Chapter Text
Metal scraped against stone. Once, then again, and again, and repeated until the material shone silver and sharp.
The stone was the arm of a large, ashen creature, and metal being one of their dreadful swords. They lifted the sharpened weapon, tested its quality carefully in the limited light, and then threw the blade at the thick tree, which was one of many protections from the sun. The edge struck the bark and sank deep into the wood, but not clean enough. The wood parted in chips and splinters away where it met the metal.
Letting out a disappointed snarl, the figure trudged back for their weapon and went to sharpen it again.
The sound of foliage crackling that surely wasn’t because of the wind made the creature stand straight in alert, but not because it was unexpected. They recognized the certain way the sticks and twigs sounded when they broke. Turning head, the figure found themselves face to face with another dark creature.
This one growled in a way that would sound amused , but it couldn’t be located in the outward scowl.
Their only eye, sharp and small, had been watching the younger one for several moments now. “The quality of your blade’s looks and performance does not account for the quality of it’s work .”
At this, the one with the blade rolled their eyes, not bothering to hide the condescending reaction. That sounded like something Stricklander would remark. All deities of whatever lives forbid that his father would ever pick something up from him .
His father. Gunmar the Black, the Dark Underlord, Skullcrusher. What part of his dignity would ever turn to be like the impure ? The mere thought was laughable. Maybe he was overthinking it.
Still, he paused the scraping and admired the mandible handle of the weapon instead. He would always heed to his father’s word without question, and he supposed he shouldn’t make this the exception. When he looked back at the ghastly form of the elder’s tar-colored body, he was once again reminded of how much he idolized the Dark Lord.
Gunmar’s need for power expressed from those around him along with the magical energy needed to make home in his stone, and Bular didn’t care when the Order reported him getting weaker from the lack of living minerals, but rather he saw his father as getting stronger by the day. After all, how could Gunmar the Black feel weak in any and all ways?
He believed— he knew his father raised and taught him right through the deadliest forms of combat and attempted hardiness through his mindset and emotions. Bular always thought Gunmar was flawless in this way, a dictator who felt nothing less than the grisly spirits which drove him to his impending might against all-kind. Bular wanted desperately to look his father in the eye and proudly state he was like him to have never given away to sentiment.
But despite that… feelings have always seemed to escape him.
The pain he felt when he witnessed the almighty Skullcrusher, powerful with the world nearly at his hands, being dragged into a hell all that time ago because of a damned pretentious fleshbag sorcerer who let a mere troll play with a trinket.
For so, so long, Bular had been nothing.
It was centuries until he finally got his father back, how he could finally see and talk to him without only gazing at an outline under a bridge, barely out of sight and definitely out of reach. How it was easy to get the Trollhunter to open the bridge, to guarantee the safety of a friend— a loud six-eyed fool who begged not to do anything of the sort. But the bridge did not remain open for long, and only Gunmar, a five other soldiers, and Gunmar’s advisor (who looked suspiciously similar to the loud six-eyed fool used as the bait) were the ones able to escape.
And, according to some of the changelings, because they sometimes always brought it up, this had happened… thirty, forty? years, such a short time for his kind. And yet, so long in a fleshbag timeline.
It was also nearly shocking how none of those who foiled their plan before hadn’t spotted the very few that had escaped, much less Gunmar. Though, just this once, he could give the changelings some credit. They were very good at covering tracks.
But, as also stated by them, covering some of their tracks would mean barely making any to begin
Being discreet was never the Gumm-Gumms’ best quality. But according to the Order, the less others know about Gunmar’s, and the few selected others’, release on Earth, the better chance they were able to get the rest of his army back. The better chance to have everything else under their power.
Bular’s loyalty stayed true to his father, to the power that held them as above. Nothing would ever deter him from that fact.
Pointed fingers dug into his shoulder, interrupting his wicked thoughts. He turned his head to see the Underlord sporting a toothy grin, malice shining in that singular eye.
“It is close to dark, my Prince. Let us go hunting , what say you?”
