“I’m shipping up to Bostooooon whoa oh oh!” McKenzie sang, at the top of his voice, very badly indeed. The Obelisk was getting larger in the airship’s viewport – it was possible to distinguish some of the details of the carvings – and he’d just gone to full power. “Shipping up! To find my wooden LEG!”

The Posh Elf Titanic wasn’t taking kindly to either the sudden surge in power (or, presumably, McKenzie’s singing). The entire airship was vibrating underfoot in a very alarming fashion, the timbers were groaning and flexing, the viewport was crazed with a webwork of cracks, little magical sigils on the wheel were flashing red instead of glowing green, there was a pervasive burning smell drifting forward from the core, and something had just fallen off the ceiling of the bridge and thumped to the floor in the corner.

But that was all cool and fine. The fucking thing only had to hold together for another couple of minutes, because McKenzie was very much in a ramming mood. He’d tried to be careful. He’d taken advice from the cleverest, most subtle people he knew, and where had that got him? Choosing between not being able to understand a single word anyone was saying or being brainwashed by a fucking piece of public sculpture, that was where, and he didn’t like the area at all. McKenzie had not just hit fuck it, but smashed it into a million flaming bits: and not only that, this was an analogy he fully intended to take out of the metaphorical realm and make fully real.

“Are you sure he hasn’t been drinking?” Leni asked Danandra. They were behind him, huddled underneath a small shield Danandra had conjured to ward off any more falling debris that McKenzie’s mistreatment of the ship might knock loose.

“Well, one cannot ever rule that out completely, but I haven’t seen him drink anything in the last hour or so,” she answered.

“Is it the battle hymn of his people, maybe?” Leni asked.

“I doubt it,” Danandra replied. “He’s never sung anything before, a fact for which, as of now, I’m very grateful.”

There didn’t seem much else to be grateful for, right now. Danandra had devoted weeks of careful research, planning and preparation to this mission. She was realistic enough with herself to admit that she’d been willing to throw that all away in a fit of pique when something nice had happened to Leni on a day that she’d fully expected only horrible things to happen to the ex-troll, but she’d recovered enough from that to come along incognito to make sure that everything went as planned. Now, as ever when Mr. Chaos himself was involved, it was all hanging in tatters and they were just ploughing headfirst into the problem. Literally.

Leni seemed to read her mind: “We’re ramming the Obelisk, aren’t we?” She asked, in a resigned fashion.

“Inevitably,” Danandra replied. She was clenching and unclenching her hands while she brought a series of offensive spells to mind, mentally locking and loading them, ready to be unleashed. It was a habitual displacement activity that had often accompanied spellcasting in her younger days, a nervous expression of tension and uncertainty she’d thought she’d long since grown out of, but then again she couldn’t ever remember facing a situation quite like this. At least there’d only been one Mahrak, not a whole city of them.

“Oh, great,” Gerius commented from Leni’s hand. “I’ve always wanted to die horribly in an airship accident. Oh wait, it’s not an accident, this is intentional chaos.”

“Don’t worry – I’ll teleport us out of the airship before it actually hits,” Danandra said.

“Make sure you two teleport out before this bastard slams into the Obelisk!” McKenzie shouted over his shoulder. “Before boom bang, you two go swish whoosh, comprendé?”

Danandra rolled her eyes. “Yes, McKenzie,” she said, then sighed. “I suppose this is actually as good a plan as any, at this point. We know from Briztaz that this airship was expected to tie up at a certain place, and an auction of the captives was to follow. I doubt blending in and trying to reach the Obelisk was an option any more anyway – when only three people emerged it was going to be obvious that something was up.”

The Posh Elf Titanic was already past that point – she thrummed her way past a pair of airships that had been tied up to stout wooden towers, setting them to swinging wildly at their moorings. Similar towers were spaced equidistantly around a very large, flat, circular plaza that was easily bigger than the very grandest of Vyrinios’ many public squares. It contained several examples of troll statues – long-forgotten priests, sculpted as they were in life, huge and robed.

There were also people, thralled by the Obelisk, making their way wide-eyed towards the object of their fascination, the thing that dominated the area. Some of them walked alone, others in small groups.

The plaza also contained a lot of trolls. Some of them stood guard by the statuary, two to each of the statues, others...hunted. The lazy ones waited for people to come to them; the energetic or bored ones pursued individuals. This would sometimes break the spell, and someone would start running: but by and large it was a scene of mindless, unknowing doom.

Until now.

What was just a smoky odour to McKenzie, Leni and Danandra was much more evident from the ground – the Posh Elf Titanic was very much on fire: her superannuated and ill-maintained magical core’s reaction to McKenzie’s reckless burst of speed. Trolls and people were looking up in surprise and amazement as the burning airship arrowed through the air towards the Obelisk, spewing smoke and flames from her stern. You did not have to be a genius of a troll to surmise that this wasn’t a sightseeing trip – her master had violence in mind.

But this wasn’t something unforeseen.

Imperianzia, High Priestess of Trollheim, looked up from her altar before the Obelisk, where she was ministering to a small group of the more religiously inclined of her race, those who’d brought sacrifices to be blessed before eating them, or had come to request divine intercession of some form or another. She had been expecting an ordinary day of dealing with such matters, followed by a nice tasty elfmaid or two waiting for her in her palace – the drow, it turned out, were good for something apart from an occasional surreptitious variation in her diet (when other drow weren’t watching too closely). They’d started herding their own kind towards Trollheim and all they asked for in return was gold. Her temple was groaning with the collected gold of countless generations of prey. Imperianza had despatched an acolyte to this ‘auction’ with a chest of the stuff and instructions to keep their hands off whatever dinner they procured for her.

She hadn’t been expecting a flaming airship to come screaming towards the holiest of troll objects (to be fair, that wasn’t a crowded field, the Obelisk was the only thing they considered holy) – but she knew what to do.

“Harpoons!” She roared, in a bellowing voice that carried over the whole square.

The remaining crew of the Posh Elf Titanic did not, at first, notice that anything was happening.

“I think we might actually have a clear run at the fucker!” McKenzie announced with a grin.

“This is too easy,” Danandra said. “Leni?”

“Just...brace for impact,” Leni advised her. “Trolls take this place very seriously – you can’t just hit the Obelisk with an airship. I haven’t been here in a long time, and the priesthood is cagey about the details, but there are defences.”

Upon hearing the High Priestess’ command, the guards at each of the statues sprung into action. The statues proved to be hollow and empty – just thin bronze casts. They were lifted clear by their guards to reveal huge ballistae, already loaded with massive, barbed harpoons. Each harpoon had a chain connected to a capstan. The ballista crews started winding back the arms, one troll each on a pair of hand-cranks, and took aim.

“That’s probably not good,” McKenzie said, noticing the activity below.

“That’s a marked change in tone from reckless yelling,” Danandra commented with a frown, and nipped forward to look out of the viewport.

Leni followed at her heels. Her eyes went wide. “Teleporting time?”

Danandra nodded firmly. “Teleporting time.”

Eight of the ballistae were in range of the flaming airship – but they held their fire. Airships were big: they carried a lot of inertia. These trolls had drilled for this, they knew they had to fire at the same time. As they each drew their ballistae fully back, they raised a red flag.

Imperianza waited until she saw the last flag go up, then bellowed: “Loose!”

A wrist-thick iron harpoon splintered through the outer hull, three whole decks, took out the airship’s steering, smashed partly through the ceiling of the bridge and then lodged there – about an inch from McKenzie’s nose. It was not the only one to strike the ship and gain a firm hold – not that McKenzie had leisure time to go and count.

“That’s definitely not good,” he commented, stepping back. He realised he was still holding the ship’s broken-off wheel in one hand, and tossed it away with a sigh.

“Girls, time to beam down to the - and yep, they’ve already gone,” McKenzie started to say, as he realised that Danandra and Leni were nowhere to be seen.

The chains binding the Rainbow Princess Blessing to the ground went taut as the airship’s bulk strained against them, failed, and came to a halt.

McKenzie was nearly thrown off his feet by the sudden lurching stop, and would indeed have fallen had a thoughtful troll not just shot a large iron bar through the centre of the bridge, thus providing a convenient handhold. McKenzie leaned into it as if he was riding the Tube, the bent down and picked up his luggage: the ballista and his bag of reloads.

“Mind the fuckin’ gap,” he growled, and then got ready to jump out of the window.

The trolls moved from their ballistae to the huge capstans around which the chains were looped, and started to push them round. The Rainbow Princess Blessing began her final very brief journey to the ground.

Unfortunately, they’d vastly over-estimated the ship’s structural integrity. Eight chains, all pulling in different directions with the force of two fully-grown trolls on each one, proved to be too much for the poor beleaguered Rainbow Princess Blessing. With a final groan of stressed timbers and a tremendous splintering noise, she was ripped to pieces.

“The fu-”, McKenzie had time to say.

With an enormous crash that shook the plaza itself, the ship finished her final very brief journey to the ground in extremely dramatic fashion and several parts – some of which were on fire, and some of which weren’t on fire yet. Debris was scattered all around. The harpoons and chains, suddenly without anything to pull against, rebounded back towards their origin points.

This was enough to cut through even the Obelisk’s conditioning – with a chorus of screams and multi-lingual curses, the non-trollish witnesses (and even a few trolls) took to their heels to find what safety they could.

Danandra and Leni had materialised next to one of the ballistae, and, in all the chaos, had not yet been noticed. Neither had they actually done anything yet – like everyone else, they were hypnotised by the spectacle of the Rainbow Princess Blessing simultaneously burning, crashing and being ripped apart by huge chains.

One example of which was heading towards them at high speed.

“Fuck!” Leni swore.

The two trolls looked around. One of them sniffed. “I smell a traitor!” He rumbled.

