(( Collab between Eggsy and yours truly. ))<br/><br/>A new sunrise washed over southern Ardon’s wooded plains. An encounter in a small village had gone about as badly as it could have. Deaths, property damage, and a potential link to finding out more gone in the night without a word. Not the greatest turn of events imaginable. Tarkus couldn’t have been forcibly removed from the inn, owing to his size and the unwillingness of townsfolk to try and nudge a very grumpy-looking Jotun out the door, but he knew full well that he was no longer welcome. Rest was still taken for Vasma’s sake, but as soon as the morning came, they left. Rearmed and prepared to travel again, Tarkus strode away from the village without a second look back, taking a road out of the northern part of town.<br/><br/>Brom, his feline companion, complained loudly while on the road. A series of grunts and other unhappy sounds rumbled in the beast’s throat, to which Tarkus responded with a harsh “Tch” sound to silence them. He was in no mood to deal with the kitten’s desires to laze about, especially not after having been shot the previous night. The sooner he was away from this backwater gathering of cabins, the better. Finally, Brom stopped his complaining, only to dart past Tarkus into the treeline. The Jotun sighed heavily, and gave chase after the animal. Something had apparently caught his attention, and he needed to be sure it wasn’t some unfortunate hunter that had been marked as prey.<br/><br/>“Something green,” proclaimed Floriad, putting her hands on her tiny hips. Her Dokkalfr companion turned his neck towards her slightly, looking down at the Sidhe that was wrapped around his armored shoulder. He pursed his lips, and said nothing for a while. Only the sounds of his cave drake crunching the leaves underfoot could be heard through the forest.<br/><br/>“You spy something green?” Silas asked after a long period of silence, blowing a strand of white hair from his face. He raised a hand to fix his hair, nearly throwing Floriad off of his person in the process.  “Gee, I don’t know. There’s not many things that are green around here,” he mumbled. He briefly wondered if she was hoping he would say tree, when rather the object she’d spied was her own wrap dress, but he wasn’t going to give into her games.<br/><br/>Vival, the cave drake, sniffed the earth as they travelled. Suddenly, he paused, and his head looked up and swiveled to the left and right. Silas gave his drake a pat with a dark hand. “It’s fine, boy, c’mon,” he urged, and the cave drake trudged on. On Silas’ shoulder, Floriad folded her arms and looked away from him, feigning being upset because he obviously wasn’t interested in playing her games.<br/><br/>From the treeline ahead of the trio, Brom burst forward, fur prickled with twigs and dead leaves. The hefty beast landed with a slight stumble onto the road, lower than the ground that was surrounding the trees properly, but soon caught his footing and shook himself off. A few inquisitive sniffs were given to the air, followed by a drawing up of the lips and a lowering of the entire body into a defensive position. Claws emerged from the tips of his digits, and in all, he managed to look very threatening. It wasn’t every day a massive tiger-like beast interrupted a walk through the woods in the midlands, but there was something slightly off about his stance. While he faced Vival head-on, his eyes were distinctly not focused on the drake, nor his riders. He was watching something behind them.<br/><br/>Vival reared, nearly bucking both Silas and Floriad onto the ground. The Dokkalfr pulled on the reigns and Vival walked backwards, distancing themselves from the giant cat. “Easy,” Silas warned, to both Vival and the newcomer. When the claw tips emerged from Brom’s digits, Silas winced, but kept his hands firm on the reigns. Floriad didn’t move, watching the cat intently. She knelt down and bent forward, whispering into Silas ear, “He’s not looking at us, there’s something else here.” Silas gave her a skeptical look, but then looked towards the cat and realized that she was in fact right. His shoulders went slack, and he turned, wondering just what was out there.<br/><br/>Behind them, more figures emerged from the treeline. Tall, hairy, apelike beasts, some carrying rudimentary weapons in the forms of tree branches and long stones. Large noses emerging from matted manes, beady eyes, and overly-large maws lined with sharp teeth were all identifiers of trolls. The tallest among them, holding what looked to be an entire fallen tree, approached from the end of the road, while smaller ones swung from the branches lining the pathway. One that landed near Brom was challenged with a vicious snarl, and when it returned the threat with a growl of its own, a slash across the torso followed. The cat immediately began to tear into the beast, while the others ignored the scuffle in favor of surrounding the others. They seemed like easier targets, evidently.