Chapter Text
"Curse this infernal sunlight!" Blinky shouts, as his four hands hit the metal gates of the train tunnel in front of him. It doesn't budge; his stone fits have no effect.
Aaarrrgghh! His closest friend for the better part of a millennium is hunched down behind him to fit through the tunnel. His eyes long since filled with tears.
Both trolls had watched in the shadows as their late friend, Kanjigar the Courageous, sacrificed himself but a few hours ago. He was battling a troll far older than them: Bular the Butcher.
But a few hours ago, the four of them were in the library reminiscing. Blinky should've noticed it sooner. Kanjigar knew his time was up, long before they did. It was in the way he couldn't quite look them in the eye, the sound of his voice when he spoke of the good old times.
The two had followed him after realising he hadn't returned from patrol, only to watch his sacrifice from afar. Aaarrrgghh! had to look away, unable to watch anymore once his friend touched sunlight and turned completely to stone. Blinky forced himself to watch as Bular repeatedly injured himself to try and reach the amulet lathered in sunlight.
Even as Blinky knew everything, he still wasn't quite sure how long the two were in silence. All he knew was that the sun had completely risen in that time.
"Why?" Blinky finally speaks. "Why could Kanjigar not accept our assistance when we offered it earlier? Perhaps if I had been more forceful in my—,"
"No." Aaarrrgghh! grumbles. "Kanjigar wanted this way."
"But... Why?" It vexes Blinky. Why wouldn't Kanjigar accept their help?
As Blinky tries to think of a reason, a human bicycle dips into the canal, skidding to a halt. He removes his helmet, revealing raven-black hair. He shakes his head, hair shifting, before looking back up in the direction he came from.
"Come on, Tobes!" The boy yells.
"James... Lake..." A voice comes from across the canal. The boy furrows his brows and looks over to the source of the voice: Kanjigar's remains, maybe ten feet away from them. "James... Lake..."
Neither of the trolls know another troll by that name, by 'James Lake'.
A larger boy finally joins him in the canal, shooting past him, screaming his head off, then circling back and landing flat on his face with a pained groan. He groans, lifting his face from the concrete. "Ha! How awesome are we..? Awesome..."
The skinnier of the two lowers his bike to the ground and takes off his helmet, his attention completely on the remains. He drops his helmet as he walks over to the rocks. The other follows.
"Hey. Did you hear that voice?" The first boy asks.
The second responds with, "What voice?"
"James Lake." The voice repeats, clearer now. The two teens scream, falling backwards onto the concrete.
"That!" He scrambles back over to the rocks. "That— That pile of rocks knows my name!"
"It's a pile of K-spar. Minerals don't talk!" His friend also crawls back over to it, nonetheless. "There's got to be a walkie-talkie in here or something."
The boy pushes away some of the remains and takes out the amulet of daylight. The blue rock inside the amulet glows, illuminating part of his face until he lifts it up to look at and the glow fades.
If the sun wasn't out, Blinky would...
He would do something!
"Huh." The boy hums, turning it in his hand. "It looks like an amulet."
His friend looks over to him, then stands up and looks around. "Who's doing this?" He yells. "Come out now!"
"Hello." He says to the amulet. "I'm listening." He slowly moves it to his ear to hear for anything else it might say.
The other joins him, also pressing his ear to it. Both boys scream as they hear the final bell for school ring out.
The friend groans, the two of them scampering to get to their bikes. "Final Bell! We're so late our kids are gonna have detention!"
"Come on. Come on!" The boy gets on his bike and is already cycling out of the canal. "We can still make it!"
"I'm right behind!" His friend yells.
The two quickly leave the canal, and it stays silent. For a while.
Blinky steps forward towards the metal gates, all four hands clasping around the bars.
"It chose... a human!" Says Blinky.
— —
In the library of Trollmarket, Vita floats over to a book on the top shelf. She brushes her thumb over the spines of some of the books, mentally reading out the Trollish titles.
Vita lifts her feet to rest on the stony shelving and kicks off from the wall. She flies backwards across the room, her back hitting another shelf where she checks those books too.
She's wearing a frilly cream shirt and a waspie — a style some humans have referred to as a 'pirate shirt' — along with some loose dark brown, almost black, trousers. She has leg wraps on her calves to stop her trousers from interfering when she fights, as well as black boots that overlap the wrap. Her tabard belt, only two bits of red fabric over the front and back of her legs, doesn't hang upside down from her position, but stays close to her trousers as if she was standing or sitting on level ground.
