Chapter Text
Something was wrong. Barbara had this sudden urge to get into painting, even though she’d never touched a brush since she was ten. She ignored the feeling, thinking it was a side effect of the accident Jim had told her about when she’d woken up in a renovated house a couple months ago. This wasn’t the time for hobbies, more and more people were winding up badly injured in the ER, looking frazzled and distraught, talking about ‘monsters’. Something was wrong, and they needed her to help these people get back on their feet. Today was no different, and while Jim was supposed to bring his test scores back after school, she wasn’t anxious.
Finding his house deserted, the trollhunter got to work on planning. They hadn’t heard from ARRRGH ever since he left yesterday to spy on the gumm-gumms, so something must have happened to him. Claire and Toby had come along too. Hunched over a plan of Trollmarket, the three almost didn’t hear the rattling coming from downstairs. Claire was the first to notice, and alerted the others. At the ready, they silently crept near the basement, weapons at the ready. The door opened with a creak, and they were met with 12 eyes staring at them.
“Blinky?” Jim asked incredulously, “Wait, what’s Dictatious doing here?”
“That, Master Jim, is what I am unsure about.” His mentor responded, “He says he has information about Gunmar’s plans, but I do not trust him. Hence,” he gestured at his brother’s hands, “the rope I bound him with.”
“Please brother, I bring valuable knowledge! Cease this madness, when have I ever given you reason to distrust me?” Dictatious pleaded.
Blinky narrowed his eyes. “Plenty of times. Now, how do we know you speak truth?”
“I’ve told you, the brute has tried to kill me! No doubt he’ll try something else too, maybe- oh, how horrendous an idea has hit me! He could torture me! Blinkous, save me, I am far too old to die!”
Jim looked between the both of them, wondering how in the world it came to this. Finally, he sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “Fine, Blinky, let him come up here, we’re trying to come up with a plan to find-”
He was cut short by a ‘waka-chaka!’ coming from the furnace behind the two trolls. The grate rattled, and, popping open, revealed a horde of goblins exiting, lunging at them.
The teens, being already ready for battle, wasted no time and started hacking at the pests immediately. Through the fray Dictatious got lost, and fell over after a green goblin tripped him. He tried to wriggle away, but the creature had other plans, shoving a crossbow in his face. The green troll screamed, thinking it was over. Blinky heard his cries, and saw the pesky gremlin preparing to shoot. He came forward, smacking it away with his arm and squashing it with a hardback for good measure. More sprites came to avenge their fallen brethren, which Blinky gladly made them join, rendering all of them bookmarks.
At the other end of the battle, the trollhunters were making good headway, the numbers of their enemies had gone down tremendously. They were on their last dozen when Claire misjudged a portal placement, and she fell inside with the rest of the goblins. The boys looked at where she’d disappeared, trying to be confident that she was fine.
The two trolls came back, the blinded one clinging on to his brother for dear life. Blinky asked where the shadow mage had gone, and he got two shrugs. To answer his question, the girl reappeared right then. They helped her up, asking her if she was alright. She gave one word answers, then turned to face her boyfriend. “I saw things. Like, memories from Morgana’s point of view.”
Dictatious gasped. “She’s got visions!”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I think we need to find a staff, it had a green gem at the top.”
“The staff of Avalon,” Blinky breathed. “Legends say it’s in Merlin’s tomb.”
“Merlin, as in, the Merlin? Arthur Merlin?” Toby asked, “Okay, that’s cool, why not, this isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve seen, but why do we need his staff?”
“Oh, the staff is very powerful, and could help us defeat Morgana,” Blinkous answered.
“But Jim,” Claire added, “I also saw that, in order to get the staff, you have to destroy your amulet.”
***
Mary rolled her eyes and threw her phone on the bed. Darci startled, turning around to face her friend. “Did Claire answer? She said she’d come to the sleepover eventually.”
“No. Said she’s busy and won’t be able to make it tonight, and asked us to go clean up Lake’s house since they made a mess! What friends we are.”
“What? That doesn’t sound like her at all.”
“I know! That’s why I asked her what was going on, and she said she’d explain when they get back. Apparently they’re going to a tomb. Like, where they store dead people!”
