sakon76

Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 19th January 2022

"Aw, man," Toby said, mopping at his forehead. "You walk all the way out here?"

Hisirdoux laughed. "I don't have a driver's license any more than you do, Toby."

"Yeah, well, I had one, in the future," Toby groused.

"Then you can say more than me," Douxie said cheerfully.

"Come on, Tobes, Draal can run you all around the Forge without you breaking a sweat, but a little bit of walking's doing you in?" teased Jim.

"It's totally different!" Toby protested. "Sparring's all short bursts of effort and then you stop and talk over the moves and figure out what went wrong and what'll work better. This, this is just endless miles of walking."

"It's hardly endless. The ranch is only about two miles from the bus stop," Douxie offered.

"That's not making it better, Douxie!"

Archie, poking his head out of Douxie's backpack, grinned toothily. "We've walked all over most of this planet by now. Two miles is hardly anything."

"You're not even doing the walking," Toby grumbled.

"I could fly it," Archie offered. "Shall I?"

"Please, no," Douxie said. "The last thing we need is someone to drive along this highway, get a glimpse of you, and crash because they saw a dragon flying by the side of the road."

"True."

"Anyhow," Jim interrupted, "I get why you and Claire have to do this today, Doux. Why are Toby and I having to tag along? We've already got armor."

"And weapons," Toby added in.

Hisirdoux shot each of them a grin and started walking backwards so he could address them, trusting Archie to watch his back and warn him of any imminent potholes. "For knowledge," he said.

Toby's expression was wary. "You're not going to dump any more textbooks-from-heck on us, are you?"

"Nah, that was a one-time thing, I promise," Douxie said, making a mental note to see how Toby was coming along in his studies. "What this is, is me introducing you to one of the local wizards who's never bought into the HexTech coven model."

Jim and Toby exchanged a look. "HexTech coven model?" Jim asked finally.

"Look, I'm an outlier among Arcadia's wizards because I do my own thing, right? Whereas Zoe and the HexTech crew stick together like glue. Safety and strength in numbers."

"What about your bookstore coworkers?" asked Toby.

Douxie waggled his hand. "Jamie's an odd duck like me. Beth's brother works at HexTech, though, so she's in tight with them."

"Okay, and this guy you're taking us to meet?"

"Henry's... mid-thirties by now?" Douxie guessed. "I met him back when he was thirteen. I was working the RenFaire and his uncle dragged him out to get him out of his dad's hair and help with the blacksmithing displays. Henry had no idea he had wizardry, no idea there even was such a thing. I took him under my wing for a few years, showed him a few spells, helped him find people who could teach him better than I could." Douxie shrugged. "He ended up taking over the forge and the family ranch from his uncle, which I understand really pissed off his dad, who's something of a corporate raider. Long story short, now he's your man if you want anything magical forged. The best this side of the country, possibly on the whole continent."

"Whoa," Toby said, suitably impressed.

"And," Douxie added, with more weight, "he's mortal. He chose not to push his power far and wide enough that he'd get caught in immortality."

Jim blinked. "Why?"

"Because there were other things he wanted more," Douxie told his brother. "Like his lady love, and the family they've had together. So that's what I want both of you to see. You can have magic in your life, as well as all the blessings mortality brings."

Jim sighed. "Douxie...."

"You've made your choice, and I accept that," Douxie said. "Though I will point out you can still unmake it. But Toby and Claire aren't decided yet, and they deserve to see the other options, all right?"

"Ugh, fine," Jim complained.

"Well, hey, I'm not decided yet, so I appreciate it!" Toby piped up. "I mean, I don't know if me and Darce want kids, or even if we're going to last-last the way you and Claire are, Jimbo, but I want the chance to see the options, if you know what I mean?"

And Jim spared his best friend a smile as Douxie turned back around. "Sure thing, Tobes."

By the time they reached the ranch, the Nuñezes were already there, Javier by the driver's side door of their pricey sedan, Ophelia and Claire standing by the passenger doors. NotEnrique was perched, troll form, on top of the vehicle's roof. The bright red and yellow stripes of his onesie clashed with his green skin.