“You have very much prioritised the wrong thing,” Danandra said with a dark smirk, then grabbed Leni’s arm and blipped them a few metres to the right. The chain took out the ballista, the two trolls manning it, and the stone pedestal upon which it had rested.

This put them out in the open – but chaos still very much reigned, there were no trolls within olfactory range, and for the moment they went unnoticed.

“Danna, you know how he’s kinda turned off his zappy-burny trick?” Leni asked, uncertainly.

“If, Leni, by ‘kinda turned off his zappy-burny trick’ you are referring to how he has suppressed the quintessence in what is a staggering new piece of lore surrounding that mythical ability, which he annoyingly neglected to mention until today, then yes, I know,” Danna replied.

“Well, do you think he might also have suppressed his, y’know, general indestructibility, too? ‘Cos as much as I hate to mention it, we might be looking at a dead McKenzie here,” Leni said, in a worried tone.

“Yes, obviously he’s dead. Very tragic, condolences, jolly good fellow he touched all our lives, sadly missed etcetera, can we go now please?” Gerius piped up hopefully.

“No, Gerius,” Danandra said. “You will recall that you shot him several times earlier, to no effect.”

“Well I wouldn’t say no effect. He was definitely...inconvenienced,” Gerius protested. “Also, the responsibility for target choice lies squarely with the archer, not the bow, that is not on me, please be sure to tell him that when he can understand you again.”

“If you think he’s dead anyway, why are you worried?” Leni asked.

“It’s more ‘hope’ than ‘think’,” Gerius confessed. “If your friend has shuffled off this mortal coil, or rather screamed off it whilst on fire, then there’s no longer any reason for us to be here, am I right?”

“Wrong,” Danandra said decisively.

The reason for her certainty was the sight of McKenzie’s booted foot kicking a partially-alight chunk of wood out of his way and several metres across the plaza. He emerged from the wreckage, smoking and ash-covered and, seeing that wave after wave of trolls were not within imminent attacking distance, patted out a small fire on his left arm, dusted himself off, coughed, and then reached back down into the hole to retrieve the ballista and bolts.

“Well that sucked,” he said to himself, then reached awkwardly around behind his back to jiggle his jacket and shirt around – there was a lot of ash stuck down there and it itched. He jumped up and down to dislodge it.

“Hell’s hunger, what is he doing now?” Leni asked.

“Wardance?” Danandra hazarded a guess.

McKenzie was unaware of their scrutiny. Having achieved an acceptably low level of burning cinders down his back, he loaded the ballista, slung his spare bolts over his back, and then started towards the Obelisk.

This didn’t escape Imperianza’s notice. “Defend the Obelisk!” She roared in a clerically amplified voice.

McKenzie heard it as just a really loud, terrifying roar but he could guess what it meant, because from all around the plaza trolls responded to it, and wave after wave of them now were an issue. They were coming from the Obelisk, where there’d already been a group of them, from the far side of the plaza, from left and right and, he supposed, from behind too.

He ran flat out and prepared to jump – but, for a wonder, stopped to think first. That would land him short of the Obelisk, right in the midst of a second group of trolls which were already converging on it.

“Not yet,” he said.

Time to thin the numbers down first. He slowed to a walk, aimed, and fired.

The ballista clacked and jerked in his hands as he emptied the hopper. The bolts hissed through the air into the oncoming trolls, piercing clothing and armour alike. Those that were struck continued their charges for a few moments, until their eyes went wide as they realised something was not right, then collapsed thrashing to the ground.

McKenzie dug out a handful of reloads and slotted them into the hopper – this was fiddly, as they didn’t come out of the bag all pointing in the right direction: McKenzie had attempted to pack them all in facing the same way but there’d been a fair amount of shaking going on since then. His rate of fire dropped, and he could hear roaring from behind, now, too. Somewhat belatedly, he realised that he’d neglected to organise a backup weapon.

Fortunately he had a backup Leni. A small, blonde-haired whirring ball of death swirled into existence in front of a huge troll that was bearing down on McKenzie from the rear. She ducked underneath as it swung an axe towards her then, with a speed that seemed impossible with such an oversized weapon, she stabbed it surgically in three separate places. The troll fell to the ground, spasming and choking on it’s own blood.

“Nineteen,” she told McKenzie, with an impish grin. McKenzie grunted in response.

“Is it safe to open the eyes I don’t have yet?” Gerius asked. He was starting to feel that he’d never feel safe again.

“You’d better,” Leni said, as she dropped her blade and unslung the bow “Time to walk the walk that you were talking earlier.”

“That is a really insensitive thing to say to someone without legs,” Gerius chided her. “Or indeed a body.”

“Kill twenty trolls for me and I’ll apologise,” Leni said – pulling out an arrow from the generous supply she’d stuffed into the quiver and nocking it.

Danandra also swished into being next to McKenzie.

“Eyes front,” she said to Leni. “I’ve got our back.”

With one hand she made a complex gesture, calling into being a demonically-glowing red orb that hovered above their heads. It began spitting out a stream of equally red bolts that streaked out to slam into trolls approaching from behind. With each bolt it grew fractionally smaller – but it was a good metre across to start with. After seeing two or three of their fellows have very large holes indeed blown in them by the bolts, the approaching trolls took what cover they could.

With the other hand, she pointed to McKenzie’s bag of ammo and snapped her fingers imperiously. The bolts within started to obediently hover up into the air, arrange themselves in the correct orientation, then drop neatly down into the ballista’s hopper.

“Nice!” McKenzie said with a grin, noting both the magical hover turret and the equally magical belt feed to his ballista. His rate of fire climbed back up.

And now he wasn’t the only one firing. Leni drew the arrow back with ease.

“Ooh! Someone’s been working out,” Gerius noted. “I have a very considerable draw weight, you know, and you’re what, five feet tall?”

“Size,” Leni muttered emphatically, “isn’t everything,” She released the arrow.

It took a troll directly in the chest, blasted through it, and kept going. It hit two more before lodging in the last one, where it exploded in a flash of green fire. The troll’s legs went down, his arms went sideways, and his head went up, where for a few milliseconds a very surprised expression was clear upon his face.

“Holy shit!” McKenzie exclaimed, between shots. “I took one of those in the bollocks!” Nobody understood him.

“Okay, that was impressive,” Leni admitted to Gerius. “You’re better in a fight than you think, Gerius.”

“No, I just really don’t want these chaps near me so I’m trying particularly hard right now,” the bow said. “Next arrow, please. Quickly.”

It wasn’t just troll warriors they were facing – there were mages amongst their number, too. One of them spread her hands wide, conjuring up a ball of blue, crackling electricity.

“Too weak by far,” Danandra muttered. “Here, let me help.” She gave the ball a hard stare.

The troll mage’s expression turned into a frown, then grew increasingly desperate, as her working started to expand and crackle between her hands. Before, her actions had been that of a sculptor, moulding a work, albeit with energy rather than clay. Now she was straining to keep it under control. She set her feet in order to cast it forth – but it was too late. The crackling orb flared, seemed to shrink down to a single point of intensely bright light, and then exploded with a blinding blue flash. The troll mage was reduced to cinders on the wind – the trolls within a few metres of her were merely burnt to a crisp and still vaguely recognisable as things that had, perhaps, once been alive at some point.

“Who would like to try next?” Danandra asked. “Nobody? My turn, then.”

Danandra’s version of the crackling blue ball was formed within the space of a heartbeat, rather than several seconds – and she did one with each hand, the next one appearing as she threw the last in a never-ending stream of sparky blue death. Spotting three trolls that were (somewhat stupidly, it would soon transpire) close together, she brought her hands together above her head, drew them apart with a stream of blue fire writhing between them, then whirled it like a lasso and threw it. It hissed through the air, wrapped itself around the trio of trolls, and then very abruptly and with literally crushing force shrank down to the size of a ring. The three trolls didn’t even have time to roar in pain – they were simply ripped in two in a fountain of blood and gore.

McKenzie, for once, found himself doing the least damage. His shots were slower, not guaranteed to hit, and were not capable of blasting through the target in order to get at extra targets behind it. But he was keeping them going – and he thought he’d seen an opportunity.

At the base of the Obelisk, past the oncoming horde, stood a very large example of a troll. She was Malice-sized, wore multi-coloured robes and a headdress of some kind, and seemed to be directing the actions of the others. She was only visible occasionally, glimpsed through the dwindling troll onslaught.

McKenzie was running short on bolts – there were only three left in the hopper, and Danandra’s magic had emptied the bag.

“Fuck it,” he said. “Worth a pop.”

He discharged two of the bolts into the two nearest trolls, then loaded the last one. The hopper was in the way now – he tore it off and tossed it aside. Then he crouched, and jumped straight up, bringing the ballista to high port as he did so.

This gave him a better angle on the colourfully dressed troll. He aimed and fired as he reached the top of his jump.

The bolt streaked out towards Imperianza, and McKenzie had judged it just right – his aim was true, it was headed right for her heart.

It stopped in mid-air, mere inches from her skin, as McKenzie hit the ground, unable to see what had happened.

Imperianza’s eye’s widened. “Praise be to your might and hunger,” she breathed, plucking the bolt from the air, examining it, then throwing it to the ground before her dismissively.

Have no fear, a voice within her mind said. We know what you face. We know their weakness. Before the hour is done, the traitor shall be devoured.

The day, she now knew, would be hers. The troll gods themselves had taken a hand.

“I’m out!” McKenzie said, dropping the ballista and instead picking up the nearest weapon he could see: Leni’s oversized sword.

“I’m out!” Leni said, unknowingly echoing his exact message, if not his words. “Hey that’s mine!” She added, as she slung Gerius round her back and noticed that McKenzie had stolen her sword.

“Ahem?” Gerius prompted.

