"A flower falls, even though we love it, and a weed grows, even though we do not love it." Dogen-zenji
.
.
.
.
It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day; misty and pastel, with an early-morning chill and the bare beginnings of birdsong.
There weren't enough people out to notice the yelling in the canal. It was too early.
"Yield, Kanjigar!"
In the foggy shadow of a concrete bridge, a troll in silvery armor pushed himself up with his blade, and glared at his darker opponent.
"A Trollhunter never yields," he spat.
Or sleeps, thought their watcher. It's too fucking early for a swordfight.
The misty morning made the fight a bit indistinct, but the yelling gave the figures away. The Trollhunter managed to land a punch, and his opponent skid to the edge of the shadow.
"Your turn, Bular," said the armored troll, his sword raised in challenge. "Yield."
Bular responded by kicking the Trollhunter across the shadow, forcing him to retreat.
"There is nowhere left for you to run, Trollhunter!" Bular taunted.
The watcher tensed as the Trollhunter ran up the side of the canal, jumping onto the underside of the bridge, far too close for comfort, but neither fighters noticed her, too intent on killing each other. Every once in a while they would get hit with sunlight, making an interesting sound and sparkle.
She had no regrets for being for being forced out of that trait.
Bular managed to pin the Trollhunter and shove him half into the morning light. He screamed in pain, part of his face and left shoulder turning into grey stone, but he managed to return the favor to Bular, who yanked away in a panic. The Trollhunter was weakened, it was easy to see; his left arm was half-paralyzed, he was out of breath, one eye had turned to stone. Bular was correct in his brag; either he or the sun would kill the Hunter, because Kanjigar was too weakened to survive the fight. Another Trollhunter, down.
"I may end," the Trollhunter rasped, half-leaning against a pillar. "But the fight will not."
He chose the sun! The watcher almost moved from her hiding-spot, trying to see everything clearly. He fucking chose the sun!
The Trollhunter leaned backward off the bridge, falling into the daylight. His skin crackled and sparkled with blue energy…
….and then a cloud covered the sun.
Kanjigar flailed for a moment and twisted, landing poorly. His partially-changed left fist hit the ground and cracked, massive chunks falling off of it. Above him, Bular screamed in rage.
The sound seemed to force the Hunter out of his shock, and he sprinted toward the watcher's side of the canal, hurling himself over the edge and into the park just as the cloud cover flew by.
"You're dying, Trollhunter," Bular roared after him, stuck in the shadowed underside of the bridge.
"How long do you think you'll last in open day? You'll be dead before the hour's up!"
The watcher couldn't see what the Hunter was doing, hidden inside of the infrastructure as she was. Bular snarled and growled, punching a pillar and shying away from the creeping sun.
She waited for twenty minutes after the son of Gunmar left, and then crept out of her hiding place and carefully picked her way across the underside of the bridge, coming up on the opposite side of the canal. It would take her longer to get home, but she didn't want to risk running into the Trollhunter, even if he was halfway to the edge of death.
.
.
.
.
Kanjigar watched from the shadow of a large tree as the stocky human climbed out of the canal and walked casually over to the next bridge, head sweeping from side to side occasionally, as if she was checking for watchers herself. The amulet pulsed as he slid a little farther down the trunk, his uninjured hand shaking in the effort to steady himself.
"I know, you blasted thing," he whispered, keeping a careful eye on the human. She crossed the other bridge back toward his side of the canal, and he wove through the shadows, trying to keep an eye on her. His balance was off; he only had one good hand, one working eye, and a dizzying headache was already forming, smothering over his mind like a heavy sheet. He struggled to remember his goal, occasionally losing sight of the human or getting distracted by the knowledge of his impending doom. As someone who had always had a clear mind and easy sight of his goals, the disorientation was more unnerving than the partial paralysis in his arm and face.
He caught up with the human on the edge of the park, trudging as quietly as he could, hissing as patches of the rising sunlight filtered through the treetops and stung him. There was a discarded blanket kicked underneath a bench and he threw it over himself, dodging and weaving behind human vehicles and dwellings as best as he could.
The human didn't seem to be sensible of her follower; she walked calmly for several streets, barely looking around anymore. A key appeared in her hand and she let herself into a tall building.
The amulet flashed again, and Kanjigar wrenched himself away from where he had been leaning, crossing the street in a hurry and laboriously pulling himself up the iron staircase apparatus attached to the side of the human's dwelling.
"Alright, you, give me some help," he muttered. His words were slurred, more than they should have been with the amount of dead stone on his face, and he knew that the creeping damage the sun had given him was beginning to affect his brain.
The amulet flashed when he reached a window a quarter of the way up, and he unceremoniously punched the glass in, falling through the opening with little grace. The human had not entered yet.
