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Act I: Youth
Scene 1: A New Arrival
When Essek goes to sleep, still young enough that they haven’t yet weaned him from sleep to trances, the cradle that has been installed in the nursery is empty. When he awakens and climbs out of his cot behind the nanny’s back, he finds a baby in the cradle. This, he assumes, must be the little brother everyone has been telling him about.
“Hello,” Essek whispers, ears perking. “You’re wrinkly.”
“Essek, do not touch the baby,” the nanny scolds, hurrying over and gently pushing him away.
“I just wanted to say hello,” Essek says, ears drooping sullenly. “Why is he so wrinkly?”
“You were more wrinkly,” the nanny says, rocking the cradle as the baby begins to make fussy whining noises. “By far. Now get back to sleep, it’s not yet morning.”
Essek stomps as much as he can back to his cot, feigning sleep until the nanny leaves. As soon as the door shuts behind her, he’s back to the cradle, resting his chin on the edge of it.
“Hello, baby,” he whispers. “I’m your big brother, so you have to listen to me. That’s how brothers work. But I’ll protect you better than Nanny can.”
The baby grabs his nose and gurgles happily, and Essek’s ears perk again.
Scene 2: Holy Day
“You have to be quiet, okay?” Essek whispers, as he holds Verin to his chest and tries to drape his cloak over the distinctly toddler shaped lump. “Or else we’ll be in trouble.”
“Okay!” Verin says cheerfully, his ears twitching happily as he rests his cheek against Essek’s chest.
They’ve been conspiring in the days leading up to today’s holy day, because Verin wants to see the sun and Essek would let Verin see it whenever he wanted if he had a choice. He does not have a choice. Mother decreed that Verin was too young and Essek hasn’t been able to stand the little whimpering sobs from the cot across the nursery every night since.
It’s a simple plan. Essek will carry Verin outside under his best mantle and Verin will get to peek at the sun. All they have to do is make sure that they don’t get caught. Essek struggles his way down the stairs, arms already shaking a little as he tries not to drop Verin as they go. He makes it as far as the drawing room, where the servants are attending their parents and older siblings with pre-prayer tea.
“Essek? What do you have there?” their father asks, frowning when he sees Essek wobbling toward the garden door.
“Nothing…” Essek says, doing his very best to look innocent and keep his ears from giving him away.
He’s convinced it almost works, though years later he’ll rethink that, when Verin suddenly giggles and ruins it.
“Essek!” Their mother gets to her feet and strides over. “I told you that Verin is too young to observe the Luxon’s light.”
“But Mother,” Essek says, still holding Verin as he pops his head out of the cloak to look at their parents with big beseeching eyes. “He wants to observe.”
“You are supposed to be the responsible one,” she scolds, snapping her fingers at a maid. “Take Verin back to the nursery. And take Essek to the library. He can observe the light on his own today.”
And so, Essek finds himself sitting on an uncomfortable chair in the library, trying to keep from kicking his legs as he squints through the open window. Below him, in the garden, the rest of Den Thelyss sit in the direct light of the Luxon, eyes closed in prayer. And somewhere, deeper in the house, he can hear Verin wailing interminably.
Scene 3: Partners
“I can be the echo knight and you can be the dunamancer and we’ll defeat the powers of evil!” Verin says, brandishing his training sword entirely too close to Essek’s face.
“You think so?” Essek asks, trying not to sound too eager.
Essek is too old for such games of pretend, at the age of ten, but the weather is warm and pleasant enough for him to take his studies outside. He’s been stealing peeks at Verin and their father as they spar, not envious of the amount of sweat involved, but a little wistful. His schooling in the basics of dunamancy has become so intensive that he rarely has the time to spend with Verin anymore. He’s old enough now to know that they’re unique among their peers, siblings born to an umavi in a relatively short period of time, but he knows too that they’re both destined to be something great.
The idea that they might be partners in future is enticing.
“If you both keep working hard, I don’t see why that couldn’t be the case,” their father says. “Come, Verin, leave your brother to his books.”
Essek scowls a little as Verin trots back to their father. If his mother were to show the enthusiasm for his arcane talents that his father shows for Verin’s natural inclinations toward swordplay, he would perhaps be less annoyed, but he understands that his mother is quite busy. So he works on his cantrips, and he peeks at Verin and their father when he can, and tries not to daydream about himself and his brother as future heroes of the Dynasty.
Act II: Adolescence
Scene 1: Newborns
Essek’s fifteenth and sixteenth years come and go without memories of his past revealing themselves. With every year that subsequently goes by, his parents’ hopes turn away from him and to Verin instead. They still fund his studies, because he is a genius unlike any other among his peers, but he may find himself ejected from the den when he comes of age.
He is prepared to pull away from Verin, when Verin’s fifteenth year is upon them, but the year passes without any signs of anamnesis. Then Verin’s sixteenth year passes. And his seventeenth. They have their own rooms now, but they slink back and forth at night even as they grow too old for such things, sitting in complete silence under the weight of the den’s disappointment.
The rumours surge as it becomes apparent that Den Thelyss has produced two new souls in its two youngest. Though their skills continue to be praised, the talk of their great destinies begin to wane.
“What if they kick me out?” Verin asks softly one night, as they sit on the floor of Essek’s room, backs pressed to the side of the bed.
“I’ll come with you,” Essek promises.
Verin pulls his knees to his chest. “I don’t think you will.”
Essek can’t think of a satisfactory response to that, so he doesn’t respond.
