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Three years, eight months, and ten days.
Jester was never as good as Caleb at holding days in her head, but she can’t seem to ignore the passage of time anymore. Every night the twin moons rise and she lays down to sleep, it’s another day that’s passed since she’s seen him. Since she’s seen most of them really, but it’s not the same with Caleb.
Beau and Yasha lived downstairs, and Caduceus still sent her messages sometimes with updates.
Three years ago, the Mighty Nein had defeated the Crawling King. Jester had pushed him back through the Divine Gate herself, the Traveler’s hands guiding her own as she poured the last of her strength into her Banishment spell. Waking up a week later had been an achievement of magical medicine that they had all been shocked Caduceus was capable of.
But Caleb was gone.
He didn’t die in the battle, they told her. Last she recalled, he was soaring into a duel right behind her with Uk’oatl, the Onyx Phoenix. He had been riding his Cat’s Ire paw with his spellbook aloft, Frumpkin true polymorphed into a Sabre-Toothed Tiger at his side. Mollymauk stood at his side, hitching a ride. Their twin purple coats billowed in the wind and matched the glowing fire that sheathed Fjord’s sword. She had known they were going to win more strongly than she had ever known anything.
But Caleb was gone.
And she was only slightly better than bedridden.
Caduceus had done what he could, but said that it was the Traveler’s price for his help. Maybe that was true; she hadn’t seen him in three years either.
After waking her up and moving back to the Xhor-house, Jester made herself comfortable in her old room. He had left Frumpkin behind, and Jester spent most nights curling up into his fur, now that he was bigger than she was. The teeth weren’t even scary anymore. She had bullied Caleb out of taking the mansion’s tower, insisting that it was a better place for her to paint. She had also thought that it would be romantic to be a princess in a tower, and besides, Caleb, wizards in towers are usually so old, and you don’t want to be an old wizard already, do you?
But Caleb was gone. And he wasn’t coming back.
Looking back, Mollymauk wasn’t sure how they won that fight with Caleb’s attention so divided, but he was glad that it was.
Mollymauk’s glowing scimitar was buried in the phoenix’s underbelly when he felt Caleb moving the Cat’s Paw out from under his feet. Ripping the sword back, he parried the damn featherbrain’s beak as it came in to snap at this oblivious wizard ferrying him around. Molly had turned to yell at Caleb about leaving the fight, but Caleb’s attention was focused in the opposite direction.
Jester was falling out the sky. The incredible kaleidoscopic display that had previously lit up her hands had vanished, as had Torog, the great bloated worm-god-thing. Caleb was pushing the spell to its limit to get under her in time.
Molly thought back to that day quite often now. As he plopped down as obnoxiously as possible next to Fjord on the cart, he wiped the blood off Summer’s Dance. It always felt good to remind Fjord who it really belonged to, after all.
“Easy kill, eh?” He grinned.
Fjord frowned. “They didn’t know anything either. We’re almost out of leads.”
“Then the next ones will know.” Molly shrugged.
“Please try not to get djinn blood on my herbs, Mr. Tealeaf.” Caduceus said with a long-suffering sigh.
Molly sat up straighter and smirked. “Wouldn’t dreeeam of it, Deucey.” He shot his tongue out and licked some of the blood off his hands. “But I have to admit, it’s got a decent kick to it. Maybe give it a try?”
It was Fjord’s turn to sigh now. Molly winked in sarcastic apology.
The three of them had been searching for Caleb for three years now, running back and forth along the planes of existence, chasing rumors of a scruffy wizard. He didn’t have his purple coat anymore, apparently reverting to brown and cheap. Frumpkin was no longer accompanying him. The old identifying features of Caleb Widogast were gone, and it felt to the trio now like chasing a ghost.
Beau had given up a year ago. If he wants to come home, then he’ll come home himself, she had yelled with tears in her eyes. She rarely cried anymore after mastering her ki, but Molly couldn’t even find it in himself to tease her. At this point, it felt like Caleb had to be intentionally avoiding them. Beau deserved time with Yasha, away from this life, like Veth had chosen with Yeza.
