[fic] [Tales of Arcadia] Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet 171/?
Your Future Hasn’t Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 12th April, 2024
The door shut behind Archie and Douxie's younger self.
"Hey." Steve touched their Douxie on the shoulder. "You okay, man?"
Douxie very clearly plastered on a smile for Steve's sake. "No," he said, smiling all the while, "but I'll figure out a way to be. Just give me some time."
"Oh-kay," Steve said, clearly not completely reassured. "Well, meantime, let's make some sandwiches!" he said. "Who wants a Steve Special?"
Krel rolled his eyes and followed Douxie to the far corner of the room, where the wizard slid down with his back to the wall, while the others moved toward food. Jim looked torn between his self-proclaimed brother and cooking, however tenuous, but Krel caught his eye and nodded him toward the comestibles. It was not that he did not trust Steve to be able to assemble a simple sandwich, but Krel also knew enough about food, and Jim Lake, to know that Jim would be better at it, and better for it.
Thinking of better for it....
"Here." Krel sat down cross-legged beside Douxie and offered him... well, his own lute, he supposed.
Douxie took the instrument and brushed fingertips across the strings, which were made of some material other than the mithrilium Krel's Atlantean lute used. "Thanks."
"When did you last see this instrument?" asked Krel.
"Huh?" Douxie looked up, surprised. "Oh. Um. Lost it in the late fifteen hundreds, I think," he said. "Almost got caught up in Henry the Eighth's reforms when he was busy making the Protestant religion so he could bang Anne Boleyn."
The tidbit of Douxie's personal history meant very little to Krel, but he filed it away to research later. "Did you miss it?" he asked instead.
Douxie shrugged. "Like a tooth, for a bit. I'd had it so long. But there were other instruments, and then I took up with Will and his lot for a while, so it's not like I was exactly missing out in artistic expression."
"And then you eventually got a guitar."
Douxie grinned. "And then I got an electric guitar," he said. "And that changed rather a lot."
"Twelve strings seems rather different than six," Krel said.
"Eh." Douxie shrugged again, his fingers already on the tuning pegs, making microscopic adjustments. He brushed his fingers over the strings, eliciting whispers of sound. "It's all in the tuning and technique. Observe!"
Krel leaned back against the wall, smiling and listening as Douxie launched into one of the great loves of his life: performing.
You could tell a lot about people by their hands, Douxie thought. It had always been true; a man's or woman's calluses and scars gave hints to their profession, though less so in modern times, as everything became automated and more and more people became white collar workers.
But... Jim's hands, for instance, with their cooking burns and sword calluses, said a lot about him. As did Toby's. Steve's blunt nails with their manicured shine also spoke loudly.
And Douxie's own hands, bearing the scars of magic and the marks of centuries of music, definitely proclaimed to those who would listen who he was.
He let himself play riffs aimlessly for a minute or two, trying to figure out what he wanted to say through his music. Because Jim had definitely been right, and Douxie needed to recharge himself somehow. Added to which, he still hadn't figured out fully how music married to magic to create bardic magic, and he had the bad feeling he needed to figure that out fast.
Like, now.
"Hey, play Wonderwall," Steve requested.
Douxie freed a hand to flip him off. "Uneducated heathen," he muttered, fit to be heard only by Krel. Who snickered.
"Dude." Toby looked affronted. "At least ask for Despacito!"
"What's Despacito?" asked Darci.
"You're kidding, right?" Toby asked her. "It's only like the best song ever--"
"That won't come out for another year and change," Claire told him, smiling.
"Wait, seriously?" Toby wilted.
"Seriously, Toby," she told him.
"Oh my gosh." Mary grabbed Darci by the shoulders. "Darce, I've just realized we've been sitting on an untapped goldmine! Think about it." She gestured at her time traveler classmates. "They know future fashion!"
"We were kind of busy trying to stop the end of the world," Jim pointed out, slicing and dicing with one of his glaives with ease. His blue hands were practically a blur. Callista was watching, looking impressed. As was Varvatos. "Not much time to focus on looking good."
Mary snorted. "Jim," she said, with the exacting patience of a sixteen-year-old expert, "there is always time to look good."
"Despacito," Douxie scoffed meanwhile, sotto voce. "At least request Free Bird. Or Stairway."
