Trav had been so engrossed in his work, he’d temporarily forgotten pretty much everything else. He’d let go of the anger he had been running on, so when he turned to see the looks of astonishment on Asta and Narnaste’s faces, the events of the last few minutes came rushing back, making him feel shaky. He’d almost died and had rune-branded a Kin woman...that he was trapped in a cave with.
This was not good. Trav desperately reached for a thread of anger, grabbing hold of memories, remembering all the injustices he’d endured during his years of freedom. Hopefully, the slaves hadn’t died in all the fighting above and would get a break now that the mines were destroyed.
The slaves. Remembering the guards’ cruelty and the way the Kin’s battle with the unknown fighters had hurt the humans, ruined their homes, such as they were, rekindled Trav’s anger. The feeling was a little artificial, but the frustration at its core was real.
Trav managed to mentally center himself over the span of a second, before Narnaste asked, “That is high-level sigil magic, and you just did it on a cave wall with a rusty knife. Who are you really?” The Kin woman rubbed her blouse over the area where Trav had marked her. Her ears flicked back and forth, and one eye twitched. Trav was not exactly an expert on canine Kin mannerisms, but even he could tell Narnaste would probably be unpredictable and dangerous right now. Well, Kin were always unpredictable and dangerous, so that assumption was a safe bet.
Instinct instructed Trav to act natural, unafraid. The battered man listened to his gut—it had saved his life many times over the last few years. He mostly ignored both women and walked to the opposite wall of the cave. Now he could see they were actually standing in a wide chamber, part of a tunnel or a long cave. At the new wall, he tapped with the butt of his shiv, projecting just enough force through the tool that it made a smaller, but identical copy of his spell equation on the other side. That done, he framed the whole thing in a glowing red triangle, and sealed the new equation with a minor flex of will, attaching the whole design to the natural power of the stone it was written on.
The faint lines began to grow brighter, and Trav averted his eyes before the whole design came to life with light. It was good that these light equations required so little energy to set up. Whatever he’d gotten from his pact with Narnaste was mostly gone. Creating the escape tunnel had taken a lot out of him, even though the majority of the mojo had come from the rock itself. He was exhausted, and the fall to the cave floor hadn’t helped matters.
Trav turned and beheld dust still swirling through the stale air, illuminated by his runecraft. The scene was strangely beautiful for a moment, almost surreal, and even more so when Trav witnessed a huge, green hand appear out of the darkness behind Asta.
An overwhelming sense of danger settled on Trav’s nerves, his instincts yelling at him to freeze as Asta was taken. The young woman screamed as she was lifted into the air, then her sounds of distress became muffled. A second later, Trav heard sick crunching. Asta’s screams stopped and her legs kicked even harder for a few seconds until they rested, hanging limply.
Back when Trav had been on Earth, it might have taken him some time to recover from the shock of something so unexpected and horrible happening, but after a few years on Asgard, things had changed. He took a step back and instructed his emberstone eye to help him see past the gloom at the edge of the light circle. Then after what he saw, he almost wished he hadn’t.
A huge, misshapen creature stood crouched, but would easily be twice the size of a man at its full, hunchbacked height. Its pebbled, cracked hide had a rubbery texture, and bits of moss were actually growing on portions of its body. The creature wore a crude loincloth tied with rope.
Trav’s eyes traveled up past its crooked, knobby toes, over its grotesque belly, and witnessed it...eating Asta. The creature’s head was too big for its body and bobbed like a bird’s as it feasted on the slave woman. Huge, blocky teeth were stained with blood as they ripped and tore at the body in its hands. Asta’s dead limbs twitched with nerves, grotesquely making it seem she still struggled while being eaten alive. That couldn’t be the case, though—her head was missing. The creature’s big, watery eyes were half-lidded in pleasure, and its disgusting, bulbous nose twitched.
Asta still in its mouth, it suddenly turned to stare at Trav and growled, taking a step closer. Now within the light of Trav’s glyph equations, he could see how its misshapen body rippled with hidden muscle.
