[fic] [Tales of Arcadia] Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet 155/?
Your Future Hasn’t Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 29th September, 2023
"Greg, come on," Barbara pleaded. "I'm clearly fit to return to work. You can see that."
He hung his head in his hands, sighing as she contorted her arm, showing off full functionality and range of mobility. "I can see that, Barbara, and believe me, no one is more interested in this magic healing business, but the problem isn't me, or here in Arcadia. It's with things like the labor board. Which doesn't know that magic exists."
She must have looked disappointed because he sighed again and straightened. "Everything's already been submitted electronically, Dr. Lake. And there are police reports that could be followed up with. If all of a sudden you're back on the job, less than a week after being injured, someone's going to notice that. And ask questions. And while I admit your little goblin friends--"
"They're not my friends," she interjected.
"Coworkers, then," Greg said. "While I admit they're fantastic at the work, and I am entirely sure an entire generation of Arcadia Oaks kids are going to grow up with goblin nannies, I do not want to have to explain them to the state medical board."
She gave him her best pouty face, knowing it wasn't going to work. He raised an unimpressed eyebrow at her. Barbara deflated.
"Look, it's nothing against you. Your work ethic is incredible. You're one of the most dedicated young doctors we have. But, Barbara... take a break," Greg advised her. "Read some books--"
"Did that already," she grumbled.
"Try a few new recipes--" He caught the look on her face and laughed. "Or not!" he said, palms up to ward her off. "Do some painting. Spend time with your son. He's never going to be that age again."
"I just hate being useless," she muttered.
His hand landed on her shoulder. "Barbara." She looked up. "Taking time to be a mother is just as important. I know it's not saving someone's life and doesn't give you that immediate rush of happy brain chemicals, but spending a few weeks connecting with your son, not to mention this boyfriend I've heard tell of, will only pay off benefits in the long run. Trust me, kids are grown and gone before you can believe it. Take the time off as a paid vacation and do some good in other ways, okay?"
"Okay, team," Jim said at lunch, the only time in the school day, bar P.E., that all of them were together. "If Vendel figures out how to crack Gaylen's core--"
"Uh, I think you mean 'when,' Jimbo," Toby interrupted, sandwich halfway to his mouth.
Jim rolled his eyes. "Okay, when Vendel figures out how we crack the core," he rephrased, "Douxie thinks that's going to be endgame."
"What?" several voices demanded, overlapping, even as Jim shot the Tarrons an apologetic look. Crack the core maybe hadn't been the most politic way to put it; both Aja and Krel looked nauseous.
"Details, Jimmy-Jam," Mary demanded.
Jim sighed. "According to Douxie, all that magic getting returned to humanity? Is going to get certain peoples' attention." He didn't want to be superstitious, but at the same time it felt like saying Bellroc and Skrael's names might bring them bearing down on Arcadia prematurely. "Arthur and his masters," he expanded. "And... Merlin."
"We are not ready," said Aja.
"Between all of them and Morando...." Krel slumped, studying the table surface. "We are really not ready," he agreed with his sister, his eyes meeting Jim's.
"Well, we've got some advantages," Claire pointed out. "No Nari. No Seals."
"So we're not gonna be dealing with the Titans this time!" Toby whooped, punching the air.
"It's a school night," Eli whined. "Can't all this wait until tomorrow?"
"General Moron-dude might be here by tomorrow," Steve pointed out. "You really wanna take that risk, Pepperjack?"
Darci held out one hand. "So our choices are a power-hungry tyrant with an unstoppable army," she said. "Or." She held out the other. "A pair of gods hellbent on destroying the world."
"Tough choice," Mary agreed with her.
"Neither is ideal," said Aja, sitting up straight, a certain something in her posture and look that Jim associated with Queen Aja rather than his his school classmate and sometime sparring partner. "Both have great costs."
"So it's up to us to choose which scenario has the greater benefit," Jim agreed. "Assuming victory--"
"Always assume victory," Aja advised him.
Jim grinned. "Do we wait for Morando and settle things as best we can for Akiridion-5?" he asked. "Or do we take away one of his targets and potentially give magic back to all of Earth?"
There was silence around the table for a minute. Around them, high school students with nothing bigger on their minds than the next test, the next date, the next job shift at Mr. Burger, chatted on, unaware of the world-changing discussion being had in their midst.
It wasn't physically the Round Table. Spiritually, however....
Claire gave a little sigh. "I vote for giving magic back," she said. Her lips quirked a tiny smile. "But then, I'm biased."
