Chaos Lives in Everything - 2. Chapter 2

The inside of the subway tunnel didn’t look all of that different from a battlefield. Feeling a long sense of deja vu Skold led the team deeper into the subway tunnel, passing through the ticket booth. Huge chunks of rubble had been ripped from the wall and covered the ground, some crushed down into a fine, white, powdery substance. The tunnel reeked of sulfur. He could detect faint traces of troll dung, an acrid almost acidic smell very much like sulfur; and underneath the smell of troll dung was the all too familiar smell of death.

Most of the light fixtures had been torn from the ceiling. A few of them were still intact, flickering on and off. Corpses were strewn across the floor like discarded play toys, blank glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling. Skold gracefully stepped over severed limbs and entrails.

“My God,” he heard Reynolds say under his breath. His face had turned a pale shade of green.

He had never seen so much destruction in one place, so much blood, so much death. Skold looked at him over his shoulder and raised a finger to his lips. “Absolutely silent,” he mouthed.

Though he looked completely calm Skold’s cat-like senses were on alert, his muscles poised and ready for attack. Reynolds and his team stayed several feet behind not daring to get too close to Skold.

Skold suddenly came to a stop, his head lowered in concentration. Reynolds signalled for everyone to stop.

Imminent danger was close by. Skold couldn’t quite pinpoint it but it was there all of the same. He could feel it in his bones, an almost psychic intuition. He sensed it in the way that the air seemed to become completely still, like a wild cat preparing to strike. His hands hovered expertly over the handles of the CZ EVO Scorpians holstered at his side.

Slowly Skold turned and came face to face with a rather butch looking woman. Her hair was short cropped, almost to the point of a fade and her face had a masculine shape to it. They were just inches apart.

“Something wrong?” she asked tentatively. She was hardly an adult, just out of training.

Skold made no move to save her. Her life did not matter to him. If he would have had the heart to shove her out of the way she might have lived to see another day, had an opportunity to go home and crawl in her bed when this was all said and done. He had one priority and one priority only: to take down his target; and damn anyone who dared to get in his way.

The crude stone edge of the giant axe sliced her in half, all the way down the middle. It cut through the top of her head all of the way down the middle through her crotch. Her blood splattered all over him, a blinding explosion of dark scarlet.

The hulking monstrosity that stood before him looked like something straight out of a child’s most twisted nightmare. Spikes made of thick bone protruded from its broad shoulders and back which brushed the ceiling. Its skin was black, the hide so thick that the only thing that could penetrate it was ammunition crafted by the elves. Even then the chances of one elf taking a troll down were impossible. Horns protruded from the front of its skull and its molten red eyes focused on Lane with a murderous intent. Growling, its mouth was open, revealing multiple of rows of razor sharp teeth and a forked serpent-like tongue.

Shaking his head to clear the blood out of his eyes he glared at the troll, his mouth stretching into a carnal grin.

“Back!” Reynolds barked at his team. “Get back! Fire on the troll only and stay out of Skold’s way!”

Already the tunnel was filled with the cacophonous reports of offensive fire. He dove behind a ticket booth and rose to his feet. I really need to start losing weight and lay off the doughnuts, he thought.

Almost tripping over a corpse Reynolds got to his feet and aimed at the troll. Even though it stood before him, a tangible thing, he could not believe what he was seeing. A troll, an actual fucking troll. Trolls hadn’t been seen in so long that they were almost legend, bedtime stories that kids used to tell each other to get themselves scared. But here it was. It had just sliced one of his team members in half, right down the middle like a hot dog bun.

Right now it was focused on Skold, seemingly unaware of anything else. Their bullets ricocheted pointlessly off of its hide. Of course our ammo doesn’t work! he thought. Because King Yolden won’t help give us the funds to get the proper ammo that we need.

What if the troll ended up getting lose, ripping through the city? How many lives would it rip apart before someone could stop it? And what if, because of this stupid, pointless setback with the ammo he wasn’t able to go home tonight to his beautiful wife?

Fear slithered around his heart like a cobra, squeezing and squeezing until he thought it would burst. Fuck trying to be a manly man. Reynolds feared for his life and the life his team.

He thought: Skold you better be able to take this thing down or God help us.

Skold ended their stare off by raising his Scorpians and opening fire. Simultaneously the troll swung its axe.

Skold’s body reacted of its own accord, immediately making the switch into kill mode. He flipped, narrowly avoiding the crude axe that would have cleaved his head from his shoulders. All sense of feeling and thought, of pleasure and pain was stripped away, turning him into a lethal killing machine. He did not fear for his own life or the life of others. He had his target and it was the only thing in the world that existed. The only thing that he felt was the joy of killing. After all he had been trained to be a weapon. He was a blur of shape that human eyes could barely keep up with; still he grinned. Bullets littered the ground at his feet.

The troll bellowed, spittle flying from its mouth. It charged towards him, the ground shaking underneath of its feet. It reached out and plucked a SWAT member from behind a pillar and brought him to its mouth. The sound of bone crunching was audible as its teeth sunk into the man’s stomach and ripped him in half. Blood rained from its maws. As if to tease Skold the monstrosity threw the lower half of the corpse at him; the other half it swallowed.

