Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jim just wanted to go home. Hug his mom. Hug Toby. Hug Claire. And sleep for about a month. 

Unfortunately there were things that needed to be dealt with before he could do any of that. 

One thing specifically. 

Well, there were actually a lot of things, like the runes carved on his collarbones, the way his words still garbled in his mouth, and the two and a half months he had spent being missing. 

(Merlin, was it really only that long? It felt like years.)

But there was one major thing that he could actually do something about. 

“We’ll be back as soon as we can.” He reached out an arm and let NotEnrique scramble up it to perch on his shoulder. 

It was a good thing that the small changeling, made of stone or not, was still light enough that Jim’s currently malnourished not-entirely-human-but-close-enough body could still support his weight. 

Angor Rot just grumbled to himself and glared at him. 

Jim was not a big fan of this plan either. 

But someone had to get the ring, he needed a changeling (a real changeling, not some half finished science experiment that might not even count) to use the changeling key to get into Strickler’s lair. 

(And hope that was where the ring was. Hope that Strickler didn’t have it with him or hadn’t given it away or never found it in the first place in this world where so much was different and yet so much was the same.)

It probably would have been safer and easier to just send NotEnrique to get the ring no matter how much the thought of putting someone else in danger while he was doing nothing and waiting itched at him. 

But that would have required talking without his tongue twisting his words into knots. 

Which he was currently incapable of. 

“You had better return.” The assassin growled, threat obvious enough that he didn’t need to voice it. 

Jim’s plan (which was made up entirely of the three vague steps of breaking into the Changeling lair, finding the ring, and getting out without getting caught) met its first complication before they even made it into the parking lot of Arcadia Oaks High. 

A parking lot that held way too many cars for some random Friday night in the middle of October. 

Jim tried to remember what could possibly be going on to have this many people at the school on a weekend and was side tracked before he could even start digging that far back in his memories by his eyes getting caught on one of the cars in the parking lot. 

Specifically a truck. 

Even more specifically a taco truck. 

It was a bad idea. 

Jim had a both very vague and very strict deadline which boiled down to however long Angor Rot was willing to wait for him and NotEnrique to come back before he started causing property damage, injuries, and whatever other mayhem a troll-mage-assassin with a grudge was capable of causing. 

Jim also had a curse that made words come out wrong when he tried to talk about a great many subjects. 

It was a very bad idea. 

The teenager that walked up to Stuart’s truck wasn’t wearing shoes, and there was a lump on his back that was probably a backpack put on under his hoodie to make it harder to steal if Stuart’s experience with the homeless population of Arcadia before the Milk Carton Epidemic was anything to go by. 

The hoodie itself, along with the rest of the kid’s clothes were filthy, stretched out, and worn thin, kind of like the boy himself, who was staring at Stuart with too old eyes in a too thin face that was twisted with some emotion that the alien couldn’t identify. 

The teen looked like he could use a shower, a warm meal, and maybe a good hug. 

Stuart hoped that since the boy was the one to approach him, he could at least offer one of those things without spooking him. 

“Here you go.” He tried to give his gentlest smile as he offered a bag full of as many tacos as it could fit. “On the house.” 

The teenager just blinked at the food that had been shoved into his arms before he looked up at Stuart and smiled. 

It was a soft, warm thing and something eased slightly in the alien’s gut to see that whatever had put those bags under the kid’s eyes and had hollowed out his cheeks hadn’t managed to also steal away his ability to make such an expression. 

“Actually.” The kid said and it sounded a bit like a croak. “I was wondering if I could make a call.” 

Jim didn’t know if the code that Krel had used to call his sister and had given to the rest of them so they could also call Aja and Eli on Akaridon-5 would still work three years earlier and under an entirely different set of rulers. 

He breathed out a shaky, relieved breath when his fingers actually did what he told them and pressed the buttons he intended to. 

He hadn’t tried writing down things that his mouth wouldn’t say yet. He didn’t know if the curse would let him. 

But he could type in a code he only knew from a future he had yet to live and that was something. 

Stuart generally thought of himself as being polite. 

Or at least polite enough to not eavesdrop on other people’s phone calls unless they were very interesting. 

And then the kid typed something into his phone and a hologram popped up, connecting it to Akiridion-5. 

Stuart gaped. 

When he was done gaping, he took another, harder look at the kid. 

A kid with teeth that were a bit too sharp, ears that were a bit too pointed, fingernails that were tinted an unnatural blue. 

The kid wasn’t human. 

The hoodie probably wasn’t there to hide a backpack as he previously assumed but some other, more obvious sign that he wasn’t human. 

Before Stuart could start running through his list of every kind of alien that this kid might be, his call went through. 

To the King and Queen of Akiridion-5.

“Ah, you must be Atlas. We have been waiting a very long time for your call, although I must admit that a part of me had hoped that we would never receive it.” 

“You…knew I would call?” 

“Kanjagar said that his forbearers had warned him of a great threat to our planet and our children and that Atlas had been the one to bestow that warning upon them and that you would contact us when the time drew near.” 

Kanjagar. 

Of course. 

Why not?

As if time travel wasn’t confusing enough already. 

Jim really needed to ask Daya and Kanjagar if there was any way to figure out what happened differently in this timeline to have Angor Rot awake and hunting and Krel and Aja’s parents apparently waiting on him to call them. 

Which would all have to wait until he wasn’t in the middle of a conversation about the possible future destruction of multiple planets at the hands of a mad alien. 

