The Brotherhood of The Black Rats

1.3 The Troll

3| The Troll

Down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, an ancient-looking warehouse shook with the tremor of a hundred cheering fans. Far below its saw dust-laden floorboards, the air stunk of sweat, cigarettes, and vomit as the shouts and curses flowed from an assembly looking down into the simple egg-shaped pit. In this pit was a  scaly green-skinned combatant currently risking life and limb for an evening’s entertainment.

A  snaggletoothed goblin stood victorious over the fallen mass of white fur at his feet. He had been the favored contender going into the match against the grizzled old wendigo now lying broken and battered before him, and he had delivered as promised. In one final display of dominance, he straddled his former foe and squatted over the beast’s forehead to the triumphant cheers of a crowd gone wild.

It took a four-man crew of diligent stocky laborers to carry the unconscious skin-walker from the pit, dodging beer cans and other projectiles as they went. Once the arena was clear, another labor grunt did his best to sweep away the flotsam and jetsam of the match and the audience’s reaction to it, before a beardless dwarf stepped forward into the makeshift spotlight, sucking on a thick ash-hued stogie and blowing rings as he went.

“Well…was that a fight or was that a fight?” said the dwarf, his voice amplified by means of a solitary wireless microphone headset wrapped around his ears. 

 Again the crowd went wild. Several eager spectators even went so far as to chuck coins at the dwarf’s feet, which he politely ignored before willing another of his human staff members to collect them with a simple air manipulation spell. 

“Tell me…” the dwarf began as his stubble-laden cheeks went wide with a sinister smile. “Who do you love?” he asked sharply, motioning to where the snaggletoothed goblin sat at the narrow end of the egg, where he was re-cooperating his stamina with a hock of ham and a half-empty bottle of cheap malt-liquor.   

    The response was a mangled mess of catcalls and chants. One clever onlooker got the jump on the beardless dwarf with a cry of “Your Mother, you short little bastard!” much to the delight of those around him. The dwarf shot a simple yet meaningful glance in the direction of his largest laborer, and the man went forward to find the culprit. 

“A better question…” the dwarf stated over the insatiable wave of noise surrounding him, “…is what do you want to see next?” 

The response was a unanimous vote for one simple thing, chanted over and over again.

“Troll, Troll, Troll, Troll, Troll…”

The dwarf made his way to the thicker edge of the pit and the various pens along its side. In one, a lone dark-skinned orc in a leather studded kilt paced back and forth along the edge of its confines, letting the meditative rhythm still its berserker rage. In another, a solemn brown coated were-beast sat licking the wounds in its matted fur from an earlier match, while next to it, a lethal looking harpy sat perched, simply waiting for its turn to be unleashed from the long metal chain that hung from its neck and the human trainer who held it. Next to them, a giant arachnoid was looking especially frightening as well.  

These were the challengers that had come to him this evening. Each one eager to display their skills in a test of brute savagery against the current house champion for the chance to take home a sizable monetary prize and an invitation to come back next week and do it all over again. They were creatures out of nightmares, survivors of the old days and the old ways, and anyone of them would have put on a show for the poor drunken fools chanting above them to satisfy the bloodlust of a crowd ten times this size. Yet it was the inhabitant of the last pen that the chants called out for.