Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 9th June, 2023

In the gloaming of the forest's protection, all was going well in the Gumm-Gumm encampment. A break to rest sore feet, to clean weapons, to wait until the night fell and they could cross the next, and final, stretch of grasslands before reaching their kingdom. There was the usual growling and jostling for spaces close to the fire, for the best meat and mushrooms, bragging of their prowess at slaughtering those weaklings who were unworthy of the name of troll...

And laughter at the whelps they'd captured. Either they'd grow to be strong and fight back, making themselves into members of the Gumm-Gumm tribe... or they'd be crushed underfoot, made into weak servants and slaves.

The eldest male held some promise, growling at any who came near his small pack. But he was soft, sharing the meager food he'd been tossed with the other whelps.

He would learn better. Or he would starve and die.

There was a thin zip! through the air. The laughter of one Gumm-Gumm cut off abruptly. His hand had barely begun to raise to the base of his skull, where something had bitten him, before it petrified, along with the rest of him.

The double-bladed glaive that had sunk hilt deep into his spine vanished in a wisp of blue light, before anyone noticed it.

Not far away, hidden, Jim Lake Jr. smiled.


Outside the forge, the clouds were streaked with pink. Douxie stared uncomprehendingly at them for a long minute.

There was, his artistic and poetic side wanted to argue, something appropriate about the timing. About how Myrddin Wylt gaining his staff and becoming Merlin Ambrosius was the start of a new day or something.

But mostly Douxie felt cold. And shocky.

The birds were too loud. And the animals in their pens too demanding. He should go let them out. He doubted Merlin would think to do it; he was clearly a landholder and lord, above doing such things. It was what Merlin hired others for...

But Douxie physically could not make himself do it.

One foot dragged in front of the other, darkness tunneling his vision in. He needed to make it to the hearth, if there was any warmth remaining there. He needed to not collapse in the middle of the yard.

One step. Another. Keep moving.

His breathing was coming short by the time he gained the interior of the structure. The sight of his and Jim's packs in the kitchen, so far away from the door, made him want to weep at the distance.

One step in front of another, he persevered.

He reached the hearth.

And gave up, giving in to blackness as his burning eyes shut and he fell like a sack of turnips.


"Will you stop fighting us and just listen?!" Claire demanded angrily, lobbing a fistful of purple plasma at Tronos Madu even as Toby uncurled from his fetal ball position. "We're not your enemies!"

"No. You are just in my way," the Voltarian hissed, lashing out at her.

Like it had with Toby, the lightning swarmed over her magical armor but did nothing. One part Faraday cage, one part "standard safety suit," as Jim had once put it.

Claire grinned ferally.

"Why does magic always feel tingly?" Toby asked, looking at his armored hands. Then he looked up, at Tronos, and his expression shifted to a smirk. Glowing orange manifested in his hand. "Get ready for the hammer," he declared, and used the inherent momentum redirection abilities of his warhammer to fly toward the Voltarian. He swung the hammer behind himself, winding up the swing like he was holding a bat. "Batter up!"

"Whoa," said Krel, shading his eyes as Tronos flew backwards between him and Aja. "Nice hit."

"Tch. You were never Jimbo's practice partner during six years of Little League," Toby said, holding his warhammer close. "I had to get decent out of self-defense. You know how much getting nailed by his fastball used to hurt, before he blew out his shoulder?"

"Quite a lot, I am assuming."

"So," Claire concluded as Toby's hammer drifted him over to land on the asteroid next to her, "Tronos Madu can't hurt us with lightning. And Aja and Krel have serrator shields to protect them."

"It does not mean he cannot injure us in other ways," Aja said. She sounded sad. "You must understand, he is not bad. Just hurt."

Toby sighed. "Yeah, I remember. He saved the planet powering Krel's space laser, last time."

"Wait, that was him?" asked Claire.

"Yeah. While you and Jimbo were gone, you missed a lot."

"Huh." Claire looked in the direction Tronos had gone flying. She didn't know exactly how big the Shadow Realm was, but it was almost a sure bet that sooner or later the Voltarian would grab onto one of the asteroids and use that to propel his return. "So how do we get him from murderous to hero this time?"