"I think your age is showing," Krel told him. "In that I suspect whatever you are referencing probably predates their existences."
"Oh, it definitely does," Douxie agreed. "Doesn't mean I can't be saucy now and again."
Krel snickered.
Douxie looked sidelong at him. "Actually..." he murmured, and changed tracks.
Krel sat up straighter as Douxie actually began to play a song. "What is that?" he asked.
Douxie grinned. "Bang A Gong (Get It On)," he replied, then let himself submerge into the music, singing. It felt right, with notes of Claire in it, and Mary, and definitely the Akiridion siblings. Aja had most definitely had a "hubcap diamond star halo" when she'd been her planet's reigning queen.
"Ooh," said Toby, eyes wide, and caught Darci's hand. She laughed as he spun her.
Douxie grinned. And when that song came to an end, segued into Ton Petty's version of Learning to Fly. For a species that were naturally groundbound, humanity had an amazing number of songs with variations on that title. Probably because they couldn't fly.
Though that might be changing soon, Douxie thought. And wouldn't that be amazing? If he was no longer alone, no longer an outlier, a freak and outcast?
He startled, his eyes flying open mid-song as a percussive rhythm joined his lute. Darci grinned at him. She'd taken a pair of forks, grasping them by their tines, and was beating out the song on the fireplace's hearth.
Douxie grinned back. He'd all but forgotten that she had played drums in Claire's Mama Skull band in their original timeline--
Zoe's going to kill me if we don't get back in time for the Battle of the Bands, Douxie realized, wincing. Not that the time of their return was something he could precisely control, but he didn't think Zoe would appreciate that distinction.
His gaze caught on Claire's newly reinstated white streak, which lead him to the Grateful Dead's Touch of Grey, Darci following suit. Most of the lyrics weren't personally relevant to this group, but the moment he hit the titular line - "so wear the touch of grey; it kind of suits you anyway" - he could see Claire's eyes widen as she realized the song was directed at her.
She might not like her connection to Morgana, any more than Douxie always liked his connection to Merlin, but it was important nonetheless. And as most of the song's lyrics implied, life was full of shit, but they survived it. Always.
And rose above.
Which led him to Elton John's I'm Still Standing, and far quicker lyrics. And then to keep with the theme, Fleetwood Mac's The Chain.
They couldn't do this without one another. Without holding together and presenting a cohesive front.
The only hope they had to save the whole world was one another, and that was terrifying.
His fingers were warm and the music was easy. Douxie's gaze caught on Jim, sandwiches having all been distributed, and the half-troll sharing with full troll Callista the bones that had held the sandwich meat, and the handful of cutlery and old greasy rags Douxie had stolen from the kitchen.
Douxie closed his eyes and let the next song flow. He didn't know if it was for Jim, or himself. "Let my love open the door," he sang, "to your heart."
Was the love the dozen of them had for one another really going to be enough to thaw Skrael's frozen heart? To temper Bellroc's burning one?
It had to be.
He felt like he couldn't breathe against that possibility. That all they were fighting for, that everything they'd done, might not be enough.
We can lose, he thought. We can lose and not get another do-over.
His fingers, unbidden, found a simpler tune. Something no less true than love.
"Why are there so many songs about rainbows?" he breathed, barely holding it together, "And what's on the other side?"
Because that was all they had, really.
Love.
And Hope.
"Douxie," Claire said, and he opened his eyes.
To see magic floating unbidden in the air around himself. Swirls of blue light. "What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing," he sang, barely believing it, "and what do we think we might see...?"
This... this feeling. The tenuous breath of fear and hope and love, hand in hand in hand. This connection.
This was where music met magic, and became bardic.
Carefully thinking of precisely nothing but the song and feeling centered in his chest, Douxie closed his eyes and continued singing, trying to find exactly where that border was between two entirely separate disciplines.
Trying to find that border, and expand it.
While the jongleur sang, Zadra thought.
It had been a bare day, by the turning of this backwards planet, since the destruction of Gaylen's blessed Core.
But what a day it had been.
And all of this... This chaos, she admitted to herself in the privacy of her thoughts. It had all been predicated on that destruction.
No, she amended, forcing herself to be as brutally honest with herself as she would have been with anyone else. It is because that destruction went awry.
Because of her.
