[fic] [Tales of Arcadia] Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet 162/?
Your Future Hasn’t Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 13th January, 2024
A roar shook the foundations of Camelot. Above ground, people paused, wondering what ghastly beast had made that sort of noise. The more fearful among them gathered their wives and husbands and children close, looking around as if they might be able to defend from some attacking force. (A few, braver, though perhaps more foolish, picked up makeshift weapons.)
Beneath the castle, an enormous blue troll that barely fit into his cell growled, his eyes burning red as he grasped at the bars caging him. They crackled with magic, burning as green as the gem embedded into his brow, which shone with an equal light, waging war within him.
Jim bellowed in pain, and pulled at the bars, warping them. One yank. Two. Three and they broke entirely, the outraged, wounded troll defeating Merlin's enchantment upon the metal. He wrenched the remains out of the ceiling, showering dust and pebbles down onto himself as he stepped out into the walkway between prisons.
Around him, other trolls snarled ferally, as red-eyed and wild as himself, attacking the bars of their own cages, burning themselves on the magic meant to keep them contained.
Merlin's good at locking things away, Jim thought spitefully, and hooked his fingers into the doors of one cage after another, breaking the locks.
Setting his howling kin free, and letting them loose onto the grounds of Camelot to avenge their pain with the blood of their captors. The guards, drinking ale and playing at dice, were unprepared, and the first to fall.
The green troll imprisoned across from Jim - Callista - was the first to be freed, but the last to leave. She stood there panting, a wild look in her eyes as her fists curled and uncurled.
"Why don't you run free?" Jim growled at her.
She snarled, baring her teeth. "Trying to decide how I can get at that fuck Arthur," Callista growled. "And pay him back for everything he's taken from me."
Jim grinned. He had no love for Arthur either.
The green gem on his forehead suddenly flared bright, blinding them both. They flinched.
And in that moment, Jim thought to himself, What am I doing?
He stared at his right hand, blue stone and ungainly. At the scorch marks across his palm. He had a sudden flashback, of trying to save someone else from a prison, of burning himself on a broken horngazel. Bleeding, broken skin, worse than any accident he'd ever had with an oven or hot pan...
The pain now was minimal, ebbing away. If he'd had his armor, back in Hong Kong, he probably would never have been injured at all. The armor protected. The amulet had the unique property of healing its bearer.
He was as right now as he had been then, Jim knew, about organizing a jailbreak. Because Camelot didn't respect the rights of all sentient beings. In fact, they didn't respect anything that didn't look human. Or a fair number of those who did - witness their attempts at purging wizards.
They'd poisoned him, drugged all the trolls, with gravesand.
He wondered if Merlin had ever known that the armor could heal, or if it was an accident. Or if Douxie, who had been the other half of the duo that created the Trollhunter amulet, had a hand in that, his knowledge and magic echoing back and forth through time.
Because the amulet, or perhaps Nimue's crown, was acting as an antidote to the poison.
He could still feel it burning through his stomach and veins, the anger that wanted to overwhelm, to make everything hurt the way he hurt--
But it was dissipating, blunted and absorbed by the armor, or by Nimue's crown, he didn't know.
But as he looked down, at Callista's face, burning with an unholy wrath, he knew that was only for him.
A rock sank into Jim's stomach as he realized what that meant.
A couple dozen trolls, hopped up on gravesand, with no way to get them out of it, loosed on Camelot....
Oh no, Jim thought.
What have I done?
Mary gasped, bringing her hand to her chest like some kind of maiden aunt as the tower shook. Morgana caught herself, one hand against the wall of the narrow stairwell.
But Claire's eyes widened.
She knew that roar. Had heard it first in life, then in nightmares. And now... in life again.
Color drained from her cheeks as she felt cold. Because if Jim was roaring, that meant nothing good. He'd barely been in Camelot's dungeons half a day. They weren't due to attempt a jailbreak for hours yet. (And that, she admitted, was only if Douxie thought they'd keep the timeline intact.)
Something had gone horribly wrong.
"Jim," she breathed, and summoned a shadow portal, darting through between one step and another, leaving her best friend and her sometimes enemy behind.
Douxie glanced skyward, at the pigeons and crows taking flight at the bellowing roar.
"Uh," said Krel, glancing around.
"That is nothing good," Douxie breathed.
