The ugly brown troll slobbered from its loose lips as it roared. Billid gagged on the smell of its breath—fish, vomit, rotting flesh, all mixing to form the most rancid thing to ever enter one’s nostrils.

  It stomped fast for Billid, wielding a small tree stripped of all branches and leaves.

  “Miss Bianca!” he yelled. “I don’t like this!” He rolled under the wide swing of the tree. “I can’t find an opening!”

  The troll lost their footing and stumbled into a tree, whacking their dangling nose against an oak. Pus leaked from the spots as it wobbled, a dumb grunt and groan as it turned to Billid with a vicious snarl.

  “Miss Bianca!” he cried again. “I think your method of teaching isn’t working out! I’d like a new knight to squire for!”

  Bianca leaned against an apple tree, halfway done eating one of the fruits growing above her. “Bollocks to that,” she slurred. “Only way to learn is to throw ‘em headfirst into difficulty. Get that sword up! Work on your footwork, dance with the beast for a moment!”

  Bianca yelled too loud. The troll ignored Billid and went for her instead. She threw away her half-eaten apple and grabbed the tip of her Dragonhammer, her gifted weapon, a magical hammer with a purple-steel handle the length of her whole body—a massive head that was half metal, the other side being a living head of a dragon, blinking and ready to bite or release fire—filled with blue runes from another world, with one bigger than the rest, resembling a pointy ‘E’, she heard whispers from the Void that the weapon was from another world entirely.

  In her grip, Dragonhammer was weightless. She threw it at the charging troll like it was a pebble, shattering ribs and bruising the mighty ego on the thirteen-foot-tall behemoth.

  It hit a wall of rock, the bottom of the Chasm of Death, sending a rumble up it that caused a small avalanche of gravel to sprinkle over the troll’s bald, flabby head.

  “Can’t you just keep doing that?” Billid begged. “I don’t have a gifted weapon like you!”

  “You’ve got your gift. Use it,” she joked. “An empty forest at the bottom of the mountain is the safest place to practice. Besides, trolls like these are territorial. We can’t ignore him and move on. He’ll follow us for the rest of our journey unless we put him down.”

  The troll regained its ego and gave another roar, choosing the squire as a target once again.

  “What if it eats me! What if it shits me out and then eats me a second time!”

  “He’s not going to eat you. I can kill the troll whenever I want. Chop chop, little squire. Kill the thing before it finds where I stashed the horses and I’ll cook you up a nice pork belly when we rest.”

  Billid wanted the pork belly badly. His mouth watered at the thought of a pork slab so tender it yielded into strips from a poke. Skin blistering, crackling, glistening with melted butter that seeped into every dip of the meat. He could taste the swinging of bites from salty to sweet at the tip of his tongue.

  He swapped his sword to his gauntleted arm and raised the other towards the charging troll. His green veins turned blue, purple, ending on white as his fingertips released a bolt of lightning. The troll was blinded by a bright flash that made even Bianca cover her eyes, a thunderous boom followed that left the knight and the squire with a ring in their ears.

  But Billid’s gift, just like real strikes during a storm, could not be predicted—but Bianca thought differently, pushing him to try and hone it at every opportunity. This time, however, was not the time he would hit his mark. It zipped between the troll’s legs, catching the edge of the beast’s loincloth and connecting to a lone tree. Both set aflame. The troll hit itself between the legs with its club to try and extinguish the fire coming for his meaty valuables.

  “Control your gift,” Bianca chuckled. “What if there were a civilian instead of a tree? A family of five. Your mistake could’ve set them ablaze or forced them to escape a fire.”

  Billid used the troll’s distraction to calm himself. “I can’t control my gift, Miss Bianca! I’ve tried to!”

  “Then you need to train it more! If you miss or your opponent dodges then it’s your duty to fix the messes you make! Heroes are here to get hurt instead of others, not to pass our struggles onto those who can’t help.”

  Billid raised his arm a second time. He never gave the enemy a chance to charge again; he released a bolt, one that hit the mark in the exact place he intended—the heart.

  The troll’s heart stopped beating. With all his might, he fought death’s invite, clutching his chest with roars that grew fainter. He wobbled, then fell, his mighty rumbling the forest floor.

  “I did it,” Billid whispered to himself. “Miss Bianca! I did it! I hit my mark!”

  Bianca swung her hammer in the direction of the burning tree and stopped its momentum still with her strength. The gusts of wind from her attack killed the fire; she did the same to the troll’s cloth.

  “Luck, or skill?” she asked.

  Billid wasn’t sure.

  She pulled an apple from her satchel and offered it to her squire. “Eat,” she demanded. “Your hands are shaking, the thrill of fighting has your nerves and senses overloaded.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I don’t have the stomach for an apple.”

  She tossed it to him, making him catch him on instinct. “Eating will ease you out of fighting mode,” she said. “Take nibbles, chew slowly, let your body do the rest. I’m proud of you.”

  He couldn’t hide his smile. He giddily took bites from the apple at her request, staying by her side as she wandered over the troll’s gaping mouth. She stepped inside, digging around in their molars.

  “I feel a bit bad,” he whimpered. “Am I supposed to feel bad for killing something? It was trying to kill me.”

  She exited the mouth, hawking from the smell, presenting her squire with a large human femur. “This troll was eating people. You shouldn’t feel too bad about it.”

