Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 2nd December 2022

Friday

Jim prickled with nerves. His fingers twitched. He kept looking over his shoulder, to see what was making him antsy. (Nothing was there.) His knee jittered under his desk; he had to put a hand over it to stop it.

For the first time, he considered that maybe he, like Douxie, could do with some anti-anxiety medication.

(Not that he was going to borrow any of Douxie's; that was a bad idea to begin with, and a worse one if/when his mom inevitably caught him.)

"Jim, seriously, what's gotten into you today?" Claire whispered during passing period, between classes.

He gave a hollow laugh. "You really can't guess?"

"But you've dealt with Gunmar before. Heck, you've dealt with worse than Gunmar before."

Jim heaved his breath out and closed his locker door. He didn't look at her. "I'm not sure it's Gunmar I'm stressing about," he confessed in a low voice.

"Toby...?" Claire guessed.

He shook his head.

It took a moment, then her eyes widened. "Going back into the Darklands."

Jim nodded, and finally looked at her. "It's stupid. I know it's stupid. I'm going to have the kairosect, right? I should be the only thing living, moving, there. It's a simple in-and-out job..."

Her arm wound around him, pulling them close together, Claire's books smushed uncomfortably between their bodies. "It's not stupid," she said into his shoulder. Jim breathed with her, his own arms wrapping around her. "You had a lot of bad stuff happen there. It's going to leave a scar."

Jim dropped his head, breathed in the scent of her shampoo. He suddenly, desperately wanted to be alone in their bed in Camelot. Not doing anything, but just holding one another, bare of clothing and all the other things that came in between them.

He wanted to be an adult again, to not have to worry about what people would think. To just have him and Claire in their little bubble where nothing else could come around and remind them of all the ways they'd both been hurt.

His hand came up, brushed through her soft hair as they stood together, a point of stillness while the world and high school students hustled and bustled around them. "I miss 'us'," he said.

"Yeah. Me too." Claire looked up at him, her large brown eyes impossibly beautiful. "Maybe after all this is over...?" she suggested.

"Yeah," Jim said softly, fingertips touching her cheek now. "After," he promised.


"What the freaking frack?" Toby asked, eyes wide, when they all followed Vendel into his workroom only to find the entire main table taken over by a model of downtown Arcadia Oaks.

It was, he thought as he examined it, scarily accurate for presumably being made by (a) a guy who had the troll version of cataracts, and (b) who hadn't left the Heartstone in a hundred years.

"Wow," Jim said, looking at it. "I knew old people got into models and stuff, but this is like ridiculously good."

"Heheh. Beep-beep!" Steve rolled one of the food trucks down the street. "Aaagh, oh no, a monster!" He veered off the street into the park. "Crash! Tshshchhcshhh~~!"

Krel rolled his eyes, practically audibly.

Vendel ignored Steve, which was probably the best tactic to take. "You have your players," he said, with a gesture at the row of tiny stone models standing along one side of the table. "Show me your tactics and your strategy."

Jim blinked. "Whoa," he said, picking up the tiny marbled marble figure of himself holding Excalibur over his head.

"Omigosh." Claire had picked up herself-carved out of amethyst, appropriately-and was examining it. "Vendel, these are amazing!"

The Elder smiled, pleased at the compliment.

Toby almost couldn't breathe as he reached for his own maquette. "But..." he said, looking up at Vendel.

Vendel reached out. Gently closed Toby's fingers around the warm stone, enclosing it. "The Trollhunter," he said, "is part of Trollmarket.

The heartstone figurine seemed to pulse with the beat of Toby's own heart.

"But I screwed up," he said pathetically.

Vendel's head tilted to the side, acknowledging. "Perhaps," he said. "But more importantly, you tried, despite your fear. Besides," he added, "what is it that I keep hearing you lot say? 'It's not Trollhunter"..."

"It's Trollhunters," almost all of them said as one.

"Precisely. Now. Your tactics?"

"Well," said Krel, stepping forward and claiming his own token, one of a matched aquamarine set, "I am to be positioned here, atop the museum." He placed himself accordingly.

"Oh! And I'm here, on the roof of the record store!" Eli snagged his own figure (rose quartz) and followed suit.

One by one, they positioned themselves, and the quartet of food trucks, until everything was appropriately placed.

