[fic] [Tales of Arcadia] Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet 134/?
Your Future Hasn’t Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 10th March, 2023
Opening his eyes, Jim looked up at the vaulted ceiling of Charlie's warren. The fire in the den had burned low during the night, but still gave off just enough light that he could see the truncated stalactites up there. He assumed they were truncated because Charlie, or some previous resident, had knocked them down instead of banging horns on them. Or maybe by banging horns on them. Jim knew firsthand how annoying it was to get your horns tangled up in something.
When Charlie had led them from the entrance to the den, the tunnels hadn't been lit at all. Had he just been depending on familiarity to find the way, or could dragons see in the dark? But maybe... both Archie and Charlie had said that dragons possessed senses that humans didn't. Did he find his way by echolocation in the dark? Or, what was that thing Toby had told Jim about once, with sharks? The ampullae of lorenzo or something, that gave them a sense of electric fields? Maybe dragons had that.
If Douxie's crazy plan to return magic to the world worked, and the magical species came out of hiding, Jim was sure there were going to be biologists and all other kinds of scientists who were going to be overjoyed to find new species to study and figure out how they worked.
Thinking of....
Jim turned his head. Douxie was sleeping closer to the fire than him, and was laying on his stomach, his head buried in his encircling arms.
Douxie was worrying Jim. For all that surviving in the woods in sixth century England was very much in the wizard's wheelhouse, not Jim's, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Douxie was fraying at the edges. How much of that was due to lack of Archie, and how much of it was due to (a) the asshole god of the hunt trying to kill him, (b) wearing himself down expending extra magical effort to keep Jim alive, or (c) receiving what was, objectively, extremely bad news from a wizard who'd been dead at least two thousand years, Jim didn't know.
He just knew that Douxie needed more support right now.
And Jim wasn't sure what Douxie needed was anything he was able to give.
What did Douxie do at home? Other than play guitar for hours and hours, when he wasn't reading.
Actually.
Jim's thoughts caught on that image of Douxie - usually wearing his headphones plugged into his amp - sitting on his bed, playing and playing and playing.
If he's a bardic mage... maybe he needs to be playing?
The more Jim thought about it, the more the idea sunk into him, and the more he was sure it was true. Because Douxie gravitated toward music as self-care, always had even before he'd known what he was.
I need to ask Charlie about that lute.
Jim slid out of the magic bed, careful not to wake Douxie, and dressed in silence. Weaving around all the stacks of books (and he really needed to get Blinky and Charlie talking book-shop, in the modern era), Jim headed down the tunnel Charlie had gone into, leaving them the night before.
The tunnel was, as expected, nearly pitch black. But Jim had the radiance of his amulet for light, and, if he needed it, he could always turn his phone back on and use the flashlight on that. But the ground was smooth, and as long as he kept one hand along the wall, it wasn't like he was going to get lost.
He found the kitchen easily enough, and with it, Charlemagne. The dragon was seasoning what had to be an entire sheep. Nearby, an enormous pan full of root vegetables waited to be cooked alongside it. Jim could identify almost all of them, though the carrots being purple threw him.
Charlie caught sight of Jim. "Oh, you're up! Sleep well?" he inquired.
"Pretty good, thanks." Jim pocketed his amulet in light of the kitchen being, well, light, and made his way over.
"What do you think?" Charlie asked him, indicating the food.
"I think it looks great," Jim answered honestly.
Charlie beamed. How he had come to think of Jim as some sort of authority on food, Jim didn't know. Well, he kind of did. Show a dragon one single pastry crust....
"Let me just get this in the oven, and then we'll start making up some sort of breakfast." Charlie unbarred the masonry oven and drew out, with bare clawed paws, several dragon-scale loaves of bread. He then breathed more fire into the oven, reheating it, before sliding the pan of vegetables and the tray that the sheep resided on, within. "Takes a lot of food to keep up this fire, you know!" he said jovially, putting the door back on the oven.
"I believe it," Jim said, nodding. The feast the night before had put true Douxie's assertion that Charlie was called "the Devourer" for his culinary abilities, rather than his savagery. "That bread smells amazing, by the way."
"Doesn't it just? Got the starter from a manticore, many years ago."
Some days Jim wondered just how his life had become what it had. He was in the year 501, talking sourdough with a dragon who had gotten his bread recipe from yet another mythological creature.
