Being much smaller than the other bodies around him, Jim snuck his way to the front of the line. He vanished his helmet and held out his hand, just like the rest. The silver fingertips of Jim’s gauntlet immediately caught Ballustra’s attention. But when she looked into the palm, she didn’t see rubies or diamonds. She saw something far more precious. Ballustra gaped at Jim, her widened eyes locking with his.
“Where did you—?” she began, before rethinking it. “Never mind. I . . . I’m far too busy.”
Ballustra reached out for more payments, only to notice her customer base had thinned considerably. Behind her, Jim remained rooted, his hand still outstretched. He said, “Take a day off. We insist.”
AAARRRGGHH!!!, Blinky, Claire, Toby, and a wheezing Merlin had positioned themselves at the border of Ballustra’s weapons bazaar, beating back any prospective clients and buying Jim time—just like he knew they would. The other Garden and River Trolls that had been clustered around him returned to the fray, leaving Jim alone with Ballustra. She took one of the crystalline arrows from her crossbow and held it close to his exposed face.
“Tell your allies to stand down,” said Ballustra. “They’re bad for business.”
“But war’s good for business, isn’t it?” Jim shot back. “You wanted the River and Garden Trolls to stockpile your weapons, didn’t you?”
“You could never understand, Trollhunter,” Ballustra said, biting into each word. “Just as Kan—as the one who came before you never could.”
“Actually, Kanjigar did understand,” said Jim. “It may have happened a little later than either of you would’ve liked. But being a Trollhunter helped Kanjigar to see things from all sides . . . not just his own.”
Ballustra realized that her stance had grown slack. She tightened her grip on the arrow and brought it closer to Jim’s jaw. But the Trollhunter didn’t flinch.
“And I’m pretty sure I understand now too,” Jim continued. “I was so wrapped up in my own grief, I didn’t even bother to notice your own. Yesterday, I lost a friend. But today . . . today you found out you lost both a husband and a son.”
Ballustra screamed and swung her arrow. It missed Jim by a wide margin and snapped against the siege engine beside them. She stood there, motionless, panting, staring at the broken arrow in her hand.
“I’m so sorry for your losses, Ballustra,” Jim said softly. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through. But I can see you’re hurting. Just like I was. Still am, I guess.”
He watched Ballustra’s wide brow crease with the first admissions of heartbreak, and added, “My friends—my amazing friends—they told me everyone needs to handle pain in their own way. And I think yours is to turn that pain outward. To turn it into weapons.”
Time slowed to a crawl, and sound became a distant murmur to Ballustra. Slowly, she looked at the war raging around them. The storied feud between the River and Garden tribes had reached a feverish crescendo. Bombs flew. Bodies fell. And both tribes carpeted the cavern with the petrified husks of their slain soldiers—soldiers who still gripped Ballustra’s wares.
“How?” she finally asked. “How do I stop the pain?”
“I . . . I don’t really know,” Jim answered truthfully. “But Kanjigar promised that it will get better. With time . . .”
Ballustra stirred at the mention of her late husband’s name, and Jim extended his open hand to her once again. She looked down and, in the Trollhunter’s palm, she saw that which was more precious to her than rubies or diamonds. Ballustra saw a ring. Draal’s ring. A ring that had been her own, once upon a time.
“Draal loved to fight, but never to start wars,” said Jim. “He fought to end them.”
A single tear trickled from Ballustra’s eye as she looked up at the Trollhunter. She took the ring from his hand and reinserted it in her nose. Jim was struck by how much she now resembled Draal.
“I built those,” Ballustra said, gesturing to her various weapons on the battlefield. “And I alone know how to disarm them. In my smithy, I have a fail-safe, a—”
A low, otherworldly wail echoed through the ravaged cavern. Claire had to cover hear ears. The squeal sounded like the feedback she, Darci, and Mary would sometimes hear when their microphones got too close to the speakers during band rehearsals—only a million times worse.
“Oh, grumbly Gruesomes,” Blinky muttered in dreadful realization.
“What is it?” Toby yelled.
“I just told you!” Blinky yelled back.
Dozens of elongated, faceless creatures stretched into the cavern. Like a flock of carrion birds, they consumed the scraps of petrified Trolls littering the entire battlefield—including the spot in which Jim and his assembled friends now stood. With dawning horror, Blinky pointed his four hands at the pitiless scavengers swirling around them and shouted, “GRUESOMES!”