"Was that... Jim?" asked Krel.
Douxie nodded, lips tight. "Almost certainly."
"Does the young king call for aid?" inquired Varvatos, coming up behind them, dusting his hands together. Beyond him, the slorr lay weakly panting, temporarily defeated. Varvatos hadn't put his transduction back on, and dwarfed the pair of them.
Douxie bit his bottom lip. "I don't know," he said, already mapping the fastest route between the stables and the dungeons. He could hear faint cries of worry from other parts of the castle, but no screams. Not yet.
"Right," he said, making up his mind. He pushed the bottle of blue slorr milk in the direction of his familiar. "Arch, take this to Merlin." A wave of blue magic, not accompanied by anything so crass as a physical gesture, shut and barred the slorr's stall. "Krel, Varvatos, you're with me."
"All right!" said Krel, pumping his fist, which was something he'd probably picked up from Toby. Or maybe Eli or Steve. "Where are we going?"
Douxie sighed, having a bad feeling about this. "Probably... a jailbreak. Several hours ahead of schedule."
Varvatos slammed one fist into the other. "Glorious," he said, and then they were off.
The knights of Camelot jolted to their feet at the bellow. So, too, did the knights of Arcadia.
"What-- what's going on?" asked Steve, still clutching his mug of ale in one hand. The other was at his hip, on the hilt of his sheathed sword.
"Unknown," reported Lancelot tersely, turning slowly to scan the edges of the training yard and what could be seen beyond the arched entrances.
"That sounded like it came from the dungeons," said one of the knights.
"Oh no," Toby muttered.
Darci turned to him. "TP?"
"The dungeons," he reiterated to her. "Like, where Jimbo is."
Her eyes widened.
"But what could have gotten to Jim in there?" asked Eli.
"I don't know," Toby said tersely. "Do you?" he demanded of Lancelot.
Lancelot's eyes narrowed. "If you accuse me, Duke Tobias--"
"I kind of think Camelot's not known for playing fair with trollkind," Toby shot back, rapidly sickening of the holier-than-thou attitude of the people who'd thrown his best buddy in prison. Didn't matter that Jim had walked in on his own two feet; they'd judged him and sentenced him before he'd even opened his mouth.
It was one thing for the two of them to get up to shit in the course of Trollhunting that, yeah, looked wrong to human authorities who didn't have the full picture.
It was something else entirely to be presumed guilty from the moment you set foot in a court.
No wonder Douxie hated this place as much as he loved it.
Another roar was accompanied by a swaying shake of the ground that Toby normally would have counted as an earthquake, but now was pretty sure was actually some kind of magical shock wave.
Then the screams started.
"Men of Camelot, to arms!" called Lancelot, his attention snapping clear from Toby in an instant.
With a cry of assent, all the Camelot knights drew their weapons and streamed out the various exits to the courtyard. Within seconds, it was empty, the Arcadians left behind, presumably forgotten.
"Um." Eli pushed his glasses higher. "So what do we do?"
"Toby." Aja caught his attention. "You think that was Jim?"
Toby nodded. "No 'think' about it, Aj'. That was definitely Jim in beast mode."
"Uh. Like, why's he in beast mode?" asked Steve.
"Dunno." Toby shook his head. "Definitely nothing good." There might be a legit reason, but if there was, it escaped him.
"So what do we do, TP?" asked Darci. "I mean, us against those knights?" She shook her head. "I'll stand with Jim, but they'll wipe the floor with us."
"I... I dunno, Darce." Toby shook his head, looking at his hands. Because she was right. They were outnumbered, for the most part outmatched, and the knights here had the advantage of terrain familiarity. "But we can't just let Jimbo fight alone." The thought of all those knights hacking at his best friend chilled him.
"Well, duh," said Steve. "We were never gonna let him go solo, Dumbzalski."
Looking around, Toby could see all of his friends nodding.
"The question," said Zadra slowly, taking out a black cylinder no more than five inches long. She shook it sharply; it snapped out, telescoping into the staff of her scythe. The glowing blades at either end activated with a hum. "Is one of tactics."
And, okay, Toby was still pissed off at her for her whole messing up the destruction of Gaylen's Core thing, not to mention the fact that she'd ended up injuring Jim and stranding them in the past.
But he had to admit that having an experienced military commander here with them was a relief.
"Okay," said Toby, willing to listen. "What's your plan?"
