[fic] [Tales of Arcadia] Fourteen Times
Fourteen Times
by K. Stonham
released 21st March 2023
On a sunny Tuesday afternoon when Hisirdoux Casperan expected nothing much to happen, a black-haired boy with a destiny walked into the bookshop and upended his life.
Douxie watched from his perch on a stool behind the counter as the teenager, clearly fresh out of school given the bike he parked at the curb and the messenger bag slung over his shoulder, walked up to the front door of GDT Arcane Books and opened it with no hesitation at all. Like he knew exactly where he was going and exactly what he wanted. Which might not have been odd for some individuals; the shop had a few regulars who attended the high schools. But Douxie knew all of them, and this boy? Wasn't one. He'd have expected a pause, a look through the shop's windows, a firming up of his conviction.
It was, after all, an arcane bookshop, and the Christian hegemony so present in this country and this century meant that people who weren't already into the occult were ginger, at best, about walking into what more than one loony had declared to be "the den of Satan!" (There were, by necessity, rather a lot of wards and protective spells laid on the shop.)
The black-haired boy, however, didn't seem to hold the least ambivalence about his goal or his entry. The bell over the door chimed as it opened and shut and the boy headed directly for the counter; Douxie straightened out of his slouch.
"Douxie," said the boy, without preamble, "I need your help."
Douxie exchanged a surprised look with his familiar. "I'm sorry," he told the boy, "have we met?"
A smile tugged at the boy's mouth. "Not yet," he said, and dug in his bag, pulling two things out, one in either hand, which he then laid on the counter.
The first item alone took Douxie's breath away: Merlin's Trollhunter amulet.
Eyes wide, he tore his stare away from that to gaze upon the second: a small emerald which blazed with so much power it made his eyes water.
"I think," Archie said, and the boy did not look at all surprised about a talking cat, "that you'd better close the shop, Doux."
"So," the boy said, unsettlingly calm, "my name is James Lake, Junior. Call me Jim. And this morning I picked up the Trollhunter amulet from a pile of Kanjigar's remains down in the canals. For the second time."
Douxie choked. "I'm sorry. The second time?"
Jim gestured, curling his hand. The emerald, which was laid on the low table between the two armchairs in the bookstore's magical layer, rose, and drifted into his palm. "Do you know what this is?"
Douxie shook his head.
"It feels like time magic," Archie said, gaze narrowed.
"This is the Chronosphere," Jim said, green light playing around his fingers.
Douxie's eyes widened. "I've heard of that! It shows the future."
"Yeah, well." Jim's mouth tightened. "It can also be used to reset time."
Douxie's mind ran a string of formulae that went something like: Jim had an obvious ease and familiarity with the use of the Chronosphere. Jim said he had claimed the amulet twice. Jim had come seeking him out for reasons unknown.
The simplest question seemed the best place to start. "How many times have you reset time?" Douxie asked quietly.
Jim's face suddenly aged a thousand years. He slumped backwards in his chair. "Too many. Um." His thumb counted on the fingers of his right hand. "I think... fourteen now? Has it really been that many? Gods."
"Fourt--" Douxie exchanged a stunned glance with Archie.
"Jim," said Archie, "why?"
"Because...." Jim seemed to curl up on himself. "Because I can't do it! I can't win, without sacrificing too many people!"
"Win? Against... Gunmar?" asked Douxie. That was, after all, who the amulet had been created to seal away.
Jim snorted. "Pfft. No. Gunmar's... well, he's not a cakewalk. But I can beat him. I have. No." He took a deep breath. "I can't beat the Arcane Order."
Douxie's blood ran cold. "The Arcane Order," he said cautiously.
Jim nodded, miserable. "They want to remake the world, because man and magic are out of balance. Which is a stupid thing to do! But try telling Bellroc that," he grumbled.
"Oh dear," said Archie.
"What happened?" asked Douxie, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.
Jim gave a bitter laugh. "The first time, I defeated them, okay? But it was barely. And it cost me... Vendel. Draal. Half of Heartstone Trollmarket, including the heartstone itself. Aja and Krel's parents. Merlin." Douxie jolted, but Jim went on. "Nomura. Strickler." The names meant nothing to Douxie, but they clearly meant something to Jim. He paused, then added one more name, in a tone of quiet utter heartbreak: "Toby."
"I'm sorry," Douxie said.
Jim swallowed. "Nari said, if I used the Chronosphere, time would unfold differently, like a flower. So I did."
"Nari of the Eternal Forest?" Archie asked, seeking clarification. "One-third of the Arcane Order?"
Jim nodded.
"What happened?" asked Douxie.
"The next time around... Toby was the Trollhunter. I let him go to Kanjigar's remains first, because maybe he was supposed to be the real hero, and I'd just been there first." Jim's mouth was a line. "It worked. Until it didn't."
"So you reset time again."
Jim nodded. His fist uncurled, revealing a wink of green. "This keeps coming back with me."
"I'm not surprised," Archie commented.
"What happened next?"
"Claire was the Trollhunter. It went okay until Morgana woke up. Then...." Jim hesitated. "Arcadia got wiped from the map."
"Another reset," Douxie guessed.
Jim nodded. "Every time, the amulet picked someone different. I guess Arcadia's not shy on hero types."
"But none of them trolls?" asked Douxie, brow furrowed. As far as he knew, there had never been a human Trollhunter before, but the names Toby and Claire were clearly human. As was Jim.
"Well, Blinky and Aaarrrgghh got their turns." Jim's mouth twisted, like he was seeing into the past. "It took a lot of work to get myself on their teams, those times. But... yeah. Reset after reset, because no matter who gets the thing, it always ends in disaster."
