In our latest volume of the Dawnbringer Chronicles, Trugg, the Troggoth King wakes from his long slumber in a cave somewhere in Ghyran – after, that is, Braggit Big-Talka wakes him up. As he chases the irritating Rabble-Rowsa, Trugg stumbles through a realmgate and emerges in the Adamantine Chain, head throbbing from the pressure of nearby nexuses. He sets off to smash them up and relieve his headache…
Someone was shouting.
The humid cradle of darkness that Trugg had been settled in was pricked with flashes of light and sound, rifling and scraping through his brainpan like claws digging into flesh. He shifted, slightly, squashing a centipede that had been skittering across his forehead. One eye slipped open. The bleary cavern seemed more or less as he remembered it: a circular pit of slimy vegetation and creeping fungi, spores drifting like snowflakes where he had disturbed them. What he did not recall was the splitting headache that left flashing patterns stamped across his eyes. Or that whining screech, like needles poking him in the ears.
‘…AN’ AT ’EM! UP AN’…’
Trugg fought against the voice pulling him from his slumber. The troggoth wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he felt like he’d barely slept. Waking up was, as ever, a terrible experience. Worse than usual, even. His skull was throbbing. The pulsing lights – there were dozens of them, joined together by zig-zagging lines, like someone had scratched a map into his head. He felt the urge to vomit.
‘COME ON, WAKEY WAKEY!’
That whiny voice again. It was the most annoying sound Trugg had ever heard. Every part of his sleep-fogged mind screamed at him to stand, find whatever was causing it, and hammer it into the earth.
‘Erm, boss?’ came a voice similar to the first, but a fraction less enraging. ‘You sure he ain’t just gonna squish us if he wakes up?’
‘Shut it, Snozznab,’ said the shouter. ‘If we’re gonna show them humies what’s what, we need as many troggin’ louts as possible. Took us ages to find this big one here. Lookit the size of him, eh? Right mean-lookin’ git. The nastier the betta; that’s what I always say.’
Trugg looked blearily down at the source of the voices. Clods of earth crumbled off his hunched form as he shifted, raining down on the source of the voices and making them yelp and complain. Grots. Trugg remembered grots, and not fondly. One of the little green wretches had a whopping great skull on his head. Another sat atop a squig as swollen and angry as a boil. There were more, peering out from behind bits of foliage. Their words were confusing, especially when Skull-hat talked. Skull-hat’s squeaking made Trugg’s whole body ache, especially his temples and the base of his spine.
Actually, that wasn’t quite right. Annoying as it was, it was not the voice that was causing him such discomfort. Something really big was crushing down on the back of Trugg’s neck. He tried to flex his shoulders. Whatever the dead weight was, it didn't budge. He didn’t remember anyone dropping a boulder on him. When had that happened? More to the point, what were these long pointy things sticking out of his brow, strung with foul-smelling weeds?
‘’URRY UP, YOU LAZY STONEHEAD! ON YER FEET!’
Skull-hat continued to jabber on, every word more annoying than the last. Trugg clenched his jaw and growled, teeth the size of stalagmites grinding against each other.
‘WAT WOZ THAT?’ the grot yelled, hands behind his flappy ears. More clods of earth and mushrooms shook free from the ceiling. Trugg took a deep, deep breath. His chest reignited with life, air and blood pumping through his crusted body, fuelled by pain and irritation.
‘SHURRUP!’ he roared at his tormentor, pulling himself onto his feet. The thick shell of grime that covered his rocky hide splintered away as he shook himself fully awake. His massive antlers speared straight through the roof, causing an avalanche of displaced vegetation. Trugg reached out and scrabbled in the soil until he felt the haft of his weapon. It was right where he left it – a great club capped with the fossilised carapace of an ironshell snail. He slapped the haft into his palms and lumbered around to face his irritators.
The grots before him stood slack-mouthed until a large slab of rock fell between them, causing the rider-grot’s squig to bounce out of control. Trugg reached out and grabbed the spherical beast, squeezing it between his thumb and forefinger. It burst with a wet pop, and its rider was projected headfirst into the ceiling. After a quick glance at each other, the rest of the grots fled for the entrance, screams of get outta here and run for yer lives echoing up the passage ahead of them.
Trugg tried to twist around to scritch-scratch at his stony shoulders. From what he could feel, the rocky flesh of his back was laden with some big shape in the centre. The rock extended above him and the pain beat down from it. He pressed his back against the cave wall and rubbed up and down, causing the entire cave wall to groan – but it still wouldn’t budge. He thumped his fists against it, which only made his head hurt more. Maybe eating something would make him feel better? He hungrily sniffed at the space where the grots had been standing, drool spilling from between his lips, before lumbering forward in the direction they had fled.