Below Vita, on the flooring of the library, Blinky rushes — no, storms in.
"I need everything on the past Trollhunters." Blinky practically demands. He moves to a shelf and pulls of practically every book to drop on a table.
"What's going on?" Vita asks as she drops from the ceiling, landing securely on her feet. She pauses. The two of them went out to find Kanjigar after he didn't return from his patrol. "Kanjigar didn't make it... did he?"
"Bular." Aaarrrgghh! says, pushing a scroll onto the rocky slab they use as a table.
"Indeed." Blinky opens one of the Brief Recapitulations of Troll Lore to start scanning for answers, for something. "The amulet has picked another. A human, Oh— what was it?"
"James Lake." Aaarrrgghh! steps away to grab more books and scrolls.
"Yes!" Blinky nods.
Vita furrows her brows in confusion. "How is that possible? No human has ever been the Trollunter. It's... It's impossible... Right...?"
Blinky shrugs, looking over to her. "You were the one who knew Merlin. You—,"
"No one knows Merlin's true intentions." Vita cuts him off, shaking her head.
The three of them spend hours scrounging through books and scrolls.
Aaarrrgghh! drops another stack of scrolls onto the desk, and some topple into a messy pile with the others.
"Thank you, Aaarrrgghh!." Says Blinky as he scans two books at once with his six eyes, and flicks the pages with his four arms. "Now, if someone could find me Axle's Forbidden Almanac—,"
"Almond Snack?" Aaarrrgghh! says in confusion.
"Almanac!" Blinky corrects.
Vita looks up over her own book at the two trolls. "It's the record of important dates, stats, and tables."It should be..." Vita trails off, pointing to a spot near the stone slab.
Aaarrrgghh! moves over to the table again, but bumps into it and makes many books fall. "Oops," He grumbles.
Blinky sighs, rubbing his eyes. "No matter. I've double checked all forty-seven volumes of A Brief Recapitulation of Troll Lore and have confirmed that every previous Trollhunter was, in fact, a Troll. It appears this... this—,"
"Jim. James? Jim?" Vita fills in for him. She's heard many humans go by 'Jim' when their name is 'James'. She can only assume he's the same.
"Yes!" Blinky puts his two books down to focus on her and Aaarrrgghh! now. "This 'Jim' is truly the first human to carry the mantle of Trollhunter, and he could not be in more danger."
"Bular will be after the amulet, since he failed with Kanjigar. And this human will meet a similar, if not worse fate." Vita says. The way humans are killed compared to Trolls is far more gruesome and bloody. Trolls are just turned to stone when killed, humans bleed out.
"We must find this boy and—,"
"Did you say something about Kanjigar?" There's a new voice from the doorway to the library: Draal, with concern clear on his face. Vita rises to her feet at the sight of him, putting down the book she's holding. His horns are close, too close, to the vines Vita has growing in the room from the ceiling. She subtly flicks her wrist and the lift up, away from his horns. "What news have you on my father?" He asks the three. "He was due back from his hunt hours ago."
Blinky and Aaarrrgghh! share a solemn look, neither one of them wanting to tell Draal what happened just that morning. The two of them had forgotten to find and tell him when they arrived back to Trollmarket and now... he was standing in front of him asking for the truth.
Vita looks to Blinky and Aaarrrgghh!, then to Draal. The bond between Kanjigar and Draal was closer than any other trolls she'd ever seen. Now, Kanjigar was gone. "Draal..." She cleared her throat, looking up at the large troll. "Kanjigar was felled in battle this morning. Against Bular."
Draal's eye widen, his lips part, and his fists clench at his sides before dropping. His eyes search theirs, only to find the truth. He heaves a shaky breath, his rocky shoulders jagged as he lowers his head.
"Died... a hero." Aaarrrgghh! adds after a beat.
"Yes. His sacrifice was a valiant one." Blinky nods in agreement. "Thanks to your noble father, the Amulet is still safe, though inaccessible at the moment—,"
Draal perks up after hearing 'Amulet'. "I must return to my training. As the son of the Greatest Trollhunter to ever live, the Amulet will surely select me as his successor. Draal the deadly will don his armour and visit revenge against his killer!"
Before any of them could stop and reason with him, Draal turns and leaves the library, headed to the Heroes Forge.
"Great Gronka Morka?" Aaarrrgghh! guesses, glancing to Blinky.
