With growing apprehension, Katemperos-Tsa, the Hyperborean, hurried through the nighted forest, towards the muffled sounds ahead. They were sickening, wet sounds, the muffled screams of men and women, of children and horses, and a hoarse, unearthly bellowing. He moved ahead gingerly, but as swiftly as stealth would allow. When the Katemperos-Tsa, sorcerer of a far northern realm, reached the source of the sounds he discovered a horrific scene of battle, now over, though in truth it could be better described as a massacre.
There was the destroyed and shattered remnants of a caravan or wagon-train strewn along a muddy dirt road, and the remnants of fires, burning embers and dying torches, burning wagons. Dead bodies, both adults and children, were strewn about like random flotsam tossed upon on the shore by some mad and mindless storm, and there were dying men amongst them, some moaning in their death agony, some muttering but if they spoke words or nonsense Katemperos could not quite discern, although they impressed themselves upon his sharp and learned mind.
The sorcerer could hear, up ahead, along the column, sounds of destruction, the sound of cracking wood, the guttering of flame, the wet sound of snapping bone. He moved carefully and alert towards the sound, staying concealed along the verge, in the deeper darkness amongst the trees, his short black robes serving him well in this cause. He stalked towards the source of the sounds. When, at last, he saw the author of that gut-wrenching cacophony, something he could scarcely believe, something he could only describe as a troll, those terrible beast-men of legend about which he had read, long ago, in the dusty scrolls of Hyperborea. In that moment he realized that was what the broken and dying men down the road had been muttering with their final breaths, likely in warning.
It was facing away from him, but clear to see in the light of the flames that consumed the splintered wagons around it. It was not terribly tall, no more than about seven and a half feet tall, but very robust, built much more thickly than a man, with legs like tree trunks, shoulders nearly as wide as it was tall, and thickly corded arms, a limp and scraggly shock of matted black hair fell from its head in snaky tendrils, its warty skin was charcoal grey- nearly black in the unsteady light. It was nothing but filthy rags that barely covered it, what looked like animal hides, and bits of human skin that Katemperos could recognize only because the faces of previous victims were still attached to them like baleful trophies. A deep fear gnawed at him, but what he saw next caused all fear to be drowned in a torrent of red rage. It was eating something, with disgusting, sloppy, wet sounds... a barely live human child. It was only then that Katemperos seemed to remember that he had a short-sword, similar in shape and length to an Osirian gladius. He quietly drew the sword from its leather scabbard and stalked up behind the hideous creature and plunged it with all of my strength up under where I guessed its ribcage to be, somewhere halfway between its back and its right side. I drove it nearly to the hilt. I tried to pull the sword free, but it was stuck, so I quickly backed away.
It turned slowly, almost languorously, to face me. That was the first moment I had seen its face. It had no appreciable neck, its broad, bullet shaped head seemed to sprout directly from its shoulders bearing a wide, bestial face, and a massive flabbly-lipped gash of a mouth, two short tusks protruded upwards from its lower jaw that was set in a prognathic underbite. Viscous strings of saliva dripped down a virtually non-existent chin that seemed to mirror its nearly non-existent, sloping forehead. The monster's nose was huge, a huge bulbous, hook-shaped crag of a nose. Its yellow eyes were large and catlike, predatory, lit with a dim balefire in the reflection of the dying embers.
At first, when it turned to face the sorcerer, it seemed for a moment only to leer at him barely curious, as if to identify this new annoyance that was pestering it. Katemperos-Tsa could almost sense the slow dimwitted workings of its brain, a mind bent not only on predatory action, but malevolence for malevolence's sake. Then, once this new situation seemed to take hold of its muddy thought processes, the face contorted into a ghastly rictus, quite swiftly, as curiosity was supplanted by malice and rage.
Katemperos-Tsa had no conscious thought of it at the moment, but he stepped forward and drew his wand of red and green wood with its core of meteoric iron, decorated with ancient esoteric glyphs that were old when the first stones of human civilization were laid, inscribed along its cubit-long shaft.
Katemperos-Tsa settled his mind with the ease of a trained sorcerer of Hyperborea, the words of an ancient incantation forming upon his thin lips, the black robes of his caste fluttered around his gaunt frame as the wand in his hand sprang to deadly life, like an adder poised to deal a death-blow. The troll lurched forward wield a piece of smoldering lumber like a club. Just then the wizards wand sprang to life, a gout of blue flame burst forth from its gnarled tip, engulfing the troll. The troll was thrown back with tremendous force, as its insides boiled and its thick, wart covered skin cracked, its ribcage burst asunder, spraying a torrent of boiling entrails. Katemperos-Tsa stared for a moment at the dead creature, then sank to his knees, utter exhaustion overtaking him, he fell into unconsciousness amongst the wrack and ruin, and he slept.
