Dropping off your perch, you approach Gronput, sword lowered and gripped by the blade, close to the hilt, so you cannot strike. Melaxu is utterly silent behind you. The trolls tense, but then they start to back away. So does Gronput. Feral and half mad, they nonetheless acknowledge your fearlessness.

But then one of the most pitiful specimens rushes you on all fours armed with a bone knife. The troll lashes out, but you grab your sword with two hands and sweep the knife away. The troll stumbles past you until Melaxu rushes forward and drives her spear straight through the scrawny creature, into the dirt.

Trolls race in every direction, some terrified and overawed, some wild with rage. Gronput vanishes into the shadows. You and the nymph have no problem fighting through them and running for the town wall.

"That nearly worked, human," Melaxu says. "Bravely done. If ultimately hopeless."

Farms and pastureland, divided by windbreaks of low trees, separate the woods around the old tin mine from the first buildings of the rapidly expanding town of Hetch. The patchwork is hard to navigate by moonlight, especially because of the unfinished irrigation ditches. But you have explored Hetch all your life, and soon you outpace the battered and demoralized trolls. In moments you and Melaxu have passed the half-finished public house, intended for travelers' lodgings, and reached the old wall's "gate." Nothing remains of any actual gate; you and the nymph stand before a gap in the low grassy hill flanked by an idol of Yune to one side and a small wooden guard tower to the other.

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You stop to check your injuries, but you're not badly hurt.

Beside you, Melaxu shivers. Sweat has plastered her short blue hair to her forehead.

"I have never actually used this," she says, rattling her blood-stained spear. "It works more or less as I expected it would, but still."

The archers in the tower finally notice you, standing right there at the entrance to Hetch.

"DARK NUNS!" the guard shouts. He slides down the guard tower's ladder. Finally! You step forward to speak to whoever is coming down to greet you.

And then, like in the pit of the new temple, the ground gives out beneath your feet. You fall, grabbing blindly at roots. You manage to snag one, and for a second as dirt pours across your shoulders, you open one eye and see beneath the old gate. Long ago, the people of Hetch offered sacrifices to protect their home. You see the jumbled bones of deer, cattle, elk…is that a human skull?

And then the gods in the earth rush in to claim you for their own.

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