“Oh you little—“ I leap at the group of humans, talons ready to strike. Behind me I hear Theo draw his sword and Marika command her guards. It’s good to know they’re safe.

The men and women who attacked me look pretty ragged. In fact, when I close the distance, I see that they’re looking a lot more terrified than I expected. What were they thinking, attacking me with crossbows? As I close the gap I break off the bolts that struck me and the wounds heal up before I get there.

“It’s a troll! Oh no!” One of the women has figured things out and falls back, dropping her crossbow. “Help us, you!”

It takes a moment for me to realize they’re talking to Marika, Theo and the guards. When I do, I stop short. They’re not here to attack all of us? I’m maybe five feet from the nearest man, who has given up on reloading his crossbow and is now brandishing a knife. Seriously? A knife?

I tap my chest, where the words appear from the dwarven stone, and speak. “What’s going on here? I’m not a regular monster.”

“We can’t see what you’re saying, Ellie!” cries Theo.

“But they can!” I call back, but then realize there’s no point, because, well. This speaking stone is cool but only people in front of me can read it.

“Writin’! There’s words on the troll!” The man with the knife sounds amazed. “It’s a magic troll!”

“There a bounty for magic trolls?” asks one of the women.

“All of you shut up and lower your weapons! The troll has a name: Ellie Dancer. She is blessed by… a god, and isn’t dangerous.” Marika’s tone is commanding.

“Not dangerous? Look at those teeth!” The man in front of me has focused on the part of me that draws the most attention.

“Not dangerous unless you try to hurt her,” says Theo by way of amendment.

I turn around. “Tell them not to—ouch!”

The man behind me has just stabbed me in the leg. With one hand I lift him up from the ground. I glare at him and pluck his knife from his hand, then point at my leg where the wound is already sealing up. In ten seconds it’s gone, not even a scar, and the man understands. He gulps and nods. “Sorry.” I shake him, just a tiny bit, then set him down.

I nod back and return to Marika and the others. “They don’t smell bad,” I say. “Not like they hate us or anything.”

“Why would they hate us?” asks Marika curiously.

“Well, I mean if they were bandits, right? They’d smell like, nervous anger or hate or cruel pleasure. Something mean, I guess? But these folks… they mostly just smell scared and desperate.”

“You can smell how we feel?” Marika asks. She sounds both curious and horrified.

I file that topic away for another time. “Can you talk to them? I also smell blood. I think some of them are hurt.”

It turns out that some of them are indeed injured. Two of them have wounds, and one is infected. It takes some convincing but I make them drink one of my super sized healing potions each, and then I’m everyone’s best friend.

“We saw you come out of the mountain and thought you must be a beast of some kind,” says the leader of the group. “We’re desperate for money, and we can’t gain entry to the city’s guilds without it. So we thought—“

“We thought if we brought in a dead monster or magic beast, we could parlay that into guild membership,” finishes the woman who first figured out I was a troll.

“Hmm. That makes sense. But why do you want to join a guild? What do your families do?” Marika asks.

There are ten people altogether. Every single person here is the son or daughter of a farmer. All of them have decided they want to be something else.

“Being a farmer to the Montcalm nobles is awful. They tax us heavily and leave us just enough to live off for the next year. Things never get better. My Da says we’re lucky, that some folks who live in the cities have to beg to live, but I think I could be a great adventurer,” says the young man who I shook up a little.

“You know, if I’d been a regular troll, that would have been the end of all of you,” I say through Marika reading. It seems all of them are illiterate.

That fact is met with stammered excuses and general displeasure, but it’s true. None of them have anything that could hurt me permanently.

“You need to have a better plan. Not knowing the basics… it’s how you get killed.” Theo says.

“But all that information is controlled by the guilds. Adventurer’s guild, watchman’s guild, even the merchant’s guild has access to all that, and they guard it from everyone.”

“Even if we could get at the books, what good would they do? None of us can read.”

It’s a real problem, but we can’t solve it right now. Instead we let the group lead us to their village, which is several miles outside one of Montcalm’s major cities, Cairn Glow.

“Oh my, we are in luck! Cairn Glow is a dungeon city!” says Marika in excitement. “There’s going to be so much opportunity there!”

“Dungeon city?” I ask.

“Cairn Glow is built around an entrance to the dungeon,” says Theo. “Monsters and resources abound in the dungeon and cities that surround them rarely want for anything.”

“Same can’t be said for the people surrounding the city,” says the leader of the group. His name is Brandt and he sounds very sour. “We still toil away growing food for people who never consider where it comes from. My parents have never seen a gold coin in their lives, and I heard that even the worst adventurer makes a gold coin a day in the top few levels of the dungeon of Cairn Glow.”

“The ones that don’t die on the end of a goblin spear, maybe,” says Theo. He taps his sword, sheathed on his hip. “You live and die by you skills and your wits in the dungeon, and frankly, you have few of either.”

