Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I can’t fit through that.” Jim said, staring blankly at the fetch, visible from their current vantage point.

“Sure ya can.” NotEnrique dismissed, he had seen how the whelp hadn’t eaten anything at first, not until the tusks came in and he could start slowly gnawing on the stones that had been offered to him and it was only when NotEnrique realized what the problem was and found the human some Nayalagroth eggs did the human actually eat anything. “All ya gotta do is change back to your skinny stalagmite of a human form.”

The whelp blinked at him, very, very slowly, like he had when the skin over his eyes had started turning into the same blue stone as the rest of him and presumably his eyes were being altered as well since, after the transformation was done with that area he seemed to be able to move through the dark caves easier, spot movement quicker, and see further then he had before.

“I can…change back?” the whelp asked like the thought had never even occurred to him.

“Uh, yeah, that’s kinda the point of making someone into a changeling, it’s in the name.” NotEnrique said with all the confidence of someone who wasn’t aware that there was no such thing as a changeling who had started out as human, and who had no doubt that the rules applied to this run away lab experiment who didn’t even have a familiar were the same ones that applied as to every other changeling. “What’s the point if you can’t change back?”

(Proof of concept was the point, proof that humans could be turned into some version of a troll, and maybe another attempt to figure out how Morgana had created the original changelings who had no need for familiars and who were capable of transforming into any appearance they desired.

NotEnrique had spent far too long eavesdropping on those progress reports to Dictatious.)

“How? How do I do it?” 

NotEnrique, a changeling who had no familiar and had never transformed in his hundreds of years of life, looked at this human youngling who was looking at him with so much hope and faith in NotEnrique to have the answers that the changeling was once again baffled by the stupidity of humanity that caused this whelp to believe in him.

And the stupidity of himself for wanting to live up to those impossible standards.

“It’s simple.” he bluffed, “all ya gotta do is let go and focus on how much you’re wanting to go back to that fleshy body of yours. Easy as anything.” 

“You aren’t looking hard enough!” Bular growled and slammed his great stone fist into the ground leaving cracks behind. 

Nomura found herself absentmindedly calculating the costs of getting it fixed for the fifth time this month without any questions, while tuning out of the Prince’s temper tantrum. 

It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard it and a dozen slight variations on this same rant a thousand times in the months since Kanjigar had died and the Amulet of Merlin had seemingly vanished into thin air. 

She knew enough of history to know that it sometimes took decades to train a new Trollhunter and considering that Kanjigar had been thought of as one of their very best it was not a surprise that the surface trolls were taking their sweet time training his replacement. 

Bular, despite the fact that he had been through this process with every one of the Trollhunters that he had killed since Merlin created the Amulet, still seemed disproportionately surprised by how much time he was being forced to spend waiting instead of smashing open skulls. 

“Are you even listening?!” 

And the brute finally noticed that she was not in fact, listening at all. 

“What’s the point?” She drawled just to rile him up even more, she had learned to appreciate the small amusements life offered. “Aren’t I just going to end up being replaced by Dictatious’ new and improved changelings when he’s done with them anyway?” 

“The human escaped.” Bular drove a fist into the wall and Nomura was adding those repair costs to her mental budget when what he said caught up to her and she went very still. 

“They did, did they?” She asked and kept her voice as carefully bored and uninterested as she could. 

It was the truth. 

She was just bored and this was just the latest bit of gossip that might finally get Bular to stop causing property damage to her museum for longer than a minute and a half. 

“It had help.” Red eyes turned to her suspiciously. “An Impure broke it out.”

Now that was interesting. 

Nomura had been alive for a very, very long time. 

She had never heard of a Changeling running. 

She’d heard of them getting too attached to humans and being killed for it 

(A line that Strickler was straying dangerously close to with how much time he spent with that human woman and how much he was moping about the missing whelp. But that wasn’t any of Nomura’s business.)

But one of the inescapable facts about being a changeling was that they were monsters to everyone. 

They never ran because where would they go?

Normal trolls were disgusted by them, humans hated them and the only ones willing to tolerate them were Gunmar and his followers. 

So what could make a changeling decide to abandon everything and risk their own life to save a human?

“Don’t get any ideas.” Suddenly there was an angry huffing troll in her face and Nomura suppresses the urge to smile as her lack of a flinch just made the Prince more enraged. “When they are discovered they will be ripped, limb from limb. They will be thrown into the deepest Nylagroth pit in the Darklands, they will—“

And off he went on another rant, causing even more damage to her Museum. 

In that moment Nomura decided she was rooting for the human and runaway changeling. 

It was easy. 

Jim had never really thought about what being a changeling would be like. 

Sure, he considered what it must be like for his friends/enemies, forever trapped between two worlds, one that hated them and the other that would hate them if their true selves were ever revealed. 

(And he had spared a brief moment to wonder about what a child born from Strickler and his mother’s future marriage might be categorized as, but that thought had led to him wondering what he was technically considered and then if his transformation into a troll or half troll or whatever, would have an effect on any children he might eventually have with Claire and that whole thought process had been shut down very quickly after that.)

But he had never imagined being a changeling himself. 

He had never imagined what it would feel like, transforming between human and troll. 

Turned out the answer was very very painful. 

Triggering the transformation itself was as simple as deciding that he needed his human body right now. 

It was easy. 

Sitting silently through the long minute of stone skin softening back into flesh, four fingers separating back into five, and the feeling of horns and tusks retreating back into his body, was decidedly not. 

Jim had watched changelings transform before. 

Had seen them shift into human forms in an instant without a single sign that they had ever been anything else. 

Jim, it would seem, was not so lucky. 

He wasn’t sure how long the transformation had lasted but it definitely wasn’t instant. 

And when it was over…

When it was over Jim was left with a body that was mostly human.

Mostly being the key word.

Because the tips of his ears were still slightly pointed and they could move more than a human’s should, his teeth and nails were sharper than they had ever been when he was human, his nose still picking up things that it shouldn’t be able to. 

He couldn’t tell if his hair was too long, if his voice was too horse, or if his eyes were able to see too far and too easily in the dark or if that was all a normal result of time spent as a captive in the Darklands. 

It didn’t matter much anyway. 

What mattered was getting out. 

And they did. 

Because even with those things he was still left with a mostly human body that lacked the height and bulk of his troll self and had lost some of his human mass on a diet of water, rocks, and the occasional Naylagroth egg. 

Fitting through the fetch itself was a tight squeeze (it was smaller than the one at Merlin’s cave had been) but manageable after sneaking past the sleeping giant Naylagroth which proved to be simple enough with the experience that Jim had gained fighting them for Gunmar’s amusement a lifetime ago. 

And then they were out. 

And falling directly into the underground cave that was the home of the sea monster that NotEnrique had mentioned was the reason that no changeling had ever managed to retrieve this particular fetch.

Darci had been acting strange.

Claire liked to think she was a good friend who was capable of respecting boundaries, but she was also by nature a very curious person. 

And Darci’s behavior for the past few weeks had most definitely spiked that curiosity to an almost unbearable point.

She hadn't been hanging out with either Claire or Mary in over a month. 

She said her dad was being over protective and refusing to let her out of the house in the wake of Jim Lake’s sudden disappearance but Claire knew for a fact that was a lie since her mom had called Claire more then once to confirm that Darci was hanging out with her.

Darci was not, in fact, hanging out with Claire at those times (or at any time recently) but Claire and Darci, as fellow children of overprotective parents, had long ago made a solemn pact to always be each other’s alibi when one was needed, no questions asked. 

Except that Claire was starting to ask a whole lot of questions, starting with why one of her best friends had stopped hanging out with her almost overnight and ending with who Darci could possibly be hanging out with if it wasn’t Claire or Mary.

Claire and Darci had an agreement and Claire would have her best friend’s back no matter what when it came to getting a little space from her over protective parents but that didn’t stop Claire herself from wondering, and as weeks turned into a month and then a month and a half with more and more disappearances and zero answers, that wondering turned into worrying and Claire decided she needed to figure out what was up with Darci and make sure there was nothing wrong with one of her best friends.

Claire wasn’t going to say anything to either of their parents, not yet and not unless she knew that it was absolutely necessary because Darci trusted her best friends to have her back and Claire wasn’t going to betray that.

But she was going to figure out exactly what was up with Darci because she would never forgive herself if her friend got hurt while Claire was covering for her.

Jim had never been in Nimue’s cave.

Claire and Douxie had told them of the home of the legendary Lady in the Lake but Jim had never seen it himself.

The only reason that he was able to identify it was the sword, blade encased in stone, on the small raised island in the center of the lake that Jim had managed to drag NotEnrique and himself onto in an attempt to avoid drowning.

A very familiar sword.

Excalibur shouldn’t be here. Excalibur should be in the hands of King Arthur, currently the Green Knight, one of the many monsters that haunted Jim’s nightmares. 

