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sakon76Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 21st January 2022
"Your subscriptions are showing," Henry murmured, eyes fast on his work.
Douxie snorted, eyes fast on his own. "I'm well aware I have issues, I don't need the reminder."
"Yeah, but you usually don't carry them this close to the surface."
The steady whirr of the dremel tool cut off. Henry glanced up to see Douxie motionless and frowning, still bent over the piece he was engraving.
"Merlin made them good armor," Douxie said softly. "It was solid, and protected Claire and Toby through more than one battle. They probably wouldn't have survived long without it. But I can't help being pissed at him for not doing more. He knew Claire was a budding sorceress. Why didn't he enchant her armor the way I'm enspelling it now? Why didn't he give her that extra edge? Was it just because he disapproves of shadowmancy? Or did he really not think her worth the effort?" He paused and sighed. "Why didn't I ever do it in that timeline? I didn't even think of altering his work to suit her better, and protect her better. What's that say about me, that I can only critique his work now that I'm trying to surpass it?" A low, bitter chuckle. "Trying to prove I'm just as good even while I'm still an apprentice. Gods, hubris is strong in me."
Henry blinked, then reached across the worktable to place a hand on Douxie's shoulder. Gold-and-green eyes looked at him. "You've grown up."
That got him an eyeroll. "Thanks, I hadn't noticed the sudden burst of maturity."
Henry shook his head. "Look, we both know that you're older than just about anyone. But I think we can also agree that at this point, in some ways, you're younger than me too. And part of growing up is taking a certain responsibility for those under your wings."
Guilt flashed across Hisirdoux's face. "I didn't do as well by you as I should have."
Henry shrugged. "You did as good as you possibly could have, given who you were then. And, believe me, I will certainly never complain. No one else ever told me what you did, or taught me what you did, and without that, I would've died in that river."
"Hiccup...."
"Look, my point is, you're a different person now than you were then. You've grown up some. You're taking the absolute best care of that girl, of all those kids, that you can now. And if that's more intense on your part than it would have been a couple years ago, you need to just accept that and not blame your past self for what you didn't know then."
Douxie's hands twitched. He looked away, breathing a laugh. "Seems people keep reminding me not to blame past-me."
"If multiple people tell you the same thing," Henry said dryly, "it might be something worth listening to."
"You've always been worth listening to," Douxie said, "even when you were a weedy, sarcastic thirteen-year-old."
"And now I am a slightly better filled out sarcastic thirty-three-year-old," Henry said, "giving advice to a nine-hundred-and-seventeen-year-old. Yeah, I can see where this makes logical sense."
"We're wizards," Douxie said. "Logic's a dice roll at best."
"True that." But Henry studied the older wizard as Douxie's hands, with their long, elegant musician's fingers, reached for the dremel, intent on taking up work again. Hands that were a hair less steady than he liked. "Right," he said, putting his own tools down on the bench. "We're taking an early lunch break."
Douxie blinked. "What?"
"You're getting wrapped up inside your head, you need to take a break and talk with your friends and think about something that isn't emotionally dicey spellwork for a while."
"But Claire's armor--"
"Isn't going anywhere," Henry told him. "We'll get it done by day's end. And unless there's something you haven't told me, you guys aren't planning on taking on Gunmar tomorrow anyway. There's time."
"So, uh, like, where are your wife and kids?" Jim asked, looking around the farmhouse kitchen.
"Zeph, my daughter, has gymnastics Sunday mornings," Henry explained, carving thick slices of ham to go on a make-your-own-sandwich platter. "Nuff, my son, has baby tumbling right across the hall at the same time. I usually take them, but Astrid's doing it this week. After that will be the traditional treat of lunch out with ice cream. They'll probably all be back around two, at which point Zeph will probably drag her mom and baby brother into helping 'improve' her boobytrap obstacle course over in the woods," he said, nodding toward the east side of the house.