“General Mo—“

“We know.” The queen interrupted gently and Jim blinked. “We will deal with the affairs of our own planet, you and your fellows have done more than enough in warning us and giving us time to prepare, although I fear I must ask you for one more thing, our children, Krel and Aja. We will be sending them to Earth so that they may be safe in the event that things do not work out as planned here on Akiridion-5. I would ask that you please look after them for us.” 

“You have to live.” It was all Jim could think at that moment. “I promise you I will do everything I can to look after your kids.” Not keep them safe. No one around Jim had been safe in years but alive and as well looked after as he could possibly manage. “But you have to promise me that you will both survive. Krel and Aja would both be devastated to lose you.”

“That is a very kind thing to demand, child.” Something about his voice or appearance had given him away. “But I suppose that since it is the only request you have given us and you were the one who provided us with all the tools we needed to see it come true then we must indeed promise it to you.” 

Jim breathed out a sigh of relief. It was stupid. To be reassured by a promise that he knew they couldn’t fully control if they kept but it might at least stop them from sacrificing their lives. 

Jim had talked about his home since the day that NotEnrique first met him. 

His mom, his best friend, his not-technically-but-that-didn’t-really-matter dad whose name NotEnrique had either never caught or hadn’t bothered to remember, and a dozen others that the changeling hadn’t always bothered to fully separate from each other. 

The point was, Jim missed his people. Possibly more than he missed his own humanity. 

And so if he was putting off seeing them again it was for a real good reason. 

So NotEnrique kept his mouth shut and agreed to help with stealing something from another changeling before the whelp could talk himself out of taking NotEnrique with him on this little adventure.

Jim missed his people so much that it had started infecting NotEnrique and making him miss all these people he had never even met just because of how much Jim talked about them.

So there was definitely a good reason that the first call Jim made when given an opportunity to make one wasn’t to any of the people that he had been talking about nonstop since he showed up in NotEnrique’s life. 

He thought about asking.

(Remembered the whelp, pacing and growing increasingly panicked at every nonsensical thing that came out of his mouth due to the curse, in a Krubera cell not even a cycle ago.)

“So…” he commented airily instead as he scrambled his way out from under the whelp’s hoodie and onto his shoulder. “This is your old prison?” 

“It’s a school.” Jim huffed at the repeated argument. “Not a prison.”

NotEnrique snorted as he took in the walls of a place that had been the setting for many of the stories the young human had been telling him ever since they first met. 

“You can’t leave, they control what you eat and where you go, what you do, and what you think, sounds like a prison to me.” He nodded to himself and felt the long suffering sigh that left the whelp’s lungs but he also felt the shoulder under him lose a little bit of the tension with the well worn back and forth. 

“Not a prison.” Jim repeated stubbornly. 

He might have added more. 

Gone into his own familiar arguments about education and socialization and all the things that supposedly separated prisons from schools. 

NotEnrique would never know because they turned a corner and suddenly there was a voice, slightly muffled by the walls but still discernible to a changeling’s ear. 

“O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” 

Jim froze. 

NotEnrique could feel the whelp’s breathing stutter as he silently crept around a corner and peered through a set of open double doors into a room that was filled with humans with a raised dais against the far wall where the only lights in the dark room were focused and a couple of humans seemed to hold the attention of most of the room. 

“Shall I hear more or shall I speak at this?”

One of the humans on stage spoke at the same time as Jim whispered the words and NotEnrique abruptly remembered why this was sounding familiar. 

He knew these words. 

He knew the tones and cadences and gestures from their time in the Darklands, trudging along with only their own looming fear of discovery and capture for company that had led to Jim reciting an entire play from memory completely with all the physical reenactments that he could remember. 

A play that Jim had tried out for. 

Had known all the lines for. 

And was now watching someone else perform. 

“Come on kid.” NotEnrique reached up to pull on Jim’s weird human fur. “Let’s get going while they’re all distracted.”

“I can't believe that Juliet dies.”

“She’s not dead yet.”

“What does ‘yet’ mean?” Toby whisper-shrieked and was promptly hushed by everyone in the crowd around them. 

“What does ‘the ghosts haunting the Amulet said that Jim is coming back soon’ mean?” Darci shot back. 

So maybe it was a bad idea to have this discussion in the middle of attending the school play but Darci had already blown off her best friend way too often, Claire had been looking forward to this play for months and there had just been disappointment after disappointment with so few boys trying out, and then out of those who did, Jim disappeared, Eli dropped out, Steve didn’t try out but might’ve made a decent Romeo if he hadn’t had a personality swap and decided to take up baking. 

So she dragged Toby and Eli to come help support  her friend. 

And promptly regretted it as soon as Toby started explaining what exactly had happened with the Soothscryer in a whisper to the background accompaniment of Mary-as-a-not-all-that-convincing-Romeo stumbling through her lines. 

“I don’t know what it means.” Toby really did seem just as confused as Darci was. “He just said ‘your friend is on his way back to Arcadia and will be there soon’ and then I was back in the Hero’s forge.” 

“That’s very vague.” Eli hummed distractedly, doing his best to hide the glow of his phone as he checked the portal-stone-scanner that he had linked to the device and had been semi-compulsively keeping an eye on ever since he finished making it. 

“I know!” Toby said and was once again shushed by everyone around them and continued in a mutter. “You’d think they’d be more helpful considering that they have all the knowledge of every past Trollhunter between them.”

Darci opened her mouth and would never remember what she had been about to say as she was interrupted by the sight of all of the blood draining from Eli’s face.  

“We’ve got other problems.” Eli informed them as he held up his phone and they saw that the thousand separate lights that had represented what they assumed to be all the pieces of the shattered bridge had disappeared only to be replaced by a single one that was larger than any other that the detector had ever displayed. 

