Chapter 3: In which Douxie falls asleep
Now that the castle was safe again and everyone scattered to find places to sleep, Claire sat beside Jim for a time, trying not to cry. She could have helped more if only she'd been able to use magic! A sense of injustice grew inside until she resolved to confront the old wizard again and demand tutelage.
Claire had to stop several times on the stairwell to catch her breath. Her suit of armor was heavy and she was tired from the recent battle as well as so much worry over Jim that it wasn't such an easy trip. Voices rose ahead and she came to a halt, listening.
"Is this all you really think I'm good for? Carrying books and sweeping? I did everything you said. I followed every rule. I even helped fight off a battallion of niffins! Why can't you admit I'm more than just a bumbling apprentice now?!"
"Every rule?" Merlin's voice was skeptical.
Claire peered around the last curve in the stairs in time to see him reach out and seize Douxie's bracer, making the younger wizard flinch back. The little crystal he'd revealed to herself and Toby earlier reappeared, but Merlin looked disgusted at the sight.
"Not only did you put yourself at risk by touching the Heart of Avalon, but you stole a piece. You could have been a master wizard two centuries after I fell asleep—maybe even one if you'd applied yourself—but you chose to suspend your aging and maturity. You haven't changed one whit, Hisirdoux, and I was expecting much, much more on my awakening."
Douxie yanked his arm away, banishing the bit of Heart again self-consciously. "Are you saying that's why you didn't summon me the day Morgana showed up? I fought off dozens of trolls! I held my own! Why couldn't you even let me know you had returned?"
"Oh really?" the old man scoffed. "The first thing I did after emerging from the Geode Caverns was search for allies. Do you want to take a wild guess what I saw when I tuned into you? A boy trying to use a basic levitation spell to rearrange bookshelves only to be buried by them instead. By both books and shelves."
Douxie's initial silence was ripe with embarrassment. "It wasn't basic, Master. I was trying to combine auto-sorting runes with a spell to make the books—"
"Don't talk back!" he snapped, one hand glowing green. "Now let's see how you really handled yourself on that fateful day."
Claire felt an invisible tide of magic wash over her. The streets of Arcadia came into view, Gunmar's mindless forces advancing on citizens who screamed and fled. Apparently she was close enough to be wrapped into the spell, but she was also in plain sight! Diving behind the illusion of a thick blue mailbox, the girl only got a glimpse of Merlin and Douxie standing ten feet away. His shoulders were slumped as he glanced at his master.
Suddenly another Douxie dashed across the path of enemy trolls to distract them from their helpless prey. His charm bracer gave off blue light, yet his expression was anything but confident as he desperately searched for a spell. He slid to a stop in an alleyway that came to an unexpected dead end, looking back with more panic now as the trolls advanced with spears leveled at him.
He called up a glowing shield to protect himself from their savage thrusts, then Archie came swooping down with a barrage of fireballs. The diversion was just enough and Douxie gained the time he needed to find a spell. A wave of intense gravity pressed down on the trolls. Though it kept them at bay, this didn't seem to be what he intended and he gave a noise of frustration, searching the bracer again. Finally Douxie invoked a spell that sent arrows of blue light raining down until the group turned to lifeless stone.
The scene froze.
"Would you like me to show the other lackluster performances in which you fail again and again to deal with your enemies in a competent manner?" Merlin's tone dripped with disappointment. "If not for Archibald, you would have died numerous times that day."
"I got the job done," Douxie insisted weakly.
Claire found herself standing in the stairwell once more as the magical reenactment ended.
"I expected a master wizard when I awoke. What I found was the same inept child I left behind, just as useless as ever." The words were spoken heartlessly and Claire got the impression that Merlin was trying to be cruel. "You deliberately placed a severe limit on yourself, Hisirdoux. For what?"
"I have my reasons," came the reply, so small that Claire could barely hear it.
For a time neither one spoke, then Merlin let out an exhausted sigh. "I have more important things to do than deal with your boundless incompetence. James Lake is in a precarious position and I must concentrate on finding a solution. Try to keep out of trouble."
Expecting to see Merlin come around the corner, Claire steeled herself to face him and pretend she hadn't heard a thing. But thankfully he didn't come that way. She heard the click of a latch on the far side of the room, indicating he was gone. Taking a step, she peeped through the open door again. Douxie held onto the central table with a death-grip, head down and whole body trembling.
Feeling he wouldn't appreciate being spied on in this state, Claire carefully tiptoed back down the stairs, trying her best not to let her armor rattle. Near the bottom she caught sight of Archie washing himself sedately.
"He needs you," the girl said, gesturing back the way she'd come. "Right now."
Looking suddenly concerned, his familiar raced up.
