The Troll-Human War Read online

  The Troll-Human War

  The Troll Wars Trilogy: Book Two

  Leah R Cutter

  Knotted Road Press

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Read More!

  About the Author

  Also by Leah R Cutter

  About Knotted Road Press

  Chapter One

  Christine roared her displeasure as she swung her great ax over her head, bringing it down hard and dispatching yet another damned demon. The group she fought this time were like huge corrupted lions, with sickly yellow slitted eyes, ugly snouts pushed out from a flat face with wickedly sharp upper and lower fangs, and a tawny, scraggly hide that wouldn’t even make good leather. Their powerful rear legs enabled them to make long leaps. They frequently ran away from the battle only to come barreling back in and surprising the unaware.

  Christine had lost more than one of the rowdy boys learning that trick.

  The two groups—about forty souls on a side—fought on a dry savannah, the grass long since grown brittle. The smell of the desiccated ground swirled up around Christine every time she took a step. A brown dusty haze filled the air, making it difficult to breathe. Though the sky appeared gray and covered with clouds, the unseen sun still overheated the place.

  Trolls didn’t really sweat, but even Christine felt her pores opening up in this sauna. Her muscled, olive-colored arms glistened even in the dim light. The haft of her double-headed ax felt solid against her meaty hands, big enough around that she didn’t have to worry about her long claws digging into her palms. She hadn’t bit one of her opponents, tearing out their throat with her long tusks. Not yet. Mainly because the smell of the demons was so foul she couldn’t imagine getting it closer to her face.

  She might, though. These bastards were really pissing her off.

  The plane they fought on was exactly the wrong place for the Risilodan—the rowdy boys who still battled—to be in. While they’d diligently stuck with her, following the fight from the previous plane to this one, they were flagging.

  Christine had never bluntly asked the rowdy boys about their heritage, but she’d always suspected that they had frost giants as ancestors, given their height. Christine was tall for a troll—nearly eight feet tall—but some of the rowdy boys were at least fourteen feet tall. They had pasty white faces, no tusks, and huge noses. Their magic was mostly frost and ice based, which wasn’t doing them any good here. There was no moisture to suck out of the air, no hidden rivers to bring up out of the ground.

  Still, they grimly fought on with their huge spiked clubs that were eight feet long and were often reinforced with a metal bar in the middle of them.

  The next demon in front of Christine reared up on its hind legs, intending to slash at her. Its snapping jaw missed her shoulder by mere inches. She choked up on her ax and struck the thing in its neck as it was dropping back to the ground, the damned blood spraying everywhere.

  She was never going to get the smell of gore and blood out of her armor. She’d grown to appreciate the need for a dress uniform as well as a fighting one. She wore something similar to the king’s guard: a heavy, blue-dyed vest with solid metal rings sewn to it; typical troll breaches made out of a brown wool cloth that she’d enchanted to be as tough as metal-reinforced armor, that ended just below her knee; tall black leather boots designed for her troll feet that were surprisingly comfortable; and a peaked helmet that rested high across her forehead and sides, gold plated so that her warriors could easily distinguish her from the other guards who all had silver helmets.

  That gold helmet also marked her as important, so she got a lot more attention from the enemy as well.

  That was fine by her. Her human brother didn’t call her a “badass warrior princess” for nothing. She’d been training for this for the last five years, sparring with the king’s guard as well as Patrick the orc several times a week.

  Yet, none of her training could have prepared her for the grueling reality of war.

  Lars and the demons had started the Great War six weeks before. Demons had poured into hundreds of the settled worlds, decimating the kith and kin. They wouldn’t accept any terms. No one was allowed to surrender or switch sides and suddenly align themselves with the demons. Not yet. Christine’s generals had surmised that at some point the demons would start offering deals, thereby turning the tide of the war further.

  Christine had been raised by a human family, a changeling, unaware that she was actually a troll until she’d broken the spell hiding the truth. She understood now why some of her generals had considered her soft.

  Not until she’d been in battles, day in and day out, death her one constant companion, had she understood what “soft” meant. And how she couldn’t afford to be, not any longer.

  Plus, they were losing. She met with her generals every night, and while no one had actually bluntly stated the truth, everyone knew it. It was just a matter of time before the demons poured into the human plane and declared themselves the victors of the Great War. They were already planning their assault. The Host would fight on the behalf of the humans—the angels, white elves, and other beings of light.

  But they’d lose, because the kith and kin, and all the other races that weren’t human, were going to be long since vanquished, or allied with the demons. The humans would be slaughtered by the billions.