"Who else?" asked Archie.
"Um. Strickler and Nomura, they're changelings. My mom." A smile graced Jim's mouth. "She was awesome. Until she got killed." Given Jim's haunted look, it hadn't been a clean death. "Aja and Krel and Varvatos. Which, they're from another planet, so I stressed out like you wouldn't believe, wondering for three months each time where the hell the amulet had gone. Stuart. That one was weird. Steve and Eli each got a go, can you believe it?"
Douxie counted in his head. Toby, Claire, Blinky, Aaarrrgghh, Strickler, Nomura, Mrs. Lake, Aja, Krel, Varvatos, Stuart, Steve, Eli. Thirteen names. Thirteen resets. "Jim," he said softly, "you said fourteen. Who was the last one?"
Jim's eyes, very blue, very traumatized, and very apologetic, met his, and Douxie knew the answer. Knew it like he knew his own magic. "You," Jim said softly.
Douxie drew a breath. Archie jumped onto his lap; his arms curled around his familiar. "Tell me what happened," he invited.
"You were amazing," Jim said. "You already knew about magic and everything, so you were a leg up on most of the rest of us from the start."
"But I failed," Douxie said. "I must have, or else you wouldn't have reset time."
Jim shook his head. "You didn't. But." He swallowed. "Bellroc killed you. And." Jim sniffed, wiping the back of his hand against his eyes. "You'd figured me out, by the end. Figured everything out. And you knew I'd do this, so. You told me. Told me to claim the amulet and come study magic with you, and we'd beat fate together this time." His mouth turned down. "Luckily it was still there waiting for me this morning."
"Jim," Douxie said softly, "sometimes you have to sacrifice pieces to win." That was what Merlin had said, so often. And Douxie had no illusions that his master had been talking about chess.
But Jim shook his head. "Nari said time would unfold differently, like a flower. But every petal so far has sucked. So I clearly," he said, with half a sob, "need a new strategy. Because this one isn't working."
The boy had seen him die yesterday, Douxie realized. And obviously thought of him as an old, trusted friend.
Well, he knew enough about the world to know that friendship of that sort wasn't on offer every day. He wasn't fool enough to pass it up.
"Jim," he said, leaning forward, reaching across the space between them, "I don't know if we can save everyone. But we can surely try." His hand curled around Jim's fist, the one that held the Chronosphere. "You know the future. And I know magic. We can work together."
"It's stupid." Jim swiped at his eyes again, shook away the tears. "How can I study magic? I don't have magic, that's Claire."
"Uhh." Douxie exchanged a surprised look with Archie.
"Saying you don't have magic? You, the master of the Chronosphere?" Archie asked Jim. "Are you truly that dense?"
"Harsh, Arch," Douxie told his familiar. But he looked at Jim on a deeper level. "I don't know if you had magic originally, Jim, but after fourteen time jumps, and two stints as the Trollhunter? You're as saturated with it as I am."
Jim stared.
"Welcome to wizardry," Douxie told him with a smile. "Fancy that ups our odds?"
Jim wiped his eyes again, this time with the cuff of his jacket sleeve. He seemed to be getting himself back under control. "It'd better."
"Going to need you to tell me about all these people, and why you trusted them with the amulet," Douxie said. "I need to know our team, after all."
"Douxie, you're not serious about this, are you?" asked his familiar.
"Think I've got to be," Douxie replied cheerfully. "It's the fate of the world at stake, Arch!"
The dragon rolled his eyes but otherwise didn't protest.
"So." Douxie turned his attention back to Jim. "How much time've we got?"
"Two years." Jim's mouth twisted. "Though it doesn't always last that long."
"Ah." Some of those loops had apparently ended in disaster long before any final confrontation with the Arcane Order. Still, Douxie would need to keep in mind that Jim was not... what, fifteen, sixteen? He was at least twice that age, and a combat hardened veteran of magical wars.
"Chin up, Trollhunter," he told Jim, reaching for the amulet to hand it back to the young man. "We've got work to do."
The minute Douxie's fingers touched the cool dragon's tooth iron, magic spoke to magic. He jolted, muscle memory running up his arm like the ghosts of flames.
He knew the amulet. Knew the weight of Daylight. Knew the sore muscles, the bruises, the ringing in his head that signaled concussion, the blood, the sweat, the tears, the fear, the sheer desperation--
Frozen, Douxie breathed. And knew that if he said the invocation, the armor would clad him just as surely as it would Jim.
Knew that Jim could toss him Daylight, or Eclipse, or... the other sword, and that he could wield them, and that they would not disappear from his hand.
The echoes of a lifetime that had never happened, he realized, could change what happened in this one.
Douxie swallowed, his fingers tightening momentarily on the amulet that had once been his, before handing it over to Jim. "I think," he said, "that you'll want to let the others hold that as well."
"Douxie?"
He found a smile, mind still reeling. "We are all," Douxie told Jim, "Trollhunters."
The fourteen of them acting at once could succeed where sequentially they had failed.
And save everyone.
Author's Note: So some time ago, my nine-year-old said the ideal sequence of events after Rise of the Titans was for Jim to keep resetting time, until every member of the Ninth Configuration had their own Trollhunter amulet and they could all take on Bellroc and Skrael and win without losing anyone. That apparently stuck in the back of my mind until I quite literally had this dream, woke up, and wrote it out in about 2000 words. The only reason NotEnrique wasn't included in Jim's list of resets is because he's still just a little short to be an effective Trollhunter. :)