Esara's hand found her sword before her mind told it to.
She didn't move. Blade drawn, with the dark pressing against her from every direction like something with weight. Slowly, she turned her head over her shoulder.
Nothing.
A sound climbed out of her throat — something between a laugh and a whimper that she genuinely could not explain. It echoed off the stones around her, bounced back, and made her sound even more pathetic than she felt.
Isn't this just great?
Then she heard it. Stones shifting. Not in front of her — to the side. Then behind. Then gone. Then again, further left, as if whatever owned the sound was circling her, taking its time, in absolutely no hurry whatsoever. She turned with it, blade forward, counting the seconds between each movement like that would somehow help.
It's not running. It's thinking.
Wonderful. The one creature in the dark that had decided to use its brain had picked her.
She began shifting her feet — small, quick steps, never letting both heels touch the ground at once, never staying still long enough for anything beneath the dark to get a clean read on her. The sweat on her palms made the hilt slick. She was sweating, circling something she couldn't see, alone.
Salty was probably still walking. Completely unbothered.
The sounds stopped.
Silence. Total, suffocating, personally offensive silence.
Her heartbeat was suddenly the loudest thing in the world. She could feel it in her temples, her throat, behind her eyes. A single drop of sweat traced a cold line down the side of her face, and she had the absurd passing thought that this was a terrible time to be bad at staying calm —
The dark exploded.
Three talons tore out of the black with a precision that felt almost personal, as though whatever swung them had been watching her specifically for a long time and had decided it was done being patient. Esara threw her sword up on pure instinct. The impact cracked through her wrists and up her forearms — she caught it, barely, boots scraping backwards across stone.
The lantern at her waist swung wildly, and for just a moment its light caught the thing.
Three fat curving talons. One more set further below. Each one blade-shaped, hooked inward — built not to slash but to hold. Black scaled legs stretched back into the dark, layered and ancient
It didn't pull back.
One of the upper talons drifted forward — slowly, almost lazily — until she could feel the cold radiating off its edge. A few centimetres from her left eye. She stopped breathing. Every thought she'd ever had compressed down into that single curved point of black blade.
Then she felt her foot sliding.
The lower grip was dragging her backwards across the stone, steady and unhurried, the way you might reel in something you'd already decided was yours.
Esara. Move. Now. Please.
She released the sword and threw herself to the left.
The talons came down. The snap of her blade was sharp and final — she felt it somewhere behind her ribs — and a deep gouge split the stone exactly where she'd been standing a half second ago. Then, as quietly and casually as it had arrived, the creature retreated into the dark.
She stared at the broken hilt rolling across the ground.
Her sword. Her good sword. The one she'd saved up for.
She ran.
Somewhere on the same hill, still walking at a perfectly comfortable pace, Salty eventually turned around to check that Esara was behind him.
She was not behind him.
He stopped and stared back into the dark for a moment.
"...Where did she go?"
He stood there a little longer, as if she might simply appear, but she didn't.
Esara had no idea how long she'd been running. The pain in her legs had been replaced by something louder and less reasonable, and the dark had stopped being a place and started being a presence — something she was moving through rather than walking in. No direction. No landmark. No sword. No Salty.
Truly living her best night.
Every few strides, she listened for it behind her. Sometimes she heard something shift in the dark. Sometimes she heard nothing at all.
The nothing was somehow worse. At least noise had a location.
What was that thing? The thought kept surfacing and dissolving before she could finish it. Ancient scaled legs. Talons are built to grip and not release. The kind of creature that belonged in the part of old books that people assumed was exaggerated.
It wasn't exaggerated.
Her shoulder hit stone. A mountain wall rose out of the dark directly in front of her, and she slammed into it at full speed, which was a wonderful way to nearly break her nose on top of everything else. She pressed her back against it, chest heaving, and stared out at the nothing she'd just run through.
Silence.
No movement. No sound. No claws.
She stood there, breathless, swordless, alone on the 95th hill with a bruised nose and her heart trying to exit her body through her sternum.
A haven, she thought desperately. Anywhere. I'm not picky.
The dark offered nothing.
"Hm? A sentient creature?"
In the corner of her eye, another source of light appeared.
A hoarse voice spoke up from her left, like grace had come to save her from the inevitable ending.
There, a short man with a staff arrived, no, not a man exactly. It wore a cloak around its plump body, with short legs that seemed to be made to traverse only short distances. Also, several factors told her it wasn't human: a long furry tail rested on the ground, and two vibrant eyes — not as vibrant as Salty's, though.
Esara's eyes widened as she recognised its appearance.
A troll?
The troll stared up at the tall human, observing and judging her.
"...A human, perhaps?"
"What are you doing here on the 95th hill? I thought humanity immigrated to Shallow light?"
Suddenly, her ears perked up as the sound of something fast approaching occurred.
"You! I'm being hunted by the dark! You should run!"
Before the words had fully processed to the troll, the claws pierced their circle of light and were headed straight at the troll. The little creature had only side-glanced the talons before its eyes caught sight of them, and within an instant, the talons stopped as though time had frozen before the troll.
The troll narrowed its eyes, offended, as though the dark had tried to do something out of context without its owner's permission.
And then something happened.
It retreated slowly into the dark.
Esara looked back and forth from where the talons had disappeared and the troll; she couldn't believe it. Had the troll made it retreat? It didn't feel like it was toying with him — it was like it had returned acceptingly.
