[fic] [Tales of Arcadia] Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet 174/?
Your Future Hasn’t Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 31st May, 2024
Douxie was clearly not all there, which Claire figured meant she was currently chief mage on the ground. Still, she didn't want to go haring off without permission and potentially botch things up again.
"So," she said, once the hubbub had died down a little. "I've got an idea."
"Unless it's a portal straight to the kitchens for these two..." said Jim, who was supporting most of Douxie's weight.
"No." Claire shook her head.
"Then what is it?" asked Toby.
Claire grinned and told them.
It was official, Jim thought, shifting Douxie's not-quite-dead weight as Claire disappeared into an amethyst and shadows portal. Claire was brilliant, but every single other member of his team was a moron. Highly effective morons who pulled off the impossible and healed shattered heartstones, but morons nonetheless.
"You okay?" Callista asked Krel.
"Not really," Krel mumbled, pressing a hand to his glowing forehead. "Is this what one of your Earth hangovers feels like?"
Douxie chuckled. "Not really," he said. "They're worse."
"Ugh." Krel slumped against Varvatos.
"So what do we do now?" Eli asked Jim.
Jim considered. "We probably get some food into these two," he said, indicating Douxie and Krel. "Then...."
"Then we need to go rescue Merlin's pasty ass," said Toby.
Douxie winced. "An image I never, ever needed in my head, thank you ever so, Toby."
"Sorry, dude." Toby didn't look particularly repentant.
The dungeon was dark and dank without the castle's magic illuminating and aerating it. A few mundane lamps had been sourced by coercion from the townfolk, and placed near the sole inhabited cell. They sat far enough away that its inhabitant could not reach through the bars and seize them. He had only been able to weaponize one before Camelot's finest had learned their lesson. Now the lamps sat, guttering and dim, far enough away that only the shaggy outline of the brute's fur could be seen as he nursed his wounds.
"Ha!" A pair of dice rolled to their stop. "Pay up, Caradoc!"
Narrowed eyes. "I mistrust your dice, Cador. They're far too lucky."
"Oh, you wish to replace them with your own? How do I know those aren't weighted?"
"How do I know yours aren't?"
"Sir, you besmirch my honor!"
Within the dim cell, General Aaarrrgghh listened to the bickering knights who paid him no attention. They were crude, venal comrades. Nothing he heard rose them higher in his estimation than dinner. Not that Gumm-Gumms were much brighter.
He paused, his attention caught by something. He sniffed the air. Thoughtfully licked the wall next to himself, tasting. Leaned down and pressed his ear to the cell's floor.
Ever so subtly, stone vibrated.
Out in the hallway, magical torches flared to life, and a breeze sprang up, freshening the stagnant air.
"Blessed be!" One of his captors stood, crossing himself. "The mage has done it!"
"Praise Merlin," said the other.
Aaarrrgghh growled. Camelot's strength was to Gunmar's detriment. Only when this cursed castle had been leveled, stone torn from stone and its inhabitants slaughtered, feast food for the conquerors, would Gunmar's forces truly triumph.
He wasn't expecting the swirl of darkness that appeared by the wall. He wasn't expecting the shadow witch that emerged from it, her face determined and her eyes glowing the purple of the gloaming. He wasn't expecting her raised hand, and the following portal that enveloped him, banishing the dungeon from his view.
Before he could attack her, Aaarrrgghh found himself falling twenty feet, crashing into the forest floor.
A dark chuckle greeted him. "So, you have returned," said a familiar voice. Aaarrrgghh looked up at his master's face. "Tell me, General Aaarrrgghh," invited Gunmar the Black, "what have you learned in your time away?"
Aaarrrgghh paused, priorities instantly rerouting themselves. He had been about to rip the witch limb from limb. But she'd struck first, her spellcasting too quick.
Yet for whatever reason, she hadn't cast him outside the castle walls into deadly sunlight. Instead, she'd returned him here. Home. To the feet of Gunmar.
Was she perhaps an ally after all?
But she'd stolen all those new conscripts of Gunmar's army....
Aaarrrgghh shook his head, confused. He pushed to his feet. "Have much to report," he told Gunmar.
Gunmar smiled. "Tell me," he invited. "Tell me everything."
"Your majesty!"
King Arthur turned. An armored figure ran up the stairs from the keep's inner courtyard. It was one of the younger fellows. "What news, Tristan?" Arthur asked when Sir Tristan had reached the battlements.