The moment lengthened as they all stared at each other until Narnaste sucked in a breath and yelled, “Troll! Run!”
She didn’t need to tell Trav twice.
Chapter 6
It didn’t take long for Trav to realize the problem with headlong flight; he was already running out of light. The Kin woman was fast and had almost reached the edge of the light circle. Thinking quickly, Trav decided to lean on Narnaste’s truth-reading ability he was almost sure she had. “Keep that thing busy, or we are going to die!” he bellowed.
“What!?”
Their tunnel was definitely too small to really fight or even evade the beast, so Trav yelled back, “You need to slow it down somehow. Let it try to get you, then dodge. I don’t know! Just don’t die either! If either of us dies now, we’re both screwed!”
The strange woman’s ears twitched, and she spun. As Trav ran past, she said, “It’s too fast. I won’t be able to slow it long.”
“Just do your best!” Trav dashed forward, risking a glance back to see Narnaste pick up a massive stone, rear back, and hurl it at the charging troll. The beast didn’t seem hurt, but it did get knocked back by the impact, slowing so it wouldn’t fall. Good, thought Trav, they had a chance. He got the feeling that the huge creature was slow to accelerate but could probably move at terrifying speeds if it were able to pick up steam.
After running as fast as he could to the edge of the light, Trav had to slow down so he wouldn’t break a limb or kill himself. He made some distance from the lighted cave that Narnaste still fought in, and found a good patch of wall. Then he inscribed a new light equation as fast as he could. With his shiv acting as a pre-set rune-tool, the complex glyph and sigil drawings luckily didn’t take him long to draw. He was able to run, stop, and inscribe, and run again at a breakneck pace.
Trav didn’t have much of a plan other than making more light so the huge, disgusting, terrifying monster wouldn’t catch them in the dark. Poor Asta hadn’t even had a chance. Hopefully, there would be an opening in the tunnel ahead so he and Narnaste could go back the way they’d come. After that, he hoped they could figure out a way to escape or hide.
Finally, he reached the end of the tunnel, or rather, it expanded to enormous size. Even after placing a light equation on the nearest wall, he couldn’t see to the other side. The troll bellowed somewhere behind, and Trav’s guts quivered as he fought primal dread. What can anyone do against that thing? he thought. He’d heard about trolls before. They were one type of feral monster on Asgard, or as the Kin called them, Wild Ones.
The Kin guards had sometimes told each other stories of troll sightings when not busy beating slaves or sleeping. Trav had largely ignored them, but after a few years in the mines, he’d picked up a few random bits of knowledge concerning the outside world. As a result, he knew that trolls were strong, fast, ate just about anything, lived for hundreds of years, and were notoriously hard to kill. Even higher-level Kin could have problems killing them since trolls had a nasty habit of healing themselves, and could tear just about anything apart given the opportunity.
By the time Narnaste emerged from the smaller tunnel with the troll hot on her heels, Trav had lined an entire wall of the huge, open cave with light glyphs. As he watched, Narnaste threw stones with superhuman strength, some hitting with devastating power, but the troll was still only slowed, not noticeably damaged. Then as it got close, the Kin woman stood her ground, waiting for the last second to dodge backwards, causing the troll to slow down, but end up holding nothing.
The creatu
re screamed in frustration and held up a misshapen hand to shield its eyes from the new light. That’s when it saw Trav.
With a terrifying bellow, the troll turned its bulk, ignoring Narnaste’s stones, and oriented on Trav. “Shit,” the tall man muttered. There was no way he could escape the troll now, except...yes. An extra dark shadow played against one wall and looked a lot like hope. It was his only chance.
Trav took off running, the light allowing him to move much more sure-footedly than before. He could practically feel the troll’s hot breath on his back as he ran. After getting closer to the distant cave wall, he verified that there was a crack, one he might be able to fit in. With renewed vigor, he put on a desperate burst of speed. Even with his headlong flight and the short distance to possible safety, the troll still almost caught him. He reached the crack right before the creature’s huge hand could close around him.
