Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 28th August 2022
Friday
"Are you sure about this?" Blinky asked nervously, fretting, as the human teenagers worked around him, swathing him in bed sheets.
"Nope!" Tobias proclaimed cheerfully. "Hey, Claire, got any more safety pins?"
"Here." She passed a couple over.
"Yum," Aaarrrgghh said hopefully, licking his lips.
Toby laughed. "Not right now, Wingman. Maybe after we're done wrapping Blinky up, you can have whatever's left."
"Okay," Aaarrrgghh said.
"Hmm." Claire stood up from where she'd been working at Blinky's feet, making sure they were completely hidden from what would be the petrifying touch of the sun. "I think we're good here. Jim?"
"I think we're covered here, too," Blinky's son reported from behind his right shoulder. He'd shifted initially to his full troll form for the height he needed to help with the draping and pinning efforts, but quickly realized that despite the height advantage that form gave him, he lacked the fine manual dexterity to operate the safety pins. After a handful of destroyed pins, Jim had shifted to his half-troll form - not as tall, but able to manage human implements better.
(Aaarrrgghh had been the beneficiary of those squashed pins. And Blinky had seized one himself, relishing the fine metal flavor, a tiny zing on the trollish tongue.)
"Toby?"
"Nothing's coming apart over here," the other Trollhunter reported with grim satisfaction.
"All right." Claire handed Aaarrrgghh the container of remaining safety pins, and hefted a large, colorful umbrella in her hand before passing it over to Blinky. "Gentlemen, shall we go raid a bookstore?"
Toby passed through her portal first, followed by a shuffling Blinky, who looked more like a mummy or a ghost than a troll at the moment. Claire caught Jim's arm before he could follow. "Whoa, hold up, hero!" she told her boyfriend.
"Why? What's wrong?" he asked her.
Claire sighed. She loved Jim dearly, but sometimes he was incredibly dense. "Are you really ready to freak out the mundanes the way Douxie does?" she asked, tapping his nose. Which was currently blue and stony.
"Oh. Oh!" Jim's eyes flew wide and he chuckled. "Forgot about that. No, not really."
Smiling, Claire watched as he grew a look of concentration and blue light rippled across his form, leaving him shorter once more, his clothing looser fitting, as he switched back to being fully human and the amulet dropped back into his hand, armor banished once more into the ether. "One more week," she said, linking her arm through his. "Then everybody knows."
"Yeah." Jim's expression was troubled. "Then everybody knows."
"Hey." She touched his cheek, directing him to look at her. "We've got this," Claire told him, smiling to try and reassure Jim. "This is Arcadia Oaks, not Camelot. There's not going to be any pitchfork-wielding mobs, I promise."
Jim sighed. "Let's hope not." He clearly forced a smile onto his own face, shelving the matter for now. "See you, Aaarrrgghh!" he said, with a wave.
"Good luck," the troll called after them as she and Jim walked through the shadow portal.
Her portal, as intended, spat them out in the solid shade of the bandstand in the downtown square. As it closed behind her and Jim, Claire took in the tableaux before them: a table knocked over, chess pieces scattered across the floor, and two elderly men staring wide-eyed at Blinky. Nana Domzalski was also there, as was Varvatos, in his human form.
"So good to see you again, Mister Blinkous!" Nana said, shaking Blinky's swathed hand.
"And you as well, my dear lady. Though I am sorry to have interrupted your chess game," Blinky said, with a glance at the spilled pieces.
"Oh, nonsense! Phil was just about to concede anyway, isn't that right, Phil?"
"Uh... yeah," the Black man said, nodding.
Varvatos, meanwhile, grinned broadly and stepped forward, pounding Blinky on the arm. "Good to see you braving the sunlight!" he said. "A true warrior must confront, and overcome, their fear!"
"It is not exactly fear..." Blinky demurred.
"Nonsense! Anything which is capable of killing you is something to fear."
"Can't argue that," Jim murmured.
Toby nodded in solidarity.
"Perhaps sometime you might join us and play a game or two of chess," continued Toby's Nana, seemingly oblivious to the stares and reactions of two of her companions. "It's always good to have a new opponent."
"My dear lady, I should love nothing more," Blinky informed her solicitously.
Nancy beamed.
"Anyhow," Toby cut in, "we gotta get Blinky here over to Douxie at the bookshop. Catch you later, Nana, Varvatos." He gave a nod. "See ya, Phil, Jerry!"