Getting the Inferna Copula was proving to be, like most things in this new timeline seemed to be, both easier and harder than it had been the first time. 

Easier, because Jim was careful, he knew what to avoid and how to do so, because the knowledge that came with time travel negated the need for a time stop, because NotEnrique wasn’t just some changeling that had replaced Claire’s brother but someone that Jim could and did trust with his life. 

Things were easier. 

They were also so, so much harder. 

Because seeing Claire, standing on that stage reciting lines that they had both learned by heart with someone else, had hit Jim like a punch to the gut. 

(He’d seen it before. 

The second time he’d lived through these months he had sat in the audience as just another face in the crowd.

And now he couldn’t even do that.)

Because it had been months and Jim hadn’t been here. 

He had no idea how things had changed this time around without him here. 

He had no idea how Toby was doing because he was the Trollhunter now but he didn’t have a best friend to back him up and Jim couldn’t count the number of times that Toby had saved his life in these first few months alone and couldn’t ever fully express how much just having his best friend there had helped him even long before the trolls and the magic, way back to when he had been just a kid who didn’t like his own birthday. 

Moral support. 

It had meant so much to Jim and he had wanted to pay it back in some small way. 

To take up the role of the sidekick while Toby got his chance to shine. 

(To at least let Toby have the protections of a magical suit of armor to keep him safe from all the things that Jim knew his best friend would willingly face even without it.) 

Except he hadn’t been able to do that because he was gone. 

He was gone and he had no clue what had happened to his best friend in his absence. 

“Whelp, snap out of it.”

Jim was brought back to reality by NotEnrique tugging on his hair none too gently and looking ready to start biting next. 

“What exactly are we looking for?” The small changeling asked once he saw he had Jim’s attention once more. “Let’s get it and get out before the Antramonstrum wakes up or we get cursed by one of these creepy things.” 

He looked suspiciously at a small paperweight shaped like a tiny notebook and quill that was sitting on the desk of the not hidden part of Strickler’s office.

He rolled his eyes at the look that Jim was giving him and stopped poking at the miniature book. 

“Fine. Before we get more cursed.” 

Jim, who due to said curse couldn’t actually say anything to explain himself without it interfering, rolled his own eyes back at him and continued poking at his teacher’s wide variety of vaguely magical looking items and shaking his head whenever NotEnrique presented his own assortment of mismatched things for Jim’s perusal. 

None of them were the Inferna Copula. 

Jim was starting to wonder if it was even here in the first place. 

Nomura wasn’t particularly fond of fleshbags. 

They were loud and annoying and dismissive and disrespectful of the artifacts that she had dedicated her entire human life to preserving. 

(They were all going to die if the cause that she had been working towards for her entire Changeling life ever succeeded so it was rather pointless to get attached to any of them.)

But they did make beautiful music. 

And teasing Stricklander about his potential human mate was fun. 

And there was, somewhere out there, a creature that had once been human and had been turned into the same kind of monster that she was. 

An abomination that was the first stepping stone to those Impures like herself and Stricklander being replaced if they weren’t deemed unnecessary before the experiments were concluded. 

There was a human whelp out there whom Stricklander was so torn up about losing that it managed to make even Nomura curious. 

A curiosity that she would never satisfy because the Bridge was finally complete and all the humans would soon be dead and they would never create music again and she would never find out what happened to Stricklander’s whelp or the two runaway Changelings or even the Trollish Warrior that had once looked at her with youthful infatuation. 

She had been working towards this outcome for decades and yet somehow now, in the moment that should have been one of her moments of greatest triumph, she felt—

“How many dead fleshbags do you think it will take to lure out a coward?” Bular asked, sparking his blades against the floor with dark, unbridled glee. “How long do you think the new Trollhunter will hide away once they hear that their precious secret is in danger?”

—annoyed. 

Annoyed was how she felt as she mentally calculated the cost of having the scratched floor tiles repaired against the idea of having them replaced altogether. 

Annoyed because the secret of the existence of Trolls was something that had served all Trollkind, Gumm-Gumm or not, for centuries and now one arrogant Prince was going to throw all of that away in a fit of impatience. 

Annoyed because Bular’s plan to lure out the fresh, untried Trollhunter stood a real chance of working and that meant that secrecy and repairing the museum’s broken floor tiles wouldn’t matter in the least and the two things that Nomura had spent all her life trying to upkeep would be deemed as worthless. 

Nomura felt annoyance at the thought and absolutely nothing else. 

Jim stared at the ring, glowing, and yellow and undoubtedly the Inferna Copula. 

Except that the place that NotEnrique found made Jim very much doubt it was the Inferna Copula. 

It had been in the office. In a box. In a drawer. In Strickler’s desk.  

In Strickler’s teacher’s desk. In a drawer that hadn’t even been locked. In a box that didn’t look like it had been touched in years. On the human side of the office. 

An item that controlled one of the most dangerous trolls to ever live, was just sitting in a forgotten corner of a high school history teacher’s desk. 

It felt fake. 

It felt like a trap. 

NotEnrique reached out to grab it before Jim could even attempt to voice any of that. 

“This what we’re here for?” The little changeling asked, examining the ring with a less than impressed gaze before offering it to Jim. 

The former human hesitantly nodded because technically it was and even if everything felt wrong about this entire situation Jim didn’t really want to jinx it by saying anything out loud. 

(He didn’t really want to know if the words would come out the way he wanted or in some incoherent, jumbled mess.)

