Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 11th August, 2023
Reality returned in dribs and drabs.
Reality hurt, and overall sucked, Hisirdoux decided.
Every single inch of himself ached, his head worst of all, pounding and pounding and pounding.
He cracked his eyelids open and reflexively shut them again, wincing, against the bright light that stabbed in, making the headache worse.
"Serves you right," Archie said tartly. "I've seen you do some reckless things before, Douxie, but blindly testing an unknown magic like healing on something bigger than a paper cut-"
Douxie whimpered. His familiar's voice was a drill going sideways through his skull.
Archie paused, and sighed. "And you did very well for a first attempt," he said softly, his fur brushing gently against Douxie's forearm. "Bar the passing out at the end."
"Didit w'rk?" Douxie mumbled.
"Barbara?" his familiar asked.
"Well, my arm's a little sore," his mother's voice said from somewhere in the same room, "but otherwise... this is at least three months of healing, Douxie. Maybe five."
He sighed in relief and let himself relax.
"Still, Archie's got a point," Jim's voice joined the conversation. "Especially since you still weren't recovered from... uh, things you had to do in the sixth century."
It took a second, but eventually Douxie connected Jim not wanting to talk about him making Merlin's staff, with Barbara being in the room. He appreciated the discretion.
Something was set down on something near him. "Tylenol. Tea," said Jim. Another sound of something being set down. "Brownies."
"Mmm," breathed Douxie, debating opening his eyes again versus trying to sit up blind. He decided on the latter - only to find out that he couldn't sit up, his body failing the simplest of commands.
A broken sound that he refused to believe came from him escaped his throat. "Help...?" Douxie asked.
Two pairs of hands helped him to sit up and turn to the side. Cracking his eyes open to admit the slightest bit of light, Douxie discovered he'd been laying on the sofa. Which was odd, because he thought he'd been at the dining table-
It took a moment of confusion before he realized someone must have carried him here after his collapse. Possibly Jim. Possibly Archie. Hopefully not Barbara, if her arm still didn't feel back to a hundred percent.
But she was the one who uncapped the bottle and deposited a couple pills in his hand while Jim steadied him. Douxie swallowed them dry, then reached with shaky hands for the tea. The sweet coating on the pills never tasted quite right to him.
Barbara's hands cupped around his, stabilizing, while he took a sip. The liquid was lukewarm, minty with a hint of licorice, and absolutely perfect. Douxie drank greedily, swallow after swallow, until the cup was empty. His headache began to recede, a bass drum played in another room rather than a wall of sound right beside him.
The cup was taken from him, and a brownie put in his hands in its place.
"Eat," his mother said firmly. "Your blood sugar's got to be in the basement."
"Please, no bloodletting to determine his precise levels," Archie begged. "He's miserable enough without messing about with the humors."
"The what?" Jim asked as Douxie took a bite.
Barbara laughed. "The four humors," she informed her son. "They're a classical way of explaining the body's balances. They're also quite thoroughly debunked," she told Archie.
The dragon sniffed. "You're talking to a dragon, while caring for a wizard. Are you truly so sure your science has all the answers?"
"Okay," Jim cut in before the discussion could devolve into an argument, "nobody's letting any blood, so it's a moot point, right?"
Douxie finished the brownie. Chewed and swallowed the last bit. He felt like he could actually open his eyes all the way now and not have the light murder him. "I overdid it," he admitted.
"I'll say," Archie muttered.
"But," Douxie countered, "the spell works. Now we know it works, and have confirmed the effects."
"Confirmed?" Barbara raised an eyebrow.
"Ah..." Douxie looked at her and grinned sheepishly. "The book does say healing magics are generally worked by multiple mages at once, to spread out the effects."
She looked distinctly unimpressed.
"Look, I was not going to try teaching an untested healing spell to Claire or to Mary," Douxie protested. "Now I know it works, and more importantly, how it works. How it feels from inside. You can't exactly teach someone, say, surgery, without having done it yourself first, right?"
She softened, relented. "It wouldn't be the best idea."
Finally! Validation from an adult in his life.
"What does healing feel like, from the inside?" Jim asked from Douxie's other side.
Douxie grabbed another brownie from the plate and considered how to answer. "This is going to sound weird," he promised, "but it's like the body has a song. And there was one instrument just jarringly off-tempo. So I had to... tweak it. Shove it. Make it get back in harmony with the rest." Maybe he should have said off-key instead of off-tempo. Also, he wondered if healing magic could be done by someone without perfect pitch. Or maybe...
