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‘Where is yours?’
Caleb’s question is casual; the look he gives Essek is not. And of course Essek looks away. Of course he’s a coward, again; of course he scans the room for something, anything to look at that isn’t Caleb’s face. It doesn’t help. Because the only available distraction is Frumpkin, kneading his paws against Caleb’s legs, purring, and drawing far too much attention to the fact that he exists and that Essek’s familiar does not.
Essek closes his eyes. Breathes in. Opens them again. ‘This is not a spell I took the time to learn. My mind was always on –’
He stops, because the words on his tongue were more important things. But he’s still looking at Frumpkin, and that means he’s noticing how snugly he and Caleb fit together, how much calmer and steadier Caleb is just for having his hands on the golden-brown fur. And Essek can't think how to describe such a bond except as very, very important.
‘Matters dunamantic,’ he decides. ‘Having a familiar never seemed immediately useful. They may be of assistance for wizards who travel by foot, and who need a more versatile pair of eyes to scout ahead, but as you know, I seldom… hit the road. As it were.’
Caleb gives a half-nod, like he expected this. ‘That's true. But they have other uses. You can cast spells through them, or send them to retrieve objects that are out of your reach. They can sneak into places a person cannot, and listen in on conversations – ’
Essek’s lips twitch. He’s never asked how the Nein learned his secret, but he now suspects the answer is making biscuits on Caleb’s leg.
‘ – but most importantly, Frumpkin is also a cat.’
‘Strictly speaking, he is a fey spirit in the form of a cat. Is he not?’
Essek still isn’t looking at Caleb, but he hears the frustrated breath. And he understands. He understands that Caleb is tired of hearing constant deflections, because Light knows Essek is tired of speaking them. But putting up walls is so much easier than looking Caleb's steel-edged, inevitable kindness in the face. It's so much easier than changing.
But terrifying as the prospect of changing is, the thought of Caleb retracting that kindness - as Essek knows he will, the moment he thinks it's pointless to keep giving it - is more frightening still. And Essek is already a proven coward. So he clasps his hands until his fingers ache and forces himself to look up.
Caleb is still watching him, like Essek knew he would be. He holds Essek’s gaze for a second, two, three, before nodding towards Frumpkin.
‘Him being a cat is important. I didn’t learn this spell when I was younger.' Caleb scratches behind Frumpkin's ears, and the purring gets louder. ‘I was like you; I didn’t see the need. When I first summoned him, it was – after I left the Assembly. Before I met our friends. It was good to have someone who could keep watch for me at night, or who could slip into places I couldn't reach, but it it was better just to… have someone. Company.'
‘Even a cat?’
‘Especially a cat. He’s a cat.’ Caleb's expression is downright scandalised. ‘Sometimes that's better. Friends - people friends - they are wonderful, but they're complicated. You have to... you know, think of things to say all the time.’
Essek almost smiles. ‘I know what you mean. It's exhausting.’
‘And you have to ask so many questions, and not make it awkward, and - anyway, you don't have to do that with a cat. Or a bird, or whatever you summon. And familiars... when you ask them to come, they'll be there for you. They cannot die. It's safe to care about them.' Caleb pulls back his coat, tugs one spellbook from its holster, and flicks through the pages. ‘We're going to be leaving soon. We have things to achieve far away from you. I meant it when I said that these people, these friends of ours, will change you. But we’re going to be gone much of the time, and you yourself said we shouldn't stay too close - '
He stops flicking, marks his page with a corner of his scarf, and digs into a pocket. ‘Having a person around – it gives you needs to consider outside of your own. You need to learn that, even when we're not around for you to care about.'
His hand emerges from his pocket, clasping a small bottle of faintly shimmering ink. Spell-writing ink. The page is still open in Caleb’s lap, and, after a moment of mentally translating the Common script, Essek reads its title. Find Familiar.
He almost laughs. Summon a familiar, Essek. It’ll help you unlearn a century of selfishness; it’ll let you forget that you started a war. It’ll fill the space left behind when we are gone.
But he’s being ungenerous, and Caleb is being so kind.
It’s a wary kindness, tinged with hurt and warning, but it’s kindness all the same. And Caleb knelt before him that night and said the difference between you and I is thinner than a razor, and he said I was like you, and Essek believes him. Caleb has been him and yet Caleb is capable of kindness. Caleb speaks of himself with spitting self-hatred and yet he once pressed his lips to Essek’s forehead and performed a ludicrous, unwarranted act of forgiveness.
And if Caleb says this low-power, common-or-garden spell is partly to thank for that... who is Essek to argue?
So he draws his own spellbook from beneath his cloak, and flips to an empty page. ‘I have my own ink,’ he says. ‘There's no need to waste yours.’
It’s always been him teaching spells to Caleb, before. But everything in his world has turned backwards since seven outcasts came storming into it. And of all the changes they’ve wrought for him, this is the gentlest by far: sitting in the quiet as Caleb talks him through the runes and the incantation words, occasionally leaning over to correct a line he’s drawing.
Until it’s finished, set down in shimmering ink. A spell that isn’t dunamancy, isn’t anything to do with hundred-year-old ambitions, isn’t even particularly useful. A spell that’s a request for help, a plea for companionship, emblazoned in his spellbook in defiance of everything that Essek used to be.
It’s barren, after they leave.
