We then arrived at a wide square. Perhaps it had been a marketplace in the past, or a public forum. A clean-flat plaza framed with grand pillars. A few of the supports had broken off the ceiling and fallen, and the surface of the pavement was torn in places, but you could still clearly see the mosaic pattern of red-brown tiles assembled among white, covering the square from corner to corner. It had surely been a sight to behold in its prime.

Near the middle of the plaza sat a great ashen shape, surrounded by wreckage. At a glance, we dismissed it as only a broken statue, and had every intention to pass by quietly without another look. However, as we came closer, the emerging strangeness of the thing stole our attention.

The statue had no pedestal to rest on, planted directly on the broken ground, and the motif was very unlike dwarves’ style too. The effigy was a vaguely humanoid figure, grotesquely obese and cumbersome; a naked, hairless, scarred mockery of man, an ill-proportioned infant cursed at birth and deformed. The thing rested leaning its heavy arms against the knees, and in front of it lay a half-eaten carcass of a brown gelding, like the pagans’ offering to the Heavens above, and a ravaged wagon. And then we realized what it really was that we were staring at, and everyone stopped in their tracks.

Too late. The statue had been stirred awake by our nearing footsteps.

The great, bald head swung our way with a pair of black button eyes, uncannily far apart, and a low growl erupted from the depths of the hardened body. Not a work of culture, a monster. It began to huff and puff angrily, as if we had interrupted a particularly good moment.

“What is that thing?” Ray asked as he reached for his sword.

As much as I hoped I was seeing dreams with my eyes wide open, and would soon be shaken awake, that was not the case, and I had to reluctantly face the facts.

“It’s a mountain troll!”

Yes. We faced off with what was unmistakably an adult troll.

A blue mountain troll, to be precise.

You could tell by the cerulean scaling on its backside, like flat fragments of rock growing on its body, which the more common cave trolls and woodland trolls missed. There was an excellent illustrated bestiary to be found in the palace library. The books said mountain trolls could also grow considerably older and larger than their lowland cousins, which rendered them an order of magnitude deadlier to man. This one was clearly fully matured, close to twelve feet tall, or over, and marked by many past skirmishes.

Trolls of this sort were typically loners, and rare in an indoors environment, as dungeons tended to be by definition. To run into one right here, right now, on this path that was meant to be safe for all—was this the hero’s luck at work, or my own?

The monster rolled up onto its feet, surprisingly nimble for its size. Next to it lay a sheared log almost as long as the troll was tall, which it gripped and brandished in the fashion of a light spear. The business end of the log was roughly sharpened and stained dark with dried blood, well-tested in practice.

Trolls didn’t normally eat people, but they did eat our cattle, and had, as a consequence, learned to perceive humans as an obstacle to all things good, to be squashed on sight.

Now that we had been spotted, violence was unavoidable.

Corporal Thiselt took up her bow and notched an arrow, taking aim at the monster’s loathsome face, but I quickly waved at her to put the thing down.

“Stop! It will rampage!”

The troll’s small brain was hidden deep under a thick skull. Its skin was hard, its organs protected by thick layers of fat. Arrows meant for people or goblins were worthless against it.

The standard method of troll extermination was to have a squad of armored men poke them to death with extra long spears. But our sole spearman was Sergeant Klein, and pitting him against the thing by his lonesomeness would only have made for a sadistic method of execution.

As much as I racked my head, there was only one conclusion I could draw from these conditions: we had no real way to win. Not without casualties we couldn’t afford.

I glanced across the clearing. In the far side began another stairway that led towards the exit of the district, if the map was to be trusted.

“The hero’s safety is the only thing that matters,” I told the others. “I will draw its attention. Wait until I give you the signal and make for the stairs, as quickly as you can.”

“I should be the one—” Captain Vergil began to say, but I stopped him short.

“—You cannot use magic and will die if you approach it. I represent the Emperor, do as I say!”

Thankfully, that silenced him. The Captain was only armed with a short sword and a kite shield, both things that had no use in a troll fight. His sacrifice would not have extended our lifetimes by half a minute. It had to be me. I drew the air with my finger.

Elemental Gate: Lux.

“Ghost Light!”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

A bright orb of white flame popped up in the air over me. It was plain light and had no functionality as a weapon, and got tiresome to keep as a reading light too. But it shone clear in the dimness of the stone hall and could be moved at will. I made the flame twirl around me, and the troll’s gaze was quickly fixed on it.

I glanced at Ray next to me. He looked back in fraught muteness. It was awfully sudden, but that would have to do for a goodbye.

“Get out of here!” I barked and took to running.

The troll was quick to give chase. The sound of its heavy footsteps pounded right behind me, long and deceptively sluggish, and I ran, ran as fast as I reasonably could in a dress, turning at times left, at times right, and made the light spin, so that the troll wouldn’t think to throw its hefty lance at me.

