Runa was on her feet. The scream echoed in her ears.

  It hadn’t come from outside.

  It had come from below.

  Lightstick in hand—why the hell hadn’t she tried harder to get some real weaponry?—she raced to the cellar door. There, she pressed her ear against the wood.

  Thuds and clatters of broken pottery. Someone stumbling around in the dark? A woman’s voice, swearing and frustrated.

  And then rising in panic.

  No time to wonder how in the hells someone broke into her cellar. Runa flung the trapdoor open and took the stairs in two leaping strides.

  The floor was littered with broken pots and jars. A woman was on the ground, trying to get to her feet. Her head snapped up as Runa ploughed down the stairs, and Runa found herself staring into a pair of panicked, dark eyes.

  Again.

  In an instant, she was back on the glacier. The woman wasn’t swaddled against a snowstorm now; her hood was back, black hair a glossy waterfall over her shoulders, a slender neck disappearing into a grey tunic and ragged cloak.

  Which Runa could see all too clearly, because in addition to the cheerful glow of her lightstick, the cellar was lit by the sickly green-white fire running around the outside of a portal.

  A portal leading to a snowy mountainside so cold the chill flooded out of it like the tide.

  A portal with a lich-bleeding skeleton charging out of it.

  It had green, glowing eyes. It had a big sword.

  Runa’s body was already moving before her brain connected the dots and told her that was bad news.

  She lunged forward. The skeleton was already out of the portal. She ducked under its swinging sword arm and rammed it into the cellar wall.

  Its bones should have shattered at the impact. They didn’t.

  Shit.

  She glanced up into its face. Eyes of pure green fire glared back at her, and behind them, something writhed like lava, like boiling mud.

  The skeleton was a troll. Taller than her, though that didn’t account for the bones not breaking. Whatever magic was keeping this thing together was strong.

  “Get out of here!” she shouted to the woman on the floor. “Up the steps, and lock the trapdoor behind you!” Did it have a lock? “Put something heavy over it!”

  The woman was scrambling with something attached to her back. “I can help!”

  For fuck’s sake. Why did nobody ever listen to her?

  Runa battered the skeleton troll’s sword arm aside and tightened her grip on the lightstick. The glow at its tip began to throb.

  …Was that a bad idea, in a room full of flour?

  CRACK!

  A bony fist socked her in the face. Runa staggered back, growling, and raised the stick to block the skeleton’s next blow. The impact juddered through her wrist.

  Snow billowed into the room. Fluffy flakes swirled in front of her eyes, hissing as they got too close. Oh, she was already boiling. Wouldn’t need the lightstick to set the flour off at this rate.

  The skeleton came at her again. Its sword was old and chipped, but all that meant was she needed to make sure it didn’t yank the lightstick out of her hand when she parried it.

  Kill an undead skeleton. Easy, if you could smash it. Kill an undead skeleton you couldn’t smash? Disassemble it some other way—fire worked. Burn an undead skeleton without blowing an entire bakery cellar sky-high and yourself with it?

  Argh.

  She tried to edge the fight to the corner away from the stairs, but the troll didn’t take the bait. It wasn’t interested in her.

  It wanted the woman.

  “It’s after you!” she yelled.

  “I know!” the woman shouted back. “I’m sorry about the portal!”

  “The portal’s yours?”

  “Yes!”

  Runa closed in on the skeleton again, inside its sword arm, and wrestled it backwards. “Can you close it?”

  “Um!”

  She actually shouted ‘um’. And Runa couldn’t even spare a moment to gape at her.

  She glanced at the portal. The flames were still flickering eerily and merrily.

  But the mountainside beyond was retreating.

  Runa laughed out loud. Thank you, Vellugar. The other end of the portal had opened in the Cauldron, and the Cauldron was doing what it did best.

  Moving.

  And leaving the portal behind, hanging in mid-air.

  The snow-covered rocks dropped away. Runa grappled with the skeleton. It hissed at her, clamping stained teeth into her shoulder. Roaring with pain, she battered it aside.

  Heat rose in a cloud around her.

  Think cold thoughts, she told herself, but there was no time to think anything before the skeleton landed a blow on her midsection that floored her. It raised its sword. She rolled out of the way and steel rang against solid stone.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She rolled the wrong way. Now she was between the skeleton and the portal.

