Chapter 8
Eight
Gunnar
The one time Gunnar allowed Ragnar to make the plan was the one time they got caught.
He was so angry at his brother, he had no idea what to do with himself.
He wanted to punch Ragnar into a pulp. Maybe grind his face into the stone floor of this place that was rancid with so much troll blood he didn't think it could ever wash clean.
But that wouldn't do anything. They were all struggling in this place, and he needed Ragnar to help get them out.
For once, Gunnar was out of ideas. He had been through more of the human cities than any of the other trolls.
He had adventured through countless battlefields, ensuring that bodies were returned to those who needed them.
Every single piece. All of them were kept in the Hall of Heroes until he found every bone that had once been in their bodies, and only then were they buried.
All those travels, and he had never been here. He hadn't even realized it existed. He should have known, should have seen it, should have had some inclination that there was a place as drastically wrong as this one. But he hadn't.
He sat on the cot, alone in this cell for once. The humans kept rotating which rooms the trolls were held in, making sure that none of them were with each other long enough to plan an escape. It was a good plan, but trolls were efficient fighters.
He'd been talking with as many of the trolls who had been here for a long time as he could. Gunnar knew most of them by name now, and in another week, he'd know them even better. None of the humans would prevent them from doing what trolls were good at doing. Escaping. Fighting. Being free.
He wrapped his knuckles with a bit of fabric that he'd stolen off a guard.
The man had likely been bringing such luxurious fabric to a nobleman.
Gunnar had seen them walking through the dungeons late at night.
He wasn't entirely sure what they were doing here, but considering the sounds that echoed from the cells, he could guess.
This place was disgusting.
But the fabric was nice. He'd always enjoyed the feeling of silk against his skin, and any enjoyment in this place was a luxury he would not turn his nose up at.
Banging on the door of his cell caught his attention. It wasn't the door with the window. That was usually where the guards were when they brought food.
He turned to look at the other door. The one that led to ruin and blood.
He had walked through it too many times now.
The humans liked watching him fight because he was a little smaller than the other trolls.
Faster. But he'd also heard that some of them liked the fact that he wore his hair as they did. Shorter, without braids.
Gunnar had once been very vain about his hair. It usually flowed loosely around his face. Rakish, as some of the troll women had called him for years now. He liked that nickname and only wore a few braids to keep it out of his face when he fought.
But now it was greasy and lank, and it hung around his head almost like a helmet because there was so much grime in it that it didn't move.
When they got out of here, the first thing he was going to do was bathe.
A few times. Maybe even just stay the night in a tub so he could feel like he was clean again.
The door banged again, as if they were waiting for his permission, which was odd.
"What is it?" he thundered, hoping that his voice would break through the thick wood to whomever thought it was smart to disturb an angry troll.
Flashes of what he had done played through his mind.
Gunnar put on a show for the humans when they wanted it, mostly because they seemed to enjoy feeding larger humans to him.
He rarely fought other trolls. But he had stomped that man's head in easily enough.
He could still feel the skull crushing beneath his heel as the crowd roared with pleasure.
"Your winnings," the guard's voice came through the door.
Then it was opened, and a woman was pushed inside with him.
Gunnar wasn't sure what to do with that. The door sealed shut, the lock clicking into place rather ominously, and he was staring at what he was certain was a ghost.
The woman was just as covered in grime as he was. He could see the labyrinth had taken its toll on her as well. The threadbare clothing she wore hung off her thin shoulders like a sack, the bones in them protruding so much he figured he could have counted her ribs.
Her pale hair was nearly white as snow, though. Someone had recently washed it. Maybe just her head, considering the rest of her was just as dirty as he was. But she looked up at him with hollow eyes, and he didn't think she saw him at all. Pale icy eyes. The irises blended eerily into the whites.
"I am your prize," she said, her voice deeper than he expected. Raspy, as if she didn't use it very much.
He was stunned that a creature like her was still alive in this place. He couldn't move from the cot. Frozen where he was, half wrapping his bleeding knuckles as she reached for the hem of her dress and started pulling it up.
"Oh, no. Don't do that." He stayed where he was, hoping that she would see he wasn't a threat.
Clearly, this was a situation he could not control. This woman had been abused. She had been here too long, with far too many men pawing at her if she was so willing to remove her dress.
She didn't follow his quiet order. She just kept pulling that dress off herself, revealing inch after inch of bruised skin.
By the gods, she was so pale he could count her veins. And he had been right. There were far too many ribs showing, every single one of them casting hollow shadows that made her seem even thinner. Her collarbones were stark, and she'd lost so much weight that her breasts were nonexistent.
"Please," Gunnar said, slowly standing and holding his hands out in a peace offering. "Do not do this. There is no reason for you to remove your clothing. It is cold in here, fair lady. Put your dress back on."
But then he watched the strangest thing happen. She looked him in the eyes and then... disappeared.
Gunnar knew what a soul looked like leaving a person. There was a coldness to it as the body remained behind, empty and vacant. Such a thing usually only happened in death. She was still very much alive, just... not there.
He waved a hand in front of her face, trying to see if she would react to that at all. She didn't. She just stared at him, her jaw slightly slack, as though waiting for something to happen.
A deep ache burned in his chest. He couldn't leave this woman here. There were probably countless others just like her, all of them broken and beaten within an inch of their lives. But the moment he saw her soul drift away like that, he knew that there was no other path for him.
He would take her from this place. He would keep her safe because no one else had.