"I don't know," said Aja.


Jim focused, picking his shots carefully. It wasn't until the third Gumm-Gumm became mysteriously petrified that the rest began to panic. Which, ironically, gave him more and better targets as they moved around, looking for the source of the deaths.

"Magic!" one of them finally bellowed, catching a glimpse of Jim's glaive vanishing after he'd taken out another three.

This, Jim was fairly sure, was not what Douxie had intended when he'd been teaching Jim how to hunt via thrown blades. But it had winnowed down thirty-one opponents to twenty-five. And apparently that was going to have to be good enough, because now the Gumm-Gumms were closing ranks.

Jim let the glaive vanish, and pulled Excalibur free from where it clung to his back. He glanced around, looking for Herne, but the god was absent.

But just because he didn't see him, Jim knew, didn't mean the god wasn't there. He was quite sure that Herne was still watching.

"Enjoy the show," Jim muttered, and leapt off the rock, landing on his feet, facing the Gumm-Gumms.

One scoffed, looking at Jim in the firelight. "A human," he sneered.

Jim let the derision wash over him and disappear like a wave at the beach. It was meaningless, and thus weightless. "I just want the kids."

Another Gumm-Gumm laughed. "Look at that. Dinner's talking."

Jim smirked, and crooked one hand in invitation. "Come get me," he said. "If you think you can win."

And then it was on. Jim didn't bother to count the numbers, just reacted. If he stopped to do something as pedestrian as identify every single opponent, he would be dead. Instead, he ducked and wove, slashed and blocked, spinning like a top to defend himself on all sides. They had the advantages of mass, reach, and numbers. He had the advantage of being damn good at fighting, better than any foot soldier Gumm-Gumm by far. And, oddly enough, he had the advantage of being human.

Trolls moved faster than humans, that much was true. But they also out-massed humans by rather a lot. And with mass came momentum. It was a lot harder for a Gumm-Gumm to change direction mid-strike than it was for Jim.

Picture a fly, darting about. Picture the human trying to catch it.

Stone and stone and more stone. One by one, slice by slash by strike, he thinned the herd.

The smart ones fell back.

The dumb ones died.

Jim was breathing heavily by the time he'd won free of the melee. But he was still standing, and his opponents were rubble. "I just want the kids," he repeated. He didn't know it, but the firelight reflecting in his eyes, and the way his hair had drifted free of its usual tidy style, made him look more than a little demonic.

The six remaining Gumm-Gumms looked at one another, communicating silently.

Orlagk might kill them for returning empty-handed.

This human definitely would kill them for continuing to fight.

One of the Gumm-Gumms spat to the side. "Take the whelps," he growled. "They're weaklings, and useless." Kanjigar got shoved forward. He grabbed Bagdwella's hand, and she grabbed the next youngling's, until they made a chain of six, crossing the Gumm-Gumm encampment until they were all clustered behind Jim. Kanjigar and Bagdwella were both growling almost inaudibly. Jim hoped it was at their former captors and not at him, but he'd get that straightened out later.

"They're not useless," Jim denied. "Go tell your king this is what happens when he picks on kids."

"What's your name, human?" asked another.

Jim smirked, feral in the firelight. "Call me Trollhunter," he said, and left, leading the group of troll children away from the Gumm-Gumms.


Jim had no way of knowing that one of the surviving Gumm-Gumms was slightly more intellectually and artistically inclined than the others. Ga-Huel never forgot the human who moved like silk in the wind, and killed his kind not mercilessly, but in the defense of children. One day he would paint Jim's image into a book of dark magics and forbidden Gumm-Gumm history.

Jim also had no way of knowing that when the bedraggled remains of the raiding party returned to their kingdom several days later, empty-handed and a bare fifth of the force that had gone forth, it would trigger a schism within the Gumm-Gumms. General Gunmar would declare this proof that Orlagk the Oppressor was weak and no longer deserved to rule. Their battle would last weeks, devastating the Gumm-Gumm kingdom. Orlagk would take Gunmar's eye early on in the battle, but eventually, Gunmar would take Orlagk's life, and declare himself the new leader of the Gumm-Gumms, one not so soft as his predecessor.