<br/><br/>Silas hopped off Vival almost immediately, Floriad gripping the spike that protruded from the Dokkalfr’s shoulder armor. She fluttered off of Silas once he landed on the ground, and spun around once or twice, changing her size to that of a normal human’s. She twirled a long faewood staff in her hands, her antennae whipping along with the current of the wind she created with the staff.<br/><br/>Silas wheeled and settled in a place so that he and Floriad were back to back. He hefted the obsidite mace off of his back and held it firmly with one hand. One troll had already decided that they looked like easy prey, and Silas swung his mace around threateningly. Vival, on the other hand, went to go join Brom, his sharp teeth bared, ready for battle. His tail swung around in anticipation for a fight.<br/><br/>Floriad swung her faewood staff and smacked a troll across the head with it as she finished a wide, arcing blow. Silas attacked likewise, swinging low for one of the troll’s knees. Nasty creatures, these were. Thank goodness they had a giant cat to help them.<br/><br/>The smaller trolls, after seeing more of their kin be bashed mercilessly, rushed forward with their own crude weapons raised. As Brom finished off the one he’d been tearing into before, his focus changed to that of a group running towards Silas from the back. He leaped over the elf and came crashing down atop them, extended claws tearing into a pair of faces while his fang-filled maw grabbed a third around the throat. He made all kinds of terrible noises during the attack, his snarling almost louder than the collective roars the trolls themselves made.<br/><br/>Apparently unsatisfied with the embarrassing display the smaller ones were giving, the larger troll hefted its tree-club onto a shoulder and began to approach, moving in a knuckle-walking gait with its one free limb. At first, the pace was slow and deliberate, but as it neared it began to pick up speed. About eight feet from Floriad, approximately the length of the club it carried, the troll raised the weapon and began to deliver a downward smash, roaring furiously on the way down. The club was stopped halfway through the swing, and the old, dead wood splintered against the surface of an immense iron sword.<br/><br/>Tarkus had emerged from the treeline after finally catching up with Brom, and intercepted the leader troll’s attack on reflex. The flat of his sword made an effective shield owing to its great size, and with the weapon the troll wielded now gone, it was left wide open. With a hefty swing, Tarkus turned and arced his sword downward onto the troll’s shoulder, lopping off its arm and part of its lower leg.<br/><br/>Floriad jumped back, letting the Jotun do his thing. She stared wide-eyed at him for a brief moment, her antennae twitching, seemingly trying to gather information. Even though he had just saved her from a rather nasty blow, she wasn’t going to let him take all the glory, even if the troll had already been disfigured.<br/><br/>She ran up towards Tarkus, not even half his height, and slammed her foot on the ground. Rocks spiked upwards towards the troll, effectively impaling it some places, but knocking it completely off its feet. She turned enthusiastically towards Tarkus, the little beads in her hair twinkling. “Teamwork!” she exclaimed.<br/><br/>“Could use some teamwork over here, Floriad!” said Silas annoyedly, who was busy clubbing a smaller troll to smithereens. Another one came up behind him, and he parried its club with his mace, his arms buckling as he did so. While he was strong for an elf, he didn’t quite think he could outright kill a troll if he went by raw strength only.<br/><br/>Vival took the other troll that had been giving Silas problems, snapping at it with his sharp teeth. The troll made a heavy grunt of defiance as Vival took it down to the ground, ripping out parts of it with tooth and nail.<br/><br/>While Tarkus did give Floriad a glance to acknowledge her, especially after she knocked the troll over, he didn’t exactly pause to make conversation with her. While the thing was wounded quite gravely, he’d seen trolls come back from worse, and instead of taking that risk he finished it off. Twice more, he raised his sword and brought it down onto the troll’s immobilized form, first at the waist, then at the neck. It was a bit of a messy ordeal, but when he was satisfied with chopping the thing into bits, he kicked the head away for good measure.