To his credit, the youth paused for a mere second, staring wide-eyed at Princess Aja's inhuman form before turning his attention where it belonged: on his king. "The power is back on, sire!" he reported, beaming, clearly delighted to be the one to deliver the news. "The torches burn once more, and the fireplaces... all of Merlin's spells are working again."
Arthur breathed a sigh of relief. He and the others could live without all of Camelot's magical conveniences, and had... but he admitted that they made life easier. More pleasant. "All praise to our wizard."
"Aye, sire!"
Princess Aja did not agree, though, given the expression on her face. Which was curious for one who hailed from a land and line of magic. "But... Merlin is not here," she murmured, glancing outward. Though she surely did not know the wizard's location any more than Arthur did. "That means...." Her voice trailed off. "Zadra!"
The woman straightened. "Your highness?"
"We must find my brother."
Lady Zadra bowed, clearly prepared to follow her liege lady to the ends of the world, if needed.
Aja paused at the top of the steps, however, and looked back at Arthur. "Good talk," she said, then vanished swiftly downward, Lady Zadra and Squire Steven following in her footsteps.
"Sire...?" asked Tristan.
Arthur huffed out a breath. "Akiridions are such strange people," he said, apropos of nothing.
Lancelot, who had been standing by silent all this time, nodded in agreement. "As you say, my king."
Eli wasn't a musician. (Or a magician. ...Yet!) And given how out of it Douxie and Krel both looked, he wasn't sure he wanted to be.
But the thought arose and niggled: whatever his own magic turned out to be, it had the potential for completely wiping him out in its use the exact same way. If Eli ever needed to use it for something big. I mean, he thought, looking down at the brightly glowing heartstone that seemed to stretch on forever, that's pretty darn big.
"What if just I go?" Toby asked Jim and Claire. "Me and Claire, at least. I mean, I know the way to the kitchens, and that way we don't need to worry about these two collapsing, or Callista being assaulted."
"Hey, I can handle myself," the troll pointed out.
"Yeah, but you shouldn't have to," replied Jim. "Sometimes being strategic avoids people pointing swords at you, and trying to use them."
"The young king never lets Varvatos have any fun," Varvatos grumbled.
Toby reached over and patted Varvatos on the shoulder. "There's a big battle coming, grandpa," he promised. "Lots of fun."
"Ugh." Krel pressed a hand to his head. "Varvatos is going to be your grandfather. I had not thought about that."
"Well, you know what they say," Darci bantered. "'May you have a dozen grandkids just like yourself'."
"I am not certain the universe could handle more than one Varvatos Vex," Krel told her, "but I see your point."
Both of their gazes lingered on Toby.
"Varvatos will point out that he has not yet had his suit accepted by the glorious Nancy," that individual said stiffly.
"And yet, given both of your propensities toward violence, it somehow seems inevitable," murmured Claire.
"A match made in somewhere," Toby muttered, no doubt thinking about his Nana showing up to the town square with an actual honest-to-god rocket launcher. Or maybe he was thinking of some other incident that Eli didn't know about, and probably didn't want to!
You wouldn't think a sweet-faced little old lady like Mrs. Domzalski would even know how to use a rocket launcher, let alone have one handy, stashed away in the attic or maybe a storage unit.
Eli had a sudden dawning realization that Toby's grandmother might, just possibly, be Linda Hamilton's character from Terminator 2, only several decades older.
"Toby, your Nana hasn't spent decades secretly fighting off robot assassins from the future, has she?" he blurted out.
Toby looked somewhat surprised by the question. "Uh... not to my knowledge?"
"Doesn't mean it's out of the realm of possibility," Jim said.
Toby facepalmed. "Jimbo, I am not going to interrogate my nana about secret wars that might not even exist!" he said.
Claire patted his shoulder. "Pretty sure that interrogation wouldn't go your way anyway, Toby."
"Probably not," he agreed.
"Come on," she said, with a quick glance around their group. "Let's you and me go grab some food for Douxie and Krel, and then we can all plan our next steps."
Claire and Toby vanished in a swirl of darkness. Jim looked around, then dragged his semiconscious brother over to the steps and sat him down there.
"Next step is Nimue," Douxie muttered, leaning against the stone wall, eyes closed. "Pretty sure she's eaten Merlin by now."
"Yeah, but I don't think you can free her until you've gotten a few calories into you," Jim pointed out.