Ophelia consulted her watch. "You're late."

"I don't control the buses running behind schedule," Douxie told her. Then he cupped his hands before his mouth. "Hiccup!" he hollered.

"In here," a distant call came back from the forge.

"Come on," Douxie told them as Jim went up by Claire's side and took her hand. She smiled and they walked on together, the whole pack of them following Douxie to the outbuilding. Where, judging from the banging, Henry was mid-work.

As he shoved open the sliding barn doors and made his way in, blinking at the dimness and the heat, Douxie saw he wasn't wrong. Henry held a sheet of metal, glowing dull red, with a pair of tongs, and was shaping it with a ball hammer. Golden brown magic hovered in the air around it, probably visible even to mortal eyes, as Henry's own gaze was fast on the work. Douxie could see the pattern of the strikes, and....

Three, he counted to himself. Two. One.

As if on cue, the last strike gathered the incipient energy of the spell and channeled it. It funneled down in a vortex, swirling into the metal, and completely vanished. Frowning, Henry held the piece up before himself, studying it intently, then he nodded and plunged it into a cooling barrel. Steam erupted, the water boiling furiously as it absorbed the metal's heat.

The piece remained in the liquid for only a moment before Henry pulled it back out again and laid it on a bench next to others. All of which Douxie could recognize as various pieces of armor. His Trollhunter friends, he could tell, also recognized them. The Nuñezes looked less certain.

"There. Sorry about that." Henry put down his tools and wiped his hands on his apron. "It's harder to hit pause on smithing spells than on some others. Henry Haddock," he said, offering his hand to the Nuñezes, who shook it and introduced themselves. They exchanged adult pleasantries, things about taxes and building codes and voting. Javier was only mildly interested; Ophelia was obviously delighted to find someone who spoke her language; she ate it up with a spoon.

Then, after the adults were at ease, Henry turned to the Trollhunters. He introduced himself to NotEnrique, to Claire, to Toby, and finally to Jim. His gaze lingered for a minute, clearly seeing Nimue's circlet, hidden though it was, on Jim's head.

Henry knelt.

As Jim stared, Douxie said, in his best imitation of Merlin's tones, "It is traditional to kneel before kings."

Jim turned his horrified gaze on Douxie. When, after a second, Douxie could hold the laughter in no longer and burst out, Jim's expression turned to a glare and he shoved Douxie. "Jerk."

Henry was laughing too as he stood. "It is an honor to meet you," he assured Jim. "And I promise I won't kneel again." His grin was friendly, wide, honest.

"Claire...?" Ophelia asked.

"Ah, long story," Claire told her mother. "I'll tell you later?"

"Mm." Ophelia's mouth was in a line. "I will hold you to that," she warned.

"For now, though," Javier said, hand on his wife's arm, "I think we are satisfied that you will be safe here today. We will return later to pick up you and... NotEnrique," he said, with a glance at the changeling, who tossed him a salute.

"All right," Henry said after the nice car had left his decidedly dusty gravel driveway, "now that the mundanes are gone, shall we get down to actual business?"

"Actual business?" Toby asked.

"Magic stuff," Henry explained, grinning. "Want to meet my magic horse?"

"Oh gods, don't call him that," Douxie complained.

"And I want to see your armors," Henry continued, ignoring his fellow wizard.

"Seriously," Douxie told the three teenagers, "do not try to ride his horse. Or pet him. Or get within fifty feet of him, if you can help it."

Which was when Tannlaus, with perfect timing, came trotting out from behind the house, where he'd been lurking while non-magically-inclined parents were within hearing distance.

"Ohmygod," Toby said, eyes wide. "You really do have a magic horse."

"He has a kelpie," Douxie retorted. "Henry's the only one who can ride that thing and survive."

"Not entirely true," Henry said as Tannlaus reached them and butted his head into Henry's chest, nosing about his pockets like he was any mortal horse in search of apples or sugar cubes. "My kids and Astrid can ride him, as long as I'm also on his back. And Archie can ride him."

