Chương 91: 90 - Cold Blood

The tunnels snaked down so deep that Alexandra lost all notion of time. She didn't meet another troll. Not until she reached the edge of another cavern. She stopped, hid in a cranny, and listened. Steps. Heavy, slow, with the grinding of fists against stone. Then a grunt. Another. There were two trolls in there. She took a deep, quiet breath and considered whether she could win. She wasn't sure. One troll had taken a while, but she didn't get hit. It was safer to fight one-on-one.

But safer meant slower, and she wasn't sure if it would even be possible. She couldn't stay in the dungeon forever. She waited a few minutes. From the noise, she confirmed only two trolls were present. She doubted the beasts could stay silent for long. Unless they were sleeping, in which case she would have to run. She clutched her spear. She had to try. Alexandra stepped out of her hiding spot and into the cavern. The walls were covered in luminescent mushrooms that filled the room with a faint blue light.

Two trolls. She'd been right. One was sitting with its back to her, facing the wall as it picked mushrooms and shoved them straight into its mouth. The other was walking toward the far end of the cavern. Neither saw her. She slipped behind a rock. If she could ambush them… But the troll that was walking turned its head in her direction, and sniffed. It grunted. The other one looked back. Shit. Alexandra gathered her mana, and cast two quick Inflict Weakness just as she stood up.

Then she charged for the sitting troll. It was closest to her. It took seven strides to reach it. The troll was still sitting up when she planted her spear into its back, and followed up with a fast Dark Bolt. She felt the dull pain of sickness of empathy ripple through her, and pulled back. As she did, she reached with Drain Life. Instead of the raging torrent she'd found in the other troll, she was beset by a strong feeling of unease. Corruption. Dark Bolt. This wasn't good. She couldn't take that lifeforce.

Alexandra stayed on the move, keeping her distance from the trolls, who seemed confused at what was happening. The second troll stood next to its companion, examining its wound with a look of horror. It turned its head to Alexandra. She bit her lip. It's them or you, Alex. She knew that. She just needed a second to chase the intrusive thoughts away. Then, she reached for the healthy troll with Drain Life. It didn't catch. The torrent was too strong.

But she could tell it was closer than it'd been for the first troll. Her gaze hardened. She took the initiative. The troll didn't charge. Alexandra had expected it to. She'd taken three steps toward them, spear leveled, and it had simply turned. Placed itself between her and the wounded one. Shoulders up. Not attacking. Blocking. She stopped. The wounded troll made a sound she hadn't heard from the first one. Low, somewhere between a groan and a cry.

It reached up and touched the wound in its back, and when it brought its hand around to look at the fingers, the corrupted flesh was already bubbling at the edges. The healthy one looked at the wound. It made the same sound back. Alexandra tightened her grip on the spear. She feinted left. The healthy troll shifted with her, tracking, keeping its body between her and the other. It didn't sweep at her. Didn't reach. Just made itself a shield for the other one. She jabbed at its arm. It flinched but didn't retaliate.

The ache bloomed on her own arm, right where the spear had grazed. She reset and circled, looking for an angle around the healthy one. The wounded troll had pulled itself upright behind its companion. Its breathing was audible, slow, labored. It kept making that sound. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. The healthy one kept answering. Alexandra stopped circling. She stood there for three seconds.

Then she cast another Dark Bolt at the healthy one, and the fight—if it could be called that—continued. She tried to cut wide and approach the wounded one from the side. The troll protecting it tracked her exactly. She reset. If it wouldn't bite, she'd make it choose. She jabbed at its arm. It took it. She jabbed again. It took that too. The third time, she held the spear tip at its ribs and waited. The troll looked at her. Then it looked at the wounded one. That was the gap. Short jabs. Methodical.

They let her do more of it than they should have. Twice she landed clean jabs to the arm without the troll pulling away, because it had turned its head to check on the other one. When it finally swiped at her, the motion was half-hearted, and she stepped past it easily. The troll she first wounded had sunk back down. It sat against the cavern wall, one hand pressed flat to the stone beside it like it needed the contact. Its yellow eyes were open and tracking her whenever she moved into its line of sight.

