Welcome to the Darklands

by Richard Ashley Hamilton

  “Looks like Skarlagk’s been digging for Triumbric Stones of her own,” Jim said.

  Scanning the shelves, Jim’s eyes landed on a hunk of emerald-like crystal. It shone with the same eerie green glow that permeated everything else in the Darklands. The glow called to the Trollhunter, bringing him closer.

  Finding some beat-up gem-cutting tools nearby, he took the emerald from the shelf and set it carefully on a worktable. Following the methods that Vendel had taught him only weeks ago, Jim used the tools to carve the green stone. He concentrated, chiseling along the ridges, cleaving off the dull parts, and losing himself in the task. When he was done, Jim held up a brilliant emerald shard in the palm of his hand.

  “I wonder if . . . ,” Jim began, looking down at the space where his Amulet used to be.

  As if in response, a compartment in the empty circle opened to accept the gem, just as the Amulet had done with the Triumbric Stones. Jim inserted the shard and watched the engravings on his Eclipse Armor suddenly shift to neon green. The effect only lasted for a second before the red returned. Yet Jim still felt somehow . . . different with this new stone loaded into his armor. Before he could even guess as to why, a flaming foot kicked open the metal door behind him.

  “HANDS!” shouted Rob as he barged into the tower, ready to throw flames. “Show me your hands, creep, unless you want me to drop you like the rest of Doctor Despot’s goons!”

  Jim instinctively raised his hands like he’d been caught doing something illegal, then remembered who he was dealing with.

  “Rob, for the last time, there is no Doctor Despot, and you are not Gun Robot!” Jim griped.

  “Your answer scans as true on Gun Robot’s lie detector,” said Rob in his robot voice.

  The Heetling then did a somersault and sprang back up by the spire’s open window, as if searching for intruders. He looked down at the Nyarlagroth queen carrying them—and the rest of Skarlagk’s mobile base—over a dune of gray gravel.

  “What happened to you back at the labyrinth?” Jim asked.

  “Well, after we got separated, I went back through the maze, trying to retrace your steps,” Rob explained. “But I must’ve taken a left when I should’ve gone right. Anyway, long story short, I found the shish-kebabed Nyarlagroth, followed the Gumm-Gumm footsteps leading away from it, and tracked the slime trails left behind by their rides. Ta-da!”

  Rob then leaned closer to Jim and whispered, “By the way, I’d watch out with Skarlagk. She’s got more loose screws that Gun Robot after his cage match with—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get the picture,” Jim said, waving away Rob. “Although my first clue was probably the way she carries her father’s severed head in her purse.”

  “I see you’ve found my Crystal Spire,” came a female Gumm-Gumm voice from behind them.

  Jim froze in place, while a wide grin danced across Rob’s flaming face.

  “Jim, you know that part in Gun Robot 3?” Rob asked. “When Gun Robot’s partner bad-mouths their lieutenant—only to turn around and find out that the lieutenant’s been right behind him the whole time, listening to everything he said? This is just like that!”

  Jim winced in embarrassment. Sure enough, Skarlagk loomed humorlessly behind him.

  “I, uh . . . I’m sorry, Skarlagk,” Jim said with a dry cough.

  “Worse has been said about me, I assure you,” Skarlagk replied before tossing what looked like a leather pouch into Jim’s hands. “Drink.”

  Jim felt liquid swirling around inside of it, like a canteen, and looked up at Skarlagk with gratitude in his eyes.

  “Is this water?” Jim asked.

  “More or less,” Skarlagk answered.

  That was good enough for Jim. He removed the cap at the end and drank deeply. It tasted slightly salty and sour, but at least it was wet. With each chug, Jim’s throat soothed and his headache faded. He drained the pouch of its contents, his long thirst now quenched.

  “Thank you,” Jim said as he tried to return the canteen to Skarlagk.

  “That bladder is yours to keep,” said Skarlagk.

  “I’m sorry, did you say bladder?!” Jim asked, now holding the pouch at arm’s length from his disgusted face. “You cleaned this thing out before giving it to me . . . right?”

  “More or less,” Skarlagk answered again. “But we have more pressing matters ahead of us. Even now, the Nyarlagroth queen moves my compound ever closer to Gunmar’s. Soon, you and I shall unite behind the power of your Eclipse Armor and eradicate the Skullcrusher from this and every other world.”