“Why, you—“

I grin at Brandt before he gets ahead of himself and the man—boy, really—settles down immediately.

“You’re right, I guess. Anyway, here we are. I’ll see if my Da will let you sleep in the barn.”

Brandt’s Da does indeed let us sleep in the barn, but only after I prove to him that I’m not a feral beast that has designs on eating his son in the middle of the night. I scoff at the idea. The boy is bony and looks like he hasn’t had a bath in a week. Now his sheep, they’re a tempting snack, but of course I won’t eat them.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Morning brings a cock’s crow and an early rise. I didn’t sleep, but I did find myself looking inward and… meditating, I guess? Anyway it felt like the entire night passed in a blink for me, but at no point did I feel like I was out of it. Just more troll weirdness, I guess.

“Brought you some food, and—“

“Are you a REAL TROLL?!”

A little girl, dressed in filthy clothes, dashes out from behind Brandt. Her voice is shrill and louder than anything as small as she is should be able to produce. She smells like excitement and curiosity.

“She is,” says Marika. “But she can’t talk, so unless you can read—“

“I can’t,” says the little girl proudly. That isn’t something to be smug about, you know?

“Hello. My name is Ellie.” I keep my voice low while Marika translates. “Who’re you?”

“Dall,” she replies. She holds out her hand and takes my littlest finger in a shake. “I’m almost six.” She stands as tall as she can, which is just above my knee.

“Pleased to meet you, Dall. I was born a little over a week ago.” Marika stumbles over my words, but they’re true, technically.

“Wow, trolls grow so fast! Brandt says you can heal people. Can you make their legs grow back?”

That’s a good question. Dall leads us not to a person, but to a dog. She’s got three legs and seems all right with the situation, given how fast she runs away when she sees me. Ten minutes of wrangling later Caine and Tyler are holding the pooch while Brandt pours one of my potent healing potions down its throat.

Sadly, it seems that a leg is a little too much for my current abilities to regrow. I did heal some missing eyes and teeth for the dwarves, but those are smaller injuries. Dall’s disappointment is obvious to both my eyes and my nose.

“She’s fine with just the three legs, Dall,” says Brandt.

“If you ever learn to fix legs, you have to come back.” Dall crosses her arms and glares at me. “You owe me a leg.”

Well, she sounds like a little gangster all of a sudden. I nod gravely and agree to her terms.

Brandt’s food is basically oatmeal but we’re all thankful. Anything but mushrooms at this point, wow. When we’re done, Marika fishes around in her top and produces a silver coin. She rolls it over her knuckles in a fascinating way and then hands it to Brandt. “For the lodging and the breakfast.”

Caine is whispering to her, and I can hear him. “That’s ten times, no, twenty times the going rate for better accommodations than a sheep barn and gruel, m’lady.”

Marika’s smile doesn’t waver and she shakes her head slightly. Brandt isn’t paying attention; he’s fascinated by the coin. “With this much money, I can join a guild! I could get a room in Cairn Glow for a week!”

“Or you could hire a tutor and learn to read,” says Marika with a smile. “There’s work in town for those that can read, you know. And you won’t smell like a barnyard at the end of the day.”

We leave Brandt with that idea and head to town.

It’s a decent walk to get there and on the way Marika and Theo take it upon themselves to educate me a little. I appreciate it.

“It’s wonderful that the dwarves let you keep the speaking stone,” says Marika. “Saves us having to convince the gatekeepers that you’re something other than, well, a monster.”

“I don’t know,” says Theo. “I thought was kind of cute when you had her roll over like a puppy.”

Everyone laughs, including me, because it was kind of funny.

“When we get there I think it’s best if you let me take the lead. I’ve never been to this city but I know the general customs of Montcalm, and things should go smoothly as long as we all stay calm.” Marika’s tone tells me she’s more than comfortable dealing with this situation and that’s great because I am certainly not. “I’ll explain to the gatekeepers about your situation, then we’ll pay the entry fee and find accommodation.”

“Going to need a guild card right away,” says Theo. “New names?”

Marika shakes her head. “That’s too much trouble, renaming ourselves. I’ll drop my family name and join the merchant’s guild. Theo, you might want to consider the adventurer’s guild. Take Ellie with you.”

“I think I want to see the alchemist’s guild,” I say.

“Oh, of course!” Marika claps her hands. “What was I thinking? Yes, definitely go there. And see about a shrine to Verity. Maybe you can get some assistance there.”

Hmm. I’m not sure about that. The more I think on it (and the more I talk to Jinx), it feels to me like this is who I am now. I’m coming to grips with the idea; I’ll never be a beautiful maiden but then again that wasn’t in the cards for me anyway. Might as well lean into being, well, me.

