Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 13th May 2022

"Tom," said Louis, his head in his hands as he sat on a bench outside the planetarium, "what do we do?"

Tom Brennan, his work partner of three years now, his friend, a stable fixture at his table for Thanksgiving and family birthday parties, looked at the stream of kids exiting the building. "Do we need to do anything?"

Detective Louis Scott blinked, and looked up.

"Can't think of any laws they broke," Tom said slowly. "From that video Mary showed us... they took down the guy disturbing the peace. And they cleaned up what they could of the damage, after."

"They're kids with swords!" Louis said. "Kids shouldn't be brandishing swords! It's against the law!"

"Again, seems to me they were responding to a clear and present danger." Tom shrugged. "Self defense, Louis."

Louis buried his head in his hands again, muttering a four-letter word.

Because Tom wasn't wrong.

And somehow Darci was mixed up in all of this.


"So what comes next?" Krel wondered. They had relocated via shadow portal from the planetarium to Jim's house, and Jim himself was baking something celebratory. From the chemical signature drifting through the air, it involved chocolate. From the secondary layer of chemical signature in the air, either he had burned the chocolate, or was making something separate for the trolls. From the way Blinky and Aaarrrgghh were hovering in the dining room, Krel was betting on the latter.

"Well, we have, what, twelve days until go time on Gunmar?" Toby asked. "Dealing with all the fallout from today, I guess."

Varvatos punched one hand into the opposite palm. "Varvatos most looks forward to confronting your Gumm-Gumms again.

"As do I. And today's events will make school most lively!" Aja agreed.

"Yeah. Lively," Douxie said glumly.

"Why the long face?" Krel asked him.

"You get to deal with classmates," Douxie said, slouching deeper into the sofa. "I have to deal with Arcadia's wizarding community. Most of whom already had choice words-or none at all-for me." His fingers rubbed against the crystal pendant he wore. Then he blinked, looking down at it. "Which sort of reminds me, I need to make more of these, don't I?"

"What are they?" Krel asked.

"Homing signal panic buttons." Douxie offered his necklace up for Krel's examination. It looked to his eye like nothing more than a piece of quartz. Unremarkable. But something about it seemed to almost buzz and tingle against his fingers. Douxie's magic, he guessed. "Made them for myself, Jim, Barbara, Claire, and Toby."

"Huh. Interesting." Krel handed it back, wondering if he could make something similar. It shouldn't be too hard, he thought. A simple locator program, on an isolated frequency... "How are they activated?"

"You break the crystal." Claire appeared in the living room, bearing a sizable bowl of guacamole, and an even larger bowl of chips. Neither of which Krel would pass up; though Jim was the superior chef, Claire's guacamole was worthy of Seklos herself. "What do you think, Doux? Necklaces for the whole Ninth Configuration?"

Douxie nodded. "All of us... and maybe the Creepslayerz, Mary, and Darci?"

"What about Draal?" Toby asked, taking a scoop of the guac. "Or, I dunno, Strickler and Nomura?"

"Seventeen individuals?" Archie asked, his eyes narrowed in contemplation. "Well, the spell matrix could hold that, I suppose."

"Then there's NotEnrique," Claire pointed out. She sighed. "This is getting kind of big."

"Do we really need them anymore, though?" asked Jim, entering bearing a tray heaped high with cookies. Following him, Blinky and Aaarrrgghh each carried a bowl of something that looked like it was topped with motor oil and smelled absolutely vile. Blinky sat down cross-legged on the floor and stirred his bowl with a fork before taking a bite of it. Aaarrrgghh simply tilted his bowl back and slurped from it. "I mean, Douxie made them when there were only a couple of us. Now we've got safety in numbers."

"Says the one who has never been shot at by bounty hunters," Aja pointed out. "I would very much appreciate one of these necklaces, thank you," she told Douxie.

Krel face-palmed. "Ugh, the bounty hunters! I had forgotten."