  “And just before you finish him off, I’ll deliver an awesome closing line,” added Rob. “Like ‘Pop goes the Gunmar!’ Or ‘You’ve just been Trollhunted!’ ”

  Skarlagk and Jim just stared at Rob before resuming their conversation. Not that Rob seemed to mind. He turned back into a fireball and began bouncing around the tower.

  “Okay, Skarlagk,” Jim resumed. “I swear. And once Gunmar’s out of the way, we will locate the Changeling nursery and free Enrique.”

  Skarlagk regarded Jim as if he was crazy and asked, “Why would we ever do that?”

  “To, um, save all the babies that are trapped in there?” said Jim not quite understanding the question.

  “Ah, you misunderstand, Trollhunter,” Skarlagk answered. “You cannot free anyone from the Changeling nursery, for it—and everything inside it—will be burned to the ground.”

  “WHAT?!” Jim roared, the engraved lines in his Eclipse Armor also flaring in outrage. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing! You actually expect me to . . . to . . .”

  The Trollhunter took a deep breath, centering himself. Even his armor seemed to cool as he calmed down and tried speaking again.

  “Skarlagk,” Jim resumed. “I think it’s you who misunderstood me. I could never, ever agree to hurting anything as innocent as a child. There has to be another way.”

  “There is no other way,” Skarlagk said without hesitation. “I will not rest until every last trace of Gunmar—including the Changeling nursery—has been obliterated from existence.”

  “Then you’ll have to do it over my dead body,” Jim vowed as the Sword of Eclipse manifested in his hand.

  He twirled the blade once to loosen his wrist, readying to battle, if need be. Skarlagk calmly removed two spears from her quiver and said, “I am prepared to make that sacrifice—and many more—in pursuit of my revenge.”

  She sharpened her spearheads against each other, grinding out sparks with each scrape. The embers caught Rob’s attention as he ping-ponged across the tower. He finally came to a stop in his humanoid form between Jim and Skarlagk.

  “Whoa, you can cut the tension in here with a bone saw, amiright?” Rob joked. “But seriously, folks, this’s just like the time Gun Robot and Sally-Go-Back fought in—”

  “Not. Now,” Jim warned, far from laughing.

  “Know that you will not have died in vain, Trollhunter,” Skarlagk said. “For once I rip the Sword of Eclipse from your lifeless hand, I will use it to finish Gunmar in the way that you clearly could not.”

  Jim tightened his fingers around his sword. Skarlagk did the same with her spears. With their brief pact dissolved, the Trollhunter and Gumm-Gumm charged at each other. But before their weapons could clash, a thunderous explosion rocked the entire fortress.

  “Fire in the hole!” yelled Rob as the shockwave sent him and Jim to the quaking floor.

  Another blast hit the spire, punching a large smoking hole through the wall. Skarlagk rushed over to it and gaped outside. The spears slipped out of her hands and dropped onto the cinders at her feet.

  “Not yet,” were the only words Skarlagk could muster.

  Jim ran over to the smoldering crater and looked out. The color drained from his face.

  “Oh no,” said Jim.

  Peering through the hole, down the tower, and across the Darklands’ unforgiving terrain, Jim saw an immense Gumm-Gumm army overtake Skarlagk’s fortress. Thousands of s
oldiers swarmed the recoiling Nyarlagroth queen and began climbing the walls built on her back with axes and grappling hooks. At the same time, Gumm-Gumm archers shot flaming arrows, while the biggest catapults Jim had ever seen launched blazing green boulders.

  “It’s Gunmar,” Skarlagk finally admitted. “He’s ambushed us.”

  Moving with impressive speed for a Troll of her size, Skarlagk grabbed Rob by his sizzling neck and clamped down. If his flames hurt her calloused hands, Skarlagk didn’t show it.

  “You!” she hissed. “You told them where to find us! That’s what you were up to before your convenient arrival just now!”

  “You—GAK!—got it all wrong!” said Rob as he gasped for air. “Gun Robot ain’t—URK!—no punk informer!”

  Jim vanished his Sword of Eclipse and tried to get between Skarlagk and Rob, whose fire was dimming without oxygen.

  “Skarlagk, stop!” Jim shouted. “This won’t solve anything! The only way we’ll have even a chance of surviving this is if we stick togeth—”

  He never got to finish the thought. Another molten boulder smashed through the wall, sending the Trollhunter plummeting out of the spire and to his doom.

