I kick crabs out of my way as I walk to the rune circle that seems to be powering the swirling portal. When I get to the edge of the strange light it casts, I look down into it. I can’t see anything other than swirling light that changes colour before my eyes. If it’s a portal to somewhere, I can’t see the other side. The runes themselves seem plain; they aren’t glowing or inlaid with magical metal or anything. Someone—presumably the current dwarf king—carved them into the floor and this happened.

A crab wanders too close to the circle and a tongue lashes out to grab it away. Oh yeah; there’s monsters that are kinda-sorta guarding this thing. But they seem mainly interested in keeping the competition from increasing, and I hope they won’t mind when I do some destructive experimentation.

What’s going to be best to destroy carved runes? The grenade potions, as I’ve come to call my coal-dust creations, aren’t going to cut it. I mentally rifle through my options: waterproofing, desiccation, healing, poison…

Acid!

That’s what I need! As long as it’s strong enough to damage stone, it will be perfect. I can pour it exactly where I want it and control what it destroys. Time for me to melt some magic runes! I step forward to get close enough, and everything goes sideways.

I’m hit immediately by three of the monster’s tongues, and it’s only because there’s a few of them that I’m not dragged away instantly. It’s like I’m being drawn and quartered or something; they have me by the waist, one ankle, and one arm, and they’re all doing their level best to yank me to their waiting mouth. One of the monsters, probably the strongest one, wins the tug of war. Unfortunately he does so at the expense of my foot, which is suddenly no longer there. I glance down to see it fall out of the grasp of the monster that had it and into the swirling energy, and then I’m flying through the air.

My leg hurts so much it’s all I can think about, but in a second I’m face to face with a much bigger problem. The monster, which according to my Eyes of Alchemy is a Dimensional Mutant Crab, is bigger than the last two I killed. It’s pulling me towards itself and flicking its venom injectors, which drip with the sleepy poison that I’ve experienced before. I can’t get the words out to make a grenade potion before it has me close enough to stab, and it does so with gusto. Once, twice, three times, and the poison is in me deep.

This one seems smarter than the others, or maybe it’s just learned after seeing its peers blown up. It doesn’t drag me to its face right away, instead waiting and dangling me by the arm. The poison is doing its work; I am getting tired and cold and I am struggling to keep myself from passing out. Thankfully the poison also dulls the pain of my foot, which is regrowing already. It lets me get the words that I need out, and this time I say it twice. A grenade potion appears in each hand. I clench my fists around them and then focus my will on staying awake. If I can overcome the poison just enough to stay in the fight, I know I can win.

After ten seconds, maybe twenty, I can tell I’m recovering. The cold is fading and so is the lethargy, and so I stop fighting. My body goes limp and I dangle from the DMCs tongue-tentacle. It gives me a good shake, followed by a smack against the wall it’s clinging to. I guess this one likes its meals tenderized! I protect the potions with my hands, careful not to squeeze them too hard. Then it scuttles on the wall until its mouth is at the highest point, and starts to lower me down.

Um. I realize suddenly that with my hand in its grasp I can’t throw the grenade potion. And this one is smart; if I just drop it I bet it would spit it out. I need to make sure it’s chewing before I feed it my special brew, and that means…

“Oh, crap,” I say when I realize what I need to do. I hang limp and the monster gets my feet, one healing and one whole, in range of its grabbing mouthparts and grinding teeth. I don’t want to look, but I have to. I need to know when its mouth is open and it’s eating to kill it.

It doesn’t make me wait. With a slashing motion it pierces my calf with one of its smaller mouth grabby arm things and pulls me in. There’s a moment where I hope it doesn’t like how I taste, and then the chewing starts. That’s when I drop the potions.

There’s a moment where time stops. The flasks fall from my fingers and I watch them, slowly turning over in midair. They both fall in the crab’s mouth, and its grinding teeth burst them instantly. Then I’m thrown across the cave, my leg blown apart and my body spinning like a pinwheel. I hit the wall opposite and everything goes black.