"Tannlaus knows better than to mess with dragons," Archie opined, poking his head out of Douxie's backpack. "To some of us, kelpies look rather like lunch."

All three of the teenagers, Henry noticed, were pale. The changeling looked wary. "Hey, hey, relax," Henry assured them. "He's tame. Mostly."

The girl was the bravest, it seemed. She opened her mouth. "How," she asked, "did you end up with a kelpie?"

"Eh." Henry rubbed the back of his head. "A couple years after Douxie started teaching me magic, I ended up going to England over the summer to visit my mom instead of working the Faire with my uncle like usual. My idiot cousin dared me to jump over this stream." The less said about how Scott had spent weeks needling him, pushing and shoving until Henry's temper was frayed, the better. "I didn't quite make it and fell in. Turns out it was the Bolton Strid."

Which meant nothing to any of them, he could tell.

"The Bolton Strid's rather infamous," Douxie put in. "It goes from being a river about ninety feet across, to about four feet across, quite rapidly."

They still looked blank for a minute, until Claire's eyes widened. "Oh! And all that water has to go somewhere."

Henry nodded. "Exactly. You fall in, you don't come out."

"Most bodies," Douxie agreed, "are never recovered."

"Yeah, so it turns out part of the reason for that is that there's a whole nest of kelpies living there," Henry said, combing fingers through the mane of his own kelpie. "Tannlaus here grabbed me by the leg and pulled me under."

Jim's brows were furrowed. "How did you survive?" he asked.

Henry shrugged. "Blasted him with as much fire and forge magic as I could. I actually don't remember much after that until I woke up in the hospital minus half a leg." He reached down and rapped at the prosthetic hidden under his trousers. "I'm told I just showed up on the shore a hundred or so meters downstream. Pretty sure my cousin got a thrashing to remember. He won't say boo to me to this day."

"Holy crap." Toby looked duly impressed. "So how'd he," he said, gesturing at Tannlaus, "get tamed and follow you home?"

"I have not got a clue," Henry told him honestly. "At the end of summer, I shipped back here. Tannlaus turned up a couple weeks later, looking as contrite as someone who's bitten off your leg can. And he's been here ever since."

"He hasn't killed anyone since then. That we know of," Douxie said, arms crossed. "My best guess remains that he'd never encountered fire magic before, and so Henry intrigued him."

"He's terrified a few trespassers over the years," Henry admitted. "Nothing fatal or permanent, though. But that's why I make sure to introduce him to people who're supposed to be here. And that's the story of how I got a kelpie deciding to live in a desert environment."

"Didn't see you introduce him to the parents," observed NotEnrique.

Henry grinned. "Well, they're not about to spend the day doing magic in my back pasture, are they?"

"Seriously?" Toby asked.

Henry, leaning against the wood pasture fence, shrugged. "I need to see it to get an idea of what I'm supposed to be matching."

Douxie, perching on the top rail of the fence, nodded. "You two can make it a spar session."

"Ooh!" Toby liked that idea better. "Eclipse versus Excalibur?" he asked Jim.

"Sure," Jim said. They each shrugged off their bags and deposited them next to Claire, who was also leaning against the fence.

"Don't eat my snacks," Toby warned NotEnrique.

The little changeling smirked. "No promises, Tubby."

Toby made the "eyes on you" gesture at him, then walked a few steps back to stand by Jim. "Ready, Jimbo?"

His best friend smiled. "Ready, Tobes."

And side by side, as it ought to be, from now until forever, they took out their amulets, read the inscriptions, and were encased in magic armor, swords materializing in their hands.

Now Henry's eyes were wide, his expression stunned.

Douxie cast a sidelong glance at him and smirked. "Religious experience incoming in three... two..."

"Oh my god." Henry crossed the ground between them in a flash, poking appreciatively first at Toby's pauldrons, then extending Jim's arm and peering closely at his vambrace. "Oh wow," he repeated himself, looking back and forth between the two armors. Then he stopped and looked closer first at Jim's amulet, then Toby's. Turning, he glared at Douxie. "Okay, when were you going to tell me you had a hand in making both of these?" he demanded.

