Before Perry could finish his curse, the tree trunk studded with metal plates was already approaching his head.

Perry lashed out with a punch, putting the full force of his suit behind it.

BOOM!

The wood of the tree exploded in every direction, the counterforce shoving Perry to the side and burying him to his knees in the compact earth.

The lumbering monster peered at its broken weapon for a moment before letting out a howl of rage, charging Perry with on all fours its mouth open, oversized canines bared.

As it came out of the setting sun, Perry was able to make out detail. It looked something like a twelve-foot-tall baboon with mange. It was obviously intelligent, since it was wearing homemade armor, plates pilfered from the nearby metal snail-things.

PPP.EXE

While Perry dug himself out of the earth, he shot a Pernicious Prison at the creature, intending to end the fight immediately by draining the monster of its life.

The giant slung the remains of the tree trunk ahead and slid underneath the inky black webbing as it wrapped around the treet, withering it away to dust.

Perry was honestly a little impressed with its speed, especially given its size, but it wasn’t time to sit and marvel, it looked like it wanted to tear his jaw from his face.

Move, damnit, Perry thought, blasting his thrusters to yank himself out of the dirt.

Perry popped out of the ground in a spray of earth, flying up into the sky-only to halt about twenty feet above the ground, his ankle caught by one of the creature’s too-human hands.

Damni-

With a roar, the creature slammed his body back down into the ground, outweighing him by several tons. Perry was protected by his armor, but the sudden change of direction knocked his breath out for a moment.

He saw the canine-studded maw coming towards his face, and recovered fast enough to ball up and kick the creature right in the muzzle.

Its face crumpled and its head snapped back as it was subjected to a level of force it had likely never expected from something so small.

The creature staggered back, looking woozy.

Okay, this is where you fall down and I get the hell outta-oh, goddamnit!

The creature shook off its stupor int the time it took for Perry to get to his feet, leaping at Perry with a half-crushed face, as though pain held no meaning for it.

MELT.EXE

Perry shot a focused beam of MELT.EXE at the center of the creature’s chest, hitting one of the plates it was wearing. Rather than spread to its entire body like he’d been hoping, it simply sloughed off, revealing raw, bleeding flesh.

WH-

Perry ducked under a feral swipe before being caught by another, sending him tumbling through the grasslands.

With a mental tug, Perry pulled the pernicious prison towards himself, shaping it into a blade.

He blasted his thrusters, soaring straight up into the sky.

The creature jumped up to catch him, and Perry brought the Pernicious Prison down on the monster’s crumpled face.

It flinched out of the way, but its momentum was impossible to change in midair.

The black blade caught on the creature’s clavicle, and Perry slammed his knees down into the back of the mentally controlled blade, adding even more force behind the blow as he rode the monster down to the ground.

BOOOM!

They hit the ground in a plume of dust as the creature was embedded in the dry grasslands. Perry felt a slipping sensation as the bone shrugged off the blade until it hit the shoulder socket.

POP!

The blade popped through the creature’s arm and the support under Perry’s knees suddenly disappeared, sending him flinging forward through the plains, landing beside a prairie dog hole.

The rodent chittered at him for a second before retreating to the relative safety of the underground.

I could add a prairie dog translator on my armor. Maybe they have something to say. Actually a network would be-

Perry recentered himself on the task at hand.

Perry shoved himself to his feet and peered through the thick cloud of dust obscuring his vision.

Infrared. Perry flipped through visualizations until he could make out what was going on in the center of the cloud.

The image of the giant climbing out of its hole sprung to life. It was carrying its own right arm in its left hand.

Perry’s skin went cold as it held its arm to its shoulder. A bloom of heat registered on the infrared along the wound before fading quickly as the monster rolled its newly healed shoulder. It grabbed its own shattered muzzle and straightened it out with the casual disregard of a tough guy straightening a broken nose.

That…is a troll.

A plains troll to be exact. They were giants who basically ate anything smaller than them. Or bigger than them. Anything made of meat, really.

Hard as hell to kill, and they fought like berserkers with total disregard for wounds, relying on their magical regenerative abilities to offset any lack of defense…

And it wasn’t wearing metal plates from the snails…it fused them to its skin. Perry had never read of anything like that It might’ve been a reaction to living on Earth, or simply cutting-edge technology for the stone-age giants.

In front of Perry’s eyes, the troll grabbed a massive piece of a nearby snail’s shell, tearing it away from the squealing creature’s flesh before slapping it down where the previous one had been melted away by MELT.EXE

The gaping chest wound that had exposed the creature’s muscle and bone healed with a flash of heat, fusing to the gore-covered metal shell, causing the blood and ichor from the snail to smoke, surrounding the troll with a dreadful aura.

The troll was a powerful, indomitable warrior who knew no rest or mercy, fighting with savage ferocity born of natural talent and mountains of experience due to its nigh-unkillable nature.

Perry squared up on it as the cloud of dust settled.

Too bad it can’t fly.

BOOM!

Perry’s thrusters launched him high into the sky, far out of the troll’s reach.

No sense playing fair.

Oh, sure, the monster thrashed and howled, throwing metal plates at Perry while dodging the Pernicious Prison with a level of dexterity Perry didn’t expect from a giant, but it was just a matter of time before Perry wrapped the troll up in the black ichor and began siphoning its life-force.

