Your Future Hasn’t Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 8th September, 2023
Latest, least, last looked for.
Toby had once, enthused by some piece of magic Douxie had performed, excitedly said "Exactly what you'd expect of Merlin's penultimate student!"
The words had jolted Douxie out of the moment, and all he'd been able to do was stare and ask dumbly, "Morgana?"
It had turned out, after a few minutes' discussion, that Toby had thought penultimate meant best, when, really, it meant the one before the last.
"But," Toby had protested at the correction, while Claire laughed softly behind her hand, "I mean, there's the pen in Pendragon too, right? Wasn't Arthur supposed to be the greatest dragon of them all?" Which had lead to another discussion about how Arthur, his name meaning bear, was alleged to be the Bear of Britain, not the dragon. The man himself really hadn't gotten on with the dragons at all, regardless of the red dragon of the Welsh flag.
But the point was, Douxie was Merlin's ultimate student, meaning his last, because the old mage certainly hadn't bothered to teach Claire much of anything at all. And he knew now, staring up at Jim, exactly why the greatest wizard of all time had taken him in.
Too much magic.
He hadn't wanted to look at it for a long time, but Douxie could no longer deny it as Krel helped him stand.
He had too much magic.
He wanted to throw up.
Because the spell he'd done on Jim's Deepdweller counterpart had been easy.
It shouldn't ever be easy to erase a person's entire memory, their entire life.
Falling into line behind the others, Krel's guiding touch never leaving the crook of his elbow, Douxie's stomach roiled and his mind swirled.
He'd done the impossible so many times, and just thought himself lucky. Fighting time to bring Taliesin's lute forward with him. Rediscovering, as if by chance, the book that contained lost Atlantean healing magic. Making contact with the memory Taliesin had left behind for him, and finding that he was a sideways descendant of a kind of magic that had been utterly forgotten. Creating a master's staff without having one himself, and transforming Myrddin Wylt into Merlin Ambrosius. Realizing a way to restore magic to Krel, and potentially to all the actual descendants of Atlantis.
Too many coincidences piled too high for Douxie to ignore them any longer.
Even, he thought, the long ago fact of a friendly dragon finding an exiled mage-child in a Welsh spring downpour.
"Everything that's ever happened to me, good or bad, is because of my magic," he remembered telling Barbara once. "It's all because I was born with too much magic." He'd hadn't been thinking about it then the way he was now, but even unrecognized, it had been truth.
Magic swirled, it moved things, it shifted probability and the courses of universes. It was a mystery, and for all Douxie's theories about dark matter, no one actually knew how magic worked or if it had some sentience of its own.
Too much magic. Douxie wanted to choke down a sob.
It didn't make up for the rest of him, of course. The clumsy, flighty, irresponsible moppet he'd been. The impulsive, scatterbrained walking disaster he'd become.
But all of a sudden Douxie knew exactly what Merlin had seen in him. Why Archie hadn't protested at any of the mistreatment he'd earned, from so many different people and in so many different ways, in Camelot, and suggested they leave.
He'd needed the tutelage.
For perhaps the first time, Douxie appreciated how truly dangerous he could be.
Mute, and teetering on the edge of a meltdown, he let himself be guided, following the others, holding on to the edge of control with his bare fingertips.
It was not hard to tell that Douxie was, as Mary put it, going through something. Whatever he'd seen in the Deep had clearly rattled him in a way that even facing down the end of the world hadn't. But Krel was at a loss for how to help him, and for now, they were on a deadline anyway.
He certainly didn't want to take Douxie out of the Deep, and have to come back, and risk triggering the Antramonstrum again. Going through its illusions once had been quite enough for Krel.
"What can I do to help?" he asked quietly, keeping an eye not on Douxie, but on the other members of their party. Toby, Aaarrrgghh, and Aja, as the ones who had been here before, led the way. Jim, Claire, and Blinky followed them. He did not miss that all three were sneaking sporadic glances back at them.
Well. At Douxie.
"Nothing," Douxie half-choked. His pupils were dilated, and Krel didn't think it was because of the dim lighting.
Archie, however, straightened where he was held in Douxie's arms. "Douxie, your medication," he said softly. Krel doubted the others would be able to hear him.