Sooner than I would’ve liked, we reached the end of the plaza, the familiar gorge in front of my boots. The Earth Vein, in all its empty, ancient glory. There was nowhere to go from there, no lower levels or stairs. The edge of the floor had broken off, giving an abrupt, crude end to the former dwarven market. I could only stop still, the angered mountain troll on one side and the abyss on the other.

My fingers reflexively sought out the hilt of the dagger under the sash, but an overwhelming sense of futility kept my hand. Even if I could cut through the troll’s hide, which was doubtful, the blade was not long enough to reach its vitals. The attempt expected me to go within hugging distance of the thing, which I couldn’t say appealed to me much, personally.

I had to keep running. Find a way to slip past it. I briefly amplified the Ghost Light and sent it higher up in front of the troll’s eyes, then shut it down. As soon as darkness returned, I sprinted left. But the troll was not as stupid as I’d hoped. Its eyes were so small and degenerated, it never fully relied on them. It trusted its nose and hearing more—though I unfortunately realized this only in retrospect.

The beast leapt sideways and was in front of me again. It brought the log down in front of my toes with a hideous crash. I staggered back. The troll lunged closer to catch me in its free hand, a hand that only had four stubby fingers.

Shrewd as a goblin, strong as a drake; it appeared trolls were every bit the menace portrayed in the books. I would gladly have missed confirming that in person.

I drew the dagger now. I would cut the palm to keep the fist from closing, then dive past its legs when it flinched. If it flinched. The palm neared fast. Large, hardened, like sculpted rock. My faith in the strategy dwindled. And then—

“—Hey, you might want to get down!”

The confident voice of a young man called from somewhere behind the troll’s back. Past the creature’s legs, I saw Raymond, his sword drawn. The person whom I’d resolved to sacrifice myself to save had, as a matter of fact, not left, but followed after us. Why? I felt dizzy, thinking how my upcoming gory death had lost all meaning.

Ray wielded his raised sword like a large brush of metal, and began to invoke a Sigil. His words and the eruption of power made the troll forget about me and look back. Air crackled and tensed. What was he thinking? Even a Court Wizard couldn’t kill an adult troll with a single spell. He would only anger the thing and die even faster. Wherever it was that the human dead went when their time came, I would find him there and let him hear it. Then I realized Ray had addressed his earlier words to me, and dropped flat against the cracked pavement, covering my head.

Finished with the invocation, Ray pointed the Kingmarker at the small of the troll’s back and shouted,

“THUNDER SPEAR—!”

A quick flash passed through my eyes and momentarily painted my sight the purest white. Followed a fittingly thunderous boom that seemed to rend air itself, as a lively tongue of golden light punched straight through the mountain troll. That livid current crossed the rotund body with ease and escaped out through the back, in a blink searing a clean round hole into the troll. Its thick skin, the fish-pale flesh, the heavy bones, and every organ in the line of fire was incinerated and ejected as charred, flaky dust. A dry scent of smoke and burning meat, vaguely fishy, spread in the air.

Its central body reduced to a smoking cavity, the troll froze. For a moment it stayed standing, looking deeply confused. The log fell from its grip. Life gradually left it, like the lingering heat of a kettle cast into snow. It wavered, and then collapsed between us, stretched out and breathless.

“In one hit…?” I blurted, despite myself.

Where had that stupendous might come from? How could a man who had only learned one Sigil command such magical force?

In two days. In only two days, he had gone from someone who could barely stand his ground against two goblins to single-handedly decimating trolls. In only two days, he had gone beyond me. Such was the hero’s ability, granted by the Gods? What else could you do but laugh?

Appearing pleased with the result, Ray sheathed his sword.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he told me with a grin. “Just a small tip, as a return favor for the lessons. Cassie taught me magic needs two things beside knowing the Sigil to do its thing: a strong image, and a strong will. You’ve got the visualization part down, all right. I’ve seen lightning bolts before, many times, so picturing it comes easy for me, but that’s not the key here. Many don’t seem to realize this, but ‘will’ this case is basically the same thing as ‘faith’. Not the faith in the gods, or anything lofty like that, like the clerics say. It turns out plain self-confidence works fine too. All you really need to do is believe in yourself, Ria. Have that unwavering conviction that ‘I can do this! I’ve got what it takes.’ Let go of what your logic says is possible. That’s not something only the hero can do, is it? I’m sure you could do it too, if you tried.”

He told me such an absurd thing, and then held out his hand to help me up.

“You’d make the little princess cry, if you bit the dust here. We can’t have that, can we? Only the last stretch left now, so let’s get going. Teacher.”

I sighed and caught his hand.

“Must you always rub salt in the wound?”