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inbabylontheywept · 10 months

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An Honorary Troll

Breaker paused a moment, taking in the sight of the mage in front of him. The robes, the beard, the aloof expression - those were all typical.

The staff was not.

“You cast with that?” he asked, half impressed.

The mage swung the thing off his shoulders overhand and planted its blade into the dirt. It was the first truly threatening staff Breaker had ever seen. The blade on its end was almost as long as the haft itself, counterbalanced at the end by a polished lump of amber larger than a goose's egg. The damn thing looked more like a polearm than a casting aid.

Breaker waited a few moments to see if the human was going to respond to his question. He didn’t. Part of him, the proud part, was happy to finally be taken seriously. The smart part of him suspected he was going to miss the advantage of being underestimated.

Breaker unslung his massive warhammer from his shoulders, its half-slowed fall still weighty enough to be felt through the mages thick work boots, loud enough to be felt in both of their chests.

Then he blitzed the length of the bridge.

The mage’s eyes widened, his wizened hands beginning to twitch out a ward. Breaker knew there wasn’t time. The gap was too short. He was already beginning his overhead swing of the hammer, half falling, the full power of his speed, strength, and weight poured into one crushing blow. He knew that the secret to hitting a mage was giving them everything you had, as hard as possible, as fast as possible, as close as possible. The more time they had to think and react, the more dangerous they’d become, and the more time he had needed to chase and smash, the more tired he’d get. Thank the Gods this was gonna work. Extended fights were-

The wizard grinned.

A spell went off. Not a ward. Simpler. A small jet of flame shot out of the amber orb, rotating the blade to vertical in a fraction of a second. The wizard half relaxed as he planted the staff in the gravel, looking forward like a huntsman versus a charging boar.

Breaker knew he couldn’t slow down. He couldn’t dodge. The one mercy he could see was that the tip was aimed at his chest, not his gut. He’d rather choke on blood than rot from the inside. He closed his eyes before impact, not wanting to see the blade sink into him.

It didn’t.

He heard the crunch of gravel give way to the crunch of his nose as the mage threw a haymaker into his sidestep, staff moved helpfully to the side. He was half glad for the blow because it helped him get his center of balance back under him again. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to get a blow in with the hammer again, it needed too much time to build momentum, but he still turned to face the wizard, every instinct insisting that he couldn’t take his eyes off the little man for more than a moment.

He turned out to be right. If he’d turned his head half as fast he wouldn’t have had enough time to dodge the cudgel end of the staff, swung like a bat at the back of his skull. If he hadn’t been outmaneuvered at every step of this fight, he’d have assumed that swinging from the direction his bad eye was on was just luck. The fact that he knew it was intentional implied that his opponent had a level of martial expertise that even most knights lacked.

With no space to use the hammer, he used the next best weapon in his arsenal: His body. His leg snapped out hard, his massive height letting him connect the blow easily with the old man’s chest. He felt something give, and watched with some small satisfaction as the human went bouncing down the bridge’s center path

Well, he didn’t need an invitation.

He couldn’t move quite as the fast as he’d launched the mage away, but it was a close thing. The pause gave him time to get the momentum he needed to swing the hammer. He felt like an ox behind a cart, the weight behind building into something unblockable, undodgeable, un-

Unbelievable.

The little man ended his tumble on all fours, splayed like a tree frog. The hammer was already bearing down on him, too late in the swing for Breaker to change course, even as he watched the final twitch that signaled a ward was cast. The hammer slammed into the mages hunched back harmlessly, the force of the blow charging the ward like a magical battery. The maniacal grin the little man had worn ever since that first blitz widened half a step further, silver molars on full display, and then-

He flew. Rather than directing the force into some sort of attack, rather than buying himself time and space, the two classical friends of all mages, the little bastard directed all of his stored up energy downwards. The blast launched him up, bringing him from all fours at shin height to eye level in a fraction of a second. He probably would’ve headed up another six or seven feet if he hadn’t grabbed ahold of Breaker’s left horn. His upward momentum swung him full circle around it, his journey ending abruptly as he drove the armored soles of both of his decidedly un-wizardly boots into the back of Breaker’s skull.

If Breaker had been an ogre, or a nightkin, or even a giant, he’d have been out cold. But Breaker was a full-blooded troll, and the horns on his head weren’t just for ornamentation. If he charged a brick wall there was a coin flips chance he’d be the winner. The boots never stood a chance.

The wizard managed to get two more vicious, if slightly panicked kicks in before Breaker’s fists managed to catch up. They grabbed him by the collar of his coarse green robe and yanked him forward, over his shoulder. The old man looked slightly sheepish, dangling from the inhumanely large hands of his opponent.