"Those aren't your kids' real names, are they?" Jim asked, pulling some green grapes out of the fridge to add to the spread, along with three types of mustard.
Henry grinned. "Zephyr's name's real enough. The name on Nuffink's birth certificate is Nicholas, but his Renfaire name kind of stuck," he said. "Much like mine."
"Oh, 'Hiccup'," Jim said, achieving illumination. "That makes sense, I guess. Wait, if you met Douxie at the Renfaire... what was his Faire name?"
Henry laughed. "He didn't have one. It took me like five years to figure out 'Hisirdoux' was his real, legal name, because it sounds like a Faire name, doesn't it?"
"I'll take your word for it."
Claire leaned against the counter and stole a baby carrot. "So if you were a blacksmith at the Faire when you met him, what was Douxie doing there?"
"If you want old gossip, you can just ask me, you know," Douxie called from the other room, where he was setting the dining table.
"Yeah, but we don't trust you not to skip over the embarrassing stuff," Toby retorted. "Where do you keep the glasses?" he asked Henry.
"Second cabinet," Henry told him, nodding to it. "All right. So. There I was, thirteen and skinny, too sarcastic for my own good, helping my uncle as an apprentice smith, when up comes this guy in Lincoln green tights and a jerkin, needing a new clasp for his cloak. And he's tall and older and cool... and he takes a look at me, blinks twice, and asks me if I knew I was a mage. Swear to god, I thought he was hitting on me."
"Absolutely false," Douxie said, now leaning against the doorway and only shifting aside to let Toby pass with the cups. "I will not stand for this vile calumny. I did not tell you you had magic until the third time I met you, when I could feel the heart eyes in your magic in that self-same cloak clasp. Which I still have, by the way."
"Still have the garb?" asked Henry.
"Ugh, it'd never pass costume approval these days. No."
"Wait," Jim said, his mind suddenly catching on one word in particular. "Lincoln green?"
Douxie said nothing. Henry grinned.
"Like, Robin Hood Lincoln green?" Jim demanded. "Douxie, were you a Merry Man?"
"No," Douxie said. His voice sounded strangled. He shot Henry a glare. "Don't you dare. I will beat you to death with a turkey leg."
"I have your armor hostage," Henry replied. He sounded gleeful. "He wasn't a Merry Man," he told Jim. "He was Robin Hood."
There was silence for a minute, then the kitchen broke out with laughter, three teenage voices all talking over one another, and NotEnrique cackling loudly. Douxie, meanwhile, turned and started beating his head against the doorframe. Finally he stopped and looked at Henry. "I hate you."
"You really don't." Henry finished carving and set down the knife.
Douxie rolled his eyes. "Fine. I really don't."
"Wait," said Claire. "Do you have pictures?" she asked Henry.
"Somewhere up in the attic."
"Burn them," Douxie demanded.
Henry grinned. "Never."
"So can you actually do archery?" Claire asked once they were all sat down and eating.
Douxie sighed. "Yes. It's one of the reasons I got the Robin Hood role. Not many people around, then or now, who know how to use a longbow."
"He's actually fairly good at it," Archie put in. "He could do those fancy split-the-arrow tricks back then."
NotEnrique let out a whistle. "Seriously?"
"I'm a bit out of practice," Douxie said. "Not sure I'd still be able to manage them without putting some work back in."
Toby was gaping. "Wait, you were good at being Robin Hood?"
"Toby," Douxie said, "I've been an actor for centuries. I first trained in using the bow back in Camelot. The role was not hard."
"Was there a real Robin Hood?" Jim, history geek that he was, asked.
"Oh yes." Archie nodded. "Not that we met him. We were banging about in France, and then Spain, while he was active in England. Still, one heard things from traders and news agents, being hungry for word of home once in a while."
Claire could practically see Jim doing his own hungering for more information.