Rather than mummifying, the troll ceased its violent thrashing and simply fell asleep like a poisoned honey badger, sleeping fitfully in the comfortable cocoon provided by Perry’s spell.

Its claws twitched under the black webbing, seeming to be having a nice little dream about tearing something limb from limb.

Really? Perry thought, scowling as the monster began snoring.

Perry dialed down the drain from the Pernicious Prison a tiny bit, until the creature began to stir.

“What are you doing here?” Perry said in Manitian, punctuating his question with a slap to wake his prisoner up.

The giant’s eyes drifted open, foggy and uninterested in engaging with the real world. Its eyes began drifting closed again.

Slap!

“What are you doing here?”

“Meat noisy,” the giant rumbled, peering at him through sleepy eyes. “Crunchy meat.”

The half-asleep troll chuckled as if it’d made an excellent joke before falling asleep again.

Experimentally, Perry dropped the drain to nothing.

The troll snapped awake with a roar, chunks of thick spittle flying everywhere as it struggled violently in the webbing, teeth clicking between full throated bellows as it tried to inchworm its way over to him and bite his face off.

After much experimenting, Perry found a level of life-drain that rendered the troll calm, but not falling asleep. Able to answer questions.

“What are you doing here?” Perry asked.

“Better question: What is meat doing not in my belly?” The troll demanded. “Climb in.” It opened its gaping maw and rolled out its dog-like tongue, inviting Perry to jump down its crocodilian gullet.

“Where did you come from?”

“Same place you came from: between a bigger one’s legs. Does…does Makruk have to teach Meat how babies are made?”

“Are all trolls assholes?” Perry demanded, pissed off at the deflections. Although the mere fact that it was deflecting indicated that trolls were smarter than the story-books gave them credit for. Most likely nobody had managed the pierce the fog of hunger and rage when trying to speak to them.

“All trolls hungry.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Perry muttered, thumbing his chin. It was an interesting evolutionary safeguard. The extra life-force a Troll produced went straight to its adrenaline and lizard brain. If a troll ever got low enough on life-force that it might die, its brain cleared up of rage hormones, and its IQ would raise by thirty points, at least, giving it the intelligence to potentially get it out of the near-death experience, so it could back to being a mindless killing machine.

Also, this is evidence that troll life-force is at least partially being produced magically. Typical creatures only have a limited amount at any given time, while Trolls seem to literally produce the stuff.

Perry momentarily debated whether it would be ethical to seal trolls into a massive life-force battery, then decided against it.

Sure, it probably would work, but it was just asking for trouble.

“What is your job?”

“Eating Meat professionally.”

Not a fan of smart trolls, Perry thought, eyes narrowing. Actually, you know what…

Perry dialed down the life drain incrementally, watching as the trolls eyes began to bulge, its breath coming more and more rapidly as it literally swelled with life-force, muscles bulging against the life-devouring webs.

Now that it was juiced halfway to raving maniac, he might be able to get more honest answers out of it. Perry didn’t need eloquent, he needed unguarded.

“You’re so stupid, I bet you don’t even know how to take care of these sheep,” Perry said. Sheep was a catch-all term for livestock in old Manitian.

“NO, you STUPID! Makruk best at watching sheep and eating Meat! After full-grown Pledge, Makruk will be warrior, claim shorties and eat nothing but crunchy meat! Makruk start with legs and eat upside down to prolong suffering!”

Okay, let’s unpack that. There’s a coming-of age ceremony, which indicates a larger group of these things somewhere with tribal-level social structure, Makruk isn’t fully grown, and Women’s Rights isn’t a thing.

It also sounds like ‘crunchy meat’ may be what they call armored humans…or just anything that’s hard to kill before it gets eaten.

Perry dialed the life-drain back up, giving Makruk a moment to clear the rage out…and allow him to understand that Perry had his number.

The trolls eyes narrowed in icy anger as his breathing stabilized.

“Clever meat tastes the same as any other.” The troll rumbled. “I’ll eat you slow.”

“Too bad you’re so stupid you couldn’t even find any crunchy meat.” Perry said, dialing the life-drain back down and letting the troll’s natural rage overwhelm his brain.

“NO! We know! Crunchy meat towards rising sun! Great Karth sent warriors to raid, Smash crunchy meat, eat raw and offer their magic to Gna’kis!”

They know where we are.

Perry frowned, searching his memories of folklore for a Gna’kis and coming up short. Was it their shaman, or something? And what magic? Were they talking about guns and cars, or something?

“Who’s-“

Perry was jostled violently to the side as a metal plate ricocheted off his armor, burying itself in the ground.

He glanced up and saw half a dozen trolls leaping towards him, their extended snouts gaping, drooling like they’d just heard the dinner bell. Their weapons ranged from trees to metal plates that had been forcibly twisted into a rough cutting instrument, lending credence to the idea that they didn’t know proper metalworking.

Time to go. Perry placed his hand on the troll’s temple and unleashed the full force of Static Shock.EXE

The troll shrugged it off.

Damnit. Perry punched through the side of the troll’s head, crushing its brain before flying up into the air.

From his heightened vantage point, he saw the other six trolls arrive and assist their brethren, tearing apart the sticky threads of his life draining spell.

A moment later, Makruk –whose brain had been crushed– climbed to his feet, shaking his fists at Perry and roaring loud enough to be heard hundreds of feet up in the sky.

Yeah…That’s gonna be a problem.