Chapter 6: Troll Attack

Xyrralei was incensed. Bula’s words had rattled her core: she had indeed lost a friend to that troll woman. Orithyra was her name, and the two had known each other for nearly as long as they could remember. Decades of bonding, gone in a flash when that giant monster swallowed her down.

The guard often chastised herself. If only she had known what would happen that day, the things she would’ve said to her friend then.

She couldn’t help herself from gripping her spear as Bula taunted her. The elven woman’s rage built, but she managed to accomplish a little goal. She didn’t let loose how much she cared for the guard in the troll’s hand. To Bula, that man was just a hostage. To Xyrralei, though, he was Hergolor and another friend with a century of history together.

The big arrow fired. The elves had watched Bula for sometime, and prepared some for the giant being stumbling onto their city. Xyrralei didn’t need to wait for the war horn to rush in and start hacking at Bula’s fingers. She couldn’t wait to see the looming troll’s body hit the ground.

But, that didn’t happen. That giant arrow which took a group effort days to carve was yanked out as little more nuisance then a splinter. Her spear strikes against the elf-dwarfing digits barely even broke skin. Bits of a reddish-brown blood splashed out weakly, though the wounds quickly healed back up with the liquid simply falling right off the green-skin of the troll’s hand.

Bula snapped Hergolor’s legs then ate him up. Xyrralei’s rage was stoked further by the sound of his bones cracking. She kept fighting, with the frustration of not being able to harm the vile troll egging on her already seething rage. She fought faster and savager than ever before. Her ferocity was unrivaled among the other similarly irate guards around her.

All for nothing.

Xyrralei kept fighting. But, with a slam of her hands on the wall, Bula reminded the elves how outmatched they were. The logs and flat wood atop the wall tumbled. The elven guard woman needed all her strength to balance herself upright for the few moments before Bula clapped.

Giant light-green palms came together from either side. More cracks of bones rang out. By being in the middle, Xyrralei should’ve quite a brunt of it, but instead made it out with mere bruises. The troll had stopped her palms from completely coming together *too* hard.

She wanted at least some of them alive.

Surrounded by fellow guards, many with skin-jutting bones and wrong-bent limbs, she was brought up to that troll’s awaiting maw and stuffed right in. Xyrralei had lost her spear, but reached for a dagger held snug to her bark ankle guard with vine-twine. She steadied herself on the tongue best she could with its slick bumping surface under foot, but tripped as she lounged to stab that crimson muscle.

Soaked in spittle, her and the other grabbed guards had nary a few seconds before she swallowed them all down.

Bula’s throat was even more packed than the mouth. The muscles tightly squeezed the elves to a ball together in there. Xyrralei pressed her feet against the walls inside, but they were too strong and slimy to get a hold. In fact, one squeeze of the troll’s esophagus snapped her shoulder out of place. She yelped in pain, but knew from the screams of those elven bodies pressed against her that she had it lucky thus far.

All that changed when they fell in the actual gut. The entire place was illuminated by what the elves recognized as partially digested glowshrooms. Some were still intact, but many of the shrooms were mush, or soggy enough that a simple touch had them lose some form and puddle.

With the light of Bula’s past meal, the elves could see the horror they were stuck in. Xyrralei had landed atop some hard, poking objects that were so brittle as to crush against her back moments later. She turned to see what it was: bones. She placed her hands on the partially digested skull belonging to what appeared to be a cervitaur.

Xyrralei shouted. The troll could’ve easily lived entirely off glowshrooms or even trees, yet here she was eating forest people, eating her and her kind. All their suffering just for selfish reasons. The guard woman quickly got to her feet and joined all the able others in pounding at the walls or generally trying to cause the least bit of pain to the monstrous woman that ate them.

Nothing.

What little weapons still intact on the way down were quick to become useless in the acid, and they failed to hurt even the tiniest bit of the troll’s stomach flesh. Instead, the elves with the strength to do so resorted to punching at every bit of undulating flesh about them, screaming all the while from pain and anger.

A single churn would knock them all over. it covered in stomach juices and chyme. A loud echo from the walls signaled the seemingly mocking pat Bula did.

Back outside, the rest of the guards at the front of the wall braced themselves as another ‘wall’ of green flesh ran right into them.

--==--==--==--

Wood and logs broke against me with ease. The wall was puny to someone with my size and strength. Bits of debris fell from my body, alongside the remaining guards. That’s the thing about high walls: when they crumble, the little folk on it fall with it.

A gurgle from my stomach rung out. I chuckled. The elves within were feisty: it almost felt like they were dancing in there. I loved that feeling almost as much as their taste.

Thankfully, there were plenty more.

To my left and right were structures attached to the trees as auxiliary guard towers. More elves stood atop the walkways about and the bridges between the tall trees, with more standing on the sturdy branches. A quick swing of my arms took care of them, and I was sure to get one handful more of elves down my throat. Satisfying.