He put aside a vague idea of asking Charlie if he knew the stir-frying technique, and refocused. "I was wondering, is there any chance you have a lute or any other kind of instrument around that Douxie could borrow? He's kind of... I think being able to play some music might help him."
Charlie's eyes went wide. "My word, yes. A bardic mage with no instrument? There's a recipe for disaster." His face wrinkled in thought, even as Jim wondered suddenly how much knowledge the human race had lost in not talking with other species. Humans' attempts at interspecies genocide had soured relations with other creatures even for wizards. Because apparently Charlie had known about bardic magic all along, while Douxie, an actual bardic mage, hadn't even known it existed. And despite living for years in Arcadia, Douxie had never even set foot in Trollmarket until after Jim had rebooted time. How much of his book-hunger was an attempt to bridge that gap between what wizards knew, and what everyone else knew? Images of Vendel showing Jim the trolls' version of the periodic table beckoned.
Actually, now Jim wondered what Krel's version of the periodic table looked like, and if it was closer to the human one, the trollish one, or was something entirely different.
"I'm afraid I'm not very musical," Charlie apologized, "but I do believe Taliesin left a lute behind. I think it might be in the library. Shall we go check?"
"Sure." Jim jogged to keep up with the dragon. "Wait, you have a library? Then why are all those books in the den?"
"It's important to have good reading material wherever you might settle in for a bit of a snack and something to drink," Charlie said serenely. "And, I will admit, since Aurelia's death, cleaning hasn't been my highest priority."
Jim didn't know who Aurelia was, and asking didn't seem kind, somehow. So he laughed instead. "My dad, my troll dad, he's the same way. He just expanded his library, but before that?" Jim gestured to around his own head height. "Stacks of books everywhere."
Charlie paused and looked at him. "A troll father and a wizard brother? My, what a family you have."
Jim laughed. "Yeah, it's gotten pretty weird. And pretty great."
"I must admit," Zadra said as the servitor brought them liquid refreshment, "your 'Krav Maga' is a suitable distraction."
"Yes, well." The one who had been introduced as "Nomura" or, confusingly, also "Zelda", picked up her own cup. "I hadn't expected to see an alien joining our class."
"An Akiridion," Zadra corrected, without heat.
"There's room for all sorts." The red-haired human, Barbara, picked up her cup and took a sip. "That's the beauty of Arcadia."
A sharp smile slashed its way across Nomura's face. "These days."
Barbara accepted this with a nod.
"I feel I am missing something," Zadra said cautiously.
Nomura snorted. "All this happy-go-lucky integration," she said with an incautious wave toward the darkened city square outside the cafe, "started because of her son." She pointed at Barbara.
"Sons," the woman corrected.
Nomura accepted the correction with a nod. "It came to a head the night you arrived," Nomura continued.
"Ah, yes. The battle." Zadra frowned. "Prince Krel did not allow me to participate, for lack of situational knowledge." It still galled her, having to stand down, but she acknowledged that in this case he had been correct. Outside the "cafe," as this place of comestibles was called, she caught a glimpse of pale blond hair. Zadra narrowed her eyes; it was indeed Princess Aja, and she had allowed the blond human Prince Krel referred to as "Oaf" to place his arm around her waist as they strolled past.
That they were courting, Zadra withheld judgment upon; that was for the King and Queen to accept, or not.
At least they were doing it within her line of sight.
"Are battles frequent here, then?" Zadra inquired, turning her attention back to her tablemates.
Barbara pressed her teeth together, before turning, with an inquiring raised eyebrow, to Nomura.
"They used to be," Nomura reported coolly. "Since Gunmar's death?" Her open hand invited contemplation.
"Hmm." A calmer city would be a safer place for her charges, Zadra thought. But at the same time, she needed to keep her skills sharp and test them against new opponents. "Would you be willing to spar with me sometime?" she asked.
Nomura's smile was a scythe. "I would love to."
Zadra glanced inquiringly at Barbara. Who laughed and held her hands up. "Oh no. I'm the merely human one here. I'll watch... but I'm not on either of your levels."
Zadra nodded. "It is always wise to know your limitations."
Another small laugh from Barbara. "I signed up for Krav Maga to help fend off drunks and unwanted attention." She sighed. "I never thought I was going to be keeping company with actual warriors."
"You underestimate yourself," Nomura told her.
Zadra looked out the window again. The princess and her suitor had moved on, but something else caught her eye. A faint orange glow from the rooftops across the park.
