Chapter Text
The first breath Essek takes is ragged and cold, a gasp so deep it makes his lungs burn and he releases it with a sob. His spine straightens him into a sitting position as he heaves in frigid air in short bursts. His vision warps as he tries to make sense of the nonsensical shapes around him. Blurry outlines painted in teals, blues, pinks, and oranges, his vision clears and comes to rest on the unmistakable shape of his friends a short distance away and Caleb, hands pulled away in the air, holding broken pieces of a small stone.
In a moment of delirious confusion, he waits for the blinding light of the luxon, the cold finger of death he knows will spoil this last visage of his friends, this death spasm of his mind. But it doesn’t come and he shakes his head in frustration, trying to clear the scene, make it settle like sand in the bottom of a stubborn hourglass. But it doesn’t work, the scene blurs for a moment then resettles back into the look of worry on the faces surrounding him.
Gods no…
“No... no no no no no…” he says half-delirious, words warbled by his frozen lips. He half expected the words to not manifest at all, for his lower jaw to simply fall away or the words to die with a croak in his throat, taking him with them. But they come anyways, ragged and torn, and he watches as the worry turns to confusion.“Wh-what have you done?”
He can’t even really see the rest of the group, half of them out of focus. He catches Jester, hand on Caleb’s shoulder, the dying flicker of pink magic dancing on his coat. Veth, glancing nervously at Caleb and the small remnants that seem to have exploded over Esseks robes.
Essek takes a shaky moment to look down at his own torso and see the fine spray of stone pieces, almost like a glittering powder, spread across his robes, falling as he folds in on himself at the waist. His head falls into the divet created between his knees as he picks a piece up himself, inspecting the smooth concave curve in the huddle of darkness created by his own body. He sees flashes of Caleb turning the stone over in his hands in his study, explaining the workings with pride. He sees himself, feigning ignorance to draw out the small smile that comes with Caleb in the full throws of explaining something from his own school of magic.
The sob comes before he can even prepare himself for its weight.
He’s unsure how long it lasts in this half-alive state, time, for once, feeling like its fluidity has slipped through his fingers, and instead it is a pounding, unmeasurable thing. He feels something like a hand on his shoulder and recoils further into the ball he is forming himself into. Had he been more conscious he would notice the absence of his mantle, the familiar weight cracked and broken somewhere on a battlefield he could barely remember. The touch is so foreign, the constant shell keeping him shielded now gone.
His hands track up his own shoulder and he feels the tear in his robes, above his heart, in the crevice between his collarbone and the start of his ribs. The phantom pain screams like fire and a hiccup escapes through the heavy sobs. “Why?” He whimpers, a half-formed cry, “Gods, why why why?”
Jester seems to settle in next to him, hand reaching for his knee “Essek, you are safe, we got you o-”
The sparks of defense dance and die on his fingers but he swats her hand away still, as a cough and another sob break through again. The hand on his shoulder tightens and he looks up to throw it off as well but instead sees Caleb’s stare intensified. The stare holds as Caduceus turns his back, arms opening and ushering away the rest of the group. Essek see’s Beau and Fjord’s expressing screwing into something ugly and bitter as Beau begins to say something but is held back by a pale hand on her shoulder. Caleb’s hand doesn’t budge as Esseks fingers curl around the wrist, Jester, teary-eyed, being collected by Caduceus with gentle words, guided away from the scene.
His grip on Caleb’s wrist tightens till Esseks fingertips go numb, a whisper leaving his lips. “Why did you do this?”
Caleb’s expression stays neutral and hard, “Friend, you know we would not leave you to die”.
The scream cuts his throat to shreds, born from the pit of his stomach “I was dead!”. His legs are weak, and as he tries to push himself up, they fall to the side. Pushing himself as far as he can towards Caleb, he growls “I was gone, I was done!”
“There is no such thing as d-”
“Yes there is!” the sob cuts in and he lets it take him for a moment, the grounding point of contact keeping him from collapsing forward. “... I was gone, why couldn’t you leave it at that?”
The silence that hangs once again takes his sense of time with it. Maybe he loses consciousness, maybe he simply chooses not to feel it, ignores its passage once again flowing around him where he wished it didn’t. He feels like a child once again, as the tears keep falling and he releases Caleb’s wrist to rake dull nails across his neck, feel the numb sensation, and know it means he is alive, that his crimes still await their dues.
The hand stays on his shoulder, softer now, and another slides from his shoulder to the back of his neck, firm in the crook of it, bringing his forehead to rest against a warm chest. The pressure on his crown drags out another sob and he brings up a loose fist to the shoulder next to it. He pounds there weakly, tears making fresh tracks through what he soon realizes are thin streaks of blood down his cheeks.
Caleb doesn’t flinch as the soft blows connect, simply presses softer against his neck and it draws a broken sob from his throat, unbidden and haunting. “I did what I was supposed to, I died, I let my time run out, I paid my price... I did what I was supposed to, that was meant to be enough…”
The cold swells and suddenly Essek feels so small, gravity’s weight immense and crushing, and suddenly every person who has died by his grasp has his sympathy. Every life he has ended with a twitch of his hand has piled on his spine and it is cracking, falling into fragments in the loose form of his body.
The fine stone powder grinds into his palm and he squeezes it till it burns. The rough pieces leave dents in his violet skin, the curved piece of the interior fitting into the crevice of his fingers. “I-... I-I wasn’t w-worth this…” he whimpers, head tilting up as he lets the dust and pieces fall from his hand.
Lips meet his hairline and he is broken all over again. Scruff presses into his forehead and he feels like a caged animal, nowhere to run, looking for something to place his anger and fear on, something to point this feeling at. Instead, he crumbles, hand reaching for the nape of Caleb’s neck like it will keep him upright. The half screams, half sobs fall out of him in waves, body shaking while the hand on his shoulder circles to his back, trying to force him to calm into a normal pattern of breathing. His fingers curl into the fabric at Caleb’s neck and he screams with all that is left in him “I wasn’t worth the second chance!”
Soft Zemnian reassurances are whispered into his hair as he lets the grief work its way out of his veins and into the air. The pressure builds and fades, coming in and out like tides but the muttering continues till Esseks breathing turns from fractured cries to slow sobs.
Hands work their way to the sides of his neck and gently lift his heavy head to meet blue eyes. “You may not see it Thelyss,” He says softly, gently, with such care in the way he forms the world, Essek wonder if he is made of glass with the delicacy he is using. “but this weight will lift with time… and we are here to bear it with you… But you must bear it nonetheless”