It shouldn’t be here, driven into a stone and waiting for someone worthy. 

Jim remembered what he had once been told about wizards and immortality, about how hard they were to kill. 

About how Excalibur was one of the few things that could kill a Primordial Wizard. 

About the way that both Daylight and Eclipse had failed to do any true damage against the Green Knight who was merely their puppet. 

Almost in a daze he walked forward, not hearing NotEnrique’s increasingly concerned sarcastic comments.

Jim remembered the vision from Utgar the Unfortunate, remembered how much damage could be done by doing nothing.

His hand wrapped shakily around the hilt of the sword.

He thought of his friends, his family, and every single person that he needed to protect. 

Jim had never been anything without the people around him.

“Please.” Jim slumped over, leaning his forehead against the cool golden hilt of the sword. “Please.”

Steve had hated Arcadia Oaks for being a boring tiny little town where nothing interesting ever happened. 

And then something interesting enough to have the entire podunk town talking happened and Steve found himself wishing that things would just go back to how they had been before. 

Because Lake was missing. 

A kid that Steve had never been friends with, had barely even known beyond how it was impossible not to know someone that had grown up in the same classroom as him for all of their lives, was missing and no one knew why. 

Lake’s absence was more noticeable to Steve then his presence had ever really been. 

It seemed like he couldn’t go two minutes without hearing the name ‘Jim Lake’ or ‘missing’ being talked about in low tones as if even saying anything about a kid disappearing was taboo. 

It died down eventually as people moved on to the next piece of gossip and the newest scandal and Steve wished that he could move on with everyone else. 

Steve hadn’t even really known Jim Lake. 

Sure, he kinda knew him in a way that it was impossible not to know someone who grew up in the same town and hung out at some of the same places as him. 

But with Lake gone Steve became aware of exactly how little he had actually known the other boy. 

Discovered, through hushed rumors that he had run away to live with his dad, that it was just Lake and his mom. 

(Just like Steve.) 

Found out through the school rumor mill and from missing posters that Dr. Lake was handing out and hanging up around town, that the boy had gone missing without a word and hadn’t contacted anyone since.

And Steve couldn’t help but wonder if it was partly his fault. 

He knew what it was like to have a bad day where even the smallest thing could end up setting you off. 

What if Lake had been having one of those days and Steve had said something, some throwaway joke or insulting comment and that had been the thing that tipped Lake over the edge into running away and leaving Arcadia behind?

(Please, please only have run away. Don’t have gotten hit by a car or eaten by wolves or something worse. Please just be a jerk who hasn’t called his mom to let her know that he’s alright even if he apparently means everything to her.) 

It terrified Steve that even when he thought back as much as he could and tried with all his might to remember, he couldn’t recall if he had ever encountered Lake on one of his own bad days, when insults and shoves and mocking laughter were so much easier than thinking. 

It terrified him that not being able to remember it wasn’t a reassurance that it hadn’t happened. 

It was almost equally as terrifying to realize exactly how many of those bad days ended with Pepperjack stuffed in a locker. 

Pepperjack, who had been acting off since Lake had gone missing, who kept disappearing as soon as school let out for the day, who had stopped insisting to everyone who would listen that Aliens and monsters and magic were real. 

Steve was terrified that he had been part of the reason Lake disappeared. 

He didn’t know if he could take it if Pepperjack did the same and he would definitely be part of the reason why. 

“Hey Pepperjack.” the kid flinched and blinked up at him through thick oversized glasses and Steve felt his stomach twist. “I– just–” Steve was no good at this talking business but he refused to just say nothing.

(He didn’t want to ever see Pepperjack’s face looking back at him from a missing poster.)

“You’re alright, Pepperjack.” And it wasn’t an apology, Steve couldn’t seem to force one out of his closed up throat but the nerd didn’t flinch when Steve clapped a hand (“Be a bit more gentle, Steve, sometimes you don’t know your own strength.”) slowly and awkwardly on the smaller boy’s shoulder. 

Coach had done that, one time when he had gotten angry and Steve had been the one who flinched.

“Ah, thanks?” Pepperjack blinked in confusion at Steve and he cursed himself, his uncooperative tongue, and his inability to find the words to say what he meant. “I’ve gotta meet Toby so I’m just going to go.”

Nimue hadn’t known what to make of it when, after nine hundred years of being content, the sword that she had created for a king finally rejected the one who was wielding it and had returned to her, altered from what she could remember, and very distinctly waiting for someone.

She had waited with it for what was a very slow blink in her immortal life, wondering whom the sword had picked.

She had not expected this small not-human-not-creature, drenched in dark magic, soul twisted with the magic of time not lived and heart resolute despite every scar that covered it.

“You can not save everyone.” She answered his plea.

“That can’t mean I shouldn’t try.” 

Maybe it was cruel of her. 

To take a soul so optimistic and hopeful and put it in a position where that hope would almost inevitably be crushed. 

But she would not be the first to do that to this particular soul and yet he remained. The hope in this one was not such a delicate thing that it should be treated with such care. 

His hope could survive almost anything and stubbornly claw its way back to the surface and scream its defiance to the world. 

“You may have the sword and all of the burdens and blessings that come with it.”

The sword was drawn smoothly from the stone.

A new king had been chosen.

Merlin closed his eyes and felt as a connection that had turned twisted and toxic almost a millennium ago, was finally severed. 

It hurt. 

He couldn’t deny that the destruction of the bond hurt even when he had already done his very best to sever it long ago and it had only remained due to the fact that Arthur was still, magically speaking, the King and Merlin was still his Wizard.

But at long last that was no longer the case.

There was a new King and as such there was also a new Wizard.

Merlin wondered how Douxie would handle it.

Maybe by right of seniority Morgana should have taken the role.

Maybe by virtue of how close she would become to the boy who had taken the role of King it should have been Lady Claire.

But it wouldn’t be.

Merlin had seen it in his time traveling future student, the bond that only the King and the Wizard shared.

Douxie had beaten Morgana in a magical duel and as such had taken any right she may have had to the title.

And as for Lady Claire one couldn’t be both Queen and Wizard.

The roles of the court and round table were clear and kept separate by design and the last time that they had been ignored had been with Arthur and had resulted in the mess that had been the last nine hundred years.

Lady Claire would be a good Queen and Douxie would be a splendid Wizard. 

Merlin, for all that he had never tried to dissuade anyone of the notion and had actually encouraged it on occasion, did not actually possess an ability that let him view the future as he pleased. 

(Someday he swore he would be retrieving the Krohnisfere from that paranoid fool of a TrollDragon even if just having the intention might mean that Zong-Shi would see it coming.) 

What he had instead was a highly inadvisable visit from a future version of his apprentice, his apprentice’s apprentice, a boy clad in armor that was very much Merlin’s own craftsmanship, a set of other human teenagers that Merlin had never actually had to interact with, and a troll with the ability to shift into a human form and a dire warning about what exactly Morgana would end up doing to human and troll children alike.

He had not been lying to young Tobias when he said that he didn’t know what would happen to James.

He also hadn’t been lying when he told the boy that he would be with his friend again. 

There was a story, told among changelings. 

A story spoken of only in whispers. 

A story too fantastical to be real. 

A story that provided too much hope to be fake. 

The story of the first changeling. 

The story of how he had bargained with Merlin. 

A story of how he had fought with and then against Morgana. 

A story of how he promised to return.

To help the changelings. 

To save them from their position, forever crushed between humans and trolls and belonging to neither. 

To bring peace between humans, trolls, and changelings alike. 

To return light to the Darklands and life to the dead hearthstone. 

A story of how the first changeling had wielded Excalibur. 

The sword of the Once and Future King. 

NotEnrique had been told in whispers of this story for as long as he could remember, never all at once, never from just one changeling.

It was a legend that every changeling knew and none could quite say who told it to them.

NotEnrique watched Jim draw a sword from a stone.

“Atlas.” The small changeling realized.

This boy was Atlas.  

The Changeling King. The one who would bring light to the Darklands. The one that would save the Changelings. 

And he was a boy. A child by even short lived human standards and he had been a Changeling for less than a year.

“Merlin. What is going on?” Douxie asked through gritted teeth as he slammed his hands down on the table at which his mentor was calmly sipping tea at four in the morning like that was a perfectly normal thing to be doing.

“Congratulations, you have been chosen as the next Wizard of Avalon.”

Douxie stalled in the rant that he had been preparing since he had woken in the middle of the night with a new bond linked to his magic, in the vain hope that Merlin was maybe having an off day and might possibly answer even a single one of his questions. 

Merlin answering the first question he asked without any coercion, pleading, or attempted blackmail on Douxie’s part was such a novel and unexpected experience that he almost missed what the answer had been. 

“What?!” 

“Really Hizerdoxe, there is no need for shouting.” His mentor looked up at him calmly, as if Douxie was the one behaving unreasonably in this situation.

