Daryl raised his hands in surrender, “I get it.” He looked at Drew and then frowned, changing the subject, “What I don’t get is why you don’t look tired. You can’t have slept in at least 20 hours and you look damn well rested.”
“I…might not have been completely forthcoming about what spells that I have,” Drew answered cautiously. “I have one called refresh, well, energize now, that keeps me from needing sleep.”
“Damn, when was the last time you actually slept?” Daryl asked.
“Other than slotting xatherite? The day before advent.” Drew supplied the answer while studying the other man’s face.
Daryl stood back up and walked over to the window, considering what Drew said, “I get why you wouldn’t trust me.” The night was still dark, but the occasional shriek of a bat could be heard outside. Drew didn’t want to consider what a bat that fed on these massive bugs would be like. “I just want my wife back, Drew. I’ll do anything to get her back, and…you’re my best, my only hope for that.”
“Did you just Princess Leia me?” Drew asked incredulously.
Daryl smirked and sat down in the chair, “Can you cast that energize spell on me? Since I’m up, might as well talk a bit more.”
Drew nodded, “Sure, I can do that, just give me a bit, it’s still recharging for another fifteen minutes or so.”
The two passed the time joking about movies; they both had similar tastes and talked for some time about Shawshank Redemption and The Bourne Identity.
An hour later the sun was starting to rise and both men, now much more comfortable with each other, set out from the house, getting the bottles of alcohol, rags, and lighters needed for Daryl’s portion of the event while Drew cleared their ambush site of the remaining night critters. He was happy to discover that the new lightning bolt could two shot most of the centipedes and other insects that lingered through the dawn.
Once the area was cleared, he made his way to the peak of a roof and began the final bit of waiting.
Chapter Twenty-Three — Burning Trolls
Wedged in between two roof segments, Drew wished he had taken the time to nail in a board or something. The shingles were loose, and his footing was slightly precarious, but it allowed him to keep a low enough profile that he didn’t think anyone would see him before he started launching fireballs. Daryl said the trolls normally came out about two hours after dawn, so he had plenty of time to get bored.
He started aiming his fireballs off towards the Potomac, trying to measure how far they traveled before disappearing. With trial and error, he determined that at around a thousand feet out it started losing power, and then disappeared completely somewhere between fifteen hundred and two thousand feet. It was hard to make accurate assessments of distance without a marked range, but those were his best estimates. He tested his other spells but found the only other one that had a long enough range to be effective was acid dart.
It meant that he was well within the effective range of fireball for this ambush. But depending on how close the trolls guarded the humans, he might have issues with catching a human in the blast. He pushed that thought away and looked around for a spot where he could lay down to take pressure off his leg.
The whole situation was somewhat uncomfortable. The morning sun was incredibly hot, especially reflecting off the black tar of the shingles. The leather vest and dark blue ODU’s he wore under it didn’t help either. However, they did protect him from the grit on the shingles. He laid down and his leg twinged slightly in pain as he bumped it a little too hard in the process. “Should probably get shoes instead of boots and a pair of shorts for the heat,” He said, thinking out loud.
Running a hand through his hair, he realized that he would need to get a haircut too. Chief would start yelling at him for being out of regs within a couple days at this rate.
He laughed until he realized it was bouncing eerily around the abandoned housing complex. The reverberating echo sounded unnervingly like someone mocking him. How strange it was to have such normal thoughts like haircuts and shoe shopping while he was waiting to ambush a bunch of trolls with magic. It was comforting at the same time to have had such normal thoughts.
Shaking his head at the incongruity, he looked around. He was positioned on a roof back a little way from the road that the trolls took every morning. Between him and the road were two housing units that formed a narrow corridor with a small playground in between them. The trolls would either come straight through the corridor or circle around the two buildings to respond to his attacks. Like most of the plan, it wasn’t perfect.
Scanning the road, he poked his head up a little higher and looked over at the DIA building. They hadn’t yet exited the big building, but they were due any time now. He then glanced over at the soccer field where the ritual had been performed. He kept thinking that he should see bodies, but they had disappeared either during the night or in the storm. He couldn’t tell which he thought was more disturbing: insects capable of eating dozens of bodies, bone and all, overnight, or rain that dissolved bodies in an instant. The fire was also empty, but he could see the reflective shapes of their long daggers in the grass. They were the only thing indicating that a battle had taken place there yesterday.
A flash of light in his eyes caught Drew’s attention and he saw Daryl pointing the mirror at him, their signal to indicate the trolls had left the building. Drew focused his attention on him as Daryl flashed Morse code at him: a short, then four longs, then a pause. One. Three long and two shorts. Eight. Another pause, and then a single long. 18T, eighteen trolls. Another pause, and then a short and four long again: one. Four long and a short meant nine. Then a short, two long and a short. The letter P. 19 people with the trolls. Drew raised his hand to indicate he had received the message and Daryl disappeared.
Drew realized that he didn’t exactly disappear; from his perspective, the body went invisible, but a faint shadow still followed where he must be as it walked to the other side of the road to prepare his portion of the ambush. How did his invisibility work anyway? Did it just bend the light around him? If that was the case, him still casting a shadow made sense? Maybe just a distortion on the ground from where the light had been bent? The shadow was too indistinct not to be affected at all; in fact, against something other than the white pavement of the sidewalk, Drew doubted he would be able to see it at all.
Drew did a quick relaxation technique, tensing and releasing his muscles, trying to limber up for the fight. It would still take fifteen or twenty minutes for them to walk all the way down the road to where he was, and he had a feeling it was going to be one of the longest fifteen minutes he’d ever experienced. He then recast all his shielding spells and hunkered down to wait.
Wiping sweat from his forehead, he waited. Finally, three trolls came into view around the house; they were standing close enough together that Drew wasn’t afraid of hitting the humans. Standing up, he launched a fireball slightly ahead of where the three were currently. To Drew, the ball seemed to move in slow motion, and one troll caught the movement out of the corner of its eye. Turning to look, it began to shout but was cut short by the explosion that engulfed all three.
Only fifteen trolls left. Four more had come into view while he took out the first group; they were on either side of a group of humans. One shouted something in a language Drew didn’t understand, and all four began to charge towards him. Drew launched a frostfire ball at the first one, but it dove out of the way, taking only glancing damage from a shard of ice that embedded itself in his shoulder.