"Sod calories," Douxie muttered, not opening his eyes. "If bardic magic takes it out of me this much all the time, blasted if I'm going to use it."
"Maybe it's like a muscle," Jim suggested. "You have to work it to build up strength and precision. You're just not used to using bardic magic yet."
"Maybe," said the wizard.
Krel, lowered to the ground nearby and still slumped against Varvatos, snorted. "Anyway, regardless of us both feeling like we have been run over by a Gondorian, it is unlikely that you will never deliberately use bardic magic again. That feeling could become addictive, now that you and I have unlocked it."
"What feeling?" asked Mary.
The bardic duo paused for a second, both clearly searching for words.
"Like having a piece of your soul unlocked," said Douxie finally, eyes opening.
Krel nodded. "The feeling of everything falling into place," he said. "Like the solution to a problem has finally been reached. Not necessarily clean or elegant, but functioning properly at last."
Mary's fingers twitched. "I just want my phone to work," she muttered. Darci, sitting beside her, patted her shoulder.
"Do you think--" Eli adjusted his glasses. "Maybe this is going to sound stupid, but... you both got hit by that magic wave same as the rest of us. And I know you were both already wizards, but... do you think that's why you finally figured out bardic magic?"
Douxie's eyes shot wide, the green-and-gold staring at Eli. "Bleeding balroths, Eli," he whispered, sounding shocked. "You're a genius."
Douxie's mind whirled, making connections. No wonder he hadn't, in literally nine hundred years of playing music, broken through to actual bardic magic before.
Gaylen had somehow actually stolen it.
An entire style of magery, taken.
It seemed as impossible as, say, making it so that there was no one left handed left on the planet.
But Gaylen had done it.
Fuzz him.
If success, as Edison claimed, was ninety percent perspiration and ten percent inspiration... then Gaylen must have stolen the last one percent to achieving breakthrough.
And now Douxie had it back.
Taliesin had said that bardic magic was sharing your soul through your art. Douxie suddenly couldn't wait to see what the arts scene was going to look like over the next few decades, the next few centuries, as people suddenly added magic to the mix. Because there was no way he and Krel were the only bardic mages on this planet.
We are the children of the stars, and we shine brightest when we rise....
He accepted food when it was handed to him, and ate, too distracted to revel in the taste of home--
Which was a pity, really. Jim's culinary wizardry was never less than amazing, but nothing in the modern era tasted quite like Camelot's food had.
I don't have time to be mooning over food right now! Douxie thought, irked at himself. I need to go save Merlin, free Nimue, get bloody Excalibur repaired, and--
--and--
And get his staff back.
Grief suddenly welled up, a hollow in his chest and a blockage in his throat that made it hard to swallow. He persisted anyway, mechanically chewing food that suddenly had all the flavor of clay.
Whatever we change here will change the future, Douxie thought. The first time, Merlin was never proud of me until after we'd changed the past. It will be the same this time.
But the harsh words Merlin had already said would remain. The ripple effect would only take present in the future of the future; it would only change what happened after the moment of their return.
A moment where other horrors would doubtless be waiting for them. Morando was on approach, and Douxie was not such a fool as to believe there was any way the Arcane Order wouldn't come investigate the wave of power that had resulted from the destruction of Gaylen's Core.
They needed Merlin.
"Doux?" asked his brother, sitting next to him.
Douxie realized he'd stopped eating and stuffed another bite of bread in his mouth, buying himself time.
"To do," he said after he'd finished that, redirecting himself because there were things he absolutely could not think about right now. "We need to go to Nimue's cave. There, we need to free her, hopefully impressing her enough to fix Excalibur. We also need to keep her from digesting Merlin."
"Too bad," muttered Toby.
Douxie ignored him. "Steve needs to come with, to get his prize, and... and I know there's something I'm forgetting," he said, hand pressing against the side of his head as though he could physically shove the thought into place.
Jim hummed. His gaze slid sideways to Callista. "Cal needs to get out of the castle, before some moron with a sword gets a bright idea," he said.
"I could drop you off?" Claire offered. "In that village?"
Jim nodded. "Toby should come with."
Toby startled. "What? Why me, Jimbo?"
Jim shrugged. "You're the Trollhunter, Tobes. There's history stuff I think you need to see with your own eyes, to kind of understand the trolls better."
"I should also come with you," said Krel to Jim.
"Huh? Why?" asked Jim.