Jim snorted and elbowed him in the side. "And you spent nine hundred years not knowing you were a bardic mage."
"It wasn't a thing then!" Douxie protested. He eyed his brother and king. "I bet if you tried healing, it might seem something more like... I don't know. A sword move that wasn't perfectly balanced or something. Whatever your own personal idiom might be."
"Yeah, no. I'm not a wizard," Jim rebutted.
"No," said Douxie, "you're not a wizard yet."
Both Jim and Barbara looked at him blankly. Douxie sighed and lowered his brownie. Archie crept onto his lap. "Look, what we're trying to do, in returning Gaylen's stolen magic to the world... if it works right. If I get everything I want from this endeavor," which was something that had historically never happened, but Douxie could hope, "then it won't just be newborns and children getting magic all of a sudden, it will be everyone. Including the both of you."
"Oh." Jim's eyes were huge, his voice tiny.
Barbara's eyes were even bigger. "Does that... does that mean everyone will heal like you, Douxie? Be immortal like you?"
"Uhh..." That was something he hadn't considered.
She was silent for a moment, then barked a laugh. "I'll be out of a job."
"Accidents will happen," Archie pointed out. "I daresay the pursuit of healing, magical or other, would still be a worthwhile endeavor, Barbara."
"I... think," Douxie said cautiously, following logic and admitting to something he'd long suspected but never wanted to consider too closely for all the implications it held, "that I'm a bit of an outlier data point at the far end of the bell curve, being soaked in sorcery the way I am. Most people probably wouldn't be like over steeped magical tea." He forced away the things he wasn't ready to look at yet, and cracked a smile, shifting to another tangent. "I didn't become immortal until I was nineteen, and before that tipping point, I still got sick and injured and recovered from it all at a normal human rate. Atlantis wouldn't have developed healing magic if it wasn't needed."
"So kids wouldn't be immortal," Jim said, following Douxie's line of thought. "And, I mean, no one knows if magic and magic healing would take care of things like... like birth defects. Or lost limbs."
"Or mental health problems, obviously," Douxie said with a smile, knocking at the side of his own head. "So I don't believe the medical field will suddenly become redundant, Mam," he told Barbara. "Any more than I think that cars will be given up in favor of broomsticks."
"Oh god," Barbara said, her voice faint, her gaze a thousand miles away. "Imagine the 5 with broomsticks instead of cars."
The rest of them paused to consider that image.
"Anyway," Archie said after a moment's horrified respect, "not everyone is likely to choose to pursue and grow their magic to the point of immortality the way Douxie has. It is a sustained endeavor."
"Oh! You mean like how Hiccup's still mortal, despite being a wizard?" asked Jim.
Douxie nodded. "Though in his case, honestly... if Astrid and his kids might also become immortal eventually, I suspect he'd stop limiting himself."
Suddenly a new thought occurred.
"Fuzzbuckets," Douxie swore, his eyes widening. "If we pull this off... there's going to be a teacher shortage."
Watching Douxie basically inhale his own weight in pasta was always a marvel. Jim had the spare thought that he and Toby should find out if there were any local eating contests and enter Douxie into them for prizes and glory.
His brother's reaction, when Jim brought up that idea, was to flip him off.
Jim didn't stop grinning until they both headed upstairs toward bed. Their mom, having been asleep most of the day, had said she planned to stay up a bit, catch up on her e-mail, maybe watch something. Which was a pretty transparent excuse, given the way she kept checking her phone.
"I'm sure he's fine, Mom," Jim told her.
"Knowing Strickler, he's probably just somewhere without internet access," Douxie agreed.
"Or without an operative SIM card," Archie put in.
Her smile was tight. "I'm sure," she agreed, in a tone which meant she really wasn't, but was going to take their opinions into account, and hope. "Sleep well, boys."
"Sleep well, Mom."
"Don't stay up too late."
"Good night, Barbara."
With that, the three of them went upstairs.
"You going to be able to meet us in the Forge tomorrow?" Jim asked in between pajamas and toothbrush.
"Probably." Douxie tapped at his phone. "I'm off both my work schedules until Monday, and I think seeing you safely through whatever's down in the Deep is a bit more important than practicing for Battle of the the Bands."
