The Groll (Short Story)
The Groll
Their origins began far to the north of the civilized world, in the dense, lightless expanse known simply on the kingdom's maps as The Deep North, located beyond the ruins of the Barbarian wall. In these primeval woods, the Groll were the apex predators. Standing seven feet tall, with immensely muscular frames covered in sparse grey skin and shaggy, dark manes, they were perfectly adapted for ambush hunting in the dense underbrush.
In the wild, the Groll were not mindlessly aggressive. They were territorial carnivores, yes, but they lived in small, quiet family units. Their intelligence was limited—they had no written language, no complex tools beyond a heavy branch—but they were far from stupid. They understood stealth, cooperation in a hunt, and loyalty to their pack. Their prominent lower fangs were used as much for stripping bark to find grubs in lean times as they were for bringing down elk.
The change began fifty years ago, with the rise of Ceder Point as the hub of southern commerce. Located on an island at the mouth of the great river system, Ceder Point became a place where anything could be bought, and any vice could be indulged. The wealthy merchants and bored sailors there craved entertainment sharper than ale and louder than dice. They wanted spectacle.
Poachers, seeking high prices from Ceder Point fight-masters, ventured deep into The Forest. They found that adult Grolls were too wild to fully break, fighting until death rather than submission. But the young could be taken.
The first Groll brought to the island city was named "Barg" by his captors. Taken as a cub, Barg was raised not in the cool shadows of the northern woods, but in the humid, torchlit dampness of Ceder Point's underground pits.
The "breeding" program was brutal simplicity. The masters discovered that if you isolated a Groll, starved it, and only rewarded it after displays of pure rage, its natural territorial instincts warped into hyper-aggression. They stripped them of their natural dignity, dressing them in simple loincloths and binding their massive chests with thick rope harnesses to control them between bouts.
Barg grew to be a terrifying specimen of extreme strength, his natural intelligence focused entirely on the geometry of the fighting pit. He was not stupid; he learned that when the gate opened, survival meant violence. He became the first champion of Ceder Point, the progenitor of the "fighting Groll" bloodline now famous throughout the underground.
Yet, the story of the Groll does not end in the dark.
Decades later, a Groll named Korg—a direct descendant of Old Barg, possessing the same massive fangs and seven-foot frame—was the reigning champion of the Ceder Point pits. Korg was different. In the moments between the violence, his handlers noticed a calmness in his eyes, a flicker of the ancestral intelligence that the pits hadn't quite extinguished.
One night, a high-stakes match was attended by Lady Isabella, a wealthy, eccentric widow from Manor Valley near the capital. She was not there for bloodsport; she was a collector of rarities, intrigued by the rumors of these "forest giants."
She watched Korg fight. She saw not just aggression, but tactical awareness. When his opponent slipped, Korg didn't maul him; he simply pinned him, waiting for the bell, understanding the rules of the contest better than the men betting on it.
Lady Isabella was struck by this flash of restraint amidst the brutality. After the match, she approached the fight-master and offered a sum of gold that could buy half the ships in the harbor. The master, greedy and shortsighted, sold Korg on the spot.
Korg was tranquilized and loaded onto a river barge. When he awoke, he was not in a cage beneath the city. He was in an enclosure larger than any arena, surrounded by high stone walls, but open to the sky. The air smelled sweetly of grass and flowers—the gardens of Isabella’s Manor Valley estate.
Lady Isabella approached the bars. She did not hold a whip or a starvation pole. She held a large side of prime beef.
"You are too smart for the pits, great one," she said softly.
It took months, but the aggression bred into Korg slowly receded, replaced by his natural, watchful temperament. Isabella had the restrictive rope harness cut away. Korg was not free to return to The Forest—he wouldn't know how to survive there anymore—but he was no longer a prisoner of the underground.
He became the guardian of Isabella’s estate. His terrifying seven-foot form and extreme strength were now a deterrent to thieves, rather than entertainment for drunkards. The Groll had been made a monster by men, but in the quiet gardens of the valley, Korg found a measure of the peace his ancestors had once known.
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The Groll's first appearance is in "Beggar's Canyon: Myca's Story" when Myca must battle three different Grolls in order to achieve her ultimate goal.