“I can’t be the Wizard of Avalon. You are the Wizard of Avalon and I never agreed to doing the bidding of Arthur, he tried to destroy everything magical and you can’t— can’t just abdicate and leave me to clean up yet another one of your messes. I’ve had enough of that for the past nine hundred years.”

“Calm yourself Douxie.” Merlin finally set his teacup back down on its saucer and turned to fully face his apprentice. “You will not be serving Arthur as he is no longer the King of Avalon.”

“What? What about all that Once and Future King business.” 

“Arthur no longer wields Excalibur and as such is no longer the subject of that prophecy.” 

“Ok, aside from the fact that I am pretty sure that’s not how prophecies work, what do you mean he’s no longer Excalibur’s wielder? That sword was made specifically for him. What, did someone go dig up his corpse to steal it?” 

“Hardly, as he was never buried.” Merlin muttered which was concerning. “And just possessing Excalibur is not enough to be declared King. The sword chooses its wielder and it has chosen someone new to wield it and as such it has chosen a new King of Avalon.”

“And you aren’t concerned about that!”

“It is not my place to be concerned about it anymore. Someone pointed out that I have a tendency to ‘micro-manage’ as he put it, and try to control things that are perhaps no longer mine to control.” Merlin finished his tea and stood to leave the bookshop. “I leave that to you now, my boy.” 

“What? Why would you leave it to me? Camelot’s long gone, where is this new wielder of Excalibur even supposed to be King of?”

“Camelot is not entirely gone but that is beside the point, the wielder of Excalibur is meant to be King over Avalon or in other words, he is meant to be King of the magical world. And you have been chosen as his Wizard.”

“I can’t be this new King’s Wizard. I am not even a proper Wizard yet. I don’t even have a staff.” Douxie insisted no matter how much it stung to admit it. 

Merlin seemed to hesitate for a moment before turning back and laying both his hands on Douxie’s shoulders. “You will do wonderfully my apprentice, you will become greater than you can imagine and I could not be prouder of you.”

And with that the old Wizard turned and left his dumbstruck student behind in the middle of an empty book store with a thousand more questions and without a chance to ask any of them. 

The old wizard had a Primordial Wizard to find, and an ex-King who was his responsibility to deal with. 

Chapter Text

Jim didn’t understand magic.

He didn’t understand Akiridion tech.

And he most definitely did not understand the Time Stone. 

But he was at least aware of that lack of knowledge so he wasn’t all that surprised when, upon being fully removed from the stone that it had been imbedded in, the jewel on Excalibur’s hilt began to glow before the sword disappeared entirely, leaving behind the amulet that Krel and Stuart had recreated for him and that he himself had inserted the time stone into.

“You should leave this place quickly if you do not wish to encounter Morgana’s Champion.” Nimue’s voice wasn’t something that Jim heard so much as he felt it, rattling in his bones with all the weight and power of something that was possibly older than the Earth and had little use for mortal words. 

“Morgana’s-” Jim tried to ask when the meaning of her warning caught up to him, but was interrupted as he caught sight of a familiar inky black magic starting to spread through the air in front of him. 

Jim didn’t think. 

Didn’t bother to question what Morgana’s champion was doing here when, if memory served him right, the magical assassin was supposed to be asleep, and trapped, and in India.

Instead he grabbed NotEnrique with one hand and held the amulet tightly in the other and moved.

An all too familiar stone dagger that Jim knew to be imbued with Creeper’s Sun, flew past where his head had just been as he ducked, rolled to the side and into the water of the underground lake.

If he had been entirely human he wouldn’t have been able to pick up on the sound of stone hitting stone as Angor Rot followed his dagger out of the portal and landed lightly on the island.

Jim didn’t look back.

He wasn’t confident in his ability to go toe to toe with the trollish assassin on the best of days and Jim had been having a very long string of days that were most definitely not his best.

And he was not about to let NotEnrique die because he decided to fight with only a weak and now unfamiliar again mostly human body, an Amulet he wasn’t sure worked and a Gumm Gumm sword that was more a hunk of vaguely sword shaped metal then it was an actual blade.

So he did the only thing he could.

He ran.

Blinky and Aaarrrgghh showing up to offer magical Trollhunter training in the middle of a random Tuesday afternoon was both a blessing and a curse in Toby’s opinion.  

Because they had offered to teach him how to actually make use of the epic new powers that he had been given and couldn’t even really enjoy because Jim was gone and that he would definitely need to learn to use if he wanted to get his best friend back and if the two trolls hadn’t shown up then the only other option would have been to ask someone else since YouTube wasn’t all that helpful on the subject. 

And the only ones they knew that they could ask about any of this were Zoe, Douxie, and Merlin. 

All of whom would no doubt know exactly why Toby was so desperate to learn how to use his new powers and all of whom had seemed less than okay with the idea of jump starting the apocalypse to rescue Jim. 

So it was nice to have a set of trolls who had decided to help Toby learn how to use the Amulet without any of the complications that would come from them knowing what Toby’s actual motives were. 

Which wasn’t to say there weren’t any negatives. 

There were…just so many. 

There was the fact that he was a human and that was apparently not alright which cool, Toby kinda got it, he probably wouldn’t be too thrilled if everyone he loved and cared about relied on the protection of a magical guardian and the one chosen to be the next guardian was a teenager from a species that was physically weaker and didn’t understand his culture or people.  

Toby got it. 

But he also couldn’t do anything about it. 

(Blinky had made it clear that the Amulet could not be rejected even if Toby was willing to give up an advantage for getting Jim back.)

And so maybe it would be nice to not be greeted with suspicion and despair every time that he came to Trollmarket. 

There was also the whole physical exercise aspect of it but the thought of Jim alone and imprisoned was enough to make any of what Toby was going through so much less important. 

And then there was the fact that training to be the Trollhunter meant actually being the Trollhunter. 

Which meant that Toby’s days were split between school, the Hero’s forge and whatever random side quest he was sent on by his new mentors. 

It wouldn’t have been bad. 

It might have been great even. 

If it weren’t for the fact that when he first stepped into Trollmarket and the first time he saw all the variety of trolls and the stones they were made of and when he managed to activate the amulet for the first time and every other tiny moment in between, he always found himself turning to say something to Jim, to share the moment with his best friend and found  he wasn’t there. 

Jim wasn’t there. 

He was kidnapped and in The Darklands and there was so frustratingly little that Toby could do about it as weeks turned into months and neither him, Eli, or Darci could find any way to get him back. 

There was something cold about the surface world. An itch he couldn’t quite scratch, something that was almost uncomfortable about it. 

The Darklands, for all of their, well, darkness, had the potential for beauty. Crystal formations that should be glowing but had lost their light, waterfalls and caverns and even the nylagroths could be friendly if given proper incentive.

“It’s home.” NotEnrique said. “For all that it’s awful now it’s where us trolls came from, the magic that runs through every troll's veins comes from that place. Changelings get hit extra hard though, probably something to do with the extra magic that got pumped into us. Regardless I’ve heard tons of stories about how rough of a time some Changelings have adjusting to the surface.

Jim walked with NotEnrique through caves that he would have maybe found  suffocating once and he thought.

Thought of Troll Market and the Heartstone at its center.

It had always given off a warmth that Jim could feel even as a human.

He abruptly wondered what it might have felt like had it not been completely drained before he had been made into a troll and had he not turned back into a human before it was revitalized in that final battle with Balroc.

He thought of the Darklands, thought of how much pain and fear and loss he had felt there and how, despite all that, this time around he couldn’t help but yearn to return.

The Darklands were dying. 

Its heartstone had been corrupted and destroyed by Gunmar and the world itself was less than a year away from being completely destroyed. 

Troll Market’s heartstone had suffered much the same fate.

And yet…

And yet it had been revived. 

Had floated over Arcadia, glowing and alive once more.

Sure, it hadn’t been great news for Jim at the time as the living hearthstone was about to be used to end the world but if heartstones could be revived then maybe–

The grinding of stone on stone was the only warning Jim got before a hand made out of loose rocks held together by magic was reaching for him even as it formed.

Thankfully the sound was the only warning that Jim needed and the crudely made Gumm-Gumm sword was more than sufficient to slice into the golem's chest and dig out the tiny stone doll that had been used to create it.

Jim crushed it in his hand and then NotEnrique was scampering onto his shoulder as he took off running much faster than the small changeling could have managed on his own.

Neither of them were sure if Angor Rot could feel it when one of his creations was destroyed but the fact that one of them had managed to find the duo at all meant that their brief respite was over and it was time for running again.

Detective Scott looked at the boy in front of him, hands held out like he was waiting to be cuffed and face set with the determination to accept his fate, and gave into the need to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“What exactly did  you do that you think made Jim Lake run away?”

“I don’t remember Sir, the fact that I forgot something so important is inexcusable and I am ready to accept my punishment.” the detective looked at the boy and sighed.

