He raises his axes to finish you. Then he takes a step back as two arrows hit him in the chest. A third hits him between stomach and thigh, nearly dropping him to one knee. Para steps beside you, drops her empty quiver and her bow, and draws her curved bronze sword.

"I thought I told you to be somewhere safe," your mother says as smoke from a burning roundhouse billows around you. "Not fighting an ettin."

The hooded man sweeps one ax-handle through the arrows, snapping them off as if they were embedded in a shield, not his body, and you fully understand what you face.

Sometimes trolls eat each other. It is a regrettable fact of their nature, like the human propensity for blood-feud. But sometimes the eaten troll does not die. It grows, reawakens, finds equilibrium inside its devourer. The fused creature hungers for more. The result is an ettin: two trolls mingled together, at war with one another and with the world.

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The ettin's hood falls away, and you see the two heads. You see that each arm is two arms, half fused, each leg like a vine wrapped around a tree-trunk. The ettin's hooded cape, which you at first think is merely an obscene trophy, is attached to his shoulders, excess flesh and faces spilling down his back.

Your mother circles warily, but suddenly the ettin lashes out. One ax nearly slips through Para's guard; her desperate parry sends her stumbling, and she almost trips over the dead Oak tribe warrior. Instantly the ettin rounds on you, and again, only the most desperate parry saves you. You step back to absorb the force of the ettin's swings, and you can't tell if your hands are burning with power or exhaustion.