“What?” Leni asked.

“By my count we just slew fifty-seven trolls,” Gerius told her. “Highly impressive work, even if I do say so myself, even more so because I’m literally shaking in fear right now.”

“Oh, is that what that funny vibration is?”

“Well, that and the fact you’re literally wearing me right now with my string between your-”

“Ew! That will do, Gerius,” Leni said assertively.

“Okay, sorry – but I’m waiting,” the bow replied, somewhat peevishly.

“For what exactly?”

“The apology you promised me after twenty trolls, so that’s nearly three apologies you owe me.”

“Fine: sorry, sorry and mostly sorry. Happy now?”

“No, we’re still probably about to die,” Gerius said unhappily.

“We’re always probably about to die, bow. Get used to it,” Danandra told him, entering the conversation as the last troll behind them died. Her glowing orb had reduced the chunk of airship wreckage it was hiding behind to matchwood, and had then done largely the same to the troll itself. It was now no larger than an apple, though – with a somewhat anti-climactic fizzling noise it fell to the ground and evaporated.

“You are on fire today, Danna,” Leni said. “I don’t think I’ve ever really seen you cut loose with, like, everything before.”

Dananda snorted lightly. “You still haven’t, Ellie,” she said.

“Ellie?” Leni asked.

“Just go with it,” Danandra advised her. “I’m dealing with a lot of conflicting emotions about you right now and that’s my solution to having to trust you in this fight. This is not the time to question it, am I clear?” She added, in a tone that brooked absolutely no argument whatsoever.

“Oh-kay, I officially agree and my name is Ellie now I suppose,” Leni/Ellie said. “Wait, holy shit, did the killing trolls to make you happy thing actually work?”

“Wouldn’t rule it out,” Danandra said quietly.

“You guys have a really weird dynamic as a group, you know that right?” Gerius asked.

“Shut up, Gerius,” both women said.

“Are you two having a moment? You are, aren’t you? Definite breakthrough vibes in the air right now,” McKenzie said.

“Shut up, McKenzie,” both women also said. “This is not how I wanted this to go, and I’m blaming you for that,” Danandra added.

Unlike Gerius, though, McKenzie ignored the instruction even though he didn’t need any special powers to understand their tone. “Oh, live a little, Danna. So many dead trolls. I am feeling good about this right now, and also, don’t even need a truth-wotsit on to say this because in the moment and all that, you are kinda hot when you pull out the stops and go full vengeful battle mage. Little bit jealous of Talius right now, not gonna lie.” He fanned his face to demonstrate his point.

Danandra shot him a narrow-eyed look. “What was that about my boyfriend?”

“Erm, more pressing problems, perhaps?” Leni pointed out.

There was still a big group of trolls guarding the Obelisk. Their advance had stopped and they were clustered together, behind shields of both a magical and metallic nature, but they were still big, and armed, and there was no way to the Obelisk except through them.

“I suppose we might as well get stuck in, then,” McKenzie said, walking forward in an implacable sort of way.

“Um...are we doing this, then? Advancing?” Leni asked.

“Looks like it,” Danandra agreed.

“Nope! Bad idea!” Gerius protested in a yelp.

They started forward and caught up. Leni retrieved a sword from the floor on the way.

There was about fifty yards between them, then forty, and then the trolls started to look very close indeed.

“I recognise her. That’s Imperianza,” Leni said, pointing to the robed troll at the back, who was now more visible. “High Priestess. She’ll be in charge.”

“Fuck I missed,” McKenzie grumbled, seeing this. “And people are always saying if you aim for the Queen, you’d best not miss.”

“So the traitor has come to meet her fate!” Imperianza called out.

“Your time is over, Imperianza,” Leni called back.

“It was an impressive display of violence, I will grant you,” Imperianza replied. “Many martyrs were made here today. They will live in honour forever in the palace of our gods, with all the prey they could ever wish for – and soon that will include you. For all eternity, you will either be inside a troll’s stomach or on your way there, and the first one shall be mine!”

“Death first!” Leni roared back, in nearly as earth-shaking a roar as an actual troll.

“Whoa,” McKenzie said, looking at her sideways. “That’s a lot of noise for a tiny elf-troll-girl thing.”

Imperianza wasn’t impressed. “And you won’t be alone,” she said with an evil smile. “Traitor for main course – but elfmage for starters.”

Danandra merely smiled. “Never again,” she said. “For anyone.”

“I don’t know what you’re all saying but I’m feeling left out of the pre-fight insults, so...go fuck yourself!” McKenzie shouted.

“Ah, the demon of the Assassin’s Guild, is it not?” Imperianza said, as the two opposing forces came ever closer. “I make you this offer once and once only, one predator to another: abandon your friends and turn away. You know not what you face.”

“I didn’t understand that but it doesn’t matter because the answer would be ‘fuck you’ no matter what you said,” McKenzie snarled back.

They stopped with twenty yards remaining, by some sort of unspoken agreement.

“Well, this is it,” Leni said to Danandra. “For what it’s worth, one last time: teleport away. I’m doing this no matter what, and McKenzie is, y’know, immortal probably – but...that’s a lot of trolls to fight through. I really don’t want you to die, Danna.”

“You’re not wrong,” Danandra said. “That is a lot of trolls.”

“And...also about the you not dying part?” Leni asked hopefully.

“That,” Danandra replied, “I’m going to have to leave in your hands, Ellie.”

“Wait what?”

“I’ll clear a path. Just make sure McKenzie gets to the Obelisk.”

“Danna – are you about to do a McKenzie thing? That’s his thing not yours! Yours is teleporting to safety, please do that instead!” Leni protested desperately.

“Remember how I said you still hadn’t seen me cut loose?” Danandra asked. She was clenching and unclenching her hands by her sides, Leni noticed, and there was also a sudden, building sense of pressure.

“Um, yes but I-”

“Well then,” Danandra said, and jumped into the air. Way into the air. Once there, she started to glow with a purple light, and hovered.

“Holy fucking shit!” McKenzie yelped.

The trolls roared and charged.

Danandra came back down like an angry, glowing comet, fist first, with a screamed word of magic, a deafening noise like someone was tearing the sky in two, and an eye-watering purple flash. She punched the ground, blasting a deep crater into the flagstones of the plaza, and where she made contact, a jagged network of cracks, filled with seething purple magic, shot forth towards the charging trolls.

Any troll that they touched was instantly vapourised in a flash of purple. Those they came close to were electrocuted and killed. Even those they missed entirely were thrown high and far, without an intact bone left in their bodies.

The altar before the Obelisk was smashed into gravel and scattered throughout the plaza – any troll near it was riddled with holy shrapnel that sank in deep.

Imperianza called forth a clerical shield, but even she was thrown back hard against the Obelisk, then fell to the ground, covering her head with her arms protectively.

The Obelisk itself was shaken on it’s foundations – the dust of centuries was knocked loose from the carvings up it’s sides.

Anyone for hundreds of miles around, even the drow mages on the airship that was already high and far away, felt the disturbance Danandra’s spell created.

The advancing trolls had been decimated – only a few remained alive, but that few would still be enough to give Leni and McKenzie something to think about.

Danandra looked up, smiled a dangerous smile, and waved mockingly at the trolls with her free hand. The purple fire in the ground boiled up into the air, forming a glowing gas, and with piteous shrieks, the remaining trolls literally melted.

Danandra lifted her fist up from the ground and brushed a few bits of shattered stone from it, then gestured towards the destruction she’d just wrought.

“See? Clear path,” she said, and then collapsed, halfway out of the smoking hole in the ground she’d just created.

“Danna!” Leni cried, crouching down beside her.

“Fuck me!” McKenzie breathed in amazement, then: “She okay?” He asked, concerned.

“Get. It. Done!” Danandra said hoarsely, doubled over with an arm around her midsection.

Leni grabbed McKenzie’s arm and shoved him bodily towards the Obelisk.

“Danna’s done her part, now we do ours,” she said, dragging him along.

McKenzie got the idea and grinned. “Okay – smashing time.”

Imperianza, however, was getting to her feet.

“I’ve got her,” Leni said, with a glare at the priestess. “Go do your thing.”

Now, said a voice within Imperianza’s mind.

Imperianza pointed at Leni, and her eyes started to glow green. Leni screamed and fell to the ground, her sword clattering away.

“Leni, fuck! What!” McKenzie asked.

“Ouch!” Gerius yelped – he was underneath her.

Leni shrieked and squirmed on the floor. She lashed out convulsively, knocking McKenzie to the ground. And then...she was torn apart.

It didn’t happen like McKenzie had just seen happen to a number of trolls, though. For a moment she had two faces, one elven, one trollish, both screaming. Then the huge troll by the Obelisk made a strange pulling gesture like she was reeling in a particularly large fish. Leni rolled away in one direction, and something else, something very big and green, rolled away in the other.

“What the fuck?” McKenzie said, as the new arrival stood up.

“What the fuck?” Leni asked, similarly getting to her feet.

“What the fuck?” Danandra asked, uncharacteristically swearing, as she beheld the scene before her.

“Hey Danna! Hi McKenzie! And hello tasty-looking elftreat me,” Violentia said, dusting herself off and picking up Leni’s – her – discarded sword. “It’s great to be back.”

She was just like McKenzie remembered, dented armour, gold-tipped tusk and everything.

“What the fuck?” McKenzie asked again.

“Been given a shot at redemption, that’s what the fuck, McKenzie,” Violentia answered, with a wink.

She could understand him, but he still had his Q-fu pushed right down.

“What the fuck?” He asked again.

“You feelin’ okay there buddy?” Violentia asked, with a quizzical expression.

It was seldom possible to faze McKenzie for very long, though.

“Whatever. Just that kind of day, I suppose,” he said. “Been regretting not killing you anyway. Time for some fuckin’ closure.”