Her eyes narrowed. The light moved, revealing it to be a glowing figure. "Do you have any native bioluminescent species here?"
Nomura's cup clinking down upon her saucer seemed loud. "No."
"Excuse me," Zadra said, standing. "I must perform reconnaissance."
"Douxie. Douxie." He was woken from the sweet, comforting embrace of somnolence by Jim poking him in the shoulder.
"Go away," Douxie mumbled without ever lifting his head from the nest of his arms. He felt like he could sleep for a month and it still wouldn't fill up his batteries.
"Douxie." Jim's voice was less whispery, less patient now that he knew Douxie was (however unwillingly) at least partially conscious. "Come on. Wake up. We've got something for you."
Douxie blinked his way to a raised head and looked blearily at Jim. Who knelt between him and the fire, grinning. Over Jim's shoulder a large white head loomed.
"G'morning," Douxie told Charlie. Not Jim.
"Good morning!" the dragon boomed, delighted, as always, by most things. "I'll have breakfast on in just a bit, but first, we've found something in the library that I think might have been left with you in mind."
Douxie made an inquiring sound.
Jim grinned even wider, and brandished a....
Douxie blinked, sitting up. "Is that a lute case?" he asked, reaching for it.
"Taliesin's," Charlie confirmed as Douxie took possession. The leather was solid, firm despite the two millennia it must have spent moldering in Charlie's library. Douxie could feel preservation spells humming beneath his fingers.
Holding his breath, and barely aware he was doing so, Douxie unfastened the latches.
And lost his breath entirely.
It was sort of a lute, but no kind he'd ever seen before. The dark wood shone, and was inlaid with scrolling mother of pearl designs. Twelve strings stretched from the neck across the soundboard, inviting his itching fingers to strum them, which he did.
Douxie grimaced. "Needs tuning." Which he should have expected; leaving strings taut during long storage generally wasn't a good idea, and if Taliesin had known, which he had, that he wouldn't be coming back from the encounter with Herne....
"This is strung with mithrilium," he commented, tightening the pegs, one microscopic rotation at a time. Clockwise, rather than anticlockwise, as his guitar was strung.
"Which means what?" Jim asked, ignorant.
Douxie looked at him through his lashes, finished tuning the last string, and strummed with his thumb across all twelve.
The sound coming off the instrument was one part lute, one part armonica, and one hundred percent heavenly.
Jim's eyes widened. "What the...?"
"I doubt there's another one of these in existence," Douxie said. "It being an Atlantean instrument, and all." And thus, lost beneath the waters. He blamed Gaylen.
...Though now he wondered how, exactly, Akiridion-5's music had evolved from Atlantis'. Because the bits of music Krel had played for Douxie had been... very formal. Regimented. And also, according to Krel, very long.
The music of the Celestial Spheres, Douxie mused. The music of crystalline lifeforms. In one sense, Akiridion magic/technology, and probably their music, was advanced far beyond that of Earth. But in another sense, it was simple evolutionary divergence at work. Because Earth's magic, and music, was, as Aja might have put it, much more lively than Akiridion-5's.
They're suited to different niches. Neither style is superior. Just different. And there's strength in diversity.
We grow and we learn and we adapt. It's not like I was playing punk rock back in Camelot, is it? Magic and music were living art forms, ones that changed fluidly, easily, over time. Patterns. It's all about patterns, and repetition, and how we change them. His fingers danced up and down the neck of the instrument, across the strings, learning how this lovely new lady sang. She wasn't his Spellcaster, but....
But she might be the most valuable thing Douxie had ever held.
And he'd held rather a lot of priceless treasures in his life, so that was saying something.
"Oh, that's rather marvelous," Charlie said, settling in to listen. "Afraid I'm not very musical myself, but I have been known to appreciate a good tune from time to time."
Douxie chuckled. "Rather like your son, then."
Charlie bolted upright. "Son?"
Douxie froze, his fingers somehow managing to make a discordant jangle on the lovely instrument. "I should not have said that," he muttered.
"So it's to be a boy." Charlie's expression was wondering.
Douxie's brain froze. Then rebooted. "Wait, his egg's been laid?" he demanded, eyes wide.
"Many moons ago," Charlie informed him. "Should be getting close to hatching." He leaned in closer. "Might I know how you know my son?"
"Ah...." Douxie blanked. Telling Charlie too much about the future could be dangerous, for how things were supposed to fall out. How to explain his and Archie's relationship...?
