As the Trollhunter, Kanjigar the Courageous fought valiantly, landing each strike with a powerful blow. Facing off against Bular was always a grand feat of danger in this long dreadful war.
Here under the bridge of humans, exchanging parries as the sun rises, Kanjigar hears only one thing ring through his head.
'This ruse will save your life,' a wise woman said. 'I sense the bindings of destiny to come at full force. Something dangerous is coming and I wish for you to live to defeat it.'
Her last warning was specific.
'Don't touch the light until the battle ends.'
Thus as sunlight narrows the battlefield, Bular taunts the Trollhunter.
"Yield, Kanjigar."
"A Trollhunter never yields."
The two trolls clash swords, avoiding the rays of deadly light as much as possible. Bular may have superior bulk as he kicks Daylight out of Kanjigar's hands into the sun.
Quickly thinking, Kanjigar resummons the sword back into his hands, guarding against another strike.
The sun rose high as they scurried their way to the bridge's under railings. Bular pinned Kanjigar down, forcing him over the ledge. Kanjigar managed to hold his weight right before his horns touched sunlight.
"It's me or the sun," Bular spat, grinning madly, "either way it's your doom."
Kanjigar gritted his teeth. This must be the way the fight ends. He strained his ears to hope that no human eyes are around before his ruse ends.
"I command Daylight, Bular," Kanjigar tightly held onto his enemy, "I fear no sun."
With all of his might, Kanjigar jumped off of the railings, constraining Bular's left arm.
The Gumm-gumm only had seconds to realize that the Trollhunter wasn't hissing in pain of petrification. Unfortunately for him, his arm trapped by the hunter burned in the light. With his free hand Bular hung to the bridge railings and saw how his left arm turned into stone.
The Trollhunter fell from the crumbling hand and landed gracefully on the ground, mockingly safe in the daylight.
"How!" Bular roared, regaining his ground and clutching his damaged arm.
"My amulet can hold many powers," Kanjigar boasted, "One such is the ability of day walking."
"There's no honor in cheap tricks, Trollhunter!"
Kanjigar rose up his sword to the Gumm-gumm, "I have no need to give you honor or glory, only to my kin. Do you still seek to fight, son of Gunmar?"
Bular roared once more, spitting insults but eventually Kanjigar watched the troll retreat back into the shadows of the sewers.
Finally alone, Kanjigar breathed out relief and returned to his own haven of darkness. Honesty he was terrified if the gem of day walking didn't work.
But it did and Kanjigar lives to fight for another day.
More proof to trust the guidance of the Lady of the Lake. But there are words of hers that he cannot make action of.
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Meanwhile, the shabby shape of the sleeping Barbara Lake is revealed to her son when he checked her that very morning.
Jim Lake sets down the breakfast tray and polished up her glasses. She looked more exhausted than usual from the dark circles around her eyes.
He glanced back to her note on the door.
Busy work last night. Sleeping in. Remember to take your meds. – Mom
No matter what message she leaves for him, she insists to remind him about his pills.
There's no real reason to argue against her. She's Doctor Barbara Lake. Of course her son will listen to her.
The only problem, Jim finds out, is that his pill bottle is empty. He even rattles the empty bottle for emphasis. Apparently it slipped both of their minds about getting a refill, either too busy at the hospitable or at school or with housework.
Shrugging, Jim talked to himself, "It's just one day. I'll be fine."
An hour later he did not feel fine.
Toby sent him worrying glances throughout class and Jim barely paid any attention to it. A small twinge of pain ached on his jaw bone and his head began to throb a little. Most of all his eyes could barely stay open. Occasionally he had to blink away the visual snow that cloaked his vision.
By the bell ring he was barely comprehending that Mr. Strickler has been calling his name.
With a surprise jerk, Jim fell out of his chair. Toby was at his side to help him up as the rest of the class left. With a clearer head Jim embarrassedly noticed that Clare saw the whole thing with a concerned frown.
"Mr. Lake, are you alright?" Mr. Strickler helped the boy gathered his scattered supplies.
