infiltrate the Master’s lands and menace the peaceful peoples of the North. Why, I bet you intended to ravish this fine elven female as your first dastardly act,” finished the captain. The dwarves soldiers hooted and laughed in approval.
Alexander sized up the situation. He was outnumbered twenty to one. He was still wounded and dazed from the last battle. In optimal conditions it would be a hell of a fight. There was no way he could take them now.
Several dwarves soldiers moved in and chained Alexander. They stripped his bag and weapons and threw them into their sledge. The chains were strong enough to hold the rampaging whatnots that roamed the forest. That made them strong enough to hold Alexander. The company formed up and left the clearing, dragging Alexander behind.
“You’d best be off,’ said the dwarf captain to Holly, “Lest I decide you’re a goblin conspirator as well,” he said with a cruel smile.
Holly looked at Alexander as they dragged him away in chains. Able to do nothing more, she shrank and pocketed Alexander’s ram, mounted her own, and sped away from her now captured Champion.
The march with the dwarves was rough. They moved faster than their squat forms should be able to move. They marched in silence. From Alexander’s considerable knowledge of military science, it seemed they were patrolling. He was told that they kept the goblins at bay. None of that mattered now. He was angry that he was captured, sore from his fight, and still mad that he was wrapped up in weirdo spirit world conflicts.
The forced march continued into the night. The constant movement prevented Alexander from healing as fast as normal. He never fell behind, much to the chagrin of the dwarves. During their only stop he tried to listen to their conversation in their native language. It was some sort of proto-Scandinavian language that took off on its own strange course. He did not have much time to listen as they continued their silent march.
Alexander had lost track of time. He was tired, something that didn’t happen that often. He had been exerting himself at his peak for hours without rest, combined with whatever magic the chains held that was draining him. He was grateful when they arrived at an outlying village to stop for the night.
The village was filled with elves. It seemed they were working shift work in the various workshops and houses scattered through the town. In a sick way it made sense. Christmas is only a few days away, thought Alexander as his captors dragged him into the barracks.
He was dragged into a holding cell carved out of solid rock and chained to the wall. He dropped to the floor and tried to find a comfortable spot. Getting as close as he could to comfortable, he relaxed and focused on healing. The dark cold cell was what he needed to mend.
Upstairs, another company of dwarves came in from their patrol. What passed for dwarves conversation echoed into the darkness of Alexander’s cell. He ignored it, up until the door was thrown open and a pair of dwarves walked in. Before he could see them, he was punched in the face by one and kicked by the other.
“I told you you should have finished me, human,” said Grimold as he struck Alexander again.
It was a rare occasion these days that Alexander found himself beaten unconscious. But Grimold and Gromold did the job quite well. He wasn’t sure when he blacked out, but figured it was sometime between the cat-of-nine-tails and the axe handle.
Alexander woke up upside down hanging from a chain. His nose had been broken again. One eye was swollen shut. He was well tenderized by the angry dwarves. He thought that he may have been in the same room, but he did not know for sure. Upstairs the dwarves slept and snored. It sounded like someone was trying to drown a chainsaw in a bucket of lard.
His hands were free. That was one thing. He had been stripped from the chest up. His coat and shirt were on the floor in the corner of the cell. He still wasn’t cold. The dwarves hadn’t done their homework if they were trying to kill him with exposure. At least his head was clear. A nap was a nap.
Alexander looked at the chains. They were Fae iron, and enchanted out the wazoo. The layered enchantments were bindings of various stripes, meant to keep the prisoner cowed. While he was no wizard by any stretch of the imagination, that did not mean he didn’t know any magic. He always thought of magic like drawing. Anyone can draw a stick figure. Some are decent amateurs. Some, like Gretchen, were in a league of their own.
Idiot savant was what Gretchen often called Alexander when it came to magic. He excelled at one thing-counter magic, disenchanting, and generally taking apart the hard work of others. He could do it on a level that magicians liked to call “High Magic”, which meant that he skipped all the gobbledygook and gesticulation and did it with well placed intention. Gretchen often tried to blame it on his prescience, but she was just jealous.
Alexander cleared his mind and focused on the chains. He visualized the layers of spell craft intertwined with the metal. Molecules bonded with willpower given form and function. He saw the bonds between the metal and the magic. With slow calculated intent, he began to peel apart the spells. The magic that gave the Fae iron strength bled into the ether. Alexander pulled the single thread of magic until it unraveled the entire enchantment. The weakened metal was little more than tinfoil without the magic binding it. Alexander tore through it and landed with a thud on the cold floor.
He waited for the dwarves to wake up and come for him. But the snoring never abated for a moment. He stood and dressed himself. Now he needed to find his gear. Ray guns were expensive to build, and if he was going to see this whole mess through he was going to need firepower.
Alexander crept up the stone stairs to the solid wooden door. He probed the wood and hinges. It was nothing spectacular. Captives were not expected to make it past the chains. He felt the edges of the door along the hinges, which were fused to the stone foundation. There was no doorknob or any other visible means of opening the door.
