Beat for Beat by Owen Townend

 Tookal always insists that he started it. He went into Bargis’s cave looking for trouble.

            Bargis may have been a Troll but he had the ambition of a true entrepreneur. The cave wasn’t simply a cave as Tookal insisted: it was Bargis's Cavern Tavern, a local watering hole for Trolls like himself, waking up after decades of inactivity. Bargis understood just how throat-drying that stiff gritty experience was.

            The business boomed and had seen its busiest week before Tookal arrived. Bargis steadily approached the door, eyeballing the little blue bastard. Wizards often meant trouble.

            Tookal didn’t disappoint. As soon as he set slippered foot through the door, he ran his fingers through his straggly green goatee and summoned a Rummage Spirit. At least that was what he claimed it was. Bargis thought it had too many red and black bits to be a harmless summoning. Indeed these foreboding colours flew and thrashed about the Cavern Tavern, knocking over quartz tables and shattering the luminescent stalagmite lighting. Within moments, all the customers had rumbled out.

            Balling up his craggy fist, Bargis threw himself at Tookal, startling the wizard with an outcry that sounded like a dozen rockslides. The wind caused by the huge troll’s unlikely sudden movement, sent Tookal’s hat flying but he managed to deflect the incoming body blow with a quick shield spell. A turquoise semi-sphere umbrella'd around the skinny wizard, causing Bargis’s punches to rebound.

            Regardless the troll kept on battering Tookal’s shield spell. It was only after the tenth hit that Bargis began to slow down.

            Tookal straightened up, tilting his head. “Wait,” he said. “Keep going.”

            Bargis frowned but was willing to oblige if it meant busting through the shield and throttling the wizard who had ruined his livelihood.

            Then he began to hear something. Every time his weighty blows were deflected, they created a curious sound on the shield's surface. This was like a drumbeat but more resonant, possibly with magic but then Tookal didn’t seem to recognise it either. Bargis slowed to a complete halt in his bewilderment.

            “The power of your hits seems to make this new sound,” Tookal muttered, stroking his beard again. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Have you?”

            Bargis shook his head. He made another fist and pounded down on the shield even harder. The beat was more resonant than before and somehow tuneful with it. He began to scratch the fissures in his forehead.

            “I don’t get it,” he grunted. “But it sounds appealing.”

            And so their alliance began. They formed a band, Tookal’s melodic incantations measured out by Bargis’s craggy-fisted percussion. It took a lot of effort from both the troll and wizard but neither could deny the business potential of making such strange, sweet music.

            They named their soulful folk band ‘Tookal and Bargis, Beat for Beat’. They took their show of shield spell ferocity on the road, both delighting and disturbing kingdom after kingdom. Perhaps you’ve even heard them. They still argue like hell, of course, but they really can’t do without each other now. Such is the fate of two wily entrepeneurs.

            Bargis and Tookal will soon be crossing seas to a village near you.