"All right." Douxie moved his model, and the obsidian Killahead Bridge, down the museum steps. "I haul Killahead out of the museum. Claire, I might need your help for that." She nodded.

"Strickler and Nomura approach the bridge, hauling Toby along, allegedly as their prisoner." Jim moved the figures of the two changelings, who couldn't enter Trollmarket.

"I put the amulet in the bridge, the portal opens." Toby chest-bumped his figure to the bridge. "Then I scramble on top of the bridge while Jimbo does his thing."

"I activate the kairosect the instant the portal is open, and go through." Jim ducked his token under the bridge and set it down. "I speedrun the Darklands-which should be frozen in time compared to me, right?" he asked, looking up at Douxie. The wizard nodded. "I grab Enrique, book it back, and hand him off to Claire's mom at the cafe before the time freeze runs out." Jim settled his token in front of Benoit's.

Toby narrowed his eyes as a thought suddenly occurred to him. "Uh, wait, one question." His hand shot into the air. "You said the bridge was in a different place in the Darklands when it got rebuilt in the woods instead of in Trollmarket, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, where's it going to be when it's outside the museum?"

"Uhh." Jim looked blank.

"Oh!" Illumination widened Krel's eyes. "You're asking, is there a linear correlation between the placement of the bridge in this world and in the Darklands?" asked Krel.

Jim continued to look blank.

"Any correlation would be kind of hard to determine from only two data points," Eli pointed out.

Krel inclined his head, accepting the critique. "True."

Douxie, meanwhile, was tapping his thumb against his bottom lip. "I have no idea where it's likely to be," he said finally. "Arch?"

The dragon shook his head. "Sorry, nothing Merlin ever taught us, or that Dad ever covered, dealt with object mapping from one dimension to another."

Jim groaned. "So you mean the bridge is as likely to spit me out a million miles in the wrong direction from the nursery as not?" A Trollish curse word dropped from his lips. Blinky looked mildly scandalized; Draal, proud. "And there aren't even any roads, so I can't take my bike or Vespa in with me."

"And we can't close the portal, and Toby can't get his armor back, until you're back through," said Claire.

"Well, fuzzbuckets," murmured Douxie.


Kneeling, Waltolomew bowed. "It shall be done, my lord," he vowed. "All is in readiness, and tomorrow the Trollhunter and his amulet shall be ours. And he, and the divine king, shall be your first victims."

Through Killahead Bridge, Gunmar growled. "Do not presume to dictate to me the order of my conquest, impure."

Beside Waltolomew, Nomura audibly snorted.

"Of course not, my lord," Waltolomew demurred. "I had merely thought, given your previous words-"

"Do not think," Gunmar spat. "Obey."

"Of course." Waltolomew bowed his head farther, simmering. One more day, he promised himself. One more day, and then it will be over.

"How may we further serve?" Nomura's voice slid into the conversation, deferential and oily. He gave a glare; she smirked at him.

A purring growl. "Find me the witch."

"The... witch?"

"Your Pale Lady," Gunmar said. "Where is she?"

Nomura gave a wide-eyed panicky look. The visual connection to the Darklands was unclear enough that Gunmar hopefully missed it.

"Our operatives have determined she is trapped within the heartstone of Trollmarket," Waltolomew risked. How had Gunmar heard of the Pale Lady? Did he know she was Morgana Le Fay?

Gunmar has another source of information, Waltolomew realized, cold panic suddenly blooming within his chest. ...I have no idea what he knows.

A pleased growl, sounding almost like a purr. "You will guide me to her, Stricklander. If your information is correct, I may spare your pathetic life. And that of your human whore."

Waltolomew swallowed, a bead of sweat running down from his temple. "Of course, my lord," he whispered, bowing.


"Uh, idea," Claire said. "We borrow the Fetch from Nomura and risk taking a peek through it. Sound good?"

Jim and Toby exchanged a look. "You see, this is why you're the brains of the operation," Jim said.

Claire smirked. "I'm really not. But thanks."

"You will have two hours, nine minutes, and twenty-seven seconds," Blinky said thoughtfully. "If that is not enough time for you to get to the nursery and back, we will have to pull Tobias' amulet from the bridge, allowing him to don his armor, and deal with Gunmar and what forces have come through. We will then have to open the bridge for you again later."