"Dude, how could you forget bounty hunters?" Toby asked.

"No, not in general," Krel groused. "In specific. The Birdie lady will be showing up next," he reminded his sister. "Asking for our papers for school and trying to poison us with cookies!"

Aja stopped and looked at the cookie she had in her hand. Her gaze slid sideways to Jim. "You are not a bounty hunter, are you?"

"What?" squawked Jim. "We just defeated Porgon together!"

Aja chuckled. "Relax, I am teasing." She took a bite of her cookie.

And passed out cold.

"Aja!" Krel leapt to his feet. "Aja, are you all right?" He shook her. She flopped like a rag doll. Krel stared breathless at his sister's limp form for a second, then whipped around to stare at Jim. "You! What did you put in those cookies, you-"

Aja opened her eyes and started laughing. "Krel, you should see your face!"

Varvatos was laughing too, slapping his hand against his knee.

Krel's rising rage and betrayal slammed into the fact that apparently that Aja had played a practical joke on him, leaving wreckage behind.

"Aja," said Krel lowly, his anger building, "you had better run. Because when I catch you-"

His sister darted between Blinky and Aaarrrgghh before he could finish his threat. Gritting his teeth, Krel ran after her, down the basement stairs and into Arcadia's underground tunnels.

He was going to kill her!


"Well," Blinky said, a moment after the Tarrons had disappeared, "I am not certain that we all require your necklaces, Master Hisirdoux. Aaarrrgghh and I, for instance, are unlikely to be set upon by hostile forces. At least not since Queen Usurna is now gone."

"Yeah, but the necklaces aren't just for 'I'm in over my head,' are they?" asked Jim. "They're also for 'my friend is in over his head and needs help'."

"Or 'I need medical attention, quick!'," Claire put in, with a glance at Douxie, who nodded.

"Yeah, but on the other hand, what can they do that cellphones can't?" Toby asked. "And we all have phones."

Aaarrrgghh hummed. "Backups good," he offered.

"Indeed! Redundancy has been known to be an invaluable asset," Blinky declared.

"Says the guy who burned a book without making a copy first!" retorted Claire.

"There were extenuating circumstances!" he bellowed.

"Yeah, no," Toby piled on. "What about Dictatious' books?"

Jim was laughing.

Douxie and Archie looked mildly concerned. "Just to ask," said the dragon. "Which books are these? That we might peruse them before their inevitable destruction."

"And are they in the restricted section of your library?" asked the wizard, a smile hovering at his lips as he handed his familiar a cookie and helped himself to another.

"Restrict-" Blinky choked. "Who restricts sections of libraries?!"

"Quite a few people," the wizard said.

Claire crossed her arms. "And then there are the pendejos who ban books."

Blinkous was left unable to communicate. He gaped. Humans banned books? That was... That was...

"Monstrous!" he spat. "Vile, cursed blackguards! Tell me who these villains are, who proclaim books unable to be read? I will have words with them!"

Aaarrrgghh was nodding. "Throw hands," he agreed.

"Quite so, my good fellow!" Blinky nodded decisively.

The humans, meanwhile, were exchanging a glance. "Okay, so once we get everyone integrated, who votes we see about getting Blinky onto the board for, like, the school or the library?" Claire asked.

Four hands and a paw raised into the air.


"All right. Thirteen more necklaces it is," Douxie said. "I'm off tomorrow, so I can get a start on those."

"Whoa whoa whoa, what happened to working on your sleep deficit?" Jim protested.

Douxie waved that off. "I can sleep later. I've got work to do."

Douxie did not miss either the way Archie rolled his eyes, or Jim's mulish expression about that declaration.

He also did not miss the way his phone buzzed in his pocket. Again.

On one hand, if he didn't answer it or check his text messages, he could continue to be happy. On the other hand, if he did, he could be an adult and start triaging the damage.

Five more minutes, Douxie decided, reaching for another cookie.


