Chapter 3 River
RIVER
I’m not hallucinating. I’m not. I keep telling myself that, like it’ll make it true.
But the air stinks of smoke and moonshine, and there’s a spider with a bitchy voice spelling out profanities in a goddamn web balloon.
A satyr is licking his fingers like he’s already tasted my marrow.
And the troll? The troll has fucking lava for eyes.
His gaze is fierce and quiet and terrifying.
Like he’s not looking at me, but through me—measuring something I don’t even know I still have.
I can’t feel my legs. Can barely hold the stick up. My arm’s jelly and every breath scrapes like sandpaper. The inside of my ribs ache like something’s splintered, and my mouth’s full of copper and grit.
But the stick stays up.
Because if I drop it, I’m meat.
“Sing. Dance. Tell me a tale.” His voice rolls like distant thunder, low and sure, and not even slightly joking. The other freaks go quiet. The toad knight with his pompous jaw. The satyr with roast girl on the menu. Even the spider hushes for a beat.
A dry laugh bubbles out of me, cracked and wrong.
“You want a fucking story?” I croak. My throat burns. My lips split.
He nods once, solemn as a damn priest.
I take a breath, and then—something inside me gives. It doesn’t break. Not yet. It bends. I drop the stick. Not from surrender. From rage.
“Alright,” I say. My voice is hoarse, hollow. “Here’s your story.”
I straighten—or try to. My spine feels like it’s made of broken glass. I don’t care. I force myself upright, legs trembling, every nerve screaming. I guess my back's not broken. Everything works even if it hurts like hell.
“I was seven the first time a dark elf touched me. Seven. He had gloves, because I was property. Untouched. You know what that means?” My gaze darts to the satyr. He flinches. Good.
“Means I wasn’t allowed to cry. Not in front of them. Wasn’t allowed to speak unless spoken to. Wasn’t allowed to bleed. Wasn’t allowed to breathe without permission. But they could touch. They could teach.”
The troll watches me.
“They trained me like livestock. You ever train livestock? You break them. Break their will. Over and over until it’s not even a question anymore. I learned to smile through pain. Learned to kneel. Learned to sing lullabies while wishing for a blade in my belly. Learned to dream of dying.”
Charen mutters, “Shit.” She sounds half impressed, half embarrassed.
I swallow, hard. It scrapes raw. But I keep going.
“Then came auction day. Big black box. Gilded. Velvet-lined. I was in it. They paraded me out like I was a prize bull. Not even clothed. Just paint. Spirals down my spine and across my breasts, symbols that meant untouched, valuable, rare. They told me to smile. I did. I smiled while planning to take someone with me.”
My voice starts to hitch. I push through.
“But fate’s a drunk old bastard. The auction never happened. Gunfire. Chaos. Blood. Rizzo’s Rangers tore through the elite like gods come to pass judgment. Except gods don’t miss. They killed slaves too. Girls like me. Screaming. Dying.”
I breathe. Close my eyes. Open them again. “My buyer tried to grab me. Drag me out. Thought I was still his.” My lips peel back in something that’s not a smile. “I broke his neck with my chains.”
The satyr's mouth is slack. Toad Knight looks away.
I’m shaking now, but it’s not from fear.
“And Rizzo? He looked down at me like I was some kind of wild thing. He offered me a place. A gun. A choice. I took it. I trained. I killed. I learned to survive.”
I look at the troll. At Kragna.
“But I’m still the same girl. Still chained in ways no one can see. Still pissed. Still broken. Still here.”
My voice breaks on that last word. Just… shatters. And before I can catch it, the sob comes. Raw. Ugly. From the pit of me.
I drop to my knees, not out of fear, but from sheer exhaustion.
“And now I’m here. In the woods. With a troll, a satyr, a mutant toad with a sword, and a fucking spider with a sailor’s mouth. And you want a song?” I spit. “Here’s your fucking song.”
Silence.
The fire’s crackle fills the silence I leave in my wake. It pops and hisses, gnawing on wet logs like a thing alive. Nobody says a word.
The satyr, Veeto—his mouth still open like he’s trying to catch flies. Toad Knight’s helmet glints in the flames, but his eyes are on the dirt. Even Charen’s quiet, which for her is practically a blood moon miracle.
Kragna, though… he just watches me. But different now. Not like meat. Not like prey. There’s weight in his stare—something heavy, uncertain, like a storm deciding whether to fall or pass.
The pain claws at my insides, a low grinding throb. I can barely stay upright. My muscles are trembling like I’m trying to hold the sky up with a splintered stick. My stomach lurches with each breath, and everything spins when I blink. But I refuse to fall.
He moves.
Big, slow, deliberate. Hooves crunching in the dirt. His horns catch the light, casting long shadows against the stone and moss. I don’t flinch. Maybe because I’ve got nothing left to lose. Or maybe because, deep in my bones, something tells me he won’t hurt me.
Not now.
Kragna stops a few feet away. His eyes flick to the others, then back to me. Then he crouches—massive body folding down like an old tree easing to the ground.
He holds something out.
A thick hunk of meat skewered on a blackened stick. Still steaming. Smells like rabbit. Or possibly raccoon. I don’t ask.
“You look like you need this more than I do,” he rumbles.
I stare at it. My hands twitch.
“Poisoned?” I rasp.