Jim wasn't expecting the shadow portal, and the tiny sorceress who barreled out it, violet fire wreathing her hands.
Except for the part of him that totally was.
"Jim! What happened?" asked Claire.
Callista snarled, and leapt for the human target.
Claire, in some kind of magical judo move, sidestepped, grabbed Callista with her magic and slammed her up against the wall behind herself, holding her pinned there, eyes glowing with that same purple flame.
"Whoa," said Jim, impressed despite himself.
"Jim!" Claire half turned toward him, a little of the magic leaving her eyes. "Are you all right?"
Growling, Callista writhed against the magical bonds.
"I'm fine," Jim assured his girlfriend. "Now."
Her eyes narrowed.
He threw his hands up. "I am! I swear. Um." He looked beyond her, at Callista. "Maybe you should let Cal go? You're only making her madder."
Claire turned back to her prisoner. Half a dozen different expressions crossed her face in a moment. Then she sighed. "You're probably right," she said, and let Callista go.
Callista snarled again and leapt at her.
"Hey! Whoa! No!" Jim snatched Claire up in one hand, holding her up out of reach of the angry, feral troll, while seizing Callista's upper arm in the other.
"She attacked me!" Callista snarled.
"Hey, you attacked me first," Claire snapped back. She was like a porcelain doll, her hands and feet finding purchase on Jim's crystalline mane.
"Can both of you knock it off?" Jim demanded. "We need to find a way out of here. The guards are only human," he reminded Callista, "but we're outnumbered, and it's daylight out there." Which wouldn't hurt him, but would hurt her.
"I know that, you numb-witted gnome!" Callista snapped. "I could have stayed in that cage and been safe. But you tore it open, and now they're going to kill us all." Her sharp teeth ground together. "So I'm gonna see how many I can take with me," she said, turning to the dungeon entrance.
"Merlin!" gasped Archie, flying in the window, barely able to manage it while carrying the weight of the filled bottle of blue milk.
"Not now, Archibald," the master wizard groused, bent over his diagrams, carefully making notations with a raven's quill.
"Something going on, Arch?" asked his familiar, the Douxie-of-this-time, dutifully returning books to Merlin's overstuffed shelves. He wasn't going for any sort of order, instead just stuffing them in wherever a space could be found.
For all the magically expanded space within the tower, there were still far more volumes than volume for them.
Archie carefully set his burden down on the octagonal worktable, then glanced at the stained glass windows that let light into the room. "It's chaos out there," he reported.
"Don't exaggerate, Archibald," Merlin said, sounding just like Archie's father. He never looked up.
Douxie, however, crept closer. "Chaos?" he asked, his eyes sparkling. Intrigued. "Maybe I should go--"
But no sooner did he turn toward the door, to sneak out and go see something interesting, than that the door shut and barred itself via Merlin's distinctive emerald magic.
"You will," said the master wizard, "finish shelving those books, Hisirdoux."
The boy's shoulders slumped. "Yes, master," he said glumly, and returned to that endless task.
"Jim--"
"I know," he answered Claire. He couldn't let Callista stalk out that door to murder and get murdered. She needed to become Deya.
Somehow.
"What's going on?" Claire asked, her eyes flitting between him and Callista's retreating back.
"Someone drugged us all with gravesand," Jim told her.
Claire's eyes widened. "Oh no."
With Callista under the influence of gravesand, the chances of her becoming Deya seeming highly unlikely. Strickler had told him, once upon a time, that the only way to break someone out of the influence of ingested gravesand was to use a strong emotional connection to break the powder's hold.
And everyone Callista loved was dead.
His brain was being useless. Somehow they'd managed to fuck up the timeline even more than he'd thought possible, on their first day here.
I got sloppy, Jim thought, frustration prickling at his eyes as he watched the first Trollhunter walk away from him. Just because 501 went well. Just because we've done this run before, I thought we could handle it. That I could handle it.
Snarling, he stomped forward, catching Callista by the upper arm. "No," he snarled, even as she rounded on him, her eyes rubies, her claws splayed to swipe him across the cheek for his daring. "I won't let you get killed."
"It's not your decision, runt," she snarled back.
"Uh, hey." Claire, who had slipped from Jim's back and stood behind him. "You know, I could just portal you guys out of here?" A black circle swirled before her spread palms. "Like, to the Wild Wood?"
