Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 30th November 2021
Barbara came home to find her house occupied by even more teenagers and trolls than usual. They seemed to fill the living room, the dining room, and spill over into the kitchen, where she found her son slicing potatoes into sticks and parboiling them.
"Jim, what's all this?" she asked, indicating the cheerful crowd.
"We kind of went to Russia?" he offered with a reluctant grin.
Russia. Okay. "And, what's this?" she asked, touching the green gem glinting on his forehead.
"Um. Kind of the reason we went to Russia?" he offered.
Douxie leaned through the cutout window to the dining room, elbows on the counter. "Jim needed help keeping his powers of divine kingship from running away with him. So we went in search of Lady Nimue, who made Excalibur in the first place, and she gave Jim that."
"Yeah, now I just need to figure out what do about it for school," said Jim, fishing out one batch of proto-French fries and dumping another in the pot.
"I'll give you an invisibility spell for it," Douxie offered cheerfully.
"Is... kingship running away with Jim a problem?" Barbara asked dubiously.
Douxie's good cheer sobered. "Yes," he said. His gaze flicked to Jim, then back again. "When he was younger, King Arthur... ordered a purge of all male infants across the kingdom, in order to kill his own bastard offspring." A mirthless smile crossed Douxie's face. "It worked; the curse on the Pendragon bloodline never came about. But, yeah, the power can run away with the person."
Jim swallowed. "He killed babies?"
"He had other people kill babies for him," corrected Douxie. "My parents managed to hide me away, said I was sickly and had already died and been buried. I was told, years later, that the soldiers killed the two other boys my age in our village."
Barbara grimaced in horror. "How Biblical," she muttered.
"Never meet your heroes," Douxie advised. "They're almost assured to be brutal bastards not worthy of their legacy." He paused, then smiled. "Present company thankfully excepted."
"Thanks," said Jim.
"So," Barbara asked, trying to get back to her original question, "why are there so many people over?"
"Well," Jim listed out, "since Douxie got caught on cellphone using magic again, we're apparently making a movie as a cover story."
Douxie's face, Barbara noted, was a mixed bag of expressions if she'd ever seen one.
"Toby's directing it," said Jim. "Eli found out about the whole magic thing and is camera crew, I guess? Mary apparently has magic and is managing a Kickstarter and the social media end. And Darci's... actually, I don't know why Darci's coming along with us."
"Because she's Claire's friend," Douxie said with a quick glance toward the living room. "And also, I suspect, because she's aware of Toby's interest in her but wants to get a good look at the magical world before she decides if she wants to date him or not."
"Were they dating before?" Barbara asked, meaning in the future.
Two nods. "Oh yeah." "Definitely."
"Well, I hope he gets her back," Barbara said. Something niggled at her, though. "It seems a little odd that Mary and Claire both have magic?" she asked Douxie. "You said it was rare. That's quite a coincidence."
Jim frowned. "And I remember Claire saying something about seeing Connie Conrad working at HexTech? She's a senior, I think. Three wizards in one school seems like a lot."
"It's because of Arcadia," said Douxie.
Barbara exchanged a look with her son. "Explain that a little further?"
Douxie shrugged. "Well, the reason the trolls are here is because of the heartstone, right? Heartstones are... well, not quite catnip, but definitely like recharging stations for any number of magical species. They radiate magic. And for one as big as Arcadia's... I can feel it twenty miles out."
"Wait," said Jim, scattering fries onto a couple baking sheets, "you can feel the heartstone?"
"Magic's in the air here, literally," said Douxie with a smile. "It feels like... like coming into a room with a warm fire, after having been out in the rain. It's comforting. Which likely explains Arcadia's concentration of mages as well as trolls."
"But Mary and Claire didn't move here, they were born here," Barbara pointed out.
Douxie nodded. "It's possible that Arcadia's magic might be causing more wizards and potential wizards to be born here. Unfortunately, no one's ever really taken a scientific study of such things. It's not even possible without some method of determining who has latent magic, which we haven't got."
Barbara smiled at him. "Once upon a time," she confessed, "I would have thought magic and science were antithetical to one another."
Douxie laughed, low and soft. "If they were," he said, "there wouldn't be nearly so many books written about magic and how it works. No, magic's just like anything else: it can be studied, categorized, and that knowledge disseminated. I have a personal theory it's related to dark matter and dark energy, but I'd really need Krel here again before I could even begin trying to figure that out, let alone prove it."