The troll shrieked as it crashed into the wall, and Trav scrambled to climb deeper into his dubious shelter. The distant light glyphs on one side of the huge cave filled his little hiding place with deep shadows and gave the terrifying situation a nightmarish, surreal feel. Light from the mouth of Trav’s crack disappeared as the troll reached inside, its long, terrible claws scraping on the stone.
After reaching the end of the crack, Trav scrunched himself into it as tightly as he could, desperately avoiding the troll’s searching hand. The beast’s rancid breath filled the tight space and the man from Earth tried not to gag.
Trav could hear the creature straining, trying to get closer, and was reminded that the thing could see in the dark. The troll might actually be able to see him even as it cut off all the light. That’s cheery, Trav thought, pushing himself harder into the jagged rock. He couldn’t see anything, and the air grew more rank every second. Growls filled his little prison, growing louder every second. Trav’s spine tightened in fear, sure that any moment a clawed hand would snag hold of his limb or clothing.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but it felt like an eternity. The very tip of one claw touched the back of Trav’s shabby trousers, and he shuddered. Suddenly, a muffled thump sounded through Trav’s claustrophobic hell, and the creature hissed in pain. Another thump and muted light filled the crevice as the creature turned. After the pitch black, Trav’s eyes drank in the illumination, and he could see what had happened.
Narnaste stood with her feet planted, picking up large stones to hurl, much bigger than she’d been throwing earlier. She must have gathered a number of them while the troll had been occupied. Familiar with the Kin, Trav could figure out what had happened. Narnaste had realized that after the troll had killed its new prey, she’d be the only one left...and she couldn’t make light. She’d be trapped, so she’d decided to stand and fight, attempting to take advantage of the creature’s distracted state.
The plan hadn’t been bad. Unfortunately, even from within his safety crack, Trav could tell the attempt had been a failure. The troll snuffled and growled as another huge stone bounced off of its head. Narnaste’s aim was good, and she was probably chucking twenty-pound rocks like softballs, but the troll was just too tough.
As the creature began moving towards the Kin woman, Trav thought he saw a look of resignation cross her face. She’d played her best hand, and it hadn’t been effective. The reality for Trav was if she died, he really had no hope—he was in the same predicament she was. Now it was his turn to act.
The troll closed with the Kin woman and bellowed, rapidly gaining speed. It slowed to grab at her, and Narnaste dodged like she had before, but this time the creature had feinted. The beast had been waiting for Narnaste’s escape, and jumped, propelling its considerable bulk with powerful muscle. With the small bit of extra speed and distance it had gained with the jump, the disgusting creature managed to grab one of the Kin woman’s ankles.
Growling in triumph, the troll hoisted Narnaste into the air, a huge grin slowly taking shape across its mouth, stretching cracked lips. Narnaste yowled and tried to claw at the hand holding her, but it was no use. Trav tried to move as quietly as he could while the troll gloated, moving closer. When the Kin woman finally saw him over the monster’s shoulder, the huge creature noticed his captive’s change of expression and turned to look, but it was already too late.
Trav clambered up the troll’s back, adrenaline giving him a huge burst of energy as he practically sprang straight upwards. The troll screeched and turned, trying to reach the human man with its open hand. Trav had already reached the creature’s back. He ducked the monster’s clumsy grab and yelled, “Die, you ugly motherfucker!” in English. Mentally, he hoped his plan would work, his thoughts manic from a combination of fury, fear, and desperation.
With all his strength, he slammed his shiv into the troll’s pebbled skin between two tufts of hair, barely managing to penetrate the thick hide. Trav levered his blade sideways to open the wound. Pulling the blade out might have let it close immediately, and that would simply not do. Then before the troll could shake him off, even as it began bellowing in pain, Trav rammed the emberstone-laced shard of rock from his pocket into the open puncture.
The enormous creature gasped. Trav climbed higher up its back while it stiffened and kicked the stone in as hard as he could before falling to the ground, painfully twisting his ankle in the process. He spun, ready for anything, resigned to probably die.
