Paul stepped inside the swing of the mantis troll’s adze and swung his war club at the creature’s reverse articulated knee. It let out a keening cry as its leg collapsed underneath it, but as it fell it wrapped an empty hand around Paul’s torso and smashed him into the ground alongside its own body. The impact knocked the breath from Paul and he lost grip of one of his clubs.

Paul’s vision blurred with pain as his healing ribs were cracked again, and he struggled for breath. This wasn’t the first time in the caves that something had tried to squeeze the life from him through, and he reacted more on muscle memory than thought. His empty hand reached for a knapped obsidian dagger at his side, and he thrust it into the troll’s wrist until it hit bone, dragging it through tendon and muscle up the creature’s arm.

As the hand went limp Paul rolled toward the body of the troll and plunged the knife into the creature’s throat. Hot blood coated his knife and hand, and he took a shuddering breath.

Stars crowded Paul’s vision, but he leveraged himself up, clutching at his stomach where one of the Troll’s adzes had opened a deep slash in his abdomen. Staggering over to his dropped club, Paul noticed one of the trolls struggling to rise. It pushed itself up off the ground with its arms before Paul brought a war club down on the back of its head.

Paul took a halting step toward the alcove where he had left Seymore and his pack, then stopped, counting the corpses around him.

There are only four bodies. The one with the head-dress and feather isn’t here.

Paul wanted nothing more than to head back to his camp and rest, but he needed to know whether the feather he thought he saw around the fifth mantis troll’s neck was real or just a figment of his imagination.

He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, willing himself to turn around, then stumbled back toward the cavern where he had encountered the trolls, running one hand along the tunnel wall for support.

Before reaching the cavern, he placed his jawbone war clubs back into the loops on his belt. If he could avoid another fight, he would.

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The fifth troll was still in the cavern, and its two lower eyes widened when it saw Paul shuffle out of the cavern. Paul held up his hands, fingers splayed, and once again tried to speak in soft, low tones. “I’m sorry about your friends. I don’t mean any harm, I just want to get out of here.”

Paul thought he might have gotten through to the creature when it began tracing patterns in the air with one of its upper limbs. Something about the gestures seemed familiar to him.

Is that some kind of sign language?

His confusion was cut short as a gout of flame erupted from the troll’s hand.

Paul took the brunt of it on his chest. The impact tossed him backward to impact on the cavern wall, knocking the air from his lungs. The thick buckskin vest he wore was ruined, parts of it smoldering painfully against his chest. He didn’t want to think what would have happened if he hadn’t been wearing it.

He looked up to find his assailant moving its hand in the strange pattern he saw the first time. This time Paul was ready, weaving a disk of light between himself and the angry flames that shot toward him.

He struggled to his feet, panting with the effort of maintaining his shield and the myriad of injuries he had suffered. The flames did not abate, pushing on his shield with heat and force. Despite Paul’s shield, the heat from the flames was oppressive. Fire licked over the sides of the shield, searing buckskin as well as exposed skin and hair.

Paul could feel intent ebbing as he fed it into the shield, and knew that he would not be able to keep it up for long. He knew if he turned to run the fire would roast him alive, so he grimaced, and step by shuffling step walked toward the troll.

The troll let out a bellow of surprise. It dropped the club it held in its other upper limb and began to trace a pattern with its hand.

Oh no you don’t.

Paul shot a ball of light toward the troll’s eyes. The ball of light was slow and had almost no force behind it, but the troll brought up its hand instinctively to protect its eyes, interrupting the pattern it was tracing.

He was close now, only a few steps from the source of the flames. Paul could feel his intent fading, and the effort of keeping his shield up felt like daggers piercing into his brain. He screamed, but the shield remained.

The troll seemed to be undergoing a similar internal struggle, letting out a piercing cry while clutching at its head.

In the end, the flames ended a moment before Paul’s shield did. Paul stumbled forward with the sudden loss of pressure on his shield but managed to reach up with one hand and rake his rat-claw dagger across the troll’s stomach while his other hand clawed for the necklace that the creature wore around its neck.

The troll fell backward, scrambling away from Paul. Paul moved to follow, but his legs gave out beneath him. He watched as the troll scrambled to its feet, and resigned himself to the inevitable, sure that the troll would finish him off.

Instead, the troll ran toward one of the cavern exits, looking fearfully back at Paul as he did so. Paul almost smiled as the troll disappeared into the darkness before he fell forward onto his face. Small tendrils of smoke still wafted up toward the cavern ceiling from his body.

Guess we’ll call that a draw.

Before he lapsed into unconsciousness, Paul brought his hand close to his face. In it, he clutched a feather.