CHAPTER 15
GIANT WORM FOOD
“What the flip are those?!” Steve Palchuk shrieked.
He ducked behind the much smaller Eli Pepperjack, who adjusted his glasses and squinted at the three creatures burrowing under Barbara’s front lawn. Their bioluminescent dorsal blades tilled the earth, while the rest of them remained beneath the ground . . . for now.
“Th-those are the biggest creeps I’ve ever seen!” Eli stammered.
“Just wait until they grow to their full size,” said Strickler. “But why have Gunmar’s Nyarlagroths congregated around this block in particular . . . ?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa—back it up, turtleneck!” Steve interrupted. “Did you say ‘Gunmar’? As in, that one-eyed weirdo Pepperjoke mooned a couple of weeks ago? Surely you don’t mean that, Gunmar?”
“Ste-eve!” Eli whined. “Ix-nay on the ooning-may in front of the adies-lay!”
Now blushing with embarrassment, Eli turned to Barbara, dropped the Pig Latin, and pleaded, “Please don’t tell my mom, Dr. Lake! It wasn’t even me who mooned Gunmar! It was Romeo! Well, Romeo’s kinda me, but because of the Grit-Shaka, and—”
“You know what? I don’t even want to know,” Barbara said.
Everyone nearly lost their balance as the house’s foundations shuddered under their feet. Strickler steadied himself and said, “I suppose you were right all along, Barbara. We do need to leave this house. But we’d never slip past the Nyarlagroths. They may be blind, but they’ll feel our footsteps and swallow us whole before we even reach your car in the driveway.”
“Follow me,” said Barbara as she hurried to the garage.
Outside, the Nyarlagroth’s circled like subterranean sharks. But the endless churning stopped when the monstrous trio heard Barbara’s car alarm reverberate through the soil. Their eyeless heads broke through the ground, ravenous jaws snapping at the empty sedan.
While the Nyarlagroths were distracted by the alarm, the garage door opened, and Barbara Lake turned a key in the ignition of an altogether different vehicle. She raced out on Jim’s Vespa, with Strickler sharing the seat behind her. Steve followed on Jim’s borrowed bicycle, towing Eli, who coasted on his Zip Slippers and shouted, “Spectacular!”
Together, they bypassed the Nyarlagroths, which were still confounded by Barbara’s car alarm, but they braked hard once they hit the cul-de-sac. Another three eel creatures tunneled around Nana’s property, upsetting the flower beds. On the roof, just outside Toby’s bedroom window, Barbara spotted Nana, Dictatious under his sunproof cloak, and Chompsky with Sally strapped to his back.
“Scrambling the Nyarlagroths’ senses was pure genius, Barbara, but you can’t rescue everyone,” Strickler said matter-of-factly. “Best to step on the gas and save our own skins.”
“Walt!” Barbara protested. “Nana Domzalski has been my neighbor since Jim and Toby were toddlers. I will not leave that woman to be giant worm food!”
Strickler raised his hands in apology and said, “Fine. But we’ll need another distraction.”
Steve yanked the slingshot from Eli’s back pocket, loaded a rock into its elastic
band, and fired. The rock smashed into the rear windshield of Nana’s own car, setting off its alarm too.
“Steve, you can’t keep vandalizing old people’s cars!” Eli said. “We’re the good guys!”
“You wanted a distraction, didn’t you?” Steve replied.
Indeed, Steve’s ploy had worked. Nana’s alarm drew the attention of these three Nyarlagroths, just as Barbara’s alarm had confused the others. But now Barbara, Strickler, and the Creepslayerz heard the honking of a third car horn. The Nuñez family SUV turned a sharp corner and sped down the block, the final three Nyarlagroths trailing it. But the eels stalled once they got in range of the car alarms, paralyzed by the sonic assault.
Ophelia slammed on the brakes, stopping under Nana’s roof. Barbara, Strickler, and Steve climbed up the hood and helped Nana, Dictatious, and Chompsky down the rain gutter. As the others worked, Eli peeked in the SUV and saw Enrique and NotEnrique strapped into two baby seats. The little Changeling spit out his baba and said, “What’re you starin’ at, Dorkstone?”