  CHAPTER 13

  SUNK

  “Okay, let’s keep calm,” said Claire as water continued to pour into her Graven Garb. “Just focus on getting inside the Kelpestrum. Once we’ve got the mask, I can teleport us back to the gyre with my Shadow Staff.”

  “And there’s our way in!” Draal yelled as his visor started to buckle too.

  He pointed his metal arm at a set of giant gills on the Kelpestrum’s neck. The slits were each at least ten feet tall, and they fluttered open and closed as the Deep-Sea Troll breathed in and out. Following Draal’s lead, the group swam closer to the Kelpestrum’s gills.

  “Um, are we sure this’s gonna work?” questioned Toby.

  Before anyone could answer, the gills reopened, and a powerful current sucked them all inside the Kelpestrum.

  Everything went dark and topsy-turvy as they passed through the Troll’s respiratory system. To Toby, it felt like he was going down the world’s most dangerous water-flume ride, but with all the lights turned off. Then, a tremendous flood of seawater deposited Draal, Blinky, Toby, NotEnrique, and Claire’s bodies in a heap within the Kelpestrum.

  “Ugh,” groaned NotEnrique as he shimmied up to share Claire’s visor. “Now I know what toilet paper feels like after it’s been flushed!”

  “Please, no more—URP!—potty talk.” Toby belched as he held his queasy stomach. “I’m still not over that taco incident in the gyre. Super—URP!—no bueno!”

  The teammates helped one another up—it was a bit of a struggle with their bulky Graven Garb—and got their bearings. The gems on their suits lit up in the darkness, illuminating the air-filled cavern. Blinky held his four hands against the damp algae-covered walls and felt them rise and fall in a steady rhythm.

  “We appear to be in his gullet,” Blinky marveled. “Now it’s just a matter of searching the entire Kelpestrum from stem to stern—over and over again, if need be—until we find that scarcest of Troll relics: the extraordinarily unique Glamour Ma—”

  “Hey, are those some over here?” Toby asked, pointing down at, like, ten Glamour Masks floating in the water around his feet.

  “Oh. Well, that was remarkably easy,” Blinky said.

  “Way to go, Tobes!” Claire cheered as she scooped up all the masks before Toby could. “But you’d better let me hold them. No offense.”

  “None taken!” said Toby, receiving four pats on the back from Blinky, plus two stronger ones from Draal. “Just between us fleshbags, I was feelin’ pretty guilty about dropping that last Glamour Mask! I thought I’d really let Jim down and doomed . . . us . . . all. . . .”

  Claire, NotEnrique, Blinky, and Draal all squinted at Toby as his voice trailed off and his eyes grew wide. They turned around and immediately saw why he was having trouble forming new words. Dozens and dozens of Volcanic Trolls crept out from the Kelpestrum’s innards, their weapons all trained on the trespassers.

  “Volcanic Trolls!” Toby finally said. “I thought these guys only hung around Gatto!”

  “I’m afraid they infest all giant Trolls, like mindless parasites,” Blinky explained.

  Claire handed the masks to Blinky, pulled out her Shadow Staff, and extended it. The handle darkened as she prepared to teleport everyone out of the Kelpestrum.

  “Get ready to shadow-jump, gang!” Claire said.

  But before she could open a black hole, a Volcanic Troll reached out and snatched the staff from her hands.

  “Hey!” Claire and NotEnrique yelled at the same time. “Give that back!”

  They went after her Shadow Staff, but several more Volcanic Trolls spilled into the Kelpestrum’s gullet, blocking them. Blinky and Draal stood protectively in front of Claire and NotEnrique, while Toby unstrapped his Warhammer from his Graven Garb.

  “I already failed my best friend once today,” Toby said, his eyes set in determination. “We’re getting out of here with these Glamour Masks, even if I have to fight every single, last one of you Volcanic Trolls.”

  As the mute Volcanic Trolls closed in, Draal cracked his knuckles and grinned. He took another step forward ahead of Blinky and said, “Now that sounds like my kind of escape plan!”

  CHAPTER 14

  THE HORDE UNLEASHED

  Across the Dunes of Desolation, Gunmar watched his legions of Gumm-Gumms descend upon Skarlagk’s nomadic castle. Even from this distance, he could hear his line of catapults smashing the fortress walls.

