From somewhere nearby came the earsplitting answer. It was ARRRGH!!!.

I raced at the left troll, currently eyeless, and though he swiped an arm in my direction, I ducked beneath it and found myself barreling down a main avenue. Suddenly there were trolls on every side of me, their bizarre anatomies brushing across my skin. Some were gargantuan, and I dove between their legs. Others were less than a foot high and scurried about like vermin, clambering over one another and rattling tiny shields and sabers. Some wore threadbare capes and tattered gowns complete with frayed insignias. Others wore makeshift tunics of thistledown and thornbush. Most, though, were naked, and I saw them as a blur of colors: jet black, burnished bronze, pink as tongue, red as blood.

Bursting from the crowd, I found myself inches from a butcher counter. I collided with it. Carcasses swung wildly. A noseless, cross-eyed troll wearing a dirty apron and holding a rusty butcher knife bellowed in outrage. I backpedaled into a mass of hungry customers, who at last had time to notice the human invader in their midst. Deafening foghorn bellows were joined by high-pitched snarls and resounding grumbles. Answering their call, from two aisles over, was ARRRGH!!!.

Pelted arms and scaled hands and chilly tentacles tried to hold me in place, but I wriggled free, rolled beneath the butcher counter, and shot out into a side alley, cutting through a family of pudgy blue trolls with skeleton wings that flapped in agitation. A six-foot mass of yellow hair—which, oddly, was topped with a pair of lit candles—slumped down the alley toting a pig’s head on a stick, which I assumed was a kind of scepter before I saw him nibble on it. It was a snack. I veered away and came upon a line of crude wheelbarrows filled with goods. I skittered aside and butted into a troll so withered his ribs poked out from his flesh, each one adorned with bejeweled rings that jangled like a tambourine as he squabbled his dissatisfaction to a troll resembling a giant, armless worm. There was a gash in the worm’s stomach, and I thought it was a stab wound until four smaller worms poked their heads out of the marsupial pocket.

Both trolls halted their argument and looked at me.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “It looks good. Really. I wish I had my wallet.”

It did not look good. The wheelbarrow was stacked with jars of a granola-like substance, except instead of oats, nuts, and raisins, it was roaches, hair, and teeth. I turned to reverse my direction when I saw a familiar black-furred giant poke its snout into the alley. Its orange eyes lasered in on me.

ARRRGH!!! huffed with such force that two smaller trolls were taken down by the spray of snot.

I jumped over the wheelbarrow. My toe caught a jar and it shattered on the ground, white teeth bouncing across brick and roaches racing away into crevices. From behind came the pound of my pursuer’s feet. Up ahead, a troll with a leathery baby face mischievously tied together the ponytails of two spotted trolls locked in separate disputes. I ducked beneath the knot, leapt over a smolder pit, and kicked through a low wire fence surrounding two little green creatures with long, furry tails facing off in battle. I spun around and found myself surrounded by gambling trolls clutching coins and howling at the disruption of the fight. I shouted apologies and hurtled over the opposite fence, the furry green gremlins snapping at my heels.