He ran circles around the troll, dodging and weaving and dancing. His bullets tore through the troll’s back. Its blood was black and thick, almost tarlike. Skold couldn’t help but enjoy himself. When was the last time that I was presented with a challenge such as this? he thought. And I’m just getting started.

Suddenly the troll’s fist flew towards him just as he was in mid somersault. It slammed into him and sent him flying several feet. His back slammed into a pillar hard enough to shatter pillar before he hit the ground.

The impact jarred through his body making his bones shake and his teeth rattle in his skull.

For a surreal moment that was somewhere in between consciousness and unconsciousness, Skold was no longer in the subway tunnel; he could no longer hear the continuing reports from Reynolds and his team. Instead he could hear the howl of the wind and snow, feel its numbing cold against his cheek the veil of nonfeeling was pierced by a blade of unequivocal longing to be back on that mountain. To take back what was lost, what had been taken and could never be returned.

But the mountain and the quasi-human emotion was pushed to the side by a different more basic premise. A cold fury seethed inside of him and his face became a blank mask. As the troll raised its axe, about to finish him off Skold sprung to his feet. His anger gave him strength and a newfound focus.

He lunged towards the troll and delivered a flurry of devastating blows. He pressed both Scorpians to its stomach and emptied the rest of each clip into its belly. Knowing not to make the same mistake again Skold dodged another blow from the troll and retreated.

The troll gave a final roar and charged towards the train tracks on all fours, slicing another SWAT soldier in half at the waist as it sailed on by. Then it disappeared down the tunnel, the ground shaking in its wake.

“What do we do?” someone shouted hysterically. “What the fuck do we do now? Did you see that sonofabitch? It was huge!”

“Pipe down Lawrence!” Reynolds barked.

Skold glanced at the bloody remains of the two dead officers inspectively. What a mess. Images flashed through his mind unwarranted: Gnarled, broken bodies. Lifeless corpses. Missing body parts. Blood. He cursed, thinking of every night when he woke up covered in sweat. There were certain memories that had been taken from him. Stolen from him. When he tried to remember those memories all he came up with was a black and hollow void. How many times had he wished that the people who had stolen his memories had taken all of them and not just some of them?

“What do we do, Skold?” Reynolds croaked, dragging him from his thoughts.

“I’m going after it,” Skold said. “It can’t be left to live.”

When Reynolds waved a hand for everyone to follow suite he said, “Alone.”

Reynolds knew that for his own sake it was best not to object.

Reynolds barked an order, his voice bouncing off the walls of the subway tunnel. Without question or hesitation the remaining members of the SWAT team marched out of the subway tunnel. He was the last to go. “Will I see you again?” he said.

Skold gave him a mocking half smile. “Do you care?”

Reynolds didn’t.

With no more words lost between them they parted ways.

Skold’s feet barely made a sound as he landed nimbly on the tracks. The smell of troll was stronger than ever. Glancing in all directions to make sure that the troll wasn’t close by, waiting to attack him by surprise, he reached for the dagger that he kept in his boot. He withdrew it and slid the blade across the palm of his hand.

For a moment he watched the blood seep from the wound, transfixed; the sight of blood fascinated Skold, even when it was his own. Already the wound was starting to close, the blood retracting back into his body. He quickly smeared it on the wall and used his fingers to form a sigil: a circle with what appeared to be an upside down F in the middle. The circle stood for Cerbyndeuyng (the Fae translation for connection) and the symbol in the middle stood for Fuere (fire). Pressing the palm of his hand flat against Fuere Skold said, “Symbote.” The sigil began to glow with a dark red light, humming with energy. His skin tingled as a twin current of energy pulsed through his body.

Skold recalled a text from the ancient codex: For in order to power the spell you must give it something be it a part of yourself or a part of something else whether it be blood, hair or life force. Everything as a price for it is the way of the Fae.

He made his way deeper in the tunnel. Occasionally he stopped to make another Fuere symbol; with each sigil that he created the energy coursing through his body became stronger. Eventually Skold came to a large puddle of liquid. He got down on one knee, dabbed a finger into the puddle and sniffed it cautiously. He winced in disgust, eyes narrowing down to slits. Troll piss, still warm. Which means the beast is not far, he thought.

Then the ground began to shake underneath his feet and he heard the troll roar. He could see it charging towards him like a freight train from the end of the tunnel. Again he sliced his hand open with the dagger to make the final sigil. The troll was two hundred yards away and covering the space between them fast.

The sigil glowed brighter than the other ones, so strong that it made the air ripple. It bathed him in its ambient red light. Each sigil made the other one stronger, doubling the power of the spell. Skold knew that he didn’t have the ammo to take down the troll, otherwise he would be sparring with the thing all night. He could only hope that in this tight, confined space that the spell would cause the inside of the tunnel to collapse in on the troll therefore killing it.

He let the energy build until the troll was almost upon him before releasing it. The sigil exploded in a flash of blinding light and fire that made a crater right in the middle of downtown Roc City.