Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 15th September, 2023

Douxie had vanished by the time Jim came through the portal with Claire.

"Everything go okay?" his mom asked, sitting on the sofa reading a book. She adjusted her glasses. "Douxie and Archie went right upstairs."

Jim glanced at the stairs. "I'm..." He sighed. "We got the core," he reported. "Vendel's looking it over and told us to come back tomorrow. But Douxie..."

"Douxie went into the Deep by himself," Claire said, beating Jim to the punch. "And whatever the creature down there is, it did a number on him."

Barbara's eyes widened. "A number on him?" she repeated.

"He was scared of me," Jim said, letting some of his upset show through in his face and voice. "And it's like he's shut down. He's barely talking, and you know how much he talks." Which was true. Douxie frequently kept up a one-sided ramble, or spent his time talking with Archie. He sometimes reminded Jim of the birds in the trees, making sound just to hear music.

But from upstairs, right now, there didn't come a single noise. Not that that was surprising, maybe, not with how Douxie had magically soundproofed all the bedrooms. But still.

Her novel discarded, Barbara cast a worried glance at the ceiling. "Will he be okay?"

Jim didn't want to lie, and he had faith in Douxie's resiliency, but... "I don't know," he said.

"Tell you what." Claire pressed a kiss to his cheek. "I'll head home. You talk with Douxie. And we'll do a study date later, okay?"

Jim felt his mouth set in a line, but he nodded. "Okay."

And with a whirl of another shadow portal, his girlfriend was gone.


Not ten minutes later, Jim stood outside the door of the once and future master wizard's bedroom, dithering. In his hand was a plate of brownies, because bribing Douxie via his sweet tooth was never a bad idea.

But the way Douxie had looked at him, in the Deep, lingered.

What if he was the exact wrong person to do this? What if he was the last person Douxie wanted or needed to see right now?

Maybe Jim should have asked Claire to do this. Or his mom. People Douxie loved and trusted.

He didn't know what he'd do if the Deep had dented Douxie's trust in him. Or worse, destroyed it.

...Well. Rebuild it, Jim guessed.

Steeling himself, he knocked.

There was no answer.

There was no answer for several long seconds. Long enough that Jim began to panic. Had Douxie left again, run away? What would Jim do if he had? Because if a master wizard didn't want to be found, he wouldn't be. And if Douxie was too afraid to face Jim again, after all they'd been through-

The door opened. Archie hovered in the air on the other side. His gold eyes took in Jim and the plate of brownies. "You had better come in," he said, and backwinged out of the way.

Douxie lay on his side on the bed, looking at nothing. He breathed, his chest rising and falling, and his eyes weren't glassy or hazed as Jim approached. But he didn't look at Jim. He didn't even look at Archie as the dragon landed on the bed, turned back into a cat, and slinked around him to curl up on the bed, pressing his warmer-than-an-actual-cat body against Douxie's back.

Jim sighed, and sat down on the bed, putting the plate of brownies also on the bed, in Douxie's direct line of sight.

Douxie closed his eyes.

Jim had no idea how to go about this conversation, because he had absolutely no idea what was going through Douxie's head. Which was kind of the problem, he supposed.

"What's wrong?" he finally asked.

Douxie gave a hoarse sound that Jim realized was supposed to be a laugh. "Me," said the wizard.

Which... made little sense. Jim tried again. "What did you see in the Deep?" he asked, more quietly.

It was a long time before Douxie answered. "You," he finally said, so softly Jim almost missed it.

Jim's eyes flew wide. "Me?"

Douxie's lips moved for a minute before any sound came out from between them. He still didn't open his eyes. "With Claire and Toby dead. The Deep made me think it had killed them before I got there. And you... you lost it."

Jim had a sinking feeling that he wasn't going to like this any better than he had liked his own encounter in the Deep. "Lost it?" he asked carefully, feeling his way through the conversation.

Douxie might have been a stone, he was so still. Only his lips moved. Was it... Jim wondered if it was taking everything Douxie had to get through this conversation. "You blamed me," Douxie said softly, hoarsely, "despite me not being there. You blamed me for not being there."

"And?"

"You tried to kill me."

Jim tensed.

"That, I could have allowed," Douxie murmured. Which was all kinds of wrong, but the wizard continued before Jim could bring that up. "But you also blamed magic. After me, you were going to kill everything magic."

Jim breathed carefully, taking in the implications. "I became like Arthur." Fuck. "That's your worst nightmare." He was a divine king, like Arthur had been. Douxie's divine king. The thought that he would try to kill magic, which was Douxie's whole life...

But Douxie shook his head. "No. That was just the prelude."

