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Deya shifted in Merlin’s armor, eyeing the horizon cautiously.
“Not long now,” she said. “We might want to move, before, er…” she made a half-hearted gesture to the effect of ‘Dying Screaming In Agony As The Sun Rises And Stone Freezes Them To Death Perhaps While Making A Rude Gesture’, but her two traveling companions turned toward her with nigh identical expressions of distaste and she deflated, aborting the action. Trolls don’t blush, not like humans can, but Deya could feel the heat rising imperceivably to her cheeks.
Still. She was right.
Stepping lightly, the three of them traversed the ashes of the human village at a steady clip. Smoke hung heavy in the air and mingled luridly with the acrid stench of roasted and raw human flesh. They hadn’t realized what they were walking into when they arrived at the sad, broken little settlement, and Deya found it best not to think too hard about what she was stepping on.
She occupied the center of the odd little entourage. To her right: Hebe, a pocket marked and wizened old Conondrom troll. Over the years she’d lost one of her four arms and two of her six eyes and was none the weaker for it. To her left: Sten, an unremarkable but sturdy warrior typical of the general Trollmarket population. None too bright, but he didn’t need to be.
They’d fought with the previous Trollhunter before his untimely demise (the Assassin, and not even on Gunmar’s orders if the rumors of his displeasure rang true). Now they’d been….demoted, Deya supposed. Ordered to babysit the rookie until she’d been deemed less likely to stab herself with Daylight.
She was knocked out of her musings by a sharp jab to the side. Surprised, she turned her attention to the perpetrator—Hebe, tense and still as true stone. Sten followed her lead, and Deya shifted onto the balls of her feet, trusting that she’d find out why soon enough.
A lump she’d first taken as a natural, gore-splattered feature of the environment was shifting; redefining itself. The sharp edge of a tusk. Muscular flanks. The tangled knots of a wild mane cascading down powerful shoulders. Wide black eyes swiveled to meet Deya’s own gaze. She was struck by the intensity of it– all at once piercing and unfathomable– and as the moment stretched longer something seemed to spark within them. Brilliant red light spread across the stranger, tracing elegant geometric patterns.
The biolights were as good as a name, if you’d heard the stories.
Johanna.
She didn’t realize she’d been staring until Hebe rammed into her again, not a sharp jab but a full body tackle. Johanna barreled forward through the space she’d been occupying not a half second later, howling with wild, unrestrained bloodlust. She was beautiful, Deya marveled, hitting the ground painfully.
“ TROLLHUNTER ,” Hebe snarled, narrowly dodging an enraged swipe. It had not taken her long to produce her knives. Deya rolled to her feet as Sten barreled into the fray, drawing Johanna’s attention and his sword alike. He was muscular, bulky, and many a troll had mistaken the two for “slow”—the last mistake they ever made, more often than not. When he moved it was with the quiet confidence of a troll who knew he was good and was intensely proud of it.
It was unfortunate the same could be said of Johanna.
Twisting away from a three-pronged strike curtsey of Hebe, she lunged toward Sten, not away, catching him off guard long enough to curl around the sword and latch onto his arm with one powerful fist.
He had enough time to swear, once, before she sent him hurtling into the remains of what had once been a human house. He didn’t get up.
Her whole world enveloped in the laser narrow focus of herenowsoonthere Deya summoned Daylight in the span of a thought, bounding to Hebe’s side. Their eyes met. Deya grinned and jerked her head Johanna’s direction. Hebe inhaled sharply, the implied “are you crazy? ” hanging in the air between them. Deya had exactly one tick of the amulet to think that was pretty hypocritical of her—her companion had gotten it without Deya even having to explain, so she must have been thinking it too—before Hebe ducked down and Deya jumped up, spring boarding off of her companion and onto Johanna’s startled, bucking back.
“Johanna!”
Her only response was an enraged roar. Laughing breathlessly, Deya clung on to the rampaging troll’s tangled mane like a particularly stubborn gnome—impossible to remove and annoying as hell. Daylight jumped from her hand to her back the instant she wondered if it could, and she allowed herself a moment to thank Merlin for the clever design. On the ground Hebe was an almost imperceivably fast whirlwind of movement, stabbing and dodging and rolling and keeping Johanna far too busy to fall backwards and smash the Trollhunter flat.
It’s possible the armor’s magic would protect her from the brunt of the damage, but she wasn’t willing to bank her life on it tonight. And getting knocked off Johanna’s back would put them back at square one. She wasn’t done here, not yet.
“Johanna,” Deya hissed. “We are not fucking Gumm-Gumms.”
No response.
“I’m the Trollhunter.”
Nada.
“You might have noticed the glowing blue armor.”