Douxie cackled and hopped down, walking over. "When you asked," he replied.

Henry's mouth moved silently. He looked like Toby thought, he wanted to be saying a lot of words at the wizard. Ones that Nana would wash his mouth out for. Finally he took a deep breath and let it out. "Tell me," he said instead.

And from there it was a whole lot of wizardese technical jargon that Toby tuned out. All questions and nodding and matrixes this and inlays and overlays that....

Give him some rocks to fiddle with and/or something he could hit with a warhammer or sword. The making enchanted items was so beyond him.

Or at least he thought so until Douxie pulled a little velvet bag out of his pocket and spilled tiny gemstones from it across his hand.

"Whoa," Toby said at the glittering amethysts, diamonds, and blue spinels. They were none of them large, by the troll standards he'd become accustomed to, but he was pretty sure he was looking at a jewelry store's worth of stock.

"Took one of the rubies from your heist, traded it down in Trollmarket for these crumbs," Douxie told him. "They're too small for trolls to want to deal with, but for embedding some power and protection into a couple sets of armor, they're just about perfect."

"Awesomesauce," said Toby.

Henry took one of the amethysts, held it up to the sun. "This could work," he said. His green gaze slid sideways to Douxie. "Show me where you think they should go."

"Come on, Claire," Douxie said to her where she still leaned against the fence. "Time for your first fitting."

"Hey, what about us?" Toby called after the retreating trio.

Douxie waved a hand without turning around. "Spar away."

"Jeez," Jim muttered.

"He's your brother," Toby told him.

Claire had the sneaky suspicion that her armor was being addressed first so that Douxie could avoid his own. That said, she was genuinely impressed with the speed at which he and Henry were adjusting pieces to fit her perfectly.

"Okay, this is weird," she finally said. "Douxie, how are you making this fit even better than the stuff Merlin made?"

"Well," said Douxie, not looking up at her as he carefully moved a dremel tool across the breastplate of her armor, scoring thin lines in a pattern she recognized to be a runic spell circle, "Merlin did a marvelous job with what he had, in the time he had. But I've actually sewn for you, so, forgive the implied lewdity, I know your body a touch better than he did."

Claire considered that. "If it was anyone else but you saying that, I'd hex them," she finally responded.

He flashed her a grin. "Thanks. My point is," he said, finishing a perfect freehand circle and beginning another, smaller, one inside it, "I doubt Ma-- Merlin ever did stints as a tailor, so I'll argue that my fitting skills are likely superior to his. What's going to count, however, is if Henry and I can make a final product that's at least equal to, or hopefully superior to, your last set."

"Oh, good, set us up in competition to Merlin Ambrosius," Henry muttered from where he was bent over the table's other side, doing his own work filling in Douxie's intricate engravings with a silver-white metal and tiny gemstones at junction points. The white and purple gems were flashing with light as he set them in with needlenose tweezers, then disappearing entirely. "No pressure there."

"You're a master smith and an experienced mage, I'm... close to mastery," Douxie said. "If between us we can't do at least as good a job, then what have either of us been working at?"

Henry snorted and kept working, never glancing up.

"Wait a minute," Claire said, stepping forward and studying the pair of greaves that had already been completed. The armor was gunmetal gray, somewhere between the shade of Jim's armor and Toby's, and the lack of color made her feel a little disappointed. But more importantly-- The designs suddenly slid into focus. "I recognize these." She looked up. "Doux, are you putting your tattoos on my armor?"

"No," he replied. "I'm putting on your armor some of the same protection, strength, and magical amplification spells I've had inked onto my skin. There's a difference."

"Uh-huh."

He paused and looked up at her. Actually thumbed off the dremel tool and set it aside. "I'm not Merlin," he said. "I will never be Merlin. I have to do things the way that works for me, Claire, and these are spells I trust completely. Will you trust me to let them defend you?"

She shifted her weight, considering. "What did Merlin put onto my armor, then?"

"Decoration," Douxie said, and there was no way she could miss the distaste in his voice. "Pretty lines to make a pretty armor for a pretty girl. He didn't give you power, Claire. He just gave you armor."