Jim looked back and forth between the two of them. "Your son is his best friend," he told Charlie, with a wave at Douxie.
"Hmm." The dragon regarded Douxie with a new interest. Not necessarily a friendly one.
"Can I... can I see him?" Douxie begged, laying Taliesin's instrument aside. "I won't touch his egg! Neither with body nor with enchantment." Because dragons, Archie had told him, could get very possessive over their unhatched eggs, let alone their hatchling or nestling offspring.
Charlie's gimlet gaze continued unabated.
"I vow the safety of his egg on the power of my wizardry," Douxie told him honestly, the strongest oath he knew how to make. Because all of a sudden nothing, nothing mattered more than getting close to his familiar. Even if Archie wasn't hatched yet. Even if Archie wasn't his familiar yet. Even if Archie wasn't... Archie yet.
It seemed to be enough for Charlie; after a moment, the dragon relented, nodding. "Come along, then," he said. "Let me show you to him."
"We're going after her," Barbara told Nomura.
Who drained her cup in one long sip. "Of course," Nomura said, standing. Her sharp smile was battle-hungry. Barbara didn't particularly like that she was surrounded by warriors these days, but she could feel the adrenaline starting to course through her own veins, so she certainly wasn't going to throw any rocks in her glass house. "Come on."
Barbara followed.
The thing was, Zadra was fast, with a penchant for leaping up to rooftops and running her way across them. "Think you can keep up?" Nomura asked, tracking that luminescent figure.
Barbara hefted the strap of her purse and slung it cross-body. "Just don't lose me on purpose."
Nomura smirked, and shifted, rocking on her hooves before leaping for the rooftops herself.
Barbara gritted herself, and followed Zadra from the ground.
Charlie led them deep into his home, into a place Jim hadn't seen before. When the dragon's bulk cleared the entrance and he could see past him, he understood why.
"This is your hoard room," Douxie said, sounding surprised. And impressed.
Jim could understand why, at least on the second point. He had been pretty sure that treasure troves like this didn't exist outside Scrooge McDuck's vault, the Hobbit movies, and Gatto's stomach.
He wondered what Archie's hoard looked like, in comparison.
Nestled into the heaps of gold coins and necklaces and crowns, was an egg.
It was a creamy white with light gray spots, and both smaller than Jim had expected, and larger at the same time. The grownup Archie that he knew wouldn't have fit inside. But maybe a kitten Archie would. Dragon-kitten? Dragonling? Dragonet?
But more importantly....
"You keep your son's egg in your hoard?" he demanded.
Charlemagne, checking on the egg, was unruffled. His eyes met Jim's. "Family," he intoned, "is the greatest treasure."
"More to the point," Douxie murmured, "all that gold keeps the egg balanced, and cooled." His gaze never left Archie's egg. "As I understand it, dragon eggs generate rather a lot of heat during the incubation process, and it needs to be conducted away. Gold is a rather soft metal, Jim. Perfect for a dragon's bed."
"Indeed." Charlie finished his examination and returned to them. "You may approach him," he told the wizard, "but do not touch."
Douxie wordlessly nodded, and stepped forth, wending his way around heaps of treasure until he was just outside arm's reach of his familiar's egg. He sat down cross-legged in front of it. "Hello," he said, so quietly Jim could barely hear him. A minute passed, then Douxie sniffed, and wiped the back of his arm across his eyes. "I've missed you," Douxie said. In his words, there was something so broken that it hurt to hear.
A mile away from the cafe, the object of her pursuit dropped to the ground. Growling, Zadra followed him around a blind corner--
--only to get knocked flat to the ground, as she and someone else rebounded off one another.
"Ow," a familiar voice muttered, as he and she both sat up.
"Prince Krel?" Zadra demanded.
The prince sighed, one glowing hand held to his head as he pushed himself up with the others, collecting his dropped serrator. "Zadra. Why am I not surprised?"
"I was following a suspicious figure--"
"Yes, yes." The prince waved off her concerns, stowing his weapon. "Magmatron. I know."
She parsed the name almost instantly. "The Cindorite bounty hunter? Here?" And the prince out alone, without any bodyguard!
Before she could begin her haranguing denunciation of Varvatos Vex and his failure in his duties to guard the royal heirs, a magenta-skinned figure dropped from the roofs, landing beside them. "Having fun without us, your highness?"
Zadra blinked. She knew that voice...!
