A Troll's Hunger (Dark Taste 1)

Chapter II: Night Dwellers

When I wake up, I am groggy and have trouble opening my eyes. I squeeze them once, twice, thrice, my eyelids fluttering, and even that pains me. Each time I open my eyes, even a little, I find the world in front of me blurry. My head hurts, throbbing with each breath, until I can't seem to think anymore.

Gradually, my eyes adjust to the darkness around me. I see the vague outlines of trees, their branches swaying back and forth. A soft summer breeze blows by, and it is almost lulling as I lie there on the ground. This sound has always been soothing to me, but not so much today.

Dark. The night is inky black. I process this information slowly.

I feel my heart drop to my stomach, and I sit up as quickly as I can. I am dizzy, and everything around me is spinning.

Shit. This isn't good. I bite my lip harshly, waiting for the stab of pain to wake me up further. A few slow breaths, and I wait until everything stops moving then force myself off the ground. I still feel a little off-kilter even now.

Where exactly am I?

Everything looks so different at night. I feel kind of lost here, having never been out this late. Usually, I am always back home by the time the second warning bell tolls in my village.

The last thing I remember is going down the hill to find the wheel of my cart and falling. I am drawing a complete blank of what happened after that. Everything is dark. I must have hit my head and passed out unconscious. Looking at the night that has settled around me, I think a lot of time must have gone by.

I feel panic settling deep in my bones, and my frown deepens.

At this moment, all I can think about is my parents and visions of their being torn apart and eaten by Trolls. I assume their screams must have pierced the stillness of the night. Of course, I never saw them dying, but I can only imagine something like this happening that night.

This is not good.

I begin to move forward, trying to be as quiet as I possibly can, with the trees being my only guide. I think I am going North, in the direction of my home, or at least I think I am. My compass is back in my cart, but by now I'm sure all the stuff in the cart has been raided by the Night Dwellers. Everything is lost.

I swallow painfully, my throat constricting in fear. I'm lucky they didn't follow my scent down the hill and I didn't wake up to something gnawing at my bones or dragging me back to one of their caves.

Maybe I am lucky.

I've heard horrifying stories from animal hunters who have stayed out past evening. That sometimes happens when they happen to run behind. They swore that each time, they felt they were followed and stalked by Night Dwellers the second the sun disappeared. And they barely managed to survive that ordeal.

At the end of their stories, they always said when they reached the safety of their cellars, the screams of the Night Dwellers shook the walls of their cabins, going right down to their very souls. The breaths of these beings were so rancid that the smell of it crawled through the walls and down to the floors to the place where they were holed up, turning their stomachs sour for the rest of the night.

But what haunted them the most come morning were the furrows that were left by the claws of these Night Dwellers outside their homes, the grooves so deep that it looked as if a scythe had done it.

Maybe these Night Dwellers were still lurking on the trails, looking for straggling humans more than hunting for things in the woods. Hopefully, for my sake. But in all my life, I've never been that lucky. Never.