Excalibur Rising

Unexpected Meeting

Chapter 13

Lila padded along silently, her feet crunching on the grass or some twig every two seconds; it had taken a good ten minutes of walking before she could step without cringing. Beside she thought to herself, if this is a test then it means they probably know where I am already.

She came to a larger opening in the maze and she couldn’t resist feeling relieved that she was no longer loomed over by the high walls of green. Glancing around, Lila frowned when she nothing or no one. It felt like all of the walking along meant nothing. She was about to backtrack when there was a loud crack and as her head whipped round to the sound she saw that there were now four podiums and there stood in the middle of them was a large green beast and in Lila’s eyes he looked like he hit every branch on his way down when he fell out of the ugly tree.

The beast had a club resting on its shoulder and its bottom half of its body had a pelt of some animal wrapped around his waist. Lila’s lips curled up as her nose scrunched up, repulsed by not only the things appearance but by the rank odour that was enveloping her. She pinched her nose to try and rid herself of the smell but she only ended up gagging because she could taste it on her tongue.

“Urgh, yuck.” She groaned backing up a step but the troll just took a step closer to her and gave her a smile. His blackened teeth crooked and the smell of something rotten puffing from his mouth with every breath.

It was bizarre, Lila found herself staring, more rudely than her mum would have liked but when faced with something like this Lila was sure that her mum would find it acceptable. The size of the head that was looming closer and closer to hers was the size of one of those yoga balls, only instead of being round, this beast head was misshapen and bulbous. Its features didn’t seem to fit on its face properly, the eyes were too large giving it the bug eyed effect, this was only exaggerated by the ridiculously small nose which on a normal human might have been deemed a cute little button nose but in proportion with the rest of the beast misshapen head it just look wrong.  Coupled with lots of warts and green skin, Lila thought that the beast before her had to be the most unfortunate looking person she had seen.

The beast gave a laugh that rumbled the floor, drool leaking from the corner of his mouth and dripping onto his bare chest as he tilted his head to the side to regard the girl before him a little better.

“Huh-huh, little girlie got to pick, or big Jack will snatch you nice and quick,” He did a little dance, the floor shuddering as he bounced from foot to foot whilst his hands gestured wildly to the podiums around him. “Pick one but only one, pick the wrong one and then it gets fun.” The club that had been resting on his shoulder started to swing wildly through the air which only made Lila back up a step.

“What the hell is this? Some freaking game or something.” Lila muttered as she stared at the four podiums. Each of them held an object, two were jewellery, one was an old fashioned pocket watch and the last one surprised her most, it was an egg. She didn’t even want to think why they would put an egg there.

“Yes it’s a game, an amazing game. Now pick girlie or I’ll pick for you and you might not like what I choose.” The troll giggled and then gestured to the podiums, his overly large eyes bearing down upon the petite girl. “PICK.”

Without thinking about it she scurried towards the podium that was closest to her and furthest away from the beast. She didn’t even glance down as she took the object into her hand and snatched it from the plinth that disappeared the moment she stepped away.  The troll laughed again, with a sort of childish glee as he stared at her hands that were clasped around the object, she hadn’t even looked to see which one she now held firmly in her grasp. She knew it was metal as it was cool against her skin and was rather large but she dared not to look, her eyes were trained on the intimidating thing that was scratching his warty skin a few metres away.