"Precisely," Blinky responds.
Vita looks down at the books, haphazardly stacked atop the stone slab again, then over to the two trolls. "We need to find out more information about this new human hunter. And fast. The sooner we do, the sooner we can train him. I doubt he knows anything of the danger he's in."
— —
Jim and Toby are the last two in the locker room after their Gym Class.
Toby's on the bench beside Jim, battling with his socks to put them on. His Nana had gotten him form-fitting trousers, but they're not really letting him bend his knees properly to put them on. Jim's having an easier time, just needing to tie his laces.
"So... close..." Toby grunts, still unable to even put the first sock on. "You talked to her?"
"Yep." Jim nods, sitting upright again.
The two are talking about Jim's recent interaction with Claire Nuñez, his crush for the past few years. During their history lesson, Jim had spaced out staring at the back of her head, and in their Gym class he'd tried top speak to her but... well, he did speak to her. Just... not in English.
They're both glad it's just them in the locker room, as Toby manages to hook his sock over his foot, but falls backwards off the bench and into the lockers behind him. His head hits the lockers with a metal 'clang'.
"Like actually spoke to her?" Toby continues, seemingly unaffected by the injury. "Not just, you know, in your head?"
Jim picks up his bag to put on his lap. There, he pulls out the Amulet from this morning to look at. "I unleashed my Español on her." In return, Claire had given him a flyer for the school play coming up; Romeo and Juliet.
"You should totally do it." Toby says, now sitting upright.
"What? The play?" Jim stands up, putting his bag strap over his neck and shutting his locker. "I'm not an actor."
Toby got back on the bench, returning to the fight with his socks. "Come on. You're always saying how you want your life to be more exciting, right?"
"I don't think Romeo and Juliet is exactly the answer, Tobes." Jim walks over to him, Amulet still in hand, and leans back against the metal lockers. "I don't mean just, you know, exciting. I mean... more. I just need to know that there's something more to life than high school."
Out of the corner of his eye, Jim spots a shadowy figure zip past. He slips the Amulet back into his bag and slowly starts to move towards the end of the lockers.
"Something more?" Toby hasn't noticed the noise or figure, but has noticed Jim moving away.
Thick steam spills out from the shower room in the corner of the locker room. Sometimes, the other guys forget to turn the showers off and leave them running, wasting gallons of water even during the recent droughts. Unlike every other time, however, there isn't voices and thwacks of towels to follow with the steam.
It's now silent, except for the hiss of the water.
"Hello?" Jim calls out, getting closer to the shower room. "Anybody in there?" Nothing. "Hello?"
Jim doesn't enter the shower room, not just yet. He stands in the doorway, one hand on the wall, as he squints to look past the steam. That same shadowy figure goes from one stall on one side of the room to another on the other side of the room.
If Jim didn't put the Amulet away, he would notice the gem in the middle glowing blue again like it didn't in the canal that morning.
A loud holler comes from behind him, from Toby. "Got one! Woo-hoo! Finally!"
Jim rolls his eyes and walks back over to Toby.
From the showers, Blinky steps out from hiding in one of the shower stalls. The hair on the back of his head is wet, and pinned to his rocky neck.
This 'Jim' clearly does not seem to realise he's in grave danger.
— —
"So, good news dude." Toby says as the two walk their bikes to the school exit at the end of the day. "My Orthodontist says I'm almost done with my braces. Only four more years!" Toby smiles, revealing his braces.
Jim's head turns to the side, hearing a commotion nearby. Across the campus, Steve Palchuk is up to his usual antics.
Steve's always been the popular bully of the school because of course it has to be him. He's got perfect blond hair, a popped shirt collar, and a cocky attitude even some teachers have struggled to contain.
Currently, he's stuffing one of their classmates, Eli Pepperjack, into a locker.
Toby follows his gaze and shudders. "Okay, nothing to see here."
We can't just let him do that." Jim's brows furrow. Eli's a nice kid, kind to everyone. The only reason he's being picked on is because he's smaller than Steve and his friends.
"Oh, yes, we can." Toby responds. "If Psycho Steve's terrorising him, he's not terrorising us! Jim?" He looks over to Jim to see him moving over to Steve and his goons and Eli. "Jim! Oh, no."
Steve shuts the locker door and pounds his fist against it. "Tell me again, dweeb face." He says with his signature cocky smirk. "Tell me about the creatures and maybe I'll let you out."