"Trollhunter to Trollhunter, Jimbo?" asked Toby. "Taking a weapon away from your enemy is never a bad idea."
"Toby is right." Aja nodded, which surprised Jim. He had thought she would have voted to take out Morando first. Aja must have read his surprise in his expression, because she smiled. "We are rulers," she said to him, peer to peer, "but before we were ever that, we were warriors. We will fight, you and I."
Krel sighed. "Always with the violence," he complained at his sister. "But fine. I do not care one way or another which problem gets dealt with first. So long as we win both scenarios."
Jim nodded, and turned to the half of their group that didn't remember the future. "Steve, Eli? Mary, Darci?"
"Well," said Eli, pushing up his glasses.
Steve slapped his hand over Eli's mouth. "Shut up, Pepperjack. We're in," he told Jim. "Whatever it is, we're in."
Eli shoved Steve's hand off his mouth. "I know I won't know what to do soon enough to be any help against an alien general," he said, "but I want to be a wizard."
Mary scoffed. "Good luck with that." Her eyes met Jim's. "I don't care which one we do first, but the fallout from either is going to be immense," she warned him. "You're gonna need me on camera, and on damage control."
"You plan deep," Darci told her.
Mary sniffed. "Someone has to think of after," she said. "And PR's what I'm good at."
"All right." Jim held up hands, fending off criticism. "You're on cameras and damage control, Mary."
"Excellent." Her smirk made Jim glad she wasn't actually evil.
What the hell. "I am so glad you're not bent on world domination," he said aloud, just to get some laughs.
It worked. A shriek of laughter rose from their table, getting attention from the others around them.
Smiling, for just a moment Jim felt like a normal teenager.
It took hours to craft two pairs of wedding rings, but that was a fraction of the time it would take a non-wizardly smith to make them, so Douxie really couldn't complain.
And they were gorgeous things when they were finished, cooled, and polished. A simple gold band for Strickler, unobtrusive and unremarkable, a sort of joke on the man's past as a spy. A matching ring for Barbara, with a space for a central gem and two smaller ones to either side. Diamonds were traditional, Douxie knew, but maybe the pair of them would want something different. He had provided the bands; he would let them choose their own jewels.
Maybe they won't want these, a tiny, treacherous part of him whispered.
Douxie did his best to quash the intrusive thought, a lingering legacy of having been thrown away by his first family. The thought, the fear, would always be there. That didn't mean he needed to treat it as holding any sort of truth.
The bands for Jim and Claire were a bit more intricate, silver and gold interlacing in flat ribbons, leaving a space for a central gem to be sunk flat into the ring for either of them. He had left room for two smaller gems to either side of Claire's.
Despite temptation to work spells into the rings, of prosperity, of happiness, of fertility - all the usual things - Douxie hadn't. Let the rings themselves stand as symbols of commitment, and their wearers navigate the whims of fate with their own strengths. He had faith in his family.
The only sorcery involved came when one looked carefully inside the rings, at the smooth circling inlay that looked like mother of pearl, but really, really wasn't.
Douxie knew of no other rings in the world like these. And given the paucity of unicorns in the world today... there likely never would be again.
Every speck of horn from the cutting and shaping had been carefully collected, swept into a plastic jar with a screwed-on lid. He didn't know what Hiccup would do with the material, but he was sure it would be both fascinating and benign.
Most of the horn was left.
"Keep it," Douxie said as he packed up to go.
Hiccup's eyes went wide. "What? No. Douxie, this is way too much!"
Douxie shrugged. "Better overpayment to protect me from your wife's wrath, than underpayment."
"Doux." The smith mage crossed his arms. "No."
"Keep it," Douxie repeated. He checked that all four rings were snugged into the black velvet boxes Hiccup had come up with from somewhere, then carefully stowed those in his backpack.
Archie sighed. "This is why we exist in poverty," he complained to the air. "Let me bargain," he told Douxie. "You're terrible with money."
"What am I going to do with it?" Douxie asked his familiar. "I've made what I wanted to, let him have the material. Unless you want something, Arch?"
"I don't need that much," Hiccup said loudly and pointedly. "I want enough horn to make some charms for my wife and kids, and I'll take the dust and scraps because I'm sure I can think of some good use for them. But the whole thing?" He scoffed. "Look, we live in a capitalist society and it sucks. Unlike my dad, my goal in life is not to do and make more and more and more. I just want enough to get by, and have a happy life. Taking the entirety of probably the last unicorn horn in existence as payment for, what, a day's work and a couple ounces of metal?" He scoffed. "I couldn't sleep at night if I let myself be that type of greedy fool."