"Clarke's Third Law, inverted?" she asked.
Douxie gave her a grin and a salute. "Exactly."
A triumphant shout came from the living room.
"Okay, it should work now," Eli said, emerging from the mystifying nest of black cables hooking the camera to the TV.
"And let's give it a go!" Toby said. "Jimbo!" he shouted over his shoulder. "The show's beginning!"
"I'm making dinner, Tobes!" Jim yelled back. "I was there anyway. Go ahead without me."
"Your loss!" Toby called. "Oh, hey, Doctor L!"
"I'll take his spot," Jim's mom said, perching on the arm of the sofa. "Go on and play it, Toby."
"Okay." Toby pressed the button on his camera, and the TV filled with beautiful, gorgeous hi-def establishing images of Siberia in winter, with only a liiiittle wobble going on. He could probably auto-correct that with the right editing suite. Maybe Douxie had a steadicam spell up his sleeve for next time?
"What's that?" Doctor L asked as the camera panned over the glorious metal intricacies of their ride.
"That is the gyre," Blinky informed her proudly. "Trollkind's swiftest and safest method of transportation to date."
"I won't argue swift," Darci muttered.
"Hate gyre," Aaarrrgghh muttered.
Then there was Douxie changing his robes to actually look like something cool and not just something emo, and Claire using her ring to search for Nimue, the rest of them following her onto the ice. A LOT of them following her on the ice, he was totally going to have to scrap ninety to ninety-five percent of that footage...
And then Nimue burst out of the ice and Doctor L shrieked. Like, honest-to-god screamed. Douxie and Jim both came running to the living room. She looked at the screen again, then back at the two of them. "That's a goddess?!" she demanded.
Jim and Douxie exchanged a look. "Ahh... yes?" Douxie rubbed at the back of his neck. "Gods are supposed to be terrifying, you know. It's part of the description."
"Well, she's definitely got that down," Doctor L grumbled.
"I imagine she'd be pleased to hear you say so," replied Douxie.
The audio was definitely subpar, Toby noted, making a mental note. Nimue came through loud and clear, fortunately, but he was probably going to have to get Jim and Douxie to do some after-dubbing. And maybe get a better boom mike with some of the Kickstarter money? Maybe Darci would be willing to be boom girl, which would free Eli up to be Camera Two.
Then Nimue was gone, and the seals, and Toby was happy he'd made the executive decision not to film the long, cold trudge back to the gyre. This was definitely enough footage to work on for today.
He still didn't have a story, though.
Frowning, Toby sighed and decided to just wing it. It had worked with The Adventures of Captain DJ Kleb, after all. How hard could it be?
"All right," Jim said once everyone had hamburgers and fries, in the case of the humans and dragon, and some raw meat, plastic wrappers, and cans, in the case of the trolls, and a place to sit and eat. "Since there's more of us now, and we're supposed to be making a movie in between everything else, we need to figure out a tighter schedule. Plans for tomorrow?"
"I'm supposed to train down in Trollmarket with Draal in the afternoon," Toby said. "And you still need to cut that tiger's eye."
Jim nodded.
"I've tomorrow off," said Douxie. "Claire, Mary, magic lessons?"
"In the afternoon for me," Claire said. "I have church in the morning."
"I don't," said Mary. "Nine here okay?"
The wizard nodded. "Nine it shall be."
"When do we get to see Trollmarket?" asked Darci, indicating herself, Mary, and Eli.
Blinky lowered his mockburger, raw beef mince held between two layers of styrofoam packaging. "Now would not be the best time," he said. "Vendel is still upset from having to preside over Usurna's sentence, and Trollmarket is reeling from the revelation of there being two Trollhunters. Which, I might add, is all the greater reason that you should spend part of tomorrow there, Master Jim."
"Let them get used to it," Aaarrrgghh rumbled.
Jim nodded. "I'll head down with you when you go, Toby."
"Sweet."
"What about me and Darci?" Eli piped up. "What should we do?"
"Well, you're welcome to hang around here and watch while I give Mary and Claire lessons," Douxie offered. "Actually..." He looked at Jim. "Should we show them downstairs after the meal?"
Jim nodded. "Probably a good idea."
Darci's eyes darted back and forth between them. "I take it you're not talking about the basement."
Claire laughed; Toby did, too, which was a problem since he had a mouthful of hamburger. Jim smiled. "No. Aaarrrgghh, Blinky, and Draal made a really cool training arena underground between my and Toby's houses."