He replays their departure in his head almost every hour, because it’s the freshest memory of their faces that he has. Nott – Veth waved one halfling hand, the movement so comfortable, so free in her new flesh. Beau held up two fingers in front of her eyes and flicked them back and forth between Essek and herself. Don’t do anything fucking stupid, Essek, she said, and he knows it was both a threat and a plea. Caduceus said something Caduceus-ish about how Essek should focus on who he is right now, and then – then they were gone. And now his world is back as it was before he met them, and yet it is irrevocably different.
For two days, he does not look at the newest spell in his book. He carries out research in his tower, and goes about his duties, triple-checks that he hasn’t left any loose threads that could expose him. He floats everywhere. His house is filled with familiar silence.
On the third day, he summons two Resonant Echoes, as he’s done a million times before, to help him with a casting in his laboratory. Then he looks into the eyes of one of his shadow-selves, and the spell sputters and dies in a way that no spell of his has faltered since he was ten years old. It’s pathetic, and humiliating, but he can’t stop it. He doesn’t even try. Because he looked at the echo and wondered what cast-away version of time it came from, and the thought struck like a punch – in your timeline, did I not do the things I have?
Did I never meet them?
He spends the rest of the day in his bedroom with the door closed. A pile of tossed-aside books grows taller on the end of his bed, and he’s considering calling the entire day a write-off and going into his nightly trance early when –
‘Heeeey, Essek! Just checking in, making sure you’re not doing any more traitor-y stuff. How’re you doing? Caleb says, did you try that spell he –’
Jester’s voice shuts off, and the renewed silence is so very, very empty. Essek swallows. Counts his reply on his fingers before speaking.
‘I’m well. I do ‘traitor-y stuff’ every moment I don’t hand myself over to the Dynasty, but against you, no. And… not yet. Soon, perhaps.’
A pause. Then, ‘Caleb says you should definitely try that spell soon. Let us know if you need help with, y’know, being nicer and stuff. We miss you!’
There’s a pang twisting his insides, both bitter and warm. ‘Tell him that by the time you return, I will have tried it,’ he manages. And then – because it’s true, and because he’s already been vulnerable in front of these people, and survived it – ‘I… miss you. Too.’
It’s a very, very good thing this is a Sending, and not a face-to-face conversation, because his ears and cheeks are burning. The selfish part of him regrets saying it already. But there’s another part of him that feels lighter for having got the words out, and he thinks – he hopes – that’s a good sign. There’s no follow-up message, but Essek knows that somewhere, Jester is beaming. He said he misses us, you guys!
Tonight, while Essek takes his meditative trance alone, she and the others will sleep in a huddle in Caleb’s little dome. They’ll be on hard ground, pressed up against each other, taking it in turns to wake and keep watch, but the air will be filled with each other’s breathing, each other’s warmth.
Essek feels very intensely alone.
Then he remembers that right now, seven people are thinking about him, and feels less-than-alone. And it’s so much like having air breathed into his lungs that he pushes back his chair and drifts up the stairs into his laboratory.
Caleb listed the spell components for him: charcoal, incense, herbs. Essek gathers them all, sets them out in a brazier, and takes a moment to think through the logistics. Fey, fiend or celestial is an easy choice: he trusts Caleb’s choice of familiar, for one thing, and for another, shades of grey have always been more appealing to him than black or white. The creature’s form isn’t a hard decision, either: whatever he summons will be living in Rosohna’s constant night-time, which only leaves him two options. And he can rule out summoning an owl. He's on thin enough ice with Beauregard already.
He sets the components alight and begins the casting. It’s a quiet, fragrant hour, drawing out the runes across the floor while the incense smokes and his lips shape the incantation. They’re words that Caleb taught him, that Caleb gave him, and it’s so easy to forget the beacons and the war and his betrayal while he lets those words fill his mouth. Nothing exists outside this room, and this spell, and – somewhere, leagues away across Wildemount – the seven friends who are the reason Essek is casting it. The reason he's ending a century of self-imposed isolation.
One last twist of his hand to finish the runes, one final word murmured into the smoke. The spell is complete, and the silence is deafening. Nothing moves. The ashes in the brazier are turning cold, and Essek hovers an inch off the floor and stares at them, and how will he ever explain this to Caleb, that he called on the Feywild and nothing wanted to come?
And then reality cracks. Green-black flames burst from the brazier, shoot upwards, and retract. Essek drops to his knees and waits, breath frozen, as the light fades and leaves a shape behind in the ash. A moving shape.
One single moment of quiet. Then a little dusky-coloured bat shakes off the ashes and flutters into Essek’s outstretched hands.
And she’s soft and warm in his palms, and there’s a tiny heart beating against his fingers, tiny black eyes looking up at him – and Essek's breath leaves him in a shaky sound that's half gasp and half laugh. It’s not like the Mighty Nein, where love took three months and the adding-up of a thousand moments: loving this creature is instant and instinctive. Because she heard an arrogant, lonely war criminal whisper into her plane for a companion, and she answered. She chose him. She came. She is here and perfect and his, and her weight in his palms feels like Jester's hand in his, like Caleb's lips on his forehead.
The wings flash out, and she flits from his hands to his cloak, then claws her way up onto his shoulder. Like she was always meant to be there, her presence easy and comfortable and - familiar.
He should have done this a century ago.
And he’s still not convinced that he was wrong, when he said he had no path to redemption. But if that path exists, then… well. There are worse first steps to take.