"But--" Douxie protested.
"Let me," Archie repeated to him. The dragon sat down, surveying the table. The root section of horn, looking somewhat like an iridescent ivory section of deer antler, lay on its side. Next to it was the jar of dust and scraps. On the other side of that was the somewhat smaller tip section, spiraling gently to its point. They'd had to cut in the middle to get segments with sufficient diameter to form the cores of the rings. "Take the smaller section in addition to the scraps," he offered Hiccup. "I will keep the rest of the horn in my hoard, as Douxie is far too apt to give things away."
"That's still overpayment," the man argued.
"Perhaps. Consider it a down payment on the next time we require your services."
Hiccup pursed his lips and let out a long considering breath through his nose. Finally he nodded. "Deal."
"Excellent." Archie extended a paw; Hiccup shook it. "As always, it's a pleasure doing business with you and watching you work."
"There is one thing," Aja said to Jim on their way into health class. "We will need to tell Zadra about this afternoon's plan, and invite her."
Jim blinked. "Uh, I kind of got the feeling she would be against it?"
Krel snorted, dropping into the chair of his desk. "I do not think that is an erroneous belief."
"Yes," Aja agreed. "She will be. But we are trying to be better than Mama and Papa," she reminded her brother, taking her own seat. "And part of that means not taking... ah, high handed actions," she said, finding the Earth term she wanted, "without even allowing our people to act as witness."
Krel looked thoughtful. "No secret agendas."
"Exactly!"
Jim hummed as he considered her words. "Well, she's your subject. Bodyguard. Whatever she is."
"Let us stick with 'guardian'," said Krel.
"Okay." Jim nodded. "If you really think she she needs to be there," he said, "then I'm fine with it."
"Excellent!" Aja beamed. "I will text her and Varvatos now."
There was a knock on her office door followed by someone flinging themselves into one of the chairs on the other side of her desk.
Zelda looked up.
To find Barbara Lake, for once not clad in her habitual scrubs, sprawled across the seat.
Zelda raised an eyebrow. "Problem, doctor?" she asked.
"They won't let me go back to work," Barbara moaned.
"Nor should they," Zelda agreed. "You were shot less than--" She stopped as something occurred to her. "Barbara. Where is your sling? Your bandage?" The woman's right arm, in fact, below the short sleeve of her knit blouse, seemed untouched.
"Douxie," Barbara said, "found healing magic and used it to fix my arm."
Zelda took a moment to process that.
"WHAT?" she demanded, standing up, sending her chair flying. Without another word, she stalked around her desk and grabbed Barbara's arm, examining it closely.
"Zelda-- ow, back off!" Barbara snapped, wrenching her arm away.
"That's impossible," Zelda said, still staring. "There's no such thing. Healing magic doesn't exist."
"Apparently it does." Barbara rubbed her arm. "He found it in a book from Atlantis."
"Atlantis is a--" She stopped short before she could say myth, because while modern academia held Plato's words on Atlantis to be mere allegories, modern academia also held things like trolls and magic to be mere fanciful stories. "Fuck," she said instead, her mind whirling at the possibility. Not of Atlantis being real, that was negligible. But of healing magic to exist....
Her eyes met Barbara's. "Tell me he plans to teach others. This cannot be lost again."
Barbara nodded. "He is. He said it's best worked in groups, anyway."
Zelda raised an eyebrow again.
Barbara gave half a laugh. "He... passed out, right on the kitchen table, after healing me." She rubbed her arm again. "I think he jumped in the deep end."
"Not like anyone else I know," Zelda pointed out. She sighed, and leaned back against her desk. Stricklander would want to know about this when he returned. He, too, would see the immense value in the wizard's new knowledge. "So what were you saying about the clinic not letting you go back to work?"
Barbara fumed. "They've already filed my leave with the state and are insisting I take it so no one comes around asking questions."
Given the little interspecies social experiment Arcadia had become, Zelda could see the point of Barbara's higher-ups. "Surely you don't think I can countermand their decision?"
"No. But I needed to vent, and I was hoping you might have something for me to do."
"Filing paperwork and filling out grant applications is beneath you," Zelda told her. "But if you want to help me check on all the new changeling foster parents in about an hour, you're welcome to join me."
Barbara's face was a study in relief. "Thank you," the doctor said.
