"Troll" (English)

Twisted trees, destroyed houses, devastated villages … The trail of blood, death and destruction in his path seemed to have no end. Men, warriors of chaos, elves, animals and all kind of beasts hung skewered on his macabre collar as trophies. Everything that was on the way of that enormous being, fell prey to his unbridled brutality. All but the one he was looking for with anxiety and desperation. That member of a race who thought long ago extinct in the war against them, the trolls, and who now had executed his revenge in cold blood by snatching his offspring and interrupting the lineage. The humans of the mountains had seen how the ogre, they called “Kannibaal”, was not content to kill the young troll, but also decapitated him; taking with him a piece of skull which he placed with strings as a shoulder pad. Too much pain to be ignored. Night after night for weeks, he had chased his trail through the mountains, forests and moors, but the ogre moved faster by day than he did at night, so he could not reach him. But at some point, whatever the reason, he would have to stop. And that moment would be used by him to kill and devour him.

With the obsession with kannibaal burned into his brain, he went down a slope and glimpsed in the distance a village in flames accompanied by cries. The troll understood that the ogre had recently passed by there or it could even be the case that he still remained in those lands. He hurried but always close to the rocky walls or zigzagging through the trees, looking for the thickest darkness that the surprise factor provided. But when he was close to edge of the village, a bang made him turn his head to the moors. In the darkness it was difficult to see, but the trolls had a magnificent night vision since it was the environment in which they moved, and quickly he detected the silhouette of the stone sanctuary. Automatically, he looked at the grass and easily discerned the footprints of a being, which according to the footsteps, should be around four meters. It was a big ogre, no doubt, but it was still at a disadvantage compared to his more than seven meters. Verslinder, that is to say “devourer”, as the inhabitants of the highlands nicknamed that imposing and angered troll, pulled up a young tree that was next to him, held it up with both arms like a gigantic spear, and began to run towards the sanctuary. There, “kannibaal”, to whom barely managed to stop, Toorn and Woeden, two warriors of chaos; was completely oblivious to the annoyed mass that in seconds would come upon him by surprise.

Translated by

Pepe Gallego                                                        Ariadna B. Alonso