Previously: A visit to the Janus Order, where Bular's autopsy is stalled as Changeling OCs investigate the Heartstone shards that have ended up on their base.

Bold italics are trollish.

There were, Barbara learned, two possible meanings for the word 'troll', depending on the context.

A Brief Recapitulation of Troll Lore, Volume 1 of 47 sat open on the table, along with a dictionary, and a sheet of paper where Jim had written out the trollish alphabet and the phonetic equivalent of each letter's sound in English.

Blinky had offered to teach Barbara to read trollish, so they could set up a book swap. He was intrigued by her medical textbooks. She was keen to learn more about this strange magical world she had found herself tied to. Jim had volunteered to teach Barbara instead, since living together would make it easier to work lessons around Barbara's unfixed schedule.

Trolls had a mostly phonetic alphabet. They didn't seem to use capitalization, but did have accents that appeared around certain words to indicate significance. Jim and Barbara had gotten onto this tangent when she noticed 'troll' was written in two different ways.

There was 'troll' meaning 'a person, a member of the species', which was the kind of troll meant by Jim's title 'Troll-Who-Is-The-Hunter'.

And then there was 'troll', usually prefixed by a tribe name, which meant 'member of the tribe'.

"The pronunciation is the same for both," said Jim. "The second one is probably what most trolls mean when they say Changelings aren't trolls, since we've been disowned and the Gumm-Gumms don't acknowledge us as full tribe members. Up till we get a Familiar we can't exactly pass as being a different species."

"Disowned?" Barbara repeated. No one had mentioned that part when she'd asked where Changelings came from.

(It might explain what Jim had said about not having a name before getting a Familiar, though, if trollish disowning involved stripping the person of their entire name rather than just the family name.)

Jim made an uncertain noise and wiggled his hand. "Sort of disowned, sort of presumed dead. Basically, after we're taken and altered, we can't go back to our first families even if we do find out who they were."

… What?

"I'm going to need you explain all of that. Starting with the –" god, which bit to even start with? "– with the 'taken' part."

"Okay?"

Jim shrugged and turned in his chair to face her more directly.

"So, Gumm-Gumms used to raid other troll communities, and sometimes they would take babies who would then be adopted into the tribe and raised as Gumm-Gumms. That sort of thing's happened with humans, too, right? And after the Gumm-Gumms allied with Pale Lady, they started giving some of those whelps to her, and she'd turn us into Changelings and swear us back into Gumm-Gumm service."

"Who's the Pale Lady? And why babies?" What was it with trolls and stealing babies?!

"Our Creator. You don't just get Changelings naturally; you have to turn a troll into one. It's safer the younger we are but it's still really hard. She's the only one powerful enough to do it."

Jim sighed.

"She disappeared centuries ago. There probably aren't going to be anymore Changelings after my generation."

That didn't exactly sound like a bad thing, from Barbara's perspective. No more kidnapped children, magically mutated to a point where members of their own species hesitated to acknowledge them as being the same species, kidnapping and stealing the faces and lives of other children in order to blend in …

"Anyway," Jim continued, "after a raid, any parents who'd lost their kids would declare them dead, since the Gumm-Gumms were too strong to launch a rescue mission against, and 'my whelp is dead' was easier emotionally – you know, for closure – than dealing with, 'if I ever see my whelp again, it will be as an enemy'. Since we're not old enough to remember our first families clearly, we can't track them down later, and since we're enemy agents by that point, it isn't safe to try."

He hooked an arm over his chair's backrest, which was beside him with the way he was sitting.

"I mean, that doesn't stop everybody, but those stories all end badly."

Barbara felt her breathing get faster and shallower. Oh no. Oh no. Had she – she had – no wonder Jim hesitated to call her 'Mom' anymore – pushing him away like she did must've stomped right on that sense of rejection, that fear of a parent seeing him as an enemy.

"We're getting way off-topic, though," said Jim.

His tone had stayed light and casual the entire time. He turned back to the table and the book and the page of notes.

"So, when 'troll' is spelled with this accent, you can infer that the word right before it is a tribe name, but the tribe names can also appear on their own. They all seem to have this same accent by the first rune," pointing to it. "At first, I thought it translated as a Significant Capital Letter, and it probably does, but it only seems to be used in this context, so it probably means 'this is the name of a tribe'."