<br/><br/>Now leaderless, some of the smaller trolls began to panic. They’d hardly been doing what could be called a good job before, but now they were even more disorderly, attacking with little coordination or focus on what was around them. Tarkus took advantage of this, swinging his blade through a group of smaller ones that were beating into Brom’s torso with their clubs. The cat made a chuffing sound and stood up, getting out of the way to let Tarkus swing his weapon around again. He seemed to be doing quite a good job at tearing the beasts apart, and was very thorough in making sure they wouldn’t be getting back up.<br/><br/>“Make sure they stay down,” He advised, stomping on a troll that was attempting to crawl away, legless but still very much alive. “Cut them apart and burn what’s left. You have to be<span style="font-style: italic">sure</span>with these things.”<br/><br/>Floriad nodded when Tarkus gave the orders, and while she was not currently fighting any trolls, she went to go help Silas, who was currently making chunks out of one of them. She bounded over to Silas and swept the corpse that he was pureeing away with a quick shift of the earth, sending it into the middle of the road.<br/><br/>Silas and Vival gave her the same exact look, but quickly went back into the fray. They tag teamed one of the few remaining trolls, with Silas swinging his mace and Vival snapping his fangs. The troll fell rather quickly, its feet having been knocked out from the blunt force of the Dokkalfr’s mace. Silas huffed, and Vival forced the troll to the ground and wrestled with it. Silas ran around Vival and with a swift delivery that wasn’t entirely unlike a golf swing, Silas knocked off the troll’s head. His weapon wasn’t very good for slicing, but when it came to cracking skulls it was surprisingly effective. He wiped some splatter from his forehead.<br/><br/>Floriad took the quivering remains of the troll right out from under them, the earth shifting below. Silas and Vival teetered out of the way, nervous on the unsteady ground. She heaped the troll on top of the other one, dust and dirt flying around everything as she moved the earth. From a bag tied hastily to the leather straps on her middle, she retrieved a flint and steel, and bent down and set the troll aflame. It didn’t catch immediately, but with a little magical prompting from Floriad the troll was quickly set ablaze. The so called corpse writhed in the flames, which made Floriad make a displeased face.<br/><br/>As the dwindling numbers of the troll pack continued to fall, Tarkus focused less on splitting the fallen to pieces and more on getting out of the way of the rapidly-shifting ground. He made a somewhat displeased noise as the road wobbled beneath him, but made no other vocal complaints. Instead, he walked over towards the pile of remains, and watched closely while Floriad worked to remove what chances remained of the beasts regenerating. The writhing was never pleasant, but damn near necessary to make sure the things couldn’t just piece themselves back together.<br/><br/>“They should not be this far south,” Tarkus commented, resting the weight of his bloodied sword on the ground. “Something must have driven them away. Do you know of anything that might be doing that?” His gaze shifted from the flames to the pair ahead of him, angled down from his considerably high vantage point. He wondered if whatever they’d been chasing after this whole time wasn’t responsible for the displacement of the beasts. He’d heard of them migrating out of the north before, but to come so far south was out of their normal behavior.<br/><br/>“Well, neither should you,” Floriad commented, in regards to the trolls being so far south. She hefted another troll onto the hastily prepared pyre, and wiped her hands. Silas was busy beating the last one into a fine pulp, so she thought her work for the most part was done. In regards to Tarkus’ question, Floriad just shrugged. “Could be anything. Maybe it was Silas’ stink,” she chuckled.<br/><br/>“I heard that,” Silas flatlined, turning away from the troll he was working on. He shook off his mace, bits of corpse smoothie flying off of it. Vival retracted in disgust, but then returned to the dead troll and began to sniff it in curiosity. “And, nope, I do not have one idea about the trolls. I was about to say, I didn’t even think trolls should be in these parts,” Silas admitted, giving a visible shrug. “Glad your cat was here, though, saved us from one hell of an ambush.”