Jötunn
It was midwinter when my foolishness reached its peak. One drunken night, my playful, carefree self caused such havoc in my tribal village that I was banished in the morning, sent out into the cold with nothing but the clothes on my back.
Wandering through silent forests and empty valleys during daylight hours, I found few chances to move Southward, as wolf-packs could be heard in that direction, fresh tracks showing their frequent prowling. Little did I know then that I would have been better off risking the wolves catching me than finding myself in the clutches of a far more sinister fiend.
By bad luck and circumstance, I found myself chased North by the wolves. Their howls haunted me throughout cold nights in the pitch-black forests as I buried myself in shallow earth to insulate my body from the frigid wind and snowfall.
The days passed, and still I heard their howls after me as I continued my reluctant retreat Northward. My dread fear of what lay ahead began to rival the simple necessity of running from what chased behind me. But on the night that I no longer heard the howls of my pursuers, it was too late to turn back. I was already in the forbidden lands.
North of my own tribe's hunting grounds, beyond the reach of Spring's renewal and Summer's warmth, the ever-greens stretch to the heavens, shrouding a misty realm where the ancient monsters of the previous Age still roam.
I had lost all feeling in my arms and legs by this cursed, black night, when I struggled to make a fire. It was the first night I had dared to light a flame, as I believed the wolves had given up their hunt and I was sure death would carry me away in the night if I tried to survive by keeping warm in a shallow grave. Besides, the earth was far too hard here for me to dig a hole.
So, through hours of painful work I surprised myself and defied all odds by starting a fire from the dry pine branches. I felt elation for the first time in days, relished in my simple accomplishment. Although I had entered a frightening land, this source of light and warmth gave me hope that I would live to see the morning and find a way back out of these forests and South to warmer weather.
Feeble flames sputtered in the wind as I curled up as close to my fire as I possibly could. Such bitter cold had cut through my coat, clothes, flesh and bones that I scarcely cared if my own body were set aflame. But even with tongues of orange fire licking at my shivering form, I still felt the cold of the forbidden realm, like an icy phantom breathing down my neck.
My eyelids were beginning to droop from fatigue, even in the face of the bright, dancing flames. But sleep eluded me when a heavy rhythm began to shake my body and boom in my ears. At first I thought it was my own beating heart that I was hearing and feeling. I quickly realized it was not, seeing the sticks in my fire quake, feeling the earth beneath me shudder, hearing a thunderous stomping, all growing stronger with each step.
The first instinct to cross my mind was to snuff out my fire and hope that whatever lurked in these forests had not yet seen it, or would lose my signal in the pitch dark of the night. A full moon shone through clouds that were moving across the night sky, so that white light illumined the forest at odd intervals, sometimes casting everything in stark shadows, other times abandoning the woods to total blackness.
To think of my chances of survival without my fire was to gamble with terrible odds. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed that whatever giant or dæmon walked these woods would not see my fire and continue on its way through this horrid land of ice and wind. But fortune had not favoured me since my banishment, and tonight my bad luck would reach its height.
The earth trembled and the air shook with each tremorous step. I glanced about in the dark, hoping to spot whatever monster was coming for me. I might not want to leave my fire, but if this beast was coming straight for me, then I would have no choice but to run. If only I could see what direction the creature came from.
A thick cloud covered the moon, smothering the forest around me in perfect darkness. Howling wind barraged my fire, reducing the flames to a tiny light, so dim I could hardly see my own hands in front of me, much less anything beyond an arm's length from my fire.
The final few steps were so heavy, so loud that I wondered if I and all the trees around me might be crushed by whatever giant was wandering through the night. But instead, cold darkness took me when a huge, hairy foot crashed down upon my feeble fire, crushing the entire thing. The clouds moved and the moon shone on a thick, woolly leg of such dark, filthy hair that I wondered what kind of enormous mammoth would deliberately set foot on an open flame.
My frosty, fear-battered mind had no time to ponder my own doom, now that my only salvation from the cold had been destroyed. Before I could move my numb legs to run, before I could open my mouth to cry out, I felt a thick, powerful hand grab hold of my collar and lift me up from the ground, so that I hung from the back of my coat like a pup lifted by its scruff.
By the pale light of the moon, I saw myself brought several dozen spans from the earth, until I came face-to-face with a visage so hideous that I could barely stand to look at it, yet I had no will to tear my eyes away. Wreathed in dark, knotted hair, the monster's head held a disturbingly familiar shape, with eyes, nose and mouth both bestial and human in form.
Giant, round eyes of dark cobalt with pure-black pupils studied me curiously. The smoke from my ruined fire rose between the massive eyeballs and my own face. I looked down to confirm my fire's demise, and the creature's enormous blue orbs rolled downward also, then rose back up to meet my own.
I was going to die. This I knew for certain. Beyond the fear of the beast that had me in its clutches, beyond the sorrow that I was lost forever in a cold, bleak realm of ice and wind, beyond all other feelings; I felt fury. My temper rose for the first time since I was banished from the tribe. I was enraged. I wanted to scream, to tear the monster to bits. I wanted to murder all that I came across and burn the world. But there I hung, helpless in the giant's hand. The monster saw my fury, and a twinkle of some cruel mischief shimmered in those dark, glassy globes.
It was then, with that sign of terrible joy and evil humour that I recognized what my mind had been slow to comprehend. I knew my doom now more fully than ever before. I longed for the wolves howling behind me. I wished I had never dared to make a fire. I prayed that this was all a dying nightmare as I expired in my sleep, buried in a shallow grave underneath a snowy tree. But my doom was real, holding me aloft in its strong hand. I stared into the face of doom as it stared back at me.
Beneath a bulbous, protrusion of a nose, thick, leathery lips parted to reveal twin rows of gnarled, broken, uneven teeth, stained brown. A noisome breath of rotted raw flesh wafted over me like a foul wind of death. I squinted through the foggy stench to see the monster's giant tongue labour to move in an unfamiliar way. Slowly, in slurred, ugly tones, the monster growled in a guttural voice. It uttered the one phrase of the language of Man it knew; passed down through the tribes in tales of the most brutal hilarity and sadistic trickery ever known to men.
"Art Thou Angry, Wee Cousin?" the Troll asked me gleefully.
Credited to Dugarte
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