The city is ringed by a tall, stone wall that seems to have been thrust up from the ground rather than built. I can’t see any bricks or seams between stones. Theo explains as we approach that the wall is likely the work of bound elementals.

“If the city gets attacked, the wall can probably animate itself and turn into stone elementals.”

“I’d like to see that.”

Theo shakes his head. “No you wouldn’t, because if they need to animate the elementals that means something very dangerous is attacking, like a behemoth or worse. Anyway, here we are. Remember, let Marika do the talking.”

There’s a queue to enter the city but when the people in line see me they blanche and move aside. There’s a few frowns but Marika keeps apologizing as we advance. Nobody complains to our face, and we find ourselves in front of the guards.

Marika starts to speak but one of the guards, who is armed with some kind of axe on a stick pokes his weapon at me. “What’s that then? Troll? Tamed?”

Marika sighs. “As I was about to say, this is Ellie and she is the victim of a… blessing… from Jinx. Can you read?” The guard nods and Marika waves me forward. “Say hello, Ellie.”

“Hey there,” I say with a wave. “Ellie Dancer, former human, now troll.” I see something and decide to push a little. “That cut on your face looks infected.”

“Oh, you’re a healer as well as a troll, are you?” The guard’s sneer is obvious in his voice but I refuse to sink to his level.

“No, but I am an alchemist. Here, drink this.” I pluck from my bandolier a potent healing potion. It’s overkill but whatever.

The guard sniffs it cautiously. “Don’t smell like no healing potion I ever drank.”

His partner leans over and smells it too. “Whew, that’s for sure. Doesn’t stink one bit. Give it a try, Rudy.”

“I promise you it won’t hurt.” Marika smiles and the guard goes ahead and drinks.

Right away the cut on his face closes up and the redness and irritation disappears. Rudy explores his face with his fingers and comes away smiling. His grin tells me that he’s pleased as punch. “Right then! You six all go ahead. No, don’t worry about that.” He waves away the copper coins in Marika’s hand. “If you’re looking for a place to sleep, my sister runs an inn near the dungeon entrance. Called Bedrock. Tell her I sent you and she should give you a discount.”

I’m surprised we weren’t all disarmed, but Theo explains that the dungeon cities often have relaxed rules for carrying weapons. “That said, if you start a fight and draw steel, you had best have a good reason. Otherwise it’s prison or bond slavery for you. So most people stay polite.”

Inside the city walls, things are busy. There’s so many people, and every single one of them is gawking at me. I wish I had a scarf or something, because I know my teeth are terrifying. Maybe some pants too. I start making a shopping list of clothes and other things I want. How far will my two silver coins go?

We find the inn easily enough. The entrance is too low for me and I have to duck, but inside it’s very nice. Timber beams and walls make it feel very homey, while a large fire pit full of hot coals radiates heat throughout. It smells like good food and old wood and I decide I like it.

“My, you’re a tall one,” says a woman’s voice. I look down and see a young lady about twenty years old. She’s squinting up at me and holding a cleaning rag.

“Hello,” I say. “Ellie Dancer.” I hold out a hand.

She shakes my hand, or rather my index finger, firmly. “Welcome to the Bedrock. I’m the owner, Puella. Don’t be fooled by the name of the place; the beds are soft. Are you looking for food or accommodation?”

Marika steps forward smoothly. “Rudy sent us here after Ellie healed his face. We seek a week’s lodging and two meals a day. Ellie eats more than most, so we will pay for the difference.”

“Eh. Rudy comes here every night for dinner. If his face is healed like you say, I’ll feed you as much as you want, no extra charge. Now, for the rooms…”

I let Marika negotiate while I look around. There’s only a few people in here; is everyone at work still?

Before things get settled, though, there’s a banging at the door, followed by a rush of booted feet. I turn and am immediately poked in the chest by a polearm held by a guard. Three more are beside him, and behind them stands a woman with some seriously nasty burn scars on her face.

“You.” She points at me. “Are you the troll that healed the gate guard? With an unknown potion?”

“You get a lot of trolls with potions coming through?” I say before I can stop myself.

The woman bristles and points dramatically at me. “By the authority of the Guild of Alchemists, you are under arrest. You will come with me and explain yourself.”

Marika looks mildly concerned. Theo looks neutral. Caine, Tyler and Andrew are fingering their spears, waiting for a word from their mistress. I can smell a lot of emotions, and all of them are leading to disaster. So I do the only thing I know will keep everyone safe.

“Okay, I surrender.” I make sure the woman can see my words. “I wanted to go there anyway.” I try to sound confident, which I realize is ridiculous after the fact. My growls make the guards nervous, but they take me away without any more trouble, which is all I can ask.

At the door I turn to face Marika, who is still looking pretty concerned. “Don’t worry. I’ll find my way back. Just don’t leave town without me.” I throw them a wink and leave with the guards, hoping that I didn’t just see the last of my new friends.