Babel's Magic-Khadgar FanFic

Voodoo Magic

An ache like no other hammered Lothar's mind and left no inch of his body agony free. While the King roused to bubbling flashing lights in his field of vision, his body rattled down to the very fiber of him. The strobing effect settled slowly as he felt around, trying to sit up but found no strength in him except for the dire soreness of his head and back. What his hand did land on was the knobby shoot like bar. Grabbing about more Lothar realized there was one every two or three inches. And when his eyes refocussed the veteran warrior realized he was laying back on hard rock with a cage made of thick sturdy hewn wood bars.

"What the-" envisioning the short brutal recall of Atiesh being shot out of the sky, Lothar pushed himself up and looked around trying to recognize anything.

Surrounding the battered man was cages, lined all the way along a stonehenge type wall. Encircling the outskirts of some fortified city that was dug into the landscape with cobbled together tools. Rustic was putting it politely seeing the fabricated huts with roofs thatched with dried limbs and everything secured with all peeling sewn from countless beasts. Jerking around Lothar heard a voice.

"Pst! My King! Sch!" Squinting three cages down, Lothar saw the mage. Who was chucking tiny pebbles in his direction. Which Lothar didn't understand why, it's not like any of the small rocks made it to him.

A scowl mixed with confusion Lothar's verdant eyes locked with the young mage's. About to speak again Lothar flinched when unwittingly out of nowhere a monstrous creature slammed a snake shaped cudgel into Khadgar's cage with such force that the man was tossed back into the wooden bars.

"Trankil!" it barked viscously to Khadgar, the creature showing skin like that of a sea sick on looker, green from head to toe all nearly eight feet of it. The green hue all in contrast to ice white hair that was spiked up in a mohawk, lack of hygiene the only thing keeping the impressive hairdo up in place. Khadgar sat back in his confines far from the beast, the words it slurred and spoke to another approaching comrade, this one blue in tone, were nothing the mage could identify.

"Ki kote nan yon sèl la ti?" The blue one gnashed it's tusks at the other. Their conversation out of either human's range in dialect. Khadgar's brown eyes shot over to Lothar further down the line in his pen. Even the King's eyes were locked on the two brutes, hyper aware of their movements as he slid back into his cage hoping to cause no stir.

Looking back over to his locked away companion, Lothar saw Khadgar's pleading eyes questioning what this all was.

Lothar silently mouthed the word, 'Trolls.'

The question mark formed on the mage's face in the form of his eyebrows furrowing and a shake of the head. Once more Lothar mouthed the word and tipped his head in a quick gesture to the savage creatures exchanging whatever information they needed before what appeared to be a female, skin as green as the mossy knolls in the area and hair as fire red as the autumn leaves, approached the two larger males. They spat something at one another, knocked their oversized tusks together and then disappeared down towards the middle of the circular village.

Refocussing on the situation Lothar wasted no time rattling the cage looking for a weak point in the construction of the aged wood.

"Trolls?!" Khadgar's whisper barely that as he exclaimed in a panic, "How did trolls see us at night?!"

Working with a stiff aching body Lothar positioned his feet with the best leverage for his legs and kicked at the surely ancient wood keeping him in, "Trolls live everywhere boy!" Lothar grunted as he gave the wood bars another kick with his bare feet, nothing, "I wasn't watching, Atiesh flew too slow over the lower lands!" Another kick to no avail, "They're Amani, just look at their color and wears. It means we didn't make it past even the Hinterlands territory."