As he ran for his life, Braggit Big-Talka considered that trying to wake up that giant troggoth by shouting into its ear might not have been a good idea. He never made mistakes, as he was constantly telling his lads – but if his streak of undeniable genius was to end, maybe this was the moment. He could hear the deafening rumble of the cavern roof collapsing as the angry behemoth lumbered towards them. Braggit’s little legs pumped furiously. His bat squigs squawked and hissed as they flew ahead of him, dodging bits of debris that came raining down.
Braggit scampered up a slope of mossy scree, bashed right into another fleeing grot and fell flat on his face. The Rabble-Rowza tumbled head over heels down the other side of the incline. When he regained his senses he found himself in a large cave filled with nervous-looking grots clutching spears and bows. From the darkness surrounding them came muttering and gibbering as those of Braggit’s band who had not been squashed by the angry trogg caught up with their boss.
‘Listen up, you lot,’ said Braggit as he clambered to his feet, trying to retain the mantle of leadership. ‘There is… Erm, there was… we found—’
There was an earth-shattering roar. A set of three fingers, each nearly the size of Braggit himself, curled around the edge of the cavern entrance.
‘Leggit!’ Braggit squeaked. The grots bolted towards the opposite side of the chamber, tripping over and trampling each other in their hasty fear, some even slicing at their comrade’s legs with stabbas to slow them down and ensure they were squished first. As they churned towards the surface, the huge shape of the behemoth emerged behind them. Braggit ducked behind a clump of ferns just as it lumbered into the cave, clutching its massive slab of a head.
A huge relic rose from between the troggoth’s shoulder blades – a crescent moon of mossy stone covered with shiny symbols, like a big humie temple on trogg’s legs. It was thrumming and spitting sparks of green magic. As the trogg-lord barrelled through the panicked mass of greenskins, grots and squigs alike were impaled upon its antlers, forming the realms’ most swiftly assembled trophy rack. It plucked their bodies off as it advanced, tossing corpses into its mouth and belching as it gulped them down.
From his hiding place, Braggit watched with a combination of awe, amusement and fear as the trogg-lord systematically squashed every single one of his lads, punching them into mush or smearing them against the walls with its snail-shell club. A few grots managed to loose arrows or jab at the troggoth lord’s legs with spears. They may as well have attacked him with soggy mushrooms. Even when a missile lodged home, the green energy that spilled from the temple-thing on the beast’s back glowed, and the wound closed up almost instantly.
Braggit had seen a lot of troggoths fight, but he’d never seen one as mean as this. With his antlered head and that weird, magic-spitting stone on his back, this particular brute cut a regal figure indeed.
‘Da Troggoth King!’ Braggit muttered, nodding to himself. That had a good ring to it. Hearing that name would get the lads all riled up and ready for a scrap.
Yes, Braggit mused, as the behemoth punted an unfortunate grot so hard that the corpse splattered across the cavern wall like a squished moth – this was a being that grots and troggoths alike would come from miles around just to gawp at. They’d flock around him like flies around a corpse, and if he went on a rampage the results would be incredible. All he had to do was get the brute to follow him back the way Braggit had come. But it was a long way to the swirly gate that had led him to these mouldy caves, and further still from there if he was to turn the Trogg King’s fury to his own ends. No easy feat, to lure such a monster all that way without becoming a smeared stain on a wall himself. He’d have to goad and lure his quarry all the way. The question was: could Braggit be that annoying?
Braggit Big-Talka snorted. What a stupid question. He drew himself to his full height and cleared his throat. His bat squigs soared around his skull-encased head, squawking. As the Troggoth King’s mean little eyes swivelled to fix upon him, Braggit began to beat his club and sickle together, leaping and kicking his heels.
‘OI! OI! OI! DA TROGGOTH KING IS COMIN’ FOR YA!’
The Troggoth King winced, rubbed his temples and gave a surprisingly sad little whimper.
‘COME ON, BOSS! BRAGGIT’LL SHOW YOU WHERE TA GO! WE’RE GONNA DO BIG THINGS TOGETHER, YOU AND ME!’
The whimpering turned into a skull-shaking bellow that caused another massive rock fall. Braggit neatly skipped out of the way of a falling stalactite and continued bashing his weapons together and bawling at the top of his voice. The Troggoth King lowered his great, mossy head and charged, and Braggit scampered away, a big grin on his face and dreams of anarchy and destruction on the brain.
Yep, great powers are definitely stirring across the Mortal Realms now, and despite all his power, Trugg is just one small wheel within much larger wheels. You can find out more about what’s up when Dawnbringers Book II: Reign of the Brute drops later this year…