AAARRRGGHH tapped the wall of the tunnel leading into Vendel's workshop, a hollowed-out space just within the Heartstone.

He tried to smile reassuringly at the younglings he and Blinky escorting. Mary and Toby smiled back. Claire and Darci tried, but their smiles looked as strained as AAARRRGGHH's felt. Jim was looking the other way, keeping AAARRRGGHH and Blinky and the humans in his peripheral vision while he watched for anyone else approaching where they were.

"Enter."

Darci had her arms crossed over the book the younglings had been writing, with stories about their families. AAARRRGGHH and Blinky had read it already. AAARRRGGHH didn't think it would sway Vendel on letting more humans know trolls existed, but the humans wanted to try anyway.

AAARRRGGHH was ready to physically carry all five of them back out again if they started pushing Trollmarket's Elder too hard, before Vendel could outright ban further discussion of the matter.

(They didn't have the other Changeling with them this time, so if it came to that point, AAARRRGGHH would be able to put Jim on his shoulders with the rest. Jim seemed protective of his fellow Changelings, so AAARRRGGHH had figured last time that Jim would be more comfortable being carried where he could keep an eye on – Enrique? Not Enrique? – and ensure the smaller one was being well-treated, and AAARRRGGHH didn't think he couldn't keep that strange canopied rolling chair secure on his back.)

Vendel was standing in front of his favourite chair, with a drink and a book on the armrest. Uh-oh. This might not be the best time to start asking favours.

"This is – about – what we asked before," said Mary. "About telling our families where we go, and who we see, here."

"I am still against it," said Vendel flatly.

"We hoping – we hope you will be more – more open to think about it," said Toby, "if you know more about our families. To know they can be trusted. Trusting?"

"Trusted," said Blinky. "You had it right the first time."

The humans would also have to be trusting, to accept that their whelps were safe among trolls, but AAARRRGGHH didn't think this was the right time to say, 'both work'.

"So we made a book," said Darci, holding it out, "with family stories. For you to read. To know them without meeting."

Vendel made no move to take the book.

"It's in trollish," said Claire.

There was another awkward pause.

Claire took the book from Darci and put it on Vendel's workbench.

"Will you read it?" she pressed.

"If I agree to read your book," said Vendel slowly, looking at each youngling in turn, "and once I do, I still refuse to expose trollkind to additional humans, you will accept my decision and cease to push this issue."

It was not so much an offer as a declaration.

AAARRRGGHH probably should've scouted out what Vendel was doing in advance, or something. Or maybe Blinky should've officially set up a meeting. Or AAARRRGGHH should've pulled them all out of there as soon as he realized they were intruding on Vendel's rare leisure time and so Vendel was going into the conversation already irritated.

The humans exchanged looks between themselves. He couldn't read most human expressions easily. AAARRRGGHH could recognize 'distress' from sheer exposure, and there was some of that, but there was something else mixed in as well.

"We accept your terms," said Claire and Darci, not quite overlapping. Claire continued. "If you give our reasoning full consideration and still find it lacking, we will not keep asking for permission."

Vendel picked up the book. "Then I will read it."

"So, to be clear," said Jim, after they left the Heartstone, "when he says 'no', you're just going to tell them without permission."

"Yeah," said Mary easily. Blinky spluttered.

"Just making sure we're all on the same page." Jim's jaw was tense. The lines on his armour pulsed closer to blue than silver. AAARRRGGHH wanted to reach over and pat his back, but Daylight hung there, and AAARRRGGHH had no desire to burn his hand on the magical sword.

Moving slow, so the Changeling could see him coming, AAARRRGGHH nudged Jim's side. Jim veered away.

"And Jim, stop by my office after school, please," Mr Strickler had said when class ended that morning. It was now afternoon, and Jim was dutifully reporting in.

Stricklander opened his pen to reveal the hidden key, and opened the partition between the mundane and magical sides of his office.

"How does that not mess up everything on your shelves?" Jim asked, gesturing to where the wall had slid away, to be hidden inside a hollow wall on a different story.