The ashen Gumm-Gumm matched his father’s smirk with his nearly identical one. As he stepped away to let the other lead through the protective shadows, Bular stopped, held up his blade, and sliced through the tree’s previous wound with the utmost precision.
He inspected the gash, waiting as if he expected the plant to bleed, before grinning and shoving the sword back in its sheath behind him. He followed the elder.
Maybe they would encounter something interesting today.
- ••
One lonesome car droned on the road under the warm toned sky.
From how the bright color was spread throughout most of the above, blanketing the few blues, and the yellow sun burning softly yet intensely in the midst of the horizon, one could take in the serene feel the scene portrayed. Such a pretty sight should mean the day would turn out as lovely as the warmth.
Only two occupants sat in the little teal vehicle, a woman at the front in the driver’s seat, with a kind, long face sporting hair the color of burnt umber tied behind her. She looked, and felt, tired, from the way she sloped while also pushing the glasses up her nose every time they slipped down so slightly. Behind her, but at the right seat, sat her son at about six years old. His black hair was short yet scuffled, not as neat as it was when he had it cut short for the first time. Blue eyes inherited from his mother were as bright and clear as day. Depeche Mode currently sang softly from the quiet tuned radio, filling the car for background entertainment.
“Bit quiet there, kiddo.” The mother tilted her head to the child’s direction, while smartly keeping her eyes on the otherwise empty road. “Anything on your mind?”
It was true, the boy had chattered most of the way throughout the long car ride, excitedly speaking of the experiences they’d shared along the way to their true destination and then back. Now, his eyes stared out the window, nose pressed against the chilling glass. Not a peep was uttered from him in twenty minutes, the woman had just realized.
“The outside’s really pretty,” Said the boy, after a few seconds. “Really orange-y .” Barbara definitely saw it on her focused view, though at her son’s words she took a quick moment to admire the “ orange-y ” light of the sky before blinking away.
“It’s gorgeous,” She agreed, smiling as she tilted her head toward him again. “And it is getting late. When we get home it’s going to be nighttime.”
Home was their town of Arcadia. They’ve visited the boy’s grandparents— her parents— well in New Jersey. A two day drive there, a three day stay, and expected was the soon end of another two days when they arrive to all their familiarity once it becomes dark.
“Can’t wait to see Toby again,” He grinned, then quickly reached for a brown pouch that sat in the other seat. “Mr. Strickler too, but Tobes especially. He’s gonna love these cool rocks!” At that, he loosened the drawstrings and picked through the contents of the little bag, which were bought from one of the small novelty roadside shops they’ve stopped by at one point of the trip.
He chose one and held it at the window, comparing the stone with the warm sky. “The car— carnelian one is almost the same color as the sky right now.” He murmured. His mother didn’t look back, though she did take his word for it. He dropped the stone back in the bag and picked up another one. “The pink swirly one’s my favorite, though. It’s ro— rhoda… rhoso… kro?…”
Barbara chuckled at her son’s struggle to remember the name. Frankly, she didn’t know how it was pronounced either. “Do you think Toby would know how to say it?”
Instantly he stopped, and he wore a wide smile at the thought of his best friend. “Probably! Tobes’s an expert on this. He’s super smart,” He exclaimed, the obvious pride unmasked. His mother smiled and couldn’t help but to agree.
“I love you, Jim.”
“Love you too, Mom!” The next few minutes for Jim were spent by inspecting the different rocks silently, before putting them aside and reaching at the passenger’s seat pocket to read a culinary pamphlet of some sort.
Barbara looked at the focused boy through the rearview mirror, and smiled again. They were going to have a great time, once they get home.
•••
Another hour passed and their lone vehicle drove at the side of the small mountains that reside right near Arcadia. Pink shifted into purple at the painted sky, unusually clear and pretty around this part of the region. Little Jim leaned back, but his mother could clearly sense the glee radiating from his being.
