Beren trekked down a low slope into a gully, distastefully noticing the sloshing muck at its center. Vainly he tried to keep his feet out of the soup of ice and mud, but he just thanked God he wore high boots, tightly tied. Finding a rock, he planted a foot on it and launched himself nimbly across the expanse before clambering up the next slope, grabbing a root as a hand-hold. He felt small bits of pressure upon his jacket sleeve as gnarled twigs and limbs groped at his form, leaves getting tangled in his thick mane of dark hair. 

He almost laughed, at a rare moment of self awareness. Nothing he ever did seemed to turn out simply. Khardos asking a boon of him to visit a gravesight should have been easy, even with the dangers of the Marches in mind. Instead, here he was, having survived a myriad of dangers only to have pissed off a skilled mercenary company wanting his head, and to top it all off, he had to find Jocasta. He prayed she was safe, but if the tremendous roar from earlier was any indication, there was more than Dead Lions lurking the brush. 

Hauling himself up, he crouched on the hard earth, momentarily cloaked by the brambles. He could have sworn he heard something, his form freezing as surely as the mountain stone, save for his searching, dark eyes. Green, brown, white, and grey filled his vision, but still a sound grew louder. Suddenly the grey began to shift and move, and he looked down the next gully to see a pale, iron colored mass of a shape ascending out of it. Vaguely man-shaped with simian proportions and a grotesque face of primitive countenance, he recognized it as a troll, and as it rose two things became evident. 

It was a head taller than most of its foul kin, and to Beren's horror, Jocasta's limp form was in its grasp. 

He felt a weird sense of despair and confusion. If Jocasta was dead, he knew he still had to do what he was bid. It changed his mission little, and he had lost friends before. In normal circumstances he would go after the troll and bury his friend properly or die in the attempt. But he didn't feel rage at the moment, just weakness. it felt different than losing a normal companion, but the same pain was still there. He closed his eyes and breathed in slowly through his nose, centering himself. Once he opened his eyes again, they shined like polished brass. He had never slain an Arch-Troll, but troll-slaying was a known skill amongst Dwarven-kind, and he had been taught by some of the best.

He followed Qwarath to its lair. 

[hr] 

Jocasta's world would come back gradually, and save for the aching in her torso and the pins and needles of sleeping limbs, she was alive and relatively fine. Her first sensation was the hard floor of stone she lay upon, and the awkward angle of her back. She had been placed down on a cavern floor scattered with bones, some rabbit and others that could be from other trolls. A pale light shined in from above, in some carved opening that shined just on Jocasta's spot. As she looked around, she saw skaldic statues of bearded men gazing at her with judgemental visages and painted like they bore the trappings of old thanes. 

The cavern was ruined and broken, rubble and stones piled as if some great calamity had passed through it. But it once certainly was made by skilled hands. Right angles teased at her vision and pillars rose to frame the rough chamber she found herself in. The floor her fingers pressed against still had the creases of tiles. The light kissing her skin wasn't warm, but the wind and cold of the outside world was somewhat buffered from the shelter.

Behind her loomed a great form, raising up from the shadows. As she felt its presence, it smiled. It's mouth was wider than a man's of similar proportions would be, and it made use of that fact to give an unsettling grin. 

"You tell..." 

[hr] 

Beren had tracked the beast for the good part of two hours, and as he did so he found Qwarath shielding Jocasta's limp form from anything that might kill her like jagged trees or sharp stones. The thing wouldn't do that if she were dead, and it lent strength to his limbs and gave him a hope he had nearly forgotten. At the edge of a thick expanse of trees, a great tor lifted out of the ground with an open maw large enough to accommodate a troll's bulk. The land had reclaimed what it has once been, and he might have missed it had Beren seen the location from anywhere save the face of the cavern. An old spear lay sticking out of the ground with a weathered cloth whipping in the wind just beside it. Qwarath lumbered in with its squat legs.

He counted to thirty, and then followed the arch-troll within, thankful for the lack of wind but heightened in anxiety from the tight quarters. The tunnel was low for a troll but comfortable for one of man height, gradually opening up to a wider cave with overturned tables of stone and statues of old figures of heroic legend. To his surprise, the walls still had remnants of a wooden construction, though now there was just as much stone as timber. A wash-bin reinforced with iron was shattered and overturned, now rotting from the long years. 

Beren found a broken stairway at the lip of the tunnel, leading into a large chamber. He didn't trust it, and so took the slope to the left, sliding down the incline as silently as he could as the troll grunted and spoke to itself in a guttural tongue. Beren's slide was halted by a large stone he caught, and then he rolled behind an overturned table, getting to his feet and peering out to see Qwarath having placed Jocasta on a pedestal in the midst of a gloomy light from above. 

His throat tightened when he saw Jocasta stirring, and he felt an elation he hadn't expected. 

"You tell..." Qwarath said wickedly, a green light in its eyes. She gave a guilty smiled, and then tried to bolt a moment later. It caged Jocasta from scrambling away with its massive arm, bear-like claws hitting the ground just beyond where she crawled to, keeping her there like a cage door shutting. The only luck in that act was Jocasta glancing between the clawed fingers and seeing Beren's face in the distance, placing a finger to his lips. He gave her a wink, and slid back behind the table.