The eye Gunmar lost to claim leadership eventually would be cleaved and carved and polished, and become a part of the armor that, in turn, took him from life, centuries from now.

Violence begets violence. The worthy weapon is the one wielded not in conquest, but to defend those unable to defend themselves.


Zelda never reached the school. As she rounded the corner between the park and the street the high school was on, a commotion at the cafe caught her eye. An ambulance, and... was that Stricklander climbing into the back?

It was. That pretentious tweed jacket was unmistakable.

She hurried across the street, catching the briefest glimpse, before the ambulance doors shut, of a red-haired woman laying on the stretcher.

Barbara.

Zelda stood staring, her lunch forgotten.

Then she turned, shoving her lunch into the nearest trash can, and stalked over to where a pair of police officers were talking to the cafe waiter. She kept half an ear on their conversation as she investigated. Blood drips leading up to a splatter on the concrete and wall. She knelt next to one of the fallen chairs.

"Excuse me, miss-"

"She was sitting here," Zelda said, ignoring the obvious effort to get her to move and not contaminate the crime scene, as if she'd ever be that stupid. Her head turned. "Stricklander would've been on the other side of the table." Her hand cut a line through the air, tracing the path back. "From this distance, it was a bullet, wasn't it?"

"Uh." The two police officers, one Black, one white, looked at her.

Zelda snorted. "It wasn't aimed for her. It was aimed for Stricklander."

"Uh, Miss...?" the Black officer asked.

She let her eyes flash changeling green at him. He yelped and stumbled back. "Jesus Christ!"

"This is the second time someone's tried to target Stricklander. That I know of," Zelda said. She lined up angles. "The shot was taken from the top of the mail center. Do you want to come look for clues, or not?"

Both men stared at her. She suppressed a snarl. Useless cops.

But they surprised her, looking at each other, then nodding.

"Suppose you might as well," the white one said to his partner.

"Lead the way," said the Black one.


"Blinkous, please!" Dictatious wailed. "I did nothing but what I could to try to return to you! Surely you must see that."

The words clawed at Blinky's heart. But he firmed up his resolve. "I spent many centuries missing you, Brother," he said, lowering Dictatious' daily sustenance, illumination, and reading materials into the enchanted trunk. At Vendel's suggestion, he had today included a sizable chunk of heartstone as well. "But at the same time, I cannot countenance your collaboration with Gunmar and his lackeys. Surely you must understand that."

"Yet they are, by your accounts, all perished!" cried Dictatious. "What do you think I might do, lacking any support?"

Blinky sighed. "I do not know," he said softly, his eyes raising to meet those of Aaarrrgghh, on the other side of the trunk. "And that is the problem."


"Well," Stuart said, dishing up nachos for Lieutenant Zadra and crispy street tacos for Commander Vex, "that's a mess and no doubt. Don't see there's much we can do about it until their highnesses call us in for help, though."

"True." Zadra held up a single tortilla chip, examining how the cheese stretched and dangled from it. "The comestibles on this planet are so strange."

"Strange but delicious," Stuart agreed. "Quite inventive, humans."

"The King-in-Waiting needs to make a transduction for you," Varvatos opined. "The only true way to enjoy hooman food is while in hooman guise."

"There is that," agreed Stuart.

"Still! What concerns Varvatos most, is not where the royals are now," the warrior said, "so much as that Morando will be here in three days, with an army of those accursed OMEN robots."

"We could just arrange for the royals to skip out to another planet before he gets here," Stuart suggested. "The Mothership is fully repaired, if I recall correctly."

"Yes, but Varvatos doubts Morando's sights are set so low."

"Low?" inquired Zadra.

Varvatos snorted. "In the previous timeline, Morando acquired Gaylen's Core and merged with it. It took the King and Queen sacrificing their cores to destroy him. Varvatos would like to avoid that ending this time."