He leapt forward and swung the trollsword at Leni. Leni parried.

“Okay, wait up a minute,” she said.

“No,” McKenzie said, and swung again.

“Look, there’s a deal on the table here,” Violentia said, turning aside that blow too. “Walk away from this and never come back – you can even take Danandra, can’t believe I’m saying that, but they say that’s the deal. Just leave me with Princess Tasty here to...let’s say re-integrate.” She indicated the elf-Leni, who was looking on aghast.

“’They’?” McKenzie asked. “Who the fuck are ‘they’?”

Imperianza – or someone, anyway, also chimed in at that point. “Heed her words, immortal,” she said, in a truly strange and unsettling choral voice comprised of a number of different growls and snarls. “This is our holiest of holy places, and thus we were permitted to intervene.”

“Okay, them,” McKenzie said. “Whoever they are.”

“That’s my actual gods there McKenzie, who you’ve royally pissed off,” Leni supplied. “And this ain’t a fight you can win. Think about it.”

McKenzie did so, frowning. “Nope, not getting anything.”

Danandra, on the other hand, understood immediately but was too hoarse to shout. Elf-Leni got it a few moments later.

“The curse,” she said. “Oh shit! The curse!”

Violentia looked at her with an evil smile. Leni went pale as the implications sunk in.

McKenzie thought about it a bit more while he hit Leni a few more times. This time she didn’t bother blocking his blows, she just let them hit her – but nothing was drawing blood. She winced, and said ‘ouch!’ - but no actual damage seemed to be happening.

But something else very strange was happening.

“Ow! Elf-Leni said, as she felt a series of blows to her body, but there was nobody attacking her.

All of this was lost on McKenzie: “Right. Thought about it, and I reckon I’ll hit a bit harder,” he shrugged, and did so, really laying into Violentia with sweeps of the sword so hard he forgot about physics and knocked himself off his feet when a particularly strong one actually connected.

“Argh!” Elf-Leni yelped, as she was knocked sideways by some invisible force.

“Not going to lie, McKenzie, that hurts like a son of a bitch,” Violentia said, rubbing her right arm. “But I’m not going anywhere. Oh, by the way-” then she swung a punch at him that caught him unawares and off-balance. He was knocked flat, rolled across the cracked floor a few times, and fetched up next to elf-Leni.

“Ooh, that felt good,” Violentia grinned, cracking her knuckles.

Elf-Leni looked at her hand in shock, as her own knuckles involuntarily cracked themselves. She grabbed McKenzie and shook him. “We can’t kill her,” she told him frantically. “The troll gods have...divided us somehow, but she’s me, I can feel what’s happening to her, so she’s covered by the curse! We can hurt each other, but not kill each other. All she has to do is delay us until more trolls come, and they will come! Hell’s hunger, we are so fucked!”

“What?” McKenzie asked, dazed. He couldn’t understand.

“Oops, my bad, forgot to say: my gods want you to understand me, McKenzie. They’re not too bothered if anyone else does,” Violentia told him. “However, allow me to translate: she said you’re fucked, and she’s not wrong.”

“Meh,” McKenzie said, getting up. “So you’re swordproof. Lucky you. Not my only option, though, is it?”

He dropped the sword and made to snap his fingers.

“Go ahead,” Violentia laughed. “Use the quint-wotsit. I’m reliably informed that the moment you do, we’ll turn into best buddies.”

McKenzie lowered his hand. “Shitfuck.”

“I’d forgotten quite how much of a dumbass you were, McKenzie,” Violentia said, still laughing.

“Oh I’m gonna make you regret saying that,” McKenzie told her in a growl.

“You really aren’t,” Violentia answered.

McKenzie levered up a big chunk of shattered paving from the floor, set his feet, and heaved it towards the other troll that was hanging back, green-eyed, by the Obelisk. It was a good throw, but it sparked harmlessly off to the side before it hit her. Something was shielding her.

“Yep, still really aren’t,” Violentia said. “Try again, by all means. Plenty of rocks around.”

McKenzie swore, then saw something on the ground between Leni’s feet, and grinned. “Bingo,” he said, and dived for it.

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She caught him with a huge overhand blow as he rolled and made a grab for the object he’d seen, but he dived between her legs, twisted and came up behind her holding the ballista bolt that (he assumed) he’d missed with earlier. He jumped up and plunged it into the soft flesh by her collarbone.

Violentia ignored it, grabbed him, and threw him back towards Leni. He managed to roll as he landed and came up in a crouch facing her.

“You ain’t gettin’ past me,” she promised.

“Tell the devil that McKenzie sent you,” he told her, in an ice-cold voice of pure hatred – then he seemed to remember something. “Oh! While you’re at it, could you mention that the guild wants a refund on the bottle of his piss we took as part payment that one time. I nearly drank that, that was not cool.”

“Yeah, that’s a no to...whatever that’s about,” Violentia said, digging around under her armour by her neck. She retrieved the ballista bolt and tossed it to him. “Here – have another go.”

McKenzie caught it – it was intact, devoid of any Violentia-blood, the poison still inside it’s glass chamber. He grunted in disappointment and dropped it.

Leni picked it up. She frowned, and pinched her arm hard, twisting the flesh.

“The fuck?” Violentia swore, her hand going to her own arm.

“However many goes it takes, you fucking cow,” McKenzie told Violentia, and tensed.

Leni laid a hand on his arm, and shook her head.

“You can’t win this one, McKenzie,” she told him. “But I think I can.”

McKenzie responded only with a puzzled expression.

“Ellie no!” Danandra – ahead of the curve as usual - cried out hoarsely.

“Wait, Ellie!?” Violentia laughed. “Oh wow, eating you is almost going to be doing you a favour, Ellie. Do you put a little heart above the ‘i’ when you write it? I bet you do.”

Leni held the ballista bolt in both hands.

“Okay, I’m a magic bow, so I can of course fire that,” Gerius said. “But I gotta warn you, there is something really strange at play here. I’m not sure it’ll work.”

“It’s fine, Gerius,” Leni said hollowly. “This’ll work.”

She pointed the bolt towards her own chest.

“Wait, what are you-” McKenzie started to speak.

“Um, no, bad idea bad idea bad idea!” Gerius gabbled in protest.

She drove the bolt home, and gasped in pain.

“Leni! Leni, what the fuck?” McKenzie asked, shocked to his core.

Blood spurted from the wound and Leni collapsed to the ground, McKenzie moving to catch her.

“What, why? Why’d you do that?” He asked the woman in his arms.

Leni blinked up at him and smiled. She could guess what he was saying. “Clearing you a path, just like Danna did,” she said.

“What have you done?” Violentia demanded, her hand going to her own chest. Blood was dripping from beneath her breastplate. “How the fuck...?” Her voice trailed off.

“The curse protects us from our former master, and our friends,” Leni replied, faintly – but the troll could hear. “But I was betting it doesn’t protect us from ourselves. I’ll see you in hell, Violentia.”

Violentia was sinking to her knees.

“Nope,” she said. “Nope nope nope. You might look like an elf, smell like an elf and I sure as fuck hope you taste like one, but we’re trolls. It’s gonna take more than a ballista bolt to put one of us down. I-”

And then she stopped, and dropped her sword as her arm began shaking.

“Okay what the fuck is this now?” She asked – slurring her words.

“Leni!” McKenzie said again, feeling helpless.

“Put me down, McKenzie. Finish this,” she said, looking meaningfully towards the Obelisk.

McKenzie got her meaning, but he didn’t want to leave her. “Shit. Shit! I didn’t want this. I know you can’t understand me and I’ve been proper shitty to you on this trip, but I didn’t want this, okay? Elf Leni isn’t so bad, actually it’s turned out she’s pretty fucking cool, you can yammer on about feelings all you like, just don’t die, okay?”

He looked up in surprise at a soft touch on his arm – Danandra had dragged herself over.

“I’ve got her,” she told him, taking Leni from his arms and placing her head in her own lap. She jerked her head towards the Obelisk. “Go!”

Her meaning was unmistakeable. McKenzie released Leni, but gave her hand a squeeze – the best he could do. She smiled. He smiled back, then stood and turned to the Obelisk with a bleak expression.

“I’m sorry, I have no magic left in me to attempt a healing spell. In any case I’m not very good at thaumatoclerical workings anyway,” Danandra told Leni, with a really strange, twisted expression on her face. Leni realised it was sadness.

“Don’t even try,” she told her quietly. “If you heal me, you heal her. That cannot happen. Let us both die.”

Danandra nodded. “Very well – but only she will die alone. You are with-” the elfmage swallowed “-a friend. Do you understand?”

“Thank you,” Leni told her.

McKenzie picked up the sword again – he didn’t know exactly what was going to happen now, but better to have a weapon than not. He stalked towards Violentia. She had slumped to the floor, on her side, with blood pooling around her midsection. She was shuddering and convulsing, McKenzie guessed from the poison that elf-Leni had somehow managed to get into her system, causing the puddle to ripple.

“Hey,” she said weakly, trying to reach for him. “McKenzie. Help.”

He was going to just walk past, but found he couldn’t. McKenzie had a wide selection of not entirely pleasant traits, and one of them was a very strong desire to have the last word. He bent down briefly by her head.

“Sorry, what was that?” He asked, frowning.

“H-help,” she croaked faintly,

“Yep, nope, still nothing, sorry,” he apologised breezily. “It’s quite noisy what with the various fires and the background noise of dying trolls, and you’re shaking like a shitting dog, there, that must really suck. One more time?” He held his free hand up to his ear.

“Help. P-please,” Violentia rasped. “Use the quintessence, do something, anything, I’m…”

“Fucked,” McKenzie growled into her ear. “What you are is fucked, in this world and the next – and in every single way, from treating your friends like shit so you ended up in this mess, right down to literally giving us the weapon that Leni just used to kill you, you did this to yourself. Think about that when you’re choking your last breath out in a pool of your own blood.”