“Is she crazy? She can get arrested for graverobbing!”
Mary folded her arms, then looked back at her phone. She pondered her choices, then reached for it. “Maybe if we do this, we’ll finally understand why our best friend changed so drastically.”
Darci sat on the bed to see the screen. “I’m in.”
***
Barbara found her house eerily quiet when she got back home in the wee hours of the morning. It was late, but not late enough that she’d missed her son coming home. She glanced at the clock, it was almost 5 AM. School didn’t start until 8, so Jim had to be home. But the house was tidy and spotless, almost as if no one came in after she left yesterday.
She frowned, placing her bag on the stair bannister. That’s when she heard it. A commotion coming from the neighbours’ home. So that’s why there was nothing out of place. Her son had gone to his friend’s house. It still didn’t make sense as to why they were arguing, she could hear yelling all the way from the other side of the street. The woman looked through her window to try to see what was going on, and that’s when she saw them.
Her son and his friend Toby glaring at an unusual old man clad in armour. He was gesticulating a lot, and kept moving his hands towards the fridge, exasperating the teens. Barbara chuckled to herself. This must be Nancy’s estranged cousin she talked about sometimes. He was probably visiting, and found the boys there and decided to mess with them.
A yawn caught up to her, and she stretched, going up the stairs to try to get hopefully more than an hour of sleep.
***
“I have to get to Strickler, maybe they already captured him!” Jim jabbed a finger at the old man.
“You are not going anywhere, and that’s final.”
“Why are you doing this? Wait, you don’t care about him, do you? All you care about is getting your magic back!”
“I do not only care about that!” Merlin snapped. “I also want to kill Morgana!”
“Forget it! I’m going to help and you can’t stop me!”
The wizard didn’t waste any time, pushing the teen back. Jim armored up, and the two fought. In the end, Merlin overpowered the youngling, pushing his foot down on his face, making indents in the floor Nancy worked so hard to polish. “You aren’t strong enough to take on Gunmar, not in the slightest,” he snarled, and then everything went black for the boy.
Waking up, he could sense he was tied to a chair. His vision was blurry, but he could see a very infuriating wizard pouring a liquid into a jar. The jar he used to catch lightning, he realized as his sight cleared a bit.
“Why did you tie me up?” He managed to ask, voice hoarse.
“Well, you weren’t cooperating, I had no other choice.”
“Just wait till Nancy gets here, she might not look like much, but she packs a mean punch,” the trollhunter shot back.
“Oh, no need to worry about her, she won’t interfere, I made sure of it.”
“You wouldn’t dare!-”
“Oh no, I just made her a nice cup of tea, it’s said it’s great for relaxing the body and helping to fall asleep,” Merlin added more softly.
“Ugh, she won’t hear anything,” Jim groaned, realizing he was as good as toast.
Merlin hummed to himself as he put down the jar filled with the black solution back on the counter. Jim raised an eyebrow as he looked at it. “Hey, what do we need this for if you didn’t need the ingredients to make Toby and Claire’s armour?”
“ We don’t need it. It’s more of a you problem.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Think of it as a choice. You decide to go through with it, we have a grand advantage over Morgana. You don’t, well, I hope you’re lucky enough to survive.”
“What does it do?”
“This,” Merlin took the container into his hand, and brought it close to the captive, “will turn you into a troll.”
“A troll.” Jim parroted.
“Yes, and I’m afraid it will be… permanent. ”
“Wait, hang on,” Jim tried ripping off his restraints, “I have to tell my mom first, I haven’t told her anything, my phone is back at my house! You can’t just do this to me!”
“Tough,” the old man shrugged his shoulders, putting the cup back on the table, “You should’ve told her sooner then. Well, I’ll be awaiting your decision, don’t be long, it’s only a matter of hours until Gunmar frees that wretched sorceress.”
Jim gave the wizard a murderous look as he went outside. Only when he was gone did the boy feel the cord binding his hands untying itself. When he tried to find it, he didn’t see anything, then sighed. He looked back at the table, then turned to look at the last rays of sunlight filtering through the window.