It stood to reason they’d been planning this from the start; I should’ve known better than to just slip out and assume I could sneak off or kill them in the dark. But why? Why wait until I attempted to escape by summoning Von Dominus?
They wanted my avatar. For what reason I didn’t know.
I concentrated on my jewel glowing gently in my hand and tried to return my consciousness there, but Bertha tightened her grip, and I had to stop myself cursing at the pain. I couldn’t focus. And if I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t reattach my consciousness to the stone.
Bertha hauled me out of the living space and into a corridor. I didn’t dare try and break through. She was too damn strong, and I didn’t have any intention of letting her rip my arm out of its socket.
The troll turned into a bedroom illuminated by a single torch. All manner of bones hung from the walls like trophies, but the room didn’t smell like death. Instead, it almost smelled pleasant with its lavender-like scent. It wasn’t all bones and flowers, though: a poleaxe rested in the corner. The weapon’s haft was much shorter than other poleaxes I was accustomed to seeing.
“Sit,” Bertha commanded as she gestured at a giant bed sitting in the corner.
I glanced at the poleaxe.
“Don’t even try it,” she warned. Effortlessly, she tore my hand open and pulled the gem free of my fingers, then shoved me onto the bed. “Behave.”
“Thing is, that’s really not how I do things.”
“Good,” she murmured. Her purple irises seemed to sparkle, and my attention was drawn to the cleaver at her side as she rested a knee on the mattress. Her skirt hiked up, and I couldn’t help noticing the pleasing curve of her almost-bare ass. The skin was smooth and almost gleamed in the torch’s low light.
Bertha removed the cleaver from her belt and tossed it beside the poleaxe.
“I’m getting mixed messages,” I told her as I eyed up the naked blade just out of arm’s length.
Again came that jazz-singer chuckle. “Want me to explain?”
I looked back into those eyes and resisted the urge to enthrall her then and there. Better for her to underestimate me, give me space to move, and to think.
“That’d be thrilling,” I said.
“I never fit in with the other trolls. There aren’t many of us left on Shadow Crag. The dungeons gave us strength, made our males potent and our females fertile. Then they were gone. It took a while, but we are weak now. All the Infernal monsters are.”
I couldn’t help noticing the way she said fertile. Blatant, wordless propositions aside, she sounded far sharper than even her mother. She knew her terrain. She knew about dungeon cores, obviously. And she hadn’t killed me—not just yet.
“That’s why I’m here. I’ll bring you back to your true strength.” My voice had every inch of persuasion I could muster from a lithe elvish form and years of marketing.
“I know. But I don’t think Ma sees your presence here the same way.”
It was about fucking time I had a stroke of luck, a gorgeous female troll who wasn’t a direct threat.
“She doesn’t matter. You want to be strong, right? You want to grow in power? A girl like you with all that muscle? You crave it. Help me. Let’s get out of here.”
“I can’t. At least not yet. I need something from you first.”
“Name it.” I was making too many deals but needed to get the fuck out of here.
“I want to become one of your dungeon’s champions. My grandpa told me all about dungeons, and how their best monsters can evolve into something far beyond their natural limits. Ever since then, I wanted to become a dungeon champion. I searched the entire realm to see whether any Infernal dungeons still existed. I found none. So, I came back to this hole in the mountain, hoping to settle down. Charlie was the only other male troll of marriage-age on Shadow Crag, and I was to wed him. But then Jeff killed him.”
I couldn’t help but grin at that. Things were looking up for Zagorath and Von Dominus. Finally.
“It was you?” Bertha’s purple lips curved into an impossible-to-ignore smirk. “Then I am already in your debt. Please, allow me to be your champion. I am well-versed in combat. I have been trained by the best that remains of the Infernal masters. Name a weapon, I can use it.”
“You sure you’re actually a troll?” I laughed. “Your family either wants to eat me or sell me to a guild.”
Bertha sighed, and a concerned expression flooded her face. “I had a different father than Jeff. He was human. My birth was the result of the last witch doctor. He worked some magic that allowed my mother to harbor a troll-human hybrid.”
“Can’t imagine it was easy living with your mother and Jeff.”
“They’ve… not been kind. Beat me and teased me for being ugly. Anger’s all I’ve ever known for them, not love. I want to see them dead.”
“Bertha, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.” I paused, saw her smile widen, then my mind flickered back to the two mountains of flesh outside and what they had planned for me. “Tell me about this guild. Jeff mentioned something about one. What do they want with my core?”
“They’re not a guild. They’re bandits. Guilds don’t exist in this realm anymore.”
“What about Entropy?”
“I’ve never heard the name.”
From Bertha’s ignorance, I figured Entropy existed in one or more of the other realms. Lilith had seemed to indicate that the guild was infamous, so the half-troll not knowing about them suggested they weren’t present in the Infernal Realm. It just meant I had to become powerful enough to draw them to me–or seek them out.
“Tell me more about Gavin’s bandits,” I said.
“They’re not his. He was just a member. They call themselves the Sand Pirates. They break all the rules set down by the Pantheon.