  Fortunately, demons were easy to bribe, so the kith and kin had learned early on about the best weapon that the demons had—something called a corruption crystal. Each crystal was tiny, no bigger than the nailbed on Christine’s pinky finger. They looked like enchanted rock crystals, clear or white with a pale glow.

  By itself, a single crystal slowly eroded the magic and moral fiber of any being they were placed next to. Over the last four weeks, the magicians had come to realize that the effect was cumulative. The longer a being was in the proximity of a corruption crystal, the more hopeless they became.

  In larger quantities, like say, if every demon in an army carried a corruption crystal, the overall effect was to severely weaken the magical attacks of whatever army the demons attacked.

  Christine and her generals had figured out magical spells to determine which groups of combatants had the crystals and which didn’t, choosing to fight the unaided groups whenever they could.

  It was one of their luckier breaks—demons weren’t necessarily organized. Several of their troops either hadn’t been issued the crystals, or more likely, had refused to carry them due to some sort of demonic family squabbling or power plays.

  The unaided demons fought back by plane hopping. They’d leave whatever plane of existence they were on and hop to a new world where there might be reinforcements, or they’d choose a field of battle where they had an advantage.

  Like now.

  If Christine led the rowdy boys to a different plane, there was no guarantee the demons would come after them. “Follow through” was yet another thing t
hat demons weren’t known for.

  She roared her approval when she saw that a group of the rowdy boys had finally managed to find some water—maybe they’d used their own rations of it—and had conjured a puddle big enough that they could shape ice daggers from it.

  It was one of the reasons why the rowdy boys made such effective fighters in these battles. Demons primarily fought with fire or acid, not ice. They could frequently be vanquished using cold spells.

  The head of the rowdy boys—Albrecto—accurately threw the ice daggers at the enemy, killing one by stabbing it in the eyes, a second in the chest, and a third right down its open mouth.

  Christine cheered. So did the rowdy boys.

  They might win this skirmish yet.

  Every little bit helped.

  A foul wind carried the scent of burning flesh. Hot ash flew across the dried field.

  Another portal opened up.

  Christine gulped.

  A massive group of demons raced out of the gaping black hole that had just appeared.

  The ice daggers shriveled in Albrecto’s hands.

  The new group were armed with the corruption crystals.

  Instead of being evenly matched, her side was now outnumbered three to one.

  Though Christine knew the rowdy boys wouldn’t like it, she still sounded the call.

  “Retreat! Retreat!”

  Albrecto turned toward her, probably getting ready to argue.

  Christine didn’t get to hear a word of it, however.

  A flying disc came whizzing by.

  It took Albrecto’s head off.

  “Retreat!” Christine called again, quickly shaping a broad portal to get them the hell out of there. She couldn’t make it tall enough for the rowdy boys to get through without stooping. She’d have to apologize later.

  Hopefully, the demons wouldn’t bother following.

  Or if they did, well, they were in for a surprise of their own.

  Her troops started trickling through the gate. Christine defended their backs as well as she could. She called on her air element to knock away the damned discs that came flying toward them. As her group retreated, behind them, she started a raging fire.

  Earlier in the war, she’d been too concerned about possibly doing damage on whatever world she’d ended up fighting on.

  Now, she was much, much more concerned about getting her people out alive.

  And while the demons might have an affinity toward fire, her own fire element was too angry for them to just pass through.

  As far as Christine could tell, she only lost one more rowdy boy before they’d all vanished into the portal.

  Only after her people were safe did Christine go through the portal herself.

  She could already hear Ozlandia, the head of the king’s guard, yelling at her for putting herself in such danger.

  Too bad.

  Christine might be an actual princess, heir to the throne of Trollville, but she still had to do the right thing.

  She backed her way through the portal, shutting it as she went through. Yet another dangerous thing to do, as she could get herself trapped between the planes.

  She made it, though, back to the human plane. The rowdy boys looked around them, astonished.

  Christine couldn’t help but laugh. The sound grated on her ears. It had been weeks, probably, since she’d laughed.

  But the expression on the faces of the rowdy boys was too much.

  While it was the middle of summer in Seattle, she’d landed them high up on Mount Rainier, where the ground was still covered in snow.

  When traveling through a portal, a being normally could only go someplace that they’d been to before. While Christine had never been to this location before, her air element had, and had shared enough images of this place that she’d been able to go there in her time of need.

  “Thank you,” said Constenllo, Albrecto’s second in command. “The wounded are already being tended to.”

  That was why Christine had brought them directly to a place filled with ice and snow. She had already started shivering in the cold, but it was what the rowdy boys needed.