Jim blinked. "What's worse than that?"

Another bitter, humorless laugh. "What I did to stop you."

Krel had said that the Deep had stopped tormenting him when he'd fought back. Was that true for Douxie as well? "What did you do?" Jim asked, wary of the answer.

A small sip of air, like Douxie was drowning. "I knocked you out, and took your memories." Douxie's voice was ragged, like he was being shredded by pain. "All of them."

"All...?"

"Everything that makes you, you." The wizard's hands were fists, clawing into themselves. "You didn't remember me, or Claire, or Toby. Not even your own name."

Archie's head appeared from behind Douxie's back. "And without the memories that make you who you are, you were no longer a divine king," he said. "Certainly no longer a threat to Douxie, or to magic."

"And it was easy," Douxie spat, his voice and face so full of self-loathing that even someone who didn't know him would be able to pick up on it.

Whoo boy...

Blinking, Jim took a moment to sort through all that. And there was a lot to sort through. First, there was the obvious fact that this had all been one of the Deep's hallucinations. Which, as Jim knew from personal experience, didn't make it less real. But within that experienced reality, he'd snapped, and Douxie had stopped him. Which was good, and fine, and legit. You always had a right to defend yourself, and those things that were important to you. Jim knew he wouldn't be any kind of king without understanding that. But at least one of Douxie's issues seemed to be that it had been easy. But, more than that, Jim realized, it was that the Deep had set the two of them in opposition to one another.

Douxie, who hadn't been able to stand up against Jim because his hindbrain had decided Jim was his baby brother long before either of them had consciously stepped into those roles.

Having to fight and destroy Jim had clearly wrecked Douxie.

Issues on top of issues, as Douxie had once said of himself.

"Okay," Jim finally said, making up his mind what to tackle first. "First off, if I ever do snap and become like Arthur, you had better damn well stop me, Doux."

"I-"

"No," Jim said, leaning into his kingship and voice of command. "This is bigger than you, and bigger than me, Douxie. This is the entire planet at stake here. If I become like Arthur, you need to stop me."

Douxie's eyes were open and he'd pushed himself to half-sit. "Don't- don't do that," he said.

"Don't what? Command you?"

Douxie glared at him with gritted teeth. "Yes."

"I'll do it until you stop being a self-pitying wet rag," Jim told him. "This," he said, touching his circlet, "doesn't mean I'm more important than other people. It means I'm responsible for other people."

"You're more important to me," Douxie argued.

"Nice, but irrelevant," murmured Archie.

Douxie transferred his glare to his familiar.

"Douxie." Jim waited until his brother looked at him. "I'm a divine king. You're a master wizard. We're both responsible for a lot of things that are bigger than either of us. This is one of those." His fingers found his circlet again. "This is a check on me. You're another. And I'm one on you, and so maybe is Merlin."

Douxie's lips tightened to a line. He looked away. "If I'm right," he said lowly, "I'll be able to overpower Merlin once I've got my staff back. Easily," he spat, like that word was particularly reprehensible.

"I dunno, Doux. He hasn't had Morgana steal and drain his staff this time."

The line of Douxie's shoulders eased. "There is that," the wizard murmured.

"Which does not mean he has any right to seal you away," Jim warned, in case Douxie was again thinking of giving in to that option. Archie had once told them that he believed Douxie would someday be more powerful than Merlin. Now it looked like Douxie had finally figured that out for himself. "Someone has to be the most powerful," he said with a shrug. "Why shouldn't it be you?"

"Because I'm nobody," said Douxie. "I'm a gutter rat, con artist peasant filth. I shouldn't be strongest."

Jim gave him an unimpressed look. "And I'm American. Birth rank and inherited titles mean exactly nothing to me. Try again."

Douxie faltered. "Because... because I'm weak, Jim. Flawed."

And there it was. Douxie's lack of faith, or love, toward himself. That, Jim knew exactly how to counter.

"Merlin," Jim said evenly, "beat me up, tied me up, and manipulated me into a position where I as much as thought I was committing suicide. And if he ever felt any guilt about it, I sure never saw it. You, on the other hand, were apparently willing to let me kill you, and only stopped me because I was threatening the entire planet. Tell me who I should trust more."


Hisirdoux needed a guidepost, a star to sail his ship by... a lodestone to follow. But unlike Merlin, he couldn't see the future. Never had been able to, beyond the flashing sideways glimpses of intuition and feeling that palmistry and tea leaves and the ancient Etruscan arts (Merlin had insisted on the study) had occasionally leant him. He'd sharpened the ability as much as he could, and by now he'd put himself up against any hedgewizard in the world at fortunetelling, but he'd never had a proper scrying stone like Merlin's, let alone the Time Map.