His stone hand was clumsy in its attempts to close the curtains and darken the room; half of it was from the paralysis, but Kanjigar knew that the other half was fear. Bular was right – he would be dead before the hour was up. The amulet had already chosen his successor, as unnerving as that was to feel. And it chose a human. Not his son, as he had hoped, or another troll, as it had since it had been created.
Of course, he could go back to Trollmarket and get help, but for what? A Trollhunter with one working hand and eye, and brain damage severe enough to impair his judgement?
He was sorely tempted. Sorely tempted. He would live however long it took him to get fed up. But what would become of Trollmarket with a Hunter incapable of defending it?
His good hand was already twitching toward the sun-lit curtain when the door in the next room opened and shut, the sound of a lock echoing in the quiet. A jangle of keys, the thud of boots on the floor. Then silence. He turned around, and the human was standing in the doorway, looking as if she was going to have a heart attack.
"Please, do not scream," he said. Or, he tried to. The words didn't come out quite as he intended.
The human watched, still as stone, as he achingly stood up from his hunch. His head was tall enough to brush the ceiling, and she wavered a bit, leaning against the doorframe.
"My name is Kanjigar," he said slowly. "I am a troll, and I do not have much time to tell you what you need to know."
The human's eyes flashed toward the window and then back to him; he struggled to retain his balance, head pounding horribly, as she looked at his damaged arm and face, the shaking of his one good hand, the armor covering his body.
"In short, you have been chosen as my successor, the next Trollhunter. It is your destiny, your honor, to defend both the troll and the human world from those that would threaten them. You will need this…"
His fingers were disgracefully clumsy as he pried the amulet out of the breastplate, making the armor fade away. He held it out to the human and she shook her head.
"I'm not the Trollhunter," she whispered. Kanjigar felt a sudden jolt of annoyance and he quickly strode over to her, looming head, shoulders, and chest over her diminutive form.
"Perhaps you do not understand," he said. "This is not a choice. You have been chosen."
"I know what the Trollhunter is," said the human quietly, looking him dead in the eye. "And I know I can't be it."
He glared at her in confusion before her words really hit him.
Oh.
Ohhh….
"You are a Changeling," he said. A brief glow in her eyes answered him.
He was not so much shocked as…mildly surprised and slightly agitated. The amulet did have an unusual sense of humor, after all.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply; the motion made him dizzy again and he had to grasp the doorway to stay on his feet. When he opened his eyes, the Changeling was still there, looking incredibly uncertain and more than a little bit afraid.
"…Nevertheless," The Hunter murmured, holding out the amulet again. "My time has come, and it has chosen you. This is not something you can refuse."
The Changeling hesitated and he said, "Just take the blasted thing," the unusual agitation building again. She snatched it out of his hand and held it like it was going to burn her, and when it didn't, she closed her fist around it and held it to her chest.
"What now," she said quietly. Kanjigar pulled away from the doorway and slowly moved to the window. The glow of sunlight was almost bright enough to burn. A Changeling Trollhunter, heh. This will be exceedingly interesting.
"Now…my task is done."
He stood in front of the window and felt the heat, the warmth that had taken his arm and eye.
"The call will be heard when I am felled. Sooner or later, someone should come."
"What are you – "
"Please do your best to protect them." He had never pleaded before, not to anyone, but despite his surety of the amulet's power he was shaky about its actual decision.
"They will not accept this," said the Changeling, close beside him. He had not heard her approach.
"Prove yourself," he replied. "You are more than what you were made to be. Prove yourself."
He forced his left arm across his chest, balanced as best he could, and threw open the curtain. The light burned as he pulled his right arm over his left, but the pain faded into a release, and he fell into the Void on the edge of the new Trollhunter's cry.
.
.
A/N: I stayed up until two am trying to find the perfect symbolic name for this bitch without it sounding too Mary-Sue-ish or, god forbid, too ebony-dark'ness-dementia-raven-way-ish. Alexandra means 'defender' and Clover means clover, which is a useful weed. She's a defender of weeds. Ugh.
So I would have made a Changeling-Strickler-Trollhunter story but I'm just not that into Strickler yet, so here's an OC.
So the damage that Kanjigar got from the sun looked pretty permanent; he could barely move his left arm and the left side of his face was nearly hopeless. With the amount of damage he got to his skull, I'm going to say that brain damage is a definite possibility, which is why he is out of character. The areas of the brain that would have been affected were places that controlled speech muscles, emotion, impulse control, judgement, and short-term memory. I highly doubt that he would have broken into someone's apartment and shoved the amulet into their face with a clear mind, no matter how little time he had.