Sam

  Sam stood staring at the devastation, stupid and slack-jawed, for too long. She willed herself out of her stupor, at least bodily. Started moving. She needed to do something. To be useful, somehow.

  She waded back out into the bog to check for survivors. One by one, she dragged cold, limp bodies out of the insatiable pull of those muddy waters. Most were stone dead. Others were headed that way, already well on their way through death's door. Some bodies had been irretrievably lost to the undertow.

  In some places the mud was up to her waist, a heavy force resisting any effort to breach it. Mongrel and Oatmeal weren't able to help, since they weren't strong enough to brave the peat bog and would probably just get stuck themselves. It was Gug who accompanied her, maneuvering the impediment more deftly than her thanks to his added height, having removed his boots and rolled his trouser legs up to the knees.

  The troll was still acting different, an unnerving coldness behind his little black eyes and a stern set to his heavy brow. Sam couldn't put her finger on what it meant, but she had enough to worry about that it didn't occupy much of her mind at present. He was helpful in retrieving the bodies, however, and somehow knew which spots to avoid that would make her sink down to her neck or worse.

  The time spent fighting the troll had seen the wagon pulled even deeper into the bog so that only one high corner stuck out. Gug dragged the metal-bound vehicle high enough that Sam could slip in through the ruined hole left by the monster and confirm that all the slaves inside had drowned, unable to save themselves as they were chained in place.

  What an awful way to die.

  [Congratulations! You have reached Level 7!]

  The message burned itself into the back of her mind as she was dragging one of the corpses to shore, frequently slipping in the mud, caked in the stinking stuff up to her cheeks.

  "Shut up!" she growled, and let go of her charge to yell at the sky. "Take it back!" The last thing she wanted right now was to be rewarded for her failure.

  But the Concord did not care about her moral crisis; did not respond to her childish tantrum.

  Trudging past with a body held carefully in outstretched arms to avoid getting muck on his clothes, Gug spared her a brief questioning look.

  "Sorry," Sam muttered as she returned to her work. "Please just ignore me."

  Gug obliged, moving on without a word spoken.

  There were only two survivors. A female Builder mercenary who was relatively unharmed, and a male Entertainer slave who had nearly drowned and was now pale and shaking.

  Oatmeal was trying and failing to start a fire while Mongrel tended to both of the survivors. The fact that the old Farmer was the most medically competent among them was somewhat concerning, but there it was.

  With nothing left to busy herself with, Sam was left standing in front of the rough line of corpses that they had made by the edge of the bog. Thirteen dead. At least two of them because of her. Because she'd hesitated.

  She stared especially at the one woman that the troll had used as an improvised weapon. She might have been pretty once, but now she hardly looked human. Her face was flattened, caved-in where it had struck Sam's chest. Her neck was all twisted around, and her spine had snapped like a twig. A broken end of her collarbone protruded through the skin, pink and bloody.

  Sam could still remember the sensation of their bodies colliding, of another person shattering against her in a strangely intimate unmaking. It replayed endlessly in her head until she wanted to be sick, then kept going until she actually was sick, sagging low to spew up her breakfast.

  "Are you injured?" came Gug's rough, deep rumble, that new icy coldness still present in his voice.

  "No," Sam mumbled. "Not at all." Not that she'd checked. A cursory glance down at herself revealed little. She wiped at the mud caking her. She didn't think anything was broken, or that her skin had even been pierced.

  "Are you sure? You took a bad hit."

  "Yeah. I'm pretty tough."

  "I see. Impressive, for a human."

  Sam tore her eyes away from the mangled woman to glance up at the troll. "Something is different about you. What's going on?"

  Gug was digging dirt out from under his fingernails, his face showing a great indifference for all the devastation around him. "That's because the person you spoke to before was Gug. I am his brother, Nug."

  "You're… his brother?" She did remember Gug mentioning something about a brother before.

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  "Yes," Gug replied simply.

  "What do you mean?"

  "When Gug needs help, he calls for me and I take over."

  "Uh… huh." Something like a split personality, then. Normally, she probably would have considered that interesting. "I'm sorry for making you do that," Sam said after a while. "Kill one of your own kind, I mean."

  Nug frowned down at her. "Why?"

  She shrugged. "In case it upset you."

  "Ah."

  "Did it?"

  "No. Killing does not make me feel one way or the other. It is rather like… tying one's shoes, only messier. I do dislike mess. In that sense, yes, I suppose this was an undesirable outcome." He gazed out at the bog, the other troll still slowly sinking, only its round belly and twisted face still visible over the waterline. "As for killing one of 'my own kind', I find the very notion offensive. Do not presume to compare me to one of those mindless beasts. I am to a troll as a human is to a bonobo."

  "I see."

  Nug stared at her for a while, then heaved a sigh. "You seem upset. Why? You didn't know these other humans, as far as I can tell."