The text came in the middle of Phil and Jerry's heated discussion of who the best "Bond" was. While Varvatos' initial thought, due to proximity to Prince Krel, had been of chemical bonds, a few minutes of listening carefully had revealed this was something to do with movies.
"I'm telling you," Phil said, "it's Connery all the way, man! He really played Bond as the gentleman thug he was always meant to be."
"Yeah, but if you read the novels," Jerry shot back.
Zadra leaned sideways toward Varvatos. "I do not understand the point of this conversation," she confessed.
"Hooman media is an acquired taste," Varvatos told her, thinking of Toby's foray into cinema and how... interesting... The Adventures of Captain DJ Kleb had been.
Nancy patted Zadra's knee. "We'll show you a few of the films, dear," she promised. "Then you can have an informed opinion."
"Nancy!" Jerry snapped. "Tell this fool who the true best Bond is!"
"Why, the next one, of course," Nancy replied sagely, giving a sweet smile.
Varvatos grinned, watching his amour throw incinerant upon the flames.
His phone buzzed as Phil and Jerry took their discussion to new heights and new volumes in the wake of Nancy's declaration. He pulled the device out of his pocket even as Zadra took hers out of her own pocket. "Ah, a message from Princess Aja!" he declared, ignoring the hooman fools in favor of checking his texts.
"Blinkous, please!" his brother begged as Blinky lowered his daily ration of food and reading material.
"I am sorry, Brother," Blinky replied with a heavy heart, "but I cannot trust you; therefore I may not free you--"
"Not that!" Dictatious snapped, surprising Blinky. "You've reiterated that time and again; I know very well that song and dance by now."
Blinky exchanged a glance with Aaarrrgghh, then leaned over the top of the magical oubliette. "What would you ask of me, then?"
"Company!" said Dictatious. "I have spent centuries in the presence of dullards. You give me all these things to read, but no one to discuss them with! My mind is a blade lacking a whetstone."
"Has point," Aaarrrgghh rumbled softly.
Dictatious then ruined it by continuing, "And I cannot imagine that stunted Kruberan oaf who follows you like a shadow has been intellectually stimulating either, over the last several centuries!"
Aaarrrgghh narrowed his eyes and growled.
Blinky looked down disdainfully upon the troll he had once counted as his idol. "You speak of things you know nothing of," he declared contemptuously. "Aarghaumont is the finest troll of my acquaintance. He has shed the poisonous ideals he could not help, being raised to them as he was. You, on the other hand, have only fallen prey to the silken voice of a murderer and tyrant!"
"What else was I to do?!" Dictatious wailed. "I had to survive somehow!"
"Death," said Blinky softly, feeling the weight of too many years and too many tears, "is often preferable to becoming a party to genocide."
"Yet do we not persist and choose each day to live one more, hoping for freedom?" Dictatious shot back.
"...Very well. You have me at an impasse," Blinky admitted.
"Now will you kindly sit down and discuss this play with me?" his brother demanded.
Blinky looked at Aaarrrgghh; Aaarrrgghh looked at Blinky, and shrugged.
"Oh, very well," Blinky conceded, sitting down; Aaarrrgghh curled around him, forming a most satisfactory backrest, as he had so many times in the past. "We have a few hours yet before we need to be anywhere. What are your thoughts, Dictatious?"
A sniff of disdain from the prison. "The two children are foolish, going against the expressed wills of their family."
"Ah, but do we not all do foolish things for love?" Blinky countered. Like this, he thought.
"Yes, but is their final price truly worth it?" demanded his brother.
"Brought peace," Aaarrrgghh offered, somewhat surprising Blinky. He smiled up at his larger companion, pleased that Aaarrrgghh had found the play worth internalizing and contemplating.
"Peace, brought at the cost of two heirs!" Dictatious retorted, stabbing his finger at the copy of Romeo and Juliet Blinky had lowered into his cell. "Not to mention the utter folly of this whole secret vows thing...."
Reading Princess Aja's message, Zadra's fingers tightened on the disguised communications device. A fact which she did not realize until it started creaking. Hastily and consciously she loosened her grasp.
She felt like the molten fire that Mother had informed her comprised the core of this planet.
The Royals were proposing to destroy Gaylen.
Her fury choked her. Made it difficult to breathe, impossible to speak.
As the natives would put it, she saw red.
Yet what were the alternatives? Allow Morando to lay hands upon the sacred core?
Never.