  And there was nothing between the skeleton and the woman it was after.

  It turned, fast, sword gleaming in the eerie portal-light.

  “Hey!” Runa yelled, pushing to her feet. “Over here!”

  It ignored her.

  “It wants this!” The woman finished messing with her pack and hefted a greatsword almost as tall as she was. Its blade was stained and pitted, but its edge was sharp.

  The skeleton’s eyes blazed.

  “Chuck it here!” Runa yelled.

  The woman tossed the sword with no grace and less muscle.

  It clanged to the floor midway between Runa and the skeleton, rebounded, and skidded towards the portal.

  They both lunged for it.

  Runa got there first.

  But instead of grabbing the sword, she kicked it out of the way, caught the skeleton mid-dive, and used its own momentum to throw it through the portal.

  The mountains had kept moving as she fought the skeleton, and the portal now hung in the air hundreds of feet from the nearest rocky snow-drift. She got to her feet and watched as the skeleton toppled over and over in the air.

  By the time it disappeared in a puff of snow, she almost had her breath back.

  “Hah,” she said. Her breath billowed in white clouds, heat meeting the frigid alpine air. Think cold thoughts, think cold thoughts. “That takes care of that.”

  “It’s gone?”

  The woman stood slowly. Her cloak and her hair swirled around her in the frigid wind from the portal, but it was her eyes Runa couldn’t look away from. Dark brown and wary, under straight black brows. The eerie light of the portal reflected in them.

  And as she looked up Runa, they filled with relief and wonder.

  Cold thoughts, she reminded herself.

  “It’s gone,” she confirmed.

  “G-good.” The woman didn’t exactly relax, but each of her joints shuddered as though they’d only just caught in time to stop her from collapsing entirely. She rubbed weary hands over her eyes and then peered around the room. “Where… where are we? Somewhere safe, I told it, but…”

  Told it? Told what? The portal, maybe. Magic-users talking about their magic as though it was a thing—particularly an annoying thing—was nothing new. Runa watched curiosity and confusion flicker across the woman’s face, illuminated by the wobbly green light from the portal.

  She frowned as she took stock of the jars and barrels lining the walls, some of them smashed.“Are we still in the Cauldron? Is this some sort of dungeon?”

  “Not the Cauldron. Not quite. You’re in my cellar.”

  The woman’s head jerked back in surprise, and her eyes flew to Runa. “Your—”

  Her eyes widened. Her lips parted on a question that got caught on a gasp. “It’s you. That’s why it brought me here. You’re here.”

  Two facts slammed into Runa’s chest. One, it was the same woman from the glacier.

  And two? She remembered Runa, as clearly as Runa remembered her.

  “Yep.” The word came out strangely gravelly. Runa cleared her throat. “Uh, yeah. That’s me.”

  “Runa.” The woman breathed her name like a prayer, and it did strange things to Runa’s insides. “I needed to be somewhere safe, and… That’s twice now you’ve saved my life.”

  Even if Runa could think of any words to say to that, there was no way she could get them past the gravel in her throat.

  The woman smiled up at her. “I’m Severine. Otherwise known as that idiot you plucked off the glacier when the mountains started trying to smash each other to pieces. And you’re Runa—Ninnius and Anklopher told me all about you.”

  “They did?”

  Severine’s smile widened. “The fact that you saved their lives seemed to be the only thing they agreed on. Except they managed to argue about it as well, somehow. They were worried you were—but you’re here. You made it out alive, the same as us.”

  Somewhere far beyond the gentle ringing in her ears, Runa’s gut twisted with guilt. Yeah, she made it out alive—because she’d spent the whole time safe outside the Cauldron. Baking bread, while Severine and her clients battled for their lives.

  She shook her head. The ringing in her ears, and the twist of guilt, paid no attention. And Severine was still staring at her. She had to say something. “The wizards aren’t with you?”

  “Golden throne, no. They had enough of the Cauldron to last a lifetime. Another thing they actually agreed on.” Severine gestured at the portal. “Not that it isn’t a beautiful view for a—did you say we’re in a cellar? But I’d better close that now. I think I’ve had enough of the Cauldron for a decade or two, as well.”