  “But… that’s what they do to live, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve seen trolls foraging for berries and cowering at the sight of humans. They can hunt bigger creatures if they wanted, killing and eating humans is a choice they make; big boy here made the wrong choice, thought we were a nice snack.”

  “I still feel horrible.”

  She chucked the bone into the troll’s gullet, wiping her hands on her pants to remove the slime and slobber.

  “Good,” she said. “Carry that weight with you. Those that kill mindlessly and feel nothing aren’t heroes. Feel sick with every life that you take, remember each one, no matter how villainous. This is how we keep our sanity; this is how we know we did the right thing.”

  “If I’ve done the right thing, why would my body and mind punish me for it?”

  “A good question. Tricky, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t have an answer?”

  “Nope. There isn’t an answer. Don’t strain your brain trying to think of one, there could be more trolls up ahead.”

  A rumble rolled above them within the dark clouds, a light rain began to fall around them. Bianca released a sigh, looking at a hole in the side of the mountain.

  “Always storming in Valan,” she complained. “Go sit inside the troll’s home, I’ll bring the horses. We’ll have a rest, put the coats on the horses so they’re warm, have a meal, then journey up in the wet and cold.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Billid said sarcastically.

  The storm grew heavier as Bianca brought the horses into the cave and started a fire. The pork belly she promised was not what the squire had hoped for—chewy, though, dry, no butter at all.

  “I ain’t a chef, lad,” Bianca chuckled. “I’ll put some gold in your pocket when we get back to Vatanil, ay? You can get something a tad bit nicer, they’ll cook it better than I will.”

  “It’s good,” Billid lied. “Very good.”

  “You choke down lies like you choke down my meals… you are not good at lying.” She pulled two goose eggs, some berries, and some bread from her horse’s supplies and gave them to him after tousling his hair. “Go ahead. I don’t want any. You cook them how you want, a reward for killing the troll.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She shrugged to say yes. “Just remember my niceness when you tell tales of me to your own squire when you have one.”

  While Billid ate, she explored the small cave. She ignored the piles of bones and buckets of piss. She yanked down a brown cloth from the cave wall and marvelled at a mural on the wall, painted in dung and blood. She pinched her nostrils shut, laughing.

  “Is that a dragon?” Billid asked with a mouthful of egg. “Is it the dragon in the Dragon Chasm?”

  “Tumulus, you mean,” Bianca said. “It’s missing a wing so it may well be. You know much ‘bout her?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to know?”

  “Dragons scare me.”

  “Well, this one won’t do you any harm. She’s stuck at the bottom of the Dragon Chasm, unable to fly up. She hatches a bunch of dragons to fly off and fetch food for her. At the top of the Chasm of Death, you can peak in—the dragons don’t attack when their mother is fed, can have a look if you like… unless it senses you’re a threat, then it’ll send the dragons to gobble you up! Chew you down to the bones and feast on your liver and lungs!”

  Billid pointed at his egg sandwich with a frown.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Finish soon. I have a feeling this storm will only get heavier, best we leave before it picks up.”

  ————————————————————————

  Quinn carried Fiasco all the way up the top of his tower at Keep Blacksteel. She had cried the whole way, burying her face in his chest. He put her on the bed and she turned away from him, refusing to look into his eyes.

  He saw the lashes on her back, some parts still lightly bleeding, and gave them a gentle kiss before joining her in the bed, holding her close, but careful, wary of her soreness. He reached a hand for her chin, trying to turn her face. She resisted with moans of rejection for a while, then gave into the touch she loved so much.

  “My love, open your eyes,” he said softly. “There is nothing to hide from. I am here. Look at me.”

  She opened them slowly, struggling to prevent another river of tears. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Cry if you need. Cry all night. I won’t leave this bed until you are ready. Fuck the Valans. Fuck this city. Fuck my duties. You are all I care for.”

  She turned in the bed onto her other side, facing him. “I want to leave Vatanil,” she squeaked. “I want to go back to Arcyril. Please. We can live with your mother.”

  “My mother?” Quinn said. “But me and her—”

  “Please,” she begged, holding her stomach. “Any issues you have with her, settle them. I—I’m—I’m… I’m done with this city, my love. I gave that prisoner and cambion everything I had. I tried my best to control my powers and keep them alive under Godwin’s orders and all it got me was pain.”

  Quinn kissed her forehead. “If that’s what you want, my dear, I will resist the hatred of my mother. I will prepare to face the Valans. King Godwin won’t allow us to leave, nor will he simply allow us to leave under the protection of nightfall. He’ll hunt us, but I will defend you. My urges for a killing are growing stronger; I will take out all my wrath on him.”

  “Nobody has to die,” she squeaked. “I don’t want people to die because of my desires.”

  “Bianca is not in the city. This is our only option. Perhaps we can wait until she returns. Our years of friendship must mean something to her. Maybe she will fight with us and force him to leave us alone… but that is dangerous. Harren is dangerous. Fuck the Valans.”

  “Not all the Valans are bad,” she whispered. “Stroke is a good man. Stay with me tonight… when I am able, I will talk to him. If there is anyone who can protect us, it’s him. We can be his friends.”

  Quinn gave her a kiss, then closed his eyes. “Do it,” he said. “I have no hatred of the young prince. You must do it. But if he isn’t able… I promise you, I will die to protect you.”