Paul stumbled down the tunnel, dragging one hand on the jagged walls for support, the sounds of the troll chief’s footsteps behind him spurring him on.

Unlike Paul’s halting half-run, the foot-falls were steady, inexorable, the chief’s long legs closing the distance with every step.

Paul shambled to a stop for a movement, turning back toward his pursuer, who was just now approaching the last trap in the tunnel system before it opened up into Paul’s home cavern. The chief had made his way through the other traps - walking straight through a caltrop field and then smashing his way through a rockfall trap. Paul wasn’t sure if the caltrops had failed to penetrate the troll’s skin, or if they had and it had simply ignored the pain. He also wasn’t sure which option was more terrifying.

Paul held his breath as the chief stepped on a hidden pitfall. There were only a few of these in these tunnels, and were usually easily lept or not very deep, but this was one of the deeper pits. The disguised bison skin gave way beneath the troll’s foot, and with a roar, the chief disappeared into the hole.

Paul let out a long breath, then allowed himself to slump down onto the cool rock floor of the tunnel. He brought a waterskin to his lips, hissing as some spilled onto the burns covering his upper chest. He didn’t stop drinking though, the water was too good - tepid and tasting a little like bison guts, to be sure, but delicious all the same to his parched tongue.

He let his shoulder’s slump, and turned to Seymore, who still poked his tiny head from the rucksack. “Well Seymore, I suppose the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” Paul allowed himself a small smile, which turned to a frown when sounds of scrabbling and falling rocks came from the pit.

His stomach turned to lead and the waterskin fell from his hands as a long, bony hand grasped the edge of the trench, and the troll pulled itself up. Its eyes found Paul as it leveraged itself up, burning with palpable malevolence.

Paul’s mouth went dry despite his recent drink. He was running on empty, and he knew it. The long gash across his back, the burns across swathes of exposed skin, and his mangled thigh all impeded his movement, and he could feel his potentiality of intent was nearly empty. Creating another large Concussive Orb was out of the question, requiring far more intent than he currently possessed.

He leveraged himself to his feet, unsteady and halting. Seymore chirped his concern in Paul’s ear. The troll strode toward him, and he felt a blanket of malice descend upon him, scouring away at any holdouts of resolve Paul might have left.

Paul’s breaths came short and quick, his skin clammy. He lurched away from the troll, toward the light of his home cavern, expecting to feel the chief’s claws to flay his back with every halting step.

But what then?

The thought was nearly lost in the crushing fear as he staggered away, but he latched onto it.

What happens after they find my home? After I lose everything I’ve worked toward?

He stumbled, and the fear and dread felt almost like physical things, pulling him to the ground. The chief was so close that he could hear its breathing, two steps more and Paul would be in reach. Seymore chirped in alarm and chomped on Paul’s earlobe, hard, but the sensation barely registered.

He felt a strange pressure in his head, as if his rational mind was being drowned in paralyzing terror, and he felt his legs stop moving. Against that pressure though was a tiny mote of resistance, of defiance. Paul focused on that patch of will and poured everything he had into it.

His appreciation of the strange beauty that the caverns could exhibit. His anger at his situation. His care for Seymore. Anything but his fear.

He fed everything that he was against the suffocating terror that enveloped him, and Paul pushed back.

The troll reared back to swipe at Paul. Paul could sense the blow coming, but he was locked in place by fear, his muscles frozen in place. He screamed his defiance against the fear that controlled him.

The troll’s arm descended.

Paul felt something tear in his mind as his stoked flames of defiance tore through the fear like sharp steel through cloth.

Paul leaned forward.

One claw still caught him on the back of his head, slicing through skin and scraping against the back of Paul’s skull.

In control of his body again, Paul continued his motion and somersaulted away, then turned back toward the troll. It widened its eyes, and Paul triggered all five of his remaining light orbs that hovered around his head.

He spent every iota of his remaining intent on guiding the Itano Circus of orbs toward his target, and he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his frontal lobe, but not before Paul saw four out of the five corkscrewing orbs explode against the troll, blasting palm-sized divots of flesh from its body.

Paul forced his battered body toward his opponent. With the light from the orbs extinguished, Paul noticed the troll open its bulbous lower eyes, Paul’s own [Nightvision] serving a similar purpose for him.

He pulled his jawbone war-clubs from their loops. They felt familiar in his hands. One of the first things he had crafted had been a set of jawbone clubs, and he had spent more time using them than any of his other weapons, despite the fact that they weren’t as practical as his spears for hunting, and his [Blunt Weapons] skill of 8 reflected the fact.

