of a gravel valley of sorts. I let Twig out of my bag to make sure everyone was okay.
"At least we lost the big troll." I said, dusting myself off.
"We're never getting out of here." Frida held her head in her hands.
"Sure we will." I moved to place a hand on her shoulder and smiled. Twig yapped as a moment of silence passed.
"Girls!" Alfur yelled. "Twig found something!" I ran over to where Twig was pulling stones away from the rockfall, a thin line of daylight peeking through. I began frantically removing loose stones as well. Twig began climbing into the hole.
"Twig?" Davids; muffled voice projected through the hole.
"David!?" I yelled.
"Hilda!" He yelled back as Twig moved further up.
"Alfur, Adeline!" I reached down for the elves and reached up to place them onto Twig. I pushed myself into the hole as Frida came up behind me, gravel falling away as the space grew.
Light hit me in the face as Twig vanished and I locked eyes with David. He extended his hand down and I reached to grab it.
"Hilda!" Frida's worried voice forced me to look back down, the familiar roar of a Troll following it.
I lurched as best I could and wrapped my fingers around Davids'. At the same time the tension on the hand Frida was holding grew. As David pulled one way, something else pulled Frida the other way.
"Come on!" David tugged as someone behind him clearly added their strength to his own. "Please!" A tear rolled across his face, beet red from the strain. Frida began to lose her grip below me.
"David!" I yelled as both of my arms threatened to break free of my body. "I'm sorry!" And I let go. The light instantly faded and the rocks sped by faster than I could comprehend. There was no way I was leaving her alone. She didn't leave me after the Black Hound. We would escape. I know it.
The End?
To Be Continued...