He had never, he realized, read Jim's palm.

Swallowing, hand shaky, he reached for his king's hand, and turned it over.

To someone else, it might just be skin. The thin white nicks of blades, the more recent calluses from holding a sword. Cream and pink, warm from the blood rushing beneath, a certain firmness of grip.

To Douxie, Jim's palm was so much more.

His experienced eye and nuanced sense of magic read the lines there. Heart, head, life, marriage, fate; ley lines mapped across a person. Jim might have been clutching stars in his hand, they all glittered so brightly. Heart and head were solid. Marriage held nothing that Douxie (and everyone who knew Jim and Claire) didn't expect. Much like Douxie's own, Jim's life line was fractured, but then continued strong. Merlin's death of self? Douxie wondered. Or- oh. Of course. Jim had literally been turned to stone and died. Apparently that event, like Jim's Trollish aura, had come back with him through the time stream.

But Jim's fate line...

Douxie could just barely see the future gleaming at him, like he was glimpsing it through cracks in stained glass, hear it like it was an instrument blaring at him from the next room.

But there were no flaws, absolutely none at all, in Jim's Fate line.

"Oh," he breathed, in wonder.

It was not that Jim would never slip, never fail. But more that Douxie, and all those around them, would catch him, would catch each other, before they could fall.

He could feel tears sliding down his cheeks.

Hope, which had guttered low in his heart, reignited.

"Douxie?" Jim's voice was concerned. The thumb of his free hand reached out, brushed the tears off Douxie's cheek.

"It's all right," he choked. All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. A prayer, and an affirmation both. He didn't need to be strong, like Merlin, like Morgana. He could be weak and still succeed, because Jim had built a cohesive team, a team whose strengths overlapped their weaknesses and held them all up.

We're stronger together. We're strong enough, together.

"It will all be all right," Douxie said, and fell against Jim's shoulder, shaking with relief.


"Okay," Jim said when Douxie had recovered himself to some semblance of dignity and they sat side-by-side on his bed, backs against the wall, eating brownies. Archie was on Douxie's other side, working on a brownie of his own, and Jim always had to remember that though Archie looked like a cat, he really wasn't one, because he'd spent enough time at Toby's that the thought of a cat eating chocolate made him want to slap the treat out of the dragon's paws. "I think you need to talk with somebody about the Deep. Somebody besides me and Archie."

"Jim-"

"I think it will help you," Jim forged on. "And I think it's something the rest of our team needs to be aware of."

Douxie blinked, puzzlement written all over his face.

Jim sighed. "Look, I hope I'll never turn out like Arthur did. But I'm pretty sure that at one point, he must have been a golden king. Or else Merlin never would have backed him. So if something happens to turn me wrong - to sour any of us - the rest of us will need to be aware."

"You're talking about contingency plans," said Archie.

Jim pointed at him. "Yes. Exactly!"

"Jim." Douxie sighed. "We won't need them. What I just saw of the future confirms that."

"Okay, how about this, then. You need to talk to someone, because the Deep is a monster in your head, and it tried to turn you and me both against ourselves." Jim was firm about this. "And I didn't talk to anyone about it when I got out, and I wish I had, because I know there are scars in my head about it." Nightmares that had faded over time, been subsumed by and into greater fears, but that still remained nonetheless. His mouth set in a line, just thinking about them.

"Jim..."

"Just think about it, okay?" Jim asked. Because he knew Douxie had centuries worth of damage to deal with, so maybe this was just one more drop in the trauma bucket, but even one drop was one too many.

Douxie sighed. "I'll think about it," he said, which wasn't a promise, but at least wasn't not one, either.

"Phoenixes of a feather," muttered Archie.

"Why did you even go down there by yourself, anyway?" Jim asked. "You didn't really think you were immune to it, did you?"

Douxie smiled and exchanged a glance with Archie. "I didn't go alone, Jim. Even I'm not that foolish."

"Well, what if it had caught Archie instead?" Jim pressed.

The dragon sniffed. "As I've told you before, dragons are realists. The thought of an antramonstrum being able to affect me...!" His tail twitched dismissively.

"Risking either you or Krel was unacceptable," Douxie said while Jim stared, his brain dumbly trying to do magical math. If Archie was immune to the antramonstrum, and he and Douxie were linked... "Arch and I had the best odds."

"Though we rather did underestimate the beast's power," Archie agreed.

"What do you mean?" asked Jim.

Douxie shrugged. "It's old, Jim. I don't know how long ago Kanjigar placed it down there, but the Deep? That's its lair."