It was long past the witching hour of the night when Douxie sat by the castle's lower battlements, gazing up at the stars overhead and remembering those far-off days when he'd lived in this place. Then light footsteps approached him from behind. He knew who it was without even turning.
"I'm sorry about what I said to you earlier, Douxie," came Claire's timid, guilt-soaked voice. "I was angry at Merlin, not you, and it wasn't fair to treat you that way when you refused to teach me."
Douxie rubbed his hands together to warm them up in the cold night air. "Merlin isn't the most subtle when it comes to his views on shadow magic, and chewing out those he considers beneath him is a personal hobby he enjoys perfecting. I'm sorry I was present when he decided to rip into you."
Claire could sense more than empathy behind the words since he'd recently been on the receiving end of Merlin's disappointment himself. She wanted to apologize for having eavesdropped too, but felt it was better for him not to know. As she came up to sit beside him, Douxie's face suddenly fell.
"You asked me to be your teacher, Claire, and I… I can't. Not because I don't want to, but because mentally I can't."
"You mean it has to do with your piece of the Heart of Avalon, don't you?"
Douxie gave a miserable nod. "Back when I really was nineteen, I had one chance to get my hands on it, and once it's removed from my bracer's magic it will lose all powers permanently. I wanted to age—just enough to be able to grasp magic a little better—and then stop aging again." He drooped on the stone bench. "But it doesn't work that way."
"What made you want to stop aging in the first place?" she wondered softly.
Claire couldn't help wishing she could snatch the words back. Merlin had asked the same question and received no answer. Did she really expect Douxie to confide in her after only spending a few hours in her company? Silence crouched between them, growing deeper with every second, but she didn't dare speak again or move to leave. It would have felt insulting.
The green crystal flared to life. With infinite slowness he wrapped his fingers around it, dispelling the protective mist that connected it to his charm bracer. The light within the stone dimmed until it disappeared entirely, hiding the regret on Douxie's face as he stared down at the object that had kept him in one phase of his life for so long.
"In all this time I guess I've grown dependent on it. I don't want to admit I'm afraid of what will happen, but… It's far past time I moved on."
Claire said nothing. After briefly squeezing his hand, she stood and walked toward the stairs, looking back in time to watch Douxie drop the powerless green gem off the edge of the battlements. He continued to stare even after it vanished into the darkness below.
Once she was gone, Douxie habitually checked his phone again. There was a text—finally!—and his pulse quickened in excitement as he sent a reply.
"I promise I'll make it tomorrow night!" he said aloud as Archie came padding up the steps to find his friend. The cat earnestly observed Douxie's almost boyish cheerfulness after the upset he'd suffered earlier, but didn't say a word.
It was only a few hours from dawn when, for the first time in forty years, Douxie returned to his old room. It hadn't changed. Books on beginner's magic lay everywhere in stacks, on shelves and even atop a couple barrels.
"Nice to see you again, Harry, Bob," he said to a pair of grinning skulls as he walked across to the low alcove in the wall that had once served as his bed. The flat stone looked as welcoming as a thornbush. "How did I ever sleep here?"
Opening one of the barrels, he performed a mending spell on its contents that turned the various cloth scraps into something vaguely resembling bedding. Better than nothing, he told himself as he lied back. At least there were never any fleas or ticks in Camelot thanks to Merlin's magic. Before becoming apprenticed to a real wizard, he hadn't been aware it was possible for anyone to live without such scourges.
Life was so different a long time ago. Yet… in so many ways it hadn't changed at all. People were people in any century. Thoughts of olden times crowded his mind even as he dozed off.
While everyone rested, a petite figure clad in green crept from hiding with melodic movements. She stepped past ten suits of armor guarding the throne room and approached the stone in which Jim Lake lay confined, keen eyes noting the suffering he endured even in stasis.
"This is my fault," she whispered. "They attacked you in pursuit of me. I only wish I could help."
Her hands glowed with a soft mixture of green light and rosy periwinkle petals, which drifted over the Trollhunter as she laid her cheek against the cool, glassy stone. All at once her head flew up.
"No, it cannot be!" Her magic sharpened and she stared intently at his pain-ridden face. "Impossible! In all the millennia since this world was first shaped, never have I… Perhaps Bellroc and Skrael would yield if they too could see such a thing is possible…"
Delicate fingers brushed his prison as silvery hope lit her eyes.
Archie woke to his friend's groans as he rolled back and forth on the bed. Before he could leap over and sink claws into Douxie's skin to jolt him out of sleep as he usually did in these instances, the wizard's body levitated. A half-visible sheen of sky blue magic drifted around him as he continued to sleep on the empty air, limbs sagging.