The chief clutched at its wounds, allowing Paul to close the gap.

He couldn’t reach the massive troll’s chest, so Paul went for the joints. Ankles. Knees, hips, wrists. Paul struck, again and again, backpedaling and dodging away from the troll’s frenzied swipes, then ducking in again inside the troll’s reach. On Paul’s fourth strike to the troll’s left wrist, he felt as much as heard a satisfying crunch as the bones fractured.

The troll roared. The sound was so loud that stones and dust fell from the cave ceiling and Paul clutched his hands to his ears. By the time he saw the troll’s right arm swinging for him, it was too late.

The impact flung Paul across the cave. He spun once in the air before slamming against the tunnel wall. He felt his ribcage crumple with a sickening crunch, collapsing his lung. Seymore was ejected from the rucksack to land on the wall. Shock kept Paul conscious as he wheezed for breath. He reached down to his side, only to pull his hand away in horror as he felt the ends of fractured ribs sticking from his punctured skin.

The troll lumbered over to him, unhurried. Paul struggled to stand, but couldn’t rise beyond his knees. His breathing was ragged and shallow. He desperately wanted to inhale deeply, but his ruined ribcage rejected every attempt with white-hot agony.

Paul looked up in despair at the troll, who now stood over him. It raised one of its clawed limbs to finish him off, and Paul knew that there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“I’ll see you when I wake up.”

If the troll understood Paul, it made no sign, and Paul closed his eyes, waiting for the blow.

Instead of feeling claws ripping through his neck, he instead felt a stab of anger from his link with Seymore, and the little lizard let out an angry chirp. When Paul opened his eyes again he saw Seymore fling himself from the cave wall to land on the chief’s face. The troll flung his head back and roared as Seymore savaged one of its large lower eyes.

No you idiot, I’ll probably come back, but you can’t!

Paul’s fears were realized. The troll reached up to its ruined eye, grabbed the ferocious little lizard, and flung it against the opposite wall, where it impacted with a wet thud and slid to the ground, broken and still.

Since Paul first saw the chief, its aura of hate and fear had threatened to swallow him whole. Now though, Paul’s own anger felt like a cleansing flame, burning away and scattering the pressure until it was nothing but ash in a firestorm. With the anger came a searing clarity, and Paul moved.

He couldn’t stand, so Paul rolled to the troll’s blindside. He felt his devastated side buckle as he completed the motion, but his rage was so complete that it seemed inconsequential.

He thrust an obsidian dagger into the troll’s ankle. The skin was thick but parted with some effort, and Paul sawed the dagger out the back of the Troll’s calf, snapping its Achilles tendon.

The troll fell to one knee, and now Paul could reach its groin. He stabbed deep into the Troll’s inner thigh then rolled away again, keeping himself away from the troll’s good eye as it violently flailed its arms, trying to reach Paul.

Anger propelled Paul on, though in the back of his mind he noticed that his vision was beginning to blur. Now he was at the troll’s back and plunged his knife where he thought the troll’s kidneys might be, then twisted the blade, which snapped off at the hilt. The troll bent backward in a spasm, and Paul pulled himself from being crushed underneath it as it flopped onto its back.

One of the troll’s hands caught him, but it was too late. Paul had already reached the troll’s neck. Paul tore his rat-claw necklace from his neck, snapping the leather string, and plunged it into the Troll’s trachea. The troll’s claws tightened for a brief moment, sinking into Paul’s already mangled body then relaxed as the chief went limp with a rasping exhalation.

Paul’s anger ebbed, and as it retreated the pain crept back in. He slowly rolled off the corpse with a whimper. Dark motes were swarming ever denser over his vision. He tried to bring himself to his hands and knees, but his legs didn’t want to move, so he pulled himself across the cave floor with his arms alone, leaving a trail of crimson behind him.

He finally reached Seymore’s limp form and managed to prop himself into a sitting position against the cave wall, cradling Seymore in his hands.

Paul knew he didn’t have long. He could feel the cold creeping in, and his hands trembled. Hot tears rolled down his cheeks as he looked down at the crushed form of what had been his only friend and companion.

Things were getting darker.

Paul reached deep into his well of intent and pushed the tiny mote that remained into the hands, causing Seymore to glow with wan illumination.

It doesn’t seem fair for you to die in the dark when you’ve helped me stay in the light.

Paul held his friend and waited for death.