Breaker cut to the chase.

“You could’ve killed me on the first charge.”

The mage nodded. There wasn’t a whole lot else he could do. His robes were caught so tightly in the troll’s grasp that they acted like a straitjacket.

“Why didn’t you?”

The wizard went for earnestness. He’d been told it was his saving grace.

“You did not deserve death. This is your bridge. I just could not afford the toll.”

The robe tightened further as the troll’s fist clenched.

“Do you wish that you killed me when you had the chance?”

The wizard snorted.

“Murder you, for the price of a goat? No. If I could make a wish, I’d wish I could swim.”

The troll let go with one fist, its thumb trailing back to its mouth. A large, sharp tooth clamped down on the meaty pad of the digit, drawing a thick bead of green blood. The wizard’s confusion blossomed into disgust as the ichor was smeared from his forehead to his chin.

“The fuck-”

His curse was interrupted by the troll.

“I have decided to make you kin. And my first gift to you, great kin, is to grant you your wish.”

The second fist, the one still gripping the front of the wizard’s robes, flung itself forward. The wizard barely had a moment to curse before plummeting into the water below.

Several seconds passed.

Breaker waited.

The wizard arose, sputtering, from the depths. He turned, trembling from the cold, the rage, and the sheer disbelief of what he was experiencing.

“It’s four feet deep.”

Breaker nodded.

“Yes.”

It was almost heartwarming, the way the wizard laughed as he began wading his way towards the far shore. Breaker’s hands gingerly roamed over the goose eggs growing from the back of his head, larger than his own horns had been when he’d passed the trials of manhood.

If nobody gave you headaches like kin, that little man was troll enough for a small army.

#humanity fuck yeah #muscle mage #i cast fist #if you can't beat them adopt them #troll bridge #wizard fight #hfy #sink or swim #fantasy #lighthearted #punchline ending

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lacertae-dreamscape · 1 year

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ORV fic idea 01 - fairytale-esque AU - Troll Bridge

General Info on idea: Joongdok, no spoilers for novel or webtoon, minimal angst, happy ending, sfw

There used to be, near the Capital of the Kaizenix Empire, a very busy road with a bridge passing over a wide, turbulent river.

Unfortunately, one day the bridge was cursed and a Troll came to live on it -and since then, every person who passes by has to pay a toll to the troll or else get maimed by it.

Many tried to come and take down the troll, but it was strong enough that no one could beat it, and then people stopped passing by that road, choosing to take longer, less comfortable paths to reach the Capital.

One day, the Crowned Prince of Kaizenix, Yoo Joonghyuk, who had been out to train with his master for the past year and thus had not heard of the troll, returns home; upon asking why his escort is taking such a long, difficult road across the forest rather than the main road, he is told of the situation.

The main road has been abandoned for so long that nobody even tried going that way for fear of facing the troll.

So, YJH decides he would go and defeat the troll himself... only that when he reaches the infamous bridge, he does not find a troll -he finds a man sitting on the side of it, looking down at the water with a complex expression.

“Are you the one exacting tolls from my people?” not waiting for an answer, YJH strikes first, grabbing the unknown man by the throat and dangling him off the bridge.

The man, fair skin and dark hair, scrambles for purchase, clutching at the hand holding him by his throat, and replies that he is no troll -in fact, he is the one who defeated the troll and made the bridge safe once again.

YJH is wary and not convinced, so the man, whose name is Kim Dokja, tells him to look under the bridge, where the remains of the troll are. Still holding him by the neck, YJH moves to the side of the bridge and looks down, and sees the corpse of the troll, now covered in roots as it returned to nature after death.

“You have achieved a great feat,” YJH tells KDJ, grudgingly, with an approving nod. “What do you want as your recompense?”

Kdj tells YJH that he requires of nothing, but if he so wishes, he could let people know the bridge is now safe, and that they can pass by it once again.

The news spread that the bridge is safe, but after living so long with the fear of the troll, not many pass by that road anyway, preferring to travel from capital to nearby towns through other means still.

YJH is one of the few who travels through the main road, and notices that no matter when he gets there, he always sees KDJ sitting by the bridge or over the edge of it, looking... lonely.

So, instead of going there as a means to reach other towns, YJH starts going to the bridge to meet with KDJ, and the two strike a weird friendship.

As the weeks pass by, YJH realises that he’s not the only one who comes to visit KDJ anymore -a few people, out of curiosity, or maybe just emboldened, have taken to traversing the bridge, and some of them stick around to talk with KDJ over time.