  “The siege goes as planned, Dark Underlord,” Dictatious reported as he clambered up to the top of the same dune where Gunmar stood. “Soon, Skarlagk’s rebellion will be extinguished, and your rule of the Darklands shall be absolute.”

  “That’s not enough,” Gunmar said. “I want that traitorous grunt to suffer, just as her father suffered. Release . . . my Horde.”

  “By your command, Warbringer,” said Dictatious before he cupped his four hands over his mouth and blew a piercing whistle that carried over the dunes.

  At the frontlines of battle, the Gumm-Gumms heard Dictatious’s signal and wheeled forward several oversized cages made from those same orange crystal spikes. The spikes retracted and the Gumm-Gumms stood clear as Gunmar’s Horde burst out of their confines. Hundreds of Helheetis, Stalklings, and Antramonstrum galloped, flew, and spread across the battlefield toward the rebel fortress.

  “Sire, it’s . . . breathtaking!” exclaimed Dictatious from their dune. “After centuries of planning—of smuggling young Helheetis, Stalklings, and Antramonstrum from the surface through the Fetches—your Horde runs wild!”

  “And they say nothing grows in the Darklands,” Gunmar mused as the rebel alarms rang.

  The airborne Stalklings were the first to strike Skarlagk’s stronghold. With earsplitting screams, the Vulture Trolls dive-bombed the rebel base, nearly knocking down the tallest tower—and Jim along with it.

  The Trollhunter hung on to the side of the spire from a pair of brand-new whips. Crackling with neon green energy, they first appeared in Jim’s flailing hands as he fell toward certain death. The whips had surged out of the Eclipse Armor, courtesy of the emerald gem in his chest plate. Reacting on pure survival instinct, Jim swung the whips blindly, managing to wrap them around the flagpole atop the tower. He dangled there, breathless, but alive.

  “Seriously?!” Jim shouted as another Vulture Troll buzzed him. “Stalklings? How could this day get any worse?”

  Looking down, Jim saw scores of Gumm-Gumms grappling up the tower toward him.

  “Boy, I really fell into that one, didn’t I?” Jim asked rhetorically.

  Left with nowhere to go, the Trollhunter saw another incoming airstrike. Jim loosened one of the whips from the flagpole and lashed it toward the swooping Vulture Troll. The fluorescent whip cracked through the air and fastened around the Stalkling’s beak. Releasing the secon
d whip from the flagpole, Jim held on to the first for dear life. The Vulture Troll pulled him off the tower and away from the Gumm-Gumms who had nearly snagged him.

  As the Stalkling spiraled out of control, Jim started to feel airsick. Ignoring his nausea, he arced the second whip forward and wrapped it, too, around the creature’s beak. Jim pulled himself onto its back and started to tug left and right on his whips, piloting the Stalkling as he had seen Skarlagk pilot her Nyarlagroth.

  “Oh, Tobes, if you could see me now!” Jim exclaimed, finally feeling in control again.

  But Jim’s smile faded just as quickly as it had appeared. Once again, he forced himself not to think of his best friend or any of the others he’d left behind.

  No time for stuff like that, Jim thought as he looked at the chaos below him. This is war.

  Pulling down on his whips, Jim drove the Stalkling lower. They skimmed across the top of the battlefield, with Jim staying low on the Vulture Troll’s back to avoid detection. Using the whips as reins, Jim guided the Stalkling over Gumm-Gumms’ armored heads, under swinging catapult arms, and between barrages of blazing arrows. Now yanking up on the whips, Jim arced the Stalkling over Skarlagk’s besieged fortress.

  “Thanks for the joyride,” Jim shouted. “But here’s where I get off.”

  The Trollhunter slid his whips off the Stalkling’s beak and jumped clear of its back. The Vulture Troll watched Jim land safely on one of the obsidian ramparts—right before it flew smack into the rebel flag flapping on the tower. The flag ripped from the pole and enveloped the Stalkling. Unable to see, it crashed into one of the catapults which, in turn, knocked into another catapult.

  From the fortress’s roof, Jim watched more catapults tip over and into one another, like a row of dominoes. The Gumm-Gumms manning them fled in terror as the catapults’ flaming boulders set fire to the overturned war machines.