He looked closer. Set within the door were wooden cogs and gears. The entire door was one massive clockwork device. The connections were so fine that they weren’t visible unless you were looking for them. The entire set up reminded him of both the ward breaking device and the mechanical rams. The door was made by the Christmas elves. He began to inspect the door, looking for the mechanism that opened the door.
He ran his hands along the surface. It was smooth and grained like a solid piece of wood. He focused through his wounds and let his prescience guide his hand. Subtle uses of his ability were far less taxing than combat. His hands slid over the surface and found a small raised pine knot. He pressed it and the door folded into itself, vanishing into the doorframe.
The room was dark. It was lit only by the dying embers of a hearth fire in the far side of the room. The dwarves slept on fur pallets on the floor. The noise from their snores was even louder than he thought it would be. Half eaten hunks of meat and loaves of bread were scattered everywhere, The room stunk of dwarf sweat and ale.
Alexander crept across the room, careful to avoid stomping on errant dwarf body parts. As he walked, he searched for his gear. It didn’t take long to find it. The dwarf captain was asleep in a corner propped on an empty keg of ale. The contents of Alexander’s bag was dumped on the floor in front of him. He bent down and began to gather his gear, not wanting to leave any of his dangerous devices in the hands of drunken dwarves. He waited for the dwarf to stir. Nothing happened. The dwarf captain continued to snore without interruption.
The main door of the barracks was a simple deadbolt. No fancy elven devices, no traps or clockwork contraptions. Alexander let himself out into the dark frigid night. The street was dark and the snow fell hard. The houses were dark. No one was on the streets. The silence was a physical thing, menacing and cruel.
He took no chances as he snuck through the dark village. Alexander kept to the shadows and walked on top of the snow, which was much harder than it looked. He made almost no sound, and what noise he did make was muffled by the snowfall. He saw no guards or watchman. It struck him as odd, seeing as how the goblins appeared to be an
ever-present threat. Then he heard the howls and feral laughter he had heard the night before. The trolls were out celebrating.
Raucous howls and grew closer. Alexander moved from street level to the rooftops trying to stay out of sight. He couldn’t see the trolls, but he could smell them. They smelled worse than the dwarves, a mixture of rotten meat and despoiled earth. He still couldn’t see them, but they sounded like they were right on top of him. Then he saw why.
The trolls were huge, half as tall as the largest trees. They blended in, their skin grey, black and cracked like tree bark. Most had multiple heads. A few had extra limbs. They lacked bilateral symmetry and were ugly as sin itself.
They ambled into town, joking in some awful feral language. One carried a large sack that wiggled and writhed. It reached into the sack and pulled out a struggling elf. He screamed as the troll tossed him into his open maw like a pretzel, crunching and swallowing the elf with relish.
Alexander shrugged. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought as he began to sprint across the sloped rooftops toward the snacking troll. Snow fell in sheets from the roof as he sacrificed stealth for speed. He pulled his ray gun and targeted the troll carrying the bag. Alexander squeezed the trigger. The bolt of energy flashed and burned as it struck the troll in one of its massive fingers. It howled with incoherent rage as it dropped the bag from his burning hand.
Alexander pushed his busted up body with as much speed as he could muster. He kicked up a rooster tail of snow as he sped toward the massive bag. He jumped and grabbed the massive burlap sack and dragged it away from the troll. The bag and Alexander hit the ground. Alexander rolled to his feet and the elves tumbled out of the sack ass over elbows.
The trolls began to take notice of their escaping hors d’eouvres. The injured troll turned one of its misshapen heads toward Alexander and the escaping elves. They were running out of the bag and vanishing into the woods as Alexander held open the bag. The wounded troll raised his massive foot to stomp them flat. Alexander fired his pistol at the bottom of the trolls foot. It recoiled as the bolt burned the grey flesh black.
Elves scattered into the woods. Alexander followed the fleeing elves. They were fast and quiet. The trolls began to give chase, deciding that fast food would be the menu for tonight. Horrible howls filled the dark forest. One of the elves stumbled in front of Alexander. Without slowing down he reached down and grabbed the small figure by the cloak and tucked him under his arm like a football.
“Make for that hill,” cried the elf, pointing ahead to a small brush covered hill between a copse of trees.
Alexander ran as fast as he could. Behind him trees splintered and trolls bellowed. As the neared the hill, the elf gestured and hissed a spell. A secret door opened up and the pair leapt through the open portal. It slammed shut as fast as it opened. Alexander felt his inner ear pop of a rapid spatial shift as he landed on the stone floor of the cave.
The elf dropped to the floor. Alexander began to feel sore again as the rush of adrenaline faded. He sat down and leaned on the edge of the cave. The cool stone felt good on his bruised back. The elf turned to him and stood up. He had red hair and rosy cheeks the same as Holly. He was short, just shy of five feet.
“Thank you,” said the elf. “My kin and I owe you our lives,” he finished.
“I should thank you as well. Without that handy portal you opened, we would not have lasted long. What can I call you?” asked Alexander.
“You may call me Black Peter,” said the elf, who offered his hand.
“Crimson