Those two men gave tentative nods and a wave, still clearly shocked by the magic portal opening and interrupting their chess game, not to mention Blinky, who must have seemed like a monster from their point of view.
"A pleasure to meet you, gentlemen," Blinky said politely, then walked to the very edge of the bandstand's shade. Where he drew a fortifying breath.
A whoosh-pop was followed by a gentle laugh, and Jim handing Blinky the opened golf umbrella. "It'll be fine," he assured his father. He gestured at Claire. "And if sheets and an umbrella aren't enough, we've got Claire."
"They have proven to be enough, in the past," Blinky said. Nonetheless, some of the tension melted from his frame at the thought of having a shadowmancer for backup. "But thank you for the consideration."
With a smile, the troll stepped out into the sunlight, crossing the green grass, heading for the arcane bookstore, the three of them flanking him and acting as moral support.
Behind them, Claire could hear raised voices: "Nancy, what the hell was that?!" "Oh, don't get your knickers in a twist, Jerry-"
"I'm surprised at both of you!" Nancy scolded, in fine form and looking like the goddess she was, her glorious silver hair gleaming in the light. Varvatos settled in to enjoy the show. "Such prejudice. I thought you were both well old enough to be past such nonsense."
Phil and Jerry both had the grace to look abashed.
"But Nancy..." Phil started, with a gesture at the retreating sheet-swathed Blinky, "he-"
"Oh, don't start with me." Nancy crossed her arms. "So Mister Blinkous looks a little different. You and Jerry don't look that much alike, and you've been thick as thieves for years now."
"Nancy." Jerry adjusted his glasses. "I don't think that guy was human."
"Of course he's not. Mister Blinkous is a troll, and he's lived under Arcadia Oaks for a long time, together with the rest of his people. Anyway, isn't your grandson the one dating an alien?"
"Akiridion," Varvatos corrected out of habit, before he'd even processed what Nancy had said. Then. "Wait - you are Steven's grandfather?" he asked Jerry.
"Uh, yeah?" The man looked nonplussed. "Wait - you're Aja's grandfather?!"
"That explains more than it doesn't," Phil murmured.
"Varvatos is Aja and Krel's guardian," Varvatos said, thumping his cane on the bandstand floor and ignoring the byplay. "And he shall remain so until their parents recover from their injuries. But, yes, he is honored to be considered their grandfather on this planet."
"Uh..." Jerry exchanged a glance with Phil.
"And," Varvatos added, "he most approves this match with the Palchuk boy. He has proven to be a worthy ally, and he and Aja shall make most beauteous children together."
The bell over the front door of the bookshop chimed. "Company," Archie murmured, jumping down from the table where he'd been examining a book that was over four hundred years old.
"We'll leave you to it," Douxie told the others, and followed Archie out of the reading room's door, closing it behind himself in case the visitors weren't the ones he was expecting. Mundane clientele didn't get access to the reading room.
"Welcome to GDT Arcane Books," he called, rounding the closest bookcase. He stopped, his customer service smile melting away into something more genuine as he saw who the customers were. "Well. Good to see plans coming to fruition."
Blinky, who might have a tent badly assembled for all that the plethora of repurposed bed sheets did a good job hiding him from the sun, beamed. "Indeed, Master Douxie! At long last I have the opportunity to visit this fine establishment."
"Welcome to GDT Books," Douxie repeated, more softly. "Shall we get those sheets off you, and begin with a visit to the special stock room?"
"Please," Blinky begged, all six eyes wide and pleading. He really did look like a hopeful kid newly stepped into a candy store.
"All right, then." Douxie concentrated, sinking into his power. Dozens of safety pins, glowing blue, unfastened themselves within Blinky's makeshift toga, wriggling their way free, followed by a flurry of fabric as the sheets unwrapped themselves. All the material and fastenings tucked themselves neatly away under the checkout counter.
"Why does it take you less time to undress him than it took us to get him wrapped up in the first place?" Jim complained.
Douxie shrugged. "Destruction's always easier than creation?" he offered.
"Anarchy is a downhill slope," Archie agreed. "Witness: exhibit A." He pointed his paw at Douxie.
"Hey," Douxie protested as Claire stifled a giggle.
"All right, I've got a question I've been meaning to ask." Toby raised his hand. "Why does the bookstore look so different than it did in the future, anyway? Was there some kind of remodeling project that happened in the next year or so?"