“Only by flavor.” A ghost of a smile plays on his lips.
I snatch it. The tremble in my hands is worse than I thought.
I rip into the meat with my teeth, not caring that it’s hotter than dragon spit.
It burns my tongue, sears my cracked lips, but I don’t stop.
I chew, swallow, tear again. It’s greasy, spicy, and too salty—and it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
The others are watching. I can feel it. Like a dozen eyes crawling over my skin. But none of them speak.
Charen mutters finally, “Well. Shit.” Then she scuttles up a vine and out of sight, her web balloon bobbing behind her like a dirty insult written in silk.
Veeto coughs. “So, uh… we’re not eatin’ her then?”
“Not tonight,” Kragna says, voice low. “She told a good story.”
Toad Knight sheathes his sword with a shrug and waddles back to his stump. “A tale of valor and vengeance. Quite stirring.”
“Y’all are weird,” I mutter through another mouthful.
Kragna chuckles. Just once. A deep, strange sound.
He hands me a chipped clay cup filled with something that smells like gasoline and rotting apples. I eye it warily.
“Crabapple ‘shine,” he says. “Cleans the blood, fouls the mind.”
I take a swig. Immediately regret it. My throat erupts into flame. I cough so hard I see stars.
Kragna laughs—full this time. “Ah, now you’re part of the crew.”
I manage to glare at him over the rim. “You assholes have a crew?”
“More like a loose association of alcoholics and misanthropes,” he says. “But we make it work.”
I drink again, slower this time. The fire in my chest dulls to a simmer. My fingers stop shaking. My mind doesn’t, though. It spins and spins, trying to understand how I got here—how I’m still alive, surrounded by monsters, and not already stew.
“You didn’t have to feed me,” I say after a long minute.
“I didn’t,” he agrees.
“Then why?”
Kragna’s face shifts. The firelight dances in his eyes, glinting off something softer than I expect.
“You’re interesting,” he says simply.
I laugh. A bitter, broken sound. “Yeah, that’s one word for it.”
The cup’s warm in my hands. The stew pot bubbles nearby. Somewhere in the dark, a bird screeches—a long, keening sound that sets my teeth on edge. But inside this circle of firelight and madness, I feel…
Safe.
That’s the word. Not comfortable. Not happy. But safe. Like nothing worse can get to me tonight.
I don’t trust it. Don’t trust him. Not yet.
But I don’t feel like I need to run, either.
Kragna gets up and walks toward the edge of the clearing. His silhouette is massive against the misty trees. He pauses, glances back.
“You’re not what I expected,” he says.
“Neither are you.”
And that, somehow, is the closest thing to peace I’ve had in years.
I wake to music.
Not the kind you play with instruments or loop in your head to keep the madness out, but a deep, chest-humming lullaby—low and strange, like stones sliding over each other in a distant canyon.
My eyes blink open to moonlight, all silver and soft through the mist drifting past the bridge. The fire’s gone to embers, pulsing like a dragon’s breath. Everything feels slow. Hushed. Like the world’s holding its breath for something sacred or awful.
And there’s that voice.
Kragna’s voice.
I don’t understand the words, not even a little. It's not common, and it sure as hell isn’t any dialect of Elvish I ever learned to hate. It rolls, though. Heavy and round. Guttural and golden. Like someone kneading grief and comfort together into sound.
I turn my head.
He’s not near the fire anymore. He’s under the bridge, half-shadowed, sitting cross-legged in the grass.
A gourd of that foul moonshine at his side.
His horns catch the moonlight, soft curls glowing like pale gold.
He’s got his eyes closed. Singing like no one’s listening.
Like maybe even he forgets anyone else is there.
I don’t move.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him—really seen him—without the grinning menace, without the amusement or crude jokes or veiled threats. Just Kragna and his voice. And something about the quiet reverence of it knots my chest in a way I don’t like.
I curl deeper into the blanket they gave me. Smells like smoke and moss and something coppery. My ribs ache. Every joint throbs like I’ve been tumbled down a mountain. I probably have. Still, I close my eyes again. Let the sound cradle me.
It’s not safe. It can’t be safe. I’m surrounded by things that laugh about dismemberment.
But for a minute, I believe it is.
Then I hear the faintest twitch above my head. A sound like silk scraping bark.
My eyes snap open.
Charen’s perched on the limb of a nearby tree, tiny spidery body backlit by moonlight, spinnerets twitching furiously. Her web glints between the branches, thin threads catching the light just right.
She’s spelled out something.
“Still think he won’t eat you, dumbass?”
I groan. Loudly. “Seriously?”
Her eight eyes blink in sync. “I’m just sayin’. Beautiful lullabies don’t mean you’re not food later.”
“Go to hell.”
“I live in the trees above it,” she chirps, then vanishes up into the foliage, muttering to herself.
I bury my face in the blanket and swear quietly. It doesn't make me feel better.
Kragna’s still singing. Unbothered. Unaware.
I lie there in the cold and the quiet, heart doing weird flippy shit in my chest, and I wonder—not for the first time—what kind of story I’ve stumbled into. And how the hell it ends.
But I don’t think I’ll get any answers tonight.
So I let the lullaby wrap around me like armor, and drift back into sleep, dreaming of lava-eyed trolls and spider-written insults.
And for once, no one’s chasing me.
Not even my memories.