Amnesia

[Corporal Light]

What is a troll?

A hideous creature unique to folklore, typically of Norse or Scandinavian mythology. They usually inhabit isolated mountains and cave structures. Given your species lack of inclines on your own planet, it is perfectly reasonable for you not to know this. Nevertheless, it is disappointing.

...Thanks...

He bounded off after his partner, his eyes more or less squarely on the arsenal she carried on her body. She was moving much faster than normal, of which Ballad could understand why, judging by her “assault rifle,” as she had called it, having been removed from its holster and held firmly in her hands. How such a contraption could even work was a question of the ages and one he wanted an answer for post haste!

His eyes settled on the black colored rifle she was wielding. The entire damn thing was an engineering masterpiece, despite half of them being unrecognizable; if the girl had such confidence in it, then it was purely factual for it to be something worthy of praise. Examining it would be like examining a fossil or an ancient text; it was an opportunity that had to be taken. Yet it held another resemblance which brought him nothing more than a feeling of slowly building dread that flowed through his body. It sort of resembled a crow, one of the only avian creatures in his land. They were not predators by nature, but their very presence spelled doom, as they often trailed the tails of the Lykers to mooch off of the carrion they leave behind. A nearby crow was rarely a good sign.

Against his better judgement, he had asked the question without much care for manners or etiquette. He focused on trying to figure out how the damn thing worked rather than what it meant, which helped him to ignore the sense of unease he got from staring at it too long. She stopped and proceeded to explain, in detail, how each of her weapons worked. As she demonstrated, his eyes twitched and his shoulders slumped in astonishment. He couldn’t deny it. He had met someone with weaponry that far exceeded his own in every way, shape and form.

It felt… he didn’t know what to feel. On one hand, he was looking at contraptions that were impossible by his own calculations of how a gun should have been made. Such things were like magic, or like a religious text. It shouldn’t have been real. It shouldn’t exist! On the other hand… its very existence invalidated everything he knew about gun craftsmanship.

“Can… Can I have that?” he said, pointing at the Oscurità she had on her back after she was done explaining how the weapons functioned, “Can I just… take that? And... not give it back? Ever?”

He slithered his hand toward the black assault rifle. The ebony-haired vigilante grabbed the gun from her back and shoved it into Ballad’s arms, not so politely.

“You can borrow it for now. I expect to have it back later.” She said as she loosened some magazines from her pack. “You’ll need these. Click the button on the side to auto-eject and just place the new one in. Pull the bolt and continue shooting.”

He nodded as he looked at the magazines. He lifted the assault rifle. It was actually rather heavy, at least when compared to his lighter revolver. It was practically impossible to use it one-handed, leading to him stashing his revolver away in his holster. He took her magazines, placing them in various places along the belt inside his jacket. He pressed the button on the side, hand sliding underneath the rifle and catching the magazine as it fell. He brought the mag to his face, examining it. He glanced inside. Bronze bullets of a size bigger than the bullets inside his revolver lay within. He let out an approving grunt before he slammed it back into the rifle, cocking the bolt back.

“I promise that I will ensure that your masterpiece of a weapon receives no harm, miss Snow.” He said, lowering the rifle so that the barrel pointed at the ground.

Dawn nods to this and grabs the just-as-black sniper rifle from the other holster on her back. “Just make sure I don’t get shot in the ass.”

“I assure you, the only possibility of your posterior being perforated by the bronze bullets inside your master-class weaponry would only be if someone else had murdered me and had requisitioned this rifle for their own purposes.”

The vigilante pinches her nose at this response. “You’re pretty dense aren’t you? I’m saying watch my back. And, damn, you use a lot of extravagant words.”

“I was being sarcastic in nature, miss Snow. I am well aware of what you meant,” he said, letting out a sudden, short stint of laughter, “and, uh… yes, that is correct. I… don’t quite know why yet.”

“...You aren’t so bad after all, Ballad. Now just prove you’re a decent shot.” She smirked surveying their surrounding once more.

He smiled behind his scarf, proceeding to walk forward. “Trust in me, miss Snow. You will find my talent to be most commendable.”

He looked around. The snowstorm that had surrounded them an hour earlier was dying down some, making it so that it wasn’t a total impossibility to gather details of the environment. The cold still made him shiver and the snow still caked the top of his hat and the confines of his clothes, but it was at least bearable. For the most part, the whole landscape was a blanket of snow, with almost nothing of note. In the distance, however, was a sea of green. His eyes widened and glowed for a short moment before they dimmed again.

“A forest.” Both Dawn and Ballad said those words. They glanced at each other for a second before walking forward, the green gunsmith leading the way.

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“Have I told you about my own weaponry yet, miss Snow?” The gunner brushed a leaf-covered branch out of the way, crunching brown and dead leaves underneath his boot. He glanced around, assault rifle in hand, for any sign of life in the woods.

The whole place was slightly darkened due to the sheer size of the trees above and the amount of leaves that blocked whatever sunlight broke through the darkened clouds in the sky. It was nothing like the dying, wrinkled old trees he would regularly find on his home planet. It was hard to imagine there could be so much green in any one place, especially in the canvas of white that was the Fields and his home.

“I don’t believe so, my gun-loving friend. I did notice your pea-shooter though. It’s a cute accessory for you. Like a bow with a dress.” She mocked at first, scanning behind them to be sure they would not be ambushed easily. Her ocean blue eyes scaled across the landscape behind them like those of a hawk. “I merely jest. Your revolver looks like a trusty weapon. Do you have anything else?”

“As inferior as it may be, I do not believe it should be underestimated,” he said after a brief pause. He glanced around, observing the bushes they walked past. He chuckled at her joke. “As for additional weaponry, I don’t… think… so…”

He wasn’t so sure now that he thought about it a bit. He patted his belt, feeling an unfamiliar bump along his right side. He opened up his jacket, whipping out the item. He stared at it, a wave of memories flooding his mind.