"Nah," Douxie replied easily, leading the way to the door at the back of the store - the one with the Gothic arch that barely managed to fit in with the decor of the regular store. "Have you seen Howl's Moving Castle?"
"Yeah...?" Jim asked in reply. Toby and Claire nodded; Blinky looked blank.
"Remember that doorway that led to multiple places?" Douxie asked, placing his hand on the doorknob.
"Yeah...?" asked Claire.
Douxie shot the four of them a grin. "There's a reason the arcane bookstore only employs wizards." He could feel the spells for different destinations humming under his fingers: the back break room that used to be his apartment; the other bookshop, the one Toby had first encountered; the reading room full of the really rare and obscure arcane books. He selected that last one now, and opened the door to wonder.
Any individual without magic would only end up in the break room and its tiny associated washroom. Employees, and a few long-trusted customers had the magic keys that would open the way to the magic bookstore and the rare books room. A fair part of Douxie's job at the bookstore was figuring out who needed access to what. Wizards weren't nearly as culturally uniform as a certain boarding school series made them out to be; sometimes they'd come to Arcadia Oaks following hope and rumor, and it was always a careful dance of are you like me and can I trust you? Until finally one side or another lowered their defenses enough to actually show off a spark of magic and then they could all get down to business.
And Douxie, since he had the spell key, could and had used it on the bookshop's front door as well, when needed. Like when his long-slumbering and absent master had demanded he gather the guardians of Arcadia and bring them to him.
Merlin had certainly made himself at home in the arcane section of the bookshop, and definitely hadn't been shy about pilfering various works and items to smuggle back home to Camelot in his magic trunk. Douxie hadn't known, and still didn't, exactly what arrangement his former master had made with Mister Del Toro in that aborted future timeline, but given Merlin had also possessed the shop's magical keys, clearly they'd met somewhere between Arcadia and New Jersey. And Merlin, Douxie thought, tended to get his own way in things. Always.
Well, he won't get his way in me.
The door opened now to the rare books room, revealing the walls and walls of tomes written in non-human languages. As well as revealing Mary and Jamie leaning over a somewhat smaller book than many of those present.
"I don't speak old-people," Mary informed Jamie.
"Lucky for you, I do," he rejoined, finger hovering over the page. He looked up, smiling. "I think I've found you a candidate spell for your videos, Doux."
"Great Gorgus," Blinky murmured, staring reverently at the floor-to-ceiling texts. And the stacks more of them on the floor. "Are those works by Alliatrix?" He drifted to one of the closer shelves. "Oh my word, they are. And these are the poem-songs of the deep-dwellers!" His expression held reverent joy.
"Yeah, so, I think we've lost Blinky," Toby said.
Claire laughed. "You're not wrong."
But Jim was looking at his mentor with a strange expression. It was almost resigned. "Are you and Aaarrrgghh going to need to expand the library again?"
"Most likely," Blinky replied, taking down a book and examining it.
"What was that word you used about Douxie's thing for books?" Jim asked rhetorically. "Oh, yeah, I remember now. Avarice."
"I have books; I certainly cannot hear you, Master Jim," Blinky said, apparently too contented to be ruffled.
Jim snickered, and joined the others at the room's central oak table.
"All right," Douxie told Jamie, once introductions had been made all around between his coworker and his friends, "what've you got for me?"
"Past-scrying," Jamie said with relish, finger tapping at the book's open page.
Archie's eyes widened.
"'Past-scrying'?" Claire asked for the group.
Jamie nodded, brown hair flopping into his eyes. He pushed it aside with impatient fingers. "So, starting with the basics, humans and most magical creatures experience time linearly, right? It's one o'clock, then two o'clock, then three." He got nods. "Time magic fucks that all up, which can cause a lot of problems. Which is why most people don't mess with it."
"Ooh!" Toby's face lit up. "The grandfather paradox!"
"Exactly." Jamie nodded. "You mess up time, you kill your own granddad, then poof! You never existed, which causes a paradox, which is the kind of thing that causes kingdoms to sink at best."
"That's only a theory as to why Atlantis was lost," Archie told the libriomancer.
"So that's why you were..." Claire said to Douxie.
He nodded, knowing exactly what she was referring to. His frantic effort to keep the timeline of Camelot's end and the first Battle of Killahead Bridge mostly intact had been the most harrowing thing he'd ever done.
Well. Second most harrowing, now.
Maybe third.