  “No, thank you,” Christine said. “For trusting me. For following me. For fighting.”

  Constenllo shrugged. “It’s still just a game for most of them,” he said softly. “We’ve lost some of us. It won’t be serious until half of us are gone. Then, well, we may just have to tend to our own.”

  Christine nodded. She’d heard the same sentiment from other groups she’d fought with. They’d had some losses, suffered a bit. If the war continued, they may have to rethink their alliances.

  Christine had to stop the war. Win it, somehow.

  She just had no idea how.

  Back in her own home, deep underground on the human side of the fairy bridge, Christine soaked her aching muscles in her tub. Her water and fire elementals worked together to keep the water warm enough, as well as make it swirl and bubble around her.

  The tub was actually a huge human jacuzzi tub that she’d bought online. With her earth powers, Christine had dug a pit large enough to slide the tub into, placing the lip of it even with the ground. She had no electricity down here, no running water, either, so everything else had to be done with magic, like filling the tub, heating the water, and making it swirl.

  Christine had spent some time fixing up her tub room. It was one of two rooms where she’d actually tiled the floor instead of just having good packed dirt. (The other being her kitchen floor. While it was possible to use magic to wipe up spilled food, it was easier in the long run to just sweep it up by hand.) She’d chosen large, square, Spanish-style red tiles for the floor in here, with smaller, pretty, hand-painted tiles around the lip of the tub. Sometimes she’d keep the water warm and the tiles cool, then she’d lean back against the side of the tub and stretch her arms out, the contrast deliciously decadent.

  That evening, Christine kept all her body under the water. Despite how she’d trained, she still got sore after so much exertion. She’d grown measurably stronger over the last few weeks of fighting, however.

  In the privacy of her own thoughts, Christine had to admit that the fighting had been exciting at first—the rush of battle, the exhilaration of slaying demons.

  The thrill had worn off quickly.

  Her attention had turned more and more to how to prevent battles (impossible with the demons randomly attacking), surviving battles (more difficult now as the demons killed more good troops), as well as winning the war.

  No one had been able to come up with a good defense for the corruption crystals yet. Part of the problem was how difficult it was to study them. Their influence corrupted even the strongest magician. They couldn’t be held in a single location for long. And no one had figured out how to neutralize them either. Any sort of magical sphere wrapped around them became corrupted over time.

  Combatting the corruption crystals was key.

  Christine had to admit that the other key was figuring out how to neutralize Lars Sorgenfreys. He’d been imprisoned for five years, in part because of her.

  However, he’d used that time well.

  Demons were impulsive. That was part of their nature. They didn’t plan.

  Lars had spent his time in prison actually devising a plan for how to win the Great War. It was one of the things that her generals all agreed on. Demons hated losing more than anything else. Fear of failure had been one of the things that had kept them in check for all the centuries leading up to this war.

  Now, they thought they had a real chance of winning due to Lars’ plan.

  And they might yet, if Christine didn’t figure out how to stop Lars.

  Christine had studied demons in detail over the last five years, before the war. (And really, was her life now going to be divided between Before the War and After the War? When previously it had been before she’d broken the changeling spell and after?)

  Minor demons tended to be more similar one to another, like th
e last race she’d just fought. The upper level demons, the ones who were members of the important demon families, tended to be individual and rarely looked alike. It was as though their parents chose the characteristics they wanted for their offspring, putting together an amalgamation of wings, fangs, claws, attack, etc.

  Lars had bone-like struts that made up his wings, with black, tattered, leather-like material stretched between them. They looked horrifying, and he towered over Christine when they were fully expanded, but they weren’t very useful. He couldn’t fly with them, and she’d been able to catch them with her winds and knock him off balance. He had sickly looking yellow scales that covered his chest, while black and white scales covered most of the rest of his body. Those were good protection for him, as both her ax as well as her magic tended to bounce right off.

  He spat an icky black acid that had ruined her metal-and-magic enhanced cloak the last time she’d fought him. He also had the usual talons at the ends of his fingers and toes, plus a wicked tail.

  If she thought about it, he was sort of like a corrupted dragon. But instead of a lust for gold, he had a lust for power.

  If he won the Great War, he’d have all the power he wanted. For centuries.

  How long did a demon normally live? No one seemed to know. (Because of course, no one bothered writing down these sorts of things or keeping accurate histories. It was one of her serious grievances with the kith and kin.) Trolls lived between one hundred and fifty to two hundred years. Many of the kith and kin races were long lived as well.

  So how could Christine stop Lars? She didn’t have to kill him but merely discredit him. Maybe even trick the demons into thinking they were losing the war.