“Good.” NotEnrique said, dropping the vessel of Angor Rot’s soul into Jim’s open palm and scrambling onto his shoulder as the boy automatically adjusted his stance to accommodate the small changeling’s familiar weight. “Let’s get out of here, this place gives me the creeps.”

The words were said while yellow eyes glared suspiciously at the human half of Strickler’s office, Jim noted with only half of his attention. 

The rest of which was focused on the ring in his hand, waiting for it to explode or grow teeth and bite off his fingers or…something. 

The ring stubbornly remained a somewhat ominously glowing piece of jewelry. 

Jim continued to eye it with deep suspicion. 

He was interrupted before he could do more than glare by a voice that sounded both far too familiar and far too close for comfort.

“C-bomb, this is such a bad idea.” Mary protested as she jogged to keep up with Claire’s determined stride while the two of them ducked around corners and through the back hallways of the school to avoid the parents and audience members that would try to stop them to congratulate Claire on tonight's performance which would only slow her down on her self appointed mission. 

Because maybe Mary was right. 

Maybe trying to follow Darci through the rain and dark when the other girl had a good twenty minute head start was a bad idea. 

It wasn’t that Claire didn’t know it was a bad idea or that she didn’t care. 

It was simply that she had run out of other options. 

Two months. 

Two months of Darci pulling further and further away from Claire and Mary. 

Two months of her best friend disappearing from school the second the bell rang, calling off plans at the last minute, and occasionally skipping class altogether. 

The play was the last straw. 

It wasn’t because Darci had left halfway through. 

Okay, the play had actually been almost over but the sheer panic written across Darci’s face as she, Toby Domzalski, and Eli Pepperjack all quietly slipped out the doors only a few scenes before the play was over, was enough for Claire to decide that she was done waiting around. 

Claire was willing to play alibi for Darci. 

She was still willing to cover for her even after two months of broken promises and dodged questions. 

She was not willing to let her friend face something that scared her that much without doing something about it. 

“Just tell my parents that I’m celebrating at Darci’s and don’t let them freak out.”

“You don’t even know where she’s going.” Mary tried and this at least Claire had an answer to.

“They are going to the canal." she said with confidence. 

Because she had tried to follow Darci before. 

Several times. 

And every time Darci and the boys went to the canal and then vanished. 

Not this time. 

Claire didn’t care if she had to search all night in the freezing rain, this time she was going to find Darci and figure out exactly what was going on.

“Whew.” NotEnrique let out a relieved breath as the two human voices grew more and more distant. “That was a close one.”

Technically it hadn’t been.

Not really. 

The human whelps hadn’t even noticed the broken lock and the open door, much less the two changelings who were caught with no real hiding place in the middle of a different changeling’s lair. 

But as someone who had yet to ever come into close contact with more than one human who was not a changeling familiar (the one who had lent Jim his phone for that very confusing conversation didn’t count, NotEnrique wasn’t sure what he was but from the smell alone the changeling could tell he was definitely not human) he thought he was a perfectly reasonable level of paranoid about the near encounter.

“Let’s go.” He encouraged the taller changeling. 

There were a few moments of silence.

“She’s going to the canal.” Jim spoke before NotEnrique could swing around in front of the whelp’s face to snap him out of his own head for the third time since they had entered the human building. 

The words themselves made this not as much of a relief as it should have been.

“That’s what she said.” NotEnrique agreed. “And that matters because?” 

“Angor Rot is out there.” the whelp said and then flinched and NotEnrique just knew that hadn’t been what the former human had wanted to say. 

“Right, good point.” He decided that ignoring the cursed slip of the tongue was a better idea at the moment than trying to clarify what the human had actually meant and sending him into another fit of trying and failing to speak, like the one he’d had in the Krubera dungeon only a few hours ago. “We should probably go deal with him before he thinks we are taking too long and decides to go on a murder spree.”

The words were enough to have Jim clenching a soft human hand reflexively around the ring in his palm while he nodded his head with small, jerky movements. 

“You’re right,” he admitted, “we need to take care of Angor Rot first.”

Maybe, Toby reflected halfway through breaking into a museum in an attempt to get closer to the object that a whole bunch of evil trolls were presumably trying to put together to jumpstart the end of the world, they should have gone to Trollmarket instead. 

Should have told Blinky and Aaarrrgghh about all of this and not gone directly for the source without any kind of real plan. 

Except they had tried that. 

Sure, they hadn’t fully spelled out what was going on or showed the trolls Eli’s portal detecting device but if the bridge being gathered again was such an impossibility to the denizens of Trollmarket that Blinky laughed at the very idea of it and somehow no one had noticed it happening right under their noses (or above their heads as the case may be) then they probably wouldn’t believe that a human teenager had managed to figure it out and track it down in a matter of months. 

So proof. 

They needed proof and for that they had to get to the source. 

And then what? A part of Toby’s mind whispered.

What would he do when faced with a portal to the alternate dimension where his best friend had been taken. 

A portal that Toby could open. 

A portal that only Toby could open. 

What would he do?

He could remember the feeling of the thin arms of a long dead Trollhunter wrapped around him as a hoarse voice promised him that everything would be okay.

A promise that Jim was out of that place and would be home before he knew it. 

And Toby wanted that to be true so badly but if it wasn’t—

If it was a lie or a mistake—

If there was any chance that Jim would be forced to spend even a day longer in the horrible dimension to which he had been taken when there was something that Toby could have done about it—

Toby was interrupted before he was given the chance to follow any of those thoughts to their conclusion by the sound of metal on metal and a set of twin orange blades attempting to remove his head from his body. 