The trees themselves couldn’t hold up to me. I placed my hands on the trunk of one to my left, then repeated for the one to my right. Whatever elves still hung on to the branches or dug their feet into the bark quickly learned they were doomed either way. The tree on the right even tumbled into another at its side, causing the latter’s trunk to crack and a few clumsy elves to slip.

I laughed.

I took another step and felt a crunching sensations. Screams reached my ears. By then, the fallout from the wall’s collapse had cleared and I could see clearly looking down. To my delight, the entire floor of the nature-built city was teeming with habitats. The elves didn’t just live on the trees, but the ground as well in squarish homes made of wood and decorated with flowers. They had two floors at most, usually one, and I could clip a few under my foot at once.

The dirt shifted and some homes crunched as I tilted my right foot to the side and looked down. I saw on my sole some fractured wood and elf bodies fall from my toes to the ground. One of the bodies still twitched.

Laughing, I set my foot back down and twisted, then wiggled my toes into the remains of a couple homes. Elf citizens ran past my toes, completely defenseless as they fled their homes deeper into the settlement. I shifted my foot forward to run over a few and felt them squish. That done, I raised my left leg high over some intact wood hovels and stamped down, crushing those and all beneath into splinters.

I wiggled my toes and grunted, having felt a good 5 or 10 of the elves pop beneath that step.

--==--==--==--

The wood elves who had their homes on the ground made up most of the settlement. It wasn’t so much a status thing as it was trying to use all available land that they settled low.

They had felt the boom of Bula’s approaching steps, though from so low behind the city walls they could only see the top of her body past the looming logs making up that defensive fortification. They heard her, though, and her horrible bargain.

A great arrow shot overhead, the giant troll pulled it free then, shortly after, the wall fell. Its collapse came with a cloud of dirt and raining wood chunks which ruined more than a few homes and ended more than a few elven lives.

People panicked, but many had faith in the tree-top archers and stayed put in their homes. A big mistake, as Bula’s first step past the walls crushed dozens. She didn’t seem to notice, both from the dust and from the archers pelting her with their volleys. Still, the people didn’t have that luxury. Each of her steps was an audible thoom that quaked the ground beneath their naked feet.

Bula eventually noticed them, and in her cruelty slid her foot forward through a few more homes. It was hopeless for the elves below. No guards were in that area, and even if so they wouldn’t be equipped for a threat like this. Naturally, the citizens certainly weren’t.

Just one of the troll’s feet was a monster in itself. The big toe rivaled the size of some of the smaller elves, and the ped itself was more than 75ft long and 25ft wide. There were no roads in the wood elf city, only the dirt paths carved by elven feet over many years that passed between structures. These ‘streets’ were, nonetheless, packed with elves trying to flee.

They’d have no such luck. With Bula’s mocking laughter ringing out from above, that giant rose her foot into the air. A canopy of light-green troll-sole hung overhead for one long mocking moment before slamming down and turning the elves beneath to pulp. All those homes with their years of history, too, were flattened into barely recognizable bits.

The troll simply grinned down. She looked to raise her foot up and stomp down again, but she turned as more arrows caught her attention.

That didn’t spare those at her feet. They fell under-her tread as she rushed at the great oaks and the archers upon them. Dodging the foot was effectively-impossible given the appendage’s size, even for the graceful nimble-footed elves. Still, those lucky enough to be away from Bula’s footfalls dealt instead with the collapsing great oaks that Bula pushed and tugged down. The very trees they loved became harbingers of death as their towering trunks fell over the elves by the score.

To add insult to injury, those beneath the shadow of Bula’s passing foot perished to falling debris. Those that didn't were instead showered with gore from the troll’s soles. The self-healing properties of the giant troll’s flesh helped expunge foreign matter from its surface, meaning that it came down as a rain of death and misery to those caught beneath. In contrast, Bula’s soles were usually clean by the next step or two.

For a being so big, Bula moved unfairly fast. The archers didn’t stand a chance as Bula advanced towards the greatest oak in the city where the council waited. She was ruthless, and her clenched fists smashed many a home or archer-post on the trees surrounding the city. Flower decorated vines and ancient trees fell left and right.

Her appetite seemed as unending as her ferocity, and the only thing that seemed worse than getting crunched by a closed-fist was getting nabbed by an open one. The screams as elves saw that greedy gullet of hers for the first time shivered spines. Archers watched their companions get devoured, only to get smashed to paste, fall from a shaky tree hundreds of feet tall or, if particularly unlucky, devoured themselves.

A cluster of archers, ready to face their death as they tumbled from an oak, found themselves landing on a soft green surface. Bula had caught them with her hand not to save them, but to stuff them right into her salivating maw. Awash in her humid breath, she gulped them down like so many others thus far.