"Scrying, however," Archie took up the thread, "is generally far more... well, not always innocuous," he admitted, "but less potentially devastating to the warp and weft of existence."
"Scrying means looking at things, magically," Douxie put in for Jim and Toby's edification.
Toby's face wrinkled up. "Like you did with our auras that time?"
"Nnn." Douxie rocked his hand back and forth. "That's a type of scrying, I guess. But, no, what Jamie's talking about is... like looking at something across a distance. Of time, I assume," he said to his coworker.
Jamie nodded. "Scrying's not like looking, say, across the central park with your eyes to see what's going on," he said, gesturing toward the front of the building to where said park was. "It's more like opening a peephole on the other side of the park."
"Oh. So folding space-time," Jim said unexpectedly.
Jamie nodded.
Toby held up his hand for Jim, who obediently high-fived him, both grinning. "Gun Robot 2!"
"It's also difficult to do, and takes a lot of power," Douxie put in. "Folding the space-time continuum isn't just something most wizards do willy-nilly. There's a ton of spells out there attempting to shortcut things, make it easier to do. Most of them don't work."
"Most of them," Archie muttered, "end up blowing things up."
"Which is why I don't try them anymore," Douxie reminded his familiar.
"Come now, you didn't start the Great London Fire," Archie told him.
"Yeah, I didn't start it," Douxie muttered darkly, in agreement.
"Who did?" asked Mary, on her phone. Possibly Googling the fire.
"Another wizard attempting something he shouldn't have," Douxie said with a dismissive wave. "Not important. Though he was a dumbass," he added almost under his breath.
"That's not what Wikipedia says."
"What, that he was a dumbass? Trust me, he was."
"No, that a wizard started it."
"Who was there? Me or Wikipedia?" asked Douxie. "My point is, a lot of spells that try to shortcut things don't work the way they're supposed to. So I'm really hoping you're not trying to sabotage me with this one," he said to his coworker.
"Take a look yourself." Jamie didn't quite shove the volume at him.
"Hmm." Douxie gave it a look over.
"It's got the rosemary, and the salt," Archie pointed out. "And, perhaps more importantly, neither soot on the page nor frantic scribbles and crossouts in the margins."
"Fair enough," Douxie said, still reading.
"Why are rosemary and salt important?" Claire asked.
"It has to do with their magical properties," Douxie replied, absorbed in parsing out the spell. It seemed like it should work...
"Rosemary is for remembrance," Jamie put in. "Even non-wizards know that one. And salt... actually, I don't know why, but salt is used a lot in spells that work with sight."
"It has to do with light refraction," Douxie put in. "Crystals are good for that, and salt is a lot of really tiny crystals all together in one spot, usually pretty pure." He looked up. "Like the cover to Dark Side of the Moon." He got blank looks, and sighed. "Children," he muttered, and returned to perusal of the book, looking for anything that hinted the spell might backfire.
"Wait," said Jim, "is that why your 'Cinderella spell' for the night of the play used all that salt?"
Douxie looked up again, pointing fingers at his brother. "Exactly. All right, this looks like it might work," he said. "Let's try it."
Mary whooped with delight and punched the air. "You got your camera?" she asked Toby.
"Do I ever," he said, and dug said object out of his backpack, presenting it with a flourish. "Let's roll."
"Wait, you want to film it here?" Douxie asked, eyes going wide.
"Tch, yeah," Mary said. She waved a hand around the room. "This place has got way better ambiance than your boring bedroom."
Douxie gritted his teeth together. The bookshop wasn't /his/, and he knew he'd gone over wizardly etiquette with the two of them. Apparently it just hadn't stuck.
"Perhaps," Archie put in, glancing back and forth between Douxie and Mary, "you should call Mister Del Toro and ask permission first."
"Hello, I'm Hisirdoux Casperan, and my associate Archibald and I are bringing you today's spell from within the premises of GDT Arcane Books." Douxie waved an explanatory hand around the shelves of books surrounding them. "Now, today's spell dates from the Elizabethan era, from the notebooks of her chief sorcerer himself: John Dee. Now, this is noted as a 'receipt for seying the passt'. Knowing as I do what was going on at the time, I daresay Master Dee and the queen attempted to use it for spying on her cousin, Queen Mary of Scots, trying to prove her treachery and treason. Let's give it a go."
"My word," Blinky murmured, "he is quite good on camera, isn't he?"
"Shh!" Toby hissed.
