Chapter Text
“Have we tried the west cave system out of town?”
Mary’s voice crackles over the speaker.
Toby makes a curious humming sound. “What’s it called again?”
“Drovas cave system, but it’s largely thought to be connected with the Hall City Cave.” Darci relays, “There are a few online maps of the underground but it’s mostly uncharted.”
It’s a stretch, Jim knows it is, let alone beyond dangerous.
“Blinky said he could get us better approximations of the area,”
“And,” Mary starts sardonically, “what if Bular’s there waiting to chomp our heads off?”
“I still think those were his remains in the canal.” Toby echoes, he’d even swiped a piece for his rock collection due to its unique look.
The beyond mutilated pieces of stone were in rough shape when found, claw marks littered each fault line, jagged teeth tattoos punctured along the edges, whoever had done that must have tore the living stone to shreds, while still alive.
A single broken blade left as mooring beside the rubble.
Bular’s blade.
“If he’s dead, which is good, that also means..” Darci trails off, the words hang heavy and leaden between the group, even over the phone.
“I know.”
They’ve lost their lead.
Bular’s death was a good thing, it kept people and trolls safe, but also left them walking blindly, toward an unknown source, scrambling for scraps.
Jim chews on his inner cheek, skin feeling raw and tender.
“I’m gonna go,” Toby cracks, “me and Nana’s crime show starts in fifteen minutes, gotta get the snacks ready.”
“Bye TP,”
“See ya.”
The girls echo.
Mary mutters something about painting her nails but Jim can hear the frustration in her throat, rough and bitter, it’s welling to a dangerous point.
Darci is silent for a moment, like she’s trying and failing to find good words.
“We’ll find something,”
“Yeah,” Jim agrees stiffly, “Goodnight Darci,”
“Night Jim.”
He sets his phone down and harshly drags a hand over his face.
They’re not getting anywhere, it doesn’t matter what or where they look, every lead trails along, straying to the same dead end thread.
Eyeing the unfinished English assignment that seriously needs his attention.
Junior year has been kicking his butt and it’s rolling conclusion is going to envelop him in tests and projects.
Part of him still feels like he’s back at the beginning of sophomore year when his world froze, that day, his friends crestfallen expression burned forever into his memory. Heart sinking into the soles of his shoes.
The small, iron handle that’s sat dormant for weeks gives a low rattle from the edge of his desk, as if stretching out, sensing his turbulence.
The Shadow Staff.
Jim’s tried to use it, painfully frequently.
He’s gripped the cold metal in his palm, feeling it’s simmering of dark magic leech outward, reach for his grief, his frustration, the tower of anxiety that hangs overhead, whatever it can clutch close, to use, to empower, to sap from his whole beating heart hungrily.
For a moment he’d let it, swallow him whole.
And he begged for it to open a portal to Claire. The staff fights and festers instead, refusing, like it can’t find her, won’t.
Jim knows it’s wrong to keep the staff, morally and reprehensibly, this thing is coated in dark, unpleasant magic.
The creepy troll assassin it’d been lorded off of is bad enough, Angor rot, they’ve only seen vague pictures of him, descriptions of his clear danger. Where he walks trolls fall, crumbling to stone under poison blades. Blinky gave explicit instructions to avoid him at all costs, since he seemed to linger topside unlike most trolls come daybreak.
But this dark magic doesn’t feel inherently dangerous. So maybe…
Jim pushes away from his desk, blinking back the lingering sting of his eyes.
A change of scenery seems like a good idea and he does want to cook dinner, it’s an easy distraction, taking both his unfinished assignment and map along.
His mom arrives home around eleven and by that time he’s warmed up her food.
Tuscan pasta with a slice of oven baked French pizza, set across from him at the dining room table as he works through another winding, spiraled line.
This is their routine lately, the sparse time that’s manageably spent together between their busy schedules.
She presses a soft kiss to the top of his head as she leans over the kitchen chair.
“Watcha working on tonight kiddo?”
Jim shifts a bit so she can see the map,“Cave systems, we’re hoping it’s where Bular had been keeping his..stuff.”
The sewers proved fruitless and disgusting if the smell was anything to go by.
Strickler said he kept trinkets like prizes, hoarding things from his kills, Toby teetered on that being a rather dragon-y quality or just prideful boasting, trolls were greatly enamored with shows of immense strength. Never to that severity though.
Gumm Gumm culture was probably vastly different too.
“There’s a chance,” Barbara guesstimates, drawing a line with her pointer finger, Jim circles the spot she stops at, another small cave. “the Janus Order has gone quiet,”
“Walt…Strickler, wasn’t as forward as we would have liked before he left town.”