That’s where the entrance to Trollmarket is. 

That’s where Kanjigar died.

That’s where Bular would have died. Tonight. In a different lifetime.

Jim wasn’t sure which of those things the curse had refused to let pass his lips when talking to NotEnrique in Strickler’s office but it didn’t matter now, when they were outside of the building and with a distant sound that most people would assume was thunder but Jim recognized as the roaring of an angry Gumm-Gumm. 

Bular was on the hunt. 

Claire was in danger.

And Jim held the Inferna Copula and with it the power to command one of the most dangerous trolls he’d ever met in the palm of his hand. 

He reached out and shoved it at Angor Rot before he could think about it. 

He had hesitated once regarding this decision in the former timeline and for that Angor Rot’s soul had been destroyed, Jim had ended up with an angry and uncontrollable assassin on his heels, his mom and Strickler had almost died, Troll Market’s protections had been breached and Aaarrrgghh had ended up poisoned with Creeper’s Sun. 

Jim wanted to repeat exactly none of those experiences. 

He would not command the assassin to help him save Claire. That would end badly for everyone. 

He would just have to protect her himself.

And to do that he needed to stop wasting time. 

“My side of our deal is fulfilled.” He said, a bit harsher then he intended but his skin was itching with the need to chase down Claire and Bular right now. “But you should know, if you do anything to hurt or threaten the people or trolls of Arcadia then I will kill you.” 

He had not forgotten the danger that Angor Rot could pose. 

He would not order the troll. But he would also not hesitate to kill him. 

He and Toby had done it once before even if Morgana had later brought the soulless troll back to serve her again. 

No matter what happened, Draal would not be joining his father in the World Between Worlds for as long as Jim could help it. 

And without another word he turned and started running. 

Angor Rot had been without his soul for so long that he found he had forgotten what feeling anything other than gnawing emptiness was like.

Angor Rot closed his hand around the ring held in the palm of a scrawny, half starved youngling who, with all the power and control of having the Inferna Copula in his hand, chose to give a threat rather than an order.

Angor Rot had once been kind, had once been selfless enough to try and lay a child to rest and to offer his stone flesh for the power to protect his home. 

Very little of that troll was left even in the soul tied to a ring.

But even the smallest amount of the troll that he had once been was still so much more than he had been in hundreds of years.

Angor Rot closed his hand around the ring containing his soul and remembered feelings other than emptiness for the first time in almost nine hundred years.

Jim was tired and aching and there was no part of his body that wasn’t in pain.

He was also faster and had sharper hearing along with better night vision than he’d ever had when he was fully human even as he mentally cursed himself for transforming out of his troll form to sneak into the school because the sound of screaming and bellowing ahead meant there was simply no time for him to go through the slow, painful process of transforming back right now which meant he was headed into battle with Bular without the protection of stone skin, the faster reflexes, and the extra strength that he had as a troll. 

But he had faced Bular before, when he had been fully human, and had come out the victor. 

He could do it again. 

He could save Claire. 

He had to. 

Jim’s hand reached into his pocket and closed around the smooth surface of the amulet that he had carried there ever since Nimue’s cave and had never once activated. 

Jim took in a deep breath, hoped desperately that he wasn’t making a massive mistake, and breathed out the words engraved into its metal face along with his memory. 

“For the good of all, Excalibur is mine to command!”

“For the glory of Merlin, Daylight is mine to command!”

Nomura watched silver armor form around the shortest of the humans in a burst of blue magic and couldn’t even find it in herself to feel shocked.

The Trollhunter was human. 

The Trollhunter was human and Nomura almost wanted to laugh because of course he was. 

Because the Gumm-Gumms had spent so long giving trolls the ability to look human and now somewhere out there was a human with the ability to look like a troll and of course Merlin’s Amulet had finally lost it and decided to pick a human for its next wielder. 

He was clumsy and untested and maybe Nomura should have stayed silent before her first attack so that the little human children didn’t get the chance to dodge her first killing strike or any of the ones that came after but this human was the Trollhunter so who was to say that the sound of her blades scraping against each other had been the reason that he had avoided her attack and not something else as equally unpredictable as the fact that there was a human Trollhunter at all in the first place?

The child just barely managed to block another strike from both her blades and it was clear to her that whoever had been teaching this human to fight had never actually needed to fight with a human’s (much less a human child’s) limited strength and reach.

And oh how that must infuriate Draal. 

To have his Father’s mantle be taken up by a mere fleshbag whelp who didn’t even know how to properly fight against a real, dangerous opponent who fought back, while passing over him entirely. 

Nomura did laugh this time. 

A loud cackling sound that she could see visibly putting all three of the humans on edge. 

She smiled a wide toothy grin at the little Trollhunter, ignoring the other two even as the boy squeaked and muttered and the girl held up her phone as if it would shield her from the world. 

“How those pathetic surface-dwelling trolls must hate you.” she drawled, feelings that she had tried as best she could to strangle long ago refusing to let her speak Draal’s name and taint him by association with her just as it had every time she should have reported everything she knew about the Trollhunter’s son to Bular and to the Janus Order. 

Nomura pulled her weapons back from attacking for a moment, sheathing one of them so she could trail her hand along one of the boxes of artifacts that had not yet been put on display as she circled the boy with predatory grace. “A human taking up Merlin’s precious amulet? How it must grate on them.”

The surface trolls who considered even the changelings that had once been their own children to now be nothing more than abominations. 

They would all hate the human that had been chosen as their protector and Nomura relished in the thought of it. 