"Or you can let him out right now." Jim almost regrets the words that come out his mouth. But there's no going back now. "I mean, you know, it would be nice."
Steve spins around to face Jim, shooting him a dirty look. "Nice would be you minding your own business."
From inside the locker, they can faintly hear Eli Pepperjack's voice. "Oh, hi, Jim."
Steve hits the locker again. "So, where were we? Um... oh, yeah, okay. You were telling me about the monsters you saw this morning, with fangs and — what was it again?"
"Stone for skin! In the canal!"
Jim's mind goes back to the morning, finding the pile of rocks in the canal.
Steve seems to love hitting the locker. "Stone for skin? Man, Eli, you've got some imagination."
Jim parks his bike to the side, against one of the pillars holding up the overhang over the outdoor lockers. "Look, Steve, seriously, just let him out."
Steve stalks towards him and grabs him by the strap of his bag. He's able to lift Jim off the ground slightly, his feet barely scraping the concrete ground. With his free hand, Steve clenches his fist, raising it up for a punch. "Or you'll do what?"
"Oh, okay. Do it. Punch me." The words come out before he can stop them. Once again.
Steve blinks in confusion, his angered expression faltering by a fraction. "You... you're asking for a beating?"
"Yeah, just go crazy." Even Jim's shocked at his own words. But he plays it off like he knows what he's doing. "But in twenty years, you're gonna be fat and bald and you'll be working in a muffler shop, and Eli will have a career in software and he'll be a billionaire."
"I do like computers!" They hear Eli yell.
Steve elbows the locker in frustration. This clearly isn't goes how he planned.
"Let him out." Toby says from the crowd. "Let him out!"
Some of the other students repeat it as well, "Let him out!"
A chant quickly forms amongst the students gathered around. "Let him out! Let him out! Let him out!"
Steve looks at the chanting students, then back at Jim, ready to throw that punch. It never happens, as Coach Lawrence storms outside. "Palchuk! What's going on here?"
"Uh, nothing, sir." Steve backs away from Jim, scratching the back of his head.
"Why aren't you at practice?"
"I was helping Eli, here." Steve lies as he opens the locker Eli's in. "He was stuck."
Coach jerks a thumb behind himself, somewhat in the direction of the school field. "On the double, now!"
As soon as the Coach's back is turned, Steve practically glares daggers into Jim's soul. "Friday at noon." He says, voice low. "You and me." He backs away from Jim, moving in the direction the Coach went and waving his finger back and forth. "Tick-tock. Tick-tock."
Across from the students, on one of the school rooftops, Vita is able to crouch down and watch the whole scene unfold.
Blinky had informed her before that the human hunter goes to this... school, so she thought to check it out as well.
"I think it's time we introduce ourselves, Jim Lake." Vita looks down at the file in her hand. It's the boy's student profile she'd managed to nick from the office.
— —
Vita walks into the human's home easily. She has a spell that can unlock doors and windows that are not charmed or forced shut.
The lights are off, the sun still faintly shining through the windows for the last few hours of the day.
Behind Vita, Aaarrrgghh! and Blinky slip into the home as well. The sun doesn't completely cover the interior, allowing the two trolls to move around with only a few restrictions. Blinky finds it easier to move around the rooms, being a similar height to some humans. Aaarrrgghh! has a bit more of a struggle, with his large form bumping surfaces and walls.
"The basement." Vita says, pointing to a door under the staircase. "It's more secluded and he will have less exits to run for."
"He will not run." Blinky shakes his head, crossing two of his arms, his other two going on his hips.
"Humans the past few centuries have been... squeamish." She responds with a shrug, opening the door she'd pointed to. "We need to wait for the right moment."
Aaarrrgghh! is able to pick Blinky up, moving him to the door and (slowly) following him inside. He manages to squeeze through the door and down the stairs, and Vita goes down after them both, shutting the door behind herself as the front door opens.
The basement is filled with boxes, shelves covered with various items left in storage. There's a light bulb, hanging in the middle of the room, but they don't turn it on. They're able to somewhat see in the dark, anyways.
Vita looks up at the ceiling as Jim Lake walks through his house. She can faintly hear his movements. She moves over to a metal beam, extending from the floor to the ceiling, and she's able to hear everything upstairs clearer if she presses her tear to it.