Claire blinked. "And Toby and Jim's armor...?"

"That has power in it," Douxie said. "It's entirely enchanted, every inch from head to heel. I'm sorry to say this, but... for you and Toby he just didn't put in as much effort."

"He didn't have a lot of power," Claire protested, feeling like she had to defend Merlin somehow. Like she had to defend her and Toby's old armors. "Gunmar stole his staff."

"It doesn't take a lot of power to do this kind of thing," Henry said, eyes fast on his work. "It just takes care."

"You're saying... Merlin didn't care about us that much," she said, wanting to find a way out of what the two wizards were telling her.

Douxie shook his head. "Maybe he didn't have enough time," he said. "Maybe he didn't have the right tools. I don't know, Claire, I wasn't there. All I'm saying is, I'm giving you the absolute best I can, and it'll be different than Merlin's best. And I...." He faltered and looked away, down at the workbench. His fist clenched. So did his jaw. "I just hope it'll be good enough."

"Doux--"

"All right," Henry broke in. "Enough self-pitying chitchat. Back to work, Casperan."

Douxie rolled his eyes but picked up the dremel again nonetheless. "You know, it sounds so much better when you say it than when my boss at the cafe does."

"That's because you're not on my payroll." Henry carefully set one last amethyst in and the entire piece lit up blue-white for a second. "Done," he reported, setting it next to the others. He looked over the table at Douxie's work. "You're falling behind."

"You're impatient," Douxie replied.

From a high shelf, Archie shook his head and gave a disgusted sigh. "I'm afraid they'll be like this for hours," he told Claire. "You might as well go see what Jim and Toby are up to."

"See if NotEnrique's eaten all of Toby's snacks, you mean."

Douxie waved an absent hand at her. "Come back in about half an hour, we should be done with this part and we can see about bonding it to you then."

"Wait, we're bonding it to her?" Henry asked.

"Yes, Hiccup."

"There's lemonade and cold sodas in the house fridge if you guys want," Henry said.

"Thanks," Claire replied, and wandered out the open door.

Jim and Toby, she found, had given up on their spar and were sitting in the dubious shade of the fence sharing snacks with NotEnrique, who was perched on the middle rail. The kelpie was nowhere to be found.

"Hey, how goes it?" Jim asked.

Claire plopped down cross-legged on the ground next to him. "I can't really tell? I think they're making good time on it, but what do I know about armor making?"

Jim and Toby exchanged a worried look. "Hey, what's got you down, Claire?"

She blew out a breath. "Douxie just kind of implied that Merlin half-assed it on your and my old armors, Toby."

"Whaaaa?" Toby gaped.

"Douxie's in there engraving all kinds of spells on mine to protect me, and he said the designs Merlin did on my old set were just decoration?" Claire didn't mean it to sound like a question but it ended up that way. "Like, I didn't expect him to put a ton of effort into making it for us or anything, but Douxie basically made it sound like it was nothing better, magically, than some wet tissue paper."

Jim grimaced. "I hate to say it, but... honestly, that kind of sounds on track for Merlin? I mean, you guys really weren't his priority. Thinking about it, I'm kind of surprised he made you any at all."

"Yeah, he wanted you to do it all alone and for us to stay out of things," Claire said. It felt petty, to speak ill of the dead, but... well, Merlin wasn't dead anymore, was he? And he also wasn't around to make armor for her this time. It was all Douxie and his resources.

"Why the heck does everyone think the Trollhunter should fight alone?" complained Toby. "I mean, Merlin, Vendel, Kanjigar... tell me Deya didn't have that problem!"

Jim laughed. "Given she showed up to the Battle of Killahead with a whole troll army behind her, no, I don't think she did."

"You should have seen Blinky," Claire told Toby. "'We are here to not run away!' He was so proud of that."

Toby grinned. "Man, what I would give to see that." Sobering, he met Claire's eyes, and Jim's. "Stronger together?" he asked, holding out his hand.

"Stronger together," Jim and Claire agreed, laying their hands on top of his.