The royals' allies had suffered a grievous injury because of her actions, they were all lost in time and place, and even she could see that the series of ensuing events had been a cascade of disasters.
Not the least of which, Zadra fumed, was that the smarmy human king seemed to think he had some right to court Princess Aja!
Not that Steven was much better, but at least he treated the princess with the proper reverence. King Arthur, Zadra felt, did no such thing.
Though Sir Lancelot's talk with her had been most illuminating, she admitted. Primitive though they were, apparently these humans had also had a creator deity who died for them, and had managed to find a way to live with that. Zadra could do no less.
The royals were still furious with her. The traitor Varvatos Vex was likewise wroth. And for all that she told herself that she did not care about the opinions of a traitor, Zadra had to admit she still did.
She could not fix what her actions had caused.
But the least she could do, with her mother's voice in her mind issuing the frequent admonishment, was apologize.
She had hated having to do so as a child, and she hated it now. Apologizing, especially to a member of the puny, weak species that populated this mudball, was as bitter as Durian bile.
But as a warrior of the Taylon Phalanx, and a lieutenant given command of her fellows, she had had to do many things which were distasteful to her, and she had not then shirked in her duty. Nor would she now.
"May I," she said quietly to the young warrior who had been injured by her actions, "have a word?"
Blue eyes, apparently the same no matter how his form changed, met hers. "Sure," said Jim Lake, and stood.
He followed her to the small chamber where she and Princess Aja, and the Darci human, had slept the previous night. Enough distance to allow the conversation, but not so far away as to be entirely out of the earshot of the rest of their party.
"I," Zadra started, then cursed silently as the words got stuck in her throat. Blasted human guise, with its biological reactions rendering her incoherent!
Snarling, she pressed the button on the handle of her ionic scythe that the prince had configured as a toggle for the transduction.
Once properly herself again, she found herself eye-to-eye with the half-troll. Changes in height were somewhat disconcerting. "I wish to apologize," Zadra bit out, "for my actions causing your injury."
Jim blinked. Then crossed his arms. "I know that I don't really know you," he started. "I never got to in the first timeline, and I've pretty much been bouncing through time since the day you got to Earth. But I do know you haven't had time to acclimate yet. To get used to humans."
Zadra nodded guardedly, not sure where he was going.
"Aja and Krel and Varvatos spent months here before they really got to like us," Jim continued. "But they did. So I kind of have to wonder... are Akiridions all this arrogant about people from other planets? Or is it just Earth in particular you hate?"
"This planet is primitive and your people haven't even developed space travel," Zadra informed him. "What have you to be proud of?"
Jim looked past her, back into the other room. "Not much," he admitted. "But... we do have magic."
Zadra turned, to see inexplicable blue light painting the air. Magic. Something which she had never seen on any other world. Something which Prince Krel asserted was completely compatible with Akiridion technology.
"Few of you," she said, turning back.
"All of us, now," said Jim, fingers touching to the shard in his chest. He gave a half-smile. "Now that we've taken back what Gaylen stole."
And there was the crux of it. This human, all the humans, asserted that her world, her entire people, were predicated on something Gaylen had stolen from them.
That Akiridions were, by virtue of existing, guilty of that crime.
That, Zadra could not accept.
"So," said Jim, "maybe I should be thanking you?"
She stared at him. "Thanking me?"
Jim shrugged. "Well, we'd have had to come back to Camelot to untangle things sooner or later." He grimaced. "I could have wished it would be later, but like my mom says, you work with the hand you're dealt."
This was not how apologies were supposed to go. Confounded humans, turning the rules of social interaction on their heads again!
Jim must have seen the confusion and irritation on her face. He smiled and patted her on the shoulder. She yanked back the urge to rip his arm off. "I hope you stay around long enough to get to like us," he told her. "And even if not, we're glad to have you here on our team, Zadra."
She seethed as he walked past her and back toward the others. What right had he to like her, when, with a few very specific exceptions, she didn't even like his entire species!
"So, um," Eli said, raising his hand when Douxie had stopped playing and didn't seem likely to restart. "I had a question."
"You can put your hand down, Eli, this isn't school," the wizard told him.
"Oh. Um." Eli obeyed.
Douxie sighed. "What's the question?"
"What's a destiny's child?" asked Eli.
"A band," Douxie said flatly.