"It was weird, the first time I met up with him offseason," Henry said, gesturing at Douxie with his sandwich. "I was all 'when did you get your hair dyed?' and he told me he'd had to get it undyed to work Faire."
Douxie shrugged. "It's not like it's hard. I've been streaking my hair in and out of colors for half a century. Observe." He wriggled his fingers, pinched a blue lock between thumb and forefinger, and pulled them down it. The hair turned black.
Claire gaped.
Douxie smirked at her and repeated the gesture, returning his hair to its usual blue-tipped state. She could just barely see the blue light of his magic between his fingers.
"Show me how to do that," she begged, thinking of all the hours and dollars she'd spent in the past bleaching and dying her blue streak.
Douxie half-bowed in his seat. "Anytime, my lady," he promised.
"Wait," Toby said. "Is that how Zoe...?"
"Mm-hmm." Douxie picked up his sandwich and nodded. "She actually started doing it before I did. Got the spell off her."
"My favorite was when you did the rainbow around your head," Henry said. "It looked like your hair had been through Holi."
The teenagers exchanged confused glances.
"What's Holi?" NotEnrique asked.
"An Indian festival which involves the throwing of colored powders at people," answered Archie. "We were there for it once, in the mid-eighties." Which eighties, he did not say.
Douxie had a soft, fond smile on his face. "Yeah. Loved that. You looked like a mix of sunset and the northern lights, Arch."
"Grooming it out was not fun," Archie tartly rejoined.
By the time lunch was over and they returned to the forge building, Douxie looked significantly less stressed, which had been Henry's goal. "All right, everyone pack in," Henry commanded the group. Archie headed upward for a vantage viewpoint from the rafters. The changeling followed. "We've got one last piece to finish, then we start in on the real magic."
"'Real magic,' he says," Douxie scoffed, resuming his seat at the worktable opposite Henry. "Everything you do in here's magic, mate."
"Well, not everything," Henry said. "I do get some smithing orders from non-magic people too, you know."
Then it was just the whirr and buzz of the dremel tool for a few minutes, and Henry turning up the flame under his little cauldron of the platinum/dwarf copper alloy to get it appropriately liquid again. For most metals, he'd have done the inlays with thin wire, but dwarf copper resisted that; any wires half as fine as what he'd need would have shattered. So heat and liquid and a syringe application it was.
Douxie's hands were relaxed again, moving easily and flawlessly through the engraving, his eyes fast on the task until at last he pulled the tool away, looked over the runic drawings, and nodded. "Done," he said, shutting off the dremel with one hand and handing the gorget to Henry.
The neckpiece's circular design made inlaying the molten alloy into the channels a bit tricky, but this wasn't Henry's first rodeo. He did end up wishing for another pair of hands, though, as he had to keep putting down one thing and picking up another, while still rotating the piece, in order to set the tiny gemstones in while the alloy remained hot enough for the dwarf copper to "grab" them and sink them in place.
But finally it was done.
He set the gorget down between them. If he'd been less experienced, this would have been his masterpiece - a work submitted to prove his mastery. As it was, it was some of the best work he'd ever done. Yet.
"Okay, stupid question," Toby suddenly spoke up. "If you said this fits you better than your old set did, Claire... what's going to happen when you hit a growth spurt?"
Claire's eyes widened. "Oh. Yeah. Merlin's set fit better after that...."
But Douxie was smiling, and waved it off. "Jim, did your armor fit better before or after you shot up a few inches?" he asked.
"It was a different set of armor, Douxie," Jim pointed out. "Oh, or, you mean the, um, blue thing?" His glance at Henry was not subtle. Henry crossed his arms, amused.
"Yes, I mean the half-troll thing, Jim," Douxie sassed back. "Or that growth spurt you got while I was running around the world hiding with Nari. Either one."
Jim just stared, like he didn't believe Douxie was talking openly about that with a stranger. But then he seemed to remember that Henry was a wizard too. "Uh... it fit about the same, I guess?" He scratched the back of his head. "Either of them."