The wizard stared at his familiar, then shifted him to a one-armed carry, fumbling for the pocket of his hoodie. He drew out a small orange plastic bottle and managed to open it, shaking a small white oblong into his hand and tossing it back the same way that Toby ate Skittles.
"What is that?" Krel asked, curious.
"Compounded chemicals to stabilize the human brain," Archie replied as Douxie swallowed, then capped the bottle and made it disappear again. He clutched his familiar desperately, like the small black dragon was a lifeline.
Krel thought about what he knew about human biology. Chemical interactions, and moving parts, and all of it so wet and inefficient. Similar in ways to Durians, he supposed, but, bar the locker room and boys' bathrooms at the high school, mostly not as smelly. That humans sometimes, he supposed, needed additional chemicals to keep their systems in operating order was not a great surprise. "Is this a problem?" he asked. Because Krel wasn't entirely stupid about human interpersonal interaction, at least not any more, and Archie speaking so quietly probably meant that this was a secret thing.
"Takes a while for the meds to kick in," Douxie mumbled, not looking at Krel. "I'm not... neurotypical, in some ways. It's been a problem, in human history."
"Ah, your society's tribalism!" Krel said, illuminated. Of course there would be unwritten social rules that punished outsiders, or the different.
Archie sniffed. "I'll thank you to look in a mirror."
"No thank you. From what I have seen of your planet's wet biology and the many, many ways it can fail you, I am very glad Gaylen transformed my people into a more stable shape."
Douxie huffed and looked away. "Guess I wouldn't exist, then, on your planet." A beat. "Might be for the better."
"Ahhh...." Krel exchanged a look with Archie, uncertain how to deal with that sentiment. The dragon rolled his eyes at him and pressed into his wizard, turning up the volume on his purring until it must be audible from several feet away.
Archie was obviously not interested in being helpful to anyone but his familiar, Krel concluded.
"Why do you think that?" Krel finally asked, lowering his voice. This felt intimate, right? Not something for everyone else to hear.
Douxie drew a shaky breath. "I'm too dangerous," he said quietly.
"We are all dangerous," Krel pointed out, drawing his serrator illustratively.
But Douxie didn't look at him. "Not to each other."
Krel stopped walking. Douxie continued on, following the others while Krel's mind unwillingly put together the pieces and his core sank.
What... what had Douxie seen in the Antramonstum's vision?
And what had it made him do?
The meds started kicking in before Krel caught back up with him. Douxie could have sighed in relief as that lovely, glassy wall of calm arose, putting the maelstrom of his feelings visible, but just out of reach. He didn't sigh, of course, but his shoulders lowered, and his tight grasp on his familiar eased. Archie looked up at him, flicking an ear in curiosity before he realized what must have happened.
It was well enough that the medication worked on him, Douxie thought, because the circular logic of guilt and despair had been pushing him toward options that really weren't palatable. Suicide, to take the danger to the others away. Or running away again, but farther and harder this time, away from Arcadia, maybe leaving the American continents entirely.
(Not that that would work, he thought, not with Claire able to find him literally anywhere on the planet. Maybe anywhere off it as well.)
He knew the feelings would come back once the little white pill ran its course and the dose of the medication wore off, but for now... he was just tired. Tired of feeling, tired of himself and the endless drama that was his life.
A wizard's nap seemed appealing.
But that was just another way of running away, he thought, and for now he was still needed here. They hadn't won yet, hadn't returned magic to humanity, hadn't defeated the Arcane Order and changed Bellroc and Skrael's minds about a single damned thing....
But they were so close, Douxie thought. The end goal was in sight. He just needed to hold on a bit longer.
At the far end of the Deep, apparently, there was a huge door set into the wall. The characters carved around it lit up at their group's approach. "Whoa," Jim said, impressed by the size of the thing.
"This is the work of your father," Aja told Draal. "It holds Gaylen's core and keeps it hidden and safe, as requested by my parents."
"Amazing." Draal approached the door and laid a reverent hand on it. "I did not know he had made this."
Jim narrowed his eyes. "It... it looks like the amulet," he said, pursing his lips.
"Hey, yeah, whoa, it does!" agreed Toby, eyes wide. "How did I not notice that the first time?"
"We were," Aja reminded him, "a bit busy at the time."
"Attacked by Morando," Aaarrrgghh agreed.
