Page 70 of Ogres Don't Play

Somewhere, I could hear Rich singing, whether it was in my head or if he really had decided to break into song, I couldn’t tell. I drew that sound in as well, using it to push the flute where it needed to be. While I played, I wove a subtle spell beneath it, an undoing, a loosening, so subtle and vague, unlike the spell she was trying to weave around me. She was spelling me with more despair, weakness, and fear, but I was playing music, and as long as that lasted, nothing else mattered.

In a music competition, well, it wasn’t really a competition, but it was pretty optimistic of her to try.

Finally she screeched, breaking my ears, and then she snapped her flute in two and then the world went completely silent.

My fingers fumbled, and the shield failed.

In a second, she was on me, once more with the enormous axe, aiming at my neck.

I rolled away from the harp, pulling Hero as I came to my feet. I took the axe blow on my blade, turning it to the side so I didn’t break my arm. Hero couldn’t be broken so easily, but I wasn’t made out of anything quite so stern.

My footwork came back to me easily, thanks to years I spent drilling, ignited by Hero’s magic. It all came back to me, and I hadn’t been terrible when I’d worked so hard to find a place with my brother amidst the lions. I blocked every swing, every hack, showing the perfect technique that my father had drilled into me.

When she exploded into her fifteen-foot tall version, she threw away the axe and grabbed for me. I parried her hand, but she kicked my blade away, sending me tumbling back. I kept rolling and came up on my feet in time to block another blow, but she clapped my blade between her palms and twisted it, wrenching my shoulder when I wouldn’t let go of the blade. When the blade was down, the handle awkwardly up, she kicked me, sending me flying a good twenty feet before I finally hit the ground, holding Hero above my head so I wouldn’t chop myself apart. Actually, Hero seemed to do that, like she didn’t want to be the one who killed me.

It took me slightly longer to get to my feet that time. The big troll was a much more difficult opponent. She’d been toying with me, seeing what I could do, before she brought out the guns, like she was auditioning me to see if I was worthy of being fed on.

Flickers of sound were starting to come back. The crowd was roaring, my ears ringing, and her muttering spells in a gutturaltongue I’d never heard before, but it might have been demonic. She was getting ready to feed on my soul.

I missed my dad. I missed talking to him while he made some weird new salad recipe, about the state of the soul, and the theory of angel blood. How could she possibly feed on someone’s soul? I yanked on the spell I’d been weaving so subtly for so long, and the thong around her neck came undone, falling to the grass between us. Did she notice? No. Did she stop her spell? No. Was I wrong? Was it something else, like a tooth filling or something?

Hero burned in my hand her refusal to doubt her convictions. I gripped Hero with two hands, bracing myself for the attack on my soul that was sure to come.

The troll lunged towards me, hand outstretched before she yanked it back, like she was pulling a noose around my neck, tugging my soul away from me.

I used her open stance to thrust deep into her belly, as fast and deep as I could go. Hero shone brightly as she burned through the thick troll hide, while Garnagth roared in surprise, pain, and rage before she whirled away from my blade, now dripping troll blood.

She brought her hand up to touch her chest. When she realized that her necklace was gone, she didn’t go looking for it. Instead, she bared her enormous teeth and with a roar that was destined to cause permanent hearing damage, she came at me, smashing, kicking, her whole body a variety of differently sized battering rams.

I did my best to dodge, but I had to stay close enough to cut her apart. Like Gavriel said, it was down to endurance. Without all the spells my grandfather had helped me weave, I wouldn’t have lasted two minutes, but with that, and my armor, as well as Rook’s strength, I didn’t die immediately.

It wasn’t a neat battle, not when it took so much effort to cut her, even with Hero’s fierce determination. I leapt away from herblows and then back in range to cut her, but she was ready to smash my ribs with a fist, sending me flying away after barely pricking her neck. Still, I rolled to my feet and prepared again, breathing slightly more shallowly with my now at least cracked ribs.

That small cut on her neck was my target. I needed to sever enough nerves and arteries to stop her, and that was the smallest point. The next time I managed to slash two inches into her neck before she slammed me back with her foot, sending me flying, and that time, not rolling to my feet. Nope. I was stunned for a second too long and barely rolled away from her foot when she stomped down where my chest had been. I kept rolling until I reached a knee, then my feet, coming up and around with a swing that caught the wrong side of her neck, but she dodged back anyway.

Hero reversed easily as she moved back, so the troll helped me cut into her neck a little deeper before the troll recoiled again, and that time back-fisted me.

I dodged back, but she swept my legs, bringing me down on my back. I brought my sword up, so when she stomped on me, she skewered her foot. Large drops of blood spattered my chest plate, and the swirling vapor of smoke from it made my eyes burn.

I didn’t inhale as I yanked Hero up through the troll’s toes, then rolled over my shoulder and onto my feet before I swung again at her neck, six inches deep.

I needed to get the blood off. It was convenient that she grabbed me and threw me down against the ground, so my chest plate was ground into the dirt, rubbing off the blood and snapping my collarbone.

How long could I keep this up? She picked me up and slammed me down again, this time helmet-first, like an excellent wrestler’s throw. Somehow I managed to scramble out of theway before she came down on top of me. I twisted at the last second and got another slash into her neck before something happened that was blurry and unclear. How long did that go on? Me, getting in a few centimeters, while she battered me until I was basically a bundle of internal bleeding encased in heavenly gold. The armor held up beautifully, and so did my spells, but still, I wasn’t going to be pretty when they peeled off my armor.

Still, little by little, her head was coming undone. Not fast enough, because I was moving too slow, and I’d inhaled too much of her poisonous vapor, and she had all these souls standing around, feeding her their energy like sad little balloon people.

One of the souls looked down sadly, where a tiny dark thing was sticking out of the grass. From my position on the grass, I could only see that one thing sticking up, a dark spike out of the green with a sea of blurry people in the stands beyond.

I rolled and brought up my sword, dodging a foot, but getting grabbed and thrown in the opposite direction of the horn. Just as well. It might corrupt me or steal my soul if I touched it. I rolled to my feet kind of on accident that time. It just worked out like that, so I was ready to chop deeply before I twisted away from her, barely getting the brush of her knuckles along my side.

If I could release those souls, then she’d have less strength and maybe finally start slowing down. How had my dad done that for me when I’d had that fever? He’d sung me some lullabies about heaven and angels singing you to sleep, to rest in the clouds.

Most of her souls weren’t angels, but that’s the only idea I had. I started singing while I was getting the tar beat out of me, hacking at that neck like a giant oak tree with a dull butter-knife. I focused on the closest soul, more visible as I sang, willing her to the light. With a snap, she exploded into white ashes, and thensouls gathered closer to me while I sang and fought, and tried not to pass out.

The next one erupted into vaporous ash so close to me, I got some of it in my mouth. It tasted better than Garnagth smelled, but not by much. I sang and fought, fought and sang, until I noticed that the troll was moving slower, and her hits weren’t quite as hard. Excellent. I only had a hundred more souls to put to rest, along with most of her enormous neck to still get through. I could barely move.

That’s when the strings began to play the opening notes to Singsong City’s theme. It was different from the usual in that it started in a slight minor key that shifted rapidly through to another minor on the other side of the major. It was exactly the kind of thing Luthiel Slandriil would have done to the majestic if slightly dull theme.

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