Krel gave a lopsided smile. "When Aja and I were in Mama and Papa's memories and saw them give the core to the trolls... well. Somehow Vendel knew that was coming. So I think he had some kind of forewarning." He pointed deliberately at his own chest.
"Oh," said Claire, her eyes wide, her tone illuminated.
"Where the king-in-waiting goes, Varvatos goes also," that individual said, his arms crossed, glowering as though daring anyone to challenge him.
"Uh, what about the rest of us?" Darci asked. "I mean, after Morgana getting killed, I'm pretty sure Mary at least isn't safe to stay in Arthur's range."
"Pfft." Mary flicked her fingers. "He can't touch me if I'm Aja's handmaiden."
"She's right," Douxie agreed. "Arthur's already pushed hospitality to its breaking point with poisoning Jim, but even that was done subtly. Stick to Aja's side," he told Mary, "and you'll probably be safe."
"Which means no going after Lancelot," Darci told Mary.
Mary rolled her eyes. "Are we sure he's not ace, or something?"
Douxie shrugged. "Keeping in mind these are all very modern labels, and he certainly wouldn't understand them if you mentioned them... he did love Queen Guinevere, quite obviously, but I can't recall even the passing rumor of Sir Lancelot having, ah, indiscretions. So I'd guess he's asexual and demiromantic? But that's just a guess, and not to be depended on."
"Hmm," said Mary, tapping her lips. "You know, I can work with that."
Eli and Darci gave one another worried looks.
Claire dropped Jim, Toby, Krel, and Callista off first, trusting the group of them together more than she trusted most other people. She then delivered Mary, Darci, and Eli direct to Aja, who had apparently been tearing the castle up, down, and sideways, looking for them.
Claire winced, guiltily. "We've got to find some way to keep in touch when cell phones don't work," she apologized.
Aja waved off the apology. "We have found each other now," she said, which totally did not address the problem.
But Claire shelved the problem, and her irritation that Aja didn't see it, or at least didn't care about it right now.
"Where is Krel?" Aja asked, peering around Claire as though her missing brother was hiding behind Claire's much shorter form.
At least that was an easy answer. "Off with Jim and Toby and Varvatos and Callista," Claire told her. "Playing emissary to the trolls and, I guess, dropping a word in Vendel's ear about your parents dropping off a certain core in a few centuries."
Aja's eyes lit up. "Lively," declared. "Krel is very good at thinking ahead."
"You lived here?" Krel asked, his distaste for the idea showing.
Toby shoved him. "Dude," he hissed. "Not cool!"
"What?" asked Krel, looking at him uncomprehendingly.
Jim was glaring too. "How would you feel if your and Aja's entire family was killed, you were sent to prison for years, and when you came back home to Akiridion-5, the palace was rubble?"
Krel processed the image and implications. "Not great," he admitted. "Sorry," he apologized to Callista.
Who didn't even look like she had heard him, poking as she was through the ruins of her once-home. "I barely even remember this place," she said, looking around the shadowy recesses of the cavern. "I was just a pebble, really."
Toby crouched down next to her. "Why didn't they kill you too?" he asked. "I mean, we know the knights killed human babies. So why would they let a troll kid live?"
Callista snorted. "Heck if I know. Maybe I was just too danged cute for them to resist. Or maybe they wanted to show me off as some kind of prize, I don't know." Her fingers dragged through small stones and dust, seeking. Seeking what, Toby didn't know. "I can't even remember my real name," she whispered.
Toby, who did know her name, glanced at Jim, who shook his head.
Callista had to find it for herself.
"I know it's not the same," Toby said, feeling like he had to give something back, "but my nana's a quarter... something. Not human"
Varvatos' head came up, his gaze intense at the mention of Nancy Domzalski.
"And we don't even know what," Toby continued. "So I know a little bit what it's like to get cut off from your heritage. Knowing that there should be something there, but that you don't even know what it's supposed to be."
Like parents, he thought. A shape he could only really see from the outside, in the form of Doctor L. and Jim's ever-widening collection of dads.
But that was okay. He had Nana, and given their family's apparent longevity, was going to have her for a very long time. Toby had long since made peace with being an orphan.
Jim was staring, Toby realized. Krel just looked mildly surprised. Wait, had he ever told them he wasn't fully human? Toby cast his memory back, and realized he hadn't. He winced. Mea culpa.
But Callista looked disgusted. "You're a halfling?" she demanded.