"Hardly, Nomura." Krel cast an admonishing gaze that lacked heat at Zadra. "Aja and the Oaf were playing bait. I was going to take care of Magmatron myself."
Around the corner behind Krel, another figure appeared. Barbara slowed her run, panting as she approached them. "I need more cardio," she gasped finally, hands on her knees.
"Yes, you do," the figure that was apparently Nomura agreed. "Running club?"
"Let me check my schedule and get back to you," Barbara wheezed. "Where'd he go?"
"No idea," Krel said. His eyes widened. "Look out!" He knocked Barbara to the ground, shielding her with his own body as a huge double-ended hammer flew through the air.
Zadra and Nomura both dodged to the sides. "It comes back--" Krel warned, even as it did that very thing.
"Huh." Nomura's eyes were wide as the hammer smacked into the hand of the waiting Cindorite. "Never seen a hammer that could do that before."
"Cyber technology," Zadra informed her crisply, taking up a position to defend the prince and the doctor.
Nomura grinned. "I like it."
"They do seem rather close," Charlemagne observed, watching the young wizard pour his heart out to the dragon egg that would one day be his friend.
What the young human said next froze his blood. "Yeah, well, I guess being familiars will do that."
It took a full second to process. "WHAT," Charlemagne hissed, rounding on Jim.
Whose eyes went wide. "What?" he asked in reply, not even seeming to understand the dire fate he had just pronounced for Charlemagne's only offspring. Aurelia's only offspring!
"My son," Charlemagne pronounced, looming large, "will never be something so lowly as a familiar!"
Jim glanced past him, at the wizard who sat by the egg. He hadn't even looked toward them. Jim looked back to Charlemagne. His voice dropped to a murmur. "I'm not sure you have a choice about that."
"I forbid it!"
Jim just looked at him for a moment, the green gem that was a sign of divine approval glowing on his forehead. Charlemagne didn't know exactly what the boy was, but he had no doubt that he had a powerful patron backing him.
The boy's eyes held all the weight, and calm, of that eternal backing, as he said, "It's not your choice to make. It's your son's." Steel glinted in his blue gaze. "Or are you going to try to take his choices away from him, and make him hate you? Because that's what happens, when parents fail their children. I've seen it. I've been it."
Charlie was shaking his head. "No. No, not a familiar! I wanted better for him. For his mother. I promised her...!"
Jim bit his bottom lip, looking again at the wizard he claimed as his brother. His voice softened. "Your son told me once that Douxie has so much love in him, that it makes any amount of effort worthwhile." His eyes met Charlemagne's. "Parents always want the best for their kids. I know my mom does. So I can understand why you don't want your kid to be something 'lesser'. But... you yourself said family is the greatest treasure, right?"
"I did," Charlie admitted.
"Douxie is your son's treasure," Jim said bluntly. "His hoard. He said so himself. And he's Douxie's. Do you really want to try to take that away from them?"
"Hand over the royal cores!" Magmatron demanded.
"Ugh." Krel wiped a hand down his face. "I don't know if it's cute or pathetic that you think we would agree to that," he said, standing and helping Jim's mother to her feet.
"My royal, you must let me take care of this!" Zadra insisted.
"Be my guest," Krel said, with a gesture at the bounty hunter.
Zadra flashed forward, her double-bladed scythe flashing like lightning and completely failing to so much as scratch the Cindorite's body armor. A mighty swing of his hammer drove her back.
Magmatron laughed derisively. "Magmatron is invulnerable! Invincible! Undefeatable."
Krel rolled his eyes. "His weakness is water," he informed the others.
"Wait," Nomura said, lowering her scimitars. "He's vulnerable to water, and he's bounty hunting on a planet whose surface is three-quarters covered with the stuff?"
"He is not the sharpest blade in the box," Krel admitted.
Magmatron laughed again. "There is no water here. Now. You're wanted dead or alive. I prefer dead. Corpses have less fight in them!" He surged forward, swinging at Krel.
Who yelped and dodged to the side, shoving Barbara away.
She hit the brick wall of the building and spun, one hand rummaging in her purse as the other steadied her. "Nomura! Can you restrain him?"
The purple changeling shook her head and leapt over Magmatron, scoring a useless hit on his armor. "No can do."
Krel's mind raced. He hadn't tried much before, but Aja was far from the only one who could manipulate their serrator.... "What are you thinking?" he called to Barbara, ducking as Magmatron's hammer went flying again.
"Did the boys show you Empire Strikes Back?" Barbara hefted a vaguely egg-shaped stone.