"It moves smoothly, and most of my curios have wide bases. I also added a few stability enchantments when I set everything up, in case of earthquakes, and those take care of the rest … Ask Dr Lake if she'd like some around the house, along with those security spells on the tunnel."

Stricklander opened the front panel of a box with an ornate, glowing crystal on the lid. He murmured while stroking the air around the crystal. Jim might have thought it was an incantation to unlock to box if he didn't recognize the crystal as an antramonstrum shell.

"I'm with Nomura," Jim said when Stricklander stopped chanting. "That seems like a risky thing to have in a school."

"It's well-behaved and well-contained," said Stricklander. "And it's not why you're here. You're here for this."

He held a blue stone, faintly glowing, with a colder light than the Amulet gave off. It was shaped like a pyramid with spikes near the point. Jim accepted the crystal and looked at the pyramid's base.

It had a pupil. Hazy, but there. Jim gasped and closed his hand around it. Stricklander did say he had access to …

"The Eye?"

"His Eye."

"It's … still living stone." Definitely not a sphere; were trolls' eyes not eyeballs or was the shape distorted from how it had been cut out of his face? "Can he still see out of it?"

"That would take very specific enchantments, which would need to be planned and cast before the eye was removed."

"… Have you ever done that?"

"No."

Jim stole a tissue from the box on Stricklander's desk to wrap the crystal, got his pencil case out of his sweatshirt's stomach pocket, and zipped Gunmar's Eye inside.

"I'm going to be out of town for a short while," said Stricklander. "The school is under the impression a distant relative of mine has passed on and I'm needed for the reading of the will and so on; nothing so time sensitive I couldn't arrange lesson plans for the substitute, but also something that might drag on unexpectedly."

To a more experienced agent, this might sound condescending, but Jim appreciated when Stricklander explained the reasoning behind his chosen cover stories. It gave Jim a better understanding of how to craft his own.

"The Janus Order will be answerable to Jennifer Smith in my absence. She'll likely continue the lockdown of the main base. I expect to return within two weeks … hopefully having acquired something else of use."

Maybe he has a lead on the Birthstone, Jim thought hopefully.

The Trollhunter came to Vendel's workroom alone the following night.

"Vendel, Elder of Trollmarket," he greeted.

Vendel braced himself; the last time the Trollhunter had used that stilted, formal tone, Vendel had been presented with a severed head, and the boy seemed honestly surprised not to be praised for such … Gumm-Gumm-ish behaviour.

Vendel had done his best to accommodate him later – it was an important victory, after all – and ensure the rest of Trollmarket would not panic over what their Trollhunter had done.

"I have the first of the Triumbric Stones, the Eye of Gunmar."

At least he had it wrapped in some kind of satchel this time, rather than flaunting the severed body part.

"Blinky said you would know what to do with it."

Vendel considered this. It was a few decades early in the Trollhunter's training, but it would be apropos. He went to a shelf and retrieved a black leather box, which he placed on his worktable.

"The Triumbric Stones, once gathered, must be cleaved. Humans cleave stones to unlock their beauty. I presume you already have some concept of cleaving stones to unlock their power."

"How you groom the Heartstone for healthy growth," said Jim. "Or the body, symbolically." He touched his own arm, indicating where one of Vendel's carvings encircled his bicep. Or did the Changeling have a carving there, too, in his troll form? "Or the body, literally, when a troll is transgender. Glug told us about King Quag. Or like when a troll is made a Changeling."

Vendel scowled at that – that obscene, blasphemous comparison to a sacred skill – but held his tongue.

"I guess that one is more like metamorphosis," Jim added, more quietly. Vendel took it as a peace offering.

"There are exponentially more elements than the humans have yet discovered. Their properties account for much of how magic works. Merlin's Amulet is a relic of unfathomable power. It is said, when he forged it, he made it malleable, so that each Trollhunter could combat dangers that even its creator could not foresee. I have, under my guardianship, a few remaining stones that Trollhunters past have used to unlock their potential."

Vendel opened the box. Jim leaned in, eyes wide and gleaming in the reflected light from the crystals.