An hour later, Douxie finally went up to his room. The Tarron siblings hadn't reappeared, but he wasn't overly concerned. To his best knowledge, there wasn't anything in Arcadia's sewer-and-tunnel system that could pose a serious danger to either of them, and if they did run into trouble... well, they had cellphones.

Communo-crystals, he thought darkly to himself. He'd need to round up some trade materials and pop down to Trollmarket to get some more quartz suitable for another round of necklaces.

In the meantime...

He settled on his bed, back against the wall, pulling his phone out of his hoodie pocket.

He skipped the voicemail for now, and went straight to his texts.

Jamie was irked that he hadn't opened the bookshop this morning the way he'd been scheduled to. He'd copied Mister Del Toro in on that, so Douxie's boss was also asking for an explanation.

There was also a whole chain of texts from Zoe...

Hisirdoux winced, and dealt with the work stuff first. /Sorry. I was busy breaking out of a time loop,/ he said. /I have five people who were stuck in it with me, if you need independent validation of events./

Jamie's reply came first: /Seriously?/

/Totally serious,/ Douxie replied.

/I can't pay you for the shifts you don't work,/ Mister Del Toro texted next.

/I know./

Douxie sighed, then typed in his bombshell. /Also, most of the sophomore class and a couple of the teachers at Arcadia Oaks High now know about trolls, magic, and extraterrestrials./

His phone buzzed in his hand almost immediately. Seeing it was Mister Del Toro calling, Douxie answered.

"What happened?" his boss asked, with no preamble.

Douxie sighed. "A trickster troll got ahold of a piece of Akiridion tech and used it to augment his magic, causing a time loop between yesterday evening and this afternoon. We went through the day five ruddy times. The only place we could track him to was the middle of the science fair."

Mister Del Toro hummed, a deep rumbly sound over the phone line. "And the extraterrestrials? These... 'Akiridions'?"

"They're fine," Douxie told him. "They're refugees from a military coup on their planet, and believe me, they want nothing more than to pass under the radar of anyone in authority."

"Teachers and students."

"Two of the Akiridions are students at the high school; the other is their guardian," Douxie had to tell him. "They're not wildly popular," or at least they weren't before, "but they're well enough liked. I don't think the school will be a problem."

A heavy sigh. "I will leave it in your hands, Hisirdoux," Mister Del Toro said. "But do not bring trouble to my bookstore's door."

"If there's any trouble," Douxie told him, "it's going to be from Arcadia's other wizards. And they never buy any books anyway."

A snort. "True!"

"Beth won't be happy with me," Douxie warned him.

"If it becomes a problem at work, let me know. Outside of work, however..."

Douxie sighed. "Outside of work, we get to duke it out on our own."

"Precisely."

And the thing was, it wasn't like Douxie was Batman. He didn't actually go around sizing up every other magician he met and figuring out how to take them out.

On the other hand, he was damned good at surviving after nine hundred years. There weren't many other wizards around who had lived as long as he had. Apprentice's power level or not, he had the sheer diversity of his magic skills on his side.

Unless she got in a sucker punch? Beth could not beat him. Not even if she dragged her brother into it.

(But her brother worked at HexTech, and if all the HexTech wizards decided Douxie was Public Enemy #1, he might actually be in trouble... No, that was a problem for another day.)

"I'll take care of it," he promised his employer.

"I know I can count on you, Hisirdoux." The line went dead.

Douxie sat there, just breathing for a few minutes, trying not to panic at all the shit he'd gotten himself in with his actions today. He had known this was going to be coming-

-but not now.

Today had gone about as well as they could have hoped. Tomorrow, however, was going to be a right cockup of a day. Or, more accurately, Wednesday would be. Because tomorrow he could hole up in the Lake house, dipping down into Trollmarket via the tunnels for the crystals he needed, and never actually set foot where anyone would be able to get past his wards.