“No changelings have shown up at the hospital right?” The idea that the secretive organization may inherently target them because of their involvement in the trolls business was unsettling.
“I still have an enchanted knife on me,” Barbara reminded, reading the troubled scrunch of his brow, “if anything comes my way, at least I’ve got a line of defense.”
He knew everyone was completely capable of defending themselves, still…he worried.
His mom is halfway through her dinner when she seems to pause, fork left setting on the edge of her plate.
“I talked to Ophelia today,”
Claire’s mom. The subject broils, a tough unrelenting weight in his gut.
“Oh..”
Their last conversation, even now, had felt tense, wire tight and he wished it hadn’t. A thick abrasive press in the air surrounding them. She’d been picking at the edge of the bandaid on her knuckle, what had her excuse been? Hit it on the counter?
Her eyes were sharp, anxious, he can still remember that distinct gleaming sharpness down to this very moment, like he was being examined under a microscope, wary.
But beyond that Claire seemed so…sad.
She’s been sad for a while he’d realize later, after she was gone, this tired, dragging sort of weight to every move she made. He wondered if maybe, he’d asked her earlier, done something different this could have been prevented.
Jim hadn’t wanted to press, if she’d wanted to tell, she would have, but she didn’t. And he’s still left thinking otherwise.
It’s wrong to put such a tremendous weight of chance on his shoulders, Jim couldn’t have prevented Claire Nuñez of all people from doing anything.
Her mom though, Ophelia had hardened with the loss of her daughter, working to keep the trolls a secret, between their salvage runs and simply exiting the market became more difficult.
The police upped their nighttime patrols since Claire’s disappearance, people outcrying for more safety. Darci said her dad agreed on some aspects.
They’d took the news that their daughter may have been caught up in a world of magic and dangerous circumstances as well as imagined.
Terribly.
“How…are they?”
“Taking it in slowly, understandably,”
“If she is..in one of those caves..” Jim bites his lip, stomach churning with the implication.
“There’s a chance she’s not,” His mom offers with a hopeful lit.
Jim doesn’t know if that’s worse or better, they’ll never find answers, never know what became of her.
“The records Strickler left behind,” His moms voice grows tight, it’d been a shock to find out he’d been working to deceive them for so long, under Bular’s command, to free his father from the Darklands.
The Trollhunter had taken his hand as punishment at the Battle of the Bridge, or so they said.
Regardless he’d left them a paper trail. Id’s, the Janus Order had kept track of Bular’s victims, damage control, most of the populous were unfortunate homeless, but there were exceptions and the list…wasn’t short by any means.
Spanning decades, hundreds of people fallen victim to Bular’s vile hunting habits.
“Nancy and I have been shifting through them,” Barbara admits, plate fully empty now. “We haven’t found her yet.”
“But there’s still more to go through?”
His mom’s gaze softened. That was all the answer Jim needed.
“I’ll finish this up then head to bed, sound good?”
“Alright hon, just don’t wear yourself out,”
Darci keeps her bag tight to her chest, close enough it presses flush against her ribs with the force.
She should have left the diner earlier, especially tonight, dark clouds cast the moonlights glow away, thick and wispy as wind howls in the trees overhead, trembling their branches, scattering leaves across the worn cement under her sneakers.
But it’d been important, her, Toby and Mary squished into a booth as Eli Peperjack sat opposite, nervously twiddling his fingers.
He was smart, probably a bit too smart for his own good.
They were aware he knew, of them and trolls, it was pretty obvious considering his stints of non-comical rants about supernatural creatures.
However, he didn’t know the one thing they desperately needed.
Her phone buzzes and she shuffles it from her pocket, Mary’s long slew of text messages only beginning her ramble.
Lock-screen a bright picture of three girls, all grinning at the camera after a perfect day at the waterpark out of town. She can’t bring herself to change it, not that she wants too, the picture tugs at something deep and raw in her chest. Maybe that’s not good, not for her, clinging to the meager scraps she’s got remaining.
Claire’s been missing for over a year, she probably doesn’t look like this anymore, she’s changed like they have but she’s not here…with them. There’s a thousand things left unshared, sleepovers missed, they won’t graduate high-school together.
She’ll remain that girl frozen on her lock-screen until…
They’re gonna find her, they have too.
Closure at the very least.
Darci exhales, shooting a glance at the growing number of twisting trees overhead.
This part of town always gives her the heebie jeebies, half the streetlights flicker, bulbs struggling to spark, things could so easily hide in the dark.
It’d been a bad detour on her part, but road construction inhibited her normal route.
Hisses faintly whisper in the night air.