Molly gave one last glance at the three djinn slavers lying dead on the ground. They’d caught wind that Caleb was hitting up every market in the plane of Air, but none of the reputable dealers had seen him, and the unreputable ones preferred to create whirlwinds first, and ask questions later.
The troubling thing, Molly thought as Caduceus started their cart into motion away from the grizzly scene, was why Caleb seemed to be hunting for a Wish…
It had only been three months since Nott had seen Caleb.
She didn’t like to think of herself as Nott anymore, now that she was back in her regular body, but it was hard to reconcile all of these new skills with the woman she used to be. So, when she put her cloak back on, knocked her crossbow again, and stepped out the door of her cottage with Yeza, she wasn’t Veth, but Nott once again. It helped with the guilt of leaving them. With leaving both her families. Veth didn’t go looking for Caleb, Nott did. Nott didn’t leave the Mighty Nein, that was Veth. It was an excuse, she knew, but it helped.
She didn’t tell anyone else that she had crossed paths with him. She didn’t really like to think about the implications.
Since defeating the Crawling King, the Nein had gotten a fair amount of attention. Particularly, there was one white haired man across the ocean who had not stopped sending both paper and magical messages to Nott after hearing that she had carried a gun into battle alongside her crossbow. Lord Percival Frederickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III was now what she would consider a good friend, and Yeza’s work on Whitestone’s residuum was revolutionary to the advances the city had made in the last three years. Nott was happy. Veth was happy.
Finding Caleb ransacking the castle library was a shock to that domestic life she had settled into.
She had responded to Lady Vex’ahlia’s call that an intruder was in the castle. One that she might be interested in. Nott entered the library under the watch of Vex’ahlia and Fenthras, confused and wary, her own crossbow loaded under her shawl.
Caleb Widogast, more manic than she remembered and certainly less put together was rummaging through shelves and desks, pushing papers to and fro as he appeared to be desperately looking for something. He hadn’t noticed her enter.
“Caleb?” Nott whispered.
Within an instant she felt the drag of a Slow spell wash over her senses, her mind sluggishly catching up to old habits. Her hand was in the air before she realized what she was doing, acting entirely on instinct to bend her fingers and force his mind to reconnect with hers. She ripped the knowledge of the Slow spell from him and turned it back, watching his legs immediately catch on air, as if he was running through pudding. That was the first trick she taught herself that Caleb couldn’t do. The first time she stole a spell from him, he was so impressed. Now he looked betrayed.
“What are you doing here? Where have you been?!” She called out, already moving towards him across the floor.
A pained look cross his face and he opened his mouth to speak, before appearing to think better of it and beginning instead to reach into a pocket of his overcoat. It was the old one he wore before Xhorhas, old and brown and ratty, pockets full of components and covered in years’ old dried blood and dirt.
Nott narrowed her eyes and sped up as she raced forward towards him, darting back and forth between the desks and vaulting over one upturned bookcase. He completed his spell with crackling eyes and a ringing tuning fork in his hand. He met her eyes as he completed what she knew to be the last movement of his Plane Shift spell, silently asking her the question she was asking herself.
Was she going to counterspell it? Was she going to force him to talk? Force him to fight her?
She let him go.
The next day, Lord Percival told her that Lady Briarwood’s notes on releasing Vecna from the Divine Gate were missing.
Beau is angry, and she isn’t supposed to be. She’s achieved her full training, and surpassed the other monks years ago. She’s got a Diamond Soul, a Timeless Body, a Mind of Mercury, a Perfect Self. Not to brag or anything.
However, for over three fucking years now, she’s lied to her friends, her family, the only people she’s ever really cared about that gave a shit about her too. She’s told Yasha. It just spilled out one night when she was drunk. The next day, she and Yasha left the search for Caleb up to the boys, retiring back home to the Xhor-house with Jester. That was part of the problem now.
She couldn’t stomach living with Jester, seeing her every day, and not telling her that she knew where Caleb was.
The night of the battle against the Crawling King and his minions, Caleb had cornered her. They had finally gotten everyone cleaned up and Jester was stabilized. Caduceus thought he might sleep for a month with how exhausted he was after the process.
“I need to help her.” He had told her. His twig arms pinned Beau against the wall in a hold she could easily break, but she relented to the secrecy.