"And the same set fit Kanjigar before you, and so on, all the way back to Deya," Douxie said. "We're talking magic armor, here, that innately reshapes itself to its wearer's need."
"Yeah, but my and Toby's armors weren't magic, Douxie," Claire put in. "It took us like ten minutes to get suited up, remember?"
"Your armor wasn't magical," Douxie corrected her. He waved a hand at the gorget, at all the other pieces laying and stacked on the table against the wall. "We're upgrading you, Claire. Got your shadow ring handy?"
Her eyes widened. "Wait, you're making this summonable?"
His eyebrows raised. "You expected less?"
Her shriek of delight as she flung arms around his neck could have knocked bats from their roosts.
Bonding the armor to Claire was apparently going to take a lot more space than the interior of the forge could afford. Everyone else got to carry stacks of the pieces outside while Douxie set up a spell circle on a cracked piece of concrete in the detached garage. The wizard had pulled a stick of white sidewalk chalk out of the pocket of his hoodie and scribed a perfect circle, about six feet across, in one go. Then he went around it with a stick of blackboard chalk, scribbling runes or symbols or Toby-didn't-know-whats every eight inches without hesitating or rubbing anything out once.
There was knowing Douxie was good, and then there was seeing it. The wizard cast eyes over it once, then nodded. "All right," he told the rest of them, "armor pieces on the runes, one per each, and do not smear the chalk." He grabbed a couple pieces off Toby's stack and, following his own instructions, set to.
Many hands making light work, they were done placing the armor within two minutes.
"So what next?" Jim asked.
"Next, we bond it," Douxie said. "Claire, you want your armor the same color as last time, or something different?"
"Wait, it's going to be colored?" she asked, looking at all the gray pieces.
He shrugged. "I mean, if you want it to be."
"The alloy inlays won't take color," Henry said. "But the rest of the metal is magically primed and ready. Once we work the spell and you tie your own magic in it, the color will be whatever you want. But!" he cautioned, finger held up, "coloring it's a one-shot deal. It's not a mood ring - whatever you pick now is what you're stuck with. So make sure you like it."
Claire blinked. "Wow. Okay."
"Speaking of rings." Douxie dug in his hoodie pocket and pulled out her amethyst ring, tossing it back to her. She caught it easily. "Into the circle and hold that," Douxie instructed her. "Henry, which cardinal point do you want?"
The smith-mage shrugged. "I'll take east?"
"Then I'll do west." The two of them moved to opposite sides of the circle while Claire picked her way over armor pieces to stand in the center. "You three," Douxie said to Jim and Toby and NotEnrique, "back up a few steps and stay clear."
"Um, do I need to do anything?" Claire asked, glancing first at Henry then her gaze staying on Douxie as the boys skittered a retreat.
"Got your colors in mind?" he asked her.
Claire bit her lip, seeming to think about it for a minute, then nodded.
"Okay. Focus on that, then, when you feel the magic around you, prodding, hook it and pull it in with your own." Douxie demonstrated with grabby hands, pulling them in toward himself.
"Uh, before you guys start this, is there any chance anything could go wrong?" Toby had to ask. Just for clarification.
"Yeah." NotEnrique eyed the spell circle. "Do we need ta take cover, or what?"
Henry snort-laughed. "There's zero danger unless something goes spectacularly, unprecedentedly wrong," he said.
"Uhh." Toby and Jim exchanged a glance.
Douxie pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're not helping."
Henry shrugged. "I mean, there's always a chance that, say, a meteor might fall from the sky or a plane might land on us mid-magic. So nothing's ever zero danger. But this? This is about as low-risk as you can get, really."
"Besides," Jim added in, "when has being part of team Trollhunters ever been zero risk, guys?"
"Well said," Archie spoke up, his tail curled neatly around his paws where he sat at Douxie's feet, watching. "Shall we proceed, already?"
