Today's prompt, "Dream", gave me some trouble. I decided to cheat a little, by writing about an AU that originated in a dream that @creatorofuniverses had, none other than the Doppelganger AU. This AU is characterized by there being two very different versions of Colfax, one a wizard and one a thief. They get along about as well as you'd expect a strong personality like Colfax to get along with himself.
~~~
Coco blinked rapidly, wavered on his feet. “Was that a dizzy spell, wizard? Really?!” he griped, putting his hands over his eyes as he tried to regain his sense of equilibrium. He knew the wizard had a number of tricks up his sleeves, but it was odd to have magic, real magic, actually turned on him. Sure, he’d been pushing the guy’s buttons since arriving in this strange world, but he didn’t know what he’d expected when Colfax finally snapped and aimed a spell his way.
Colfax’s words echoed in his head in that eerie mimic of Coco’s own voice, words the wizard had invented himself for his spellcasting. A faint fog around him dissipated as the spell finished its course. Wisps sank into the well worn stones of the floor.
Stones that, Coco realized, were a lot wider than he remembered. In fact, there was suddenly a lot more space around him than he remembered there being in the wizard’s tower room. The nearest shelf, before only a foot or two away, was several paces from him. He tilted his head back, taking in the suddenly castle-like height of a simple bookshelf.
Whirling, he found other vaguely familiar furniture standing so much bigger than he remembered. He hadn’t been in this renaissance faire world all that long, but he had spent plenty of time all over the castle. He knew what the place looked like. The workbench, the charts on the wall, the window, they weren’t supposed to loom so high overhead. He was like a toy discarded on the floor.
Coco’s heart jumped to his throat. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. The world had warped beyond recognition in the most frightening way. He turned his head this way and that, taking in details he never thought he’d see. As recognition crept up on him, he began to think he might have underestimated this crazy world.
“No way …”
“Don’t act so surprised,” a voice, familiar but not, rumbled overhead like a mild storm. “You were repeatedly warned that you’d face consequences if you kept trying to steal from me.”
Coco turned to the source of that voice, tilting his head back to meet the eyes of a man who stood as a giant over him. The face was normally a mirror of his own, a bizarre double that had grown up in fantasy land instead of the world Coco knew. He was the reason Coco needed to go by a nickname around here‒all to keep anyone from confusing him for the socially-inept wizard that spent so much time playing around with magic.
It was hard not to tease a guy like that, a version of himself that had never bothered to learn how to read people. Had never learned how to hold a basic conversation. He had never needed to blend in, to steal and lie just to keep his family fed. Really, Coco nicking a few golden coins here, some odd little magical implements there, were just practice. Teasing. A fun way to pass the time while stuck with an insufferable mirror of himself.
Now, though, he had a couple regrets. He held up his hands as if calming an agitated horse. “Come now, Colfax. Fella. Isn’t this a little drastic?”
Colfax narrowed his eyes. It was a chilling expression, full of all the intensity Coco might expect out of a Colfax, especially one who never bothered learning to tone it down. His heart fluttered in spite of himself.
The tower that was Colfax-the-wizard shifted, took a step forward. Coco’s gaze dropped to the footstep that covered all too much ground towards him. Seeing a giant coming his way cut right through his thoughts, sent an instinct for survival jolting through him more powerfully than any police chase.
He pivoted on one foot, already aiming himself for the door. It stood impossibly tall, too many paces away, but there was more than enough space beneath it to escape if Coco could just make it that far.
After that … no ideas leapt to mind just yet, but for now the important part was to get away from himself.
Behind him, the giant wizard started muttering something else in those made up words of his. Coco’s heart did a flip and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Something was coming, and he had no intent of waiting around for it. On some kind of instinct, he juked to the side and did a quick somersault, changing his trajectory for springing back to his feet. To his side, he saw something bright and quick dive into the floor where he’d been an instant before.
Wizard-Colfax wasn’t discouraged. He took a few more steps. Coco felt them, each and every one, through the floor. They rumbled beneath his frantic steps, so casual compared to him running for his life.
“C-Colfax! Can’t we talk about this?!” Coco called, still making his bid for the door. It was his only chance if the wizard had moved on to slinging spells around.
“Tried talking,” Colfax replied, his voice cold. “You refused to listen.”
He wasn’t precisely wrong. Coco swore and shook his head as he ran. He wasn’t about to convince the guy of anything now. He had happily bothered him, tried to find ways to get under his skin. And it had finally worked.