Jim snorted and spat toothpaste into the sink, rinsing. "You sure your bandmates are going to agree with that?"
"Zoe will, once I explain it to her. Marti and Gil will just have to live with it."
"Let me know how that goes." Jim's eyes caught on his own reflection in the mirror over the sink. Behind him, the bathtub curtain was drawn back. He could just see the darkness outside the bathroom window.
The last time he'd gone into the Deep, he'd faced his worst nightmare at that time, being controlled. He'd had to fight himself - literally himself, someone who used every move he knew, fought exactly the same way he did. He'd been worn down and worn out, and he didn't know what it was that had finally defeated whatever was down there, because he'd just turned around at one point, exhausted, and it had been gone.
He hadn't waited to recover, just jammed his fists and blade into cracks in the wall, and climbed, wanting to get away.
He'd lived.
But his nightmares were so much worse now.
He swallowed, and looked away from his reflection. "All yours," Jim said, and ceded the bathroom to the wizard.
"Cheers." Douxie went in as Jim went to his own room. Archie's worried gaze followed Jim, but the dragon didn't say anything.
Jim shut off his light, got into bed. The light of the streetlamp shone through his window. Across the street, Toby was probably getting into bed too. Maybe he was already asleep.
Jim's hand itched to grab his walkie-talkie. Or his phone, to call or text Toby.
But keeping Toby up with his worries would be stupid. And counterproductive.
He heard Douxie rinse out the sink. The bathroom light clicked off.
The wizard appeared in his doorway, framed by the hallway light. He was wearing an old band shirt, faded almost to the point of illegibility, and a pair of equally worn sleep pants, both in the dark gray to black range. "Good night, Jim."
"'Night, Doux."
Douxie's brow furrowed in concern. "You... okay?"
"I'm fine," Jim lied. "Get some sleep. It's not like you haven't had a hell of a last few days."
Douxie didn't look like he entirely believed Jim, but nodded nonetheless. "Sleep well," he said softly, and vanished. A moment later, his bedroom light turned off.
A thousand thoughts flurried up in Jim's solitude. His worst fears. He would have to confront them. He wanted to be ready. Would it be being controlled, again? Arthur almost making him kill Claire flashed through his mind. Or... maybe being helpless again. He hadn't even been there when Bellroc's Titan had crushed half of Toby's body, killing him. Or then there was the heart-pounding fear of the unknown, like when he'd used Merlin's potion.
Maybe his worst fear, Jim thought, was Bellroc and Skrael winning.
So many different possibilities kept bubbling up.
Rule One: Always be afraid, Jim thought. And he'd thought he was past that, that he could just ride the edge of fear and call it situational awareness, but...
He breathed in, trying not to shake.
He'd been wrong. There were so many things he was afraid of. So many ways he could fail. Jim didn't know which one the creature in the Deep would pick. And if he didn't know what it was, how could he be ready to fight it?
Sleep that night came only in a few short bursts, and even then, was filled with uneasy nightmares.
Her students were up to something. Lenora Janeth could sense it. Hushed whispers, furtive hand gestures, and the ever-present sending of notes via cellular phone in place of the traditional folded bits of paper.
Half of her class was most definitely not paying attention to her lesson on triangles.
Given which half it was, she wasn't sure if this was something serious, or merely more of the standard teenage mayhem.
When in doubt, Lenora thought, go to the head.
"Mister Lake!"
His head jolted up. He had dark circles under his eyes. "Yes, Miss Janeth?" he asked, looking panicked, as though she'd suddenly asked him to solve an equation several levels above his abilities.
"Should I be concerned about your lack of attention?" She let her gaze drift across those of his cohorts who seemed similarly distracted.
"Uh... no?"
"That does not sound like a very certain 'no'."
Jim grimaced. "It's... complicated?" he offered, sounding half sheepish, and half like he was trying to fit a complex problem into a simple matrix.
She considered what she had seen him do, both at the planetarium, and in the town square. "Do you require an early dismissal?"
"No." His voice sounded firm on that point, at least.
"Then I must request that you keep your extracurricular activities on pause during classroom hours. You may resume them during passing period, and at lunch."
He looked abashed, but also relieved. "Yes, Miss Janeth."
"We will also discuss later the two tests you missed."
Jim's shoulders slumped. "Yes, Miss Janeth."