Wednesday he had work at the bookshop, at Benoit's, and at band practice.

Wednesday, he would be screwed.

Archie came in the room while he was mulling that over. As if awoken by his presence, Douxie's phone started buzzing again in his hands. Zoe.

"You should answer that," said Archie, jumping up on the bed.

Hisirdoux grimaced. "Counter argument: if I don't answer it, she can't yell at me."

"True. But, the longer you put off answering her calls, the angrier she will become. It's not in your best interest to hold her off."

Douxie sighed. "I hate it when you're right." Taking a deep breath, he did his best to nerve himself up, and answered. "Hey, Zoe!"

It was only the strength of the wards he had on his phone that kept her hex from burning his hand black. As it was, the electric shock made him yelp. The phone tumbled from his fingers to land face down on the bed as Douxie cradled his now painful left hand in the other.

"Ow," he said.


Archibald looked at his familiar. Douxie's pupils were dilated. He was rocking back and forth. His injured hand kept twitching, as if he wasn't in complete control of it.

Incandescent fury arose in Archie's heart. "Ashildr-" he growled, preparing to swear vengeance on the witch who had hurt his familiar.

But Douxie snatched up the phone before Archie could do anything, and pocketed it. "No," he said. "She knew exactly what my wards were. She could've done a lot worse. This was a slap in the face, nothing more."

"I do not care," Archie ground out. "She hurt you, Douxie!"

"Yeah, well." His wizard looked at his injury. "Not the first time."

The phone buzzed again. "If you answer her call..." Archie warned.

"Oh, come on, Arch!" Douxie complained. "It's Zoe." He shook out his injured hand and fished the phone back out of his hoodie. "Hello, love," he said, answering.

"HISIRDOUX CASPERAN!"

Archie winced at the volume and pitch of her yell.

"Well, I see those vocal exercises have been working," Douxie said, holding the phone at arm's length.

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'VE DONE, YOU GODS-DAMNED MORON?" Then, a second later, "Of course you do, you're you, why do I even bother... ugh."

"Zo, you knew this was the plan. You even know why." Douxie settled back against the wall again, phone tucked between his ear and shoulder as he flexed and worked the hand she'd zapped. Archie could practically read the alternating numbness and pins-and-needles sensation by how he moved his fingers.

"Yeah, but not today! In two weeks, you said. TWO WEEKS, CASPERAN!"

"And why should that make a difference?" Archie inquired, butting up against Douxie so the phone would pick up his voice.

"Ugh. In two weeks, I might have been able to talk some of HexTech into helping," Zoe replied. "Now? Ha, fat chance."

Archie exchanged a look with his familiar. Douxie pulled the phone away from his ear and set it on his leg, hitting speakerphone. "I thought you were against this whole thing," Douxie said.

"Yeah, well. Turns out I'm even more against the planet getting destroyed." Archibald could practically see her fuming. "Now I've got an entire employee force who are trying to decide what they want more: to leave Arcadia ASAP, or to headhunt you. In the old-fashioned sense."

Ah, yes. The sense of the word that had led to the rise of the guillotine, among other things. "They can try," Archie informed her.

"Yeah, yeah, I know he's better than most of them."

Archie sniffed. "It's not that Douxie is more powerful or more skilled than them, though he is." His familiar looked gratified by the compliment. "It's that the moment any of your short-sighted coworkers try anything, I will enact human immolation upon them." He thought about the possibility with grim satisfaction. "And I believe you know exactly how hard it is to extinguish dragon's fire."

"UGH. I'll warn them," Zoe said.

"Good. I would hate for you to have to train a new batch of coworkers."


It was obvious from the moment that he got home that Darci's dad was in a bad mood. He growled, he grumbled, he wouldn't sit still for more than a couple minutes before getting up and pacing. Finally, over dinner, he said, "Darci, you're grounded."

"What?!" she demanded. "Why?"