Bula marched towards that tallest tree, looming a good thousand feet tall. There, she figured the council must be. Indeed, once she got close enough she saw a wooden platform with the elven ballista upon it. It was unloaded, they had since learned it was useless against her.

A new horn sounded, different in timbre from the last. It didn’t mean surrender, but rather “fall-back”--to consolidate and protect the council and the Great Tree. Bula laughed as she saw the elves scurry away towards that looming tree.

Without any arrows to distract her, Bula started to pay attention to her feet again. Right at her toes, a crowd of elves was packed dense between some broken homes and the trunk of a fallen tree hundreds of feet long and dozens thick.

She lifted her foot up above a swath of pure elf-folk.

--==--==--==--

There were few feelings better than seeing a retreat. Even if they were just running away to consolidate, the message was still clear: ‘we can’t handle her’. They can’t handle me. Can’t blame them, as I haven’t met any settlement that could yet.

Course, there *were* a few feelings better and they were also within my grasp or, rather, under-step. Without the archers to distract me, much of this city was defenseless as the guards and such held up at that giant tree in the distance. I looked down to a crowd of elves all huddled together and smiled.

I slammed my heel to the ground and angled my foot above the mob. Bits of wood debris, little to me, were at their side. The trunk of a tree I fell was behind them, and my foot was to their front. They were trapped.

I pivoted my foot forward. The shadow of my sole no doubt growing darker as it drew down on them. This was far from my first time stomping on people, but it was still a treat to have them all bunched up like this without much buildings or the like mixed in.

By taking my time, without a single word I reminded them and any elves brave and foolish enough to watch that their people had no hope. I felt their bodies bunch up. The bottom of my foot forced the elves before from standing to squatting, then sitting, and then laying down. I felt their hands push futility against my sole, unable to move even a single toe let alone the whole thing.

One errant flail of tiny elf arms tickled me, and a curl of my toes popped a couple of elves heads and torso’s like little berries. I heard their screams muffled as they wailed into the flesh of my foot and their fellow puny elves. My foot pressed too far down for any room for ‘em.

I felt their bodies ‘give’ a bit, then felt the snapping of bones. That was the best part, that ‘crunch’. Like a lot of good things in life it went by quick. From then on there were only a few smaller crunches eked out with a few twists of my ped. Wiggles of my toes broke the last bit of their bones to dust, and by then they were all mush and liquid blood.

I lifted my foot up and the gore fell from it, leaving behind quite the visceral mess.

I grunted: there was a certain thrill to a solid step like that, one where it’s mostly people. It was a real reminder just how strong I was, and not to mention a good motivator. That big tree, twice my size, loomed in the distance where the council was who could perhaps answer some questions of mine.

Still, there wasn’t too big a rush. I wanted to get there before they saw fit to escape, but a little bit of wreckage on the way couldn’t hurt.

I set my eyes to all the homes at my feet and stomped, again and again. I walked with purpose, but tried not to be too predictable. I’d step on one pair of homes, then immediately swipe my foot towards some elves who thought they were safe.

I wondered if the elves at that great big tree were watching me turn their city into ruin. Some little folk used glass to see far, but who knows how good elven eyesight was in general. I looked dead ahead towards the looming oak while slamming my steps onto a few dozen of their people’s homes. Over and over again.

While marching along, I bent down to help myself to more of the little folk. I scooped up a couple of homes at a time and just popped them in my mouth alongside whatever elves got caught in the gesture. Unfortunately, the homes were a bit too big to swallow whole for me, but just one or two chomps was enough. That kept most elves alive to wiggle down my throat.

I wasn’t worried about eating the homes of course, knowing that my stomach could handle far tougher things that that. For the most part, if a creature, plant, or one of their crafts could fit in my mouth, then it could serve as food.

That great tree was only hundreds of feet away from me soon enough. Some of the trees here were a bit taller than me, but this oaken thing was about double my height if not more. Some roots neared the thickness of my arms, and the branches too were similar in girth.

I noticed how defended it was now. Squinting, I spotted the archers among the wooden platforms and spirals on it, or atop the roofs of whatever tree-built buildings there were there. Near the center of the tree, about level with my chest, was a big hollow. That was the most guarded, and it had a big log-made platform jutting out with a bunch of guards, archers, and that ballista from earlier: unloaded, since they figured it was useless against me. Wise of ‘em.

That one elf was there too: the feisty guard woman with the autumn hair. I bet she was glad to fire that giant weapon at me earlier. I wondered how she felt seeing me walk towards her, wound-less, with much of their settlement wrecked behind me.

I paused a moment, dug my toes into the ground, then broke into a sprint. Arrows flew my way in droves, but I had no fear.