"And why should I trust you?" snapped Callista. "You're a human."
"The child is a mage," someone else corrected. Jim's head snapped around to see Morgana stepping out of shadows, Mary behind her.
Jim's hackles automatically raised and he growled at the sight of the witch.
Morgana, not Mary, for the record.
Though Mary did shrink back behind Morgana at that. Jim gave her what he hoped was an apologetic glance.
"You're one of Merlin's," snarled Callista.
"I'm my own," Morgana mildly corrected the troll. "And were it not for my birth, Arthur would see me as dead as any of your magical kin. So I trust you understand that I am not on his side."
Jim could practically feel the weight of Callista's mistrust.
"Whatever," he told Morgana. Turning back to Claire, he said, "Get us out of here."
She nodded and summoned a portal. Morgana looked mildly impressed at its size. "I'll find you," Claire said.
"Save who you can," he told her, and pulled Callista through the portal with him.
"Well," said Douxie, walking down the last few steps as Claire's portal swirled to a pinpoint then vanished, "that's one problem dealt with."
Morgana seemed startled to see him. Mary and Claire less so.
"What's going on, Claire?" Douxie asked his student.
She grimaced. "Someone slipped all the prisoners gravesand. Jim was able to fight it off, but...." Her expression told the rest of the tale.
"Ugh," Douxie agreed, his mind spinning out the possibilities. Horrifying ones.
"These are your dungeons?" asked Krel, picking his way down the last few steps past Douxie. He stopped and surveyed the wrecked cells. "I am not very impressed."
"Primitive hooman technology," Varvatos opined, following his king-in-waiting. He seemed disappointed that they hadn't directly encountered any of the trolls and goblins wreaking havoc in Camelot at the moment.
Morgana's eyes were wide as she stared at the blue behemoth. "I do not believe we have been introduced," she said faintly.
"Ugh. Varvatos, your transduction," Krel reminded him.
Varvatos rolled all four eyes, but complied, returning in a flash of blue light to his human guise.
Morgana's eyes only widened. "A spell of concealment...?" she asked. "But... I do not sense it. And nothing of the sort should be able to get past me." Her eyes narrowed. "I have studied such enchantments, so that what was done to my mother may not be done to me."
Douxie winced.
"No magic," Krel told her. "It is Akiridion technology."
"Fascinating." Morgana looked once more, keenly, at Varvatos, then turned, waving a hand at Mary and Claire. "Come, handmaidens. We have magical creatures to rescue from those brutes my brother calls his knights." She summoned a portal of her own. "Clean up in here, will you, little Douxie?"
He gritted his teeth. But he bowed. "Yes, my lady."
And then all three sorceresses were gone.
Douxie sighed.
And set to magically cleaning up the damaged cells.
"Why do you do that?" Krel asked. "She cannot order you around."
"Unfortunately," Douxie said, shoving with magic to straighten a set of bent bars, "here and now she can. And I suspect Lady Morgana, despite knowing I'm not from the here and now, is going to be almost as bad as Merlin at not seeing who I am for who I was."
"Most unfortunate," agreed Varvatos.
Douxie craned his neck, looking up at where Jim had literally ripped the bar wall of his cell out of the ceiling. "Wow, Jim really did a number on this." He dialed through his bracelet, looking for the strongest mending rune he had to hand.
"Shouldn't we be rescuing trolls?" asked Krel.
Douxie shook his head, casting the rune and holding it steady as chunks of rock and mortar flew up from the floor, fitting themselves snugly back into place. "Trolls hopped up on gravesand? That's foul stuff. They won't want rescue, they'll just want to kill us. It completely strips away the other options of the 'fight, flight, freeze, or fawn' instinct. And unless you have a few hidden tricks you haven't shared with me, none of the three of us can portal them out of danger the way Claire and m'lady Morgana can."
Krel looked shamefaced. "I was still working on localized subspace corridors," he muttered. His shoe toed the damp ground of the dungeon. "It did not seem urgent yet."
"Nothing ever seems urgent until you realize you needed it twenty minutes ago," Douxie agreed. He finished his casting and patted Krel on the shoulder. "Don't worry. If it helps any, as I just said, there's precious little I can do at the moment either. Not without actively turning against Arthur's knights. Which is not a good idea just now."