He left her there, and headed for the Obelisk. It was huge, several metres around at the base, and towered up into the sky like some kind of knife thrust into the heart of the heavens.

The way was blocked by the huge, glowy-green-eyed troll in the inappropriately colourful get-up.

“Stay your hand, immortal,” the troll said, in her strange voice of layered growls. “You will be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams – this we vow.”

“Move out of the way,” McKenzie told her, or them, or it.

“There is gold aplenty in our temple – rubies and emeralds from a thousand forgotten crowns, diamonds the size of a man’s heart. Name your price,” the voices offered.

“Hmm,” McKenzie said. “Where’s that?”

“In our temple, which is-” the troll stopped, and narrowed her eyes. “Obviously we shall tell you no more until you swear to cease this heresy.”

“Aw, go on. Just point in the general direction, even,” McKenzie asked, in a fake-wheedling tone.

“Toy not with our patience!”

“Ooh, stroppy. Thanks for the tip off, though, I’m totally raiding that later. When I’m done ruining your day, that is.”

“A different coin, then,” the voices continued, cajoling. “Power? Women? Our divine influence can give you many things.”

McKenzie ruthlessly stepped on the thought of ‘a way back to Earth’ that sprang up, accompanied by thoughts of Narra. The price was too high.

“I do alright on my own on both counts, I’ll have you know,” he snorted instead, as dismissively as he could.

“You do not wish to suffer the consequences of our displeasure,” the troll threatened.

“If you could do anything, you would have already,” McKenzie shrugged, and raised the sword ready to stab.

“We are gods!” The troll growl-hissed. “We will have our vengeance if you destroy all our worshippers! This too we vow.”

“Okay, bye,” McKenzie said, and pulled back ready to strike.

The huge troll blinked – her eyes went from glowing green to normal red, and she threw herself to the side, out of the way. “No!”

McKenzie, despite the general grimness of the situation, barked out a laugh. “Faithful ‘til the last, you are. Wow.”

The way to the Obelisk was clear.

“Here goes nothin’,” McKenzie said – he tossed the sword to one side, put his hands on the Obelisk, and let the quintessence surge back up inside him.

The bracelet immediately hissed away into nothingness. With the quintessence released, McKenzie’s magical sense returned. The Obelisk positively roared with magical power – the sudden sense of it was like a physical blow to McKenzie’s entire body.

But he barely noticed that, because suddenly everything was wonderful. Amazing. All he’d ever wanted, just in this moment, just from being here, stood in front of this fantastic lovely piece of stone.

“It’s so beautiful,” he breathed.

A tidal wave of power rushed into him. The ground shook. The troll priestess scrambled back away as fast as her bulk allowed.

McKenzie began to glow, and laughed maniacally. His body was wreathed in sparks, tingling all over as the power of the Obelisk howled into his body. The Obelisk itself also glowed – and cracks started to appear in it’s surface.

“Has he done it?” Leni asked – she had her eyes closed but it was impossible not to sense that something titanic was underway.

“It’s begun,” Danandra confirmed.

“Get out of here, Danna,” Leni said. “I’m done for, we both know it.”

“No, we’re both getting out of here,” Danandra said, pulling Leni back towards the crater.

Violentia’s convulsions had started to subside – but then again, so had her heartbeat and her breathing, both of which were pretty fucking important to her, and she’d only just got them back, too. To add insult to mortal injury, as she looked at her elf-self (who she’d planned to eat) being dragged away by the one elf in the entire world that she most regretted never being able to eat, she was hungry, too. Not good, for a dying troll: Hell waited for those of her race who failed to die with a belly full of prey.

She craned her head round to see the glowing McKenzie draining the Obelisk.

“You...always were...a fucking showoff,” she grumbled painfully.

Then she gasped, went rigid, and died.

Leni too gave vent to a sudden cry of pain.

“Ellie!” Dananadra paused in her arduous dragging. “Ellie?”

Leni’s eyes were closed, her chest unmoving.

Then she drew in breath. “Still here,” she said. “Somehow.”

McKenzie, just as had happened in the forest when he tried to absorb what amounted to a nuclear explosion, was starting to realise that he’d zigged when he should very much have zagged. The power flowing into him stopped making him all tingly and giggly, and instead started to make him feel like he was about to explode – an altogether too familiar feeling to him.

He also found that he couldn’t pull his hands away from the Obelisk, which was bad, because now he’d finally found it he would suffer no harm to come to it. If he was going to go boom, he didn’t want to do it where it could hurt the Obelisk.

“Um...shit...fuck,” he muttered, although the chaotic magic currently raging through him served to amplify it to a roar. “Danna, little help? I’m stuck to the Obelisk and about to explode! Again!”

They could, of course, understand him now. “Destroy it, you fool!” Danandra shouted back from the crater, coughing. She’d pulled Leni down into it with her, for whatever protection that would afford them.

“No way!” McKenzie roared back. “It’s too shiny! I won’t hurt it!”

Danna gave a grim bark of desperate laughter. “Oh, you will. Willingly or not, you’re about to destroy it, and us with it.”

Leni’s eyes shot open. “The Archmage’s spell!” She gasped.

“What?” Danandra asked.

“I think you missed that meeting,” Leni said, getting up with a wince. “McKenzie, use the Archmage’s spell!” She shouted, as loud as she could after stabbing herself, which, it turned out, was still pretty loud.

“Which one!” He shouted back. “Also: hey you’re alive!”

“The one she gave you at the meeting!”

“Erm...when?”

Leni rolled her eyes. “Literally bleeding to death here and he can’t remember a fuckin’ meeting,” she grumbled, then raised her voice again: “After you nearly drank devil piss!”

“What?” Danandra asked, equal parts amazed at Leni’s sudden strength and confused at the mention of McKenzie drinking demonic urine.

“But I can’t hurt the Obelisk!” McKenzie shouted back.

“It won’t, remember?” Leni yelled, then coughed. “Ow.”

Oh, right, that, McKenzie thought, finally recalling the conversation. The Archmage was still very misguided about the Obelisk, though, she still thought of it as a magical mind-control device rather than the gateway to serenity that it so obviously was. Could he trust what she’d said?

Fortunately, another of McKenzie’s character traits of debatable virtue was hitting fuck it a bit sooner than most people.

“Fuck it,” he said, and dug the spell out of mental-magical storage. He let it hoover up both what the Obelisk was venting and what he was dangerously overstuffed with.

Xixaxa’s magical miracle gadget manifested behind him as a whirling ball of green energy, and grew slowly and slowly larger as it fed on the Obelisk’s magic. McKenzie gritted his teeth and held on, or rather was held onto.

Until he wasn’t – McKenzie’s hands came free at exactly the same time as his mind. As it’s power dipped below a certain level, the Obelisk’s influence flickered and died. The remnants of it’s energy rushed through him and into the spinning Xixxy-ball, which was now very brightly glowing, rotating like a high speed drill and the size of a house.

There was no sound, or flash of light, or gust of eldritch wind. Nothing like that. But all around the world, everyone from the highest born elflord to the lowest beggar on the streets of Vyrinios woke up to a sudden realisation, something they’d always known, but never, until now, thought important: trolls eat people!

And following that, it did not take long for the knives to come out.

In Trollheim, more cracks ran up the side of the Obelisk, and chunks of it started to flake off.

“What have you done?” The troll-priestess asked, aghast. She was curled up on the floor, looking up with wide eyes – or across, rather, even cowering on the floor her eyes were level with McKenzie’s.

“Broke your fucking mind control spike, innit? Oops,” McKenzie told her with a wicked grin. Having successfully siphoned the power out of the Obelisk and into the spell, he felt fine. Brilliant, in fact. “One last thing to do…”

McKenzie flexed his neck, jammed his feet into some handy cracks in the ground, put his hands back on the Obelisk and pushed as hard as he could.

“No!” The troll protested – but didn’t make any kind of effort to stop McKenzie.

The Obelisk groaned, made a few ominous cracking and grinding noises, and then ponderously fell to the earth with a tremendous boom, shattering into countless pieces.

“And scene,” McKenzie said, dusting his hands off on his jacket.

“No!” The troll said again.

“You,” McKenzie remarked to her, “need to work on your vocabulary. You’re very repetitive, did you know that?”

“You will pay dearly for this outrage!” Was her answer, as she got to her feet with eyes once more glowing green. “Prey creatures will tremble at the recollection of your fate for millenia to come!”

“See, that’s better,” McKenzie replied. “Eloquent, creative, long words and that. Well done.”

“Look around,” the troll gods rumbled at him.

McKenzie did. “Yep. Lots of chaos. Reminds me, I better go check on my friends.”

“Look further.”

McKenzie did.

“Ohhhh,” he said. “Them.”

More trolls were heading in from the city to the centre of the devastated plaza – and it was a fair bet that they weren’t coming to provide humanitarian assistance.

“Your witch has exhausted her power, and the traitor lies dying,” the troll gods said, pointing to Danandra and Leni. “How now will you-”

McKenzie once again jammed his boots into the ground, grabbed the troll’s outstretched arm, spun and heaved. He didn’t manage to throw her quite as far as he could a drow, but still managed a good hundred yards or so. She glared at him with angry green eyes the whole distance.

“Boring conversation anyway,” he remarked, then turned toward Danandra and Leni. “Girls we’re gonna have company!”

For what seemed the fiftieth time in the past – to be fair highly eventful – five minutes, he picked up the sword, and ran over to Danandra and Leni, giving the Archmage’s spinning green ball of whatever a wide berth: no way did he want that shorting out through him. He passed Violentia’s body on the way – if that wasn’t a dead troll, he didn’t know what was.