Krel stared for a heartbeat. Then he grinned. "You are thinking of the part with the tow cables? Leave it to me!" He ducked and rolled out of the path of the returning hammer. But rather than rolling away from Magmatron... he rolled toward the bounty hunter instead.
"Prince Krel! What are you doing?!" Zadra demanded.
His serrator reformed into a whip, turning and twisting around and around Magmatron's legs, binding them, even as Barbara hit the dwarkstone hard against the building, hastily set it down by a fire hydrant, and scurried away.
Krel as much as counted the sektons until its detonation. Three. Two. One--
"Such a puny explosion cannot--" Magmatron's boast was cut off by a scream as water poured down on him, seeping into all the magma-filled cracks of the Cindorian armor. He stumbled. He flailed. He tried to escape, but his feet were tied.
Magmatron fell.
"Ladies," said Krel, gesturing at the bounty hunter with an open hand.
"My pleasure," said Zadra with a vicious grin.
Nomura's expression echoed hers.
Together, they attacked.
The explosion left a crater in the street, more than a few store windows blown out, and a multitude of car alarms going off. Seklos and Gaylen, why do humans make their alarms so annoying?
"So," Nomura asked Barbara, "do you always carry a dwarkstone in your purse?"
Barbara smirked as savagely and with as much satisfaction as either of the other two women. "I started Krav Maga for self-defense. In this town, there are many kinds of self-defense."
Nomura chuckled, a dark and appreciative sound.
"A most excellent use of strategy," Zadra complimented her and Krel. "I must see this 'Empire Strikes Back' of yours."
"Yes!" Krel fist-pumped. "Movie night!"
It hurt, realizing that his only child would have no greater ambitions than being the assistant to a human wizard. But....
But perhaps, Charlie admitted grudgingly, looking at the wizard who sat before his son's egg, murmuring words that Charlie could hear, if he wanted, but chose not to, there would be compensations.
Like a wizard who loved his son as no other.
And Hisirdoux was a wizard that Taliesin had seen fit to entrust his legacy to, so he must be something truly special.
If his son had to have a wizard, Charlie tried to soothe himself, at least he would have the best one, not some run-of-the-mill hedge wizard.
"He's my only child," he murmured. "Dragons mate for life, you know. And his mother...." Charlie shook his head, his eyes closing in pain at the memory.
Jim winced. "What happened to her?"
"Slain," Charlemagne pronounced. "She was off, conducting business to the south. We had arrangements to protect the herds in exchange for a portion of the slaughter, and some cheese. Then some knight called George came about and killed her." He growled, deep in his throat. "My own beloved, in the course of enacting her duties!" Sorrow nearly swallowed him whole as he wept for the one he had lost, and would never hold again.
Jim looked like he was realizing something, because after a moment his sympathetic expression widened with shock. "Oh," he said in a small voice. "Oh. Shit. Um." He breathed. "Okay, I've been through time travel enough times to know that I really shouldn't tell you much about the future, but... it's going to get bad between now and our time, okay? Like, really bad." His eyes were big as he glanced at his brother and the dragon egg. "You need to keep yourself and your son safe, okay? Learn to lay low and survive, all right?"
Loss still panging at his heart, Charlemagne managed to nod. "Thank you for the advice. I shan't ask what happens. I expect, though, that I'll live through it all."
"Yeah." The boy nodded. "I'm sorry that it's going to happen... but, yeah. You'll survive it all. Both of you." His eyes rested on his brother. "All three of you," he said softly. "It'll hurt... but you'll live."
"Sometimes," said Charlemagne, "that is all that can be hoped for."
Author's Note: Jim talks about the ampullae of lorenzini, which is a fascinating shark fact I learned from helping to translate Ultraman Moebius, of all things. (Yay, Fushigi-chan Fansubs!) I figure Toby's the type to watch nature documentaries or shark week or such, and pass along all the best facts to his best bud, Jim. "Armonica" is not a typo. If you want to look up the instrument Douxie is referencing, try searching for "glass armonica" or "glass harp." Douxie's "I should not have said that" is a reference to Robbie Coltrane's portrayal of Hagrid in the first Harry Potter film. And, yes, I fridged Archie's mom. I feel bad about that! But given we have no indication of her being alive at any point in her son's life in canon, I feel it was justified by the source material. That was George, the Patron Saint of England, doing the slaying, and Aurelia the dragon in question in his myth.