We rejoined the others, gathering there on the beach with the scraps of Torsten's family. Their long feasting table, once packed with siblings, in-laws, and countless children, now would be nearly empty. Out of all of them, only Torsten, Torhild, Torbjorn, and Torrun with her triplets survived. Both Torhild and Torbjorn had lost both their mates and all of their children. It fell to Torsten to tell Torbjorn of his son's fate. The proud troll, his skin covered in silver rune tattoos, who stood taller and broader than all his brothers, wept and screamed with the heaviness of his loss. He hid none of it.

"Why didn't you save him?" Torbjorn demanded of me, his eyes wide and bulging despite the glare of the sun off the sea that was surely blinding him. "You saved Grandmother. You went for her first, didn't you! Because she is an elf you chose her over my boy!"

He lunged at me, his hands reaching as if to wring my neck like a chicken's. Torsten stopped him, grabbing the man in his arms and holding him in a tight embrace. "She tried. You know she did. I am sorry, brother. It is my fault. If he hadn't defended me he would not have been there."

He was lying. Torsten knew it was lying for my sake. Of course I went for my fellow elf first. I'd gone back to Synnove's apartment for her. No one else. Not Ragnar, not Torrun, not even her innocent babies. My only thought upon realizing I could not save Torsten, was to find Synnove and run.

I stayed quiet, let him lie.

"I should have stopped Father. I should have done something. If I had, none of this may have happened. They'd still be alive." Torbjorn wept, clawing at his brother's back. "He was my son, and I turned my back to him. My son. My little boy." He broke down then into incoherent muttering between painful sounding sobs. Torsten kept holding him. When he crumbled to his knees, he crumbled too and would not let go.

"Ylva and I have come up with a plan to seek the Southern trolls's aid. All we need is a means to sail to the South. Her brother can get us larger ships as well as maps that will guide us there. If we can get the Southern trolls to help us, we can rejoin with them. We can build a knew life with our mother tribe, if only long enough to rebuild."

"It'll mean nothing if the Elders are allowed to live. We have to kill them, Sten. All of them. Every single one. So many more are going to die to see it done, but we must, Brother." Torbjorn raged and sobbed into his brother's shoulder, clawing at his back with the pain of it. "What will become of us once you are gone? While you are seeking to save us, what is to stop them from dragging us back below?"

"Nothing." Torsten answered, letting his brother claw and hit and bite him with his rage. He held him and would not let go even as the other trolls around us stared at us in blank horror. "But what choice have we now?" He asked. None of them could give an answer. "We will make them all pay for what happened to us today, but it will take time, patience and we cannot do it without the elves. The pact must be upheld." He looked at me as he said it. I turned away and returned to the water.

I sat in silence while the trolls around me grieved their dead. I ground my teeth at the sounds of their wailing and shouting. I watched the heap of stone that remained of the mountain, waiting for a monster to come climbing from its ruin at every tortured sound. To my surprise, however, the Drone and Queen did not show themselves. Either they believed the trolls were eliminated, which was unlikely, or they saw no need to rush to claim their new slaves. Those two seemed to have been here longer than the Northern troll clan itself. They knew them and their ways. They knew the trolls feared water and were practically blind in sunlight. They would have reasoned that the trolls had nowhere to run. They would take their time, seizing all that remained of the trolls' riches, let their children devour the dead and dying, and then they would come to drag the survivors here below.

When that happened, I resolved, Synnove and I needed to be far, far away.

The sun was down when Torsten finally sat beside me, offering a skewered fish. The thing was burned to a crisp, but I took it, eager for something in my belly besides sea water. "How are you feeling?" Torsten asked, watching me with amusement as I tore away at the fish with my teeth, devouring it bones and all.

"Like I need to sleep for a week." I replied, crunching rib bones between my teeth.

He glanced over his shoulder, towards the makeshift camp up by the dunes where the others were gathered, trying to cook more fish for everyone. "Is there a reason you're sitting out here alone? You should be with the rest of us. It is safer that way."

"Think that if you like. It'll give me more time to run."

"Eager to abandon me again, Sulsha?"

"Hush, I didn't say you couldn't sit here. Stay, we can make a run for it together."

"As you like." He made a pleased sound in his throat, almost a chuckle, almost a satisfied grunt. "I can't believe they brought the Mountain down on us. Everything is gone. My family...the house...The Great Halls...so much history and knowledge. Gone." He said to the crashing waves below us.

"So long as there are still trolls in the world none of it is truly gone. Houses and Halls can be rebuilt, histories can be retold, knowledge recorded. Though your dead are gone physically, they still remain in your memories. So long as you live, they cannot fully vanish from the world." I felt his eyes on me and my face warmed. "That is something we elves have had to teach the new generations for ages now. The Elders have taken much from us, but we are not gone. Not yet."

His large hand squeezed my shoulder and he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. The heat and weight of him against my side was a welcomed comfort. "Thank you." He mumbled into my hair. He breathed in my scent softly as if I would smell of anything other than death. "Despite your bite, you're a kind soul, Ylva. We might still be uncertain of each other but I am glad to have you as a wife. Even if you did leave me to die."