There is the librarian of the town, Yoo Sangah, and even the ArchMage Han Sooyoung, and a couple kids from the neighbourhood who stick around to play and look incredibly fond of KDJ.

Even the Sword and Shield of the Royal Guard of Kaizenix, who usually follow YJH to protect him, have taken a liking to the man, and visit him on their own free time.

(YJH is not jealous that he has to share KDJ’s time. He would be, if not for the fact that there is always a smile that brightens KDJ’s otherwise sad, sallow face, whenever he’s around people he likes, and that smile is something YJH finds himself cherishing.)

Slowly, more people start to pass by the bridge, as word travels as fast as an arrow, and the news of the troll’s demise have reached every part of the land.

Many pass, but only some of them stop by to talk with KDJ, who is... always there, somehow.

And then, over time, YJH starts to notice that he looks more and more haggard.

His clothes become baggier, and when he moves, when he talks with YJH long enough that he becomes animated and some life and colour starts seeping back into his pale skin, YJH peeks under the edge of his sleeves and his pants and sees dirty bandages covering his ankles and wrists.

His friends get worried about it, but he always says things are fine -he’s not being hurt, or anything. Everything is just fine. All he wants is for them to continue coming to visit, as he enjoys their presence.

They all ask, of course -doesn’t he have a home? “He can live with me, of course!” says Lee Gilyoung, jutting out his chin, as if daring the adults to tell him off. “I basically live alone anyway,” he mutters, a little softer.

“I have more space, and I could use some help reviewing the books I write in my spare time,” HSY says, knowing that since she lives near the palace, she’s more equipped to have a ‘freeloader’ live with him.

YJH says nothing, even though he wants to, because the mere idea of asking KDJ to live with him makes the knot in his chest just a little bit tighter. He just glares at HSY and then at KDJ, daring him to explain what’s wrong with his house, wherever that might be, that makes him stay by the bridge all day no matter what.

“I’m just renovating it. My house is fine, thank you very much,” KDJ’s expression is a mix of fond exasperation, but his smile is a bit too empty, and his eyes shift sideways, and his nostrils flare. “Besides, wouldn’t it be fun if we all lived together in a huge house, anyway?”

And with that, he gets everyone so invested in the hypothetical idea that they all forget about the original question.

YJH sees this, sees the relief in KDJ’s eyes, the fondness as they all start to talk about building a huge house near the palace, thinks that they’re all stupid -not a single one of them has considered that the royal palace is, in fact, big enough to become that house, yet says nothing.

He will come back alone, and maybe then he will make KDJ talk. When it’s the two of them alone, maybe the words he wishes to say will come out more easily than in front of this many people, no matter how fond even YJH has become of them.

KDJ is fine. He’s fine. Whatever is going on at his house, YJH will find out.

He’ll be fine.

Until one day, YJH and the rest of KimCom get to the bridge, and KDJ is nowhere to be seen.

They leave, search for him everywhere, then return to the bridge, worried that he’s gone, worried that something happened...

Then, YJH hears noise coming from underneath the bridge, and goes to check...

... and sees KDJ collapsed on the ground, on the other side from the body of the troll, now gone and replaced by the roots of a large, short tree.

YJH is the first to reach him, heart jumping to his throat, turns KDJ’s body around and...

there are roots and bark covering the skin of his neck, part of his face. They cover his arms down to his fingers... except its not roots covering him. It’s his own body, turning into wood, just like the troll.

There are wounds all over his arms, and from those wounds instead of blood sap spills out, and little, sapling roots that curl around his limbs.

“I didn’t want you to find out like this,” he murmurs, voice croaky and tired. He refuses to look at them, and instead focuses on the tree that was once the troll. “It was my mistake, after all.”

And then, he comes clear.

He defeated the troll because he wanted people to stop having to pay tolls, tricked the troll and killed him, but... due to the magic of the bridge, the troll’s defeat meant the winner would become the new ‘troll’.

Forced to stay on the bridge by that same magic, KDj felt the pull of the magic demand him to ask for a toll to every person who passed on the bridge, starting from his first meeting with YJH.

He refused, but for every person passing on the bridge that did not pay him a toll, a fraction of his body turns into wood. At first he tried to hide it with bandages, but after a while, he could barely move, or walk, and in the end he dragged himself underneath the bridge, hoping no one would find him there until he’d fully turned.

He has given up already -and he’s ok with it, because it means that when he dies, the spell will disappear, and there will be no more troll to ask for tolls.

Of course, KimCom is absolutely not okay with this.

They care for him and they want him to live, but he waited so long without telling them, and now there’s so little of his body left free of wood they don’t know if they can even help.

Not even HSY’s magic can do anything.