"Stones that will grant nimbleness," the Aequati Stone, used by Araknak the Agile to traverse any obstacle;"a glimpse into your enemy's mind," the Omniscien Stone, used by Deya the Deliverer to stop Merlin from being so damned cryptic all the time, according to what she'd told Vendel's father Rundle after returning from her quest to punch the wizard in the face;"even the power to walk in daylight."

"Wait, why isn't that one in the Amulet always?" Jim asked.

"The Umbra Stone is particularly temperamental and difficult to wield. Most Trollhunters do not have time to learn it."

"Shouldn't that one be first priority?"

"The Trollhunter is rarely aboveground during the day." The current one was, but he was an outlier to the pattern in every other respect as well.

"And when they are, they die. Kanjigar might still be alive if he'd had this stone with him." Jim looked away from the stones and up at Vendel. "Give me the Umbra Stone. I will make it part of the Amulet forever. No future Trollhunter will be killed by sunlight then."

Vendel closed the box.

"You should learn to properly cleave a stone before you start altering the Amulet. You do not need the Umbra Stone. Show me the Eye."

Jim glared. For a moment Vendel thought the boy would grab the box and try to steal the Umbra Stone from it, though he'd have to guess which one it was. Instead, Jim opened the satchel he still held, and extracted the Eye of Gunmar from its soft white wrapping. Some of the wrapping tore on the crystal's sharp protrusions.

Vendel put the box away, pretending he didn't notice the Changeling obviously making mental note of where he kept it. He led Jim over to his grindstone and picked up a stone about the size of the Eye with a set of tongs.

"You should be in troll form for this. The subtleties will be easier to observe."

Nothing he had read in human books suggested they had an understanding or interest in stone shaping for purposes other than aesthetics or building construction. Also, Vendel had some idea how squishy humans were – he'd feel less unnerved by a troll standing so close to the grindstone, where chips could fly.

Jim went rigid as stone without actually transforming.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

Vendel rolled his eyes. "Would you prefer to have Blinkous or Aarghaumont present as a chaperone?"

"It's not that I expect you would hurt me," though, from the way he was inching back, he obviously hadn't ruled it out either, "it's more, what if someone else comes in and sees?"

"Without your armour, there would be nothing to see. Trollmarket is highly populated and popular. I doubt you look so unusual that you stand out to a casual glance." Blending in was part of what the Changelings had been designed for, after all. "It would not be the first time I demonstrated proper cleaving techniques to a visiting student."

Jim instead closed the faceplate of his helmet and turned his head to the entrance of Vendel's workroom. The entire suit of armour flashed blue as he did, responding to its wearer's distress.

… No, Vendel realised a moment later, when Jim physically pulled the Amulet from his chest to dismiss the armour. That blue flash had been the Changeling's transformation.

He looked so young.

Too young, in fact – the Battle of Killahead had been just over 400 years ago, and the whelp standing before Vendel now couldn't be even 200 yet –

"How old are you?"

"What? Probably a bit less than 450, why?"

Jim's brow ridges crinkled adorably – a Changeling should not be cute, but whelps were without trying – and then he made a sound of realization.

"Oh – oh, the age distortion. You've never met a 'young Changeling', have you? This is how old my Familiar would be if we never swapped, not how old I am. I'll start aging like a troll again once I hit human adulthood. Or catch up to the age I would've been without the age pause. We don't exactly have ways of testing those theories."

"… This is how young your human friends are, then."

"16 for a human is about 240 for a troll if I've done the math right."

He hadn't – he looked about half that age – although maybe humans had a delayed puberty? That didn't make much sense, for creatures so short lived, but it could happen. If they hit puberty in their second century instead of it marking their first – or, the equivalent thereof – that would at least make Vendel feel better about how ridiculously young the Trollhunter looked, a child should never have been even considered by the Amulet –

"… Should I switch back?" Jim asked, in English. He was wearing a human-like style of clothing, too, Vendel noted, as he started to get over the initial shock and take in more of the boy's appearance.

"No," Vendel decided. He picked the sample stone back up, having dropped it from his tongs when he'd been startled. "This is important for your education and your duties. Watch closely."

Jim was attentive, asking intelligent questions about how Vendel decided which planes to smooth and which angles to cut. Despite the boy's illusion of youth, Vendel felt confident allowing Jim to cleave the Eye himself.