"You've an odd sense of romance." I huffed a hollow laugh. "I'm beginning to think you like it when I mistreat you."

"You wouldn't be far off the mark." He laughed too, his chuckle sounded even more hollow than my own, the both of us delirious with unspoken anxiety and terror as to what still had yet to come. We laid back in the soft sand. I moved closer to him, to rest my head on his arm and be wrapped up in his cloak.

I turned my eyes from the waves to the stars and the sliver of moon in the sky. "You realize that we cannot take everyone with us on a small fishing boat. We will have to leave the rest here and when the Queen and Drone find them..."

"They'll either be enslaved or devoured." He squeezed his eyes shut a moment as if to blot out the truth of my words. "I know."

"Do you really think the Southern trolls might help us?" I asked.

"I have no idea. I only know of them from our stories. We were once one tribe. We all lived in the mountains of the South. Our numbers became to great and so our people split apart. Back then the world was different. There was no sea to divide the peoples from each other and so my forefathers walked the great distance here, seeking the familiar sights of mountains and stone. After we settled here, there were many earthquakes and floods. Disaster upon disaster, but we remained safe in our halls, even as the water rose, and the sea formed. We lost contact with our mother tribe after that. Over time, they became merely legends. I have no idea if they still exist or even if they ever truly did, but the slim possibility is the only hope we have. As you said, we cannot defeat the Elders with a handful of trolls. We need an army."

"Even if we find them, there is still no guarantee that they will help. You might not even speak the same language anymore. You've been so long divided."

"I know." He said again. "We may well be near the end, but we are not gone yet. I must try." He looked up to the stars with me and his hand found mine within the cocoon of his cloak. He squeezed it tightly as a child might when they grew afraid, seeking safety in a touch.

In the early morning light, while the rest of the trolls were still sleeping, Torsten and I started to make our way to the docks. The trolls had scattered somewhat as the sun rose, seeking every scrap of shade they could find, any patch of darkness that might shield their eyes from the sun's glair. Torsten moved with a hunched posture; his cloak draped over his head to shield his eyes. Even then he squinted, and tears poured from his eyes unbidden. His fingers pinched the back of my dress as he followed me. "You can't see a thing, can you?" I sighed. Things were getting better and better.

"I can make out shapes and colors, but everything is blurry." He dried his watering eyes with a piece of his cloak.

I reached back and took his hand, pulling him after me towards the direction of the docks. "Stay close. Don't let go." I stopped then, feeling a shift in the air, a sudden swelling of humidity and rising of temperature. The golden morning light began to dim. I raised my eyes to the sky to see dark clouds begin to roll in. They moved too quickly to be natural, rushing towards the sun to blot in out.

"What is happening?" Torsten blinked his tired eyes, finally able to creak them open from their painful slits as the sky darkened. "Is it the Elders? Have they come for us?"

"No," My power reached out, stretching along the beach. I knew the Elder's magic and this was not theirs at work. It was a familiar magic, similar to what I'd felt stirring in my womb so long ago. My gaze fell from the sky to find a small figure in the distance. Synnove stood at the edge of the water, her hands lifted high as she weaved, calling in the storm. She was a sun elf, she drew power from it, but she chose to blot it out for her family, to ease their pain even if for only a brief time.

The remnants of that family were crowded at her feet, watching her work her magic. I wondered if they knew how powerful she truly was, or if they'd ever really given what was taken from her much thought. Being trapped within the Magic had dulled her power so much, but now, she was free again, free to stand and bask in the sun until her power overflowed. Already, color had returned to her faded body. Her hair was more golden, her cheeks pinked with warmth, her eyes bright and lively, despite the tears streaming down her face.

Her hands fell heavily to her sides as we neared. Torhild and Torbjorn stood at her sides. Their faces, weary with grief as they were, held a new determination. It set their jaws, pinched their brows, lined the corners of their mouths. It gave a hardness to them, as if they'd been carved from stone. "Will there be room enough for all of us on the fishing boat?" Synnove asked. "These two are refusing to let me go without them."

"Our mates and children are all dead. We cannot sit idely by while you three risk so much to go to the South." Torhild said. "Torrun cannot make the journey now that she has three babies to care for without her husband. I must do what I can to make sure she and her children remain safe."

"If you mean to kill those creatures that caused all this, I mean to be there for every step." Torbjorn growled.

"The boat that is coming traveled only a short distance. It is very small. It won't carry three trolls. I'm not even certain it'll carry one and two elves. At least one of you will have to stay behind."

"Perhaps not." I pondered. "Torsten, if you were to shapeshift into a bird how long do you think you could maintain it? We are closest to the Eastern Continent. Would you be able to make it there? The fishermen that are coming are from an island, no more than a day's rowing from our shores. You could make it there I think."

"I told you, the only shape I've learned is the snow lion." Torsten said, confusion furrowing his brow.

"You can be taught." I said, looking to the sun elf who gave me her own puzzled look. I watched it melt into a quiet fury before my eyes. It made my smile widen. "Judging by the spell you just wove like it was nothing, it would seem you know more than just healing magic. Is that not right, Synnove?"