He thought of a different Palchuck sitting across from him, with a similarly determined look on her face as she informed him in no uncertain terms that she’d had quite enough of how her husband was treating her son and wanted to know everything that she could do about it.

He’d given Susan as much help as he could but the damage had already been done and no one was all that surprised when the boy started acting out.

It had never been anything too bad as far as Scott could tell, insults and school yard fights, the kid could probably be classified as a bully but he had never done any real damage.

Scott thought of the number of times he had hauled the elder Palchuck into the station for something done after a few too many bottles that he “didn’t remember doing officer, honest.” after sobering up and wished he had at least double that number of arrests so that this kid wouldn’t be so guilt ridden and fearful that he had done something absolutely awful that he couldn’t remember.

“Jim didn’t run.” Scott sighed, he shouldn’t be telling this to any civilian, much less a teenager but he wasn’t going to let this kid self-destruct under the weight of thinking himself exactly like his abusive father. “At least it seems highly unlikely, his mother is adamant that he didn’t, there were none of the signs that he might have been planning on it, and–”

Scott hesitated, looked at Palchuck who wasn’t looking very convinced or like any of his self inflicted guilt was leaving, and decided to press on.

“–and we received a report of a break in on a house on the same street the night before Jim Lake disappeared.” 

A report that Scott had investigated.

A report that Scott had clearly not investigated well enough because the perpetrators hadn’t been caught and there was a child missing. 

Being hunted by Angor Rot for the second time was just as terrifying as the first time. 

Moving through the intricate web of caves that branched out from Nimue’s underground lake while being hunted by Angor Rot wasn’t all that different from traveling through the treacherous landscape of the Darklands while being hunted by Gunmar’s army.

Which meant the terrified exhaustion was at least consistent if not welcome.

“Sleep. We’ve lost him for now and ya need to sleep before you collapse.” NotEnrique insisted, and plucked Jim’s phone out of his hand from where he had been staring at the pictures stored on it. 

The phone should be dead. 

Had been dead for what Jim now knew to have been his first few months in the Darklands, until an incident that involved a horde of goblins, an explosion of razor sharp falling crystals, and Jim being a bit too close to yet another of the hammer’s lightning charged attacks. 

His phone had been at a glitching eight thousand and fifty-two percent charge ever since and Jim wondered if it had to do with HexTech being the only actual electronics store in Arcadia and thus where the phone had come from in the first place. 

Considering all the things the phone had survived in the previous timeline he was leaning towards yes. 

“I’ve got the hammer if any of his golems show up again.” NotEnrique told him firmly, shoving Jim down to the floor in a corner of the most recent cave that they had found themselves in and brandishing said hammer to demonstrate his point

Jim smiled a bit at that.

NotEnrique had gotten quite good at using the ordinary looking hammer to devastating effect throughout their time on the run through the Darklands and had continued his slightly concerning streak of exploding everything that got in his way in the Surface world as well.

The tiny changeling’s ability to manhandle Jim in to lying down on the cold stone flood by force, even while Jim was in troll form (something that he had taken several precious and painful minutes to return to not entirely by choice after they had left Nimue’s cave behind and had run until they couldn’t hear the scrape of stone feet on the cave floor anymore) was probably a testament to exactly how true the green changeling’s statements about his lack of sleep were.

It was a bit unnerving (actually it was downright terrifying) how suddenly and uncontrollably his body had started to shift back into that of a not quite correctly proportioned troll but it was a form that was easier to travel in and to fight off the stone golems that Angor Rot had sent after them with, so Jim was choosing to ignore that problem for now.

(He was also ignoring the amulet. He already had the magic inside his own body behaving uncontrollably and most definitely did not need to add whatever magic a possibly time traveling magical amulet built with alien tech might decide to unleash on him without any warning.)

“Fine.” Jim gave in, snatching back his phone from the smaller changeling and tucking it safely into his ragged hoodie pocket, and letting himself be shoved all the way onto the stone of the cave floor, because he couldn’t really waste energy on arguing when at any moment the telltale spread of ink black magic might appear and he would have to scoop up NotEnrique and run again. “Wake me up if something happens.”

“Sure kid,” the Changeling muttered but Jim was already asleep.

Domzalski was Lake’s best friend and Steve might not be able to do anything to help the police find Lake but he could look out for his best friend.

Someone had kidnapped Lake and after a long, serious, very thorough talking to given to him by Detective Scott Steve had eventually been persuaded that trying to track down whoever had taken Lake himself to get the kid back would just end up hindering the police’s own investigation.

But that didn’t mean that Steve would be doing nothing.

Whoever had taken Lake had tried breaking into Domzalski’s house first which meant that Lake’s best friend was also in danger and Steve wasn’t going to let anyone else go missing on his watch.

Jim awoke to cold stone, NotEnrique shouting, and the realization that there were worse things than being hunted by Angor Rot.

Namely, being captured by Queen Usurna. 

Angor Rot inspired a confused mix of utter terror, anger, and gratitude. 

He had all but killed Aaarrrgghh and had killed Draal. 

He had also been the only reason that they had managed to defeat Morgana and prevent the Eternal Night, sacrificing himself in the process. 

Jim had no such conflict regarding Queen Usurna. 

She had killed Vendal, forced Jim into the Deep, helped Gunmar drain the heartstone and take over Trollmarket and tried her very best to kill everyone that tried to escape, and she had given Aaarrrgghh and multiple other troll children to Gunmar to be raised as soldiers. 

Given the choice between them Jim thought he preferred being hunted through unknown cave systems by Angor Rot.

There was a kid walking up and down the street with a baseball bat over his shoulder and a determined set to his face.

He’d been there for at least a week, showing up after school and walking up and down the street.

Barbara had been too busy and exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally from searching for Jim in any way she could think of, to think about it too much the first few times she saw him. 

But she had just gotten off the phone with James and needed to think about something other than why she had ever married a man who refused to come back to Arcadia even with his son missing. 

So she invited the boy in to have a snack.

It was a disaster.

Barbara had never been able to cook and the endless number of burnt, still frozen, and some horrendous combination of the two, monstrosities that she had been making of every meal since that awful night when she realized that Jim wasn’t coming home, were just a reminder that her son was missing.

But it was nice. 

To have someone else in the house to share the pizza she got delivered.

And just for an hour the house felt just slightly less empty.

NotEnrique was absolutely certain that the whelp was cursed.

He decided this when the former human went from being imprisoned by trolls in the Darklands to being chased by Gumm Gumms to being chased by another troll and then imprisoned by trolls in the surface world. 

That all added to the fact that Jim definitely had a history with a magical assassin known for killing Trollhunters. 

A history that had allowed the two of them to keep ahead of the rather terrifying Angor Rot just long enough to end up being caught by the Krubera, one of the most dangerous tribes of trolls in the surface world instead.

Who Jim also appeared to have history with if the way he glared at everything anytime their queen was mentioned was anything to go on. 

“What’s your problem with the Krubera Queen?” NotEnrique finally asked as he ignored the guards that passed by their cozy little cage.

The glares were annoying and the way that one of the trolls who wasn’t even a warrior seemed to be going out of her way to stop by where they were imprisoned and spit spiteful words at ‘Gunmar’s monsters’ was something that might be a bit hurtful to someone without NotEnrique’s years of experience in ignoring those kinds of things. 

Hence his attempt to distract the former human with pretty much anything else. 

Jim opened his mouth and then winced, hand creeping up to press over his heart in that way he sometimes did that NotEnrique was finding increasingly concerning as time went on. 

“She’s going to kill us.” Jim seemed to say without thinking. 

“What makes ya say that?” NotEnrique asked because he knew that pretty much all surface dwelling trolls thought that Changelings were abominations that should be killed on sight but Jim had been human before this whole mess and then locked in a cell around the trolls that thought of changelings as abominations to be used like tools rather than abominations to be killed on sight. 

A very important distinction that a human whelp should not have been aware of.

“Because we came from the Darklands, which means we are linked to Gunmar, which means–” the kid cut off with a gasp of pain, wincing and digging sharp claws into the stone over where a human’s heart would be, the words seemed to refuse to leave his mouth.

“Stop.” NotEnrique ordered because this was probably something he should have addressed a while ago but he hadn’t ever really found a way to bring it up naturally. “Try telling me about how you became a changeling.” 

Jim looked at him, baffled, and opened his mouth to do so anyway because that was just the type of youngling he apparently was.

He moved his mouth, obviously trying to speak.

Nothing came out.

“Thought so.” NotEnrique shrugged as if it didn’t really matter one way or the other. “None of us can say how we were made into what we are, it’s a piece of magic that all of us got, probably to stop the surface trolls from ever finding out how changelings are made and trying to make some of their own. Never seen anyone react like you do but you probably got put on a tighter leash cause you started out human.”

Jim frowned, opened his mouth and closed it a few times without speaking before carefully picking his words and trying again. “I think Queen Usurna would be one of those surface trolls you mentioned.” 