"Well, technically my great-grandma was the halfling," Toby defended.
"Ugh." Callista shook her head, as if shaking off the thought. "That's not going to make you popular, kid."
"I've never been popular in my life," said Toby. "Why, what's the big deal, anyhow?"
"People don't like mixing," she told him, resuming her search.
"Well, that's just racist," he told her, offended.
"Trolls in your time much different?" she asked him over her shoulder.
"They're... getting better," Toby hedged. Because they had, and they were, and they would. He and Jim just needed time to work on them.
Even boulders got worn away by dripping water, after all. Old trollish prejudices weren't much different.
Callista stiffened, finally finding something. "Huh," she said, picking it up. It looked kind of like a doll, like the ones Toby had seen a time or two around Trollmarket, being trundled along or piggybacked by very young trolls. "I remember this," Callista said, running fingers over it. She turned the doll over. "De-ya," she read aloud from the back, sounding like someone just learning to read, sounding aloud the word.
Toby's breath caught.
"Deya," Callista repeated. "I remember that name. I like it."
Jim felt blindsided. Toby wasn't fully human? And he knew about it? And he hadn't told Jim?
He tried not to feel hurt, but that was like telling a knife not to be sharp. The feeling cut, and cut, and cut. He and Toby told each other everything, always had.
It was the two of us at the start, Jim thought. It’ll be the two of us until the end. Toby had totally stolen the line from the Gun Robot animated series, but being an in-joke didn't make it less personal. He and Toby had always had each other, as far back as Jim could remember.
"Whatever you are thinking," Krel said, laying a hand on Jim's shoulder, "know that your brain is probably lying to you right now. Wet meat powered by electricity is an amazingly inefficient way of experiencing sentience, and is bound to glitch more often than other forms."
"You know," said Jim slowly, "for someone who claims he hates emotions, you're pretty good at dealing with them."
Krel smirked. "Well, I am a genius."
Looking at the Akiridion, Jim felt his heart ease a little. It might be true that he and Toby had always been two peas in a pod, as the saying went, but their world was so much larger now. They both had so many more friends. "I just wish he'd told me," Jim said quietly.
Krel shrugged. "It is not like we have not had other things to be dealing with," he pointed out. "And it is certainly not like you spent over a week in another century instead of in the educational penitentiary with the rest of us."
"Did he tell you?" Jim asked.
Krel shook his head. "I do not think he has told anyone until now."
Huh. Somehow that made it hurt less.
Turning back to the Trollhunter and the Trollhunter-to-be, Jim found Callista looking at the stone doll, an unreadable expression on her face, before she laid it carefully, reverently, in a stone niche.
"Be at peace," Callista said. It sounded like she was laying ghosts to rest. Saying goodbye to her family, Jim guessed. His heart ached for everything she'd lost.
But as he looked around at the ruins of the troll village, Jim couldn't help his mind wandering to another destroyed village. One he'd never even seen, and never wanted to, given how they'd cast Douxie out for his magic. But there was a certain... symmetry, he guessed. A troll village destroyed by Camelot and a human village destroyed by Gumm-Gumms.
The problem wasn't the humans, and it wasn't the trolls. It was the fighting. The constant war.
How do we get people to stop fighting? Jim wondered, the prospect suddenly bleak. For all that he'd helped orchestrate the battle of Killahead once before, that hadn't really solved the problem. In fact, it hadn't solved things at all. Douxie had still spent centuries on the run, hiding his magic, and the trolls and all the other magical beings had been forced underground.
They'd destroyed Gaylen's Core in the future, hopefully restoring magic to humanity. It was only a first step, but it was a first step to healing that rift in the world.
You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it, Jim thought, and his jaw firmed. It was something Toby's nana had told him several times over the years. Mostly when Jim had been getting frustrated with following a recipe.
I made myself into a king, Jim thought. I took up this burden, for all of us. And I'm going to see it done.
"Where now?" asked Toby.
Jim met Toby's eyes, then Callista's. "We go to Dwoza," he said, and took the first step.
Author's Note: I'm sorry for the few weeks' delay. I've had some things going on in real life that scuttled writing inspiration for a bit. Jim's quote about completing/not completing a task is from the Talmud. It's there as a nod toward Aaron Waltke's tweet about Toby wearing a Hannukah sweater. Jim's dilemma of how to get people to stop fighting one another owes its origin to T.H. White's book The Once and Future King.