Mist-Beneath stood over the row of half-immersed human bodies, humming to herself. A nice assortment. To the untrained eye, humans all looked the same, but she knew better. There was enough variety here to give her a chance at success.

Despite her previous two attempts. Which had ended ... messily.

Delicate creatures, humans. Clever and numerous--and cowardly in a way that gave them remarkable strength--but delicate. Shockingly unable to heal. If she cut one's finger off, it never regrew. Not ever.

To say nothing of removing an entire arm, or an eye, or an internal organ.

Still, she'd learned a great deal. So she packed the braziers with herbs and mosses, checked her arrays of crystals, the ones arranged in circles on the floor and the ones embedded in slits in the humans' skin, then she closed her eyes a moment to center herself and--

"This is an abomination," Armored-in-Frost grumbled, at the entrance to her ceremonial chamber.

"This is survival," she told him.

"Pouring a trollish soul into a human vessel." His growl sounded like the rumble of magma. "There is no honor here."

"The humans will kill us all before the winter is over. Every one of our children, dead on your watch. Will that bring you honor?"

Armored-in-Frost rubbed his face. "Is there truly no other way, mother?"

"Not within my power. This is unlikely enough to succeed."

"It shouldn't even be possible."

She lay her hand on his forearm. "The Celestials cannot defeat the Ward from outside the valley. So they've been ... altering human souls. Hoping to damage the valley from within."

"The humans don't need help when it comes to causing damage."

"But they'd never destroy the Warding."

"Because self-preservation is the only creed they follow."

"The Celestials have been at this for a long while now, though with only a rare few successes. Even for them, the cost of twisting a soul is very dear." She tutted. "A long while, though the Sleepers didn't give me a dream of it until recently."

Armored-in-Frost dipped a claw in the blood in which the humans were marinating. "A nightmare."

"The Celestials opened a crack. A tiny crack, through which I may attempt a similar alteration--except I want to save my people, not destroy the ward."

"You're too late, mother. These humans are dead."

"Not entirely. Not yet. There is a faint flicker of life about them."

Armored-in-Frost made an unhappy noise so she chased him from her chamber. Then she hung the white lantern to ensure her privacy and began the rite. She sacrificed her own flesh and chanted to the somnolent ones, a lullaby to seek their guidance ...

***

Eli's pain faded.

The sharp jabs and deep aches of his trauma eased. Then all his pain vanished, even the minor twinges of everyday life. The stiffness of his shoulder and the catch in his knee from a sparring accident. He felt better--better than ever. Except for his broken teeth. They still felt rough. Not missing anymore, not cracked, but--

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"Human teeth take the longest time to repair," a voice growled. Hardly a voice, more like two stones grinding together.

He turned his head and saw it. A troll. An ancient troll, with ropes of crystal around its neck and patterns in glowing paint or--or blood or ichor--on its chest and arms and its middle eye glowing white and--

And Eli wasn't scared. Which almost frightened him. But no, he'd woken here before. A dozen times in the past few days, and each time she'd been there, talking in her gentle voice.

Wait. Gentle? No, she sounded like boulders tumbling down a mineshaft. And ... she? Yes, not it: she.

"I'm Mist-Beneath," she said.

"I'm--"

"You're Five," she interrupted. "Trolls don't have names until our second birth, our true birth."

He looked at his hands: his soft, human hands. "I'm a troll?"

"Where it matters. Inside. How else can you speak trollish?"

"I'm speaking trollish!" he rumbled, and memory returned. The financial report, the Marquis. The Keep, that terrible dungeon. The prison wagon and the battle. "You saved my life."

"There is troll blood in your veins now, Five. It is weaker than a natural-born troll's, but was enough to fetch you home from Death's antechamber."

"Home?" he said, and looked around.

A cave, dimly illuminated by moss with tiny glowing fruits. He was lying on a bed, covered by blankets of animal skins. Leather blankets--or lizardskin. He pushed the covers aside and sat at the ege of the bed. The troll cavewitch--she must've told him that when he'd woken earlier--filled most of the center of the space. Behind her, a table and chairs, carved from stone, only slightly too large for him sat near a simmering cauldron of--

"Is that food?" he asked.

Her laugh sounded like a happy avalanche, and a moment later she handed him a bowl. "Stew. Eat your fill, Five. This is only the beginning."

Eli dug his paws--his hands--he dug his hands into the bowl and slurped the stew. Delicious. Sweet cubes of meat and savory strips of ... a different kind of meat, in a hearty spicy gravy. After he finished his second bowl, Mist-Beneath brought him an even bigger bowl of icy water to drink, drawn from what she called the deep wells, and he finished that too.

Finally replete, he managed to continue the conversation. "Beginning of what?"

"When you woke yesterday, you kept asking me why. Why? Why? Why save you?"

"And you said ..." He didn't quite remember. "That after my second birth, my proper birth, you'd tell me everything?"

"Yes. Very good. Once you're an adult among the trolls, once you pass the stonechild rite and earn your own name and your full voice, I will tell you."

"When does that happen?" He frowned across the cave at a stretched animal hide decorated with strange symbols. "What's the, uh, stonechild rite?"

"It happens after you meet your den-mates. You will enter at the same time, though each of you will move forward alone."

"Enter what?"

"So impatient!" she cackled. "There is still human in you yet. Do you remember anything of your previous life?"

Eli frowned. He remembered, as far as he could tell, everything of his previous life. His childhood--his parents had been servants, not farmers--and working for the cooper and the hayward and the militia. And then the archive. Finally putting his literacy to good use until that report for the Leotide City office. Then his life had come crashing down.

He remembered everything but he didn't feel much. The memories were almost impersonal. Like they were simply stories he'd heard. Although his time in the Keep's dungeon, that was a story with bite. Yet even that memory wasn't enough to wound him, not anymore.

"I do," he said.

"Do you remember Rockbridge? The ... the tunnels and caverns?"

"You mean the streets and buildings? Yes."

"Can you pass as human?"

In Iolian, the most common human tongue in the valley, he said: "Do I sound human? I do. I look human, I feel human. Am I not human?" He stretched, and felt the strength in his limbs. "I'd think your spell didn't work except I'm alive. I'm whole. Well, except for the odd tooth."

"What?" she said in trollish. "What are you saying?"

"What color is my blood?" he asked, in trollish, extending his arm.

She sliced his forearm with one of her stone-shard rings and his blood welled red. Dark red, true, with maybe a hint of green, but nothing that looked immediately inhuman.

And as he watched, the slice healed.

He wiped the blood from his unbroken skin. "Yes, I can pass for human."

"Good, good. Excellent news, Five. Very good."

"Why are you calling me 'Five?'" he asked. "What happened to One through Four?"

"I asked the moonguards--the trolls who fight the humans--to keep some of them intact. To toss them to me before ending them. This time, six of the humans looked ... possible. For my purposes."

"What are your purposes?"

"Later, impatient one! Later. You were the fifth of six. And the only one who lived."

"The others, uh, weren't still lingering in Death's antechamber?"

Mist-Beneath rumbled a laugh. "Mm. They'd already wandered into death's bedchamber, where not even troll blood could save them."

"Huh."

"Now come along and meet the others. You're awake for true this time."