Back arching, Archie backed away then shot toward the door. Thankfully finding Merlin still awake in his workshop, the dragon explained what he'd seen in a near-panicked voice. But the old man just raised one eyebrow and went back to his research.
"What did you expect would happen when he finally let go of that Heart shard? Nothing? Nine hundred years he's been living off it. Now he's beginning to readjust without it. It might be a few weeks before he wakes up again, but he'll be fine. Most likely."
"Weeks?!" Archie almost gaped. "Oh dear… he had plans."
The news that Douxie was trapped in a suspended sleep was unsettling to everyone, but it generated more curiosity than anything. Merlin refused to say a word about him, therefore Archie found himself the center of attention as Toby bombarded him with an assortment of mostly nonsensical questions concerning wizards. At first the irritated dragon either gave wildly fictitious answers or sarcastically told him to become a wizard and find out on his own, neither of which dampened Toby's enthusiasm.
The group had settled down to eat an assortment of vegetables conjured from a random field along with enough rubbish to keep the trolls happy. Although the smell from the trolls' food was nearly enough to curb anyone else's appetite, the humans were too polite to complain and choked down their food anyway. Galahad never joined them no matter how many times he was invited, though. The old knight insisted he had to remain on sentry duty, but Blinky guessed it had more to do with his solitude for hundreds of years. He simply wasn't comfortable around people.
Claire always insisted on eating in the throne room to be near Jim, so they all sat on the decorative floor beside his stone. Archie had been fully absorbed in a fresh fish head when Toby leaned over.
"If a wizard caught a disease, would it be just a regular sickness or would it turn magical? Like chicken pox that make you turn blue instead of—"
"Tobias Domzalski!" the dragon whipped out, wings quivering with anger. "I have had precisely all I can stand from you! Until Douxie wakes up these topics are considered banned on pain of a fiery backside!"
A few curling flames leaked from his mouth to prove this wasn't an empty threat.
"What?!" Toby exclaimed at the announcement, wholly shocked. No one else was. "Oh, come on! At least tell us how you ended up as his familiar. That part would be mostly about you, so it can't be off-limits, can it?"
Since this was the first sensible question he'd been asked (and everyone else seemed interested too), Archie was willing to reconsider. He swallowed the last scrap of fish with the words, "Hm. Well, I suppose not."
Leaping onto the empty throne of King Arthur, the dragon settled himself into a comfortable position as he examined his audience. It was gratifying to see he had their undivided attention. Merlin had just entered to perform another magical scouring on Jim to see if his newest theory might have some effect on the onyx shard, but he paid no mind at all to the others present.
"Dragons don't always have full control over themselves and their transformations, especially at a young age," he started. "Our emotions easily lead to mishaps even when we do our utmost to be careful. Much like young wizards."
%*%
A forest of ancient trees stretched overhead as a miniature dragon alighted on the ground and then padded softly along a deer track. Archie paused to watch a stream and one clawed paw snapped out to graze the dorsal fin of a maddeningly quick fish, but the resulting splash made him pull back. After fitfully shaking himself off, he gave a sniff, growing instantly interested and taking off in one particular direction.
The not-too-distant village was surrounded by a ragged palisade that hadn't been repaired in at least a generation, but Archie paid this little mind as he slipped through a gap between rotting boards, in search of the source of that tempting smell. Heaps of old wood scraps had been tossed in one wide area, possibly in preparation for the traditional midsummer bonfire. They had certainly collected quite a lot, he noted as he wove through the sprawling mess. Some people also seemed to use it as a rubbish heap, though.
A woman worked outside her house over an open fire, cooking slabs of bacon and then dumping them into a covered pot. Archie's eyes followed the sizzling meat with rapt attention while his form unwillingly shifted to that of a cat. Hardly taking the time to think about it, he darted out when the woman started to transfer the very next piece of meat to the pot.
Teeth closing on the thick bacon, he ripped it away with a savage noise and dashed back the way he'd come. Unfortunately, having just been on a skillet, his prize was far too hot and he dropped it into the dirt.
With a spoon-waving woman barrelling down on him and a slab of meat too difficult to transport, Archie's instincts came into play and he transformed into a black wolf.
The woman's angry cry turned to one of terror. Neighbors who had already been curious about the racket now came running, some with weapons. Wolf-Archie scrambled for the meat and then disappeared into the hill of collected wood as the crowd descended. Without hesitation they pursued, digging and poking into any gaps where he might be lurking. The outer ring of palisades may not have been repaired in years, but a wolf of his size still couldn't make it through easily, and certainly not without attracting attention.
Terrified, he crawled under a ripped sack and a few boards, hoping none of the villagers would find him. Swallowing the bacon brought little satisfaction, though, since he was now being hunted. But no matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn't make himself change back into a dragon to fly away.