"Not that," Krel told Eli. "Morgana said that Arthur was a child of destiny. Is that a thing?"
"It is," Douxie said as Jim came back into the room.
"It's not like divine kingship, is it?" asked Jim, frowning.
"Nah." Douxie shook his head. "They're different, though I guess Arthur is both." He squinched his eyes narrow and looked at Jim. "You're not. A child of destiny, that is. At least not so far as I've been able to tell."
"Thank god," Jim sighed, sitting down cross-legged between Toby and Claire, in front of Callista, who leaned to the side to look around him.
"Yeah, Jimbo's almost too much stuff already," Toby agreed, knocking his shoulder against Jim's.
Douxie chuckled. "A child of destiny is much more Merlin's stuff than mine," he explained, setting the lute aside. "They're... fixed points, as far as I can tell. Someone who will be born and do a great thing, no matter how chronomancers try to sway things. Think Buddha. Alexander the Great. Thomas Paine. Ghandi. Martin Luther King Jr."
"Jesus Christ," Steve muttered, head in hands.
Douxie flashed him a smile. "Possibly him too, though if he actually existed, he was well before my time. Anyway, children of destiny are certainly thicker on the ground than divine kings."
"Huh," said Aja, her tone speculative. "I wonder if we have had any on Akiridion-5."
Krel looked thoughtful. "Seklos, maybe...?"
Douxie shrugged.
"So if Arthur's a child of destiny," asked Claire, "why isn't Jim?"
Douxie splayed his hands. "No idea. I'm not a chronomancer. But Arthur definitely is one, which is why Merlin...." He paused, took a deep breath, let it out. "Why Merlin," he said quietly, "intervened to ensure his birth, and that he had a good part in the raising and training of him. Arthur was destined to change things. And Merlin had used the Time Map to see how he would change them."
"So what's the difference?" asked Mary. "Between Jim and Arthur?"
"Other than that one's, you know, not a jerk," said Darci.
Jim smiled at her.
"Hmm." Douxie drummed his fingers. "It's kind of subtle, but if I had to delineate the difference... it's about choice," he said. "Arthur's path was laid out for him from the moment of his birth. Jim, on the other hand," he said with a nod at his brother, "chose his path. Chose to become someone who could be a divine king. And accepted that when it was offered to him. Some people have destinies; others make them."
"Destiny by choice?" Jim asked Douxie.
Who nodded solemnly.
"I must admit, I do not think much of your Earth kings, if Arthur is a typical example," said Krel. "Morgana also accused him of murdering his own child."
Douxie winced. "Ah, yeah, that was... that was Merlin throwing his weight against destiny," he said.
"Douxie," said Claire, flatly. Demanding more details.
"It was when I was a baby! I didn't have anything to do with it!" Douxie flailed. "Arthur had a bastard, who was also a child of destiny, fated to kill him -- and I know you've all read Oedipus, so you know fighting against destiny doesn't work in the end! -- so Merlin made sure every child who could fit the description was killed, because you know what would happen if Arthur fell? Camelot would go down with him, and then Gunmar would win!"
"What is Oedipus?" asked Aja.
"Oh, I know!" said Steve. "It's this guy who married his own mom." He looked proud at having the knowledge.
"Yeah," said Claire, "because he was prophecied to kill his father, so he was abandoned and raised by a shepherd, so he didn't know the guy he got into a fight with as an adult was his father, and he didn't know he married his own mother."
"Yeah, that." Steve nodded.
Claire looked exasperated.
"So." Toby made a gesture of shoving things to one side. "Putting aside the issues of kings killing their kids or marrying their moms, or whatever other horrible things have happened in the past, I got one question. What do we do now?"
"Uh." Douxie looked a bit lost. "I've got to go to Nimue in a few hours, I guess? With Claire and Steve."
Steve perked up. "Me? Why me?"
"You'll find out when we get there," Douxie told him. "Anyone else?"
"We gotta free Aaarrrgghh from the dungeons," said Toby, frowning. "I mean, he's a psycho now, but we know he can change."
"Do we?" Callista asked Jim.
He nodded. "Yeah."
She rolled her eyes. "You're definitely crazy, then."
Jim laughed into his fist. "We have to get Callista safely out of Camelot," he said, jerking his thumb at her. "She's not safe here."
