Fracture

"If only there was a payphone..." Douxie muttered against Jim's shoulder.

He chuckled. "In 2017? Yeah, right. Besides, we haven't got any money." Jim was pretty sure payphones took money.

"You've got a wizard," the wizard said. "Who needs quarters?"

Jim scanned around them. He didn't see anyone; it was far too hot for most humans to want to be outside, he suspected. Still... "We're way too exposed," he said.

A moment's silence. "Pick a building," Douxie said at last. "One with a phone."

"No promises," Jim said, and chose.

It was a huge building, cavernous. Jim had the vague idea that it might have been some sort of aircraft hangar in a past life, but no evidence to support that. But it was shadowed to his oversensitive eyes and it had air conditioning.

After, what, a month of air conditioning, he hadn't thought he'd be so glad to feel it again. Frag the desert in summer, anyway.

"Put me down," Douxie instructed.

"Are you going to be able to walk on your own?"

"Only one way to find out."

The wizard swayed as Jim set him back on his feet, and Jim did not like how pale he was. But Douxie didn't topple. "Are you going to be okay?" he couldn't help asking.

"I'll be okay when we get someplace actually safe," Douxie replied sharply. Then he sighed. "Sorry."

"Not a problem," Jim assured him as they skulked farther into the building. "Just... my mom's a doctor."

"Ah." There was a hint of a smile in Douxie's voice. "Let's see. You're thinking blood loss and shock, then, right?"

"Am I wrong?"

"Probably not." Douxie checked the window of one door while Jim checked another. He shook his head and moved on. "You're just not accounting for the magical whiplash."

"Magical whiplash?" Jim asked, not understanding.

It earned him a grin - still pale, but genuine nonetheless. "Went from fourteen years of drought to, well, fourteen years' worth of flood," Douxie said. He gestured at his truncated arm, which was still limned with a ghostly blue glow. As Jim watched, he noticed what looked like sparks.

"Is that... supposed to sparkle?"

Douxie's grin turned pained. "No," he said. "That's me slipping on keeping it reined in. Thing about that much magic is, without a focus to dump it into for storage, it's harder to hold back."

"Oh, like Merlin's staff."

"Yes, like Merlin's-" Douxie stopped. Smacked himself on the forehead. "I'm a moron."

"Um?"

"I need my vambrace back," Douxie explained. Jim drew a line along his own forearm, indicating, questioning. Douxie nodded. "Merlin's got his staff to help handle his power. I'm not a master... but my vambrace does some of the same things for me."

"Great," Jim said. "How do we find it?"

Douxie smirked. "We don't find it. It finds me." He closed his eyes.

Jim glanced nervously up and down the corridor. It seemed empty, but...

The sub-audible humming around the wizard grew louder, almost deafening. Jim winced. He had noticed something like this around Merlin, after his change to a half-troll, when the old wizard had been performing spells, but it hadn't been this pronounced. And he'd forgotten to ask Blinky about it.

He gritted his teeth and endured, as the pressure kept increasing and increasing, and then- Stopped. Like popping a soap bubble.

And around Douxie's arm was a pewter-gray leather bracelet that took up almost his entire forearm.

The wisps of blue at the end of his arm dissipated, running into the tooled channels of the leather and then vanishing.

Douxie sagged in relief. His color suddenly looked so much better. "And now," he said, "for pockets." A mesh of glowing blue runes lit up around the vambrace. He spun them, then tapped at one.

He'd been wearing the same shapeless pair of dingy scrubs ever since Jim had been tossed into the cell opposite from his. Now, lines of blue light drew pockets on the garment and disappeared, leaving the pockets-real, tangible, seemingly made of the same material as the scrubs-behind. Douxie tucked his severed hand into one and looked up. "Now we just need a phone."

"Right." Jim nodded and moved on to the next door. "Why do you want to keep the hand, anyway? You're not serious about the cloning thing, are you?"

Douxie looked in the next window. "Jackpot," he murmured, and tried the door handle. It was locked. He hissed out between his teeth. "Recludo," he said, and Jim knew a spell when he heard one.

The doorknob mechanism came to pieces in Douxie's hand, some of it falling to the floor.

"Whoops." The wizard looked abashed.

"It worked, though," Jim pointed out as the door drifted open.

"A little too well. Not used to having this much power on tap." The wizard went into the room. Jim followed, trying to wedge the door shut behind them. It didn't work terribly well. "As to the hand... truthfully, I'd like to give the poor thing a proper burial, but that's not the point. The point is this." He drew the hand out again, finger tapping at the silver band around the wrist. His gold eyes met Jim's, unexpectedly serious. "This is a magic nullifier. I want to know how it works, and why. And," he said, his gaze refocusing to the dark shard piercing through Jim's Trollhunter amulet, "if we can use it to your benefit."

Jim was taken aback. "Wait. You think-"

"Mm-hmm." Douxie nodded, drifted closer. Reached up his severed hand and tapped the edge of the silver bracelet to the shard.

It fractured at the contact.

A flake fell to the floor.

So did Jim, gasping with pain.

"Ow... ow... ow..." He tried to breathe through the agony.

"Fuzzbuckets." Douxie's eyes were huge. "Okay, no more experiments until we've got Merlin."

Still breathing heavy, Jim nodded. He rolled onto his back.

"Phone," he croaked.