Instead, the creature stood still for another moment before screeching, every muscle in its body seizing. The troll crashed to the ground and began convulsing, thrashing in the throes of agony. Its skin actually glowed for a moment before the entire creature breathed one last fetid sigh and was still.
The troll twitched in death but didn’t make any more noise. The surrounding cave grew painfully quiet other than the sound of labored breathing. Shock from having survived made Trav feel woozy for a moment, and he staggered over to the lighted portion of the cave. Finally he sat, his back against the wall, closed his eyes, and began chuckling.
His mind went blank, restarting as his limbs jittered from the aftereffects of the enormous adrenaline dump he’d experienced. I’m alive, he thought in wonder. His tired thoughts became interrupted a moment later by a soft sensation on his lip. Trav’s eyes flew open, and he stared into Narnaste’s half-lidded gaze. The Kin was kissing him, a thought that took a while to really land.
The inhuman woman growled deep in her chest and pushed Trav down. Now that he was touching her, her incredible strength could actually be felt. But inexplicably, his own ardor suddenly rose, and he half surprised himself by kissing her back.
A tiny portion of his body that was still capable of conscious thought noted that he’d just survived a life and death situation, two actually, and he’d rune-bonded the Kin female. Then the last of his conscious thought was completely muted as he ran his hand through Narn’s hair, pausing to touch her animal-like ears. His caress passed over her back, to the swell of her ass, and he grabbed it while kissing her more deeply.
Narnaste responded by whining and panting with need, practically ripping her clothes off. The light glyphs on the walls cast harsh shadows, but the Kin woman’s body was beautiful, the glow somehow accentuating her savage appeal. After that, Narnaste nuzzled Trav’s neck, and her hands began clumsily working to take his pants off. Her damaged ear tickled Trav’s chin, and his hands ran up the front of her body until he gently cupped her breasts.
The tiny, thinking portion of his mind asserted itself again, asking about Beth’s memory, about the slaves, and the fact that Narnaste was Kin.
Trav snarled, letting the heat from his blood travel to his eyes. “Fuck it,” he panted. “I’m alive.” With that, he wrapped a hand in the canine Kin woman’s hair and jerked her head back. Despite her much greater strength, she let him arch her body backwards as his mouth went for her throat to nibble at her collarbone and lick her jawline.
The Kin woman moaned, her tail wrapping around Trav as he embraced her on the stony ground. After that, the small, ra
tional part of his mind stayed mute, and the man from Earth fully lost himself in pleasure, celebrating having cheated death yet again.
Chapter 7
Trav awoke with a gasp in complete darkness, trying to figure out where he was. Then he felt something soft next to him, and Narnaste grunted in her sleep. Everything that had happened before came back in a rush, and he realized several things at once.
First, he’d just been with a Kin woman, and she was still next to him, gently snoring. Now that he was awake and his mind was clear, he could actually sense her general direction, too. The bond he’d originally created between them had strengthened, and now...he was full of magical power! Trav’s eyes widened as he closed his eyes and tried to sense the edges of the new magical energy inside of him. It was so vast, huge compared to the amount he’d used to burrow through rock before—why was he not being burned to cinders?
With an unsteady hand, Trav drew small glyphs on the cave floor. Using his finger, not a tool, was harder and usually took more energy, but he felt like he had enough raw power filling him now to power a sun. Once the modest light equation had been finalized, a soft glow sprang up from the white lines on the ground.
Trav sucked in a breath, startled by a distant shadow, but he quickly realized it was just the corpse of the troll he’d killed. Wow. He’d had sex with a Kin woman on the stony ground with a dead monster a stone’s throw away...What is wrong with me? he wondered.
A wave of guilt threatened to descend, but he angrily pushed it away. Beth had been dead for over half a year now. On top of that, even before they’d been married, she’d told him that he was not allowed to mope around the rest of his life if anything ever happened to her. She’d known him too well. She’d also made it very clear that she wouldn’t give up on life if Trav died, either.
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