  Sam shook her head. "I didn't." She looked back at the bodies, felt a new wave of nausea bubble up inside.

  "Then, why?"

  "I failed to save them. At least two, probably more, are dead because I couldn't bring myself to kill."

  "Ah. Yes, that is a considerable weakness. A fool once told me: 'To achieve the good life, love without shame and kill without mercy'."

  Sam nodded along absent-mindedly. In an effort to think about something, anything else, she asked: "You seem strong. How were you able to use something like Power Word [Death]? I was told that it doesn't work unless the target is already attuned to the concept you're influencing them with."

  "In this case, it worked due to a fairly complex set of ability interactions. It would take some time to explain."

  Sam looked over at Mongrel, still prodding at the two survivors and barking orders at Oatmeal. "Doesn't seem like we're in much of a rush."

  Nug sighed. "If you really must know, I'll try to explain the sequence of events in order so that even a human can understand.

  "One, my brother used Brainstorm to vastly boost his aggregated Processing score and allow me to take over.

  "Two, I used Telepathy on the troll to gain insight into its thoughts, actions, and bodily functions while also dumping a large amount of raw information into its head to confuse the beast and slow its reaction speed.

  "Three, I used Visualize to manifest my understanding of the enemy's cardiovascular system into a concrete visual layout, essentially allowing me to see inside its body.

  "Four, I engaged the troll in close combat. Though I could easily outmaneuver it, I was of course well aware that trolls possess the innate passive Mutagenesis, allowing for extremely rapid regeneration and making them very difficult to kill short of completely dismantling the body. That would have been messy and time-consuming, so I settled for a simpler approach.

  "Five, I made a blunt-force strike to the site over the enemy's heart, timing it perfectly to the rhythm of its heartbeat so that the trauma produced momentary arrhythmia, something adjacent to a brief cardiac arrest. Not enough to kill, but…"

  "But close enough for Power Word [Death] to work on it," Sam guessed.

  "Correct. Normally, this would be an extremely difficult Power Word to pull off even with that level of setup, but it was made easier by the fact that I had already penetrated the enemy's mind, giving me greater influence over its mental state, as well as my prodigiously high Processing score allowing my Power Words to work with greater efficiency.

  "Monsters are easily affected by these types of mental attacks, as they are stupid and typically have weak mental barriers, but Power Word would not have worked at all if not for the preceding cast of Telepathy. A Power Word target needs to perceive and understand the word they are being influenced with in order for it to take effect. Trolls typically have no comprehension of the One Tongue, making them immune, but by having direct Telepathic access to its mind I was able to transfer the information directly as raw mental stimuli in addition to casting the skill verbally."

  Sam found the lengthy explanation somewhat calming, feeling almost like Will was there to lecture at her. She wished he was there. She could use a hug. Just looking at his face would be enough, really.

  But he wasn't there. And there were still another ten days until she would see him again, assuming they ever made it out of the impenetrable fog that still ringed their small area of clear space.

  Nug went on talking, and Sam wasn't about to stop him, even though she wasn't really paying much attention.

  "Power Word [Death] does not cause any physical damage. It merely convinces the target body to instantly shut off any cerebral and cardiovascular activity, as it believes it is dead, which in turn causes true death. This bypasses any regenerative power granted by Mutagenesis, making it a perfect tool against this type of enemy."

  "That's very impressive," Sam mumbled. And more than a little terrifying, but she didn't say that out loud. "Thank you, Nug. For doing what I couldn't."

  Nug gave a small nod. "You're welcome." He began pulling out handfuls of dry grass to wipe his bare legs down with. "And thank you, human, for saving my brother from bondage. It's been a long time since anyone has treated him with any kindness."

  "Don't mention it."

  "As such, I have no objections to his traveling with you. However." He rose to his full eight-foot height, towering over her, face shadowed from what little sunlight broke through the fog over their heads. "If you allow Gug to come to harm through your weakness, I will see that you pay for it dearly."

  Sam expelled a quick, hysteric laugh before she could stifle it. "Understood, Nug," she said. "I'll… try to do better."

  "Good. See that you do."

  The active effect of Brainstorm must have ended not long after, because a change came over the troll's face, and he seemed confused for a moment as he looked around, inspecting first his surroundings, then his own body. He made a sad sort of moan at the sight of his waistcoat and trousers flecked with mud. At least they were already brown, so the mess was not too obvious.

  "What happened?" Gug asked, blinking vapidly at her, his lower lip outthrust. "You were in trouble, so I whooshed. I thought my brother could help you."

  "He did," Sam replied with a put-on smile, scratching at a dried-out crust of mud on her cheek. "You both really saved my ass, Gug. Thank you."

  "Really? I was helpful?"

  "Really."

  "Really really?"

  "Really really, Gug."

  His face split in a huge, stupid grin. "Heh."