"I'm fine," he said the same time Toby said, "Probably not."
"You don't look too good," the teacher continued, "I have to ask if you're coming down with something." Jim raised a hand to his forehead, just to make sure, but his temperature felt normal. He even let Mr. Strickler do the same thing and he was still concerned and confused.
Jim glanced around, aware that it was only him, his best friend and his favorite teacher here but wariness still relevant to his aching head. "I ran out of my medication today, allergy pills," he assured, "I guess my body really needed them."
"That's a bit alarming," Mr. Strickler said.
"Yeah this isn't as bad as the last time you didn't take them," Toby added.
Jim clenched onto his handbag, feeling a little flushed at the worried eyes aimed at him. "I'm just tired, that's probably it."
"Or stressed," Mr. Strickler said, "I fear that you're carrying too many responsibilities. I know that it's just you and your mother but if you feel overwhelm-"
"I'm okay," Jim rushed, "We're okay."
Mr. Strickler gave him a small smile, "I was merely going to suggest that you ask for help." He nodded over to Toby, still at his side with a thumb's up. "You're shouldering the weight of the world like Atlas." The teacher walked over to his desk to write something. "I believe I'm long overdue for a conversation with your mother. Also here's a nurse's note if you feel like you're getting worse." He handed the papers to Jim. With one last worried gaze he said, "I do only mean the best for you, Young Atlas."
Pocketing the notes, Jim offered a grateful smile, "Thanks Mr. Strickler."
As the boys left the room, Mr. Strickler called out, "One more thing, if you're feeling better, I submit that talking with Miss Nunez would be more effective than staring."
Toby snickered, "Take the advice Jimbo. You're going to need it."
"Shut up," he lightly scoffed.
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"I'm glad to hear everything went well," a feminine sigh echoed the crystallized healing room of Vendel the wise.
"The look of his face," Kanjigar laughed, "I'm detailing an artist immediately." At the unamused scowl of the elder troll, the hunter switched gears, "Anyway, from the way Bular fought and screamed he seemed as eager as ever to kill me."
"He always wants kill," Aaarrrgghh said.
"Yes but this felt different this time," Kanjigar continued, "I sensed he's anticipating something. He fought with great tenacity and alarm."
Blinky rolled his six eyes, "He does that only when you quip about his father."
"Speaking of fathers," the woman began, "how's everything with you and Draal?"
"Lady Lake, we're supposed to talk about the fate of troll kind," Kanjigar groaned, rubbing his temples for good measure, not like the woman can see it.
A snort from the communication tool irritated the Trollhunter further. "Last I checked he's a part of it. Meaning you should take my advice and spend more time with him."
"Shall not," he said and beside him the three trolls sighed over another round of this argument. "I must prioritize my duties as the Trollhunter. You agreed with me about keeping him away from my scared charge."
"Yes but I also told you to bond with him as well!"
"There you go off again with your human thinking," he grumped, "Troll culture is about bonds forged through bloodshed battles and I will not risk my son into a war he cannot win. He's not ready."
Aaarrgghh roughly nudged his shoulder with a stern glare, "Fought with us at bridge."
"That was when Deya bared the mantle," Kanjigar dismissed, "I am proud to say we conquered that battle but now that I am the Trollhunter I will leave no burden fall upon my son."
"So what's stopping you Kanjigar?" Lady Lake asked harshly, "I guided you to live another day and for what, all to fight more?"
Vendel approached the speaking tool before Kanjigar could make a move to destroy it, "Lady Lake, we thank you for your guidance and council but this is a nature of us trolls. I'm afraid mere words cannot sway the most stubborn of stones."
"Hey!"
"Of course Elder," Lady Lake said, losing the intensity in her voice. "All I'm suggesting is that you deserve to spend time with your son."
"I do and I will," Kanjigar promised, "but after the end of the Gumm-gumm King."
He stomped off without a goodbye. As the Trollhunter he values every warning and advice from the bloodline of the original Lady of the Lake. Her existence was a mere folk tale to young whelps but only elders, important figures, and the Trollhunter have a direct connection with her.
