It's All In Your Head

Chapter 1

"You must be joking."

"I never joke Blinkous. This is completely necessary."

"And if I refuse to allow this intrusion into my personal memories?"

"Then the trollhunter will die, and this world will fall to Gunmar forever."

"If you are so sure, then I see no choice than to allow it. But that doesn't mean that I have to like it, and if I say we leave then we leave, no protests. It is my mind, and I intend to maintain some control over it."

Merlin nodded, not entirely satisfied but knowing that this was as far as he would be able to convince Blinky. The wizard had returned with a plan, but to carry it out, he was having to rely on others much more than he was used to. The main problem was that for Merlin's plan to work, he needed a certain sword- a sword that was now destroyed. There was, however, still hope- Blinky had seen this sword once as a child, and if Merlin could find the old memory of it, he could create a magical copy.

Blinky, Claire, Toby, Jim, Aargh, and Merlin sat in a circle, cross legged, hands linked. Jim gave Blinky a worried smile, having noticed his friend's nervously twitching ears and fidgeting set of lower hands. "Are you sure you want to do this?" Blinky shrugged and gritted his teeth. "This is apparently the only way, so let's get it over with."

Merlin began the chant, and a greenish glow spread from his hands through everyone in the circle. The wizard continued the chant but dropped the hands of Claire and Toby, the glow continuing as he knelt in front of Blinky, placing his hands against the historian's skull near his horns. The wizard stopped chanting, and the room hushed as he concentrated, the green light intensifying until the humans could see it through their closed eyelids.

Then the light vanished, and the trollhunters stood in a white space, a single door in front of them. "This isn't your mind, it's more of a gateway. Past the door is your memories, which will be a lot less organized than out here." Blinky glared but reached past the wizard, grabbing the handle.

The surroundings swirled together dizzyingly, and Merlin raised his hands over his head- after a few seconds the world calmed, and the trollhunters were standing in a cave full of children's toys. "I'm using a spell to organize the memories individually so we can move around in them. The people in Blinky's memories will not be able to sense us, and we cannot change anything they do or say."

Claire had picked up one of the toys, a fluffy stuffed thing that looked vaguely like a teddy bear. "Was this yours?" Blinky sniffed it and shook his head. "I don't know. I don't remember this room." Jim was confused and he asked Merlin, "How can we be in his memory if he doesn't remember this?" Merlin was inspecting the room cautiously. "Memories are never destroyed, they simply fade. Blinkous had no reason to remember this particular room, and so he does not. However, the memory itself is still there." Suddenly, footsteps echoed down the hall, shrieks of laughter accompanying them.

Two tiny trolls ran into the room and one tacked the other, landing in a tangled heap against the wall. One, judging by the blue hair and skin, was obviously Blinky, while the other could only be an infant Dictatious. The troll whelps laughed and tumbled over each other, happily wrestling until Dictatious got the upper hand, pinning his twin to the ground. "Give up! Give up!" Dictatious crowed, thinking he had won, but Blinky kept struggling until it was his turn to sit on top. "No you do! Surrender to my might!" Blinky watched his younger self play with a small sad smile on his face, missing the days where he could play with his brother.

All too soon, Merlin made the cave disappear, frowning with deep concentration. "Sorry, that wasn't the right memory. I'm not sure when you might have seen the sword, so this is a rather random process." Blinky folded his arms in annoyance. "You realize I have over 600 years of memories right? This sounds like trying to find a needle in a haystack." Merlin huffed and their surroundings began to resolidify.