It could have been her imagination, but to Deya it seemed like the frustrated howls had lost some of their bite. Aware that the moment (if it really existed) could be brief, she carded through her knowledge of the woman— only the sensational details, of course. It was distasteful, but Johanna’s sorry tale had spread from heartstone to heartstone like the plague; picking up speed every time she did something particularly impressive. Or horrible. Or both.
No helping it.
“We’re after the same thing. Gunmar’s head, and—” Deya steeled herself for the possible fallout “—your son. All the whelps he stole.”
Johanna froze.
Hebe, not expecting it, narrowly avoided colliding with a filthy blue-black leg. She recovered admirably and sprung backwards, three eyes on Johanna and the fourth on Deya herself. Probably assumed it was a trap.
Reasonable.
Silence fell; so sudden and thick Deya thought she could cut it with a knife if she had half the mind too. Another moment passed, and she slid neatly off Johanna’s back. Daylight dissipated as quickly as she’d summoned it the first time.
Hebe wasn’t pleased, which was fair. Johanna had been trying to kill them all of thirty seconds ago. But Deya had come to…trust her instincts, when it came to these things. It could kill her, but she doesn’t think that’s today.
“Thank you.” She hoped the smile she flashed was magnanimous and not slimy. “I appreciate you, uh…”
It was Hebe’s turn to interject. “Thank you for not…murdering all of us?” Four eyes blinked lazily. “Too late to hope for ‘not injured’.”
The knives remained out.
Johanna eyed the weapons sharply for a breathless half-dozen ticks of the amulet before she sighed, losing some of the tension that had characterized her since they’d met. It wasn’t gone, but she seemed….calmer. Inch by inch the biolight faded from her skin. Deya was almost sad to see it go—it was pretty, and easier to appreciate when Johanna wasn’t trying to kill her—but when the last of the light faded from her skin Johanna turned her gaze to Deya once more with eyes not inky black but brilliant, warm green.
A fair trade.
“You. Talk.” Johanna’s voice was raspy with disuse. “Trollhunter,” she added, like there was a chance Hebe would assume it was directed at her.
“I meant what I said,” Deya replied. “We want the same things. I’ve—we’ve,” she gestured at Hebe, who seemed sour at being pulled back into the conversation, “heard many tales, of what you’ve done. Seen it firsthand.” She paused, considering. “You probably would have killed us, if you hadn’t stopped.”
“Yes,” said Johanna. False modesty didn’t become her.
Deya took a step forward. Johanna tensed. Allowing herself to be swept up in the flow of the moment, Deya reached a hand out to the amulet on her breast and yanked, dissipating Merlin’s armor as easily the sword. Hebe inhaled sharply; but allowed Deya to lie in the grave she’d dug. She set the amulet on the ground.
Another step forward, then two, then three, and Johanna allowed it.
“We both fight Gunmar’s army.”
Johanna nodded.
“We both want him dead.”
Another nod.
“Will you…” Deya paused, searching for the right words. They were eye-to eye now, or near enough—Johanna was so large that even looking down her nose at Deya required a bit of contortion. “I don’t think,” and even she didn’t know why she was so set on this, “that you can do this alone. So. Join us?”
Johanna stared, unblinking.
Laughed.
“You…” She paused. “Not first.” Another laugh. Deya thought it sounded terribly empty, and terribly sad. “ Why? ”
It was a fair question, and Deya raised her chin, maintaining as much eye contact as she could. Breathed deeply. “You were here, right?” She spread all four of her arms, gesturing at the ruins of the human village, the crumbled and burnt homes of wood and steel and stone and the remains of its inhabitants. “You tried…to stop this?”
Johanna nodded, silent once more.
“But you couldn’t,” Deya continued, “Because…you’re strong, but you’re still just one troll. We,” and this. This isn’t a promise, this is an oath. “Are going to stop this . Stop him. Stop the killing. The abductions. And it’s going to be together , because nothing less will work. ”
Out of the corner of one eye Deya could see Hebe staring at the two of them—or maybe just at her—something surprised and maybe a bit proud on her face. It was gone as soon as she’d noticed it.
“…Maybe,” Johanna replied, as good as anything Deya could have hoped for. Not a guarantee, but a start.
“If you two are done,” Hebe drawled, cutting into the moment, “we need to pick up the pace.” She turned to the crumpled building Sten had been tossed through, contemplative. “And Sten. Your new friend threw him…pretty hard.”
On the horizon, the first gentle rays of dawn’s light were making themselves known. To her right: Hebe, huffy, consulting their map in the hopes that there existed some sanctuary nearby that didn’t involve holing up in a corpse filled human settlement. To her left: Johanna, radiating faint embarrassment as she freed Sten’s unconscious body from the trap of her own making. Deya grinned.
A start, indeed.