Well as direct as a communication tool can be.
The few previous Ladies of the Lake made direct contact to troll kind but only in dire extremes. Now the current one asks for privacy and only Vendel knows her face. It is better off that way, Kanjigar reasons as he walks through Trollmarket.
His world must remain hidden from human eyes. He has the sneaky suspension that Vendel has connection to other magical humans on the surface but Kanjigar is fine to remain ignorant to that information.
As he makes his way to the Hero's Forge, his son Draal approaches him.
Just as he was about to greet his kin, Kanjigar narrows his eyes at the broken spike on the youngling's shoulder. "My son, is there a reason you have fewer spikes then I remember?"
"No," Draal said too quickly, shifting to have a better profile, "Father I wanted to check up on you. I heard about your fight with Bular."
"I won obviously," Kanjigar said shortly, too focused on getting a good look at his son's back. Draal still attempted to turn away but he got a good look at the scratches and scorch marks. "Draal did you go train in the Forge without my permission again?"
Draal didn't waste time with denial, "So what if I did? It's not like you would even give me permission."
"I told you, only Trollhunters train there."
"And yet you bring anyone willing to spar with you except me!" Draal exclaimed, "Why don't you ever want to train with me?"
"Right now you are acting like a whiny whelp," Kanjigar stated, well aware of the civilian eyes watching, "I don't have time for this, son."
He brushed past Draal, swallowing down the tight feeling in his throat for once again pushing away his son. It's for his own good, Kanjigar told himself. Lady Lake doesn't understand this part of his life and no advice from her will change his mind.
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By the end of the school day, Jim can confidently say that he needs his drugs.
Okay, not the proper term for prescribed pills but he's using humor to cope.
First he tries to introduce himself to Claire. All he got from that was embarrassment, a tiny spark of hope, and a flyer for theater auditions.
Second he tries to talk Psycho Steve out of bulling Eli Pepperjack. It was pretty intimidating and the loud noises weren't helping his headache.
Lastly the mentioned headache was gradually gotten worse. Sharp pain prick in his jaw and Jim wanted to guess that this is probably his wisdom teeth coming out early. But then his ears feel too sensitive to sound and massaging them weren't helping. At the very least the weird pressure on his head lessened but his head still feels off balanced.
His eyes through, that's the real problem. Jim would swear that when he checked his reflection his eyes would flash with a different color for a millisecond. Toby said that he didn't notice a thing but believes him all the same.
Honestly if it wasn't for Toby the poor boy would've broken down.
Toby helped Jim get back home and made him lay on the couch for a while.
"And you don't have like a spare hidden around?" Toby hollered out, double checking the bathroom cabinets. He padded back down the stairs to see Jim groaning into the pillows. "Oh boy this is worse than last time."
Jim pulled the pillow off of his face, "I don't feel so good, Mr. Domzalski."
"Don't you dare pull that on me!"
"The pain is real!"
"Oh my Guillermo," Toby slapped his forehead, "I think you're ready to play Romeo, Jimbo."
"If I can get my meds," Jim squeezed his eyes shut and reach over for his phone. Learning from earlier, Jim had the brightness all the way down as he speed dialed his mom. "Nope, straight to voice mail again."
"Well she'll be home soon." Jim threw his best friend a doubtful look and shimmied over to lie on his stomach and press his face into the pillow. "Jim, you should be on your back so you can, yah know, be able to breath."
Toby could barely hear the muffled, "Head hurts!"
He heard Toby walk over and then felt the boy pat his back gently. "I'll go whip up some good old fashion chicken noodle soup. Nothing like Nana's recipe to help a growing boy as she likes to say."
Jim made an effort to grunt out a thanks but it must of have gotten lost in the pillow as he tried to sleep. It felt more like lucid dreaming. He can clearly hear Toby in his kitchen, using the medium size pot and oh how weird that he knows the specifics.
But that's the least of his worries as he scratched at his head, the twin pressures that returned with a force of agony. Jim thinks that he's biting on the pillow because his jaw bone has the unpleasant sting again.