Only for a second, though. Then I’m woken by the pain in my leg, or rather, where my leg used to be. I don’t even try not to scream. A distant part of me notes how as a troll even my screams sound terrifying, but most of me just hurts. I scrabble up to a sitting position and put my back against the wall and watch.

The room is fairly well lit now. I’ve exploded what, three? Four? Anyway, I killed a few of the crab monsters and now their glowing globe light liquid is splattered all over the place. The ones that remain are still on the wall, but they’ve taken their distance. I shake the last grenade potion at them. “Don’t make me use this,” I say to warn them off. Hopefully they don’t know I’m all out of coal dust.

My leg is healing incredibly fast. Like my forearm, my lower leg has three bones instead of two. Trolls are weird. The flesh regrows in a fascinating manner; it looks like it’s unfolding from the existing part of me. As it regenerates the pain gets better, until I’m back to a hundred percent.

I get up. “Being a troll is pretty decent,” I say to myself and the cave crabs. “But I don’t—“

I am knocked flying. This time it isn’t a tongue, wrapping around me and trying to pull me in. It’s something else, and it’s on top of me and stabbing me over and over again. With a roar of effort I twist and throw the thing off. My wounds are shallow and they heal fast, but I’m still unprepared for what I see when I get up.

Stolen story; please report.

It’s a troll, but not a forest troll. Not exactly, anyway. Its body looks like it was braided together out of troll parts and transparent blue energy. It’s almost beautiful except for the fact that it is eyeing me up like I’m tonight’s dinner. I immediately decide it is a ghost troll.

When it jumps at me I’m ready, or I think I am. I try to swat it aside but the monster ignores my attack, focusing on getting through my defences and ripping my throat open. It almost succeeds; it’s only luck that gets my arm between its mouth and my neck. Instead it bites down as hard as it can on my forearm and thrashes like I’m some little prey animal. It hurts!

I dig my talons into its face and rip it open, but it heals as fast as I do. What’s more, it isn’t bothered at all by my attack, and it doesn’t let go of my arm. I need to be more brutal! My humanity winces at the idea but I gouge the ghost troll’s eyes with my talons, and that works. With a howl it lets me go and dashes away, presumably to give itself a chance to heal.

“Oh no you don’t!” I throw the grenade potion at the ghost troll. It doesn’t dodge and the potion smashes against its scales, knocking it backward and blowing pieces of its body off. They melt into nothing where they land. The ghost troll is thrashing and hurt, and then I hear it speak.

“Hurts… kill you…” It coughs up a fluid that is the strangest shade of green. “You… not me.”

Shock fills me and I freeze. I recognize the voice, even though it’s actually a troll’s snarls and growls. I understand it; it’s not just a monster.

It’s me.

The ghost troll leaps at me, its injuries healed apparently healed enough to resume its attack. I backpedal. “Wait! It’s— we don’t have to fight! I can understand you!”

“No.. fight. Kill! Eat!” My own voice comes out of the thing’s mouth, followed by a flurry of attacks that nick and carve my skin. I can’t do anything but back away, and I crush cave crabs under my feet as I do. Their indignant whistles are lost in the growling, howling rage of my opposite number. My evil twin!

Between swipes of deadly talons, I realize what it—she—is. When the monsters pulled me apart, tore my foot off, where did my foot go? Into the portal. The portal that mutated the crabs. And I regenerate. Somehow my foot was energized by the portal’s power and grew into… this thing.

The ghost troll doesn’t let up. I try to talk to her, to get through her animalistic need to kill me, but it only serves to distract me. She isn’t like me, I realize; it’s not part human at all. She might be intelligent but it’s not me. Relief washes over me, and it takes me a moment to realize why; I really didn’t want to kill myself.

But that’s all to the ghost troll’s advantage. She doesn’t have the human fear of pain that I do. She doesn’t flinch when I claw at it. She doesn’t panic when I get a lucky shot and burst one of her eyes—ew, by the way. She just takes the space and time she needs to heal and then resumes the fight.