(Stones always worked best for the one who cleaved them, no matter how well they worked for anyone else.)

When the shaping was done, Jim opened the back of the Amulet to insert the new stone, and Vendel saw another stone already in it. He thought for a moment that Jim had stolen the Umbra Stone already.

"What is that?"

"Uh … Remember when you let me bring a Heartstone piece to Draal? When I got it home, I noticed this tiny piece had chipped off. I didn't think he would miss it. I read in one of Blinky's books about Trollhunters putting stones in the Amulet and wanted to try. It lets me summon a knife." Blatantly trying to distract Vendel, Jim asked, "What do you think the Eye will do?"

"It's impossible to know for sure. Properly cut gemstones work in ways one can never predict – only discover."

"There must be patterns. Mineral type? Crystal lattice structure? Colour, age … nutrition?"

"The trollish classification of stones is rather more complex than the human one," said Vendel. "Minute differences in composition or the environment in which the stone develops can result in vast differences between two crystals of the same size and overall type. It is astronomically rare for stones to be identical."

Jim turned into a human again before he summoned his armour.

"I'm going to train and unlock the potential of the Eye. I will be back for the Umbra Stone."

Vendel watched him go, and slowly opened the book the human whelps had given him.

If they were really that young, no wonder they wanted their parents.

Honestly, it was a wonder their parents hadn't wondered where their whelps were wandering off to and beaten down the market door already.

If Vendel wanted to head off a human invasion, he needed to know who he'd be dealing with.

Up next: Insecurities abound! You know what, I might make that the chapter title.

So, how about that latest Tales of Arcadia news, eh? Wizards release date, August 7th? Exciting! I'm not expecting it to change much of what's planned for this fic, but I said that about Season 3 and about 3Below, too.

I do know some stuff expected to come up which I want to know for other stories but also plan to ignore for this one: when exactly the Battle of Killahead Bridge took place, when Deya trapped Gunmar in the Darklands.

In this fic, as Vendel says, that happened 400-odd years before the main storyline, in the late 1500s, shortly before the trolls stowed away on the Mayflower in 1620. (And after Angor Rot got his soul ripped out by Morgana in 1297, because why would he need to protect his people from Gunmar if Gunmar was already trapped in the Darklands, huh, novel spin-offs?!)

This was a number I came up with back when I thought trolls only lived 1500-1600 years, based on tweet from Guillermo del Toro; and that Blinky was around 600 years old, as opposed to just having actively studied humans for that amount of time, based on that line about the human dances he's witnessed; and that Draal, obviously younger than Blinky, was either a whelp during the Battle of Killahead Bridge or not born until afterwards (rather than fighting in the battle) and that was a factor in why Kanjigar didn't want him involved in Trollhunting, because Draal was part of the first generation to grow up 'in peace'; and likewise Bular was a whelp during that battle, which was why he was the only Gumm-Gumm not trapped in the Darklands, or he was born after and sent to the surface by Fetch because he was the only one small enough, and either way he was basically raised by the Janus Order; and that trolls had an approximate 15:1 ratio with humans for age, based on the line about bowel control.

However, I have altered troll aging rates a little, based on the idea of Blinky participating in the Battle of Killahead. If he's 600-ish in 2016, that would make him only 200-ish in the late 1500s/early 1600s – which would also, proportionately, be the same age or younger than the humans are. (16x15=240)

So, how to have Vendel be scandalized at how young Jim is when a troll that age is apparently fit for combat? Shuffle the stages of development.

I decided, in this universe, trolls reach their full size a century or so before they actually become adults. So, a mid-adolescent troll would actually be 120, translating in human terms to be about 8 years old – still a child rather than a 'young adult'.

In other lore, I made up the names for the Aequati Stone and the Umbra Stone, based on mangled Latin for 'balancing' and 'shade' respectively. The Omniscein Stone, and Deya going on a quest to punch Merlin for being cryptic, came from the spin-off comic The Felled. 'Omnisceinstone' was all one word in the comic but that doesn't fit the pattern set up by the Aspectus Stone, the only one named on-screen in the show.