Above them, Nana’s orthopedic shoe slipped on the gutter, but Steve managed to catch her. Nana batted her eyes and said, “Such a strapping young man! Just like my Horace!”
She planted a big, wet smooch on Steve, making him blush and shudder at the same time. He quickly passed Nana on to Strickler, then pawed the old lady kiss off his cheek. Barbara waved them over and said, “The sooner everyone piles in, the sooner we can drive away from these mutated gophers!”
“We’ll never escape them.”
Everyone turned to Dictatious, who stood on top of the SUV like a very bizarre hood ornament. His six milky eyes could not behold the sunset colors in the sky that so captivated his brother. And yet he saw things all too clearly. Dictatious stared ahead, adding, “Nyarlagroths can smell the stink of the Darklands on any who have traversed that dismal dimension . . . and all that they have touched.”
“So that’s why they’ve honed in on this neighborhood,” said Strickler. “Each of us has either come from the Darklands or knows someone who has.”
“Fine, we can’t outrun the Nyarla-whatevers,” Barbara accepted. “But is there a way to, I don’t know, send them back?”
“To the Darklands?” cried Dictatious. “But how?”
Strickler’s eyes flared yellow with an idea. Adopting his most professorial posture, he clapped the Creepslayerz’ backs and said, “Misters Palchuk and Pepperjack, how would you like to earn a little . . . extra credit?”
CHAPTER 16
DUST TO DUST
“And I thought I had a big appetite!” said Toby, both impressed and grossed out.
The Gruesomes swarmed the devastated cavern, bingeing on the ruins of war. Their sallow, rubbery faces bore no features, save for the gibbering maws that feasted upon the dead.
Watching the Gruesomes cannibalize the Troll parts triggered a flashback in Jim. He unwillingly recalled his time in the Darklands, when he saw an Antramonstrum do the same thing to a heap of slaughtered Gumm-Gumms.
“It . . . it’s horrible,” Claire managed to say.
“I disagree,” Merlin shared, not that anyone asked him. “True, many Trolls have died here this day. But their deaths make it possible for the Gruesomes to live. It’s a natural balance.”
Some of the surviving River and Garden Trolls turned away from each other. They used their weapons to poke at the creatures in morbid curiosity. Despite lacking nostrils, the Gruesomes sniffed the prodding Trolls, whose bodies had become dusted with the pulverized remains of their fallen comrades. Then, without warning, the Gruesomes unhinged their jaws and devoured the living Trolls in exaggerated gulps.
“I take it all back,” Merlin said, going pale. “The natural balance is terrible.”
Team Trollhunters looked down at their own bodies, similarly coated in dead Troll dust.
“RUN!” Jim yelled.
“More running?” Merlin moaned as everyone else took off ahead of him.
All around them, the River and Garden Trolls, once so heatedly entwined in combat, now fled from the Gruesomes and each other. AAARRRGGHH!!! tossed Toby and Claire onto his back, while Blinky sprinted alongside Jim and Ballustra.
“Master Jim, would it not be more advisable to flee in the other direction, rather than backtrack from whence we came?” said Blinky.
“The River and Garden tribes may be beating a retreat right now, Blink,” Jim said back. “But we all know they’ll go back to feuding once the Gruesomes eat their fill and move on.”
“They will war until no Troll is left standing,” Ballustra said. “Unless we reach my fail-safe—a kill switch that would sabotage every weapon I’ve built!”
“Armistice,” AAARRRGGHH!!! grumbled in understanding.
Howls—alien and piercing—sounded from behind as they reached the caved-in entrance to Ballustra’s workshop. Jim looked back and saw the Gruesomes close in, fluid forms corkscrewing around every obstacle in their path.
“Jim, you guys go on ahead without us,” Claire said, hopping off AAARRRGGHH!!!’s back. “We’ll buy you some time!”
She aimed her Shadow Staff at a lunging Gruesome, and opened another microscopic black hole. The vortex sucked up the insatiable invertebrate, pulling it apart like so much taffy. AAARRRGGHH!!! grabbed another before it could latch on to him. The normally gentle Troll stuffed the Gruesome’s hindquarters into its own mouth, like a snake eating its own tail.
“Oooh, nice ouroboros!” Toby complimented as he smashed a third with his Warhammer.
