Chapter Text
Jim Lake - approximately one hour post-incident, Arcadia Oaks Canal
The clattering of metal echoed in Arcadia’s canal, bouncing around with the energy its source was beginning to run out of. His eyes were wide and his hands kept twitching, one reaching for the sword at his back far too often as the other adjusted its grip on an uncapped fountain pen, the nib stained ominously red. His face was smeared with ash, smudged from when he’d tried scrubbing it off. It hadn’t worked.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
He whipped around, the amulet set into his armour pulsing with blue light as he finally gave in to his paranoia and grabbed his sword, holding it out in front of him. There was nothing but the clack of his armoured feet against concrete to disrupt the siren’s call.
He took a deep breath in, then let it out slowly. Tentatively, he put his sword back where it was before, and continued on his path along the canal.
Before him, a bridge loomed, close enough to put him a little at ease. He longed to step into its shadow and let the caverns underneath swallow him whole. Maybe then he’d be free of the consequences he’d just brought crashing down around him. If he could vanish—not forever, but for long enough—then maybe… maybe he’d be able to find a way out of this mess he’d caused.
He didn’t regret it now, after thinking it over—not really. If he’d hesitated, the only thing to follow would have been chaos and destruction. He was sure that if he hadn’t done it then, it would only have been a matter of time until it came about in some other way. Ignoring the issue would have got his friends killed. He didn’t have the time or freedom to regret it.
On his finger, a newly acquired ring throbbed with an orange-yellow glow, just as the shadow of the bridge covered him completely.
It was obviously magic of some sort, he didn’t need to be an expert to tell that about it at the very least. He’d… collected it from the site of the incident, though he didn’t quite know why he’d kept it, even for this short of a time. He’d been inexplicably drawn to it, just like he’d been drawn to his amulet, and once he put it on, it gained a quality he could only describe as eerie. It felt both cold and hot at the same time, and it was almost as if it was trying to crawl off his finger of its own accord.
Speaking of that characteristic, it was also now firmly attached to his armour. He suspected that even if he had the frame and peace of mind to try, he would be unsuccessful in removing it from the black glove under his metal plating. How he knew that, exactly, he couldn’t possibly say.
A pair of eyes shone out from under the bridge. He quickly grabbed his sword again, levelling it at the newcomer.
“Who are you?” he demanded, voice much less shaky than he’d thought it would be.
The newcomer stepped forwards into the light of his amulet, casting a nearly ethereal sheen of blue over rocky skin somewhere between white, grey, and cream, worn by a figure that towered over him without really having to try. Each hand—luckily only two—held a dagger, sharpened and meticulously cleaned, and held like the newcomer knew how to use them. Orange-yellow eyes battled his amulet’s light for dominance in the dark.
He recognised those eyes.
“Jim Lake,” the newcomer rumbled, low, and as gravelly as it was raspy. Hands tightened around the daggers, raising them higher. “My name is Angor Rot.”
Jim’s throat ran dry.
Angor Rot came closer, slowly. All of a sudden, he lunged, stabbing towards Jim’s face so fast that he couldn’t raise his sword in time to—
The ring glowed brighter, and the air between it and Angor Rot’s dagger seemed to shimmer with a spell. The dagger which, although its owner was clearly pushing for it to carry forwards, had stopped a few inches from Jim’s eye.
Angor Rot gave him a dangerous smile. “I believe you have something of mine.”
-
Jim Lake - seven minutes pre-incident, Arcadia High principal’s office
Jim didn’t want to know what Strickler had done while on his ‘vacation,’ and nor did he want to think about what he’d done to get back to both Arcadia High and his old teaching position, along with the further power of being the acting head.
He didn’t really want to think about what had happened to Principal Levit, either.
But despite all his hopes that he’d be gone for good, Strickler had returned with a vengeance that far outstripped Jim’s patience for the man.
He didn’t want to be stuck in a room with him for any length of time, let alone outside of school hours with no one but Steve for company. Yet, here he was—Strickler sitting smugly opposite him as he clenched his jaw and bit his tongue on words he longed to shout for the world to hear. Strickler was a killer and a fraud, and he had everyone eating out of his hand. It was so infuriating, how he could just go about like nothing had happened—like he hadn’t almost definitely killed the old headteacher, like he hadn’t tried to kill three of his students; like he hadn’t nearly succeeded. He got to waltz back into his fake life with not even a hair out of place and a glowing ring that was definitely some kind of magic, and Jim couldn’t do a thing about it.
The moment Strickler walked into the office, their conversation—‘conversation’ was a loose term—was thinly veiled threats and barely concealed secrets that, thankfully, flew right over Steve’s head. Jim had to wonder, what did this look like from an outside perspective? He, Strickler’s supposed favourite, glaring him down like he was trying to sear through Strickler’s skull with his eyes alone. A glance at Steve showed him to be equal parts confused and afraid.
“I could take you out,” Jim said, standing with his palms flat on the desk as his nails began to scrape the surface, “right now.”
Strickler mirrored his position. “And I could do far worse—are you ready for that?”
Jim narrowed his eyes at Strickler, taking his hands off the desk so they could clench into fists. Strickler was more than prepared to play the long game—to dance around the point like he was trying to win some sort of twisted competition with players who didn’t care to ask after the rules. He was fully prepared to drag this out until Jim had stumbled into a grave of his own making, and he was prepared to win.
Steve looked at Jim, then at Strickler, then back again. For once in his life, he held his tongue.