“She’s trying to create her own changelings?” NotEnrique tried to clarify. 

“No, but I get the impression she’s not a very nice troll.”

NotEnrique narrowed his eyes. 

Jim got the impression. 

From the whole zero times in his very short human lifespan that he might have encountered Queen Usurna of the Krubera, a tribe of trolls known for dwelling in the deepest caverns and rarely leaving them?

“That wasn’t what you were trying to say, was it?” 

Jim just slumped a bit and tried to bury his face into his arms around the horns on his head. 

NotEnrique reached out to punch him in the arm, thought better of it, and tried to give the boy a few comforting pats instead. 

Despite all the changeling familiars being kept in the Darklands NotEnrique had very little knowledge on how to comfort a human youngling. 

Steve had been stopping in at Dr. Lake’s house ever since that first night when she had invited him in, nearly burned down her own kitchen and both of them with it, and ended up ordering pizza instead. 

The woman was very…nice.

He wasn’t sure what he had expected from Lake’s mom but the stressed and tired woman who still managed to find a smile for a random kid she didn’t know and tried her best to make sure he was okay even while her own kid was missing wasn’t it.

He liked Dr. Lake and she definitely didn’t deserve anything that was happening to her.

He had found her crying once.

She told him where the spare key was and that he was free to drop by at any time and he had entered the house to find her sobbing into the shoulder of Mr. Strickler as the history teacher rubbed soothing circles into her back.

Steve had never particularly liked Mr. Strickler but that opinion changed after seeing him comfort Dr. Lake, while Steve was completely lost on how to help, and then sitting down to an awkward dinner of take out that the teacher had brought as Mr. Strickler asked about how the search for Jim was going and Dr. Lake explained all the steps that were being taken.

Seeing how much Strickler seemed to care about Lake and how much just having him around seemed to comfort Dr. Lake made Steve decide right then and there that he now definitely liked Mr. Strickler.

Dr. Lake was a good woman.

And he found himself just wanting to do something for her.

Jim’s tongue was twisting his words into knots. 

Now that he was paying attention he was uncomfortably aware that what he was trying to say tended to end up being completely different from what actually came out of his mouth when it had to do with a very specific set of subjects.

‘I’m from the future’ He tried to say and the words were shifted into: “I’m getting a really strong feeling of deja vu.” 

Which he was. 

Between being continually hunted by Angor Rot, escaping the Darklands only to find himself imprisoned by Usurna quickly thereafter, and once again being bonded to a magical amulet, Jim was starting to feel like he was living out a funhouse mirror version of his previous life.

(Still better than the other time he had restarted from the same day. 

Still better than doing nothing, seeing the world start to end and knowing it was entirely his own fault.) 

‘I knew you were trustworthy because we knew each other before I time traveled.’ Changed to: “Hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

And what, oh-strange-magic-system-twisting-every-word-that-came-out-of-his-mouth, did that mean? 

‘This isn’t the first time that I’ve been changed into a troll.’ Became: “Being turned into a changeling isn’t all that different from before.”

Which was the closest to saying what he wanted to since this all started and yet also still managed to completely miss the point. 

But a troll had stopped by to give them dinner, a hostile glare and a set of vicious comments that Jim hadn’t even paid enough attention to remember and NotEnrique was starting to give him concerned looks. 

(Actually, he had been giving Jim concerned looks for a while it’s just that they had grown increasingly panicked and had started being accompanied by the awkward arm pats of a changeling who had never met Claire and had never learned how to comfort a human, which was starting to make Jim panic as well the more he thought about it.)

So Jim stopped trying to say the things he wanted to say and instead tried to remember at what point this had kicked in. 

How long had his words been being switched around inside his mouth without his permission? 

“Barbara still can’t make anything edible.” an old woman, squinting through glasses that were an inch thick, and with a cat tucked into her arms, tutted in disapproval. “She’s bound to starve herself to death without her boy to take care of her. Well, come along child.”

“Me?” Steve pointed a finger at his chest.

“You see any other teenage boys around that I could be talking to?” 

Steve didn’t but he swept his eyes over the street again just to be sure.

“Come on, we don’t have all day and we don’t want that woman to starve do we? I try to bring over a casserole whenever I can but dear Barbara works such odd hours that it is hard to catch her while it's hot and she is not the best at heating things up.”

Steve winced a bit at that as he stepped into the old woman’s house and narrowly avoided tripping over a calico cat as it wound deliberately between his legs, spending so much time with Dr. Lake had certainly given him a new appreciation for his own mother’s perfectly cooked meals. 

(He hadn’t even known it was possible to make a meal entirely inedible just by microwaving it before meeting the doctor.

He knew now.)

That was how Steve spent an entire afternoon in the Domzalski house attempting to learn to cook with Toby Domzalski’s Nana.

He wasn’t very good at it.

By the end of the afternoon he had only managed to learn how to make one dish decently well.

But it was one more than he had known before and the next time that Dr. Lake invited him into her home, he was able to make something that they could both eat.

Angor Rot making his appearance was almost a relief. 

Yes he was a murderous assassin who would kill him without remorse but at least Jim knew how to fight off blades and fists in a way he couldn’t for magic and curses. 

“Where is it?” The troll growled, slamming into the bars of the cage and looking at Jim with that all too familiar mad look in his eyes. “Where is my soul? I know you know!”

The cage rattled as the assassin shook it harshly as NotEnrique dragged Jim out of reach. 

‘How do you know that I know who has the ring.’ Jim tried to say. As he probably should have expected, what came out of his mouth instead was: “Why would I know anything about your soul?”

“Nine hundred years I’ve waited for you Atlas and you will not lie to me now!” 

Jim opened his mouth.

Closed it. 

His name wasn't Atlas. 

He wasn’t nine hundred years old. 

He had never spoken to Angor Rot in this timeline. 

He had been called Atlas before.

He had been present nine hundred years ago in some versions of the future and past. 

He didn’t know everything about the current timeline and its history.

Oh sweet Merlin, he was barely able to deal with the current complications of one set of timeline changes and he hadn’t even bothered to consider what had/would happen with the whole traveling back to Camelot mess.

(The Amulet of Merlin was still in circulation, Gunmar was still trapped in the Darklands and the bridge was still, according to the vague history lesson that Douxie and Zoe had given Toby, Eli, and Darci, scattered which meant that Daya had still escaped Arthur’s dungeon, accepted the Amulet, and the battle of Kilahead had still happened.)

(Changelings still existed so the Arcane Order had still managed to corrupt Morgana.)

(But Angor Rot was supposed to be trapped, asleep, in India.)

(Excalibur was supposed to be in Arthur’s possession.) 

(“Time unfolds differently, like a flower.”

“If it is meant to be then it will be.”)

Jim had apparently been staring off into the distance, having some sort of mini crisis over what he was going to do at some point in the future/past that would change so much and yet also change nothing, for too long for Angor Rot’s liking.

“You think that the Kurbara Queen will spare you? She will give you straight back to Gunmar just as easily as she gave him her own tribe's younglings.”

“She did what?” 

Angor Rot moved fast. 

Jim moved faster. 

Truthfully it was only thanks to Jim’s trollish body and the fact that Angor Rot had been pressed up against the cage that Jim was able to get to him fast enough to reach through the bars and lock his arms around the larger troll before he could hurl a dagger edged with Creeper’s Sun at the Kurbara troll. 

“Go!” Jim yelled through gritted teeth because sure, this troll was one of the trolls that had been looking at both him and NotEnrique like they were worth less than the dirt under her heel but Jim never ever wanted to see another troll succumb to the slow creep of that terrible poison. 

The troll, because things could never be easy or simple when Jim was involved, didn’t run in the opposite direction. 

She instead moved closer to the cage, and Jim, and by extension the angry troll assassin that Jim was desperately trying to keep caged by sheer strength of will and adrenaline. 

“What did you just say?” The troll was moving closer, visibly agitated by the fact that neither of them were answering her. Jim vaguely recognized her as one of the trolls who would have rather seen him and NotEnrique dead immediately rather than merely imprisoned until their queen could decide what to do with them. 

“Don’t hurt her.” Jim wasn’t sure why he was trying to give Angor Rot orders but his grip was slipping against the assassin’s constant attempts to escape it and there was very little else he could do. 

“Give me back my soul.” 

‘I’ll knock Strickler out and hand you the ring myself if it gets you to listen to me.’ Is what Jim tried to say. What came out instead was: “I’ll give you what you want if you do what I say and do. Not. Hurt. Her.” 

Angor Rot stopped struggling and turned to look at Jim with those creepy magical eyes of his. 

“Swear it.”

Jim had made this deal before. 

Well, not exactly this deal but one which was too close for comfort considering how the last time he had agreed to retrieve Angor Rot’s soul for him had gone. 

(“If it’s meant to be then it will be.”)

