As Blinky and the oddly smug Kanjigar entered the Hero's Forge, the first sight to greet their eyes was Draal the Deadly, Kanjigar's son and the self-proclaimed 'rightful heir of the amulet'.
It looked to Blinky like Draal had spent the day battering the Forge's training equipment to pieces. All around him sat piles of broken dummies, stone chunks, metal shards, and wooden scraps. At Draal's side was Aaarrrgghh, a former general of Gunmar, dividing the trash into further piles as he sorted through it all.
As soon as Draal laid eyes on his father, his mouth erupted in a wide smile. As Blinky had, Draal ran to greet Kanjigar with a hug. Blinky could swear he saw Kanjigar gently trying to pry Draal off of him, but Draal was too enveloped in the hug to notice. Blinky went to greet Aaarrrgghh.
"Blinky!" Aaarrrgghh joyfully lifted Blinky off the ground with his brute strength.
"Hello, old friend. How have you been?" Blinky asked.
"Helping Draal clean." He motioned his head to the piles of trash. "Was waiting for you. Gone long time."
"Indeed I was. I needed to see that our Trollhunter was alright."
"Thought Kanjigar didn't like you spy on him."
"What? I was not spying on him," Blinky insisted. "I was merely waiting for him to return." He thought his excuse sounded pretty good, but Aaarrrgghh shook his head.
"Sorry. Kanjigar told me to tell you no more following him."
Blinky sighed. He had to accept this.
"Alright, old friend … But would it hurt to check on him every once in a while?"
He offered a small smile. Aaarrrgghh gave him a stern look in return, that said Blinky had best not. The two trolls turned their attention back to the father and son in time to see Kanjigar extract himself from Draal's embrac
"Now that we have that out of the way," said Kanjigar, "I would like you, Blinkous, to escort me to your library."
"But Kanjigar … you already know where my library is. You helped me build it when we got here, remember?"
"I did?" asked Kanjigar. "I mean, I did! I shall go look for – I mean, walk to it."
He turned around abruptly. Blinky watched in confusion as Kanjigar left the Hero's Forge. Aaarrrgghh began to sort through the piles of trash again.
"Does Kanjigar seem a little odd to you?" Blinky asked Draal and Aaarrrgghh.
"No," said Draal simply. "Why?"
"It's just, how could he forget the way to my library when he was the one who suggested where to put it?"
"Don't know," said Aaarrrgghh. "Maybe tired from battle."
"Aaarrrgghh has a point, Blinky," Draal agreed. "I don't think anything is wrong with my father a day's rest won't fix."
Blinky considered this. Kanjigar had spent the day hiding on the surface, which would strain any troll. But forgetting something so basic, and that peculiar expression on his face when they returned to Trollmarket, and the almost spiteful look when he'd pulled away from his son …
What if they're right? Does that mean I'm going mad? No, surely not. I must have seen something.
Of course, Blinky had also spent the day hiding on the surface. Perhaps the stress of that had gotten to him and he was reading too much into tiny, innocuous actions.
Yes. It was probably nothing. Everything was fine.
This chapter has been edited by Forever-Furuba.