"You ready, Claire?" asked Douxie.
She nodded. "I'm ready."
Claire didn't close her eyes, not wanting to miss a thing. She was a mage, who knew when knowing about something like bonding enchanted armor to someone might come in handy?
To either side of her, Henry and Douxie lowered their hands, palms-down, over the chalk circle. Douxie's sky-blue magic curled and wisped in drips and drops of plasma. Henry's ghosted down more like a golden-brown fog. Both sets of magic lit up the circle, running toward one another and continuing around, intertwined, after they met, until the circle was closed twice over.
And the weird thing was, Claire could feel the magic thrumming, like a pair of heartbeats as the air inside the circle heated up, until it felt like a hot summer's day.
The pieces of armor levitated, sluggishly spinning, over Douxie's runes. "Claire, your color," he said. She risked a glance at him; his pupils and irises were glowing bright, strong blue, his hair floating around his face.
Color. She focused on it, on what she wanted. Not quite the pinkish purple Merlin had chosen for her, but not too far off it, either. A deeper, bluer shade, a touch lighter than her magic, so it would match in the shadows--
Merlin had made that other armor for her, and she was grateful. But Douxie had made this armor for her, and she knew it was crafted with more love for her, more care, than Merlin had ever felt or taken.
When she felt Douxie's magic, and Henry's, reaching out to her, Claire gladly reached back. It felt like joining hands with friends. She raised her eyes to meet Jim and Toby's worried gazes, and smiled.
It was like holding their hands.
Like Henry had said, there was nothing to be afraid of here. Just a little magic.
Reaching out for her friends, Claire sent her power coursing through the armor, and called it home.
The spell circle vanished in a flash, chalk runes burned away into the ether like they'd never even existed. There was no sign of the spellcasting that had happened in Henry's garage.
None, except the teenage girl now clad in armor the color of blackberry juice. A deep royal purple, bluer than Tyrian or Imperial purple. The spell inlays, picked out in razor-thin silver-white alloy, almost glowed against it.
"Wow," said Toby.
"Claire, you look great," said Jim.
She laughed a little. "This feels amazing," she said as the two boys and the changeling stepped over to her. She stretched and reached, testing out her range of motion, turning her head to try and see her own back. "It's so light!"
Archibald, meanwhile, walked over to Douxie and jumped up on his shoulder as the older wizard seemed to almost fade away into the background in the face of his student's delight. "You've done quite well, both of you," Archie said, and washed a paw over his ear.
"Thank you, master dragon," Henry said. He offered a fist; Douxie bumped it, both of them, he was quite sure, entirely pleased with the day's work.
"Claire," Douxie spoke up. She turned to him, joy writ large across her face. He pointed at the ring still in her hand. "'Revertere ad me'," he told her.
She blinked. "Oh!" She held out the ring. "Revertere ad me," she recited carefully to it.
With a flash of amethyst light, her armor disappeared and only the ring remained.
"That's no longer a loan from Vendel," Douxie said, nodding at the ring, to her wide gaze. "That's your version of an amulet now." Her eyes only got wider. She glanced down at the ring and back. "I'll make up the loss to Vendel next time I'm down in Trollmarket," he added.
The girl seemed to be at a loss for words. Her fingers curled around the ring. Then she dashed across the space between them, nearly knocking Douxie over with the force of her hug. "Thank you," she said into his shoulder. Her voice sounded rough.
After a second, Douxie returned her embrace, smiling softly. "My pleasure, Fair Lady Claire."
She sniffed and scrubbed at her eyes, then, pulling back, looked at Henry with a watery gaze. "Thank you," she repeated to him.
And what could he say to that? It wasn't like he wouldn't do his best work to keep the teenagers saving the world from /dying/ in the process. Henry resisted the urge to shrug, and instead put his hand over his heart, offering a shallow bow. "It was my pleasure," he said, echoing the wizard who had been his first teacher.
