Chapter 5 River #2
I look at him. “You’re not gonna ask what happened?”
“You’ll tell me if you want to.”
We stand there a moment longer, watching the river roar below like it’s hungry for more.
“Do you trust me?” he asks.
I blink. “Do I what?”
“I said do you trust me?”
I stare at him. At his too-big frame and strange, intense eyes and voice like cracked stone warmed in the sun. I should say no. I should laugh. I should walk away and never look back.
Instead, I say, “I don’t know yet.”
He nods. “That’s fair.”
We keep walking. The forest closes around us again, and I wonder if I’ll ever really get out of it—or if some part of me will always be lost here, among the fog and blood and ghosts.
Kragna hums something under his breath. A tune I don’t know. It’s low and rhythmic, like river stones tumbling.
I don’t ask what it means.
I just let it carry us forward.
The birds stop singing again.
It’s like a breath sucked out of the forest. I know that silence now—know it in my bones, the way an old wound knows a storm’s coming. But before I can speak, Kragna moves.
"Down!" he roars, and the ground vanishes beneath me.
My shoulder smashes into dirt and rock as he yanks me flat against the mossy forest path.
A heartbeat later, the world screams—a boulder sails overhead, close enough that I feel its hunger in the air, like it's tasting for blood.
It slams into a tree with a thunderous crack, obliterating bark and branch alike in a shower of splinters.
Another one follows.
And then they appear—two ogres, hulking and stinking of rot and wet stone, smashing through the underbrush like they were born from the mountain’s bile itself.
One has a skull helmet, too small for its head, teeth sticking out like a crown.
The other drags a slab of uprooted tree in both hands, its feet pounding earth that quivers beneath us.
“No,” I whisper. My knees turn to water.
Same band. Same bastards. I remember that grin—wide, dull, innocent in a way that’s somehow worse. The one with the crown licked blood off a friend’s crushed ribcage.
I lift my gun with a shaking hand, but before I can aim, Kragna’s already moving—toward them.
Running toward them.
And then he changes.
His laugh rumbles out first, low and sharp like thunder cracking sideways.
His skin ripples, hardens, darkens—like stone sweating blood.
His shoulders stretch impossibly wide. Bones crack and reform with wet, sickening sounds.
A second pair of arms burst from his sides with a spray of steaming flesh, ending in hooked claws that shine like obsidian.
Veins of striking light flicker under his skin, his eyes burning lava red.
He’s a goddamn nightmare.
The ogres halt, their thick brows twitching, nostrils flaring as they finally catch his scent. Kragna growls—a sound deeper than the river’s pull, deeper than the grave. He launches himself at them with a howl that shakes the trees.
And then it’s chaos.
Kragna slams into the tree-wielder first, shoulder-first like a battering ram.
Bones explode. The tree-weapon snaps in two, its jagged stump embedding in the ogre’s gut.
The creature stumbles back, gurgling—but Kragna doesn’t stop.
One of his clawed arms stabs upward through the ogre’s jaw, punching out the top of its skull in a mist of brain matter and bone shards.
It twitches, twitches again—and then flops like a broken marionette.
The crowned one roars and charges, swinging its spiked club in a brutal arc.
Kragna ducks under it, fluid despite the bulk.
He moves like something born of battle—like he’s dancing with death and calling it sweetheart.
His claws rake across the ogre’s belly, spilling hot, ropey guts onto the ground.
But the beast keeps coming, enraged, grabbing Kragna by the arm and trying to crush him against a tree.
That’s when the troll laughs again.
It’s joy. Unfiltered. Feral.
He headbutts the ogre.
Once. Twice. On the third blow, the ogre’s face caves in, the crowned skull helmet cracking like an egg.
Teeth go flying, and something pink splatters my boot.
Kragna doesn’t stop. He tears the ogre’s head clean off, vertebrae snapping in his fists like kindling.
Steam hisses from the ragged neck stump as he flings the head into the woods like a skipping stone.
Silence follows. Broken only by the wet drip of blood off leaves.
He stands in the ruin of them, chest heaving, gore dripping from his claws and face. Eyes glowing. The monster in the moonlight.
And he turns to me.
My gun’s still in my hands, half-raised, though my fingers are numb. My heart is trying to beat its way out of my chest. My breath comes in short, hot gulps. He’s... magnificent. Horrific. A force of nature wrapped in flesh.
He walks toward me slowly, steam rising off his body. The extra limbs retract with a grotesque sucking noise, folding back into his frame like they never existed.
And then he’s just him again.
Kragna.
“Didn’t like the way they looked at you,” he mutters, wiping blood from his brow with the back of one hand.
I blink, unsure if I’m supposed to laugh, faint, or run.
We set camp a little further off the path, under the shadow of a wide boulder draped in moss.
I start a fire with shaking fingers. He doesn’t speak much—just grunts, busies himself with collecting dry wood and slicing something edible from his pack.
My brain’s still trying to wrap around what I saw.
That wasn’t a fight.
It was slaughter.
And he did it for me.
The wind shifts. I breathe in the scent of scorched pine, the faint sweetness of moss crushed underfoot, the copper tang of blood clinging to Kragna’s skin.
I don’t sleep right away.
Instead, I watch him from across the flames as he whittles something with a rough knife. His hands—massive, stained, strong enough to tear a monster in half—move with surprising gentleness, carving smooth grooves into pale wood. His brows are drawn together, his jaw set.
When he finishes, he walks over and crouches beside me. I tense, still not sure what I’m doing with this creature.
He holds something out.
A flute. Simple, carved wood, notched with care. The grain’s been polished with oils from his fingers. A gift.
“For when you can’t sleep,” he says, like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
My throat tightens.
He saved me. Fought for me. Made music for me.
I reach out and take it, my fingers brushing his. There’s warmth in that touch. A slow, steady heat that pools in my chest.
And for the first time in years, I feel something I forgot I could.
Safe.