Mist-Beneath led Eli along tunnels smooth worn by trickling water, descending ever deeper into the mountain. Apparently trolls possessed an innate sense of their location underground, but the trollblood hadn't granted Eli that particular boon.

He was utterly lost. All he knew was that the path led always downward, always darker. And that it finally narrowed until Mist-Beneath needed first to crouch and then to crawl.

Eli amused himself by imagining Armored-in-Frost scraping himself raw to get this far. Though losing a few dozen pounds of flesh to the rough walls probably wouldn't even slow him down.

The darkness thickened until Eli couldn't see with his eyes. He watched through both sparks, one in front, one behind, still trying to merge both images into a single mental picture. He made little progress, but still managed to spot the tunnel enlarging before he actually reached the wider stretch.

Ten minutes after that, he followed Mist-Beneath into a forest of the stone pillers that Clay-Watches had told him were called stalagmites and stalactites.

"The roots of the mountain," Mist-Beneath said, and her voice echoed.

"If you say so. What now?"

"Walk among them. Find a chamber, whichever one calls to you. Then listen to the mountain."

"Uh," he said.

"Feel the weight of stone overhead." She touched his forehead, where a troll would have a third eye. "Feel the immensity above you. "

"And then just leave whenever I'm ready?"

"Mm. The only rules here are yours and hers."

"Hers?"

"The mountain's."

"Ah."

"Clay-Watches cooked for you." She handed him her pack, which was so heavy that he grunted in surprise. "The mountain will bring you water."

"I, uh ... you realize I don't have the slightest clue what I'm doing here?"

Her three eyes crinkled in amusement. "Of course."

"I guess that's nothing new."

"This is all new, child. Trust me. Trust yourself. Trust the mountain."

"Okay, then," he said, and headed into the stone forest.

He wandered past four or five chambers before he settled on one--for no reason except that he felt silly waiting for a sign or inspiration. They all looked the same, though the one he'd chosen was small, too small for adult trolls. Too small for juvenile trolls, too, with the ceiling only a finger-span above Eli's head when he sat crosslegged in the center.

Maybe that's why he chose it. Because nobody else could.

The thought amused him as he settled into his ... meditation? Well, into listening to the dripping of water and the thud of his heartbeat. He kept the sparks close and still. Thinking about the mountain above him, overwhelmingly immense, like a castle rising above an ant.

Or like a keep rising above an ant. Above a man locked in the dungeon ...

Flashes of memory strobed in Eli's mind, flashes of sensation. A lacerating whip, a piercing needle. His breath trembled ... then after a time, stopped trembling. Because the mountain surrounded him, protected and healed him. The mountain embraced him. His memories remained, but the emotions drained away like the beads of water dripping down the stone walls.

He breathed, and felt the mountain breathing. An endless exhalation of peace and solidity.

At first he simply sat with the feeling and then he simply sat. Because nothing happened. He'd never experienced that much nothing before, that absolutely bottomless well of nothingness.

Which was probably supposed to feel spiritual, but actually just bored him. Maybe that was the point. 'Boring' him, as in eroding into him like water boring through rock.

Or maybe he was just bored.

Yeah, pretty sure he was just bored.

Hours passed. He brought his sparks together, unifying his vision, and then apart. That got old pretty fast. He ate meat on skewers of cave-bamboo and drank from a puddle then sat again, waiting for ... what?

Guidance? Weight? A feeling of completion? He didn't know, so he just kept waiting. He sat and waited, played with his sparks and slept and waited and played with his sparks again.

Time moved differently in the dark.

His stock of food diminished.

The caves whispered, the stalactites hummed.

The mountain slowed him, somehow, and impossibly heavy mass that pressed down on Eli without touching him.

He felt himself dissolving into the darkness and he heard himself awkwardly humming a troll song that Lichen sometimes played. Then he felt himself dissolving into boredom, so he focused anew on training himself to manipulate the sparks, to maintain clarity while they whirled around him, and--

A finger touched his temple.

"Yah!" he yelped, jerking away.

There was nothing there except a spark. No fingers, or claw, or blade. No monster in the darkness, no spirit of the mountain.

"Huh," he said.

He thought for a second, then brought the spark to hover a handspan in front of his face. He looked at himself. Long tangled hair, scraggly beard. Closed eyes. He lifted a hand and touched the spark and felt nothing, as always. It was like touching a mote of dust drifting in a sunbeam. Maybe he'd dreamed the touch of a finder. He kept slipping in and out of wakefullness. So he ate and drank and listened to dripping water plink into puddles, a thousand beads of water creating a symphony or a heartbeat, a thousand heartbeats and--

He felt another touch.

And again, when he spun to look, there was nothing there but a spark.

Hm. That time, he focused differently. Instead of trying to move the spark, he focused on weight. He poured the mountain's bulk into the spark, shifting the sensation of heft though himself and into the spark. He poured thousand thousand tons of rock and ore and dirt and damp into a single flake of ash, a single grain of sand.

And that time, when he pressed his fingertip into the spark, he felt the contact.

He felt the contact twice. Once with his finger and once with his spark.

His shout of triumph echoed through the stalactites and stalagmites. The spark still didn't feel like much--more of a hummingbird's sneeze than a ton of stone, or even a single pebble. Yet Eli thrilled at the breakthrough. Two sparks, and now he could give either or both of them the substance of ... well, of a bead of water like the endless interior drizzle of the mountain herself.

What did that mean for combat?

Nothing. At least, nothing more than spitting in an opponent's face. At least not yet. He'd hone this skill, this gift of the mountain, on the whetstone of himself. He didn't know where the crooked path of his life was leading him, or if he'd survive his return to Rockbridge, but this felt like the first steps of a long journey.