“Fine, I promise.” 

It wasn’t like he had many other options at the moment. 

“What,” the female troll whose name Jim didn’t know and who had gotten far too close to the half mad assassin during their brief exchange, “did Usurna do?” 

Angor Rot was too busy studying Jim’s face, presumably for any sign of deception, to answer her. 

“What happened to my son?!” 

“It’s finished.” Eli, circles under his eyes the color of coach Lawrence’s coffee but a triumphant smile stretching his face, gestured at the most Mcgyver’d looking doohickey that Toby had ever seen in his life which was hooked up to his computer screen. “With this we should be able to scan for things that match the magical frequency of the stones that were a part of the portal and find another one, then all we have to do is get to the nearest one which might be a bit of an issue because that gyre thing was moving way faster than any human transportation and so the nearest portal might be really far away but i do have some money saved up and we can use it to get some bus tickets and–”

“Or,” Darci said, staring at the computer screen, “we could use the portal right here in Arcadia.”

“What?!” Eli yelped and spun around in his chair to see that on the part of the digital map that represented Arcadia Oaks there were a huge collection of the dots that he had made to represent the portal magic stones.

An overwhelming amount as a matter of fact. 

Eli zoomed out the map as far as it could go just to be sure but he was right, the collection of dots representing portals in Arcadia was more than all the ones on the rest of the map put together.

Eli had a not so great feeling about this.

“Didn’t that goth chick say something about there being a portal that was broken and scattered to prevent it from ever being opened again?” Darci asked.

“Yup.” Eli gulped, none of them taking their eyes off the screen of his computer.

“Somehow I don’t think it’s very scattered anymore.” Toby observed.

Chapter Text

The Krubera were, on the whole, a very intimidating group of trolls who to an unpracticed eye were hard to differentiate between and were easily grouped into the category of ‘Usurna’s trolls’. 

Except that Jim knew how Usurna had died before. 

Knew that her soldiers had turned on her over the discovery that she had given their children to Gunmar to be raised as soldiers because if there was one thing the Krubera were more known for than how dangerous they were it was how closely bonded they were to each other. 

These were the trolls that had felt Aaarrrgghh slowly dying from halfway around the world and had come to do what they could to help him regardless of the fact that he hadn’t been in their tribe since he was traded away as an infant. 

Thanks to the changeling we-don’t-talk-about-fight-club magic Jim couldn’t explain any of this to the distraught mother of one of said troll younglings that had been traded away in the name of power. 

Thanks to his new shaky deal with Angor Rot he didn’t have to. 

Jim honestly hadn’t expected the assassin to actually explain the situation (harshly and without any consideration for the one hearing it) just because Jim told him to. 

But apparently Angor Rot had taken ‘if you do what I say’ and ‘don’t hurt her’ as separate stipulations to their deal and Jim was too busy being relieved that no one was dying to correct him. 

“There is no need to be concerned about the Killahead Bridge Master Toby. There is no way that it will be opened again. After all that would require gathering every last one of the stones that were scattered centuries ago to rebuild it and using the amulet of Merlin to reactivate the portal itself. It’s impossible and no one would be insane enough to even try to attempt to open it again.” Blinky assured as he patted Toby on the back comfortingly. 

Both the comfort and the assurance would have been significantly more effective if all three of the teenagers in the room weren’t completely convinced that there was, as a matter of fact, someone crazy enough to track down every piece of that bridge to try and use it as a portal once more. 

“Right.” Darci said, pouring every bit of I’m-just-going-to-have-a-sleepover-at-Claire’s-house-and-definitely-not-going-to-go-through-a-magic-portal-and-visit-an-underground-troll-civilization that she had mastered in the past few months into her expression. “That’s such a relief.” 

Darci kicked both the boys under the stone table to keep them from saying anything as it had been long established that she was the only one of the three of them with any real ability or practice at lying. 

“Indeed, indeed.” Blinky hummed, attention already turning to the book being held in his lower right hand. “It would be an absolute disaster if the bridge were to be opened again. Gumm-Gumms coming through to reign untold chaos and death upon the entire world, it would be horrendously awful.”

Horrendously awful indeed. 

But it might also be the only way to get Jim home. 

Darci glanced at Toby.

Jim was his best friend. 

The key to opening the freaky portal was his amulet. 

And that meant when it came down to it the decision would also be his. 

Zulkraa knew that other tribes tended to group the Krubera tribe together. 

Their loyalty, similar appearances, and strong connections to each other made others see them as one united whole rather than a group of individuals. 

She hadn’t minded, once. 

Had taken pride in their unity. 

Then her child along with all the rest of the younglings in the nursery that day had disappeared, stolen by Gunmar and were never retrieved. 

Then none of their pleas or demands of the queen were met with anything other then empty words and a too quick dismissal. 

Then their people did not go to war with Gunmar and the Darklands to either retrieve their offspring or avenge them. 

Then Zulkraa lost her faith in her Queen. 

She hadn’t thought there was deliberate maliciousness on Usurna’s part but somehow she wasn’t surprised by it. 

She didn’t just trust the words of two of Gunmar’s monsters and Morgana’s pet but it was easy enough to confirm when she knew what she was looking for. 

Easy enough to ask the right people and follow the clues of orders given and not received and of potential witnesses quietly silenced, of the Queen’s mysterious contacts and disappearances and refusal to pour effort and resources into reclaiming the children that she had traded away for power. 

The story was confirmed and double checked and checked again. 

The Queen was dead by the time the shift changed. 

The Krubera were a close knit tribe loyal to a fault and willing to fight anyone who threatened their own. 

Zulkraa did not get her child back. But she did finally get the opportunity to avenge him. 

And when it was finally over she went back to the cells after a long night of remembering the way a changeling had fought to protect her through the cage where she had helped to imprison him, had yelled at her to run even as he held on to one of the most dangerous trolls to ever live with limbs that were too thin and skin that was too pale which she had initially chalked up to him being a changeling but that on a troll youngling would have spoken of starvation and exhaustion. 

She had ignored it at the time because she hated Gunmar and his minions and she’d had more pressing concerns so had pushed it to the back of her mind until the immediate crisis was over. 

And now that it was over she made her way back to the cells because she had been given a chance to avenge her child and the Kurbara repay their debts. 

Except when she got to the cell that had once held two small and malformed Changelings she found it empty with no evidence that they had ever been there in the first place. 

“You can’t be mad at him.” Deya informed Kanjigar succinctly. “He did more in four years of being a Trollhunter than any of us did in centuries.” 

“All of which has been undone.” Kanjigar pointed out and Deya took a second to mourn the days when Kanjigar had still been the living Trollhunter and had held her in high enough respect to not question anything she said.

The image he seemed to hold of Deya The Deliverer, First Trollhunter and the one to banish Gunmar and his armies to the Darklands had steadily been destroyed after his death and enforced proximity to her ever since.

“You know that fate never truly forgets what has happened. If not, then Draal would not have his place among us as Trollhunter.”

She watched as Kanjigar’s eyes almost unconsciously flicked to where the image of his son stood, still and lifeless as it had been since they returned to a time where Draal was alive and his spirit was not among them.

Just as it had for the first time after those brief six months wherein Draal held the amulet and joined them upon being turned to stone. 

When Utgar had reverted that timeline to its original state Draal’s ghostly form had reverted to this same statuesque state until his second death in the crystal cave.

It wasn’t Deya’s first time seeing such a thing.

She had been the first, depending on how you looked at it, and so had been there to see everything that happened (and didn’t happen) after.

“Besides,” she decided that it would be better to draw Kanjigar’s attention away from his alive-then-dead-then-alive-then-dead-and-alive-again son. “It’s not like he is the first to have done such a thing. And Utgar erased two centuries worth of time rather than just four years.” 

Two hundred years that were lived through the same repeating fourteen years as Utgar learned more about time magic than any troll in recorded history (the irony that Utgar was not actually recorded to be a time wizard in history because of that self same magic was not lost on the former Trollhunter) while fighting an enemy whose very existence had been erased, leaving behind only the empty spots in the Trollhunter’s memory to prove that they had ever existed at all. 

“Utgar didn’t rewind to a point before he even became Trollhunter.”

Deya sometimes wondered what would have happened if he had. 

She and the others had watched Utgar for his entire forgotten career as Trollhunter, they had watched how the repeated years and lost relationships and endless need to restart from the beginning every time had worn on him until the only thing left holding him together had been his duty as a Trollhunter to protect the world from having the very fabric of time unwound. 

None of the council had truly blamed him for letting go and allowing Bular to kill him and the Amulet to find a new wielder as soon as the threat was defeated and he found himself once again on his first day as Trollhunter. 

She wondered what would have happened if he had managed to rewind to just a few hours earlier, before the Amulet chose him, if he would have been able to actually live without the sometimes overwhelming weight of Daylight and the protection of the world on his back. 