Claire shifted her weight and crossed her arms. "So Kanjigar had to make a door to the vault where he hid a really powerful artifact, and he made it look like a thirty foot tall copy of the Trollhunter's amulet, and bolted it to the wall?"
Toby's eyes narrowed. "And he used giant flathead screws," he critiqued. "He could've at least used crossheads."
Jim stifled a laugh.
"Kanjigar was a skilled craftsman," offered Blinky, his lower arms crossed and one hand under his chin as he contemplated the masterpiece. "It is perhaps no surprise that he chose to model a vault to contain what might be either a weapon or a treasure, on the source of his armor."
"He was more than just a skilled craftsman," said Douxie quietly, surprising Jim as he stepped up. The light shone oddly off his eyes, reminding Jim of that one time in the troll pub when Douxie had looked at their auras. "This is... your father studied with Vendel?" he asked Draal.
Looking surprised, the troll nodded. "Yes. How did you know?"
Douxie's mouth curved in what might be a smile. "The style of spellwork's unmistakable." He waved a glowing hand, the runes of his bracelet also illuminated, and all of a sudden the giant thirty-foot emulation of the amulet lit up with blue fire, Trollish characters that Jim didn't even know traced all over it in a 3-D web.
"Whoa," said Krel now, just behind Douxie's shoulder. "Now that's impressive."
Claire, Jim noticed, wasn't looking so much at the vault door after Douxie's initial casting, but at the wizard himself. Her expression was concerned.
Jim agreed with the sentiment. But he also knew that Douxie, as Jim had mused once upon a time, really was like a cat. He needed some time, and space, and to come to them on his own for help.
Which absolutely did not mean that they didn't all need to keep an eye on him. The monster in the Deep messed with your head like nothing else.
"A mechanical incantation?" Jim asked Douxie instead, remembering what he'd said about the roundhouse where the Arcane Order had held Nari.
The gentle, slightly spacey smile, was turned on him. "Exactly," his brother said, and worried as he was, Jim couldn't help but feel a small glow of pride in his chest that he'd gotten something right about the magic that Douxie knew everything about and Jim so seldom knew anything about.
Toby gestured to Aaarrrgghh. "All yours, big guy," he said, indicating the glowing Trollish characters inscribed around one half of the magic door.
Aaarrrgghh gave him a smile. "With valiance and justice," he said.
"Long may House Tarron reign," Aja finished, reading her species' half of the inscription.
The mechanisms of the amulet door lit up, then dimmed, and started moving. Toby was put in mind of the train tracks and turntable at the roundhouse in the future. He wondered if all mechanical incantations were round and like clockwork. He should ask Douxie sometime. Except not now. He risked a glance at the wizard, who had gone from his breakdown to something that looked more usual. But people just didn't get over things like that, that fast. Not even 900+ year old wizards. So, clearly, Toby was not asking him about things right now.
"Come on," Aja said to all the others, beckoning, as the door opened. "Let us go within."
The lot of them followed here. Happily, with no alien dictator and evil robot army shooting at them this time!
Once the doors closed, the ball of light rose from the floor again and showed the holograms/illusions of Gaylen creating Akiridion-5, and Seklos resisting his tyranny. Aja and Krel narrated the events for those of their group who had not been here last time. But then Krel stopped, a funny look in his black/cyan eyes. "Was... was Seklos a wizard?" he asked. He turned to look at Douxie. "An Akiridion one."
He got a half shrug in response. "Possibly. She was certainly an engineer like you."
"Well, yes, she designed a cannon that killed a god, of course she was a good engineer," Krel argued.
Jim pulled Excalibur off his back and considered it. A blade that had killed a god. "I killed a god," he said. "And I'm not a wizard." His mouth quirked. "Yet," he emphasized toward Douxie.
Who just gave a tiny smile in response. But he looked tired.
"One does not need to be a wizard to kill a god," said Kanjigar's ghost, materializing. "Though it certainly helps."
"Kanjigar!" several members of their party said as one.
"Father," said Draal.
Kanjigar gave his son a smile, and a nod.
Which, given Draal's stricken, grieving look, may have been more than he'd ever done in life. Toby felt a little ball of hatred and fury like a knot in the center of himself, that other Trollhunters had pushed their families away. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair.