“Leni! You’re alive! How? Danandra! You’re terrifying! Wow!” McKenzie grinned. “But seriously how, Leni?”

“I-I have no idea,” Leni admitted.

“The poison,” Danandra answered. “Neither Ellie nor Violentia could be killed by a mere ballista bolt, but the poison they’re tipped with was, we can assume, designed by drow alchemists. They must have not wanted any accidental deaths while handling it – so it’s harmless to elves but deadly to trolls.”

“Result!” McKenzie said. “Yay! Also, we won! Yay again. Also, who’s Ellie?”

Leni raised her hand. “Me. Just go with it.”

McKenzie blinked. “Okay. But more trolls are coming, what do we do?”

“I’m alive, but I don’t think I’m going to be swinging a blade or drawing Gerius,” Ellie said.

“Drawing Jerry what now? This is not the time to start sketching, Len- Ellie,” McKenzie said, puzzled.

“Hi, I’m Gerius. Magic bow, we met before but you were...incomprehensible,” something said, from over Leni’s shoulder.

“Oh, Mr. Twangy. Right. Okay, Danna, anything...left in the tank? Can I give you a jump start?” He snapped his fingers with a spark of quintessence.

Danandra glared at him, too exhausted to even feel anything at the little rush of magical energy. “It doesn’t work like that, McKenzie,” she said heavily.

“Okay, I’ll improvise,” he said, lacing his fingers together and stretching his arms. “That machine gun blue balls of energy thing looked like something I could manage, although I’ll be honest, it’s the jumping-glowing-hovering-smashing-burning everything trick I really want to do. That kicked serious arse.”

“Do not do anything with the quintessence!” Danandra commanded. “Less than ten yards distant is a highly powerful, complex work of the Archmage’s that I cannot tell the function of. Do nothing to interfere with it!”

“Because explode?” McKenzie asked, frowning.

“Indeed,” Danandra confirmed icily.

The troll priestess was in the lead, but from every direction, her congregation was not far behind – and they looked murderous.

“I think we might’ve wound ‘em up a bit,” McKenzie estimated. “Can’t think how.”

“We’re being total tourists. We’ve been disrespectful of their customs and vandalised a statue,” Ellie answered.

“Granted, but this is like the worst holiday destination ever,” McKenzie replied. “Also, the statue was fugly. And mind controlly.”

“True, they should’ve put that in the brochure if they didn’t want people smiting it,” Ellie nodded.

“Exactly,” McKenzie said emphatically. “It’s basic marketing.”

Ellie gasped in delight. “Oh my gods are you doing comradely humour-in-the-face-of-danger banter with me? Are we..are we there?”

“Yep. We totes are, Ellie,” McKenzie grinned, nodded, and held out a fist to her. She bumped it with her own, giving a giggle that was both delighted and utterly delightful. The ballista bolt still lodged in her chest didn’t seem to be bothering her in the slightest. Seeming to notice it for the first time in a while, she absent-mindedly removed it and threw it away.

“Fair warning – if you two continue with this highly irritating wholesomeness, I may vomit,” Danandra said.

“I love you too Danna,” Ellie said, misty-eyed.

Dananda rolled her eyes. “Yes, I suppose we’re all friends here now.”

Ellie made a squee noise and jiggled up and down.

“I’m touched, you guys!” Gerius chipped in. “This is so lovely my string may need re-waxing, because it’s melting!”

Danandra glared at him. “Silence, bow,” she said.

“Yeah, dial it back a notch Mr. Twangy,” McKenzie said with an expression of mild distaste. “You’ve been here what, five minutes?”

“Guys, don’t be mean to Gerius,” Ellie chided them. “He was really scared and he did his best.”

Both McKenzie and Danandra sighed and said: “I suppose.”

“Thanks, hot lips. It means a lot that you stood up for me,” Gerius thanked her.

“Hey! We agreed, no more over-familiarity!” Ellie told it.

“That’s on me, sorry, I got caught up in the moment,” Gerius apologised.

McKenzie gave vent to a suppressed snort of laughter.

“What?” Danandra demanded crossly.

McKenzie pointed to the bow on Ellie’s back. “Patri-archery,” he said.

Both girls stared at him blankly.

“’Cos he’s a bow, so archery, and he’s using what Chrissie keeps calling mysogynistic language and I would call being a sexist dick, so patriarchy, patri-archery – did that not translate?” McKenzie asked. “Has the language thing not come back all the way yet?”

Danandra sighed. “Oh, we got it – it was just terrible.”

McKenzie looked at Ellie in appeal.

“Sorry man, I’m still wearing an honesty charm. It was a bad pun - but I’m still over the moon that we’re proper friends,” she offered, as a consolation prize.

McKenzie exhaled. “Whatever. We’ve got imminent violence, anyway. Back in the foxhole, you two. Mysterious Xixaxa orb of doom in the vicinity or not, it’s fireworks time.”

“No! We don’t know what it does!” Danandra insisted.

And then, on cue, it showed them what it did.

The orb’s spinning reached a crescendo, and then it exploded silently outwards. McKenzie and the girls saw it flash towards the edges of the plaza, but it didn’t stop there – it carried on around the entire world, in an expanding - then, once it’d gone halfway round the globe - contracting circle.

In it’s wake, trolls fell to the ground, finding themselves suddenly weak.

“What’s happening?” McKenzie asked.

Danandra was just biting her bottom lip – this was truly powerful magic.

“They’re shrinking,” Ellie, unaffected, observed.

And indeed they were. The trolls charging towards them staggered to a halt, dropping suddenly-oversized weapons, tripping over their own clothes and armour as they became heavy and burdensome. Not even the troll priestess was immune, even though her eyes still glowed with her gods’ presence. She got smaller and smaller – and then she was lost in a pile of coloured cloth that, until moments ago, she’d been wearing.

“Um...what the fuck?” McKenzie asked – of who, it wasn’t clear. “Did she just shrink them away to nothing or what?”

Then the troll priestess – along with all the other trolls – emerged from heaps of clothing or armour, looking at themselves in amazement and shock. Some screamed, some cursed, some just froze in shock.

“Oh, I know that feeling,” Ellie commented, but with gleeful maliciousness rather than sympathy.

This transformation didn’t appear to be exactly like Ellie’s, though. Imperianza was still green. Despite her attempt to wrap a bit of her clothing around herself, McKenzie and the others could see that her huge and heavy frame had shrunk down to a slender, delicate one. She was no more than five feet in height, if that. Her ears had become pointed, and her tusks had morphed into tiny little canines. Her eyes, though, still glowed green.

All around the world, trolls found themselves suddenly, well: no longer trolls.

“No! What have you done?” The priestess demanded – not in a chorus of growls, but more of a multi-channel hiss.

“Aaand we’re back to the predictable dialogue,” McKenzie said, with a disparaging upwards flick of his eyes. “But seriously, yeah, what have I done?”

“Well done McKenzie,” Danandra said, “you’ve invented goblins.”

Ellie was laughing – but then stopped. “Wait, are they still strong like me? This could still be bad.”

“One way to find out,” McKenzie said, shrugging. He strode forward to grab the troll priestess – but Danandra beat him to it, seizing the tiny troll by her black hair and dragging her towards Ellie.

“Release my avatar!” The aforementioned gods demanded.

Danandra did not – she threw Imperianza to the ground in front of Ellie.

“A brief experiment with no control group,” Danandra shrugged, “but nevertheless I think we may confidently conclude that they’re no stronger than me,” she reported clinically.

“Danna, fuck, that’s, like, several gods you’re bullying there,” McKenzie said, awed at the attitude.

“Heal my friend,” she told Imperianza.

“We shall do nothing of the sort,” Imperianza replied, with an attempt at making it sound haughty. It didn’t go so well.

Danandra then turned on her own haughty voice, which was, of course, world-class.

“Either you will heal my friend,” she informed the goblin, “or you will lose your head.”

“Pah! Your magic is drained,” Imperianza hissed.

“Why, I do believe you are right – fortunately, at present, that will present no insurmountable issue. High Assassin, I have an Appointment for you,” Danandra said to McKenzie.

McKenzie held up the oversized troll sword. “On it – and this one’s on the house,” he said.

“I told you I would have my vengeance if you destroyed all my worshippers,” the troll gods said.

“I haven’t destroyed a goddamned thing,” McKenzie said.

Ellie spoke up: “Sorry, McKenzie, Danna’s charm is kicking in again so I have to say this – that is patently not a true statement.” She gestured around at the general devastation.

“Danna, can she take that off now?” McKenzie asked Danandra.

“Of course – Ellie, feel free to take it off,” Danandra said.

“Aw, I kinda like it,” Ellie said, admiring the ring on her finger. “Also I’m worried that if I do take it off it will affect the whole everyone-doesn’t-hate-me-any-more thing and I am not emotionally prepared for that.”

“Ellie, take it off or I’m melting it,” McKenzie told her flatly. “You can get Danna to de-truthify it later if you love it so bloody much, but I’ve had enough of real talk for, like, a year. I want my goddamned friends to lie to me, is that so much to ask?”

Ellie pouted, but removed the ring and slipped it into a pocket.

“Right, if we can get this meeting back onto agenda, what I meant was that I haven’t destroyed all your worshippers. They’re just smaller now, hence more vulnerable, hence way more likely to throw prayers in your direction, which is a god’s whole flow, right?” McKenzie assayed.

The troll gods glared at him. “That is incorrect, as you should well know,” they replied.

“Why the hell would I know that?” McKenzie asked, frowning.

The troll gods laughed. “Immortal, and yet completely without wisdom or self-knowledge,” they remarked. “The irony is more delicious than the tenderest elf-meat. Which, ew!”