"Jim didn't sleep well last night," Archie observed from where he was stretched out across the back of the sofa.
Douxie nodded, his hands tying swift, precise knots in the cord, recreating Steve's destroyed panic button pendant. The array of quartz crystals he'd picked up in Trollmarket were spread across the coffee table before him, as was the rest of the coil of cording, and a pair of house scissors. "I did see him down three cups of coffee this morning." Instant coffee, given that Barbara had apparently been addicted to the stuff at one point, so the household had no coffee maker. But Douxie knew where Jim hid the jar of crystals from his mother: in the very back of the freezer, buried under bags of frozen peas and carrots.
"Do you think it's because of their plan to go down into the Deep?"
"Hard to think it's because of anything else." Douxie himself had slept the sleep of the dead. And if breakfast this morning had left him humming a few bars of Gaston... well, at least he was feeling back in the vicinity of human. "What do you think, should I do a pendant for Zoe? Maybe a few others?"
Archie narrowed his eyes. "Define 'others'."
"Uh. Jamie. Hiccup. Jack."
"Mm-hmm." His familiar gave him a narrow-eyed gaze. "And why are you thinking of adding them into the spell matrix?"
Douxie's hands stilled. Lowered. "I..." He sighed. The truth was, he didn't have a specific reason. But they'd helped him, and he knew Claire was in a group chat with the other wizards, and hearsay had it that Zoe and Hiccup were getting on better than they ever had, or at least tolerating one another in the wake of the big battle downtown...
Didn't the two parts of his life deserve to be held equally? The future, as represented by the Guardians of Arcadia, and the past, as represented by the wizards he'd known for varying amounts of time?
"It's just a feeling," Douxie said eventually. "I think they'll stand with us when the Arcane Order comes knocking."
"If," Archie corrected.
Douxie gave him a wan smile. Odd that, in this, Archie was the more optimistic of the pair of them. Or, given that he didn't have future memories of battling Bellroc and Skrael, perhaps it wasn't that odd after all. His fingers rolled one quartz crystal in particular. The one Jack had told him had a seed of winter magic in it. If he made that into a pendant, he should probably give it to Jack. Or maybe, Douxie considered, to Jamie, who was Jack's best friend and loved him like a brother.
The same way Douxie loved Jim.
"Do you think any of them have gotten caught by Jim's divine kingship yet?" he asked, letting the web of associations in his mind take him where it would. That train of thought was safer, by far, than the idea of affixing the crystal to Jack's staff, making it a sort of mini master wizard's staff.
He had the experience. He had the knowledge and technique. He could do it.
If I start handing out staves right and left, Merlin will obliterate me from orbit, Douxie thought, and knew it for absolute truth.
Archie considered his question. "I'm not certain," he said after a moment. "They each count him as an ally, that much is obvious. Whether or not he's expressed enough of his power to pull them into his ambit, however..."
"Probably not yet," Douxie agreed, nodding. He picked up his work again, tying more knots. "Of course, the easy way to be certain would be to ask Jim if they're 'his' or not."
"Yes, you could do that."
Douxie tied the last knot, and set down Steve's completed necklace. He regarded the crystals and his other materials one more time. "Screw it. I'm going for broke, Arch." He reached for the next crystal in line.
"Douxie." His familiar's voice stopped him. Archie sighed, adjusted his glasses, then jumped down from the sofa back, to stand on the sofa's cushion so that he was right by Douxie's shoulder. "You can't," Archie said, "make a necklace for everyone Jim claims as his."
"Oh," Douxie said, eyes widening as his own motivation suddenly became clear to him. "Oh, so that's why I..." He let the thought trail off, thinking of who currently was in the spell matrix. "Seventeen people's not much of a kingdom, Arch."
The dragon shrugged. "Arthur started with one."
"Merlin."
"Indeed."
There was temptation to compare himself and Jim to Merlin and Arthur, to be dismissive or boastful of the fact that Jim was already way ahead of the former once-and-future king, but...
But comparison was a killer.
Douxie instead picked up the crystal that resonated with winter magic. "I feel like I need to do something with this for Jack," he confessed lowly. "Which is why I was maybe going to use it for a necklace for him. Because my other thought was to affix it to his staff."