More spell words echoed overhead. Coco’s chest tightened and he prepared to make another dive out of the way. Just as he did, though, a thick fog washed over the floor, overtaking him with more speed than any vapor should be able to. He stumbled. The room around him was lost to his sight and he grabbed the cowl that hung loose around his neck, frantic hands holding it over his face just in case the gas was dangerous.
A scoff rang out overhead. “Don’t be so dramatic. I’m not poisoning you.” Colfax’s voice no longer came from behind him. It came from somewhere to the side. Coco glanced uselessly in that direction before turning the other way to get some distance.
Not three paces later, he tripped on something that appeared as if from nowhere in the fog. With a yelp, Coco toppled forward, hands shooting out to catch himself. Rather than stone, however, they met a pliant surface, something almost leathery. It radiated heat, and while the fog retreated as fast as it had rolled in, he came to the horrifying realization of what it was.
A hand. A hand so similar and so different from his own. Coco stared in shock at a lifeline longer than his torso, felt a heavy pulse beneath his own hands.
The vertigo of falling onto a giant hand was soon replaced by real vertigo as that hand shot into the air. Coco tried to flinch back into motion, only for the fingers and thumb of that hand to spring closed on him as if released from a trap. He was pinned all too securely in a fist as the floor dropped away.
Colfax-the-wizard stood from his kneel, dark eyes fixed dispassionately on Coco. Coco could only twist enough to catch that look in the corner of his eyes, and his body shuddered as the helplessness really sank in under his skin. “You got me,” he said, his voice a lot weaker than he hoped for. “I know when I’m beat. I’ll take the bounce, if you just put me right I’ll leave you to it‒”
“And let you go terrorize the rest of the castle?” Colfax cut him off. He turned and the dizzying speed of his pivot cut off any protests. “No, you need some time to yourself.”
He approached his workbench, scattered with all kinds of magic implements, crystals and tools and herbs and the like. Coco imagined being pinned like a bug on a board and squirmed while his stomach did flips. “What are you plannin’, mind if I ask?”
“I don’t mind,” Colfax dismissed, stopping before the workbench. For a long couple seconds, he scanned his various supplies before grabbing a jar from the back of the bench. A few fragments of leaves remained at the bottom, and when he maneuvered the large cork out of the top a faint but bitter smell almost immediately filtered out.
Coco thrashed, but couldn’t do a thing about Colfax holding that open jar underneath where he was suspended in his grip. Before dropping him in, though, Colfax nodded at him. “This will keep you out of trouble. Be grateful it isn’t the dungeons.”
“Grateful?!” Coco sputtered. “C’mon, Colfax, don’t‒” his voice gave way for a yelp as the grip around him released and he felt, for a small instant, the terror of freefall. Even knowing the jar was there to catch him, he couldn’t help but twist in fear, reaching to catch something, anything. And then he landed in a heap on a glass floor, the real floor looming so far below him.
When he looked up, Colfax was already fixing the large cork in place. More of those spell words got past the cork and some kind of magic seeped into the jar, and then no sound reached him at all.
Even more Doppelganger AU stuff!
So, because the original premise didn't have Gt, of course we had to add it in. XD Wizardfax made a shrinking spell a while ago, just in case he needed it (and used it on Charlie first, saving his life but also making the very tiny king very opposed to using the spell overmuch). And, since Charlie left the two Colfaxes along, of course wizardfax turned to it in recourse.
Thiefax is decidedly not about this turn of events.
More Doppelganger AU shenanigans. Wizardfax is the stoic Colfax we'd all expect- thiefax has learned that sometimes you have to employ certain social skills to get what you want (or if nothing else make your other version uncomfortable).
Hey, another new AU! Y'all have no idea how many new Trust AUs we've come up with in the past few weeks. XD I'd blame covid if I weren't so ecstatic about it.
This AU was actually a result of a dream I had. The premise was that Charlie was a young king in a fantasy realm, whose most trusted advisor was his court wizard, Colfax. However, due to some unknown magic shenanigans, a Colfax from another AU somehow showed up- a dedicated thief from a cutthroat world. Cue King Charlie mistaking thiefax for wizardfax, and quickly realizing "oh no wait, you're a different person". Sort of.
Then ensued quite a few shenanigans in which thiefax tried to steal anything within reach and wizardfax was tasked with being in charge of him until wizardfax could work out the magic to send thiefax back home. Of course, since they're both Colfax, this went absolutely disastrously.
I love this AU so much. @neonthebright and I have already mused on so many ideas for it.