"Sit on the bed," he said, trying out a theory that she would take whatever she was ordered to do.
And she did. The woman walked right to the cot and sat down on it, nude and without caring that she was. She even started to lie down, but he stopped her before that happened.
"No, just sit."
He watched her sit there, her hands primly placed on her lap, and waited.
She didn't move a muscle. Her body was breathing.
He could see her taking slow inhalations.
Ancestors, she was so thin he could see her heart beating between the hollows of her ribs.
The artery down the center of her belly jumped with every beat as well, so easy for him to see that his heart broke.
Gunnar had no idea how long he waited. He wanted to see her do something. A finger twitch that might suggest the trauma was still in there, that a fight was still in her body. Nothing happened. Not even a thigh twitch, a shift of her toes, barely even a blink that was out of place.
He stood and blew air into her eyes, making them blink rapidly, but the moment he stopped, her eyes settled right back into the strange rhythm that was far too consistent for it to be natural.
This wasn't just obedience. This wasn't just trauma.
She really wasn't in there at all.
"Strange," he muttered as he stood, his knees creaking. He must have been crouched in front of her for a very long time for them to ache like that.
He had to know what was happening to her.
Gunnar wasn't just any troll. He had traveled more than any of the others combined.
He had seen kingdoms across miles of landscapes.
He'd seen an ocean so large that the waves would have swallowed any ship that dared set sail.
The world was an open storybook before him, and he had read every single page, but he had never seen a person do what she was doing now.
"Wandering souls," he said as he draped the only blanket in the room over her shoulders. "I never thought I'd see that in my lifetime. But your body remains behind as a puppet. That, fair one, is dangerous."
A vacant body was open too far too many things.
After all, there were still spirits that haunted this place.
He had never been so gifted as to see the dead, but he was certain there were plenty here.
A soul could slip into a vacant body like this.
They could take over her form, slither into that hollow place she'd left behind.
Didn't she know this? Didn't she know the danger of using magic?
"Magic."
Of course it was magic. Gunnar settled down onto the floor at her feet, crossing his legs as though preparing to meditate and staring up at her calm features. Her eyes remained locked on the wall behind him, but he was certain she would move if he ordered her to do so.
"Raise your right hand," he said, narrowing his eyes.
She did so.
"Put your finger in your nose."
And again, she did. If she had been acting, surely that would have been enough to cause her to break even a little. He didn't believe she was acting, but a man had to be sure.
Sighing, he ordered, "Remove your finger from your nose and brush your hair away from your ears for me."
The body moved, hollow and far too easily ordered around. She moved her hair to the side and revealed tiny, pointed ears. Not large enough for him to think she had a high blood content of magic—perhaps more than most, though.
"You should know better than to use magic like this. There are too many people here who would take advantage of a hollow form." He had been here long enough to know that.
Or perhaps that was the point. She disappeared from this realm to escape the reality of what was going to happen to her. He knew there were many gladiators in this place who would take advantage of whatever pleasure they could find.
Places like this made monsters out of good men.
He had not fallen so far. Gunnar decided she likely wasn't going to come out of this trance for a while yet, so he stood and settled onto the cot behind her. Back to back, he knew his skin would at least give her a little more heat than that blanket.
"My name is Gunnar," he said, bringing one knee up to his chest and wrapping an arm around it. "I grew up in Trollveggen, which is not a place you are likely to know the name of. I don't even know what you all call it. Never cared to ask."
He'd always been good at talking. So that was what he did.
For hours on end. He told her his story.
How he had always wanted to follow in Tindra's footsteps, to become a warrior that everyone would look up to.
He was a fighter, always had been, and was scrappy.
That was why he'd stayed alive in this labyrinth when he knew many of the warriors who had been stolen with him had not made it.
He told her about being a Bone Keeper and how important the role was. By the time he'd managed to tell her all about Ragnar, their king's hope for peace, and how that had all exploded in their faces in a rather dramatic way, he was nearly falling asleep.
Only then… she shifted. He felt the slightest movement of her shoulder blade against his. A simple movement, but one that told him she was back in her body.
Gunnar didn't want to frighten her. So he didn't change the cadence of his tone as he changed what he was talking about mid-sentence. "Ragnar has never been a very good— Move slowly, lass. Your body is going to be stiff after staying so still for such a long time."
Her form turned to stone. "I apologize. I do not usually wake like this in the middle of a gifting. I will return to my state shortly."
"I'd prefer it if you didn't."
"I cannot control it. My mind does not need to be here for you to seek your pleasure."
"No, it doesn't. But it does need to be here to sleep." He let the words hang between them for a moment before softly adding, "I will gladly watch over you, lass. Your mind may not believe it needs rest, but your body does to survive."
"I..." She clearly didn't know what to say. There was almost a hint of frustration to her tone, though, and he didn't understand that.
"Rest," he said, a little more firmly but still trying to remain gentle. "We don't even have to move. But you need sleep before they come for you again, so you can keep fighting."
He thought perhaps she would argue. Instead, he felt her sagging against him inch by inch until she settled into what he thought was actually sleep. He couldn't imagine how exhausted she must’ve been.
His heart warmed in his chest. This labyrinth hadn't taken his kindness from him, and even now, small creatures knew they could trust him. The fact that she slept while he was here? It was the greatest gift he could have been given.
As he drifted off with her, he vaguely remembered a time when he had met a dark-haired priestess. One who had begged him to save a pale-haired woman. And he… well. He hadn’t taken the job back then.
But maybe he should have.