"Stars. In your multitudes scarce to be counted, filling the darkness with order and light. You are the sentinels; Silent and sure. Keeping watch in the night."
Where History's hidden helper is found in the Darklands by the human Trollhunter himself...
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"Oh, no! Jimbo, it's Draal!"
Kayla's mind automatically thought of the Draal she knew, before she corrected herself when she spotted the blueish-white glow of Draal's eyes, the lost soul's eyes, "Run!" She shouted at Jim who had also frozen for a moment before kicking into gear.
They bolted for the opening, Jim reaching it first with Kayla behind him. For a moment it looked like both of them would make it, until Draal managed to grasp Kayla's arm and throw her backward.
Kayla went sliding across the stone streets of Trollmarket before she was stopped by a wall. "Go!" she managed to shout out to the Trollhunter, "Get them out of here!"
Jim nodded, letting the wall reform. His worried face was the last thing Kayla saw of him.
Draal's body advanced on her when it was evident that he would not be able to gain on the Trollhunter. His metal clawed-hand picked her up by her throat.
Kayla could barely breathe as his hand tightened even more, "Draal," she croaked out, hoping that some sort of miracle would allow her to get through to the lost soul.
Her green eyes started swelling with tears as the pain around her neck only grew with her armour pressing inwards with the son of the former Trollhunter's strength. Her amulet started glowing as Heirloom tried to protect the last Angel.
Both the last Angel and Heirloom knew that their efforts would be futile in the end-
Suddenly the ground appeared underneath Kayla, and she coughed in air. Her eyes wide as she stared up at Draal who had frozen like the stone around them.
"Draal?" Kayla whispered, her voice quiet in shock more than anything.
His motionless body tilted his head to look at her, the blueish-glow was still there in his eyes, but...
His soul was still here. Still living, and regretting everything his body was doing.
⭐
The first troll that Kayla met, aside from the Trollhunter, was his son Draal.
Her six-year-old self had been playing alone whilst she waited for her father, the current active Angel, to finish his "chat" with the Trollhunter.
She had been happily climbing around the small "room" her father had told her to stay in until a bunch of rocks shifted right before she could've climbed on them.
She had shrieked, fallen to the ground and scrambled backwards away from the sudden troll.
The troll was different from the ones that she'd seen in the books, and the few trolls in TrollMarket that she'd gotten a glimpse of didn't have as many spikes as this one. Plus this troll's hue was a lot more potent than the ones that her father had pointed out on the way down.
The troll gave her an odd look that she only recognized because of how many times she'd managed to surprise her family members when she mentioned something from the family books, "Who are you?" the troll asked, his voice indicating that the troll was male.
Kayla had trembled slightly before the training her father and uncle had been teaching her kicked in. She scrambled to her feet, shoving her shoulders back and setting her jaw determinedly. Whilst she displayed confidence with her body, her eyes were the true windows to her emotions.
"I'm Kayla Di Angelo," She said, false confidence in her voice as she narrowed her small eyes at him, "Who are you?"
The troll looked her over before he snorted, "I am Draal the Deadly, son of Kanjigar the Courageous and Ballustra," he looked her over once again with a strange look that she'd never seen before, and Kayla struggled not to squirm, "What is a human welp doing in TrollMarket?"
"Si tu veut vraiment savoir," Kayla stuck her chin in the air, relishing in the even more confused look that the troll, that Draal, was wearing as she spoke in her birth language, "Mon père avec ton père."
The blue spiked troll frowned, "What does that mean?"
"My dad is with your dad," Kayla grinned, she adored sharing what little knowledge she had, a little smug, "It's a human language called French that I'm using."
"Oh," The troll nodded, "I believe I have heard it a couple of times before; however I had not learnt it from the humans-" his face twisted in a mixture of disgust and horror, she wasn't sure if that was from the mere idea of having to talk to a "normal" human, or about learning the language itself, "-before we arrived here."
"But-" Kayla spluttered, letting her confusion and horror at the knowledge of someone not wanting to seek out new knowledge show on her face as she threw her arms up, "-all that you could've learnt from them! Our books say that you didn't arrive here for years, think about all the history that could've been recorded!"
Draal the Deadly snorted, and when she asked him why he was amused, he just waved her off.
She stuck her tongue out at him before reaching for her bag where her books were, pulling the first one out as she sat with her back to a wall. Always keeping an eye on the troll who seemed far too amused by her.
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Here's Chapter fifteen!
EDIT 9th August 2021: I've made a change to how Kayla and Draal first meet (Originally, I had it so very wrong where Kayla and Draal met when they were both kids - which really doesn't work in the time-line, what was I thinking??) where Draal is grown up and Kayla's still a kid, and with future spoilers, I've fixed it up so that it makes more sense in the canon time-line that I've f'ed up.
In the alternate timeline where Jim never gets the amulet, and Draal does while Kayla gets Heirloom, this is the reason they fought so well together in that timeline/alternate universe. XD
What? I like coming up with different ideas. Sue me. 😋