“What? Why? Deuce has got her all fixed up, hasn’t he? Jess is gonna be fine.”
“I made him wake her. Temporarily.”
“What the fuck , Caleb?! You know what that could do to her, she needs to rest if she’s going to he-”
“She said she can’t feel the Traveler anymore.” He deadpans, not looking away from her eyes. “You didn’t see. I was watching her at the end. He appeared there with her. Really him, not just an illusion or an apparition of an avatar. And then he went through the Gate with Torog. The Traveler is gone, and it will devastate her. I’ve got to get him back, before she wakes up, if I can.”
Beau is speechless for a moment, and then her arms come up to rest on his. “Ok,” she says, “we can leave in the morning to-”
“This one’s just for me.” His eyes are like steel and fire, daring her to refute him. “She needs you here for her, and so do the people of the Empire and the Dynasty. You’re in charge of the Cobalt Reserve now, as well. You can’t run off.”
“She needs you here for her too.”
“I’ll be back before she wake up.”
He wasn’t.
Caleb has been gone for three years, eight months, and eleven days. But now, he thinks to himself, it is almost time to go home.
He stands at a place that mortals are strictly forbidden, at the base of a golden gate so large that he can’t see the top or the sides of it. Behind him stretches the vast multicolored sea of the Astral Plane, levitating islands of all colors stretching into infinity, and the occasional floating sword from lost adventurers. The Divine Gate’s location is a secret for a reason, and it’s one he is here explicitly to defy.
While mortals can move through the gate, it stands in place to prevent the gods from appearing on the material plane. He needs to spring one particular trickster out of god jail, and it will not be an easy job.
Standing at the Gate, Caleb flips open his spellbook, consulting his notes one last time. Delilah’s notes on slipping past the Divine Gate were helpful, and hopefully the Traveler was in position to move. He’d only get one shot.
With a deep breath and a prayer to the luckiest tiefling he’d ever met, Caleb closes his eyes, and makes a Wish.
When Jester wakes up the next morning, it’s to Yasha’s excited face inches from her own. She lurches backwards into her pillow and yelps.
“Oh, sorry!” Yasha exclaims. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Jester nods slowly, confused. Beau and Yasha don’t come up to her room in the tower much. She’s assumed that they felt guilty about her condition, for some reason. Well, if Yasha wants to visit, she was going to make the most of it.
“It’s ok, Yasha!” She says, trying to stretch her smile as big as she can without seeming weird. “What’s up? Do you want me to braid your hair again?”
“Oh, no- well, that is, yes, I do, but not right now, because- oh you need to look outside!”
Jester cocks her head and motions for Yasha to hand her the staff that she leans on, but Yasha’s grin widens as she moves the staff further away.
“Try it.” She offers.
Jester frowns. “That’s not funny, Yasha.”
“You slept in the rain for me once,” she smiles, “because you had faith my god would be there for me. He was, in the end. You know, he asked me where I find my strength. I told him it was from you.” She pushes the walking stick onto the floor and offers her hand. “Try.”
There’s something in her eyes that Jester hasn’t seen in a long time that looks suspiciously like hope. She takes the proffered hand, and pulls herself out of bed.
There’s no pain. She takes a step, and then two, and then three. She lets go of Yasha’s hand. Her body obeys her again, her necrotic wounds gone as if they had been simply washed away. Even Caduceus’s full effort and weeks of prayer to the Wildmother hadn’t been able to do that.
“What happened?” She asks, breathless.
Wordlessly, Yasha points to the window, and Jester runs to it. Runs, for the first time in years, because she knows what’s on the other side.
In the darkness of the Xhorhas streets, illuminated by the soft green light of the city lamps, two faces look up at her. One man in a ragged brown coat stands at attention. His long hair and beard are both full of dirt and knots, and show several more grey hairs than the last time she saw him. There’s another man at his side, clad in a dark green cloak and gripping Caleb’s shoulder as if he can’t stand on his own. Both are smiling at her through the darkness.
At her feet, Frumpkin purrs, and the medallion that she's worn for almost four years grows warm again against her chest. She’d recognize them anywhere.