Norway

Eron descended from the sky into the clearing just outside of the walled village.

He amended that in an instant.

“I think I need to upgrade this place into a town.”

What had been a village in his memory had expanded in the two years since he had last visited.

The inner section, which was the old village, was now encircled by a tall, stone wall and made him think of a fort or a castle. There were more buildings inside than he remembered, but it was nice to notice that the old shipping containers he had flown in long ago were still in use.

Outside the stone wall were more structures. These looked to be constructed from the wood undoubtedly harvested from the surrounding forests judging by the cleared areas. Encircling that was another wall. This one was made from the same stout timbers.

“Eron!”

A girl cleared the wooden wall in a single leap.

A cloud of snow bloomed when she landed.

He could see the faint glow of magic surrounding her entire body as she bounded across the few hundred yards to him in a few leaps.

“Deirdre!” he smiled and realized that they were on eye level. “You’ve grown, like, a foot! Are you a teenager now?”

“Well, since I don’t turn thirteen until July you’re wrong.”

He made a show of incorrectly counting on his fingers. “Still closer to that than twelve… so I’d say I’m only twenty percent wrong.”

“That’s not how that works,” she snorted. “And where have you been? We thought something happened to you,” she hugged him.

“Is everything okay? Did anyone—?”

“The old team is fine. We’re better than fine, actually!” she turned and spread her arms toward the town. “We’ve gotten bigger! Sven’s always moping about wanting to show you how well we’ve been doing.”

“It’s impressive. I thought that I had the wrong place for a second. I guess you probably don’t need the supply runs anymore,” he eyed the shipping container. “I can always spread the stuff out to the other places.”

She laughed. “I mean, only if they really need it. We farm a bit, hunt, trap and fish. We also do expeditions to the closest towns and cities. We’re strong enough now that casualties tend to be light. No one’s died in over three months.” She knocked on the small, wooden wolf’s head medallion around her neck.

He grimaced. “My fault for being gone so long.”

Confusion flashed across her face.

“You had to go on expeditions,” he explained.

“Oh, no. We would’ve even if you hadn’t missed the drops. Have to level and get better,” she shrugged. “No big deal.”

He disagreed, but remained silent.

“Well, where should I put this?” he patted the container.

“The same place is fine.”

“I wasn’t sure with all the changes.”

“We decided to keep that spot just for you. Regardless of all the changes. Eron’s Place. Olga made a sign and everything.”

He sighed.

“You should see it. Pretty nice. Lots of pink and sparklies. Magical,” she smirked.

“Of course,” he smiled. “I’m sure I’ll love it.”

“Great! You go drop of your presents. Although, you visiting is better than evil Santa Claus.”

He regarded her grin. Saw the buried pain barely peeking through and decided that was good. Perhaps with more time and distance from the horrors she had seen and experienced in her childhood it might vanish completely. He hoped the same for all the kids that shared those weeks, months in that monster’s clutches.

“I’ll race you there.”

“Hah! You’d win, but I’d still try. Sadly, I must go tell Sven and the others. They’ll want to see you right away.”

With that she bounded back to the town.

He heard the excited and worried conversations of the men and women manning the wall.

Plenty of faces he didn’t recognize.

He smiled and waved for their benefit.

More the latter than the former. Unless someone had enhanced vision they probably couldn’t make out much of his face from that distance.

Show them that the flying man carrying a shipping container wasn’t a threat.

Although, they probably all heard the stories about him.

The familiar creeping sensation of embarrassment climbed up his back.

Sometimes it sucked when people looked at you like you weren’t a fellow human.

After dropping off the supplies Eron was hustled into what amounted to the central structure of the town.

Part home for the children and part main administration building.

Nostalgia flooded him.

He had done a lot of the work on making the place.

Liberal use of his strength and heat vision to move and weld several shipping containers into a five-story structure that rivaled the pyramids.

At least that’s how he liked to describe it to others.

It only sort of looked like a pyramid.

Definitely a lot smaller and the random nature of the childish paintings on the outside didn’t help impart a sense of grandeur or gravitas.

To be fair, children were responsible for most of the artwork.

