Queen Of The Ventils

XXVI

Slowly descending the stairs to Jim's basement, we all gasped at the sheer amount of books inside, forming mountains and mazes of literature that filled the entire room. "Blinky has books on everything I can think of and more," Jim explained. "He should have something we can use to help you."

As we approached a particularly tall stack of books, I could hear grumbling and curses in another language, and the occasional novel being flung aside. "Blinky...?" Jim asked the pile slowly, creeping around the side. "Master Jim!" the voice cried, before enveloping him in a four-armed hug.

Coming around the pile, I saw a grey-blue troll with six tiny, yellow eyes. He had answered the call Toby had made when my sister and I were fighting General Morando. I shuddered at the memory and quickly pushed it to the back of my mind. That was not a time I wanted to revisit soon.

"And fair Claire! Tobias! How I have missed my Trollhunting compatriots," he cried in delight, looking to Claire and Toby with arms open wide.
"Hey there, Blinky," Claire gave him a hug.
"Good to see you, Blinky," Toby smiled and gave him a thumbs-up.
"Ah! And it appears you have gained a new ally as well!"

Blinky strode over to Lunalis, looking her up and down. She slowly leaned away from the inquisitive troll, very clearly uncomfortable by his thorough examination of her. "Master Jim, I do not see anything particularly special about this human," he whispered to Jim when he thought Lunalis couldn't hear.
"I am not a human, Troll," she hissed, before lifting him off his feet with magic and spinning him around, before dropping him back in a stack of books.

"Great Gronka Morka," he gasped in awe. "What sort of arcane Magiks does this nocuous female possess?!"
"Blinky, this is Lunalis," Douxie explained. "She's a Ventil. A-"
"A Ventil?!" he screeched, scrambling away before tripping over a stack of books, and promptly crawling behind his mountain of scripts.

"My friends, do you not realize what a fatuous mistake you have made in bringing this evil creature here?!"
"Blinkous, she isn't evil," Archie explained, alighting on my shoulder. "She's just-"

"You," he hissed at her. "You may have seduced Master Jim into falling for your charms, but you cannot pull the wool over the eyes of Blinkous Galadrigal! Gaaahhhhh!!!!" He charged her, arms swinging, and before I knew what I was doing, I stepped in front of her with her arms spread wide.

"Blinky," I shouted, stopping him in his tracks. "She is not evil! We came here so we can get voices out of her head!"
"And, a better question, how do you even know what she is?" Douxie asked.
"Pah! That cretinous buffoon Merlin can't keep everything a secret," he laughed before grabbing a book and opening it. "Now, you said something about voices?"

As we briefly described the situation we were in, Lunalis went to examine the various books lying around, bound in a variety of mediums; leather, scaly-textured cloth, and one looked to be bound in what looked suspiciously like human skin. "Ah, this does sound like a consequential situation," Blinky said, thinking intensely. "But by Deya's Grace, never in a millenia would I help a creature as savage and wild as a Ventil!"

"Blinky, why do you hate her so much?" I asked, gently putting a hand on Lunalis' arm to prevent her from attacking him again. "She's simply trying to get these voices out of her brain."
"Because these foul creatures have been the cause of the death of more trollhunters than the books can count," he snapped, turning and grabbing a huge book that looked like it was carved from solid stone.

Flipping through the yellowed pages, he stopped at the image of a bulky troll with bulging muscles and a horrific underbite, fighting a half-human creature that resembled a dragon. Enormous arms that were mixed with huge, reptilian wings, scale-like patterns running all over its skin, and huge jaws that spewed a column of flame towards him.

"Observe. Bartriix the Bloodthirsty. One of the most brutal and violent trollhunters in history, he had a reputation for drinking his mead out of the skulls of his enemies, and using their skin to wipe his face afterwards."
"And I'm willing to guess he was killed by a Ventil," Douxie ventured.

"Correct, my wizard compatriot," he sighed, tracing a stubby finger over the charcoal drawing. "One night, whilst he was on patrol, he was attacked by a vicious humanoid creature, with horrifically deformed features and strength beyond anything he had seen before. It blew fire hotter than the magma of Grotto's Keep from its enormous jaws, and its roar was so fearsome it made him soil his armor."

"Really could've done without that info, Blink," Jim gagged.
"Yeah, dude. TMI," Toby agreed, turning rather pale.
"At any rate, the Sword of Daylight was no match for its impenetrable hide," Blinky continued, thumbing through pages at breakneck speed. "He died a grisly death, his body was never found, and the amulet appeared in the bar where the next Trollhunter, Giif the Gassed, was at the time."

"Gassed?" Lunalis cocked her head to the side.
"How could he hold a weapon if he was in a gaseous state of matter?" I asked, confused.
"He was not a being of vapor," Blinky retorted. "He was so hungover from drinking with his friends that when he received the amulet, the title was a joke, but after he died he had no mentionable achievements to speak of, so that was what we called him. Ah, here we are! Another Trollhunter who was killed by these demons.

"Hildegarde the Happy. She was so cheerful, she died with a smile on her face. Probably because the arachnids who killed her injected her with a numbing venom." At this, he turned the book around once more so we could see how she had died, and I immediately wished I hadn't eaten my pancakes for breakfast.

Three spiders were surrounding a round troll with a plump face and giant grin, who was trapped in a bundle of a strange, silk-like substance and lying amongst many other skeletons, most likely the other victims of the Ventils.

The Spiders themselves were huge, and looked almost like centaurs I had seen in Strickler's history class, if the horse parts were replaced with bulbous spider abdomens that were connected to spindly, muscular legs that perched on delicate points and lifted the back half of their bodies in some gravity-defying act of magic.

The human halves weren't exactly better. Their skulls swept up and ended in dulled points and had no hair, and instead were covered from head to toe in tiny hairs of varying shades. Their lips were peeled back to reveal disgusting black tongues and razor-sharp fangs. Their multiple sets of eyes were narrow, and were all one color with no pupils or irises.

And, as if that wasn't enough, they had multiple sets of arms, from just four limbs to as many as ten, and some possessed less than the usual five fingers, and all had nails that were filed to sharp points. And, judging from the size of the skulls around them that looked suspiciously human, they towered anywhere between 7 to 12 feet high.

"Proditorus," Lunalis whispered, studying the creatures intently. I myself was frozen in shock, trapped in this snapshot of a horrific moment in history. These Ventils were nothing compared to the creatures inside the book Douxie had shown us. These were true-blooded Proditorus; the most horrifying and brutal kind of creatures imaginable.

One after another, the book revealed more pictures of helpless trolls of all kinds, all being destroyed in some horrible way, and all bearing the armor of the Trollhunter.

A single-eyed troll with a pearly, spiral horn on his head being torn limb from limb by cat-like Ventils that crawled towards their prey on all fours with nimble paws and dagger-like claws. A skinny troll sinking to the depths of the ocean whilst surrounded by colorful Lionfish, their rainbow of exotic colors and fringe-like fins almost rendering their victim unseeable.

A tiny troll trapped between the horrifically disproportioned jaws of an Anglerfish, the only source of light to show the battle its glowing esca, which illuminated its giant teeth and the expression of the unlucky troll whose face was contorted in a permanent state of terror and pain.

"I apologise, Master Jim," Blinky sighed after a few more minutes of showcasing the documented deaths. "But I cannot help you. I will not help be the cause of more death by these creatures."