It feels all too slow and he digs his nails into his scalp, trying to scratch away the pain and it turns sharper once he realizes that he must have scratched some skin off. Jim squeezed his hands, gaining some self-control to see blood under his finger nails.
Mindlessly he licked away the specks of blood, almost satisfied with the taste.
Then he looks at his hands and sees blue.
He just licked away the red smudges of blood and now there's blue something specked on his hands. Weirdly his first reaction is to lick and chew it away but no, it's his skin that's blue.
Jim shucked off his jacket wildly, gaining Toby's attention.
"Hey Jim, everything al-"
Both boys stared at Jim's arms, patches of blue skin tone seeping seamlessly with his usual complexion. And then Jim attempted to scratch it all away in a panic.
"Jim, stop!" Toby ran over to get a hold of his friend's shaky hands and sharp nails. Jim's arms now had red dripping into this mess. "Jim, look at me."
The boy's eyes are wide and he's starting to breathe too fast. "Toby, what's going on? My allergies, what, what's happening?"
Too confused and scared at the abnormal changes, Jim peers at his arms, the blueness hasn't spread but he notices how his nails changed to a pure white hue and gotten sharper and inhuman.
Jim's barely aware that Toby's been patting his cheeks. They're both scared but Toby knows that his mind is far clearer and makes the decision to let go of Jim to call Dr. Lake. The moment he got the lady's number ringing Toby feels the air shift and hears the door slam.
A cold weight drops into his stomach as he saw his best friend zip away in only a matter of seconds into the fading light of the sun.
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After his training in the Forge, Kanjigar goes to the surface, comforted by the late evening sky as the sun winks out from the horizon. He still has the gem of day walking but he won't make a habit of using it. He needs to keep trolls and human matters far away from each other.
It might not be entirely possible but a troll can hope.
He thinks this because the two worlds are already as chaotic as they can get. A mixture of the two has already been attempted by the race of the changelings, a truly horrible experiment.
Kanjigar continues his trek through the woods, keenly aware of any movement from either man or animal. With the looming threat of Bular, he's been risking a lot of time on the surface, attempting to catch any track of his misdeeds, hence the purpose of the gem of day walking.
It was a suggestion from Vendel to push the boundaries of the Amulet and with the title of Courageous how could Kanjigar refuse?
He walks this path alone to shield his kin from the dangers that Bular has likely plague upon the humans. Lady Lake has shared her suspicions of Bular acting on the violent quality of eating humans. Kanjigar knows that as the Trollhunter he's supposed to protect both sides of the world.
Kanjigar admits that he has already failed one side of it with his inaction on human affairs. Explaining his incapability translated into excuses for Lady Lake. She's not wrong.
Lady Lake has wisdom from her own ancestors, each one different from what Vendel has said. The Elder tells him that the current one is far more engaged despite the anonymous calls. Kanjigar patiently waits for further insight on that but for now he walks.
That's when he smells it, blood of an impure.
He hasn't smelled that type of scent since he caught Draal coming back from a battle with a changeling years ago.
The Trollhunter chases after the source. It moves fast, away from the lights of human domesticity. Something must have gone array, Kanjigar justifies, likely its mask was cracking and it's fleeing to its master.
Fleeing to Bular.
No, Kanjigar must intervene and soon he catches up to the changeling. It runs clumsily, disregarding the natural stealth of its kind. Running up to the changeling, Kanjigar sees how small it is and how it is whimpering, destressed.
The changeling is unstable, that's dangerous. Kanjigar wastes no time to tackle the whelp, pinning it to the forest floor.
"You're done for the night, impure," Kanjigar sneers.
He expects fiery insults about his ancestors, of labels of being a brute and slave to Merlin. Instead the whelp just screams, scrabbling under his weight.
The changeling flails its limps and sobs out, "Oh my Guillermo, please, please don't kill me!"
"Gill-mo?" He tries to say.