A happy reunion welcomed him into the main meeting hall.

He was beyond relieved to see most of the kids that he had pulled out from deep beneath the earth there.

“Where’s—”

“Eric and Ingri are out investigating something weird in the forest,” Sven said.

This time Eron found himself looking up. “You’ve definitely grown a foot since I last saw you.”

The boy— the teenager grinned sheepishly. “I believe it’s closer to ten inches.”

“That is what she said,” Thor laughed.

Eron laughed in turn.

Their voices had the hilarious breaking quality that one got when going through puberty.

The girls rolled their eyes while the boys elbowed each other and grinned.

It was good to know that some things didn’t change.

“How do you even know that joke?”

“I— I may have put an emphasis on collecting entertainment items as part of our supply runs. For morale purposes,” Sven added hastily. “Plus getting electronic items to work again and maintaining them helps people with related classes improve and level. There is also a clear strategic and tactical value in regards to communications. I don’t want to rely strictly on one thing. It’s good to have both magic and technology,” Sven said.

“And magitech,” he nodded.

“Yes… though that one is harder to earn progress in.”

“You don’t need to justify anything to me, Sven. From the looks of it you’ve… all of you have done well without me. You’ve all grown. I’m happy to see that! And I recently met some people that might be able to give some pointers on the magitech stuff.”

He told them a long story about a terrible fog. The cause of his long absence.

By the time he finished dinner had crept up.

The children— he couldn’t see them as anything else despite their growing lankiness and the sparse beginnings of facial hair for the boys— shared tales of their own adventures. Exciting and terrifying. Joyous and sad. There was never a lack of tragedy in the post-spires world.

He was glad that they were all still alive.

They showed him their newest runes. Magic spells tattooed on their skin. A legacy of their shared horror.

Jonas flew around the space with a spell for flight glowing on his limbs. Along with his back and chest judging by what Eron could see through the teen’s shirt. There also seemed to be glow coming through the thick brown mop of hair on his head.

“Is there a rune on your head?” he raised a brow.

Jonas winced. “Yeah. Had to get it on, like, all of my body parts. Didn’t work properly until I figured that out.”

“You should’ve seen him crying,” Olga grinned. “Like a baby.”

“Took you all day, didn’t it, Jonas?” Deirdre jabbed him in the arm.

“Okay… first of all, it hurt, like the worst place you can get a tattoo. And I had to do it while looking through, like, three mirrors,” Jonas complained.

“Should’ve just put it on your face like I told you,” Deirdre said. “Then you’d just have to deal with doing it backwards.”

“Then I’d be that guy with a face tattoo,” Jonas scoffed. “Better on the top of my head. Hair covers it and even if I go bald everyone shorter than me won’t see.”

Eron agreed with the assessment. From the looks of it there wouldn’t be a lot of people that would qualify to see Jonas’s head rune once the boy was fully grown.

“By the way, Olga, nice touch on that unicorn on my sign,” Eron said.

“You liked it? Everyone was saying that it was too… girly,” Olga shot a triumphant look at the rest.

“I’m way too mature to have a problem with pink and sparkles, especially magic sparkles that actually sparkle. The way the unicorn moves is pretty cool. Like when I watch it flap its wings I can think that an animal like that could exist somewhere out there.”

“Yes, I really thought about the anatomy of it,” Olga beamed.

“But unicorns don’t have wings,” Thor threw his hands up. “Pegasus! A pegasus has the wings!”

“So what? Unicorn and pegasus have a baby and there you have it,” Deirdre shrugged. “I’d say Olga’s got it right, probably.”

“Fair,” Thor conceded, “but I will never not complain,” and retracted in the same breath.

Eron cleared his throat. “Say, Olga, if you do happen to run into a unicorn or a pegasus or the hybrid…”

She looked at him expectantly.

“… just don’t run up to hug it right away. I get that unicorns are supposed to be good, but that’s just stories. I’ve read other stories where they’re… not so good.”

“I know, I’m not a kid. Always confirm if something is a threat before letting my guard down,” Olga pipped.

“Ugh… you are not supposed to let your guard down at all,” Sven sighed.

“Please don’t,” Eron said.

