“Claire’s backpack!” I leapt to my feet and flapped my arms at the despondent trollhunters. “Claire’s backpack! Claire’s backpack!”

Their glances were easy to read: the Sturges kid had finally gone insane. I laughed, rather insanely, and ran down the center tunnel. Just before the light from Blinky’s eyes ran out, I spotted a second pink scrap, this one a silky fabric fringed with lace. It was the dress she wore at her da’s request, the one she hated, the one she was now tearing to pieces. She might as well be tearing up all the lies of her past life, for this was life and death, and she was fighting with what weapons she had on her.

I marveled at the turn of events as the rest of the gang gathered behind me. It would be the bold breadcrumbs of a sixteen-year-old girl, not the combined talents of a trained regiment of trollhunters, that would lead us to Gunmar.

And they did. We followed Claire’s pink clues through hidden crevasses and over unlikely crags. Pinpoints of sunlight slowed us at times, but the sun couldn’t stay up forever. When it set, Blinky and ARRRGH!!! were renewed with the vitality of the night, and they scampered across treacherous terrains as only underground dwellers could. The blood pounded in my ears and my skin prickled in anticipation of battle. I can’t speak for Tub, but I’m pretty sure he felt the same: I’d never seen the guy look so alive.

The tunnel tightened like a closing fist before releasing us, one at a time, into a limestone cavern as wide as a hockey rink. Tall, contorted objects jutted at haphazard angles from the ground. We walked among them in silence until we were surrounded. Blinky kept his eye-light low. There were no living creatures about and yet I felt a frosty dread.

“The Cemetery of Souls.” Blinky was hushed with reverence. “So long have I heard whispers of this fabled place, though never did I dare dream of seeing it with my own eight eyes. But of course the Hungry One would position himself so as to relish the agony of those who died the most painful of deaths.”

“What’s the most painful way to die?” I asked.

“See, Jim?” Tub said. “That’s the kind of question I could live without.”

“Being caught in sunlight,” Blinky said. “It is said that the pain goes on for decades.”

“Is that why they were given these weird gravestones?” I asked.

“Gravestones?” Blinky raised several of his mournful eyes. “These are not gravestones.”

The glow of his red eyes intensified and revealed the terrible truth.