The Troll swayed his hands, a gesture for Esara to follow him.
"Come with me; this place isn't safe for a human like you".
She remained silent; she had no idea what to say. All that thinking and running, was she really safe all of a sudden? She couldn't believe it.
"Why should I come with you? What makes me think that I'll be safe with a strange creature like you?" She'd asked doubtfully.
"Strange creature?" The Troll snickered lowly. "Harsh words coming from a person of the ever-arrogant race. You are alone, aren't you? Be fast, or Death will rethink its choices in sparing you".
The Troll began walking, and knowing it was true, Esara had decided to follow him.
I have to follow yet another strange being
***
A few minutes later, she came upon it — a stone house, a small shelter carved into the shallow mouth of a cave as if the mountain had simply decided to make room for someone — around it were subtle hints of grass even.
The Troll pressed a boulder aside from the entrance with one hand, the way a person might move a chair, and gestured for her to enter.
She looked at the doorway. She looked at herself. She bent nearly in half to get through it.
The interior was mostly stone — shelves, surfaces, walls — but several candles burned at different heights around the room and cast everything in a low amber warmth that felt almost offensive after what she'd just run through.
She straightened as much as she dared, which wasn't completely. One more inch and the ceiling would have its own opinion.
A haven. An actual haven. She hadn't entirely believed one would appear.
The troll moved through his home without ceremony, ducking nothing because he didn't need to. Then he poured something into a stone cup from a clay vessel on the shelf and held it out toward her.
"It's herbs. Good for your body."
Esara looked at the cup. She looked at him. She had just been chased through the dark by something ancient with talons that had snapped her sword like a twig, and now a troll she'd met thirty seconds ago was offering her a warm drink in a cave.
She took the cup.
The troll settled into a stone chair — the only chair, she noticed — and reached up to pull back his hood with the ease of someone finally comfortable. She watched without meaning to.
His skin was grey and dense, textured like weathered rock, and from his collar upward ran carvings of symbols she didn't recognise, etched into him the way markings were etched into stone tablets. His eyes caught the candlelight — similar to Salty's in shape, but quieter. Less like something burning and more like something that had burned for a very long time and learned patience from it.
He picked up his own cup and drank from it without any particular urgency.
"Settle down. Feel comfortable." A pause. "I won't kill you."
Esara hadn't moved yet. She stood for a moment longer— looking for the thing that was wrong with it. Then she looked down into the cup. Sniffed it. Nothing unusual. Nothing she could identify as a reason not to.
She took a small sip.
It hit her tongue like a punishment. Bitter, as if the herbs had a personal grievance with her specifically.
"W-What the—".
But it was warm, and it was something, and after the night she'd just had, her body accepted it with an embarrassing amount of gratitude. She took another sip. Then another.
She exhaled with comfort for what felt like the first time in a while.
"You have a name, human woman?" He asked.
She decided that distrust had its limits, and she'd already reached most of them tonight.
"Esara." She glanced at him over the rim of the cup. "You?"
"Dovregrubben."
Her eyes drifted around the interior. Stone shelves. Carved walls. Candles burning in the quiet. It was small, and it was strange, and it was the safest she'd felt since she'd lost Salty in the dark.
"You've got a nice place here."
"It's not a lot for a human," he said, without apology, "but it's my home." He leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees. "So tell me, Esara — what are you doing in the abyss? It's not somewhere humans traverse alone."
"I wasn't alone." She exhaled again, slower this time. "I had a companion. Lost sight of him somewhere on the hill, and then found myself running from whatever that thing was."
Dovregrubben nodded slowly. "I see. So it was Death that found you." He paused. "It was bound to happen. Death hasn't seen humans here in a long time. Your kind being back must confuse it."
Esara stilled.
Death. That was what it was called. The same name Salty had used for the tentacled thing that had killed the forsaken the day before. If that one had been a guardian, then this one — the talons, the circling, the patience — must be one too. Different in form, but the same in name.
"I've seen another Death," she said carefully. "Unlike this one, it had tentacles. Can you explain that?"
"Death comes in many forms, depending on how deep into the abyss you go." He tilted his head. "If you're speaking of tentacles, then you mean the guardian of the 99th hill. Never been there to see it, but I've heard of it." He paused. Something shifted in his expression. "Wait. You encountered another Death?"
It wasn't a question.
She lowered her cup and placed it between her feet. "Yes. My companion spoke with it on my behalf. The same way you just pulled me out of the dark just now".
The troll was quiet for a moment. Then he made a sound that might have been a laugh — low and rough, like two stones grinding together.
"Really. A human has seen two Deaths and still draws breath." He shook his head slowly. "Death must love you."
Esara stared at him.
Love her. She had been saved by Salty talking to a monster she hadn't even seen, and then by a troll who happened to be standing in the right place at the right time. That wasn't love. That was an uncomfortable series of coincidences that she intended to have words with the universe about later.
"And your companion?" Dovregrubben continued. "Where is he now? If he's human, Death won't accept the same bargain twice. He'd be in a real situation."
She almost smiled. She couldn't help it.
"I doubt it." She picked the cup back up. "Salty has other things to worry about than something deciding to attack him."
The stone cup hit the floor.
It cracked clean across the middle, the sound sharp and sudden in the quiet of the cave. Dovregrubben sat completely still, staring at her with an expression she couldn't quite read — somewhere between disbelief and something older and heavier than that.
The candles flickered.
"....Salty?"