Jim led Blinky and Ballustra through the debris-clogged tunnel. They reached the smithy, which was a shambles, tools and tables overturned from explosions and looters.
“The kill switch must be here somewhere,” Ballustra said, digging through the detritus.
But her hands stopped when they grazed across something else. It was Draal’s cold, stone hand. Jim sensed Ballustra’s sudden stillness, then saw what she saw. The Trollhunter joined the grieving mother, sharing in her moment of silence.
“I don’t mean to be insensitive, but time is short,” Blinky said, four hands cupped to his ear so he could listen down the tunnel. “It sounds as if something’s slipped past our friends!”
He squinted his six eyes into the passage—right when a Gruesome sprang from the darkness. Blinky had barely ducked before it poured past him and into the workshop. The Gruesome’s blank face hissed with interest around Draal.
“Stay away from him!” shouted Jim, sweeping it away with his Sword of Daylight.
Ballustra rose, her posture supremely calm, and said, “No, Trollhunter. Let it pass.”
“But Draal’s body—” Jim started to say.
“Is mere rock now,” said Ballustra. “It will only weigh us down for the rest of our days.”
As her words struck Jim, Blinky backed toward them. He kept the salivating Gruesome at bay by swinging an odd device he’d just found. It looked like a wand, fitted with teal crystals and a central coil spun of fine wire filaments. Blinky was about to bash the Gruesome with the device when Ballustra snatched it away.
“This isn’t a club,” she said. “It’s my kill switch!”
“The fail-safe?” Jim asked, now roused from his worry.
Ballustra tucked it into the pouch on Blinky’s belt, while simultaneously removing something else. As the Gruesome squealed, Ballustra secreted whatever she’d just taken into her son’s rigid hand.
“Tell your team to admit the other Gruesomes,” she said.
“But your workshop . . . your home . . . ,” Jim began.
“I have all I need,” said Ballustra, her nose ring fluttering as she exhaled in acceptance.
Seeing the certainty in her eyes, Jim nodded to Blinky. The six-eyed Troll ran down the tunnel, out to the main cavern, and shouted: “My friends, a slight change of plans! Our Trollhunter now wants us to send in the Gruesomes for some Gorgus-forsaken reason!”
“I sure hope Jimbo knows what he’s doing!” said Toby,
using his Warhammer like a croquet mallet to punt a few Gruesomes into the tunnel.
“Me too,” said Claire while she and AAARRRGGHH!!! corralled several more.
Merlin stepped aside, permitting the final Gruesome to join the rest of its ilk, and said, “As do I . . .”
Inside the workshop, Jim and Ballustra witnessed Gruesome after Gruesome ooze through the tunnel. Once the last had arrived, Jim stopped swinging his Sword of Daylight. He and Ballustra leaped away from Draal, and the famished Gruesomes descended upon him like some grotesque tsunami. Their greedy mouths latched all over his body—including Draal’s hand, which still held the activated Dwärkstone grenades Ballustra had taken from Blinky’s pouch.
“Go down swinging, Draal,” said Jim.
He ushered Ballustra out of the workshop, then heard a series of controlled detonations behind them. Looking back, Jim saw an immense fireball shoot out of the workshop—and right at him. The Trollhunter pushed Ballustra out of the tunnel and quickly secured his helmet over his head. Buffeted by an intense wave of heat, he somersaulted clear of the incendiary blast. The fireball rocketed toward the cavern’s domed ceiling, lighting up the entire battlefield with its white-hot glare.
“Thanks,” Jim said through his soot-streaked faceplate as Ballustra helped him to his feet.
Toby, Claire, Blinky, and AAARRRGGHH!!! soon joined them. The Trollhunter’s faceplate vanished so Jim could get a good look at his friends—only to find one missing.
“Where’s Merlin?” he asked.
A giggle answered Jim’s question.
Porgon leered at Team Trollhunters from the center of the war zone. Dried mud caked his face, reminding Claire of those two masks—one smiling, one frowning—that symbolized comedy and drama. The Trickster Troll’s hexing arm manned the controls of Ballustra’s siege engine. And in his other hand, he held Merlin captive, the wizard’s unconscious body trussed in Garden Troll vines.
Seeing her cannon in enemy hands, Ballustra fished her fail-safe out of Blinky’s pouch.
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