“Yes, okay, fine,” Olga rolled her eyes.

They were partway through dinner when Eric and Ingri returned and promptly tackled Eron in fierce hugs.

“Sven, we tracked it and found its lair,” Eric said after relinquishing the bear-like clasp.

The dark-haired boy hadn’t grown quite as fast as the rest. He still had that chubby cheeked-look of childhood. Broad and stout though. Still had that piercing glare that seemed to suggest he hated you.

Eron knew otherwise.

The boy always looked that way. Happy, angry and everything in between the facade rarely cracked.

The thought made him sad.

They all wore the marks of their time beneath the earth in different ways.

“The goats?” Sven said.

“All of them,” Eric replied.

“Goats?”

Sven gave him a quick recap.

An actual troll had stolen the goats from the shepherds tending them on their path to a grazing area a few miles to the northeast.

“It didn’t kill anyone?”

“Yes. I thought it weird too. Shepherds have Skills to protect their flock and they always have a team of dedicated fighters with them. Not to mention the guard dogs and Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder. That’s usually enough to handle things. This troll didn’t seem interested in a fight. Even after taking a lot of wounds it didn’t attack. Sorta just walked right on through if they could be believed,” Sven said.

“They wouldn’t lie,” Deirdre crossed her arms.

“I’m not saying they did. Just saying that people don’t always remember how fights actually went. I can speak for myself on that account,” Sven said.

“I thought the entire flock scattered? What are they doing with the troll?” Thor said.

“Milling about,” Ingri said. “Not scared of it at all. If I had to say, I’d say that they were sticking to it out of fear. For protection from the monsters in the forest.” She turned to Sven. “And they’re not goats. They’re sheep. How you still can’t get that right, I just can’t?” she shook her head like a disappointed schoolteacher.

“What? You said Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder are goats,” Sven said.

“Wargoats,” she corrected.

“That isn’t a thing,” he complained.

“No, no, you see, sheep are, like, the female goats,” Jonas chimed.

“Oh,” Deirdre exchanged a look with Olga, “and male goats are just goats?”

“Aren’t they?” Jonas looked to Eron for support.

He sighed. “Sheep are sheep and goats are goats. Different animals. I’m mature enough to admit that I didn’t learn this until somewhere in my 20’s.”

“It was strange. We watched it for awhile,” Eric continued. “But it didn’t touch the sheep and two goats.”

“What are you talking about? It tied my babies up,” Ingri scowled.

“Yes because they kept trying to gore and bite it. All things in consideration I took that as a rather… nice… thing from a monster,” he shrugged.

“It is sounding like you don’t want to attack,” Deirdre frowned.

“No. I think discretion is best. It doesn’t seem all that violent at first look. Maybe communicate first?” Eric said.

“What else did you observe?” Sven said.

“Not much. It walked around ripping branches off the trees and eating them,” Eric said.

“Be more specific,” Ingri chided. “It only took the branches off from the highest point it could reach at each tree. Ate everything too. The pine needles, the bark, the branch.”

“I thought trolls ate meat?” Thor whispered to Eron.

“Fictional ones. I’ve never seen a real one,” he replied.

“Anyways… it’s very tall and very strong. About 3 to 3.5 meters. Very long arms and legs. Blue-ish skin, wiry muscles. Ripped branches as thick around as my arms without effort. Like snapping toothpicks. We should be very careful whatever we decide to do,” Ingri said.

Well, that settled it for Eron.

“What direction was it?”

The kids looked at each other.

He could see the desire to appear as capable adults war with prudence.

The former won out.

Eric and Ingri gave him directions and he was soon flying over to visit the troll.

He heard the monster long before he saw it.

Heard bleating sheep too. They didn’t sound scared, but what did he know about sheep vocalizations.

Once he descend to the forest floor he saw it.

The troll was as the kids had described it.

Tall and lanky with obvious strength in its defined musculature.

Its gray skin had a bluish tint.

Hands ended in long fingers. Only three and a thumb. The fingernails looked… manicured.

Its feet were longer and broader in proportion to the rest of its body.

“Oh… greetings,” the troll waved hesitantly as it chewed on a thick branch.