"Letting the goblins realize I've stolen Enrique, and giving them time to catch up with me," Jim said, his eyes going wide with realization. "Great."

"And that's not even counting whatever fraction of Gunmar's forces will remain on the other side of the bridge," Douxie mused.

"Let alone the uncertainty of how far Killahead will be from this nursery," Krel added on, frowning.

"Or how exhausted the Lake boy may be after running for two hours," said Varvatos.

"You know, all of a sudden this plan's not seeming so great," Toby said.

"We could maybe rescue your brother later?" Steve offered, looking at Claire.

She winced. "My mother will throw an absolute fit," she said. "But we might have to."

"Either that, or we need to find some way for Jim to travel faster, expending less effort." Douxie's hand was on his chin, his expression considering.

"But how?" Krel asked, hands in the air.

Silence.

"Big Jim moves faster," Aaarrrgghh offered after a moment.

"Bike's out. Vespa's out," Douxie listed. "My skateboard's out. And I really don't think you could use a broomstick, let alone learn to fly one in the next twenty-four hours."

"Ha. No," Jim agreed. "I might have to go full troll for this."

Aja hesitated, looked at her brother, then pulled her hoverboard out of her serrator. "I do not know if you can use this, but... we could try?"

Krel blinked. "Good question. I do not think we ever experimented with humans using hardlight devices."

"After this," Jim promised. "We'll hit up the Forge and test that after we finish strategizing." He glanced at Vendel, then back at the model on the table. "So. Either I go through and rescue Enrique, or we put a pin in that to do later. Either way, what happens next?"


"We," said Nomura, exiting the museum, "are fucked."

Stricklander, following her, winced but did not disagree. "Other changelings...?" he posited as to the identity of Gunmar's spies. He shook his head. "Unlikely," he answered his own question.

She stopped, nostrils flaring as she took in the parking lot. There was a scent...

Her eyes narrowed in fury. "Goblins," she spat, whirling on him. "How did we forget to account for those treacherous little creeps?"

Stricklander caught her wrist. "Now, now, Nomura," he said, eyes flashing yellow-and-red. "Mustn't lose your temper at being outclassed." His eyes flickered to the side then back to hers.

It took a second for the penny to drop. His glance meant: We're being watched. Play along.

What the hell. They were in too deep to change sides now, even if she had been willing to bet on their survival in Gunmar's reign.

She scoffed. "So that's why you've been courting the boy's mother," she said. "Getting him to trust you. Clever, Stricklander."

"Yes, well." He released her wrist and tugged at his jacket cuffs, straightening them. "There's more than one road leading to Rome, after all."

"Rome is yesterday's news," she told him. Where would be safe, she wondered? Hopefully her apartment. "I'm going home for the night. You?"

"I think I might go give the lady in question a visit," he said. There was something in the terseness of his expression that made her think he'd just done the same assessment of his turf as she had, and decided its safety features were lacking. She resisted the urge to snort: she had told him as much, on multiple occasions. It was his own damned fault for not listening to her. "Sleep well, Nomura. Tomorrow will be a big day, for all Changeling-kind."

"For this entire city," she muttered at his retreating back. One way or the other.


"Walt," said Barbara as he went about closing every door, window, curtain, and blind in the entire house, "what on Earth are you doing?"

He turned to face her, and the expression of fear on his face shocked her. "I've miscalculated," he said, desperation in his voice. "Gunmar has more spies than I thought. He knows about you, Barbara."

She blinked. "Spies?"

"The goblins," he explained, turning back and forth to make sure he hadn't missed anything. "Upstairs- I'm sorry, please excuse me for a moment-" And then he was on the stairs, and she heard him going into one room after another upstairs, shutting windows and pulling curtains to.

She breathed out a sigh and sat down on the sofa. Her phone was in her hand, texting her sons while she waited.

/Something about tonight's meeting with Gunmar has Walt spooked. Apparently he has goblins as spies?/

By the time Walt was coming back downstairs, she'd gotten a reply from Jim: /We're stuck in Trollmarket for a little longer, working out some logistical kinks. Is Strickler there with you?/

One followed from Douxie: /Stay in the house and you should be safe. It's heavily warded./

/We'll stay put until you get here,/ she promised.