This isn’t like the fight with the orcs. The anger that took over isn’t there; I’m just off balance and distracted by the fact that I’m fighting my magical twin. Also, the orcs had the decency to die when I tore them up. This opponent just heals her wounds back and I’m no farther ahead. If only that rage would return! Maybe I could win—

The ghost troll gashes me badly, catching me while I’m distracted by my thoughts. My belly hurts where it’s been opened up and I refuse to look down at the mess she’s made of me. Before my eyes the ghost troll licks my blood off her talons and grins with a mouth full of knives, and I know the truth.

I’m going to lose this fight. The ghost troll will overcome my ability to regenerate, or I’ll get grabbed by one of the monster crabs when I’m distracted, or any number of other things could happen. I had been scared; now I’m terrified. Worst of all the ghost troll can smell it. I watch her face twist in terrible joy as the knowledge that she will win comes to her. She catches me and smashes my face into the rock once, twice, three times, and then steps back to assess her work.

Panic seems welcome, and I almost fall to it. The troll part of me urges me to fight but I can’t let go of my humanity as easily as I need to. What I need is a way to let that part of me take over, and in an instant it comes to me.

“Create a potion of fury,” I say through a mouthful of blood and broken teeth. I spit most of the detritus out of my mouth and tear the cork out, then swallow the potion. My copy doesn’t do anything to stop me, and then I lose myself.

Time no longer means anything. My body moves unnaturally fast and my limbs bend in ways that never occurred to me to try. My human mind is a passenger in my troll body, and my vision is clouded by a rage I cannot fathom. The fight changes from exchanges of blows to a continual, tearing, ripping frenzy of blood and tooth and bone and talon.

The ghost troll is speaking again, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. I’m watching through my own eyes but it’s as if I am pulled back from them; they are tiny portholes to the world and I am just the audience to a horrorshow. Her words enrage me and I tear out her throat to stop them. Her talons are painful and so I chew them off, swallowing her flesh and tasting her blood. It’s horrible. It’s disgusting.

It’s what I am meant to be.

The ghost troll heals as fast as I do, but I’m winning now, and I don’t give her the space to recover completely. There’s no fear smell from her; I don’t think trolls can truly fear, but there’s a scent of desperation. I snarl in joy and my human part recoils at my fury.

The fight has lasted… I can’t say how long. But the fury potion is fading from me, and I need to finish things up. I feel bad for the copy of myself that I made, but I will win. I know exactly what to do. That part of her that isn’t me, it’s not from here. I’ll send it back where it came from.

When the potion’s effects have faded enough to let me take control, I flex my mind and speak. “Create a potion of banishment.” A beautiful glow fills my hand and lights the cave fully. I don’t have time to take in the sights; I need to finish this. I turn and face the ghost troll, who has taken the opportunity to back off and heal. She sees me with the potion in hand and leaps, mouth agape and arms wide to catch me.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and throw the potion at her. It arcs through the air and strikes her directly in the mouth, and then I’m blinded by a light so brilliant it burns my skin. There is a sound like someone drinking the last of a milkshake through a straw and then a terrible tearing noise, and then silence.

I crouch down in case the stupid DMCs decide to do something. It only takes my eyes a moment to fix themselves. When they do I see there’s nothing left of the ghost troll, not even a stain. Little crabs are still eating the remains of their bigger brethren; apparently not having eyes can be useful. They didn’t get blinded by my makeshift inter-dimensional flash-bang.

Suddenly my stomach seizes with a pain almost as bad as when I lost my hand or my leg, an I collapse to the cave floor. My body is pulling itself into a fetal position and I can’t stop it. I curl up in pain and try to keep an eye out for the crabs that I know will eat me if given a chance. The last thing I see before I pass out is a figure in the corner of my eye, bent over and looking at me with interest.

“Oh, Ellie. Whatever am I going to do with you?” says Jinx just before I lose consciousness.