“See?” McKenzie said, brushing off their needling as bullshit. “Trolls have changed, so you’ve changed too. Now do as you’re told.”

“Honestly – like, normally honestly – I actually think I’m okay,” Ellie said, prodding at the hole in her chest. “The bleeding’s stopped and I think it might be scabbing over already.”

“No! Heal it! It would be a heinous crime to leave a mark on such a perfect bosom!” Gerius interjected.

“You’ve got serious issues with appropriate workplace behaviour, Mr. Twangy, you know that right?” McKenzie told the bow. “And that’s me saying that. Els, do you want me to melt him?”

“I’ll be good I promise!” Gerius said hurriedly.

However Ellie looked to be the one who was melting. “E...Els? Are you...giving me a cute little nickname?” She asked, eyes wide.

“Yeah, I’m all in on this. You came through, you earned it, you get the whole McKenzie’s friend experience, which includes the nickname,” McKenzie said.

“And also the disappointment, annoyance, and wearisomely frequent gut-wrenching fear,” Danandra remarked, with a raised eyebrow, “but you already knew about all that.”

“Totally worth it anyway,” Ellie said, grinning.

“If you will not cease this mawkish drivel, could you actually please chop my avatar’s head off? This is worse torment than our holiest object being destroyed, which, by the way, thanks for that,” the troll gods muttered.

“Meh - wouldn’t be the first unique divine creation I’ve destroyed or otherwise fucked up,” McKenzie shrugged. “Now – heal her, or I will banter some more with Els, and only then cut your head off. After that we’ll put it on a spike and banter some more in front of it.”

The troll gods sighed. “Very well. Since I have need of this avatar, I will consent to allow her to heal Violentia,” they said, holding out a hand towards the injured elf.

“My name,” she said, her eyes steely hard, “is Ellie.” She paused, then: “With a little heart above the ‘i’.”

“So be it, Ellie with a heart above the ‘i’,” the troll gods said, then looked at McKenzie. “You have not heard the last of this. We will neither forget nor forgive what you wrought upon us this day. Sleep with one eye open.”

“Gripping my pillow tight? Pfft,” McKenzie scoffed. “You want to exact terrible vengeance on me? Join the fuckin’ queue. It’s loooong.”

It seemed the troll gods, or goblin gods, now, McKenzie supposed, didn’t share his issue with last words. The goblin’s eyes ceased their glow – and her expression changed from one of anger to one of fear.

“I am...commanded to heal you,” she told Ellie, haltingly.

“Yeah, we know, we were all listening,” Ellie replied.

“Will you stay your hand if I do so?” She asked McKenzie.

“Jury’s out. Definitely won’t if you don’t, though,” McKenzie replied flatly.

The goblin stood, placed her hand on Ellie’s wound, and muttered a prayer. When she took her hand away, the skin beneath the bloody hole in Ellie’s clothing was unblemished.

“Thank you, I suppose,” Ellie said.

“Are you...going to kill me?” Imperianza asked, looking around at her three captors.

McKenzie gave it some serious thought.

“Not me, not now,” he finally said, lowering the sword. “Probably should, but I’m taking the rest of the day off. Next time you pray, though, you can let your gods know that vengeance goes both ways. They come for me or my friends, I come for their worshippers – and you’ve got enough problems along those lines already.”

He wasn’t wrong – even within the confines of the plaza, some of the erstwhile ‘prey’ had stopped running, turned around, and become hunters: scenes similar to those currently playing out in a great many locations around the world. Goblins were taking to their heels – at least the ones who wanted to continue being goblins, anyway: a proportion of them were either unable or unwilling to save their own lives.

Imperianza looked around in horror.

“This the part where you run,” Danandra reminded her.

Imperianza ran.

“And now we’ve won,” McKenzie said, tossing the sword aside, for what he hoped was the last time. “No more fuckin’ trolls. Thanks for your help, ladies, could not have done it without you.”

“You are totally welcome,” Ellie smiled.

“You are an idiot, McKenzie,” Danandra said. “Do you realise how close we came to death?”

“And yet here we are, breathing like pros,” McKenzie replied.

“Divine displeasure is not something to be shrugged off, McKenzie!” Danandra told him forcefully.

“Yeah I do have to admit, that part’s going to get me up sweating in the night a few times,” Ellie admitted.

“Ooh! I volunteer to distract you when that happens,” Gerius piped up.

“Okay,” Ellie, said, unslinging the bow and glaring at it. “We are going to have a serious talk about boundaries later. If you don’t make positive changes to how you see me and relate to me after that, I’m giving you to Danna to do experiments on, buddy boy.”

“I need help, I know,” Gerius said. “Sorry!”

“Good. Now be quie- hey! I think can read that now!” Ellie remarked.

“Read what?” McKenzie asked, puzzled.

“The inscription! On Gerius!” Ellie said, tilting the bow to get a better look at the writing. Then she closed her eyes tight shut. “I should prepare myself to properly understand it’s deep meaning.”

Danandra sighed heavily. “It just says ‘Leni heart Gerius forever’,” she told Ellie.

“Wait, what? No, that can’t be right!” Ellie protested, then read it. “Oh. It is.” Her disappointment was such that McKenzie felt like he was seeing a puppy being kicked. Ellie was, if it was possible, even more appealingly cute than before.

“Terribly sorry. One moment my dear,” Gerius said. The ‘Leni’ changed into an ‘Ellie’ – with the mandatory heart above the ‘i’.

“No, I mean, I thought that once I could read it, it’d say something wise about the new me,” Ellie confessed.

“I’ve only heard him say about five sentences that I could understand and I can already say with authority that whatever that bow thinks isn’t worth shit anyway,” McKenzie said, in what was an attempt at making her feel better, but it only made Ellie’s unhappy expression worse.

“Hey!” Gerius protested. “I take exception to that!”

“Is this a string you really want to pull on, mate?” McKenzie asked threateningly. “There’s a big fire right there, you can be on it in seconds.”

Danandra breathed out hard. “Why is it falling to me to make someone look on the bright side? It might be inane and childish, Ellie, but it’s still in elvish. If you can read it, you’re definitely one hundred percent an elven woman now.”

Ellie blinked and smiled. “Oh! I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You were always a woman to me,” Gerius said in a low purr.

“Dude!” Ellie told it. “Seriously. Boundaries.”

“I’m so sorry, I’ll try, I promise!” Gerius said.

“Bullshit, Mr. Twangy is lying to you,” McKenzie warned. “He’ll keep saying he’ll change and never will. Classic gaslighting behaviour, that is.”

“Water. Food. Transport,” Danandra said.

“Sorry, what?” Ellie and McKenzie both asked at once.

“Those are actual problems we have right now, as opposed to therapy for magical weapons, which can, frankly, wait,” Danandra reminded them all with some asperity. “This is a city in the middle of one of the most inhospitable deserts in the world, we have no water or food, we do not know where it can be found, and McKenzie turned our airship into a number of bonfires and some assorted wreckage whilst singing very badly.”

“Yeah, sorry about the singing, I’ve got no kind of voice for it at all,” McKenzie admitted.

“We noticed,” Danandra told him. “Could we come up with some sort of an exfiltration strategy, now, please?”

“I suppose we should probably head for one of those airships, then,” McKenzie suggested.

“One thing first,” Ellie said. “Danna, I know McKenzie isn’t supposed to use his zappy-burny trick unless absolutely necessary, but would a bit of fire be okay?”

Danandra herself snapped her fingers, resulting in a tongue of white fire. “I think I am sufficiently recovered to undertake the task I suspect you have in mind.”

“Did you have to go with ‘zappy-burny trick’?” McKenzie asked, with a pained expression.

“Yes, haven’t we already discussed this?” Danandra asked.

Ellie didn’t answer, instead she walked over to Violentia’s body. Danandra and McKenzie followed.

She was still a troll, albeit a dead one. She’d died on her side, it seemed, either craning her neck backwards to see her holy object fall, or simply in a spine-bending spasm. Her convulsions had left her covered in her own blood.

They all just stood and looked, for a moment.

“If she even so much as twitches,” McKenzie said, “then Danna won’t need to burn the corpse. I will vapourise it.”

“Restrain yourself,” Danandra advised him. “With your lack of control, you might end up resurrecting her.”

“Okay, point taken, I do not want a zombie troll,” McKenzie admitted.

“I won’t say farewell or goodbye,” Ellie said, looking down – well, mostly down, she was only about as tall as Violentia was wide. “Because I don’t want her to fare well in the afterlife, and there was nothing good about her – but...she’s my past. I don’t know what to say, but I don’t just want to say ‘I’m glad you’re dead’.” She stopped, looking unsure of herself.

“Don’t worry, I’m totally fine with it. Here lies Violentia, a bloody annoying troll. I’m really glad she’s dead, because she was just the fucking worst,” McKenzie supplied, then intoned: “Ah-ahhhmeeeeen,” drawing the amen out in a sonorous, churchy tone.

“Same, can’t hide it, won’t even try – one hundred percent glad she’s dead: and I’m glad my friend Ellie killed her,” Danandra added.

“Aw, thanks Danna. And yeah, not gonna lie, it does feel good,” Ellie agreed, with a sigh. “If you’d be so kind?”

Danandra held out her hand. “This may take a while,” she said. “I overextended myself today – it will be some time before my magic returns fully.”

Then there was a sudden blast of heat, a white flash, and less than a second later Violentia’s body had been reduced to a rapidly-dispersing cloud of ash and a few streaks of bubbling, molten metal from her armour, sizzling away on red-hot flagstones.

“Yeah, that took aaaages,” McKenzie said, and laughed. “Still as awesome as ever, D-Ra.”

Danandra was so surprised that she let ‘D-Ra’ pass by entirely without comment, instead just staring at her hand in wide-eyed surprise.