And if not for Jim, Trollhunters would have done that forever.
"I built this place," Kanjigar said, "to guard Gaylen's core for when House Tarron would one day return." He knelt, bowing to Aja and Krel.
Toby rolled his eyes, and followed suit. They all did, even Douxie, who made the gesture look easy and flowing, like a dance move he'd done a million times over his life.
Even Jim, who didn't make kneeling look natural at all.
But this wasn't about Jim being a king, Toby realized. This was about the politics of Akiridion-5. Which was intertwined, or whatever, with Earth, but was its own thing.
"Sir Kanjigar," Aja said.
"Wow, you said it correctly," her brother murmured.
Aja ignored him. "We are Aja and Krel Tarron, daughter and son of King Fialkov and Queen Coranda. And it is our honor to meet you."
"The honor," said Kanjigar, "is mine. And Gaylen's core is yours, House Tarron, as it has always been."
Kanjigar gestured, and the giant crystals, looking very much like the steps from the canal down into Trollmarket, Toby realized, flew to build the pillar reaching to the core. But Aja and Krel didn't seem happy. They each looked, instead, like the core was a weight chained around their necks, dragging them down.
"It is now yours to protect," Kanjigar's voice said even as he faded from view.
"But... that is not what we are going to do," Aja said quietly.
Toby half expected Kanjigar's ghost to pop back into view with a surprised, outraged expression on his face.
"Aja." Krel laid a hand on her shoulder. "We cannot let Morando get his hands on the core. And." He glanced around their group, his gaze landing on each face in turn, "we must try to heal what Gaylen did to Earth. We owe the planet at least that much."
"I know," she said, her face crumpling. "But we will be destroying the last remnants of the one who created our world and our people, Krel. It is not that easy to just let go."
"But it can be," he assured her, hand squeezing. "Look around you, Aja. At our living friends. At this living world. And ask yourself what is more important: the past? Or the future?"
It took a second, but then Aja's expression cleared. She closed her eyes and leaned her head forward, her brow meeting her brother's. "You are of course right, little brother," she said. "The dead do not get a vote. And Seklos' sacrifice means nothing if we cannot use it to save another world as well."
"Very well, then!" Blinky said, clapping his hands together. "Shall we climb?"
Sword on his back again, Jim grinned. "Race you to the top?" he offered.
Aja smirked in return. "Oh, you are on, Lake hunting boy!"
The race to the top of the crystal pillar was very reminiscent, Krel thought, of that race to the top of the Hero's Forge that Blinky had at one point instigated. Though this one, of course, had more participants. (Blinky himself, Krel noted, did not participate, which seemed highly unfair. But then, neither did Douxie, and that was a thing Krel did not want to press at the moment.) And the rest of them were onto Claire's cheating with her portals and all actively worked with one another to sabotage her. Including Jim, whose idea of distracting his girlfriend apparently involved pulling her into a kiss.
It was, Krel had to admit, a highly effective method. Though Claire made the funniest face when she realized that was what her boyfriend had been doing.
In the end, though, it was Aja and Krel who reached the top first, approaching the glowing pink gemstone that held Gaylen's core from either side.
"Come to mama," Aja murmured, raising her arms high.
Krel laughed. "And papa!" he said, imitating his sister.
The gemstone slowly descended into their eight arms. It was warm, Krel thought, like Trollmarket's heartstone. He wondered if this gem was, in fact, made from a heartstone. Obviously a different one, given the color, but still.
"It's humming," Aja said quietly.
"It has a beat," Krel said, feeling it through his core. It was like a human heartbeat, or--
Oh.
He risked a glance down at Douxie, on the floor far below them.
The beat wasn't the crystal, it was the magic. And if he, like Douxie, was some kind of bardic mage, maybe that was just how magic felt to Krel, now that he knew to look for it.
Slowly, around them, the tower's crystals began to drift down to the ground, like a long, low exhale. Their friends stood on the crystals, smiling.
This was one of those moments, Krel thought, where it felt like the universe had gone right for a change.
Looking around the crystal, he saw from his sister's expression that Aja felt the same.
Their hands tightened on one another where they each held the crystal, a promise of I've got you and we're in this together, always.