Douxie sighed. "Whiteboards," he said, and conjured a few out of his spell bracelet, along with some markers. "All right, who's got ideas?"
The traveler paddled the relatively calm night seas, humming quietly to himself an old song whose words he had forgotten. This was the best time to fish, right after the sun had set, when the sea creatures were at their most curious.
He caught sight of something drifting in the waters, and paddled closer. Driftwood? Treasure?
It was neither.
A corpse. A human corpse, at that.
"Poor girl," Angor murmured, hauling her aboard. She was missing a hand - undoubtedly the wound that had killed her. And she was soaked in seawater; it dribbled from her mouth, pooled from her hair. She was cold, and clammy, and had clearly been in the water for hours. But for all that, her clothing was fine and she even wore jewelry.
He wondered if he would ever know the story of who she was, and who had killed her, and why, but he doubted it. Encounters like this were casual and glancing.
"Best to leave her where her own kind may find her," he mused aloud, the sound of his own voice his sole companion, as it so often was.
He knew of a cove whose flat stones would not be reached by the high tide, where human villagers often came to scavenge for seaweed and shellfish. He would leave her there, to be discovered and buried by her own kind.
Some trolls, he knew, would have taken her body for bounty from the sea. But they were crude, and Angor prided himself on being kind. The taste of human flesh had never appealed to him.
It was not far to the cove; he tied his boat to a rock to prevent its drifting while he heaved the sodden form into his arms and laid her out carefully. He closed her eyelids (humans did that, didn't they?) and crossed her arms over her chest, the ruined stump hidden beneath the whole wrist. "Rest in peace, young one. May the spirits guide you home," Angor told her, as much of a benediction as he knew, and returned to his boat, and to the sea.
He was right about many things, but wrong about one: even a glancing encounter is often enough to form a connection. And kindness, unfortunately, is not always a thing that is repaid.
Three gods faded in from the shadows as the troll paddled away, a stone figure in a flimsy boat that, should his vessel be upset, would surely drown in the sea that surrounded him.
A brave troll, and one unafraid of dying.
After all, there were worse things, than death.
Nari prowled by the offering the troll had left them. She sniffed at it. "Ugh," she said, wrinkling her nose. There were so many layers of pain and betrayal wrapped around the corpse that she could scarcely believe it.
"Death," Bellroc agreed. "Disgusting."
Nari rolled her eyes. Her sibling did not understand that as Life existed, so too must Death; that they were natural helpmeets, working hand in hand to create the cycle which was within her purview. It really was quite a simple cycle, which she wished Bellroc and Skrael would grasp: all which lived, must die, and that death in turn would feed new life.
Though, to be fair, she seldom understood the inner workings of their domains of Fire and Ice. So perhaps she should not castigate them for not understanding the workings of hers.
Still, this corpse was interesting. Fresh, and of a flesh that was used to wielding immense amounts of magic....
"Your time is not yet done," she decided. She could see Bellroc and Skrael look at one another, wondering what she was doing.
Nari extended her hand, and sent Life back into the corpse.
The woman awoke, her spirit not yet having journeyed far into the After. She rolled onto her side, clutching her stomach and choking, coughing out the water that had filled her mouth and lungs. It was an ugly, excruciating process, no doubt, but Nari's magic was relentless. This woman would live, and would serve them.
Only a fool would turn down a perfect tool, given into their hand.
The matter of the woman's missing hand was troublesome, however. She was out of balance without it, the magic in her body attempting to run in its usual paths only to have them aborted by that absent limb.
Nari shrugged and created a simple construct hand, adhesing it to the truncated flesh with ease. Her eyes glowed with pleasure as the woman's magic began to flow again. Better, she thought. Much better.
"Why?" the woman demanded, once she could breathe again and therefore speak.
Nari opened her mouth to explain, but Bellroc beat her to it. "Because you will be our champion," her sibling said, apparently having divined Nari's plan.
Nari smiled. It was so nice when her family all worked together. And here, at last, was a project where they might join their strengths.
Author's Note: Douxie's playlist is Bang a Gong (Get it On) by T. Rex; Learning to Fly by Tom Petty; Touch of Grey by The Grateful Dead; I'm Still Standing by Elton John; The Chain by Fleetwood Mac; Let My Love Open The Door by Pete Townshend; and The Rainbow Connection by Kermit the Frog.