“The big turn’s coming! I love that part!” The boy exclaimed, looking ahead to see the curve of the road where it seemingly disappeared at this angle of the mountain. Barbara chuckled in agreement, and rolled the steering wheel to follow the turn.
A lot of things then happened at once.
A giant silhouette darker than night itself stood in their expected way, but there was no time to closely observe it as the mother screeched along with the car’s wheels to stop, only to be knocked away and off the edge.
They were in the air for a second, before the impact was made in the dirt and rocks.
Barbara coughed, nearly choking on spit and, as she morbidly realized, blood. The wreckage was barely comprehensible, both in the fact that it even happened in the first place, and how it had ended up now. Her little teal car had flipped onto its top, up against a gigantic boulder, and her torso and above was hanging out of the broken window of her driver’s side, now on the rough soil and grass.
Glass from the window had pierced her midsection and head. Under her head she felt a painfully hard surface, another rock, she figured, but she felt it growing wetter and wetter—
With all her strength, her hand reached up to feel her temple, and then behind her head. Her hair had undone at some point, but the thick wetness she felt continually drenching it confirmed her dark suspicions
All that knowledge gained from medical school would certainly be useful at this moment, if not for the woman frozen in place, unmoving as she witnessed the same gigantic figure that caused this mess crawling his lumbering form down closer, closer to her. The only thing to discern from the mass to her blearing eyes were faint, glowing markings of blue. Another figure, nearly as big as the first, appeared shortly and followed the other, also ashen dark but there was nothing else about it she could clearly notice.
Anything she saw now as clear was turning blurry, even more so to someone with glasses (which, she realized, were hanging off her face, seemingly unscathed as if to mock her for her current state).
There were noises coming from the dark figures as they neared, and she realized they were voices , but speaking in a dialect she didn’t understand. All she knew was that they sounded, and looked , dangerous.
Maybe they saw the tumble was not as immediately fatal as they thought, and had come to finish the job.
Both directly reached the side where she was splayed out through the broken window, and she noted how large, incredibly large the two were, if the fact that the one with glowing carvings had towered her car on the road and knocked it down without trouble wasn’t already an indication to the fact. Sheltered under the trees and darkening sky, the only light came from that creature’s glow and the tiny blinking that indicated that the (failed) airbag had gone off.
The monster’s huge horns were wide and imposing, and she was reminded of how dark his onyx-colored… skin? was when she saw the first glimpse of him. Blue eyes met one blue eye, both completely different looking from each other.
The huge creature’s one-eyed gaze was searching, but seemed otherwise unaffected by what he had caused.
The curiousness was snuffed out by the impulsive words from the other dark beast, who spoke of something gruffly, but then his next words surprisingly came in a language Barbara did understand, “This was not meant to happen.”
“No,” The one with glowing markings also started to speak in English. “But we will not eat her.”
…So that was an option. The woman shuddered.
Bular said something else, but his father’s stern look stilled his words and had him duck. This was also a way of him doting on his son, as intense and dark as his expression might seem otherwise.
But Barbara still recognized the fondness coming from the tar colored creature, even as he glared to the other one with notable curling horns. The thought could be something induced from her head injury, but she thought she recognized something familial to the way he did so. Like an adult to a child. A parent to a son.
“J— Jim ,” She breathed, and even that hurt, but it hurt more to think that she only just remembered her baby was also a victim of this terrible circumstance. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything, with how the two creatures turned their focus back to her, but she couldn’t reign back the fear for her son.
Her son !
Her gaze managed to spot him also upside down, his seatbelt saviour holding and locking him in place. She thought she would see him terrified at the sight of the new creatures that stood at the side of the wrecked car. Instead, his eyes were closed, looking like he had been knocked out on impact. Or , she thought, horrified, worse .
Barbara hadn’t noticed the approaching claws until they took hold of the car’s door through the broken window and ripped it off, striking fear again at the mother. It was the creature with the glowing markings, and she saw him stare at the small mass that was her son. The creature dropped the door and reached toward the hanging child and ripped through the belt holding him up. He caught Jim’s form before he could topple on the broken glass-ridden dirt with a hand.