"Its roots are grown through the stone of the entire chasm," Archie agreed. "It's old, and it's powerful, and it's hungry." He cast a look at his familiar. "And with Douxie's amount of magic? He was a feast. No wonder it sunk its hooks in so deeply to you."

"Stupid me, I know." Douxie's head thumped back against the wall.

"Rash you, rather."

"Wait." Jim remembered the Deep smelling a little different than before. Like... like dragon's fire. "Did you... did you try to burn it, Archie?"

"I most certainly did!" The dragon looked proud of himself. "Though I think it would take true hexfire to burn out its roots."

"Leave it be," said Douxie. "It's not harming anyone down there, save those individuals Trollmarket thinks warrant punishment."

"Yeah, like me," Jim rebutted with a glare. But he subsided.


Jim was pressing for things Douxie would really rather avoid. Tell Claire he'd seen her dead body, then wiped away everything her boyfriend had become? Or telling Toby that same thing?

Yeah, Douxie would rather not. He liked breathing. Also not being Rule 3'd.

Let alone however Barbara might react, after learning what he'd done to her son.

"Um," Jim said, breaking into Douxie's thoughts, "Eli said... he said he could tutor you. In algebra. If you wanted."

Douxie stared.

And had absolutely no idea which way he should respond.

It wasn't like he needed to know higher maths, after all. He could find the hypotenuse of a triangle or the volume of a sphere, both very practical things. But... knowing sine, cosine, and tangent, all of which had Jim tearing his hair out on a regular basis? He was very sure there was absolutely no practical application of those principles (theorems? ...whatever they were) to his sorcery.

But then he thought of Krel, for whom such concepts were laughably simple, things he had incorporated so early and easily they were even more basic to him than runes or Latin to Douxie.

Krel, who was practically destined to come up with truly amazing forms of sorcery that Douxie had never dreamt of.

He wanted to understand those branches of magic so badly he could almost taste the desire.

Douxie swallowed. "Tell Eli I'll get back to him on that in a few days," he said, shoving the decision off to the future. Because he couldn't concentrate on that now, not with Gaylen's core hanging like a sword of Damocles over all their heads.

Not with - if all went as he hoped - the Arcane Order, along with General Morando, about to descend on them in only a day or two.

They weren't ready.

But Morando was coming regardless, so they'd run out of time.

Actually, have I ever let Jim know explicitly what might happen? Douxie thought about it, and realized he couldn't remember ever spelling things out. Fuzzbuckets.

"Jim," he said, and something in his tone had his brother lowering his brownie. "We need to talk."


"Even I know," said Jim, "that that's never a good phrase."

"Probably not," Douxie agreed. "But... given how badly I screwed up before, not telling you about the Order? I need to do this now."

"You mean not telling me about what happens when a god dies?" Jim asked, just to confirm.

Douxie's cringe was not comforting. "Yeah, that." The wizard sighed and looked away, toward the ceiling. "Jim. If we even can destroy Gaylen's core, return all that stolen magic back to humanity... do you think Bellroc and Skrael's won't notice that? Won't feel it?"

"Uh." Jim stared at the wall opposite. He said a very short word.

Douxie barked a laugh. "Exactly. But what's our other option? Wait? Morando will be here in a day or two, and letting him get the core's just as bad an idea."

"And it would cost Aja and Krel their parents." Jim tried to think of a way out of the dilemma. He couldn't see one.

"Or themselves," Douxie agreed.

Jim bit his lip until he tasted blood. The pain was grounding, as was the hot dark taste on his tongue. "We're not ready." He looked at his wizard. "Doux, we're not ready."

"We'll never be ready," Douxie agreed. "Not for this kind of thing. They're deities, and we're humans. 'As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport'."

"Not comforting, Douxie," Archie chided him.

"I know." Douxie took a deep breath. "The advantages we have are this: we don't have the Genesis Seals, let alone Nari. They can't raise the Titans without them or her, and they can't get either from us. Merlin's protecting them."

Archie snorted. "Do you really think something like this won't send him rushing to Arcadia as well?"

Douxie shrugged. "It probably will. But I highly doubt he'll bring Nari with him. Anyway. Bellroc and Skrael also have Arthur - and you are a match for him," he promised Jim. "You're much stronger than you were the last time you faced him."

Jim glowered. "You mean when he sent his evil shard into my heart and then made me his puppet?"

Douxie nodded, seeming unrepentant. "Exactly so." His fingers touched Jim's crown. "You weren't a divine king then, and you are now. He can't overpower you, and he won't have the element of surprise any longer. You can fight him." A sly grin crossed his face. "And I will wager Excalibur versus Excalibur will give a divine screeching feedback, so be ready for that. I'm sure he won't be."