The look on Strickler’s face made Jim boil with a rage so intense that he was half prepared for the air to set itself alight around him. He was burning with fury, but more than that—he was afraid. He was afraid of what Strickler would do if left to his own devices.
Rule one of Trollhunting: always be afraid.
Strickler could no longer be trusted to remain in line without the threat of Bular’s wrath hanging over his head. He had to finish this as quickly as he could.
Rule two of Trollhunting: always finish the fight.
Jim eyed the pen in Strickler’s hand. It was uncapped, the silver of it glinting in the light from the window.
He was moving before he could stop himself.
Jim wrenched the pen from Strickler’s grasp, and in his moment of surprise, spun it around in his hand and lunged towards Strickler’s exposed throat.
It took him a few seconds to realise what he’d done.
Strickler raised a hand lightning-quick to his neck, but the blood was already gushing out. Jim didn’t know enough about changelings to say anything concrete about Strickler’s current predicament, but in human terms, that amount of blood was not good. Not good at all. The pen was still stuck in his flesh, but only halfway. It wasn’t enough to stop the flow. Strickler coughed, and flecks of red came from his mouth.
“What…” he rasped, before another cough made itself known, and the bloodied pen fell to the floor with a clatter.
A chair scraped back, then fell over as Steve abruptly stood up, staring with wide eyes at Strickler as he hunched over the desk. His eyes soon fell on Jim, and in that instant, Jim realised exactly what he had done.
“I…” Jim started, but couldn’t find a single word more. He couldn’t drag his gaze away from Strickler as he hacked and coughed.
“What the fuck,” Steve whispered, backing away. Jim could feel his eyes on him. “What the fuck have you done?”
Jim made eye contact with Strickler. Strickler flicked his gaze to the door, then back to Jim, even as he continued to press a hand to his neck in vain, choking on scarlet globs every so often. Jim shook his head, taking a small step back. Strickler repeated his earlier motion—eyes to the door, then back to Jim—and suddenly, it clicked.
“Steve,” Jim said. “Steve, go get a teacher.”
Steve didn’t reply.
“Steve,” Jim insisted, almost hissing the name. “Go!”
Steve, stunned into motion, scrambled for the door. He slammed it against the wall, gripping the frame as he shot one last look at the scene behind him. “You’re the fucking psycho, Lake. Not me.”
He slammed the door again on his way out.
The instant Steve was out of sight, Strickler changed forms in a flash of light. Again, Jim didn’t know much about changeling biology, or even if wounds carried over from one form to the other, but whether or not they did, Strickler had a much higher chance of survival in his troll form.
Steve was going to tell everyone what Jim had done, and there was nothing that could be done about that. Jim’s problems were firmly rooted in the here and now—the here being a blood-soaked office, and the now being closer to Strickler’s death than he was entirely comfortable with. Strickler was still clutching his neck, why was he still pressing down on the wound, there was no blood in his troll form so why—
Strickler let out a dry laugh. “You really think th—” He coughed, hand shifting enough to reveal a growing patch of grey marring his green, stone skin. “Young Atlas, do really think that was a normal pen?”
Jim’s stomach dropped.
“No.”
Strickler bared his teeth—it was hard to tell if he was smiling or not, in his troll form. “Well played, Young Atlas,” he said. “Well played.” Without warning, he lost his grip on the desk and crashed to the floor with a resounding thud.
Spurred into action, Jim swerved around the desk and fell to his knees, hands hovering over Strickler’s shoulders as he lay in a pool of his own blood. “No, no, no no—no, I can’t—I didn’t—”
“What’s done is done,” Strickler told him, eyes slowly closing even as Jim found the courage to shake him, trying desperately to keep him awake. “I should’ve known there was a reason you earned the title of Bular Slayer.”
“Hey!” Jim snapped in a sudden moment of clarity. “Don’t die on me, alright? This wasn’t supposed to—I—”
“Save your breath, Young Atlas,” Strickler hissed through increasingly obvious pain. The grey had spread almost halfway down his torso now, and was slowly creeping along his jawline.
Jim’s shoulders hunched as his body shook, his amulet joining in. It vibrated in his pocket like the phone it clearly wasn’t, until it wrenched itself out and formed the Trollhunter armour without the—usually—required incantation. This hadn’t happened for so long, he’d almost forgotten that it could.
Strickler opened one eye and observed him. “You’re afraid,” he said. “Good. You should be.” His eye darted down to the ring on his finger, glowing a harsh yellow-orange in contrast to the blood on his finger and the floor it was settled on. “Take the ring,” he ordered, and Jim began to reflexively obey as a result of years of classes with him, before he thought twice about trusting the word of someone he’d—he'd—
“At ease,” Strickler joked. “Would I wear it if it caused me any harm?”
Jim watched for a moment as the stone of Strickler’s hand solidified, just to be sure he wouldn’t try anything—stupid, stupid, what could he possibly do on his deathbed—and slipped the ring from his finger. Before he could think better of it, he slid it on over his armour. It glowed brighter, then began to almost leak into the surrounding metal. The blue glow of the finger he’d put it on and the two on either side of it tinged with a warmer light, and Jim looked back down at Strickler again, only to find that his face was the only part of him not yet solidified.
Strickler smiled at him—this time, there was no doubt about it—and closed his eye for the final time. “You’re on your own now, Young Atlas.”
He exploded into a cloud of ash, dust, and light, leaving Jim in his bloodied office, alone.