The babbling of last words continues much to the Trollhunter's confusion. "There are so many recipes I want to try! I want to graduate and actually have a real conversation with Claire. Toby, oh man Toby, I'm so sorry. Why did I run? I look like a monster! I'm blue? Why am I blue? Is it because my eyes are blue or because I wear my blue jacket way too much? No, oh no Mom!"
Finally the words stop but Kanjigar doesn't feel any better when the whelp cries out for its mother.
If this is the changeling's signature move to catch the enemy off guard, well it's working. But what kind of battle tactic is crying for mom?
The wailing go silent and Kanjigar realizes that he spent way too long just staring oddly at the other troll.
"Please let me go," the whelp whimpers and oh Deya, this truly is a whelp, only a babe. His eyes hold an innocence that only a father can know. Draal once had those clear eyes, long time ago before he ever picked up a weapon.
Kanjigar slowly moves off of the boy but still keeps a tight grip on his scruff. Well no, there's no real scruff actually so he holds on tightly to the boy's shoulders.
"I'm not going to kill you," Kanjigar said slowly, trying to calm the boy. He wants to threaten an 'unless' because this is still a changeling but now standing over the boy he sees the stubs of horns. They barely poke out. He only notices them because of the speckles of blood at scratched skin.
Narrowing his eyes, Kanjigar tries to get a better look at the boy's skin in the moonlight.
It's in a human skin tone, squishy and too soft to be considered troll. And yet there are patches of blue on the boy's arms. Kanjigar may not know the skin tenderness of humans but he knows the skins of trolls and changelings. This boy barely qualifies at one. For Avalon's sake Kanjigar can't even see his tiny tusks!
The boy still stares at Kanjigar with horror, as if he's as menacing as Bular.
The thought disgusts him so Kanjigar speaks to the boy like he once did to a young Draal, "I'm sorry for attacking you. I believed you to be," he coughs, "be a nefarious, old troll."
His weak smile does nothing to ease the boy. He glances at the hand still clutching his shoulder and back to Kanjigar. He utters out, "Troll?"
"Yes a troll," Kanjigar knocks on his horns for emphasis but gets confused at the boy's growing confusion. "Wait you do know what a troll is, yes?" The boy slowly shook his head. "But you are a troll or at least part?" Kanjigar takes a moment to process his own words, "Huh."
In that though process, he becomes oblivious to the boy's meltdown.
"What?" He shakily said, "No, this isn't happening. This is just my allergies. I must be hallucinating."
Instinctively, the Trollhunter said, "Hello Hallucinating, my name is Kanjigar the Courageous."
The boy slowly blinked and his ears, too small but still pointy, twitch.
"That's it!" The boy raises his arms above his head, shrugging off Kanjigar's lost grip. "I am dreaming!"
"Dear boy," Kanjigar weakly smiles, "please chose a name, Dreaming."
"ARGH!"
"Hmm, missed a few letters," he muttered.
The boy began to march off, "I'm going home!"
Wait.
"Wait!" Kanjigar quickly grabbed the collar of the boy's shirt, effectively stopping him, "I can't let you return to your familiar's household."
The boy raised an eyebrow at him, "Okay I barely understood that sentence. All I got is that you're not letting me go home."
Kanjigar quickly thinks. This whelp of a changeling ran into the woods panicked over his trollish features. He hurt himself until he bled, too confused and scared and… and new. He might not be able to shift like a mature changeling.
"Do you think it's wise to return still looking like this?"
That gets the boy to pause and he looks to his talons. The white of it still has some blood.
"I don't know what's going on," he admits, fisting his hands with a determination that matches Draal's, "but I'm going back to Toby, we can figure this out together."
"I'm afraid I can't let you do that," Kanjigar said, duty prevailing any other option. He can't let this changeling gossip a dangerous secret to presumably a human.
The changeling's ears twitch up and oh how young this whelp must be to be so expressive with merely his ears.
Kanjigar ignores the look of horror as he slams a heavy, armored fist onto the boy's head.
The boy drops to the ground with a groan.
The Trollhunter carefully takes the boy into his arms.
Vendel must have some insight on this right?
I've read so many canon rewrite fics and how I've written this.
Thanks for readying!