Legends of Runeterra

It turned out that Sligu's brother was also called Sligu, so Trundle came up with the brilliant idea of ​​calling one of them Big Sligu and the other Little Sligu. That way, even if the troll who had been knocked on the head forgot he was dead and jumped up again, he would still be able to tell the two brothers apart.

Big Sligu led him deeper into the glacier, where a shimmering web of straight passages stretched ever deeper into the glacier. These passages couldn't have been carved by trolls, but for some reason, something felt unnatural to Trundle. They seemed to have a magical, stomach-churning quality, just like the feeling he'd had in the icy labyrinth beneath the Frost Witch's palace.

They passed icicles dangling from the cave's ceiling and past trolls of all shapes and sizes, ranging from enormous to even larger, Trundle noticed.

Trundle soon lost count of how many trolls he saw.

"You northern trolls are quite a flock," he said.

Big Sligu nodded. "There are many monsters here. All want to eat the trolls. Only the big trolls can survive."

Trundle looked closely at little Sligu, curious about how he'd managed to survive. Perhaps he had more thoughts going through his head than the other trolls. Though they were all quiet trolls, a troll as cunning as Trundle could tell if they were smart or not.

Perhaps he could take little Sligu with him. Leaving the clever troll alone was no good. Sligu might be small, but sooner or later he'd make some serious trouble.

Finally, Big Sligu led them to a vast cavern deep in the glacier. A ray of moonlight shone through a hole in the ceiling, casting dancing lights and ghostly shadows on the ice walls. Trundle found it beautiful at first, but then he remembered the story of Yetu's capture of the cavern, and he forced himself not to think of how he had aimed the cratered back door at the top of the cavern and poured out his entrails.

"The big trolls are all here with the king," said Big Sligu.

Many very large trolls were indeed gathered together, surrounding a huge blue stone covered with a layer of moss and a few clumps of what looked like coniferous grass.

But it wasn't a boulder.

It was a troll, and when he turned around he had grown even larger, as if the contents of Trundle's bag had caught his scent.

Yetu was nearly twice as tall as Trondell, his arms thick as tree trunks, his legs thicker. His head was like a rock rolling down from the mountaintop, picking up all the frost moss and furze along the way before landing on a larger rock. A short knife sat in the folds of skin on his chest, serving as a sheath. The black blade was smooth and flat, forged from the hot rock at the foot of the volcano.

He glared at Trundle like a pack of frostfang wolves glaring at a fat, lame Ernyuk.

Trundle had originally planned to crush Yetu's head with his Bone Crusher upon contact. But after seeing the northern troll's brain, he changed his mind. Between Yetu's skull and the True Ice of the Bone Crusher, Trundle couldn't say which was harder.

Time for a new plan...

"You have meat." Yetu's voice was low and hoarse.

"I have meat," Trundle said, pulling the rancid remains of a crook-horned goat from his bag. Yetu's eyes widened as he snatched the meat from Trundle's hand and devoured it.

Yetu wiped his bloody chin and burped.

"You Trundle?" he asked. "The one who said he was the Troll King?"

"Correct."

Yettu reached out and lifted the fur cloak that Trundle was wearing.

"Are you freezing in the north, little guy?" After Yetu said this, the trolls around him burst into laughter, and the sound was like several avalanches converging at the same time.

Trundle shrugged. "The Troll King has to dress well, right? So you're Yetu?"

"Who else could I be? Which troll is wearing a crown here?"

Trundle looked again at the moss pile above Yettu's head. Now he saw that bloody bones, horns, and antlers were mixed in with the tangle of thorns and ice.

It looked like a dark cloud turned upside down, shooting forked skeletal lightning into the sky.

"So this is what a crown looks like," he said.

Yetu nodded and walked towards Trundle.

"You're not that big," Yetu said, patting Trundle's messy red hair with a thick finger. "I heard you were the biggest troll. Said you scratched your head with the sky and quenched your thirst with the sea."

"That's a good one, I tell the other trolls to tell it wherever they go," Trundle said. "Did you hear the one about me using the tallest trees in the Great Green Forest for toothpicks? Or the one about me eating a whole mammoth in the morning and then bathing in its skull?"

"What is a bath?"

"It's just... never mind," Trundle said. "And the one about me leaping over the southern mountains and wrestling with the White Stone Giant? Or the one about me kneeling his tail and using it to dig the inland lake at Raxtak? That's my favorite."

"You often go to fight giants," said Yetu.

"No fun fighting anything else," Trundle replied.

"Are you here to fight me?" Yetu asked, grinning, then raised his fists. Just as Sligu had said, they were fists like huge rocks. The other trolls gathered in a circle and began stomping their feet, waiting for Yetu to give them a beating.

The next plan was cunning enough to melt the Frost Witch's hair.

"Fighting doesn't always have to be about fists," Trundle said.

“Yeah, sometimes I kick things to death,” Yetu agreed.

"That's not what I meant," Trundle said, tapping his forehead lightly with a sallow claw. "If you were a true king, you would use this."

Yetu nodded. "Headbutt. Yeah. I'd also like to use my head, slam it."

"I mean with the inside of your head," Trundle said. "Your thinking brain!"

"brains"

"Fight with your brain," Trundle said, then added quietly, "I'm lucky you can't fight just by looking at me."

"How are we supposed to fight with our fucked-up brains?"

Trundle grinned, showing his full teeth, and then he turned the bag upside down, emptying the remains of the animal onto the ground, creating a fetid heap of fur, bone, and rotting flesh between them.

"Who can eat more!" said Trundle.

"How does this count as using the brain?" Yetu looked at the other trolls under his command in confusion.

"You'll find out soon enough," Trundle reassured him.

More meat was brought in and piled between the two troll kings who sat facing each other: chunks of flesh from the bellies of giant sea beasts, ribs from woolly mammoths, slippery, stinking fish, the great wings of flightless tundra birds, giant ernuk heads, and piles of wriggling body parts that Trundle was secretly glad he didn't recognize.

Besides the food, huge stone bowls of foaming soup were brought up. The smell was so strong it made Trundle's nose hairs curl. It was like the smell from the cracks in the ground around a volcano, and Trundle felt that it would taste worse than the yellow water that the soft-skinned people in the South called beer.