It looked tired. Afraid. The other took a hit to the knee. It staggered. Alexandra stepped back and gave it space, and it used that space to move even closer to the other troll. It crouched beside it. Touched its shoulder with one massive hand. The other troll leaned into it. Alexandra looked away. She looked at the ceiling, at the mushrooms growing in clusters along the rock, at the faint blue light they cast. She thought about the dungeon. The gates. Her quests, but also her life outside. She looked back.

The trolls were still crouching beside one another. Both of them were watching her now. The healthier one's wounds were accumulating. Dark Bolt was working. She could see the bubbling at the edges. Its yellow eyes met hers. She had cataloged the first troll's eyes without thinking much about them. Small, yellow, animal. Tracking her for gaps in her defense. These eyes were doing something different. They held on her face with an attention that wasn't tactical, and in them she found something she didn't want to see.

She looked at the wound on its arm. Then back at its face. It made that low sound again. The other one answered. Weaker this time. Alexandra stepped forward and the troll stood back up, putting itself in the way again. But slower now. The wounds were taking hold. She could see the effort it took to straighten. She didn't make it drag out. She worked quickly, targeting the same spots, keeping her jabs short and economical. She didn't like how efficient she was being. The troll took it.

When it finally went down, it caught itself on one arm, head bowed, and she finished it before it had the chance to look up at the wounded one again. She stood still for a moment. Behind her, the first troll had gone quiet. She turned. It was watching her from the floor. One hand still flat against the stone. The other had moved, slowly, to rest against its companion's back. The yellow eyes found her face again. The troll's pain was distant, muted by whatever blunted edge the species ran on.

What she felt instead was her own chest, tight in a way that had nothing to do with any sickness. She killed it quickly and cleanly. Then she stood in the blue-lit cavern and did not move for almost a full minute. The mushrooms grew in silence along the walls. The two bodies settled. She rolled her shoulders. Checked her spear for damage. Opened her journal. Took the time to check her two new curses: stutter and cold blood. She didn't cure cold blood. She wasn't sure she'd like how she felt after that.

Giant Slayer 3 -> 4 Inflict Weakness 8 -> 9 She was about to walk to the far end of the cavern and keep exploring when another troll stepped into view. It was larger and was dragging a stone club the size of her body behind it. Its eyes locked onto the corpses, then onto her. She saw a flicker in them. Then it roared. She didn't have time to dispel her journal. The troll crossed the cavern in four strides and swung the club in a flat arc that would have taken her head off at the neck.

Alexandra threw herself backward and felt the wind of it clip past her chin. She hit the ground hard, rolled, came up in a crouch with her spear out. The troll was already turning. It was faster than the others had been. Much faster. She cast Inflict Weakness and felt it land, but the troll didn't slow. It brought the club down in an overhead strike, and she dove right, and the impact cracked the stone floor where she'd been standing and sent a chip of rock into her shin like a thrown knife.

She hissed and kept moving. But the troll didn't give her distance. It stayed on her, club swinging in wide, punishing arcs that turned the cavern into a series of narrow corridors she had to navigate at a dead sprint. She jabbed at its thigh on a pass, and the spear bit, but she was moving too fast to follow through, and the angle was wrong. It barely drew blood. The troll didn't flinch at all, and the wound closed before she could think about it.

She tried to circle back toward the center of the cavern, where she'd have more room, and the troll cut her off. Herded her. She realized it was doing this a half-second before her back hit the wall, and then the club came sideways at her ribs. She got the spear shaft up in both hands. The impact blew through the wood and into her arms, and she felt something give in her left side. A sharp, distinct pop, followed immediately by a heat that spread up to her shoulder and down to her hip.

She held on to the side of her broken spear that held the tip and crumpled along the wall, and the troll raised the club again. She threw herself forward, inside its reach, too close for the weapon to swing. She drove the surviving half of her spear into its stomach. It grabbed her. One hand. Closed around her left arm and pulled, and the heat in her side turned into her bones rubbing against each other. She screamed. The troll lifted her.

She stabbed it again, in the arm this time, twice, and it slammed her into the stone floor with enough force to punch the air from her lungs. She lay there for a full second, unable to do anything at all. The troll raised its foot.