Douxie laid out the spell ingredients on the reading room's central oak table, which had been cleared for the purpose. His deft hands and easy flourishes gave credence to his history as a conman and street performer. Sketching a runic circle layout, he placed items on it, including a hand mirror as well as the sprig of rosemary and the poured pile of table salt. Checking his work, he quickly compared it to the sketch in the book beside him. Giving a nod, he put his palm to the table. His eyes flared brief blue as he pushed power into the spell.
All the items laying on the spell circle flashed blinding white, then began to set off a white smoke.
"Crap, the fire sprinklers'll go off!" Jamie yelped.
"No, it's just mist," Archie disagreed.
Douxie never looked away. "Mystic mist," he agreed, amusement in his voice. "Three... two..."
On what would have been one, the mist blazed, then cleared, revealing an image of...
Of...
"Uh, I think I'm too young to be watching that," Mary said.
Douxie's eyebrows were raising toward his hairline. "Um. Well. It appears Mister Del Toro's theory that this building's spot used to host a bordello is... accurate."
"I'll say," Jamie muttered. "Eww, gross."
Douxie waved a hand through the image, dispelling it and the mist surrounding it. He turned back toward the camera with a smile. "So! It appears Master Dee's spell does indeed work... for a specific location. How or even if he used it to discover Queen Mary's treachery, we have yet to determine. Until next time!"
"Hey, uh, Douxie?" Toby asked from behind the camera. "Does that spell have a limit for how far into the past it can look? Because I've got an idea..."
Some time later, Toby turned his camera back on, setting it down carefully on a table to keep filming. It would be immediately obvious to a viewer that the venue had changed, and the wizard and his familiar were no longer at the bookshop. Instead they were now in what seemed to be in a large natural cavern (totally atmospheric!), with a lot more people present.
"All right," Douxie said, addressing his physically present audience rather than the camera. "Everyone ready?"
"You betcha," Toby answered, taking his seat.
Jim, next to him, raised a huge bowl, brimming with... "Popcorn made and ready."
"Then let's see if this works." Douxie turned back to the array before himself. The spell circle he'd made in the Arena was noticeably larger than the one at the bookstore. What had to be an entire rosemary bush was piled on one side, with a mound of salt as big as a five-year-old on the other. And Toby didn't know exactly where it had come from, but the mirror was the giant plain type he usually saw hanging on bathroom walls.
People shifted as Douxie knelt down. There was quite a mix of ages waiting, as well as of species. At least four of the individuals present had blue or green skin, and distinctly inhuman appearances. That would look great on camera. Only the Akiridions were absent. Mary had invited them, but apparently the proposed viewing material was "Ugh, boring." Especially once Varvatos had found out there was no possibility of punching involved.
With a flash and a flare, a mist screen formed, bigger than most televisions and weirdly viewable from any angle. After a few seconds, it cleared. Douxie sat down and scooted backwards, ending up next to Claire. Archie jumped into his lap.
No sound came from the mist, but then...
"Holy shit, is that a real T-Rex?!" Toby squealed as it appeared on the screen.
"Language, Toby-Pie!"
"Sorry, Nana!"
"My word." Strickler's eyes were wide. "Imagine the number of historical debates this spell might be able to solve."
Nomura, tucked into Draal's embrace, sniffed. "There's no sound, Strickler. You can't get Lincoln's lost speech."
"Perhaps with a camera and some lip-reading technology..." he began.
"Who cares about Lincoln!" Steve piped up, his eyes wide. "This is cool!"
Author's Note: Given that Jerry is the only character we see use the term "buttsnack" who did not obviously pick it up from Steve, I headcanon that he's either Steve's (maternal) grandfather, or a neighbor who fills that emotional niche for Steve. I also tried to make up the discrepancy for what GDT Arcane Books looks like from the outside through the windows versus what it looks like inside, once Douxie unlocks it with a spell in episode 1 of Wizards. I mean, the bookshelves in front of the door completely vanish! So clearly his little spell isn't just because he forgot the key - it takes him and all the rest of them to a different aspect/layer of the store. And in the last scene, I figure just about everyone is piled into the Arena, watching dinosaurs. Including NotEnrique, as well as Jamie and Jack. Because dinosaurs are cool. And, yes, T-rexes did roam California, 66 million years ago!
Also, many thanks to Karin_Star, Jahoan, and varve over on AO3 for pointing out an internal consistency error with regards to chapter 68! I've edited this chapter appropriately.