Watching Jim on his two attempts to leave the Amulet behind she thought the answer was probably no. 

There was a reason all of them had been chosen as Trollhunters and Jim’s first attempt which left the title of Trollhunter to Draal had still ended with Jim taking up a sword that wasn’t Daylight, preparing to face Gunmar, and more recently the young human hadn’t even made it a full two days into not being the Trollhunter before he threw himself into danger and also into the Darklands. 

Utgar wouldn’t have been able to live a long undisturbed life even without the Amulet and Deya wasn’t sure what she felt about that revelation. 

“Just because Jim isn’t the Trollhunter doesn’t mean he’s running away or that he won’t do everything in his power to make sure things go as well as they possibly can.”

“And look how that has been turning out. He got kidnapped by Gunmar not even two days after getting back.”

“Aww,” Deya leaned over to pull her many-times-great-grand-successor into a headlock. “You’re worried about him aren’t you.”

“No, I’m worried about Heartstone Trollmarket and the timeline and– let go of me.” 

Deya let Kanjigar twist out of her grip and offered him a comforting smile. “He’ll be alright you know, Jim’s tough. Tougher than we remember to give him credit for.”

She ought to know, she had been the first to meet him, way back before she had even known that he was a Trollhunter at all and she had always remembered that odd human-loving troll, even if she had taken far too long in connecting the dots on that Jim and the human named Jim that had ended up inheriting the Amulet nine hundred years later being one and the same and as such she had been just as ready to underestimate human-Jim as the rest of them.

“We don’t even know if he’s alive.” Kanjagar grumbled and Deya had known he was worried about his successor.

She opened her mouth to tease him some more, annoying Kanjagar seemed to be the only way to get him to stop his endless brooding fits, even if she was also worried about her old friend there was nothing that they could really do about—

A ripple through the space around them.

It was familiar to Deya. 

Far too familiar and she had wanted to speak to Jim again but not like this—

The feeling was gone just as quickly as it had appeared.

“What was that?” Kanjagar asked. 

He was the most recent of the Trollhunter ghosts, barring Draal showing up after his deaths in two timelines, and so had never been around to witness the deaths of any Trollhunter besides that of his own son during which he was presumably focused on other things, and as such probably hadn’t notice the feeling that came along with a former Trollhunter joining their ranks. 

(There had been another moment. Deya knew that Jim had died however briefly and had been brought back by the sorceress that he loved so much. 

But at that point the Amulet itself had been so damaged that none of them could really focus on what was happening to Jim outside of their little world.)

But there was no new Trollhunter ghost. 

A cursory glance out of the Amulet revealed that Toby was fine, impatiently tapping his pencil and waiting for school to be over and most definitely not dead.

And Jim wasn’t here.

The feeling had been gone almost as soon as it appeared and nothing had seemingly changed. 

But it was Jim that they were talking about and nothing was ever nothing when Jim was involved.

“I’m not entirely sure.” She told Kanjigar. “But we should be ready in case it happens again.”

Going on the run with a troll assassin who could portal from place to place was significantly easier then going on the run from said troll assassin who could portal from place to place. 

The Kurbara cells had not been designed with Angor Rot in mind. 

Escaping was as easy as slipping through an inky black portal and trusting that the one controlling said portal really wasn’t about to kill them. 

Jim closed his hand on the reforged amulet in the pocket of his tattered hoodie and made sure that NotEnrique was settled firmly on his shoulder before stepping forward and hoping for the best. 

They didn’t die. 

Not when they stepped through the portal and out of the cage. 

Not while they were making their way as quickly and quietly as they could out of the city. 

Not when Jim hissed at the assassin not to kill any of the trolls blocking their way out. 

It was unnerving, the way the troll actually seemed to be doing as Jim said, to be following the agreement that Jim hadn’t intended to make and following orders even though Jim knew that the cursed troll hated being forced to obey. 

It was unnerving and Jim hated it and he made extra certain that nothing he said after that was phrased as a command. 

Heartstone Trollmarket was the most amazing place that Eli had ever seen in his life.

Sure, it had been a bit terrifying to hear Darci screaming in his backyard and to rush out to find her and Toby facing two giant stone monsters, but Blinky and Aaarrrgghh had turned out to be nice and Blinky had proved himself more than willing to answer all of Eli’s endless questions.

Besides which was the fact that Toby hadn’t been getting very far in trying to learn sword fighting from YouTube and Blinky and Aaarrrgghh were apparently meant to train the Trollhunter.

And they were good at it too.

Eli hadn’t been underground nearly as much as either Toby or Darci because of his never ending attempts to figure out how to trace those portals so they could go save Jim, but when he did get the chance to watch Toby in the Hero’s Forge it was really impressive how quickly a kid who hadn’t been able to consistently climb a rope in gym class was improving. 

Eli was pretty sure it had less to do with Blinky’s constant reminders of a Trollhunter’s duties or even his mentions of dangers such as Bular, and everything to do with Jim and the need to be strong enough to rescue him. 

But it worked out because with Blinky and Aaarrrgghh so focused on training Toby up into a reasonably skilled Trollhunter Darci and Eli were left to search the underground civilization for ways of getting Jim back while Eli’s brain tried to think his way around the various roadblocks that came with trying to create a scanner for magical rocks while using purely non magical items. 

They had eavesdropped on any conversation that they could get close to without the trolls immediately shutting up at the presence of a pair of humans, had discovered RotGuts (one of the coolest places Eli had ever been to even if it had lost him a good number of old socks) and bought every single item they could bargain for even remotely related to portals and dimensional travel without giving away their potentially apocalyptic intentions, and had flipped through book after book in Blinky’s library searching for anything that might help. 

What they ended up with was a comprehensive knowledge of local gossip courtesy of Bagdwella, three candles in a box with a set of small purple jewels inlaid and a layer of dust thick enough to activate Eli’s allergies on the outside from RotGuts, along with an urgent need to master reading Trollish so that anything within Blinky’s books could actually be comprehended. 

Which was to say they found nothing that they could actually use in getting Jim back. 

Nothing aside from the bridge that was most definitely being gathered by bad guys attempting to end the world and that Toby, as the protector of said world, was somewhat morally obligated to not open. 

That was probably why Toby was willing to stick his entire hand into the mouth of the Soothscryer when the ghosts of Trollhunters past apparently decided to summon him.

Jim’s original plan had been to find a Gyre station that might be able to take them to Arcadia. 

There were quite a few flaws with that plan as he had neither Aaarrrgghh nor magic to start the vehicle and didn’t have Blinky around nor anything more than the vaguest idea of how to choose a destination in one of the contraptions and that was if there even were Gyres this far down that went to Arcadia. 

Overall, using Angor Rot’s portals had seemed like a far more reasonable idea. 

(They had roughly two and a half years at best before the Arcane Order decided to stop being subtle. 

Jim had wasted more than enough time already.) 

He wasn’t expecting to be kidnapped the second he walked into the world between worlds. 

(The staff of shadows didn’t actually open portals from one place to another. 

Not directly. 

Instead a portal was opened into the world between worlds and another one was opened out of it and back to the real world wherever the wielder of the staff wanted to go. 

The world between worlds which was, as Jim was abruptly being reminded, where the ghosts of Trollhunters past dwelled.)

“So why am I here?” Toby asked the freaky council of dead Trollhunters.

He was more than a little unnerved by how many of them he could recognize from the statues that were made from their dead bodies that lined the walls of the Hero’s Forge. 

Something that he was avoiding thinking about by focusing on a different detail.

The ghosts in the Soothscryer were weirdly silent about the fact that Toby was human. 

Toby had been coming down to Trollmarket for weeks and every time there was still someone disgusted or confused or terrified about the fact that their new Trollhunter was a human.

Which meant that Toby was the one left confused by not a single Trollhunter of days gone by mentioning it.

Seriously, not a single word, it was starting to freak him out.

“Okay, what’s going on?” Toby finally blurted out, unfortunately right in the middle of Mr. The Courageous' speech that he hadn’t been paying attention to which Toby felt slightly bad about but that feeling paled in comparison to how much the lack of constant disapproval was freaking him out.

“What do you mean?” One of the many past Trollhunters, whose face Toby recognized and whose name Blinky probably would have been disappointed in him for not knowing, asked. 

“I mean why are you guy so okay with the fact that I’m human when pretty much every other troll I’ve met has acted like it’s a insult or a sign of the apocalypse, where’s the derision, the mockery, the ‘you aren’t worthy to bare our legacy’?”

“To question your worthiness would be to question the judgment of the Trollhunter who chose you and the Amulet that agreed with him and with enough time I believe we have learned our lesson about doing both.” Drawled a tall, female Trollhunter whose armor included a helmet with wing looking things on its sides. 

“Then why did you summon me here if not to scold me for, I don’t know, being human, not being worthy of being chosen?”