"Douxie says we should hunker down here," she reported, setting down her phone. Walt sat down beside her, taking her hands in his. They were like ice.

"Douxie has warded the house?" was his first question.

She nodded. "And the Domzalskis', and the Arena downstairs."

"Thank goodness." He heaved a sigh.

"Walt," she said gently, "tell me what happened. I can't help if I don't know what's going on."


By the time they were done going over strategy, Jim felt like his head was stuffed so full it was going to explode.

"So many contingency plans," he groaned.

"Vendel is indeed the master of seeing all the ways in which something may go wrong," Blinky cheerfully agreed.

"Yeah, and most of the time he just sits back smugly, waiting to be proved right," Toby groused.

"Being fair, Toby," Claire pointed out, "I think helping us take out Gunmar is a little more serious than most of what Vendel sits back for."

"Yeah, yeah, you're right." Toby cast a long glance around the empty Hero's Forge. "But we still have no idea who's going to show up to help tomorrow. If anyone."

"Thus, the myriad contingency plans," Douxie chimed in. "Come on, Jim. I want to see if you can ride Aja's hoverboard or not."

"Ugh." But Jim dragged himself upright.

"This should be interesting," Krel said, leaning back against the wall in a flash of blue and crossing all four arms.

"Jim is not a data point for your interspecies research, little brother," Aja chided, also returning to her native form and pulling her hardlight hoverboard out of her serrator.

"One, everything is data," Krel refuted, "and, two, I would say you are the one conducting interspecies research."

"What does he mean by that?" Steve whispered to Eli.

Eli patted him on the shoulder. "I'll tell you when you're older," he promised.

"All right," Aja said, ignoring the byplay, "let us see how you can handle a hoverboard, Lake boy."

"I can handle anything you can dish out, princess," Jim promised, smirking. Though he was less than perfectly certain as he stepped up onto the surfboard that was made of light and had nothing holding it up...

Douxie winced. "Don't tell me you've never ridden a skateboard before."

"I have!" Jim defended himself. "Once."

"Badly," Toby piped up.

"Thank you," Jim said to his bestie. "I don't remember you doing any better, Tobes."

"Yeah, but I'm not the one trying to ride an Akiridion skateboard through the Darklands," Toby said, grinning wide.

"Ugh." Douxie rolled his eyes and stepped closer. "Bend your knees. Feet a little bit farther apart. Find your center of balance."

Jim wobbled.

"Focus, Master Jim!" Blinky called. "You can do this."

"Yeah, real helpful," Jim muttered under his breath. Douxie's instructions were much more useful than Blinky's positive attitude right now. Jim slowly and carefully shifted his feet until he felt balanced, less like the board was about to slip out from under him and land him on his ass.

"Much better," said Douxie, who rode a broomstick like it was simple. "Aja?"

She grinned and leapt lightly onto the board, landing behind Jim, making him lose his balance and flail. Aja laughed and helped steady him, stepping to stand right behind him. She planted herself with the easy assurance of someone who used this method of transport preferentially. Her lower set of hands rest on Jim's hips; her upper, his shoulders. "All it takes," she said by his ear, "is balance and determination."

"Um, that's great and all," Jim replied, "but how do I make it go?"

Aja snorted. "Like this," she said, leaning forward. Which made him lean forward, lowering down to keep his balance-

The board began to move.

"Whoa," Jim said.

"And to the side," Aja instructed, making him move with her to go around the curve of the Forge's wall. "And you go up," she said, hauling him back, weight shifting so the board tilted and flew upward, "and down." The opposite, so the ground was approaching. "It is very simple," she said.

"Great. How do I make it stop?" Jim asked.

Aja laughed. "Different backward," she said, pulling him with her, demonstrating. The board slowed, on the other side of the Forge from where they'd started. Aja hopped off. "Okay," she said, one hand on the board, "now you must try it alone."

Jim swallowed, took a breath and nodded. He crouched low, to center his balance, and leaned forward.

Beneath his feet, the board moved.


"My butt hurts," Jim griped as they climbed the basement steps.

Douxie couldn't help a smirk. "You certainly wiped out enough times."

"Ha. Ha. It's not like I've spent years riding brooms and skateboards and hoverboards."

"You did fairly well, all things considered," Archie said as Douxie opened the door.