Unable to move him awyay from the bridge because of the magic, KimCom try finding different magics to help, but time is slipping away from them, and by the time YJH visits again, after another fruitless trip to the nearby Tower of Mages, KDJ is unconscious, barely breathing, the roots of his body digging into the soil and into the stones of the bridge.

YJH is filled with anger.

This is not the way it was supposed to end -not when he hasn’t even managed to find the words he wanted to speak to KDJ the most. Not when all the time spent with him, that mattered so much to him, feels like it was wasted by KDJ’s determination to keep them from the truth.

The man needs to be saved, if only so YJH can make him repent for not telling them until it was this late.

That man needs to be saved, so YJH can tell him there’s a place in his home at the castle, at his side, for him to always come back to.

Now that he knows that KDJ will sacrifice himself for others, he wants him to learn what it means to live for others, too.

In his anger, helpless and unfair as it is, YJH wields his sword, and Transcendent in power, starts hacking at the stones of the bridge, hissing and spitting in fury.

And as he does that, pieces of the bridge collapse, revealing the red spires of the curse, embedded deep into every stone of the bridge.

At once, all of KimCom starts attacking the bridge, and piece by piece, it collapses under their unified work.

Sword and fists and shield and magic join at one, a single goal in mind -destroy what caused their dear person’s demise.

And once the last brick of the bridge collapses into the waters of the river below, once nothing is left there but an empty space and tired, exhausted faces and tear tracks,

once the tree that was once a troll is exposed to sunlight, it starts to dry out and rot, inch by inch, until it is gone.

and once the sunlight touches the still, breathless body of KDJ, lost to sleep, more tree than person, the roots start to retreat. Slowly, ever so slowly, the wooden parts on his skin shrivel and fall off of him.

The curse is finally broken, now that the bridge itself is gone.

“I am... free?” he murmurs, staring into YJH’s frowning face above him, as he wakes up surrounded by all of his friends.

“Until your next stupid, foolish idea,” YJH mutters, spite colouring his words.

“You talk as if I meant for it to be like this,” KDJ murmurs back, soft and tired but with a small, grateful smile on his lips. “I can’t even regret it, because it got me to meet you... all of you,” he adds, hastily, cheeks red in embarrassment, looking away from YJH to hide his own foolishness.

“What... what are you going to do now?” Shin Yoosung asks, hesitant. “Are you going to go home?”

KDJ snorts, but there’s a soft smile on his lips as he stares at the two kids clutching his body like they’re afraid he’ll disappear if the let go. “I don’t... quite have one? The bridge was the uh, the longest I’ve spent in a single place since I left that shithole that was my previous home.”

Everyone opens their mouths at once, protesting this, ready to offer their own places again, for real this time, only for YJH to grit his teeth and hiss out a quiet, strong “silence.”

In the ensuing quiet, all eyes on him, YJH leans forwards to grab KDJ’s hand in his own, ignoring the way his ears burn in embarrassment, to focus on the red spreading over KDJ’s cheeks.

“You have a home,” he says, making sure to enunciate the words properly. “by my side.”

It doesn’t matter if everyone’s hollering and pointing, it doesn’t matter if HSY and JHW are exchanging high fives and money moves hand faster than he can blink.

All that matters is the wonder in KDJ’s eyes as he looks at his face, then at their hands intertwined, then back to his face, as a small, hesitant smiles takes over his face.

...

“Wait,” KDJ murmurs as YJH holds him in his arms, safe and wrapped in his cloak as he rides on his horse towards the Capital, looking at YJH with his eyes wide. “Aren’t you the Prince?”

“Mn.”

“Is that something you can-”

“Yes.”

“But-”

“Stop overthinking, Kim Dokja. I want to be with you. No one will dare complain.”

“Not if they want to keep their heads where they have ‘em,” LJH adds helpfully, riding on YJH’s left.

“Mn,” YJH agrees, frown darkening at the thought.

“Hey now,” KDJ murmurs, but his hold on YJH’s cloak tightens, and if anything, he looks just as pleased as YJH himself is.

“From travelling hero to princess consort,” HSY cackles, laughing at him. “What a level up!”

“Not a princess,” both KDJ and YJH reply at the same time. And then, YJH adds, much to KDJ’s chagrin, “wife.“

“Ah yes, my bad. From Travelling hero to wife,” HSY corrects herself, a shit-eating grin on her face.

KJD hides his face in YJH’s chest but not even that can hide the smile on his face.

#omniscient reader's viewpoint #omniscient reader #joongdok #fantasy au #troll bridge #orv fic ideas #ORVplotting #fic idea 01

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