"And what, exactly, will you be doing while I distract King Arthur?" Jim asked pointedly.

"My level best to fast-talk Bellroc and Skrael into giving humanity one more century to prove themselves," Douxie replied. "How can they argue that mankind has betrayed magic when mankind's just gotten it back? All we need is for them to give us a trial period."

"Punting judgment down the line," Archie observed. "How very you, Douxie."

"Look," the wizard complained to his familiar, "I know it sounds like making Judgment Day a problem for Future Me, but if we can't shift the planet in a measly hundred years, when everyone's just gotten magic back, then we'll never be able to. Humanity went from the Wright Brothers to walking on the moon in just fifty-six years! Change is possible."

"And Morando?" Jim asked.

That won him a grimace. "Best-case scenario would be that he ticks off Bellroc or Skrael and they take care of him for us," Douxie admitted. "Worst case... we'll need to deal with him and his Omen robots ourselves. Remind me to ask Blinky about some dwarkstones."

"I'm sure he has a stockpile," Jim said, trying to turn everything over in his mind. It was almost certain there was something he'd missed, or Douxie had. They really needed the whole team together, brains working on this.

He missed the round table.

Jim let out a long breath. "All right," he said. "I'll spread the word tomorrow, at school. What are your plans?"

"Talking with the wizards I trust, letting them know what's about to happen," Douxie said. "Reconvening with you at Vendel's after school lets out. Which reminds me, I have a new necklace for you to pass on to Steve."

"I'm sure he'll appreciate it," said Jim.

"I've also made ones for Zoe, Hiccup, Jack and Jamie," Douxie added. "I want to be able to notify them right away when and if the excrement hits the fan."

"You're so cute when you don't swear," Jim said, patting him on the head.

"Fuzz off," Douxie told him, batting his hand away.

If everything goes according to plan, Jim thought. If Vendel can figure out how to crack the core. We'll be confronting the Arcane Order again by this time tomorrow.

Math homework suddenly seemed a lot less important.

He didn't want to call Toby, though. Didn't want to disturb the celebration everyone else was having in the troll pub. He didn't want to call Claire, either, and interrupt her happy reunion with NotEnrique.

If it was all going to go horribly wrong tomorrow, one night of everyone stressing about it wouldn't change anything. Let them all have a couple hours of happiness.

"Jim," said Douxie softly, clearly reading his expression, "there's this: if things go wrong, you do have the Time Stone. So long as you have that, we can try again."

Jim barked a laugh. "If I have to, maybe Strickler should start calling me Young Sisyphus instead." The idea of having to do this all again, to rebuild friendships and fight for the future one more time, seemed almost unbearable. But-

"Excellent knowledge of the classics," Archie complimented him as Jim looked at the wizard and the dragon.

-But, Jim knew, he would. Because he would never stop fighting to save the world.

And if everyone else got to have their last evening off, he wanted one thing from his.

Shoving off the bed, he walked over to Douxie's guitar stand. Picked the red instrument up off it. Returned to the bed. "You owe me a guitar lesson," he said, ignoring how his voice cracked just a little. His voice could crack under the strain; the rest of Jim Lake Jr. was not allowed to. "You promised me to teach me to play the lute back in the sixth century. I'm collecting now."

Douxie's face was a study in surprise. "I didn't think you were serious about that," the wizard murmured.

"Yeah, well. I am." Because Jim had heard, more than once, how magic was emotion. And for Douxie, magic was music, and thus a way to steady his feelings.

Douxie studied him for a second, then softened. "All right. First thing, though." His thumb touched Jim's chewed-up lip as Douxie shoved the last of his brownie in his own mouth. His gaze narrowed; Jim flinched as a blue glow lit up in front of his mouth. The damaged lip tingled. It felt warm. After a moment, Douxie pulled his thumb back, the magic glow fading.

"Doux, don't waste your magic," Jim chided. His lip didn't hurt anymore as he prodded at it with his tongue.

"Then don't injure yourself," his brother retorted. "Now, you want to hold her like this..." And his hands were on Jim, adjusting his posture and his grasp on the guitar.

If there was only one night left, Jim was going to spend it learning the first step of how to make music, and helping his brother return to making magic.

Besides, he thought, if they survived, it might be nice to someday be able to serenade Claire with a little more skill than he'd exhibited once upon a time when Draal had loaned him a grit-shaka.


Author's Note: Douxie's line of "All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well." comes from Julian of Norwich, and he quotes again from King Lear.