Michael was awoken by a light shake of his shoulder. He looked up to see Marcus holding a finger to his lips before he went to wake Davi. They were in an empty longhouse that seemed to exist to store the sheep during the coldest parts of winter. He cast muffle on himself and gathered his things as he watched Marcus awaken the others and tell them to do the same. He was surprised when he saw that Francesca had a muffle spell of her own, and once they were all together, Ollie added in a spell of his own that seemed to hide their shadows and muffle their movements even more. Once they all gathered their things, Marcus had them move slowly for the back door where he very gently, pushed it open and gestured them outside before having them move further out.

Once they were nearly a mile away, Marcus turned to them.

“There was a bounty hunter in town,” he said as he made certain that his pack was secure at his back.

“Just one?” asked Davi. “We could easily handle one.”

Marcus shook his head. “I’m not sure. This guy felt… off. Kind of like Bayle when he was fighting except the man was just walking and talking calmly.” He shook his head. “Besides, the villagers could’ve gotten caught up in it and I didn’t see a reason to risk that. The last thing I heard was him letting them know that we were takers. They didn’t take it well.”

“You heard him?” asked Ollie.

“Yeah. I was… bartering for extra supplies.

Michael sighed. “And I was just feeling proud of you for considering the villagers’ safety.”

Marcus shrugged, “Our lives are important too.”

“Fair enough. Do you think we’ll be able to stay ahead of him, or should we set a trap instead? He may be strong, but with all of us prepared, I feel like we could probably take on most. May be better than looking over our shoulder.”

Marcus shook his head. “There are a number of branching paths on this road from what I remember on the map. If we’re lucky we may be able to avoid him entirely, and if not then we can hopefully find a better place for an ambush.” he gestured around to the mostly open hills and plains around them, “hard for us to hide for too long out here, especially not knowing what abilities this guy has.”

“If I could divine him, I may be able to figure it out.”

“Unless he notices you before you notice him.”

“He didn’t notice you.”

“He almost did, and I was in pitch darkness several houses away with a muffle spell from Ollie.”

Michael looked at Ollie with a raised eyebrow.

“Do you ask friends why they need healing, or do you just heal them?”

Michael sighed. “Very weak excuse, but debating everyone’s morality isn’t why I’m here. I’m not your dad.”

Pyotr and Lance both snorted at that drawing a glare from Michael, who dropped it and sighed.

“Old habits die hard I suppose.”

They traveled at a quick clip the rest of the early night and most of the morning without stopping. There were a number of smaller side roads that Marcus began to take them down, taking some time to cover their tracks with Ollie’s magical assistance when they did so. The main road had more travelers and their own travel wouldn’t be easy to distinguish from anyone else's, but they ran the risk of running into more travelers that could let others know they’d seen them. Eventually they reached an old wooden bridge that hung over a quickly flowing river. They were all approaching it, when Marcus suddenly held out a hand for them to stop, and drew his rifle.

“You must have a bit of elf in you,” said a deep rumbling voice from under the bridge. “To have heard me lurkin down here.” A large gray-brown hand slapped wetly onto the bridge as a massive bipedal creature pulled itself out from underneath it. It was shaped like a man, with two arms and two legs, but its face was long and almost conical with large tusks and rows of teeth like a sharks in its mouth. It was covered in river mud that had mostly dried across its skin, but was otherwise naked. It reached back under the bridge to take out a large wooden club that looked to have once been most of a medium-sized tree.

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“Troll,” said Lance as he drew his sword. “Haven’t ever seen one in person.”

The troll picked at his teeth with a long nail on his pinkie finger as he looked them over with small black eyes.

“More of you than I can eat. S’unfortunate.” He cocked his head as Lance’s armor reflected a bit of light into his eyes. “Think you’d mostly be a bit too crunchy for me anyway.” he swept his eyes across all of them and settled on Francesca. “Hows about you just give me ‘er and let the rest of ya go, eh? Good deal?”

Michael stepped forward a few steps. “Honestly? Not the worst one I’ve heard.”

Francesca glared at him, and Davi stepped a bit in front of her defensively.