Archie's eyes flew wide. "Douxie, you're not saying-"
"Oh, it's not big enough to be a proper master's crystal," Douxie assured him. "But it would certainly give him an edge and a bit of a boost."
Archie was silent for a moment. "There are three individuals currently on this planet who have the ability to make master wizards' staves."
"Six," Douxie corrected, "if my theory about the Arcane Order being the originators of master's staves is right."
"Six, then," Archie accepted with a nod. "And while I agree that Jackson Overland is goodhearted and a master of his own form of magic..."
"Yeah, not a good idea, I know." Douxie turned the crystal this way and that. "Merlin'd kill me, and that would set off a whole mess." Starting with Jim and Archie's bloody retribution, for one, and then the only person left who'd know how to make a master wizard would be Morgana, and that was just not a good idea, on so many levels. He sighed. "Maybe if I think of the pendants as being for our team's strike force." Which was a good argument for inviting his fellow wizards in on it. They'd proven they could all work well together. Plus if he used the winter crystal for Jack's necklace, that would remove the temptation to do things he oughtn't with it. "I'll make them the necklaces, Arch."
"Are you sure that's wise?"
Douxie shrugged, measuring out another length of cord. "I may be a wizard, but I most certainly am not wise. So, no. I have no idea. But I'll ask them each if they want in on the team, and if they do, good for us. If they don't, well, no hard feelings."
"Good luck," said his familiar, rubbing his cheek against Douxie's. Douxie smiled, leaning into the caress, and got back to work.
"You did not sleep well?" Krel asked Jim, over lunch.
"Yeah." Jim rubbed at the side of his face. "No, not really. You?"
Krel shook his head. "I could not stop remembering what happened the last time I was down in the Deep, and trying to calculate what might happen this time."
Jim's smile was tired. "Same."
"You guys don't have to go down alone, you know," Claire put in.
"Or even first!" Toby agreed. "Let us take the brunt of it sometime."
Jim's eyes met Krel's, and Krel knew they were thinking the same thing: that there was vorpon's chance either of them would let their friends be submitted to that horror.
"We will think on it," Krel said, which was a lie. "First, we still have fifth and sixth periods to get through."
"And my first makeup math test, ugh." Jim's forehead melodramatically hit the table. "Kill me now."
Claire patted her boyfriend on the back, demonstrating sympathy.
"I could go first," Aja said quietly to Krel. On her other side, Steve was talking with something about Eli. Krel couldn't be bothered to pay attention to whatever idiotic nonsense the blond oaf was coming up with now. He just didn't have the energy, physical or emotional, to spare.
He looked at his sister, and thought how brave Aja was. How determined. How strong. How utterly not expendable. Krel shook his head. "No. I would not ask you to do that-ah!" he forestalled her rebuttal. "We will need you to be in charge while Jim or I are trying to pull ourselves back together afterward. If nothing else, you will need to read the Akiridion half of the entrance passage."
Her forehead wrinkled. "I thought Varvatos was coming with?"
"Yeah, no," Toby said, shaking his head. "I think he and Nana are teaming up to keep Zadra out of the way. Something about testing out her transduction?"
Aja laughed. "It is most cool," she agreed. "Unlike Varvatos, she still looks like a warrior!"
"I am uncertain about this activity," Zadra said, eyeing the exterior of the building. It proclaimed itself to be "Lucky Lanes!" and featured an image of a bright red sphere with three black dots striking a trio of white cylindrical targets.
"Oh, it's great fun, dear!" Lady Domzalski patted her on the arm. "I come once a week with my ladies' group."
"Varvatos is told," the Commander said from her other side, "that this mighty test of strength and skill is simple to learn, but intriguingly difficult to master."
"Well then." Zadra crossed her arms, pale pink in this guise but at least pleasingly muscular. "Let us attempt this 'bowling'."
Author's Note: In my head, Arcadia Oaks is slightly north of Los Angeles. Probably a little south of Thousand Oaks. Regardless, the 5 freeway would either run through the town, or be very close to it. And the 5 is notorious for bad traffic. Barbara's comment about picturing the 5 with broomsticks instead of cars came from my Wonderful Husband. Douxie hums Gaston from Disney's 1991 animated Beauty and the Beast. Specifically the lines "When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs every morning to help me get large; and now that I'm grown I eat five dozen eggs, so I'm roughly the size of a barge." For Zadra's transduction, I'm imagining actress Gwendoline Christie.
