“Hell yes!” Tub shouted. “Did you see that? Did you guys see that?!”

“O-ho! Ha-ha! Hee-hoo!” Blinky cried. “You have not failed us, pudgy warrior! Fellow hunters, gather round, for it is nigh time to hunt!”

While we panted for breath, Blinky extended each of his tentacles and quilted them, over and under, into a shifting, liquid pattern that seemed to capture the entire nighttime in its net. I found myself at a cadet’s attention. Blinky at last began to speak, softly at first, but with a rising, rousing grandiloquence.

“There will be no more despair—no, friends, not tonight. If sorrow or regret or anger chills your bellies, permit me to warm you with the whiskey of anticipation. Oh, how each of my four stomachs roils to smell troll blood darkening the underground mud. There may have been scores of trollhunters in wars past and only five of us here tonight, but so much greater will be our glory. Follow me now, with courage the size of the fabled Old World mountain trolls! Follow me with your blades whetted sharp enough to split the very oaths of vengeance that fall from our throats! Look around you, soldiers! These are the nights of legend! These are the grim circumstances that inspire the greatest of songs! And when we destroy the destroyer, brothers and sister, we shall be fêted like kings and queens in the Promenade of Victors!”

My chest swelled with pride.

“The Promenade of Victors!” I shouted.

“To watch as they carve our names in the Tower of Truth!”

“The Tower of Truth!” I echoed.

“Or, alternately, into the headstones of the Graveyard of Glory!”

“The Graveyard of…hang on, the what?”

“Either fate we shall welcome as eagerly as a stein of boiled bile!”

“Yes.” Jack unsheathed his swords. “Yes!”

ARRRGH!!! brought herself to unsteady legs. “It be yes.”

“Urrrmmg, bleennhh, plaarff,” Tub griped. “Don’t mind the guy without a translator.”

The trollhunters rushed for the door. I took a breath and stared at my battered sneakers, hoping for a similar burst of bravery. There, lodged between a dented flask and a foam container stained with barbecue sauce, I saw the mangled remains of the astrolabe. I kneeled down to gather them.

“Don’t,” Jack said. “It belongs here.”

His eyes were blazing but calm. I looked from him to the bridge that towered above us to the rest of this dingy, littered catacomb. It was as broken as Dad, but it also had provided us a way to put all of the wrong things right. Jack held out a hand. I took it around the forearm, preferring the circled notebook wire to the tacks of his glove, and after he helped me up, we stood in place, gripping each other a few seconds longer than necessary. History had witnessed stranger handclasps of brotherhood, but not many.