Her dad looked stymied at that. But only for a second. "For, for... for hanging around with delinquents who use illegal weapons and engage in shady dealings!"

She gaped. "They took out a troll running rampant and destroying public property!"

Her mom was looking back and forth between them like it was a tennis match. "Wait, what?"

"They're a bad influence and I want you to have nothing to do with them. Argument over. You're grounded." Her dad turned his attention back to his spaghetti and meatballs.

Darci saw red. "You can't ground me for hanging out with my friends! What, are you going pull me out of school too?"

"I am considering it."

"Mom!"

Her mother set down her fork. "That... does seem a little harsh, Louis. What did they even do?"

Her dad stabbed his fork in her direction. "We're talking teenagers with weapons here, Yara! And I'm not talking pocketknives. I mean swords! And that's not mentioning the aliens, and the, the whatever those other creatures were!"

Darci's mom was looking at him like he had two heads. "Louis, do you need to take a break from work?"

"What? No!"

"Because it sounds to me like you're getting all het up over some private citizens dealing with someone and keeping the peace. What, is your professional manly pride injured because some teenagers did your job for you?"

Darci relaxed an inch. It sounded like her mom might be on her side.

"What? No!" her dad protested again.

"I think you need to shut up, eat your supper, and do some thinking, Louis. And not try to alienate our girl from all her friends just because they out-performed you." With a snort, she picked up her fork again. "Male testosterone," she scoffed. "Ah!" She raised her utensil in warning as he opened his mouth to protest. "This household is a democracy, and you have been outvoted two-to-one. Eat your dinner, Louis, and think about what you've done."


"Worried about tomorrow?" Claire asked as she fished a clean shirt out of her laundry basket and laid it on the bed to begin folding it.

On the other end of the line, Jim sighed. "Is it weird that I don't know?" he asked. "I mean, on one hand, with all the stuff we've been through, I feel like I know who I am, what I'm doing."

"But on the other hand, the last time you had to go to school with everyone knowing, it was in a FEMA tent and everything was already so wonky that no one gave us any trouble?"

"Yeah."

"It'll be fine," she promised.

"It's like... I know I can take anything Seamus and Logan can dish out. But it's going to be weird having everyone look at us and ask questions. Or not ask questions, that might be worse."

"I know." Finishing the last of her shirts, Claire started in on her underwear. She and her dad had come to a compromise where he washed her laundry and she folded it, because as a teenage girl, it was just weird having your dad fold your undies. "Weird's kind of the defining word of our lives, though."

"Yeah." Jim chuckled. "Trolls, wizards, aliens... remind me what normal looks like, again?"

"Don't let Aja or Krel catch you using that word."

"What, 'normal'?" he joked.

She laughed. "Did you study for Spanish?"

"I tried. How did your studying for history go?"

"Ugh. It'd be so much easier if we were allowed to ask Douxie for help," she complained. "He's good at making things come to life. Strickler isn't."

"Strickler's an academic. I doubt the state would approve of Douxie coming in and teaching about, I don't know, the real story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin or whatever."

"Maybe Blinky could teach," she suggested.

"I thought we were trying to get him elected to the school board?"

"Yeah," she murmured, pausing. Socks danging from her hand as the world seemed to spiral out around her, so impossibly big and inertial.

"Claire? Are you okay?"

She took a breath and shook herself. "I am," she assured her boyfriend. "I think I'm starting to get what Douxie sees. How we're trying to change the world, and how big that really is."

"Scared?" Jim asked her.

"A little," Claire admitted.

He sighed into the phone. "Me too," he admitted. "I think we just have to hold onto Blinky's hero's speech, and keep going until we're through."

"Fear is but the precursor to valor," Claire murmured.

"Yeah." A moment of silence. "We can do this, Claire. We have to."


Author's Note: The term "communo-crystals" is from The Last Starfighter. The idea of a restricted section of a (magical) library is probably from Harry Potter.