In an instant the commotion changed. The shouts increased and everyone clustered in one spot less than fifteen feet from Archie's hiding spot.
"The cat changed into a wolf right before my eyes!" the bacon-woman cried out. "It couldn't have been anything but magic."
"That boy told me yesterday he was looking for the Casperan clan," another added. "Those cursed turncoats! Wouldn't surprise me one bit if he had magic hisself."
Other voices murmured in angry agreement as a youth was hauled out from whatever shelter he'd made for himself in the giant heap. Disheveled enough to have been on the road for weeks, "wizard" didn't describe him in any sense of the word. Dark haired and thin and possibly about the age of twelve or thirteen, he stared about at the villagers in bewilderment.
"I-I didn't do anything!" he insisted in a pale, trembling voice. Not that anyone was listening.
Guilt tugged at Archie, but curiosity too. Was this really… a wizard? At last?!
Whether he was or not, the dragon couldn't deny he was responsible for the current situation the boy was in and resolved to do something about it. Legs coiling underneath him, he suddenly sprang from his hiding place at the group with a howl. Most screamed and ran, giving the youth a chance to break away. He fled to the palisade wall, only to find himself trapped between a house and the remaining members of the crowd. Finding the strange wolf at his side (but oddly not antagonistic toward him) the boy couldn't help but feel even more confused.
As villagers advanced on the pair, a glimmer of blue mist began to issue from the boy's hands. Frightened as he was, an unexpected surge of magic poured out against his will. Seeing this, he tried to tighten them into fists and make it go away, but that did nothing except intensify the magic.
"The palisades!" Archie barked out, crouching with raised hackles and bared teeth between him and the villagers. "Aim for the palisades, wizard!"
Not even pausing to consider the fact that an animal had just spoken to him, he thrust his hands toward the wall of boards and spiked poles, blasting a hole the size of an ox cart. Then they were speeding through it for the forest's nearby refuge.
%*%
Archie smiled a bit as the narrative came to an end. "It was only natural to bind ourselves to each other after that. And I happened to possess a few things an amateur wizard would find useful."
"Like what?" Toby wondered.
"I'm sure you all noticed the wristband he wears. It's a magical storage device crafted more than two thousand years ago by a metalsmith wizard."
It turned out Merlin had been listening without appearing to do so and suddenly spoke up. "Bulludhu the Forger, as he was known in Babylon. It was always his ambition to create a vessel that could contain magic and save it for future use. He was only able to complete ten or so that worked perfectly before he became a casualty in yet another of the Arcane Order's contrived wars. I always wondered how such an artifact landed in Hisirdoux's lap."
"And yet you never bothered to ask," Archie said just loud enough for the white-haired wizard to overhear.
"Very well, I shall do so now." Merlin rounded on the small dragon with an intimidating ice-cold gaze. "Where did you manage to come across it?"
Archie fidgeted on the throne and then busily turned to groom himself, speaking between licks. "It was a castoff from Charlemagne the Devourer's hoard. He never has anything to do with wizards if he can help it, so I took the opportunity to liberate that particular piece."
Merlin's eyes narrowed the slightest bit, watching Archie's reaction carefully. "You dared to enter the den of Charlemagne? Perhaps you have more spine than I thought."
The cat washed one paw and swiped it over his ears, seemingly unconcerned. "The old one naps for years at a time. I doubt he knows it's gone even now."
"Wait, who's Charlemagne the Devourer?" Toby asked aloud. Everyone shot him dirty looks for interrupting. "What?"
"A formidable dragon," Blinky supplied. "One about whom little is known, and that is more than enough to dishearten the most stalwart warrior."
Once again Merlin stayed silent, but his clouded expression seemed to imply a secret. One which made the small dragon shiver and suddenly redouble all efforts to clean his fur even though it was practically immaculate.
A/N: It just didn't make any sense to me whatsoever that Douxie could have advanced so little over 900 friggin' years! It reminds me of Schmendrick from The Last Unicorn who was so incompetent that his master placed a temporary immortality spell on him until he overcame his block. I felt Douxie's case deserved a little more attention as well as an explanation that fit the story. Now why exactly he made such a decision you'll just have to find out.
One other thing that absolutely infuriated me in "Wizards" was the amount of time that passed. If you stick to the present, the entire story takes place in less than 24 hours (and even if you take their time in the past into account, it probably isn't a week longer), whereas Jim spent literally months learning and growing as the Trollhunter. On top of that, it begins the night after the climax in 3Below. Too much all at once, in my opinion. So I'm slowing down the pace and creating a handful of minor conflicts to build up stamina and forge actual relationships instead of assuming all these random people will automatically get along.