“Balderdash!” Blinky cried. “I shall double my efforts! Triple! Quadruple!”

ARRRGH!!! picked up the box with a bashfulness that begged for forgiveness.

Jack’s warning crunched from his boom box speaker.

“I’ll cut it out of your hands, I swear!”

Spittle trickled down ARRRGH!!!’s chin as she gave her human friend a smile of metal-packaged teeth. Then she reached carefully into the box and withdrew the Eye of Malevolence. The yellow orb flopped inside the cage of her hand, its long stems whipping like strings of wet seaweed. A high-pitched, babyish squeak emitted from somewhere inside the feculent flesh.

The thing wanted fed.

“Hold her down!” Jack commanded.

He wrapped himself around ARRRGH!!!’s left arm but was nowhere near strong enough and in seconds found himself dangling from the bicep. Blinky knotted his tentacles around both legs but he did not look especially optimistic. Tub gave me a desperate look and we both took handfuls of stiff black fur.

The Eye of Malevolence dug its long, stringy fingers into ARRRGH!!!’s face, and that was it for the trollhunters. Jack’s armor crashed loudly when he hit the dirt. Blinky was thrown into a pillar, setting off a small avalanche of crumbled cement. Tub and I found ourselves rolling over and over, locked in a terrified embrace. I put on the brakes and saw the Eye’s soft body pulsating as it leeched away our friend’s sanity.

A door to the troll world opened in one of the pillars. I was about to announce this news before dozens more began creaking open and snapping shut from every part of the underpass: the belly, the walls, the ground beneath our feet. ARRRGH!!! had done her job, but the Eye had countered by opening additional passages to confuse us. For a bonus we received a deranged ARRRGH!!!; she lurched at her former partners, taking out chunks of concrete and canal bed and sending refuse into the air like filthy insects.

Blinky’s tentacles picked up a dozen jagged pieces of rock.

I withdrew Cat #6. Would we have to hurt her? Or worse?

Or would it be the other way around?

Only Jack, I noticed, had not armed himself. He stood motionless with his hands at his sides.

I pulled Tub closer to the action.

“Jim! No! Bad timing! She’s in a mood! Reschedule! Reschedule!”

“Boost me up!” I shouted. “Now!”

“Oh god oh god oh god oh god,” Tub mumbled as he ran up behind the marauding ARRRGH!!!, kneeled down, and laced his hands together. I planted my foot into Tub’s makeshift sling and he launched me upward, as he’d done a hundred times in the past. For a delirious instant I was airborne and then my face was full of fur. I wrapped my limbs around an arm muscle bigger than me.