Krel blinked. "The knights," he said. His eyes widened. "Aja!" He bolted up the stairs.
Varvatos groaned, but loyally followed after his king.
Douxie rolled his eyes. "I would place money," he said to the empty dungeon, "on Aja being the safest person in this castle." Especially given how fond she was of violence. Nonetheless, he sighed, looked around the repaired cells, then set out after the Akiridion pair.
Zadra's plans to make up for her mistakes by coming to the young king's aid were waylaid by another king.
Arthur stepped out directly into the path of their squadron as they arrowed directly to the dungeons. "Princess Aja," he said, paying the rest of them no more than cursory attention. "Come, we must get you to safety."
Aja blinked at him. "Safety?" she asked, as if it was a foreign concept.
"The trolls in the dungeon have revolted," Arthur explained. "Including, I am afraid, your countryman. When placed in close contact with the others, it seems their brutal nature overcame his more civilized mannerisms. I apologize; the fault is entirely mine."
"Say whaa--" Toby said, but his jaw snapped shut as Aja held up a hand to silence him.
She examined Arthur minutely. Behind and around her, her friends of this planet shifted from foot to foot. None of them, Zadra noted, looked particularly happy.
"There are many differing versions of the truth," Aja said finally, with a newfound depth and diplomacy that she had never exhibited before fleeing Akiridion-5. "For instance, it may well be true that Jim has attacked someone. But equally," the queen-in-waiting said quietly, leaning in toward Arthur. He, in return, leaned toward her, to hear her ever-softening words, "it may be true that this was not done without cause."
"Do you call me a liar, in my own kingdom, Princess Aja?" asked the king, his face hardening.
"I would not dare," she said, smiling politics. "But I would request an investigation be done, to... determine the cause of these events." Her mouth was a slash as sharp as any blade. "That they might not be replicated, you understand."
The others seemed to fall in line behind her. "Yeah," said Eli. "I hear Merlin has this nifty device that lets you see the past."
"Surely your pet wizard would allow us to use this device to determine the truth?" asked Aja, deceptively mild. "For the sake of... international relations?"
Zadra was so proud of her queen's finesse that she thought she might shatter from it.
Arthur's face hardened. "I am sure we can come to some arrangement," he said brusquely.
"Lively," said Aja. Smiling still, she let her arm rest on Arthur's. With her other hand, she beckoned Steve and Zadra to come with her.
Toby's face was an open question.
Zadra nodded him off in the direction they had been going, as Arthur led Aja inside. Go investigate, she hope was conveyed clearly.
Toby nodded once then set off, Darci and Eli by his sides.
The Wild Wood was as Jim remembered it. Dark. Unruly. And full of more gravesanded trolls by the minute, as Claire and Morgana found them and portaled them out of Camelot.
Well, that last part was different, anyway.
"Why did you grab me?!" Callista demanded. "I could have had Arthur's head!"
"Yeah, or he could have had yours," Jim pointed out. "He's surrounded by knights and he has Excalibur."
Jim had Excalibur too. But a voice in his head that sounded a lot more like Douxie than Merlin cautioned him not to pull it out. Something about not tipping his hand that he was from the future. About not giving the Green Knight warning of what was to come.
Of not fighting Excalibur against Excalibur until he absolutely had to.
For someone who said he wasn't much of a chronomancer, Douxie seemed very worried, sometimes, about the space-time continuum. Jim wished he wasn't so certain that Douxie was right about it.
Because one wrong move... and they could wipe out the entire future they'd come from.
He swallowed. No Arcadia. No Trollmarket. No Mom.
And no way home.
"We're free," he told Callista instead. "Isn't that worth more than ripping off a king's head?"
"No," she snapped.
A dark chuckle sounded. "Oh, I like you," said someone, prowling into the shaded space between the trees.
Jim swallowed, his hand clenching reflexively, as if around Eclipse's hilt.
"So," said the huge dark troll, sniffing the air, "what sorcery brings you here, fleeing Camelot?"
I can't kill him, I can't kill him, if I kill him it'll break history--
"Fleeing a tyrant," Callista snarled, her eyes glowing like rubies. "Who the frack are you?"
"Gunmar," the tyrant introduced himself. "And if you want to crush that little human kingdom... so do I."
Callista smiled. It showed all her sharp teeth. "I'm listening. Tell me more."