Seeing her beautiful boy now at the grasp of the creature, she momentarily forgot she was afraid.
Her bloody hand reached up to them, teeth clenched as she ignored the pain, but still couldn’t move. “Don’t you dare hurt him…” She meant her tone to be loud and forceful and angry. It really came out more weakened and pained than ever.
And yet, the creature noticed the intensity of her preferred emotion right through her icy eyes. Her need to protect the smaller child was fierce, even with her life ebbing away.
The intention… was admirable.
His one, glowing eye darted to look back at the motionless child. Despite the red trailing from his forehead matting his dark hair, he was otherwise fine. Peaceful, even.
“I will do no such thing,” The creature then answered, startling a reaction out of the other one, who blinked his ruby eyes at his father. It took a moment for Barbara to understand what he meant— oh dear, she was already getting out of it —, but she looked surprised, which wasn’t surprising to the Gumm-Gumm. But he did surprise himself with how… unfeigned he felt when he said so.
He noted the older fleshbag clenching her teeth, perhaps realizing again of her own pain, or even to challenge him. Gunmar the Black, always telling the difference, spotted both.
“You’d… better not…” She heaved and wrought out a painful cough, but the look in her eyes remained strong. Seeing them again, the dark creature felt something loosen inside him. Not his hearts, no, his are cold and dark and practically nonexistent. But the loosening was there, and upon that, he made a decision.
“You have no time left,” He stated what he believed to be the truth, and he saw the fleshbag, as weak as she was, flinch at his bluntness. “But,” He adjusted the tiny child in a way that had him cradled in his rocky elbow, with the gentleness of all the worlds. “I will shelter him. Keep him breathing.” He didn’t say care .
Her own breathing went more and more shallow.
“Keep him safe?” Was that her talking? …Was she really asking this beast to look after her child, after what he had done? She should feel affronted for daring to make such a request, something could be dearly wrong with her, other than the obvious. But besides the horrid gash on her head, she felt… fine. Okay with this. Comfortable?
“You have my word.” The dark creature stared down at her, practically nothing could be detected from his firm, dangerous scowl, but there was something lighter, something less dangerous. Her boy stayed at his large crook, appearing right, and safe there. Even at the creature who started this mess.
She almost didn’t hear the shocked exclamation coming from the other dark monster, too focused on how peaceful her son looked now.
“ I love you ,” She whispered hoarsely, quietly. Her Jim can’t hear her now, but she felt better knowing she had said so, one last time. To the one carrying him, she thanked.
Gunmar stared at Barbara, Barbara stared at Gunmar. The large creature then gave a growl and a nod, keeping the little fleshbag cradled in his hold, then turned and walked away. It would be fruitless to attempt to save the woman, but the decision to leave her alone instead of the thought of having her as a meal stuck with him as he left.
Barbara watched him go.
Was she out of her own mind to be okay with these creatures caring for her beautiful boy? She couldn’t think more on that now, however. Her boy would be safe, and that’s all that matters.
The other ashen creature stood behind, his posture and expression showing outrage. He looked back at the human, something intense burning in his bright yellow and red eyes as he glared at her, before huffing and went to turn after his father.
A Fleetwood Mac song had apparently played almost silently for the duration of the exchange. The last lyrics of the music droned, and then ended.
She felt her eyes droop, aware of the forever unconsciousness of her now fate. Barbara never wanted it to end like this, but wanting can only do so much.
Strangely enough… she trusted the powerful creature, trusted his word, to protect her son. The blood continued to pool from and around her head, but she felt at ease despite that, remembering the promise.
Jim deserved so much. Silently, she was thankful he was carried away from here. He shouldn’t have to wake seeing his mother dying.
Right before her weakened eyes closed for the final time, she caught sight of the little brown drawstringed bag, spilling out the little stones her son regarded so dearly. Like her, they were broken, left behind in the wreckage, and forgotten.