"I will find her and kill her, little boy," The hag purred. "Her fate was sealed the moment I learned she was close to you." Stalking over, she grabbed David by his jacket, long raspy talons tearing through the fleece and polyester. "I wanted to save you, perhaps. You are so beautiful, like Freyr. But I need your heart's blood to bridge this world to the next."
David grasped at the ground for something, anything he could use against the hag. he gripped coins and balled them into his fists, punching her reptilian skin. Laughing, she flung him across the cavern to smash against the other wall.
David staggered to his feet, but she was already on top of him again, inhumanely fast, monstrously strong. She lifted him into the air with one clawed hand. She drew the other back, but before she could plunge it into his chest to pull out his beating heart, a broken broom-handle sprouted from her chest. The hag gasped and dropped David to the ground, whirling in an instant on the girl behind her.
"Leave David alone!" Claire screamed. She held the other half of the splintered broom in her hand like a sword, raising a shield in front of her. The hag swiped, and Claire just barely managed to get out of the way of the terrible talons, stumbling in her rush. The claws scraped the edge of the shield, tearing through jagged scratches.
"Your death I will make sweet," gasped the troll-wife, gurgling blood from her mouth as she yanked the makeshift stake out of her back and cast it across the room. "Sweet and long and painful."
David gasped for breath on hands and knees. Surging to his feet, he grabbed the first object that came to hand--a rusted nail the size of a railroad spike--and rushed forward. The hag turned as he approached, claws glinting in the strange green light. David raised the giant nail in front of him, parrying the awful talons.
In his hand was no longer a nail, but a sword, plain, with a dark leather handle and chunky pommel. David swung like a man possessed, putting all his rage, terror, and desperation into it. The hag's arm skittered through the air to splat against the wall. A moment later David struck her in the chest, the blade somehow cutting deep. Claire joined from the other side, raising the broken broom in both hands and burying it into the monster.
Shock glazed the hag's face. She shivered, a huge motion that knocked Claire to the ground and jerked the sword from David's hands. Her remaining arm seized at David, slicing his coat to ribbons and scraping across his skin with her talons, but then she fell back. Her body rapidly shifted from Claire to Sheila to others, a dozen faces of beautiful women David didn't recognize. She curled around the sword, gave one final gasp, and lay still. Her body calcified until a statue of a one-armed woman lay in front of them.
"The other one said that metal doesn't work on trolls," Claire said, breathing heavily. "How'd you do that?"
David looked down at the sword in his hand. "I don't think this is a regular sword," he said inanely. In a moment it shrunk back to a large nail. "Let's go find Hod."
Claire nodded, pausing only to grab another of the nails from the cave floor. In a moment they broke into a jog, back the way David had come, his skin glowing strongly, lighting the way.
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