“Ah, yes! I do! Two, in fact. Both very… effective weapons, if I do say so myself.”

“Whatever works for you friend. I prefer to dip my knowledge into more weaponry. It makes you unpredictable as an assassin.” As she mentioned that last word, a spike felt as if it had been ran through Dawn’s head. She remembered being an assassin now, but that was about the limit of memory gain. As for who she worked for or where, it was still a mystery. “Shit..” She cursed under her breath placing her palm on her forehead. “That hurt.”

He was about to respond when a flash of pain surged through his head. Electric sparks fried his veins as smoke billowed out from the sleeves of his coat. He saw fire. He started to tremble at the sight until he realized it was not what he had originally thought was burning. It was an unfamiliar building made out of wood and stone that was ablaze, with the all too familiar stench of decaying bodies nearby. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he was standing right outside it, staring at it, with a flamethrower in his hand.

He hyperventilated, his eyes glowing a bright gold. He glanced down at the item in his hand. It was the same thing.

He stashed it away and brought a gloved hand to his sweating forehead. It could not have been him. No, it could not. The spirit inside his head was playing tricks on him. Feeding him memories that were not his own and could not have been his own. He did not do that. It was not true.

“‘Ey!” Dawn called out to her companion. “Are you alright? I think my memory is starting to come back.”

He gulped. “...Far from it, friend. Far… far from it...…”

“Are you good to continue? Should we stop?” Dawn didn't lower her guard.

“...Yes, I… I’m fine.” He said, tightening his hold on her assault rifle, “let us… continue forward…” He sounded quieter than before.

They continued walking, not saying a word to each other for a period of time. There was still no sign of life; there wasn’t even a chirping of birds or the distant cries of a deer or anything that resembled an animal trotting along in the snow or dashing out of a bush. There had to be SOME kind of wildlife or SOMETHING in these woods, right? It was like the whole forest was dead; the thought of that did not put his mind at ease one bit.

He glanced back at Dawn. She herself was looking around, her grasp on her sniper rifle firm. During his flashback, he had almost forgotten about what she had said.

“You… You said you were an assassin, right?”

“Yea, I murder for money.” She scratched her head trying to pull up more memories. “It might be why I died in the first place and the cause of this amnesia.”

“I… I see…” A patch of smoke emerged from his coat sleeve again. He coughed after inhaling it, the gas stinging his eyes. “How.. How did you get into the business in the first place? Doesn’t seem like something you’d just… be.”

“Some people are just born to kill. Before I came here, I only knew how to use a scoped gun before I came here.” She explained. “But I needed to learn to protect myself. So I trained by killing people whom I thought deserved to die.”

He remained silent for a few moments before he responded. “...Understandable, I suppose…” He looked away from her. “H-...How did you do it?”

“How did I do what? Learn to kill? Train? By simply putting finger to trigger. It's not so difficult.”

“It can’t be that simple. Removing another from existence… that isn’t an easy thing to do.”

Dawn goes quiet for several seconds before saying anything in response. “...Sometimes, it's necessary, or else people you love die…”

He himself does not speak at all. The gears in his head turned for a few moments before he talked again. “I… I understand. I just… I only wish it was not necessary. That people like you were not needed anywhere. People like us.”

“You and me both, friend. You and me both.”

He nodded. He glanced around, the world having gone still throughout their conversation. There wasn’t even any wind or snow or anything. All that was there was a silence so loud it pierced his ears. Nothing was alive for seemingly miles on end.

He heard the rustling of leaves.

He halted, his head turning towards the noise. One of the bushes was shaking. He glared in its general direction.

Staring back at him, without blinking, were two sets of golden eyes, black slits running down the middle like a cat’s. He lifted the assault rifle, pointing it at the bush.

“Stalker!” he shouted, the noise causing both the pair of eyes to blink and the woman next to him to flinch. “We are both aware of your presence inside that hedge of plant matter. Reveal yourself at once!”

Slowly, the golden-eyed creature stood up from the shrubbery. It was coated in leather and green-skinned, with matching colored, bushy hair on its head. It had two curly trunks that jutted out from its mouth and a nose of epic length. It looked oddly familiar to him.

“A troll.” Dawn and Ballad nodded at each other as the woman raised her sniper rifle, looking around a bit more. The gunsmith, meanwhile, closed in on the creature, a poisonous glint in his eyes as his finger pushed dangerously close against the trigger.

“...It’z you…” the troll finally spoke. The rifleman paused.

“You’re familiar with me?”

“Ya have… a reputation wit’ da locals.”

He kept his eyes trained on the troll, but he could hear leaves crunching nearby. The sound was coming closer. He looked back at Dawn for a brief moment. There was a hint of concern in her eyes as the sound reverberated around the forest. She was pointing her rifle in various directions, evidently trying to find the source of the noise.

“Elaborate…” he replied, looking back at the troll.

The troll said nothing. Instead, three more sets of golden eyes became visible. Three more trolls, armed with bows and axes, appeared from behind the trees in front of the gunsmith. They marched toward him, hands tight on their weapons. Ballad stepped back a few paces as he pointed his rifle at each of them in a vain attempt to keep them back.

“We’ll give ya a taste, mon.” Their bushy-haired leader said as he withdrew a knife from his belt.

There was a crack of lightening, followed by the deafening tinnitus. He traced the source of the noise back to Dawn. Smoke billowed out of the barrel of her sniper rifle, which pointed down the way they came at the now headless troll.

He did not waste time thinking about that. He pulled the trigger, letting loose a barrage of bullets at his assailants.