“You okay Danna?” Ellie asked.

“Yes. Sorry,” she said, with an uncharacteristic apology. “I, um, perhaps I...did not exert myself as much as I thought I did.”

“No ‘perhaps’ about it. That was like a 1.2 on the Danandra do-not-fuck-with-scale,” McKenzie told her, with an approving nod. “Bad-ass.”

They stared for a bit longer, processing whatever emotions they had about Violentia’s death and, in Danandra’s case, her extremely foreshortened cremation. McKenzie finished first – he didn’t have any particularly complex feelings about the whole thing, apart from a vague sliver of disappointment that he hadn’t done it himself.

Then something occurred to him, and he took his phone out. It was back on, he was relieved to see. He raised his finger to dial – and then thought better of it. Not now. There’d be time later.

“Okay, shall we get the fuck out of here?” He asked Danandra and Ellie, instead.

“Indeed,” Danandra agreed. She was clenching and unclenching her hands, McKenzie noticed. As he watched, she seemed to notice too, looked down, and stopped.

“Works for me,” Ellie agreed, discarding her sombre expression. “I hope there’s something pretty to wear in one of the airships. Black really isn’t my colour.”

“I hope there’s something to drink,” McKenzie said. “I’ve been sober way too long already. I usually prefer as short a gap as possible between the funeral and the wake.”

“Yes,” Danandra agreed, surprising them both. “I think I could definitely use a drink.”

“Eeeny-meeny miney mo,” McKenzie said, pointing to the various airships tied up around the plaza in turn. “We’ll take that one over ther-, wait: Ellie, where’s the temple?”

“What? Oh, that way,” Ellie pointed vaguely off to the side.

“Then that’s where we go first,” McKenzie said. “Diamonds, rubies, emeralds and ‘gold aplenty’ were offered to me as bribes, just now, which I very nobly turned down just like a proper hero, but since I’m, y’know, an assassin now, I don’t work for free. I mean I wasn’t expecting to get paid, but if it’s just lying there...”

“Oh, c’mon McKenzie, we didn’t do this for gold,” Ellie said, then paused: “How much ‘aplenty’ was ‘aplenty’, was there like a weight mentioned?”

“I dunno, but in terms of diamonds I was told heart sized. Shall we find out if she was bullshitting me?” McKenzie grinned.

“I think it’s definitely something we should look into,” Ellie agreed.

Danandra sighed. “Since there’s probably no dissuading you, McKenzie, very well. I shall be blaming you if all the airships leave while you are looting, though.”

“Oh, it’ll be fine,” McKenzie said. They changed direction slightly, to head towards a large building at the edge of the plaza.

Ellie linked her arms in Danandra’s and McKenzie’s, giggled, and led them towards it, skipping.

“Seriously, Ellie, yes you’re a new woman but there are limits, okay?” McKenzie said, giving her a look.

“Okay, I can respect the vibe here,” she said, unlinking and walking normally.

“Better,” McKenzie said. “Much better.”

- o O o -

The Siberian night was filled with confusion, shouting and occasional – entirely futile – gunfire.

The intruder wasn’t put off. Bullets were not something she had to worry about.

There was more shouting and gunfire at the entrance to the facility, followed by an attempted conversation once people started running low on clips – the intruder waited patiently while they all got it out of their systems. Once an officer who spoke English was found, this turned into an actual meaningful conversation. A compromise was arrived at. The prison staff decided that she could probably go exactly where the hell she wanted, nobody here was paid enough to stand up to something like her, after all.

Below, a more senior officer met her.

“You are aware of the procedure?” He asked her.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“There is no way back,” the officer said.

“I know,” she replied.

“Is this...authorised?” The officer asked.

The intruder just smiled. The officer decided he could do without an answer.

A volunteer was found, the officer explained the deal, and he agreed. He was not a sane man, in any case.

“He is dangerous,” the officer told the intruder. “This man is, how you say, serial killer.”

The intruder just nodded.

The aforementioned serial killer tried his luck once, on the way down to the chamber – but only once. He was swiftly disabused of the notion that he was going to be able to overpower her and escape.

The intruder did hesitate in front of the archway, which was, after all, a deeply ominous thing to behold. But she hadn’t come as far as she’d come to be put off by a bit of fear, and she was determined to make this trip. So she swallowed, got her shit together, and gave the serial killer a meaningful nudge.

She emerged into darkness on the other side – she was, after all, unexpected. She’d come prepared, though – she pulled a flashlight from her backpack and flicked it on, illuminating the twin of the chamber, and providing light just in time for her to avoid stepping in the few, steaming bits of the serial killer that had made it through to the other side.

She winced. The snarling had been a bit unsettling.

Then the chamber lit up with magical light as the wooden door in the far wall opened, and a man in red robes emerged. The intruder flicked off her torch.

“Oh!” He said. “It’s you! I did not know that you were, I mean, I did not expect that you would...is the boss behind you?”

The intruder shook her head. The man in red robes became suspicious. He knew this was a dangerous individual in front of him. He called up a binding spell, made a gesture with his hands, and a magical rope whipped into being and wrapped itself around the intruder.

It fizzled and dissolved.

“Hey, that tickles!” Christine said, giggling, as sparks briefly raced up and down her body.

“Bozhe moi,” the man in red robes said, hollowly. “Is not possible!”

“No, seriously dude, it tickles. Knock it off, mister...Russian magic guy. Sorry, wait, McKenzie told me about you. It’s Sergei, right?”

Sergei nodded, aghast.

“Okay, I’m not here to cause you any trouble, Sergei, so you can chill with that whole...attempted bondage rope thing, that was weird and not cool, I am not into that and you need to seriously learn some manners, okay?” Christine berated him.

Sergei nodded.

“I think you can guess who I’m looking for though, right?”

Sergei nodded again.

Christine waited. Sergei just stared, still aghast.

“And?” She prompted.

“Sorry,” Sergei said. “This is big surprise. Crowbar is in Vyrinios, or he was. He has...done something quite big. World is shaking.”

“Yep, that sounds like him,” Christine nodded. “Okay – Vyrinios. Is that where his office is?”

“His office?” Sergei asked, confused.

“Yeah, he’s like the CEO of the Assassins, right?”

“Yes, he is High Assassin. Their Guild Hall is in Vyrinios,” Sergei answered.

Christine waited again, then: “Okay, Sergei, I totally get that English is not your first language and I’m sorry I don’t speak Russian, but seriously, your conversational skills are, like, barely existent. Work with me here, man. How do I get there?”

“By...airship?” Sergei answered.

“Oh cool, yeah, McKenzie said ships fly here,” Christine said, then her expression turned into one of awe. “Ships fly here! I just, like, totally cannot wait. I mean I can fly anyway, so I won’t, like, need a ticket. But still, so awesome. Hey, are there unicorns?”

Sergei appeared to have recovered a bit. “Honestly I do not know, mostly I stay here, do things for the boss,” he answered. “Listen, I will call him, okay? We can help you.”

Sergei produced an actual, for-reals crystal ball from within his robes. Christine’s eyes lit up.

“Oh, wow!” She darted forward. “Can I look at it?”

Without waiting to be asked, she reached out to touch it. It flared briefly, then, like the rope, it’s power fizzled into her hand and she gave a small, pleased yelp.

Sergei sighed.

Christine, to be fair, did look contrite. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Did I, um, have I like broken it completely or can you charge it up?”

“Is okay, I can use enchantment, replenish magic and-”

The crystall ball cracked with a sharp ping noise, and then turned to sand, which slipped through Sergei’s fingers to form a rather pathetic pile on the floor.

Sergei sighed. “Oh well,” he dusted his hands off.

“Sorry,” Christine winced. “That was my bad, bill me for that, okay? But if you have like a phone instead, it’s cool if you want to call your boss. Tell him I quit. Tell him I’m an adventurer now, look, backpack!” She gestured to the large backpack she was wearing as proof, along with a sturdy leather jacket, slightly damp with melted snow, over, surprisingly:

“Chainmail?” Sergei asked.

“Seemed appropriate,” Christine said, looking down at the chainmail, which stretched almost to her knees. “I had this ex who was into LARPing, he left a load of his shit in my apartment, including this thing. I had to use duct tape to take it in at the back, though, he mostly bought XL sizes – he worked out, like, obsessively, you know the type, and I’m more of a size four, maybe a six, okay, fine, yes, a six, and-”

“Psyonara, please...wait until I contact the boss, okay? This...could get bad,” Sergei said.

“One – glad you know my superhero name, it’s not been that long and I can only guess that you don’t get the internet here like McKenzie does, so I really appreciate that, thank you,” Christine smiled.

“Crowbar gets the internet here?” Sergei asked.

“Wow, you’re really not in the loop, are you? Sorry man. Point two,” Christine paused, and became intent, “it only gets bad if you want it to. You don’t want it to get bad, do you Sergei?”

Sergei looked down. He was hovering a few inches in the air – not his doing - and the magical orbs in the chamber were flickering, like badly maintained flourescent lights in a dark alleyway: the kind people got stabbed in. He remembered that the blonde, smiling girl stood before him, chattering about clothes sizes and ex boyfriends and unicorns, was superpowered – and it had just been demonstrated that his magic was useless.

“No,” he agreed readily. “No, I don’t want it to.”

“Excellent,” Christine smiled. Sergei felt his boots touch the ground again, and only barely managed to suppress a sigh of relief.

“Is that the way out? And is there someone outside – no offence – who’s a bit more, like, with it? I need directions, “ Christine asked him.

Sergei just blinked.

“Oh-kay, I guess I’ll just go look,” Christine said, and headed towards the door. “Bye Sergei, it was nice to meet you!”

And she was gone.

- o O o -

The McKenzie Files will continue soon with the next story in the series, The Unlikely General.