"We can show you what we need that potato gun to fire," Douxie said to Eli.
Eli's eyes lit up. "You mean that's for a real purpose?"
"Oh yeah," Jim said, sighing. He looked at Claire and Toby, at Blinky and Aaarrrgghh. Douxie had only been peripherally involved in the Eternal Night; they certainly hadn't been fighting side-by-side with him yet. "There's something we need to tell you guys about."
After things quieted down and everyone went home. After Douxie had removed his latest set of bandages, revealing tender pink skin where there'd been raw flesh and blood a few days before. After Jim's mom had cleared him to go bandage-free and he'd gone off to take a shower.
After all of that, Jim sat his mom down.
"You're not making me less worried, kiddo," she said, gaze catching on his new headgear.
"This one isn't bad, I promise," he told her. "Well, mostly not bad." He reached up to touch the circlet. He couldn't feel anything magic about it, but Nimue had said it would help.
"What happened?" she asked softly.
Jim drew a deep breath. "After Douxie got caught on camera... the entire magic community here pretty much decided to shun him, because they couldn't bury it."
His mom's forehead wrinkled. "But you said...?"
Jim nodded. "Apparently Mary's a natural, or something? Really good at technomancy even through she didn't know she was a wizard? Anyhow, when Douxie came home and told me that, and that he'd probably be losing his band too because he'd saved someone's life..." He drew a deep breath. "I was almost out the door before he managed to stop me. I had Excalibur... I was just going to kill them all." He felt sick about it, about how easy it had seemed, how obvious a solution.
His mom's mouth was a line. She swallowed. "So that's why you needed something to help you keep control."
Jim nodded, miserable.
"She said... in the video, Nimue said it's hardest when you start," Barbara said quietly. Her hand came on top of his. "You're still pretty young, kiddo. Even if you're two years older than you look," she added.
Jim had to laugh. "They weren't the best years, but they weren't all bad," he promised.
"Mmm." Her smile was kind. "You got a girlfriend out of them. Friends. More family - don't think I've missed Blinky being a dad to you."
Jim had to laugh. "Yeah. He's a lot better than my bio one. Not that that's a high bar to step over."
Her gaze flicked to the ceiling as the running water upstairs shut off, then went back to Jim. "And... a brother?"
Jim nodded.
"Good," she said firmly. "I always wanted you to have siblings. It just... never managed to happen." His mom's expression went wistful. "Do you think he'd let me adopt him too? I mean, legally it might be tricky since he's undocumented, but... I always wanted more kids. Even if one's older than me."
Jim had to laugh. "Only chronologically," he pointed out. "Physically and emotionally, Douxie's another story. And... maybe?"
Neither of the humans noticed the black cat laying across one of the steps to the building's second floor.
Archie flicked an ear, interested in what he'd heard, then stretched and padded upstairs as the bathroom door opened and Douxie came out, toweling his hair dry.
Douxie was working the last drips out of the ends of his hair when Archie came in their room and jumped on the dresser to address him. "You haven't brought up that Eternal Night quandary yet, Douxie."
"Haven't had a chance," he replied absently. "Not when Eli, Mary, and Darci've been around the whole time, and they don't know about the time travel business."
"They will eventually," Archie pointed out.
Douxie gave his familiar a look. "They found out about magic even existing less than a week ago. It's not fair to dump apocalypses on their head just yet."
"Mm, yes, bad form and all that." Archie watched as Douxie pulled his pajama shirt over his head. "That being said, it did seem a matter of some importance to you. And if you can't broach it to all your fellows at once, as it seems you may not be able, perhaps you should start small and close?"
"You think I should bring it up to Jim." Douxie sighed. "You're probably right. I just hate putting more on him, after this week's debacle. Debacles."
"He has Nimue's crown now," said the dragon. "That should help. And if he's to be a leader, then his job is to /lead/. Don't coddle him, Doux, not if you want him to reach his fullest potential."
"It's not coddling him, it's wanting to make sure he's got his feet back under him first," Douxie shot back. "But you're right. I'll go do that now."
"Good boy," said Archie.
"Saucy midge," replied Douxie affectionately, rubbing Archie behind the ears.
By the time Douxie and Archie came back downstairs, Jim and his mom had moved to the living room and were watching Mistrial and Error: New Orleans. Douxie sat next to Jim. "Crown, please," he said, holding out his hand.