Then there's another voice up there. 'do you ever wish you could find something that would make your life easier? The ability to do the amazing? Well, look no further because Food Magic is here. That's right, Food Magic—'
There's a small crash behind Vita, and she spins around to see that Aaarrrgghh!'s bumped into the house's furnace. She shushes him and presses her ear back to the beam. Only to hear shooting instead of another man's voice.
The shooting stops.
The basement door opens.
"We don't want to scare him." Vita whispers to them, backing up into one of the darker walls.
The human boy, Jim, walks down the stairs with what Vita thinks is a broom in hand. He makes it halfway and looks around; Blinky just barely misses his gaze, bumping into the furnace and knocking out some coals as he moves to a hiding spot of his own.
Jim walks the rest of the way down and turns on the light, illuminating the room even more. He moves around the basement, getting scared by his own reflection at some point, and freezes when Aaarrrgghh! crushes the light he'd just turned on.
Blinky's now standing behind him.
"No—," Vita whispers, reaching out.
"Master Jim!" Blinky yells at the boy, extending out all four arms and giving him a toothy grin, partially filled with sharp teeth.
Jim screams, falling back on the floor and crawling backwards to get away from Blinky. His head hits the metal beam Vita was at previously and he groans, rubbing his head.
When he opens his eyes, Blinky calls out to him again, moving closer. "Master Jim!" Jim hits his head again when he tries to move away. "We have found you!"
Jim moves away from the metal beam to try crawl backwards to somewhere else. Little good that does him, as he then bumps into Aaarrrgghh!.
"I am known as Blinky." Blinky introduces himself as Vita steps out as well. There's no point hiding it now. Though she hoped this could've gone smoother.
Jim looks up at Aaarrrgghh!, who smiles down at him and waves. "Hi."
Jim screams, getting to his feet again to run, but is cornered by the two trolls.
"It's Aaarrrgghh!. Three Rs." Aaarrrgghh! says.
Blinky and Aaarrrgghh! start to move closer to Jim, so Vita hits them both over the head with her staff: a long wooden stick that curls at the top around a red, pointed gemstone floating in the curl. "Give him some space."
Jim drops to his knees, covering his head with his hands.
Aaarrrgghh! looks down at him. "Hmm, he says," — Aaarrrgghh! screams, mimicking Jim's — "a lot."
"It's more of a yelp, I believe. A greeting, perhaps." Blinky suggests. Before Blinky can return a yelp of his own, Vita hits him over the head again.
"The human greeting is 'hello'!" Vita reminds them. She then kneels down in front of Jim when he slowly looks up at them again. "James Lake. You have been chosen by the Amulet of Daylight, to take on the mantle of great responsibility as a protector."
"Pr—Protect?" Jim stammers out.
"Yes." Blinky nods, stepping forward. "Unbeknownst to your kind, there is a secret world, a vast civilisation of trolls lurking beneath your very feet, hidden from view."
"T—Trolls?"
"Trolls! Yes, trolls!" Blinky exclaims, as if Jim's suddenly understanding everything they're saying. "And it is now your charge to protect them. For you, Master Jim, are the Trollhunter! This honour is yours to accept. So, what say you?"
Vita sighs, facepalming.
Jim's eyes roll back and shut as he collapses to the floor. The three of them look down at the unconscious boy.
"Is that a yes?" Aaarrrgghh! asks the two.
"Oh my Merlin." Vita sighs, kneeling down by Jim's head. She looks up at the two Trolls. "You should head back to Trollmarket. Vendel will be wondering where you've gone, and Draal will assume you have the Amulet with you for him."
"And what of you?" Blinky asks her. "You haven't been among humans in at least three centuries."
"I'll figure something out." She shrugs.
— —
Jim shoots up into a sitting position on his sofa and, without questioning how he got there, grabs his phone to call Toby.
"Pick up! Pick up! He mumbled to himself, standing upright now.
"Hey, Jim."
"Tobes, it's me!" Jim yells right away. "You're never gonna believe what happened last night!"
"Yeah, I'm, kind of in the middle of something, Jimbo." It sounds like his mouth's been stuffed with something. Food, maybe?
"I am freaking out here! Seriously freaking!" Jim starts to pace around, his phone pressed to his ear. "I need to talk to somebody!"
"Chillax. What's going on?" Toby asks him, his mouth still sounding full.
"Okay, last night, I heard something in my basement. I thought it was raccoons, but then—,"
Toby cuts Jim off. "Yeah, hang on a second—," Toby is then also cut off by the screeching sound of a drill, followed by the boy's own screams. Once the drilling stops, he's able to speak again. "Sorry, Jim. I'm gonna have to call you back." There's more screams before the phone hangs up.