It took a moment, but he became aware of the two of them staring at him. "What? Does Varvatos have condiments on his face again?" He wiped at his cheek with the sleeve of his cardigan.

"Pardon me, Commander Vex," Zadra said, "but did you just say Gaylen's Core?"

"It's here?" Stuart added. "Like, here on this planet? Earth?"

Varvatos blinked. "Did we fail to mention that?"

"Yes!" Zadra snapped.

"Oh, this is not good. Not good at all..." mumbled Stuart. "Maybe I can catch a ride to Gorbon. No, not Gorbon. Maybe the Hydralos system..."

"Stuart!" snapped Varvatos. "No one is going anywhere! Running and hiding is not an option."

"Where is it hidden?" Zadra asked. "We must make sure it is secure. Morando must not acquire Gaylen's Core."

"It is as secure as it is possible to be, Lieutenant," Varvatos assured her. "Where, precisely, it is, Varvatos is not at liberty to say."

"But you do know where it is?" she pressed.

"I, the royals, and several of our allies know its hidden location," Varvatos admitted. "Also that it cannot be accessed without an interspecies task force. Which Morando does not have," he pointed out.

Her eyes narrowed. "The humans have it?"

"I am not giving you any more information, Lieutenant," he told her. "What you do not know, cannot be tortured out of you."

"Well, that's a wise thought," said Stuart, "if not a very comforting one."

"Nothing is comforting in war," said Zadra. "Nonetheless," she said, her eyes never leaving Varvatos, "I find I must trust you on this, Commander Vex."

"Thank you, Lieutenant."

"And if you betray the royal family again," she hissed, her tone as sharp as the blade of her scythe, "there will be no place safe for you, in this galaxy or any other."

Varvatos nodded, accepting that.


"Master Taliesin!"

Douxie was dragged, unwilling, from the arms of darkness by rough hands on his own arms, shaking. He moaned, and shoved down - not for the first time, nor the last - the urge by his stomach to retch all its meager contents on the clothing of his tormentor.

"Taliesin!"

Douxie winced, and draped an arm over his eyes. Unfortunately, it didn't block out the sound. "G'way," he managed to slur.

An abrupt intake of breath, followed by a relieved sigh. "You're not dead, then."

It was Merlin, he realized. There was something important there, something Douxie needed to do...

After a moment, his brain, despite being filled with large, jagged spikes of pain, managed to connect Merlin and Taliesin, and Douxie fought the urge to groan. Or to curl up in a ball and weep. He'd done his job, he'd gotten Merlin his bloody staff, and his name. Couldn't the universe let him off for a bit?

But, no, apparently he had to keep on being Taliesin and mentoring the newly fledged master wizard for a little bit longer.

"Matter and energy are alike," Douxie managed to mumble through a parched throat. "Neither may be destroyed, only transformed."

Merlin was silent for a moment. "What the blazes does that mean?" he finally demanded.

"It means," Douxie said, cracking his eyes open, wincing, and hastily shutting them again against the light, "that making your staff took rather a lot of energy, young Merlin." He managed to push himself upright, discovering in the process that his shoulders and back were killing him. He blinked his eyes open until he managed to adjust mostly to the light; Merlin was a bleary smudge of anxious indignation. "Ever starved?"

Merlin blinked, and slowly shook his head.

Douxie's mouth set in a line. His master, it seemed, had always had food security. Had come from a rarefied landowner class. Well, what else should I have expected?

"Wizards," he said softly, "use up rather a lot of energy in their magery. Something for you to be aware of, in your use of magic henceforth. And," he added, when Merlin opened his mouth to speak, "something for you to keep in mind for any wizards you may take under your wing in the future." Himself included. Though he'd long since figured out the equation "magic = hungry" by the time he'd come into Merlin's orbit. Still, it hadn't kept him from playing about with his abilities. Much.

Merlin subsided. He looked like he was turning a thought over in his mind. "You said the staff would make it easier."