"Yeah," said Jim, "but is it going to be good enough, tomorrow?"

"Jim." Douxie turned and laid a hand on his brother's shoulder. "It will be. I have faith in you."

"Faith is easier to have than to have to live up to," Jim shot back.

Douxie shrugged. "When have you ever failed to live up to someone's faith?"

Jim's eyes bored darkly into his. "Vendel. Draal. Half of Trollmarket. Strickler and Nomura." A pause and a swallow. "Toby," softly.

"Fair enough," Douxie admitted, caving and regretting bringing up those painful memories. Part of his own heart hurt at the reminder, echoes of people he'd lost but hadn't yet. Merlin. Nari. Archie.

...Even Morgana.

"We'll do better," he promised, for himself and for Jim. "Because I don't want you having to use that bloody stone again."

"It's not good for much else," Jim pointed out.

"It's also not supposed to be used as an Omega-13 device," Douxie rejoined, heading out into the house.

"What's an Omega-13 device?" Jim followed.

"It's from a movie called Galaxy Quest," Archie informed him, leaping up on the kitchen counter. "It turned back time precisely thirteen seconds."

Jim's face wrinkled in thought. "That's not very long."

"Long enough to undo one mistake," Douxie told him. Which had been the entire /point/ of that particular plot device.

"Thank goodness you're here," Strickler said, coming into the kitchen.

Jim raised his eyebrows. "We're not that late for making dinner," he said, clearly going for lightheartedness. "And I even set the crock pot going, so I know Mom hasn't tried poisoning you. Has she?"

"Jim!" said Barbara from the dining room.

Strickler shook his head. "It's not that at all."

Douxie exchanged a look with Jim. "What is it, then?"

"Gunmar knows about Barbara," Strickler said. "He mentioned her, specifically, during today's ritual humiliation session."

"'Mentioned'?" Jim asked, eyebrows going high.

"He is using her as a-forgive me, my dear-control on my behavior."

The penny dropped, for Douxie as well as Jim. "He knows you're planning to betray him."

Strickler nodded, clearly miserable.

"Fuzzbuckets," said Douxie. Jim said a much shorter word that started with the same letter.

"Jim!" chided Barbara.

"Sorry," Jim apologized, as if by rote.

Douxie heaved a breath in, then out, mind whirling, trying to figure out what this changed. Or if it even changed anything. "Um," he said. "Um."

A paw touched his arm; he refocused on the concerned face of his familiar. "Whatever happens," Archie said softly, "we deal with it together."

Douxie drew another breath, forcing himself to settle. "Together," he said softly, remembering all the promise and potential of being soulbound to his familiar. Archie's strength was his.

Fortunately.

Jim was watching him. "We don't have to decide how to handle this right this second," Jim pointed out.

"Young Atlas," Strickler protested, but Jim overrode him.

"Let's set down, and talk out some plans over dinner," Jim said, banishing any illusion any of them might have had about who was running the show. "Strickler, you'll stay here tonight and drive Mom in to work tomorrow."

"If any of the trolls reach the hospital..." Strickler murmured. "Or even the goblins..."

"Douxie can drive in with you," Jim pivoted on a dime. "Doux," he asked with a smile, "are you up to one more set of wards?"

"On the entire hospital?" Douxie scoffed. "You must be mad. The ones on the house bar entry to uninvited guests. That would be impossible to do on a medical facility. Particularly an ER."

"What about an aversion spell?" Archie suggested. "We've got the cantrip to block Gumm-Gumms from the facility. All you'd need to add in is some way of keeping the goblins out."

Douxie thought about it for a long minute, trying to remember if he knew a specific spell that would do that. His vambrace lit up and he spun the runes as he thought. "If I deconstructed Krelnak's glyph," he mused at last. "There's a chance I might be able to come up with a goblin-excluding variant. But!" he warned, "it's only a chance. I'll need to see what I can come up with tonight, and there will be zero opportunity to test it."

"Whatever you can come up with," Barbara told him, "will be better than nothing."

He gave his mother a wry smile. "You say that, but you've never seen how catastrophically some of my improv spells have failed."

"How bad can they get?" she asked.

As one, Douxie and Archie winced.

"Oh," said Strickler, "I think we must hear this tale over dinner."

"You set, I'll dish," said Jim. "And Douxie gets to talk."