“The kind where he be not breathing anymore.”
“You be a fucking stupid troll! He was meant to marry Bertha, make her settle down and be a good troll wife!” I heard a flurry of strikes, felt them tremble through Jeff’s body and then down, through to his hand. It seemed like domestic violence was a standard answer to grief in troll culture.
Good.
“He attacked me, Ma! I don’t know why since we’d been getting along so well. He had this new elf friend.”
“Elf? There be no elves in Shadow Crag. Probably only a handful in all the realm.”
“It was an elf for sure. Jumped off a cliff when I was chasing him. Fell to his death.”
“Strange behavior for an elf,” Ma said. “You must have scared him sorry, Jeff.”
Loath as I was to give him credit, Jeff was lying to her. He knew full well I’d enthralled his friend and forced him to attack. Bless his black heart.
“I did. Then I found this. A pretty. For you, Ma.”
My jewel flickered as Jeff’s palm opened. My vision was still short-ranged, but I got a fractured, red-tinted impression of a face peering down at me.
“What is this? Do you not be knowing it’s a dungeon core?” Ma’s tone was more impressed than chastising, which didn’t bode well. She knew what I was, who I was. Obviously, she was sharper than the average troll, and dangerously so.
I hoped Jeff would buy me some time with his stupidity.
“Dungeon core?” he queried. “Sounds tasty.”
Well, he definitely didn’t disappoint.
I heard a thunderous whack, and I tumbled free of Jeff’s paw to the ground. Each time one of my sides struck the earth, it sent painful reverberations through my core. Inwardly, I was glad I hadn’t thrown myself off the cliff to get away from Jeff—it would’ve stung like a bitch.
“You’ll not be eating the core. We ain’t seen one in the Infernal Realm for thousands of years. Lilith must have brought him here. People are going to want to know about this.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Just my luck to run into the brains of the family.
“Like who?” Jeff questioned. “The guilds?”
Another crack sounded.
“Hellfire, Ma! Not my head. I be needing that.”
There was a shushing noise, followed by a murmured conversation just out of range. Jeff’s Ma was clued in—she knew what I could do with my core’s hearing. I’d just have to bank on her knowledge being limited. It was not a good option, but the best I had.
I heard Jeff say something about the guilds again, swiftly followed by another crack and a healthy dose of trollish mother discipline, twice in a single conversation. They knew about the guilds. No mention of Entropy, but that still didn’t make it any better. I needed to create a dungeon; I couldn’t allow myself to keep getting toted around in pockets.
Nor could I let them take me to any guild, Entropy or not.
Either the creature I’d contacted would show up soon with his tribe, or I’d have to get dangerous again and take more risks. It was still far too long until Von Dominus could show up again, so I had to be patient, relax, and think of possibilities. I had to come up with a way to turn this to my advantage.
“Sorry, Mr. Core,” Ma said as she picked me from the ground and dusted me off. “Jeff not be knowing things. He be a stupid troll.”
Hell, why not start sowing chaos now? I let my consciousness flow outward again, and this time, I found the swirling mass of hulking flesh that was Jeff. This time, I projected my voice straight into his mind, without worrying about listening to his thoughts first.
“Your mother displeases me,” I said to Jeff alone. “Do you really want her to end up like your friend, Charlie? Would you like me to take her mind and then turn her upon you? How does killing your own mother sound? Because I will make you fight her, and you will be forced to cut her throat before she drives a kitchen knife through your skull.”
There. That would do the trick. I was incapable of controlling his mother from my jewel, but Jeff didn’t know that.
“Ma! The pretty be speaking in me head!” he howled.
“Shut up, Jeff!” There was another whack. “The core is tricksy. It lies. It bites. And it eats if it not treated nicely. We just be needing to show it our troll hospitality.”
I took my focus off Jeff and found the horrendous form of Ma. Unlike the stone-like mind of her son, the mother troll seemed to have a faster flow of thoughts. Not encouraging, but I wasn’t here to encourage.
An idea struck me.
“I want none of your hospitality,” I said. “I’ve been summoned to your world by Lilith, and you wouldn’t want to anger your goddess.”
“My goddess? Lilith not be our goddess anymore. The Infernal Realm has no god! We’re free creatures now.”
Well, that was unfortunate. Atheist trolls. Part of me wondered how Lilith would feel about this fucked-up little family living in her mountain and shit-talking her. Threatening the troll obviously wasn’t working, so I decided to change tactics.
“If you free me, I will show you to my dungeon. You can scour my floors for plunder. I can assure you it will be more than worth the trouble.”
“You be lying,” Ma retorted. “Your dungeon doesn’t even exist. You are just a core without a dungeon. You don’t even have a pixie to guide you. You know nothing, little core. In fact, I be surprised you’ve even learned to speak. Dungeons are supposed to have tiny minds when they first begin. Must be the work of Lilith. Crafty goddess, that one.”
“He said we could plunder his floors,” Jeff said. “Can’t we do that?”
Attaboy, Jeff. The idiot was biting into my lies, at least.
“There be no floors,” Ma spat. “Besides, we don’t want a reward from him. We just want the little core to stay with us for a while. Ain’t that right,