All that was left, at least for now, was getting the core to Vendel. Which was easy enough. Claire made a shadow portal directly between the vault, and Vendel's workshop. As a bonus, she could even tell that the Elder was in it.
Aja and Krel went through first, carrying the huge crystal, followed by Toby and Aaarrrgghh, then Douxie and Archie, with Jim and Blinky and Draal pointedly bringing up the rear behind their traumatized wizard. Claire went last, sealing the rift behind herself.
In Vendel's workshop, a mug of liquid had obviously been knocked off the table and splashed across the floor. Claire grimaced. Her portal must have startled Vendel. But there really hadn't been any way for them to contact him ahead of it. He didn't have a phone.
Regardless, he'd clearly gotten over his startlement, and was directing the Tarron siblings to lay the core on his worktable.
"Is this... heartstone?" Krel asked, hand lingering on the encasing crystal. "It feels magical."
"No." Vendel shook his head. "Kanjigar and I placed the core in a stasis crystal."
Claire and several other members of their party twitched. Her eyes sought out Jim, remembering him laying lifeless and poisoned in Merlin's green crystal that had looked all too much like a casket.
Jim, at least, looked calm. But then, he hadn't seen himself like that. For him, one moment, he'd been awake and in pain. The next moment, he'd been awake again, and surrounded by Arthur's hostile knights. No space in between.
She crossed the space between them now, and looped her arm through his, leaning her weight against his warmth. Jim looked at her, surprised. "Claire?"
Claire shook her head. "Ask me later." Right now she just needed to be reassured that he was here, alive and uninjured.
Vendel's hands ghosted across the crystal, as if sensing things she couldn't. Blinky's eyes were narrowed, watching, as were Toby's. Douxie, she noticed, was also carefully watching Vendel's movements, but his gaze was less... avaricious, maybe... than the others'.
Geomancy, Claire realized. Vendel was doing something with geomancy, and Blinky and Toby were studying that, while Douxie was seeing whatever Vendel did.
"Ah, right here." Vendel drew out a comically tiny tool that looked like a miner's pick, and tapped at the pink crystal.
It cleaved neatly into two halves. Gaylen's core hovered for a moment, then, as Vendel brushed the two halves of the stasis crystal aside, the core floated down to rest, shining and palest blue, on the worktable.
"Oh, neatly done, Vendel!" crowed Blinky.
It won him a faint smile. "Thank you, Blinkous."
Toby's eyes were huge. "Whoa. Can I learn to do that?"
"In time." Vendel did not look away from the core. "Now. I need to study this. The lot of you, come back tomorrow."
A choir of "Yes, Vendel,"s tumbled from their mouths. Obedient to various degrees, they trooped out the door.
"So!" Toby said brightly, once they were a respectable distance from the workshop, "who's for hitting the pub with me?"
"I will," said Krel instantly. "Dealing with sacred artifacts and dead gods is, as your people say, thirsty work."
"I'm in," said Draal.
"And me too!" chimed Aja.
"Well, then!" Blinky clapped his hands together. "Let us go and procure a few tables."
"Shove them together," agreed Aaarrrgghh.
"Count us out," Jim said with a speaking glance at Douxie. "I think we should head home."
Archie, who had migrated to his wizard's shoulder, nodded curtly. "I agree. You have tests to study for."
Jim groaned, slumping. "Don't remind me."
"I should head out too," Claire said, checking her phone. She smiled. "NotEnrique's back, and I want to know where all those changeling candidates are going."
"He is?" Toby lit up. "Awesomesauce! Give the little dude a high-five for me."
"Will do," Claire confirmed. "I'll send Chompsky to your house. If he's not there already."
"Ooh yeah. Betcha five bucks he's already having his happy reunion with Sally."
She laughed. "I wouldn't even take that bet, Toby." With a gesture, Claire summoned a shadow portal to the Lake house for the brothers.
"See you all later," Douxie said, and headed through.
"Jimbo," said Toby, making Jim pause. "You're going to take care of him, right?" Toby nodded at the portal.
Jim's smile was strained but honest. "Of course I am, Tobes." He put a hand on Toby's shoulder. "Don't let us put a damper on the party, okay?"
"Right."
"Come on," Claire told Jim. "Studying, remember?"
He groaned. "I remember," Jim said, and let himself be drawn, arm in arm, though the portal with her.