  Runa nodded, feeling light-headed, and got out of her way.

  The wizards were fine. She knew that already. Hearing it from Severine was different, though.

  And then there was her.

  Severine. It sounded like something from around the Peaceable Sea, and so did the woman’s accent, though blurred in the way accents got when, like Runa herself, you spent a lot of time away from wherever it was you grew up.

  She’d survived. She’d made it out, with Ninnius and Anklopher.

  And then she’d created a portal through the world, to somewhere she would be safe, and the portal had taken her straight to Runa’s cellar.

  Runa felt light-headed.

  Standing at the side of the portal, Severine pulled a thin knife from beneath her cloak. Her mouth moved and Runa strained her ears to hear what she was saying.

  “I know… but just this time? If we don’t… can’t help you find your way if a skeleton slices me to bits, can I?”

  Runa frowned. Who was Severine talking to?

  Who was this woman?

  She watched as Severine tentatively prodded at the fiery edge of the portal with the tip of the knife. To her apparent relief, the portal began to knit itself closed.

  Severine kept prodding until the portal was the size of a door, then a window, then a mousehole. At last there was nothing but a handful of green flames hanging at knee-height.

  She straightened with a sigh.

  “I never want to see that much snow again so long as I live,” she declared.

  “Or any skeletons that active?” Runa suggested absently. She frowned. On the glacier, Severine had been bundled up against the cold, but her hooded cloak and scarf were missing. Had she lost them as she tried to escape the skeletal troll? Why keep hold of her rucksack, but let go of her cloak and risk freezing to death on the side of a mountain?

  “I don’t mind the undead. It’s when they try to make me dead that I get upset.” Severine tucked the knife away and turned to Runa, back-lit by the handful of flickering green flames. Runa couldn’t see much more of her smile than the curve of one cheek, and the gleam of light on one dark eye as she pushed her hair back behind one ear.

  She’d fought the skeleton without flinching. She’d made a joke about it while Severine was safely prodding at the portal. But now, with Severine smiling at her? Even if that smile was more than half shrouded in shadows?

  Her tongue tied itself into knots in advance, just in case she got some dumb idea like she could put a sentence together.

  Severine’s smile grew. The glint in her eye softened. “I can’t believe that of all the places in the world that portal could have brought me, it found y—”

  At that moment, the portal fire went out.

  Severine made a strangled noise.

  Runa’s tongue hastily un-knotted itself. “Don’t move!” Runa barked. She knelt, sweeping her arm out in an arc—there. Her lightstick. She shook it to turn it on and used the light to find the greatsword with the stained blade before either of them tripped over it and got themselves impaled after all the effort she’d put into not letting the undead troll do it for them.

  The greatsword was lying where she’d kicked it—by a pile of broken barrels at the far wall, hilt down, pitted blade propped up on the remains of a shattered crockery jar as though it was just waiting for someone to fall on it neck-first. She knelt to pick it up.

  Runa wasn’t a swordswoman. She’d take a machete if the vegetation required it, but for fighting, she preferred smacking things with a big stick. Even better, she preferred not getting into a fight in the first place.

  But her hand fit around the greatsword’s grip like it was made for her. The braided black leather was smooth and warm as her own skin.

  The blade gleamed in the warm glow of the lightstick, but it didn’t gleam a soft reflection of the stick’s gentle light. It gleamed the black heat of fresh blood.

  Something shivered through her.

  “Oh!”

  Severine was staring at her, her eyes wide. Her eyebrows pulled together, and she repeated softly, “Oh…”

  Runa coughed and changed her grip on the sword so she was holding it, not wielding it. She didn’t want Severine to get the wrong idea. Even though the look in her eyes hadn’t been fear, exactly, it was still…

  …not the look Runa wanted in her eyes.

  Her heart thudded.

  She cleared her throat again, trying not to think about what she did want to see in Severine’s eyes because, firstly, that was the sort of thing that only happened in her lonely midnight dreams, and second, there was still a decent amount of flour in the air.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” she said, not looking at Severine, and managed to point with her hand, not the blood-rusted sword. “I’ll get some food on, and you can tell me everything.”