Finally she found what she had been looking for. 

She used one clawed finger to cut through the cloth wrapped around it, careful to not touch it directly even as she grabbed it  with the remaining cloth serving as a dangerously delicate protection for stone skin. 

Then she threw it at the young Trollhunter’s face. 

The boy yelped and caught the horseshoe as it bounced off his forehead without any hint of a magical reaction. 

Nomura hummed. 

So the amulet really had chosen an ordinary human. 

The boy wasn’t even a changeling. 

It was interesting. 

And possibly a bit insulting. 

Darci wasn’t at the canal. 

She had apparently chosen tonight of all nights to not make her way to the waterway despite consistently going there every time that Claire had managed to follow her on any of her disappearing stunts for the past two months.

This turned out surprisingly to be something of a relief to Claire herself as it meant that at least Darci wouldn’t also be killed by the giant stone monster that had been perched on top of the bridge, apparently waiting for anyone to brave the storm to get close enough to be eaten. 

This was a rather cold comfort seeing as Claire herself was definitely about to die but it was a comfort nonetheless.

“Where are you, Trollhunter?! Too much of a coward to face me even to defend your precious human world?!” The monster shouted because apparently the minotaur-gargoyle looking creature could talk as well as producing the most terrifying animal growls that Claire had ever heard in her very-soon-to-be-over life as it slowly stalked towards where she had been cornered against the railing of the bridge with her back to the rushing water in the canal below, two giant swords sparking against the ground as it grew ever closer. “You will have to come out sometime! I will kill as many humans as I need to until you do! Starting with this one!”

The monster finally stopped shouting into the rain and focused back entirely on Claire, two swords swinging up impossibly fast and then back down directly at her face and Claire closed her eyes and braced for the end.

The clang of metal on metal almost disguised the sound of Jim’s heavy breathing as he just barely managed to throw himself in front of Claire in time for Excalibur to block Bular’s blades.

“You. Will not. Hurt her.” The words were spoken between panting breaths and were slightly muffled by the helmet that had materialized along with the rest of the Magiktech armor but none of that managed to hide the growl that crept into the words even though there had been no time for him to transform out of his more human appearance.

“Trollhunter,” Bular snarled, seeming to either not notice or not care about the differences between the armor of the reforged amulet and the original. “Finally decided to stop being a coward and come out to play?” 

Jim didn’t bother with replying, focusing instead on trying to steady his own breathing from his desperate race across town to reach the bridge in time, straining with all the strength lent to him by his armor to hold up Excalibur with a hand wrapped around it’s hilt and one bracing the blade itself to use the ancient sword as a shield to block Bular’s blades from reaching him or Claire even as the Gumm Gumm Prince pressed down with all his weight. 

The time in the Darklands, followed by his time being hunted by Angor Rot, followed by his brief imprisonment at the hands of the Kurbara followed immediately after by the trainwreck that had been this entire night were all taking their toll. 

Jim had fought this troll before. 

Jim had killed this troll before, even if Aaarrrgghh had technically dealt the final blow before the fatal wound dealt to him by Daylight had managed to finish the job.

But that had been before, when his body was not an unreliable mishmash of magic he didn’t understand and he had friends at his back ready to fight alongside him. 

And Claire was here.

A younger, terrified Claire who didn’t have her magic or a weapon to protect herself or apparently any idea what was going on and Jim would not let her get hurt. 

So he wouldn’t fight. 

Not here. 

Not where Claire could end up getting involved.

Jim let his grip on one side of Excalibur falter just slightly, just enough for Bular to sense the movement and press his own advantage even harder. 

Jim shifted his stance, and his left arm dropped from where he had been using it to prop up Excalibur’s blade and shoving both himself and Claire to the side as the force of Bular’s own momentum sent him stumbling forward towards the railing of the bridge that he had trapped Claire against, forcing the huge troll off balance for just a moment.

Just long enough for Jim to put one of his very first combat lessons into action by bringing up his armored knee aiming straight for Bular’s gronk-nuks, before summoning his shield (and thank Merlin that the Killstone was apparently still in his amulet to grant him access to it) and using it to slam into Bular with every single bit of magically enhanced strength that the armor could grant him, sending the troll backwards, over the railing of the bridge, and into the racing water below.

It wouldn’t last. 

Jim had the memory of this night and the first time he had ever seen Aaarrrgghh use violence to tell him that Bular could and would be back in only moments without a Daylight inflicted injury slowing him down. 

So Jim grabbed Claire’s hand and started running. 

NotEnrique was perfectly fine with his size. 

Maybe it was no match for the huge, bulky Gumm Gumms that he had been surrounded with for as long as he could remember and maybe it was something that would always mark him as a changeling, who were all too small or lanky to ever be mistaken for a regular troll.

But it also meant he could get places that normal trolls couldn’t, it meant that he could go unnoticed, and more recently, it meant that there was something to differentiate him from the trolls that were no doubt the source of the whelp’s nightmares. 

Normally he was perfectly happy with being the exact size that he was. 

Normally he wasn’t trying to keep up with a much taller changeling who had taken off running without any warning and a desperation that NotEnrique didn’t understand. 

Or rather hadn’t understood, until he finally managed to catch up to the whelp and the human that he was tugging along behind him. 

NotEnrique took in the wide eyed human staring between the two of them with the baffled confusion of likely being half convinced this was all some bizarre dream. 

The human was female, with short black hair that had a single streak of blue running through it. 

NotEnrique had seen this human before. 