“Good, a sensible humie. Not lots of those. Just toss her over to me and you can be on your way.”

“Whoa whoa, I said it wasn’t the worst

deal I’ve heard, I didn’t say we were taking it.”

Marcus began to slowly move a bit further back as he readied his rifle, and Ollie began muttering under his breath as he began to channel his magicka.

“Just give me the woman Humie, or I’ll take the big man too,” he said pointing at Davi.

“Absolutely not. If you were going to take any of the men, I’d have to insist that you take Lance, here,” Michael moved over to Lance and lifted up his arm. “Not quite as big as Davi, but I can guarantee the meat is fresher.”

“Actually, you know what,” Michael moved over to Pyotr. “This is probably the best tasting of all of us. You take him and the woman off our hands, and we’ll let you cross the bridge.”

The troll scratched his head. “What. No. It’s my bridge. I’m letting you cross it.”

“Are you sure? Let’s circle back to that later. For now I want to go over our dependencies to make sure that nothing on our end is holding you back from meeting your part of the obligation. We’ve gotta get this done on time, or else the execs are going to be a real pain in the ass.”

The troll squinted as if the act of doing so would help him to think better.

“You know what, let’s set a follow-up meeting for next week. I think we’ll need to cc Cheryl in HR since this is a personnel issue.”

The troll gave a low rumbling growl. “I don’t-”

Marcus fired his rifle and immediately after two bolts of lightning slammed into the troll’s chest.

The troll staggered back for a moment, but didn’t go down. Michael, Pyotr, Lance, and Davi all charged forward with their swords ready.

Pyotr reached him first, carving into the troll's calf with a powerful slice of his sword.

Lance followed that up by sinking his spear deeply into the monster’s gut.

By the time Michael and Davi reached it, the troll managed to swing its club. Knowing that neither of them could block the blow alone, they both raised their shields and actually charged the club, robbing it of momentum as they struck it at the same time.

With their shield arms shaking they struck out with their swords. Michael managed a deep cut with his sword, but felt the metal of it strain and was forced to let it go and draw his dagger as he backed away. Davi chose to move closer to the troll and slash across his stomach, causing its grey organs to spill out next to where Lance had embedded his spear.

It looked for a moment as if it would make another attempt to lift its club, when a heavy stone slammed into his head, and he instead fell backwards, dead.

Michael moved over to the corpse and carefully extracted his sword, aware that it would break very soon even with the care he’d taken to keep it from breaking. He then yanked the spear from the troll's gut and tossed it to Lance.

He caught it easily. “This is why we have soldiers and militia patrol for creatures like these. Creatures such as this have no place in the world.”

Francesca nodded. “Maybe the one good thing Stent does.”

Lance looked as if he’d retort, but thought better of it.

Marcus was carefully wading out to stand under the bridge. Michael took off a few pieces of his armor and followed him out. Under the bridge were a number of corpses, mostly animal, but some human. A few… very small. He walked over to them, ignoring the maggots and decay as he went to each recognizable head and placed a hand on it, saying a prayer for each of them. He saw a flicker of gold in a corner and noticed a pair of boots in surprisingly good shape along with a few saddles and scraps of cloth. He examined them closer.

Title

Boots of the Sender

Grants:

Kicking with these boots is granted Major Strength

Michael blinked and grabbed the boots before wading out to see if they were his size. A cursory look told him that no, they were too small for him, which meant that they were too small for Davi. He looked over at Lance, but his own feet seemed to be about the size of Michael’s. Ollie fittingly had clown feet. That left Marcus and Pyotr.

Marcus was still searching through the troll’s nest so Michael went to Pyotr.

“I found these titled boots. They make kicks much stronger. See if they fit you.”

Pyotr raised an eyebrow. “They’re not quite ballet shoes, but I’ll give them a try.” He stripped off his own boots and pulled on the new ones with little difficulty. Once they were on he looked around and found a small tree. He lifted his leg and planted a perfect kick into the center of the tree. It struck with such force that everyone stopped what they were doing to look at him. There was a perfect footprint in the center of the tree and a crack where Pyotr had struck it. He giggled a bit as he looked back at Michael.

“They have a bit of a kick.”