Jim took it off, looking reluctant, and handed it over.
It was lighter than Douxie had expected, which was probably good for Jim's sake. Nonetheless, he expected its weight seemed more significant to his brother.
"Turning that invisible will be a tricky bit of work," Archie commented from where he stood on the sofa arm, also examining the circlet.
Barbara turned the TV volume way down. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you can always tell if something's made by a god because of the nature of the magic," Douxie said, turning the crown slowly around and examining it to the best of his second sight. "Divine magic's... slippery? Mortal mages can look at it, piece together bits of how it works, but altering it?" He laughed. "You'd have better luck snuffing out the sun."
"Which is also not a good idea," Archie put in. "Mages who try that sort of thing don't tend to live long."
"In long and short, that's why no one but the Lady could mend Excalibur once it was broken," Douxie said. "Merlin may be powerful, but even he can't do anything to divine artifacts."
"So what are you going to do?" asked Jim.
"I think," Douxie said, "if I can encase this in a spell, it might work. Though..." Douxie sat back and frowned, thinking. He looked at Jim. "Can I see your amulet too?"
"Sure." Jim dug in his pocket and handed that over too.
Douxie took it, looked at it.
Blinked.
Showed it to Archie.
Who also blinked, and said "My word."
"What?" asked Jim.
Douxie turned it back around, held it up before him. "Read it."
"For the good of all-" Jim's eyes went wide. "What? Excalibur is mine to command?" He grabbed it back.
"Seems the Lady had opinions."
"Yeah." Jim held his amulet for a minute longer, then handed it back over.
"Let's see if this works." Douxie set the amulet down on one leg, the circlet on the other. He flicked a finger at the circlet's emerald, pinging the gem with both his finger and his magic.
It lit up, as did the amulet.
"They're linked," said Archie.
"Which means... what?" Jim asked.
"Well, it means the invisibility spell will fall whenever you use your armor," Douxie explained. "People will see this then. Though I suppose if they're already seeing you armored up, that'll be the least of what you're needing to worry about. For me, it just makes the enchantment a little trickier, if I don't want to be completely recasting it each time. Which I don't."
Archie hummed. "Sympathetic encasement, you think?"
Douxie nodded. "With the silk thread?"
"I'll get it," Archie volunteered, and shifted to dragon form, flying back upstairs.
"While he's fetching that..." Douxie handed the amulet back to Jim, who secreted it once more. "Arch pointed out something the other day, which I've been meaning to bring up, but it keeps getting waylaid."
Barbara huffed a laugh. "Not like you boys have had anything else going on," she pointed out.
"Exactly," Douxie granted. "Nonetheless... Jim, if we manage to evade having the Eternal Night happen, how does that effect things going forth?"
"Um. It's the best-case scenario?"
"On one hand, yes," Douxie agreed. "A lot less death and property damage. On the other hand... Arcadia Oaks never finds out about magic and trolls. Never accepts the trolls. And, perhaps equally important, never learns to embrace the outre. I know you weren't here for it, but what will happen when Colonel Crazy from 49-B comes after Aja and Krel, if the town won't defend them?"
"Oh." Jim's eyes were wide as the ramifications hit him too. "Shit." Then he flinched as he realized his mom had heard him curse.
But Barbara didn't seem overly concerned. "Those are the two alien kids, right?"
"Akiridions," Jim agreed.
"I don't want to say we need to let the Eternal Night go ahead," said Douxie. "But... if we don't, what can we do to replace those specific consequences that stemmed from it?"
"I don't know," said Jim.
"Me either. But we need to start thinking about it. Fast."
Author's Note: Clarke's Third Law is "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Therefore, Clarke's Third Law, Inverted would be "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." Which does rather seem to be the sweet point where Earthern magic and Akiridion technology meet.
And, I'm really glad all of you have been reading this story so far! I know that a good many of you are appreciative that I've kept a consistent posting schedule of every other day. Which is why I'm sorry to announce that this story is going on hiatus for the month of December. I've been doing this for four months, but with my kids having some school holidays, and a couple weeks of them being sick, the chapters I have written ahead have gotten fewer and fewer as time has gone on. I need to take some time to R&R before I burn out, to make gifts, and hopefully to get back ahead. I do have another story written I'm planning to post on Christmas, which I hope you might read and enjoy. So, happy holidays, y'all, and I will return with new chapters on January 1st.