Douxie nodded. "And it shall. But few wizards have staves. Without the bonded focal crystal..." He shrugged. "Magic dines on the wizard's body. Keeping ahead of its drain is always an interesting race." He closed his eyes and let himself slump forward. The hearth, he realized, was cold. Bad stewardship; it was always easier to keep an existing fire burning than to light a new one.

But Merlin had probably never had to care about the little things like that.

It's all little things, Douxie thought with a sudden despairing clarity. It's all the little things that add up to make the big ones. There was no room for great magics without someone to sow and harvest the grain, without someone to thresh it and mill it, without someone to keep the fire burning and bake the loves of bread that fueled the wizard's body.

Had Merlin ever seen that? Either before now, or in the next fifteen centuries?

Grieving, Douxie feared not.

Princes in their towers, Jim had once said about powerful wizards like Merlin and Morgana.

Jim had probably been right.

Douxie still wanted the power, the ability to dance with the universe... but never at the cost of not seeing the atoms that made it up.

"What may I do?" Merlin asked unexpectedly. Douxie looked up at him. "To help you," his youthful mentor said. A smile gentled the harshness of his mouth, adding wrinkles to his eyes that made him look unexpectedly kind.

"A bite to eat," Douxie - no, Taliesin - requested, "and a dram to take the dust from my mouth."

"It shall be done," Merlin said, and stood to serve.


"All right, crew," Jim said, once he judged they were far enough away from the surviving Gumm-Gumms. "Anyone hurt? Anyone hungry?"

To a one, the younglings clamped their mouths shut. Kanjigar shook his head.

Jim rolled his eyes. He rescued them from their kidnappers, and this was the trust he got?

He sighed. "Come on, let's take a break. We won't get across the plain while it's daylight anyway." He found a reasonably defensible spot, hemmed in on two sides by boulders, and, never going out of sight, started gathering wood to make a fire. After watching him for a minute, Kanjigar started helping. "Keeping an eye on me, Kanjigar?" Jim asked.

The small troll startled, and dropped his gathered wood. "How do you know my name?"

Jim smiled. "I was sent to rescue you."

Big eyes. "By who? My dad-"

"I don't know about your dad," Jim said, continuing to pick up sticks. "I spoke with Vendel."

A scoff. "Vendel? He's a-" This was followed by a Trollish word that meant artisan, but with a derogatory overlay. Kind of like calling someone a hippie, or an underwater basket weaver, Jim guessed.

"Not anymore," Jim told him. "His master is dead. And so is Rundle." Leaving the implication that young Vendel was now the leader of this group of trolls.

Kanjigar stared at him. The next word that fell out of his mouth was one Jim had learned from Draal in another timeline.

Jim hid a grin. Definitely his kid's father.

After he had the fire started (thank you, Douxie), the trolls all seemed willing enough to sit around it for a while and wait for the sun to sink lower. Jim took the opportunity to hunt.

He was less than surprised when, as he slit the deer's throat to let it bleed out, Herne reappeared.

"A successful hunt," the god observed, circling around Jim and the unfortunate ungulate.

Jim didn't think he was talking about the deer. "Thanks."

"What will you do now?"

Jim slit the animal's belly, pulling out the entrails, as Douxie had taught him. It was messy, bloody work... but given he was talking with the hunt god at the moment? He really didn't want to test his luck not leaving an offering. "Take them back to their people." Then hopefully somehow get back to his brother, and their own time. He hoped Douxie was having as much luck with Merlin as Jim had had with the Gumm-Gumms.

"Hmm." The god was silent for a moment, watching as Jim worked, glaives flashing like kitchen knives.

Jim was breathing hard by the time he finished. He glanced up, blue eyes meeting Herne's green. "Please accept my offering," he said, "lord of the forest and the hunt."

Herne reached forward, strong dark fingers curling under and around Jim's jaw. He gazed into Jim's eyes for a long moment. Unexpectedly, he smiled.

"My sister chose well," Herne said.

And between one heartbeat and the next, the god was gone.

Jim waited, then stood, hefting the deer carcass over one shoulder to haul back to the fire and the hungry troll children who waited at it.

As he left, wolves appeared from nowhere, their tongues lolling out as if in laughter.

The god accepted his offering.