Tales of Arcadia: The Krohnisfere Effect

The Ninth Configuration

James Lake Jr. slowly opened his eyes. Rubble lay all around him, and smoke hung in the air.

The aftermath of the battle with the Titans had not disappeared. Jim was not back to the start of it all, where he could set things right.

"But. . . the Krohnisfere was supposed to fix everything. Why didn't it work?!" Jim screamed to the friends standing around him.

Friends who he had thought would disappear only moments ago. He looked up, brushing a rogue strand of black hair out of his face. Claire's perfect eyes met his worried ones, reminding him of all the adventures he had had. Going back would have caused him to lose all of that.

Going back would also have resurrected the chubby corpse that was his best friend. Toby. He still lay crushed under the heavy stones. There were so many others who had died in the wars. It had been up to Jim to keep them alive.

And he had failed each and every one of them. Twice.

The Krohnisfere left Jim's hand and went flying into a brick wall, splintering into irretrievable pieces. Everyone in the gathering gasped, except the Trollhunter. He would never regret throwing away the tricksome object that had dashed his only hope.

A warm hand grasped his shoulder.

"Jim, please, don't. . . Don't let this break you," Claire begged.

"How can it not? How did it not break all of you? It was my- my sacred obligation to bring them all back! Heck, it was my sacred obligation to keep them alive in the first place. I keep failing. You should all go away before I kill the few people- trolls, aliens, wizards, whatever- that I haven't already."

"Master Jim don't insult your mantle. You have tried your very hardest. It is by your fault that those of us still here today are alive, not that those who will no longer be here are, well, gone."

"Jim, Blinky's right. You fought so hard. It isn't your fault that the Krohnisfere didn't work."

Jim's rational self wanted to listen to his friends, but his angry side shut them out.

"Although, I must say, it was hasty of you to destroy such a rare artifact."

"Blinky, not helping!" Douxie scolded.

Finally, a miniscule smile reached Jim's lips. At least his remaining friends would be able to go back to being their old selves, whatever timeline it was.

Krel joined the couple, pulling Jim up from the ground. He hadn't remembered falling.

"Look around you. There is much to fix in this world, but it is worth fighting for. Hm. . . Some of it, anyways," the alien prince added.

"You guys are really bad at this whole pep talk thing," Jim told his friends.

"You try it then, mister!" his girlfriend exclaimed.

"Alright, I will.

"Trolls, aliens, wizards, humans- friends one and all. This day and those before it have been horrible. We have lost many. We have suffered. I. . . have been a jerk."

"He's not very good at 'this whole pep talk thing' either," Krel stage whispered to Claire.

"Shut up and pay attention," she answered. "He'll get there."

"But!

"There is still something left after all of our struggles, something that we have managed to preserve. The Krohnisfere may not have worked, but our friendship and our mettle will not fail! Together we will heal the world we have been left with!"

"See, I told you so," Claire said, allowing a wan smile to touch her lips.

"Wait!!!!" Douxie suddenly yelled. "Get over here, ladies and lords! I think I have found something!"

A grin of crazy hope stole over Jim's face, as he stumbled towards Douxie. The Master Wizard was holding a shard of the Krohnisfere in his hand.

The survivors crowded around, with the Trollhunter shoving to the front. Shards of dark green glass that had once shown various glimpses of time crunched under their feet, forever blank. Only the one in Douxie's hand remained the light green of the original sphere.

Only the one in Douxie's hand still showed the moving picture that was a piece of time.

In it, two boys were biking furiously. One was chubby, the other skinny.

"We're gonna be late!" the chubby one yelled. "And all on account of meatloaf!"

"Toby!" the cry rose from everyone assembled.

"Our first day of trollhunting," Jim said, sounding teary.

The team stood transfixed around that little shard for the whole day, watching as the boys lived through a seemingly average day of highschool. Jim remembered it all. Every word and every action. And he noticed that some small things were different.

Like the fact that he asked Mr. Stickler out to lunch with his mother, and the fact that he looked much more confident when he talked to Claire.

Normal life began to return to the streets, cleaning up in the aftermath of the fight. All the while, the group watching the shard of Krohnisfere stayed rooted to their spot.

Finally, the movie within the shard reached the school day's end.

"Hey Tobes! Take the canal home today. You might find something interesting!" Other Jim shouted to his friend.

"Okay!" The end of Toby's sentence was lost to the wind as he biked out of sight.

For a few moments longer, the amulet watched Jim, happily biking up the road. Then, it zoomed backwards, focusing on Toby as he discovered the amulet.

"It did work!" Jim breathed a sigh of relief.

"Why didn't we go back, then?" Claire asked. "Why are we still here?"

"Because, I don't think time works like that," Douxie slowly began. "Remember when you and Jim and Steve and I got sent back to Camelot? Rhetorical question, of course you do.

"Well, we thought at first that the whole timeline was messed up, and Merlin's-" Douxie paused in a moment of silence for his deceased mentor- "magic devices were all freaking out. Then we realized that, because of some weird time rules, all of this shad already happened before you three were even born, and that was the reason the timeline was like that in the first place?

"This is something like that. The whole time Trollhunter Jim was going on his adventures, Trollhunter Toby was living his. Before any of this had even happened, the happier ending had already started! Or. . . Maybe it was all happening at the same time! Maybe time doesn't exist!"

"Douxie, I think you hit your head too hard with a spell," Claire told him.

"I think the Wizard may actually be onto something," Krel argued.

"So, while we fix this mess, Toby is alive and living a happy life in that timeline?" Jim could only focus on his former friend.

"It is, as you humans say, 'you can"t have your cake and eat it'."

The crew had stopped watching the shard by this point. Unbeknownst to them, it had glitched forward. Toby, Steve, Darcy, Douxie, Jim, and Merlin were standing on the balcony of a floating castle. The air around them was sparking with bright green magic.

"You knew, this whole time, that everything was fake?!" A much more fit version of Toby screamed.

"I didn't know it would end like this!" Jim screamed back. "I just wanted everyone to be happy!"

"Yeah, well, we aren't!" Toby replied.

"Yeah, Buttsnack!" Steve supplied.

"You were dead, Toby!" Jim cried.

Trollhunter Toby froze. Or maybe the whole image did.

Seconds later, it turned the same dark green as the rest of the pieces of the broken Krohnisfere.

The Trollhunters didn't need to know this part.