Through the bars of a cage, on the screen of Jim’s phone, the whelp had never seemed to grow tired of scrolling through pictures of his mom and best friend and stopping to zoom in on pictures with a lot of people to look at this human girl in particular. 

The furious roar that split the air might almost have been mistaken for thunder had NotEnrique not been very familiar with the sound of angry Gumm Gumms even if he wasn’t sure that he had ever heard one that sounded quite that livid.

“Get her out of here! Please!” There was desperation in Jim’s voice even though his expression was hidden and his voice was muffled by the helmet that he had somehow acquired alongside an entire suit of glowing armor in the past five minutes in which he had been out of NotEnrique’s sight.

NotEnrique had never had a problem with his size before and the fact that it made it all but impossible to even consider trying to fight against any fully grown troll. 

Had never thought he would ever be in a situation where he would even consider staying to fight instead of running and hiding.

Watching Jim adjust his grip on the sword of prophecy that NotEnrique had only seen once before, when it had been drawn from the stone, squaring his feet to take on the threat that was crashing steadily towards them all on his own was enough to make NotEnrique wish for the first time that he was large or had the natural defenses that made others of his size deadly threats even without brute strength. 

But he wasn’t and he didn’t.

And he had seen this whelp decide to throw himself at a magical troll assassin, from inside a cell, without a single weapon, to protect a troll that he didn’t even know and who hadn’t even been nice to him.

NotEnrique couldn’t even imagine what kind of idiot the former human might turn into if someone he actually cared about were put in danger. 

“Don’t be an idiot.” the small changeling ordered before turning to the human. “Follow me.”

The human looked between the two of them, still seeming a mix of confused and terrified at the entire situation but now with an added bit of concern creeping its way in. Perfect. 

“But what about—” 

“Atlas can handle himself.” NotEnrique told himself more than the girl. 

Because the changeling standing there, wielding Excalibur, was Atlas, with a whole set of prophecies that he needed to fulfill and he would not die here.

Douxie had felt bonds form before. 

Could remember the day that Archie had claimed him as his familiar. 

Had felt the gradual build up of an apprenticeship bond with Merlin. 

He knew what bonds and destiny felt like.

So he recognized the feeling that had him bolting straight up from where he had fallen asleep on a collection of books on various magic related topics and one seemingly random guide to botany and quilting that for some reason his brain had convinced him was relevant to the whole suddenly-being-declared-Wizard-of-Avalon-without-a-singular-bit-of-prior-warning-thank-you-for-that-Master situation at roughly hour seventy-three of his sleepless attempts to find something to tell him what was going on. 

“Douxie?” Archie eyed him somewhat warily from where he had apparently also been sleeping on Douxie’s pile of books, “what’s wrong?” 

“A bond.” the young-by-immortal-standards wizard gasped, stumbling to his feet and checking his charm bracelet on instinct as he started towards the door, “there’s something— someone— they’re in danger. I have to go. I have to get to them!” 

Focused as he was on his bonds and the one that was new and all but screaming at him with the need to get to the person on the other side, he was able to sense Archie’s unease with the situation and was immensely relieved when the cat decided against voicing any of his doubt, instead he leaped onto Douxie’s shoulders as the wizard pulled the door open and started running in the direction that the bond was pulling him towards.

Atlas was not fighting like a troll possessed. 

Angor Rot had seen plenty of those trolls who fought without control over their own minds and bodies and that was not how Atlas was behaving.  

No, the way Atlas fought was merely stupid.

“Is he trying to get himself killed?” Angor Rot growled. 

The changeling could be clever. 

Their games of cat and mouse through the tunnels surrounding the cave of the Lady of the Lake, which only ended with the interference of the Kurbara tribe, had proved that. 

Along with over nine hundred years of life and experience and somehow managing to dodge each and every one of Angor Rot’s attempts to find him in the time since he had first encountered the changeling all those centuries ago. 

The changeling could be clever. 

So why in the name of the Pale Lady, wasn’t he being so now?

The chase through caves had obviously deprived the changeling of food and rest and had exacerbated whatever state he had been in even before Angor Rot had begun hunting him. 

He was starved, exhausted, and there was definitely something wrong with the magic flowing through his veins if the single transformation that Angor Rot had witnessed from the Changeling was any indication. 

And yet he had charged straight into a fight with Bular the Butcher, son of Gunmar the Black. 

All to draw attention away from the human and the other changeling as they escaped.

It was stupid.

It was stupid to throw himself into a fight that he would not, could not win, all for the sake of two creatures that would undoubtedly end up getting themselves killed anyway.

Angor Rot didn’t have to do anything and he could simply watch the changeling that he had been hunting without success for centuries finally die before he could do anything else to disrupt the assassin's life. 

The changeling’s movements were starting to slow, exhaustion finally beginning to overpower the adrenaline that had been keeping him going thus far. 

Angor Rot didn’t have to do anything.

Bular finally managed to land a hit that Atlas didn’t manage to block, dodge, or deflect that sent the much smaller form crashing into the side of a human building.

Angor Rot’s hand clenched around the ring that was now fitted snugly on his finger. 

The armor that almost resembled that of the Trollhunter and had baffled Angor Rot for almost nine hundred years, dissipated and the changeling was left in his human form, barely conscious and entirely defenseless. 

Angor Rot was under no orders. 

The Gumm Gumm Prince raised his single remaining blade to strike down the helpless human form. 

And for the second time that night he was halted by the sudden arrival of a new combatant before he could deliver the final killing blow.

Angor Rot was, after all, free to do whatever he so chose.

“Eli, is there any way you can hack the security cameras and erase any proof that we were ever here?” 