Jim's shoulder slouch as he pulls his phone from his ear. Right, of course, Toby had the dentist today...
Jim looks down at his things around him in the lounge, his bag resting against the sofa, the Amulet on the coffee table. Everything is where he'd left it before going into the basement. Like it hadn't happened. Like he'd fallen asleep and dreamt it all.
But the pain in the back of his head said otherwise.
Jim then notices the sticky-note next to the Amulet. On it, 'don't tell anyone' has been written in ink. At least he thinks it's ink. He brushes his finger over the wording, having some of it smudge and come off on his finger. Yep, definitely ink.
Jim looks back down at his phone, checking the time. It's seven o'clock. Shit... School...
— —
Jim steps into Principal Strickler's office during school hours that day. He'd thought about not going, listening to what the note said. But how would they know if he told one person. He pokes his head through the door and looks over to Strickler's desk. He's sitting there looking over some papers with his famous orchestra music playing.
"Ah, hello, Jim." Strickler smiles at Jim from behind his desk. "What can I do for you?"
Strickler had said the previous say that Jim could always come and speak to him, so he was hoping now was alright. "Do you have a minute?"
"Are you alright? You look peaked." Strickler says, concern painted across his face as he indicates to the stool in front of his desk. He turns his music off with his other hand. "Here, sit."
Jim walks in, shutting the door behind him and moves over to the stool in front of Strickler's desk.
He sits down, bag still slung over his shoulder, and exhales. "Okay. I don't really know how to say this, but last night, something incredible happened." — Jim notices that the stool is too low for him, that he's not at eye-point with Strickler and stands up again. He spins the stool on its axis to raise it before sitting down again — "Actually, unbelievable. Completely unbelievable." — The chair's still too low so he stands up again to keep spinning it. One of the taller kids must've been in here last time — "As in, you wont believe me, but I'm telling you it's true. I promise you it's true!"
Strickler chuckles at his attitude, straightening the folders in his hands. "All right. Just calm down. I'll believe you." He puts down the folders and instead picks up his pen, the one he likes to click the lid on and off of when moving around the classroom.
"Uh," Jim doesn't know where to start, "okay. Last night, three, um, things — well, one of them wasn't a thing — but, they showed up at my house."
Strickler raises a brow. "Things?" He repeats for elaboration.
"You know, things! Guys. But... really weird." God, how could he explain this without being locked up in a psych-ward? He stammers, trying to explain them. "One had these eyes, and the other one was huge and hairy, and the woman that was with them, she had this stick. And they said the guys were tro—..."
Jim's mind goes back to the note. 'don't tell anyone'.
"Tro?"
"Tr— Trainers!" Jim exclaims. "Trainers, who want to train me in... ch..." He glances around the room for anything that could help him inn this interaction. There's a chess set on the table by the window. "Chess!" He lets out a nervous chuckle as he moves over to the chess set and picks up a knight.
On the board, the white king's protected by its other pieces, but the white queen can't move anywhere without being taken off the board. If it moves towards the white king, it'll be taken out by the black king. If it moves to take out the bishop threatening it, a rook will get it. And so on, and so on.
"And why would that have you so perturbed?" Strickler asks him, tilting his head slightly.
"They really weirded me out." Jim shrugs. Has he played it off well enough?
Outside the open window, Steve Palchuk is practicing soccer with his teammates. He kicks the ball and it flies out in a curve before hitting one in the face. Steve looks around and finds Jim watching him. Like their last interaction, Steve waves his finger like a ticking clock, making the sound effect Jim can faintly read on his lips.
"Now, I think it know what has you so distraught, Jim." Strickler takes up a more relaxed position in his chair.
"You do?" Jim looks over his shoulder at his teacher.
Strickler rises from his chair and slowly moves over to him, hands clasped together in front of himself. "It's like I told you yesterday, you have a lot on your shoulders. Too much, in my opinion, for someone your age. And i think this opportunity..." Strickler takes the knight from Jim's hand.
"Chess?"
"I think it's causing you anxiety." He places it down on the board again. It's diagonal from a white knight that would take it out if it goes for the white queen. He takes the queen out anyway, sacrificing the black knight for the white knight to take it. "I know you want to be there for your mother, but it's as a great poet once wrote, 'do what's good for you, or you're not good for anybody'."
