The Pixie Wars: Elemental Magic

Chapter 1: The Troll

The troll surprised us in the worst way possible. Ugh! Its putrid smell was so strong that we were all gagging and retching as soon as we climbed up the river bank. Trolls love to bury their food for a few weeks to let it "ripen," or as pixies say: "rot and putrefy." That contributes to their horrible odor. They're belligerent too, irascible, they hold grudges, and they don't bathe. In other words, they make terrible neighbors and we pixies, along with the goblins, fought several wars to inscribe a permanent, uncrossable, border between our lands. The rotten smell of a troll without an accompanying white flag of truce meant problems for us.

We'd been expecting to ford the river, climb into the clearing, have a quick look around, and then report back to The General that everything was secure. The mission was supposed to be perfunctory. "Perfunctory" went out of the window the moment the stink alerted us that there was a green-as-snot troll somewhere close by, probably hiding in the bushes and bramble at the clearing's edge.

Trolls are strong boogers, about three times the size of an average pixie. They're dense too, which makes it hard to use magic on them... not that we had any. Kekipi said we should leave it alone and go back to report it. But nobody paid attention to him—he was just the goblin our squad had been stuck with in some sort of goodwill exchange. Ignoring Keki's good sense as well as the trolls' reputation, Phelan was anxious to draw first blood for our, as yet, untried squad. Our 'little wolf' was hopping up and down and chanting "kill, kill, kill." His brother, Faolan, was older and usually more cautious, but he already had his blade out and was pounding the air with his fist. They were all waiting for my order, and Quillan and the others fell in line when I told them that we would be carrying a troll-head trophy back from our first mission.

The distinctive stench permeated the whole clearing meaning that the troll had been waiting there for some time. Also, because it surrounded us, its foul odor wasn't providing any clues as to where the snot-headed beastie was. Renny, always the joker, gave a hard look over at Phelan, our young hothead, and waved his hand under his nose as if Phelan had passed gas. Phelan's pointed ears turned bright red and he started to open his mouth to say something back, but the troll's thundering belch interrupted the exchange. The bushes on one side rustled, and then, with a loud "crack," fell into the clearing, revealing a monstrously ugly beast. Arlen fell under the bush, crushed, but he is a trooper and did the fastest butt-slide retreat I'd ever seen.

I'm short, as far as pixies go. I'm just under two toadstools tall. Faolan is the tallest pixie in our squad, and he's only two-and-a-half toadstools. He's kind of gawky, like his arms and legs are too long for his body, but that's because the whole squad was made up of my old school mates, and I was just 17. I don't know how old the troll was, but he stood somewhere near six toadstools tall. That stinky monster was three times my size. Three times taller, and three times thicker with warty, moldy tree-trunk like arms and legs.

We went from joking about the dangers we might face, like rabid squirrels and blood-sucking butterflies, to full alert in a second. I gave the order to scatter and surround—a standard pixie tactic against small numbers of enemies. It tended to distract the baddies and give us smaller folks a chance to get our pokes in from all directions. But the troll wasn't as dumb as he looked. He saw me give the order, so he locked on to me and started to charge as my squad was still rushing around to encircle him.

I'd like to say that I handled myself well, and I did get my blade out before getting bowled over and crushed under the troll's smelly foot. I started jabbing at his ankle and leg. I was hoping to cut a tendon, but I would have settled for getting his snot-dripping foot off of my chest so that I could breathe. Even the foul stench of the troll would have been better than blacking out—the edges of my vision were getting blurry and dark as I fought for air.

So I was pushing and stabbing his leg when he reached down, grabbed my arm and, with a grisly, twisting 'pop,' he pulled it off. The troll pushed with his foot for leverage, and he pulled my left arm out of its socket and off of my body. You'll forgive me that I passed out.

I came to, fuzzy-headed and aching everywhere. For some reason, Quillan, the squad's untrained medic, was dumping canteen after canteen of water on me. I sputtered and choked. I'm sure I screamed, at least as well as a fuzzy-headed, drowning pixie can scream. It turned out that Kekipi, our goodwill goblin, had driven the troll away by dousing it in Goblin Fire. Because the troll was standing on me at the time, I also got covered in the burning sap. Quillan was throwing water on me, trying to put out the fire (my comparatively smaller problem) so he could get a look at my empty arm socket (a big problem, any way you look at it).

Worst of all, I wouldcome to learn that Gage and Trey weren't just unconscious. The two of them werelaid out by my side with their eyes closed. I couldn't see any obviousinjuries. They had jumped to my aid when they saw what the troll had done tome. Quillan said that they'd fought bravely. The troll was just too much forthe young pixies in my squad. The stories from the old timers who had fought inthe troll wars turned out to be worse in reality.