Kanjagar coughed lightly into his fist and cleared his throat. “We have summoned you, young Tobias, because we have been watching you ever since you were first chosen by the Amulet, we know that you intend to go to the Darklands to retrieve your missing friend.”

Toby stiffened. “I’m going to get Jim back, I don’t care if you don’t like it or want to take away the Amulet. He is my best friend and I’m not going to leave him there.”

“There has only ever been one Trollhunter who successfully rescued someone from the Darklands.” Kanjagar said sternly and Toby perked up, this was why he had been willing to risk losing a limb and possibly his life to the teeth of the Soothscryer after all.

“Someone did it? Merlin made its sound like no one had ever even tried before.”

A raspy chuckle echoed in the distorted Hero’s Forge and Toby spun around to find one of the Trollhunter ghosts standing on the floor behind him rather than floating through the air like the rest of them were doing.

“And here I thought you would be more freaked out by a bunch of ghosts watching you. I know I was.” Toby couldn’t see the face of this Trollhunter as his helmet was one that covered his face entirely but Toby was pretty sure that he was smiling. 

(Or whatever the Troll equivalent of smiling was. 

Toby had seen enough nature documentaries to know that showing teeth could very easily be considered a threat instead of a sign of happiness.

Blinky and Aaarrrgghh smiled in normal, non threatening ways but Blinky was reportedly very interested in learning and mimicking human customs so that didn’t mean much.)

“Oh come on Skinny Legs, it’s not like we were stalking you. We are literally a part of the amulet. There’s not much we can do about it.” The female Trollhunter nudged the other one gently in the side and sent him stumbling multiple steps to the side before he recovered himself.

Seeing them standing side by side on relatively level ground Toby abruptly realized how small the male troll was, he seemed to be at least a head and a half shorter than pretty much every other Trollhunter in the room and seemed to have none of the bulk that was present on every other troll that Toby had ever met. 

“So the Darklands. Saving Jim.” Toby deliberately steered his mind away from the fact he hadn’t actually seen a child troll yet so didn’t know how to identify one and that this room was filled with dead Trollhunters because he only had time for one crisis at the moment.

“Right, so, the first thing that you should know is that you should never go into the Darklands alone without a plan, that’s crazy and could potentially lead to Gunmar being released to cause huge amounts of destruction and death.”

“I’m getting Jim back.” Toby said, not willing to budge a single inch.

“Then it’s a good thing he’s not in the Darklands–” Toby opened his mouth to protest that he had seen Jim get dragged through that portal “—anymore.” the small-ish troll stressed. “One of the trolls on the other side helped him get out somewhere in England…we think.”

“You think?” The troll opened his mouth but Toby bulldozed right past anything he might be trying to say. “How do you even know any of this? Didn’t you say that you were tied to the Amulet, there’s no way you can know which dimension Jim is in if I don’t even know if he's still alive!”

Toby didn’t even know what the Trollhunter looked like behind the helmet but when ghostly blue arms reached out and pulled Toby into a hug, he couldn’t help but let them. 

Months of waiting and searching for a way to find Jim, watching Dr. Lake fall apart and listening to adults talk in whispers about the Milk Carton Epidemic when they thought that the kids couldn’t hear, had built up until he found himself silently crying into the armored chest of a dead troll whose name he didn’t even know

“It’ll be okay.” the troll rumbled. “Jim’s alive and you’ll get him back.”

“How can you know?” Toby asked, desperate for it to be true.

The smallest Trollhunter (aside from Toby but he was human so it didn’t count) made a noise as if trying to talk and failing. 

And then he made it again.

“You good buddy?” Toby pulled back and whipped at his face. 

The small troll growled something and the bulky female Trollhunter from before wrapped a comforting arm around him and Kanjagar took over the conversation again. “It seems that is information that we can’t give you yet but The Undone Trollhunter is correct, you don't have to worry. Your friend is on his way back to Arcadia at this very moment and will be returned to you soon.”

Toby had a lot more questions.

Like what did ‘soon’ mean?

Was that in human terms or immortal ghost terms and if it was the latter then how long would that mean? 

And how did this fun sized Trollhunter that Toby had never heard of know all this?

Toby didn’t get a chance to ask any of those questions as his body started glowing blue and fading from the weird alternate Hero’s Forge and back into the real one.

The second that Toby was gone Jim found himself in the bone crushing embrace of the first Trollhunter. 

“I’m so glad you’re alive.” Deya told him while her grip seemed to be attempting to ensure he did not remain so. 

“You…remember?” Jim managed to squeeze out of lungs that the armor that had appeared on him the second he walked into the mystical version of the Hero’s Forge was doing very little to protect. 

“Yeah, whelp.” The older Trollhunter finally loosened her grip at least enough so he could breathe and once again stand on his own two feet. “We remember. The whole ‘only the Trollhunter will know’ thing seems to have included all the Trollhunters.” 

“Then Toby…?”

“Doesn’t remember so far as we can tell.” Kanjigar informed him. “At least not yet. We’re keeping a close eye on him and Draal.” 

“But Draal wasn’t—“ six months in an alternate world that ended in tragedy as a result of his own desire to escape his responsibilities. “I thought it wasn’t real.” 

“It wasn’t.” Utgar floated down to join them on the floor. “Just as much as it was. A future that never was isn’t any less real for being undone. As you of all people can attest.”

Jim squared his shoulders and made sure to look his predecessors in the face. “I don’t regret it. I would do it again in a heartbeat if it meant saving Toby.” 

“We know.” Deya’s arm, which had never left its place around his shoulders, squeezed him a bit. “You’re not here to get chewed out by us. Merlin knows each and every one of us has made are own highly risky decisions with much less prompting and I for one would be a massive hypocrite if I said you shouldn’t be time traveling at all.”

Utgar nodded with a thumbs up and several of the other ghosts that Jim was less familiar with simply nodded their agreement. 

Jim felt his lips move around his tusks to shape themselves into a smile. 

It was nice, knowing that he had the support of these trolls. 

He hadn’t needed it. 

Claire, Blinky, Aaarrrgghh and the rest of the nine had agreed to the decision and that was all he had really needed. 

(Jim didn’t know what he would have done if they hadn’t agreed.  

With Toby’s corpse, still and lifeless not even ten feet away Jim couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t have used the time stone no matter what. 

He was very grateful that he never got the chance to find out.)

But it was nice. 

One more fight that he didn’t have to brace for. 

There was, however, one thing that still confused him. 

“If I’m not here to be lectured then why am I?” 

“The Former Trollhunters have to gather to advise the current one. You are a former Trollhunter.”

“But I’m not. I’ve never been a Trollhunter anymore.” 

“You are not the first Trollhunter to tangle the fabric of time, young Lake,” Kanjigar told him stiffly. “Although I do admit you are one of the only ones who has traveled back far enough to never receive the amulet and make it stick, my son is an example that this does not fully erase what you once were.”

He made a sweeping gesture to where a stone statue of Draal stood tall and regal on one of the ledges sticking out from the wall. 

Jim abruptly wondered if he had his own statue in this place. 

He had died once.  

Just for a moment. 

It wasn’t something that any of them ever really brought up 

Aside from Toby with his never ending ability to make any subject seem a good bit less grim and terrible.

But Jim had been dead for just a bit before Claire had managed to bring him back and Jim was now forced to wonder where his place was in this hall of ghosts. 

He wondered if this made him Schrodinger's Trollhunter. 

Not the current Trollhunter, not a former Trollhunter, not a future Trollhunter. 

But a Trollhunter all the same. 

The Undone.

That was what Kanjigar had called him.

The title weighed heavily on his shoulders. 

(Though it was nowhere near as heavy as Toby’s limp and lifeless hand had felt in his own.) 

“You are here because every Trollhunter is their successor’s mentor. We will all be there to advise the current wielder of the Amulet but it is up to each Trollhunter to be the main guide for the one who comes next. As I was to you, young Jim, so you must be to young Tobias.” 

“Wha—“

Jim didn’t even get the chance to fully voice his confusion as a tear opened up in the ground beneath his feet and he found himself abruptly falling out of the World Between Worlds and back onto the solid earth of the real one. 

“I told you not to wander off.” Angor Rot said and Jim didn’t bother with replying, instead choosing to continue wheezing breath back into his abused lungs. 

For a bit, in the ghostly domain of the former Trollhunters, Jim had forgotten how much every single part of his body hurt. 

“You alright there kid?” NotEnrique asked and accepted Jim's shaky thumbs up without a fuss and instead started pushing the former human to his feet. 

“We in the right place?” The little changeling asked, gesturing to the sky line beyond the hill that they had landed on. “Because if we ain’t then I think I’d prefer walking the rest of the way without the creepy magic.” 

NotEnrique continued to mutter about exactly how creepy Angor Rot’s magic and the World between worlds was but Jim had stopped listening. 

Because there, lit up and sparkling with individual lights against the encroaching darkness of the night, was Arcadia Oaks. 

Jim was finally home.