“I think,” the spectacled boy ducked a vase that probably was older than time and cost more than his family’s whole house as it shattered against the wall, “that we have more important things to be worrying about.”

“Your dad isn’t a cop.” Darci muttered, carefully stepping over the shattered pottery as they both tried to keep out of the way of the ongoing battle, “he’ll kill me if he finds out I helped destroy a museum.” 

“It’s not destroyed—” 

The glowing blue form of Toby was sent hurtling through the air and also through one of the museum’s windows and out of the building.

“Nevermind.” Eli corrected himself as they both scrambled over broken glass out the window after him to check on their friend.

“I’m fine.” Toby reassured them both before they could even ask, “turns out magic armor is pretty awesome.” 

“It won’t be enough to save you.” The purple troll approached them leisurely, swords swinging deftly in each of her hands as green eyes glowed in the dark.

Toby quickly pulled himself to his feet on the grass lawn and put himself between the approaching troll and his two entirely armorless friends.

The troll smirked and opened her mouth to say something else—

A blue beam of light smacked right into her before a single word could pass her lips.

“Go!” a voice commanded and all three teenagers turned to find Douxie, bracelet glowing and a bespectacled cat perched on his shoulders, “that won’t hold her for long.”

The teenage Wizard grabbed Eli and Darci who in turn grabbed Toby and they all started running.

“What are you doing here?” Toby, the owner of a set of magically strength and stamina increasing armor and as such the only one of the three humans not using every bit of his breath to focus on running, asked. “How did you know that we needed you to come save us?”

“He didn’t.”

Maybe if all three of them hadn’t just discovered that the tool to start the apocalypse was currently entirely reassembled and in their local museum, hadn’t just been in a fight to the death, and weren’t currently running for their lives, they would have taken the time to freak out more about the cat that had suddenly started talking. 

“There’s someone else in danger.” Douxie informed them, eyes focused ahead of them, squinting against the rain. 

“Great,” Toby sighed, resummoning the sword that he had allowed to dissipate into blue smoke, “Any idea who?”

A resounding roar cut off any answer that Douxie might have given as the wizard dropped his hold on the humans and took off running at a speed that only Toby could keep up with, right hand dancing over the glowing blue bracelet on his left.

“You guys alright?” Toby asked and Darci waved him off.

“We’ll be fine.” she said between gasping breaths, bracing her weight on her knees as Eli fully collapsed to the street while trying to recover his own breath. “Go help him.”

Toby didn’t need any further encouragement to take off after the wizard. 

Angor Rot was an assassin. 

He was very skilled at being an assassin and was very deadly at his craft. 

He was also not a match for the Gumm Gumm Prince in a straight-out brawl.

He was losing and he knew it. 

He had already lost his poisoned dagger and now only had his staff to fend off the larger troll’s attacks using his own speed and reflexes, but the Butcher never gave him enough of a break between his onslaught of attacks to summon the portals needed to send himself and the changeling that he had decided to protect into the World Between Worlds.

It was a foolish decision to be sure. 

Throwing himself into a battle he would not win for a changeling that he barely cared about.

Angor Rot couldn’t help but grin as he failed to sidestep another swipe of a blackened blade and crashed to his knees as his leg crumpled under the blow, because for all that the decision had been foolhardy in the extreme and was likely going to get him killed, it had been his decision.

“What are you smiling about?” Bular growled and Angor Rot felt his smile grow even wider because for the first time in what seemed like forever it was a genuine reflection of an emotion that he was feeling rather than a mimicry of a faint memory of what he should be feeling. 

It also widened as he watched the movement behind the Gumm Gumm as Atlas’ tiny human form, still lacking the glowing magical armor, leaped up to plunge Angor Rot’s lost dagger into the black troll’s back.

Bular let out a deafening roar and twisted around to snatch the changeling from his back by the throat in a crushing grip and Angor Rot thought that perhaps it was fitting that the two fools would die together. 

And then the Trollhunter arrived. 

All that Toby could see was Jim. 

Jim.

Who Toby hadn’t seen in months.

Jim.

Who Toby thought he might never see again. 

Jim.

Who was about to be crushed to death by a huge black troll just as Toby finally found him. 

There was not a single chance that Toby was going to let that happen.

He didn’t know how he got to the two of them.

He didn’t remember stabbing Daylight straight through the monster’s gut. 

What he did notice was the moment that Jim was released from the troll’s grip as it stumbled back and Toby reached out to steady his choking friend. 

“Jim!” He could feel tears welling up in his eyes as he wrapped his arms around his swaying friend for the first time in what felt like forever. 

“Tobes.” Jim’s voice was hoarse and croaky, but Toby thought that Jim might also be starting to cry. 

“TROLLHUNTER!” 

Toby jumped as he spun around to see Douxie throwing spell after spell at the large black monster, blue light pinning down the creature’s left arm while the pale troll that had yelled at him, kneeled on the street, shadows around him surging to life to pin down the black troll’s right side as the huge monster writhed to break free, murderous rage clearly visible in red eyes even as dead stone started to spread from the glowing blue wound that had been dealt by Daylight. 

“Go.” Jim told him raspily, letting go of Toby and stepping away. “Finish the fight.”

It sounded like something that Blinky had said a dozen times.

Jim hadn’t even met Blinky yet. 

And he would never have gotten an opportunity to if the bellowing, furious troll had crushed his throat before Toby and Douxie had shown up.

Toby didn’t feel a single shred of regret as he swung Daylight through the monster’s neck and made sure it wouldn’t hurt anyone ever again.