I smacked my new rolling pin into the nearest imp, feeling the end mash flesh and crush bone. An imp dropped to the ground, its spine shattered from my blow. My boot slammed into the creature’s skull and shattered it. I swung above my head with unbridled ferocity, my rolling pin pounding into imps left, right, and center. It was almost like playing a game of whack-a-mole, and the monsters dropped around me like dead flies.
Eventually, the cloud of imps scattered, not willing to try their luck against an elf who knew how to swing a club. With the brief respite, I spotted Bertha’s cleaver glinting dully in the flickering firelight. I couldn’t wield both weapons since the club required two hands.
I glanced up when I heard Bertha’s deep roar, just in time to see my champion sweep under her mother’s arm and catch her around the waist. Her poleaxe had fallen somewhere on the cavern floor.
My hands closed around Bertha’s cleaver, and I looked up. Bertha’s muscles rippled as she tensed and planted her feet. In an insane display of strength and leverage, she lifted her mother from the ground and then arched back. Ma’s howling curses came to an abrupt end as my champion drove her down through the dinner table. I could almost hear the snap of the mother troll’s neck breaking, but that may have just been the table exploding in a cloud of splinters and blood.
Troll furniture could probably stand up to a dead cow or two, but a half ton of troll flesh? Not so much.
Bertha got an arm under herself and slid back to her feet. Blood trickled from a cut on her cheek, and one of her eyes was beginning to swell. She still wore that battle-frenzied smile as she waited, ready for my next instruction.
Loyal. A force of nature under my command.
“Nicely done,” I said to Bertha as I handed her my cleaver.
“You take it. My gift to you. I’ll have the rolling pin.” We exchanged weapons, and I took a second to appreciate the cleaver.
“We’re not done yet,” she said.
I heard a roar from Jeff. He struggled to his feet with his free hand holding half his intestines inside his gut.
“Fuck, I thought you dealt with him,” I said to my champion.
“It seems my brother is a difficult troll to kill, but I wasn’t talking about him.” Bertha nodded above, the imps now regrouped. They screeched and swept toward us again.
This was the last time I’d make a deal with these flying little bastards; they were more trouble than they were worth.
“We’ll draw the imps to Jeff,” I said. “Let them finish each other off. Ready?”
Bertha nodded, then we made our move.
I dived left, and she went right, but the swarm of little bat-winged cretins were already upon us. The imps circled back when we changed directions, none of them seeming to agree on which of us to pursue. Bertha and I circled her injured brother, and he appeared to think we were taunting him. He let out an enraged cry as he struggled to keep his insides from falling out of his stomach.
The imps regrouped but still seemed confused by our movements. Rather than chase us down, they took the easy kill—Jeff. The troll howled as they tore into his face and stomach, but I didn’t have time to watch them start dissecting him.
“Run!” I yelled to Bertha, and she started for the exit.
I followed after her, but then an imp caught hold of my tunic, its claws eager to rip into my throat. I reached over my shoulder and plunged the cleaver through its gut. The creature went limp, falling out of the air in a shower of blood and bile.
More imps fled toward me, came, obviously finished gnawing the flesh from Jeff’s bones. The swarm didn’t stop to attack when they reached me; instead, they continued to the exit and ensured Bertha couldn’t escape. She struggled to fend them off with the club as they harassed her. She needed a better weapon, like her poleaxe, but it was probably halfway buried beneath the piles of imp corpses scattered in what used to be her mother’s kitchen.
I was wrong about Bertha needing a better weapon. In a matter of seconds, the imp cloud was reduced to a single member, Bertha crushing the final creature’s skull with a well-aimed swing of the rolling pin.
The last imp was dead.
Something clawed at my ankles, but I stomped forward, my boot crunching through a skull with a grisly crack.
Okay. Maybe that was the last imp.
Then the wooden window panes splintered, and more imps arrived. There was almost as many as before, but they were now led by two different kinds of imps. The pair in charge looked more muscular and bore a single purple stripe of flesh running down their spines.
Great. These two were probably the Infernal Realm’s version of boss-imps.
Was one of these two bastards the creature I’d spoken to? Either way, they were going to die.
Infernal Essence swirled around their hands, convalescing into orbs of energy. That was new—I’d never seen any of the creatures here use magic before. Boss-imps who could wield fucking magic balls of death? This was going to be fun.
“Do not let them hit you with the shadow-spheres!” Bertha yelled as she sprinted toward me.
I dived behind the wreck of the table just as the orbs crashed into the wall and floor where I’d been a moment before. A foul-smelling black mist, like boiling ammonia and brimstone, erupted inside the cavern and made the trolls’ fireplace flare up. Heat punched outward like a fist, and I hissed as my skin prickled painfully in response.
I glanced over the table and saw Bertha hiding behind her mother’s rocking chair while the elite-imps assaulted her with their exploding spheres. The rest of the imps watched, and I guessed they didn’t want to come between