Return it somehow unnoticed to Akiridion-5?
She nearly snorted at the ludicrosity of the idea.
Hide it elsewhere in the cosmos?
No. She trusted that King Fialkov and Queen Coranda had hidden the core here, on Earth, for a reason. Even if she did not believe that Gaylen was born of this pathetic mudball. Much less that he had once been one of the pathetic human natives.
She forced down her fury and feelings of betrayal. They were unwarranted; the Royals had given her the information they had, and invited her to watch the execution of a god. Wrong as their opinions were, in their place she could have done no less. And she had pledged her life to their service, to the will of House Tarron. They were her lieges, and it was not her place to doubt them.
(Except she did.)
"Tell them I will be there," she said, stalking away, needing to bleed off her fury before it hurt someone.
The middle of the night was the perfect time to leave the tour group. Waltolomew had snuck out with ease, always letting his shadow follow just closely enough that he didn't risk a stab in the back, but could plausibly argue he just hadn't seen the man.
"Gary from Ohio" had joined the group at the last moment and stuck out like a sore thumb. Walt lamented the efforts of his trainers. But ineptitude in concealment was certainly not an indication of lack of lethality; he had made sure to never be alone with the man; indeed, he'd stuck to groups of at least five whenever he could.
Now, however, Aysa-Thoon was within striking distance, so he'd left his tent, carrying what few supplies he truly needed, and slipped from one form to another, launching himself into the sky with ease.
I shouldn't laugh, Walt told himself. I shouldn't. But the curses rising up from behind and below were so amusing. Had "Gary" truly not studied his prey, to not know that Waltolomew was capable of flight?
He took a leisurely circuit of the encampment, testing the air. If anyone saw him, they would doubtless think him a distant bat.
Then he set out for the ruined temple that held the infamous assassin Angor Rot. Making sure to travel slowly enough that his pursuer, snarling and swearing and crashing through the brush like... well, like an angered troll... would be able to follow him.
A nebulous thought about cats playing with mice flashed through Waltolomew's mind. He grinned.
Vendel was not fond of headaches. And, as a rule, the denizens of Trollmarket caused them far too often. Yet even so, they'd never been so discourteous to the strain of his temples as their newest Trollhunter (Trollhunters, Vendel amended silently) and all those problems which had been dragged in his wake.
The newest, and largest, of which lay on his worktable.
The Akiridion core was not a heartstone. But neither was it entirely dissimilar. They both held power, locked away in their crystal lattices. Vendel could sense the energy laying dormant within the core. It felt even denser than the deep power emanating from Trollmarket's heartstone. But it was also colder, locked away.
The Trollhunters wanted to free that power, to return it to its alleged origins, before an Akiridion usurper could seize the power for himself.
Which was all well and good.
Vendel sighed and raised a hand to the warm golden glow of the heartstone, feeling it hum and pulse beneath his hand. It was these same stones that had made this world a refuge for trolls, when they'd had to leave the Darklands. It was the heartstones that enabled them to survive on this very foreign planet despite the deadly poison of its daylight.
He had spent years, decades, centuries cultivating this heartstone, faceting it plane by careful plane to give life and warmth to the community of trolls who resided in its shelter. And it had grown under his tending; the heartstone was now larger, warmer, and stronger than it had been when they had first settled here. He felt a reasonable amount of pride in that: as the heartstone thrived, so did his people. Yet despite that not inconsiderable acquaintance with it, the heartstone still held surprises.
Such as the fact that it was the prison of Morgana Le Fay.
Vendel frowned, then pushed the thought away; right now, he needed to focus on the Akiridion core, not the trapped sorceress.
He turned back to the crystal that had once been a god, and before that had been a human sorcerer from Atlantis, if the wizard's tales were to be believed.
Centuries of knapping stone, and yet somehow this felt like a master's test.
He traced the cracks and fractures, the sections where larger pieces had clearly been chipped away. He could guide the young Trollhunter to cleave stone for its power; surely this piece was no different?
Feeling the ebbs and flows of energy beneath his fingertips, he traced the crystal inch by inch, feeling. Though his eyes no longer saw as clearly as they once had, this skill had not deserted him.
Circle after circle, he followed the power locked within.
Finally, his fingers stilled.
"Here," he said aloud, marking the spot in his memory. There was the faintest line of a crack through the core; at its very tip, a strong enough blow would shatter the crystal, releasing its energy.
He knew what result the Trollhunters hoped for.
Vendel only hoped they got it.