She quickens her pace.
Must have been an alley cat or something.
Darci eyes the old house to her left, lights out, porch dilapidated.
For a moment she catches a flit of golden eyes in the window, soulless, fiery things.
It’s just her imagination, right—wrong, she makes it to the end of the street, the hisses reaching a feverish pitch, closer, hunting.
Squirming creatures wriggle from the darkness, and Darci is vastly outnumbered…and alone, not a car in sight.
Was this purposeful?
She doesn’t recognize them off the top of her head. But they faintly look goblin like, skin an off reddish brown, backs hunched toward the sky, Hobgoblins maybe? No…they’re almost shadow in nature, frothing and wispy.
At least six, seven, she realizes to late as a weight connects with her back roughly, Darci crashes to the pavement feeling her palms scrape against rough rock.
She scrambles for her bag, sent flying from her arms when she landed.
No swords of course, but there’s a rather large pocket knife in the front zipper and pepper spray her dad insisted on.
She rolls onto her back, using her elbows to prop herself up. They don’t speak like Goblins, mouths too wide and teeth too uneven, but their eyes gape with a hungry savor.
Darci kicks the closest one hard in the jaw, deformed teeth gnash closed, in a frenzied spiraled manner.
Her heart wrenches painfully hard in her chest, panic numbing her fingertips.
Footsteps crash like thunder from behind.
Metal dragging against pavement.
Darci can see a few of them still, as she twists and flails struggling to keep another from advancing, while the one trying to bite gargles, large eyes snapping toward the sound, hackles rising as they get a clear view, but she can’t from her place on the ground.
A sword arcs over her head, taking the flurry of teeth and claws straight off her chest.
It’s body congealing on the pavement, making a disgusting sound as a metal boot collides with its head.
The silver shape moves fast, almost too fast, frantic in a way to dispose of the creatures.
Some vague, what may be a threat rolls off their tongue in the language Darci can’t understand, the hobgoblins react in kind though.
Hoots and hollers becoming a swath of sound, filling her head like cotton.
Another, and another there’s too many, so many, all buzzing shapes of wrath.
They go flailing, forced back.
Daylight sent skittering.
Darci jerks forward, grabbing for her bag, heaving in another breath. Fingertips enclosing around the smooth handle, veering for one prepared to leap at their exposed back.
She sinks her knife into its head, hearing the sickening squelch, feeling flesh give way under her hands.
Darci pulls back, loosen the painfully tight grip on her knife. Whatever remains of the pack slithers off in fear, sludge soaking in the pavement.
She’s okay, it’s okay.
Darci can still feel her heartbeat in her throat.
Her palms ache but the scrapes aren’t anything she won’t get over, sting for a few days sure, her dad will be worried—
“Did they hurt you?” A rough, low voice asks and Darci flinches, blinking back the fuzz blurring over her peripheral, runoff adrenaline.
“Darc.” It’s said so quiet she almost misses it, like there’s a lingering apology in the single word for startling her.
They must not know her name fully.
Darci stares at the Trollhunter, one of the first times she’s ever seen them up close, it’s always from a distance, warded back by the space of their clipped attitude toward humans. They stumble a bit, rocking on their heels, giving her space as if realizing just how close they really are.
“I’m..good, I’m okay,” She assures, swallowing.
Darci manages to rise, “But you..” She reclaims the lost space.
A deep, rolling growl erupts from beneath the helmet, harsh and threatening. But it sounds off kilter, a strange mangled impression of a trollish growl, too throaty.
Darci backtracks immediately, unsure, injured palms up.
Her gut is telling her to step forward though, which would be against her self preservation.
She wants to help them.
Their posture is arced, wounded in a way that’s revealing more than any facial expression ever could. This is more than just from fighting off the hobgoblins.
“You’re hurt.”
“Stone skin.”
“Still,”
“Don’t.” Is her only warning and Darci heeds it warily, the Trollhunter isn’t like most trolls, too human in stature, lacking the looming height and gruffness that some, but not all trolls are accustomed too. They’re built to be apex predators, stronger than whatever may dare decide they’re an adversary.
But they’re still a troll or like any warily justified person and can get aggressive when threatened. Do they think Darci is threatening them?
They obviously aren’t okay. With another few staggering steps. It feels like they’re staring right through her, intertwined grooves in the metal helmet serving to direct where their eyes would be.
”You…should go, there may be more.”
A protest wells in her throat.
They straighten up, not without a sharp rattling breath that catches behind their teeth.
“Go home,” It’s not a suggestion, it’s a demand. Far deeper than she clocks in the moment.
Leaving Darci standing on the dark street.