The school bell rings, breaking the two from the flow of their conversation.
Jim moves away to grab his bag he'd barely registed puttig down, but stops and looks back to Strickler. "Hey, thanks for the advice. I like talking to you."
"Always." Strickler nods with a smile.
As Jim leaves, Strickler catches a glance at his bag, at the glowing stone in the front pouch. His smile instantly drops and his eyes widen when he sees it.
Strickler hesitantly looks back at the chess board, at the queen he'd just demonstrated taking. Strickler hopes the metaphor he'd somehow put out wasn't caught by the boy.
The life of one of their own, for the life of the Witch Soldier.
— —
Jim slices up the tomatoes and slips the knife used back into the holder after washing it. He picks up the tomato slices and places them on the meat atop the bread. The, he layers the lettuce, then the cheese, and finally the top layer of bread.
Across from him, leaning against the chair in the kitchen, is his school bag. The Amulet's poking out of the pouch, but is now glowing like yesterday. It glows bright, then dims, then glows brighter.
Jim moves away from the lunches and over to his bag. He picks up the Amulet and goes through the back door, stepping outside into the garden with it. If it's going to do anything, he doesn't want it to be inside where things can be broken easily.
There's some woman on the road out the front calling for her dog, but Jim's focus is on the Amulet as it glows.
The weird writing along the rim of the Amulet glows blue like the stone in the middle and spins around the edge of it. It stops for a moment, the writing now in Chinese, Jim guesses. Then it spins again, now changing to Spanish, Jim at least knows a little of that one. It then spins again and stops on English.
"For the glory of Merlin," Jim says the writing out-loud as he reads it, twisting the Amulet around as he did, "Daylight is mine to command."
The wind around him picks up, howling now as the leaves blow from the trees and the wooden fence panels rattle. Jim squints, pulling the Amulet closer to his face to inspect it.
A glowing blue ball of light falls from the back of the Amulet and lifts up to Jim's line of sight. It dips down to his shoulder on his right side, then to his bicep on his left before fading once it touches his chest where his heart is. Four or five more lights follow it, going straight to his heart this time.
Jim's body lifts up into the air, but he doesn't fight it. Blue sparks swirl around him, loosely encasing him in the light. His arms extend outwards at his sides and metallic plating, almost like armour, forms around his arms before locking onto them. The same thing happens with his torso, plates of armour growing around his body — growing far to big for for his actual body, however.
Jim drops back to the grass from the weight of the metal, landing perfectly on his feet. The armour covers the entirety of Jim's body, with his head barely poking out over the chest plate.
After a moment, allowing Jim to calm down from the shock of the magic armour that'd materialised around him, the armour begins to skrink around his body to match his size.
The metal gloving slips down to fit his fingers, the boots and legs tighten to be flush, the chest plate shrinks to where he can actually see past it.
"This is so freaking cool!" Jim yells, flexing his fingers to test it out.
Jim can't help but pose in the armour, hands on his hips, chest puffed out. That's until another ball of light leaves his chest where the Amulet now resides, followed by three more.
The balls of light move down his right arm and to his hand, which he extends outwards a bit in front of him. They disappear into his palm and a burst of light covers the entirety of the surrounding area.
A sword grows from the palm of his hand. For a moment, Jim's in awe and amazement. That is until the sword grows to its full size; its full size being larger than Jim.
Jim grunts, the eight of the sword pulling him forward as it falls in front of him. He yells out as he tries to lift it, quickly managing to as it shrinks down to a more accessible size for him.
Jim recalls the swordplay him and Toby have seen in their rewatches of Gunrobot parts one through four, along with his culinary skills, and swings the sword in the air. It cuts through the air easily, and feels as light as a knife Jim would use in the kitchen.
He's always wanted something more. Maybe this was it?
Jim's smiling like a kid now as he swings the sword around in the garden. He raises it above his head for a heavy blow he'd seen in a movie, but falls backwards as the sword embeds itself in one of the boulders in the garden.
Jim's arms drop to his sides as he turns to look at the sword. He puts one hand back on the hilt and tugs. Nothing. Then two hands. Nothing, again.
Jim sighs, moving to stand on the boulder as well and puts both hands firmly on the hilt. He pulls again, now using his whole body weight to do so.
Jim's eyes clasp shut as he pulls even harder, and the sword comes out! Only to skink into another boulder behind him.
"Awwh, come on!" Jim yells. This time, however, it's easier to pull the sword out the stone.