Scene 2: Ambitions
When Essek announces his intention to train as a combat dunamancer, he’s met with laughter. His teachers are not unkind, but they are amused.
“You’re a prodigy among prodigies,” Starguide Hythenos explains kindly, clapping him on the shoulder. “It would simply be a waste of the gifts the Luxon has provided for you to focus on something as trivial as combat. You’re meant for more than that.”
Essek bites down the urge to protest, to explain that he’s going to partner with his brother. Verin has been taken into training with the Aurora Watch, now that he’s old enough to do so, training under his father’s newest batch of recruits.
“It is my area of interest,” Essek insists. “I understand that chronurgists are favoured for combat, but I’ve been working very hard to apply graviturgical methods to combat. If you look at my proposal —”
“Essek,” Starguide Hythenos says gently, later, when they’re alone in the Starguide’s office. “Your father has denied your request for entry to the Aurora Watch’s arcanist division. So it’s time to put aside childish dreams and focus.”
When Verin races up to the Den manor’s gate to meet Essek upon his return, Essek shoves past him and storms up to his room. He skips dinner, despite his mother’s reprimands, and he listens that night in cold silence as Verin rattles the locked door knob. Perhaps it is time to set aside childish dreams after all.
Scene 3: Distance
“How are you two doing?” Zyn asks, on his first visit to Den Thelyss in over five years.
As the Thelyss sibling closest to them in physical age, though he’s older in his half-orc body now than they look only a couple decades his junior, he has always taken it upon himself to check in with them in ways the others don’t.
“I am doing well, honoured brother,” Essek says politely, refraining from prestidigitating his hair after having it unceremoniously ruffled. He’s recently cut it short, and it’s much harder to keep tidy despite there being less of it.
“Yeah, I’m good,” Verin says, scuffing the toe of his boot against the ground.
It’s been years since Essek first started putting space between himself and Verin, but Verin did the rest of the work when their father had abandoned the den to get himself killed in Bazzoxan. Many a fight about fault was had, but they’ve come to an agreement now. They simply don’t talk unless they have to.
“The umavi said you’d grown apart, but I thought she was exaggerating,” Zyn admits. “Wow.”
“We’ve simply set childish things aside,” Essek murmurs. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have homework to complete.”
“I have to get back to training,” Verin adds, turning on his heel and going without a proper goodbye.
Essek apologises to Zyn for him, says goodbye, and flees to his room to study. If Zyn and their mother discuss them further, he never finds out.
Act III: Adulthood
Scene 1: Shadowhand
The best part of wearing his mantle at all times, Essek has decided, is that no one can see him fidget anymore. He’d been scolded many times growing up for it, for the excess energy that only seemed to burn off when he could keep his hands busy. That energy is abundant now, as the banquet to celebrate his appointment to the role of Shadowhand drags on, his anxiety that the whole thing is somehow a joke at his expense mounting.
He’s spoken more words to Leylas Kryn tonight than in all of his youth combined, and he doesn’t think that the Bright Queen would condone a prank on a newborn soul at this scale, but one can never be sure.
Near the refreshments, Essek can see Verin shredding an expensive pastry into crumbs without eating it. It’s the same anxious fidgeting that Essek is doing under his mantle.
It crosses Essek’s mind to say something, to scold his brother for showing such a flaw in front of their leader and their god and every member of the dens old enough to attend the party, but he can’t bring himself to move.
He simply stands in place, hands wringing as he exchanges composed greetings with other nobles, accepts their thanks with the grace that is expected of the most accomplished newborn soul to come out of the dens in centuries.
As the party begins to wind down, Verin finally comes over, standing inches taller than Essek if not for the minor levitation charm that has become Essek’s signature.
“Congratulations,” Verin says gruffly. “Politics will suit you well.”
It’s an insult and they both know it, feel the tension of the moment as it pulls and prepares to snap. But the tension holds, as Essek lifts his head and graces his brother with a cool, insincere smile.
“Thank you, brother mine,” Essek says, all soft and smooth politeness. “I hope you find your place in the den as well.”
He ignores the gnawing in his stomach as Verin storms off, stopping only to say goodbye to the umavis on his way out.
Scene 2: Taskhand
Verin’s birthday is a quiet affair, attended only by the umavi and Essek. Essek is only there because he was told to come, called away from the safety and comfortable isolation of his towers. All three of them consume their appetisers in silence, the absence of Verin and Essek’s father palpable, and the umavi’s allowance of the celebratory meal dictated solely by the fact that she gave birth to them.
“Your brother has news,” their mother says, prompting, as the servants clear the first course of dinner and bring out the second.
Essek looks at Verin with a polite smile. “Oh? Please do share, brother.”
“I’m leaving next week,” Verin says. “I’ve been appointed a post in Bazzoxan.”
He says ‘Bazzoxan’ like it’s a threat, like it’s something spiteful. Essek tries to focus on the small spark of relief that Verin is moving away from the border skirmishes with the Dwendalian Empire, which have recently worsened with the disappearance of two beacons. Everyone in the Lens and higher levels of court suspects Scourger interference and Essek has quietly stoked those rumours to cover his own tracks. The dread of Bazzoxan taking another person Essek loved as a child threatens immediately to quash his relief.
“Bazzoxan,” Essek says. “That’s a dangerous post.”
“I’ve been made Taskhand,” Verin says, tipping his head up defiantly. “Father would be proud. I’m going to fight back the fiendish threat so that the rift to the abyssal plane can be closed once and for all.”
Perhaps Verin really can do it, if only by sheer force of stubbornness, the one thing they still have in common beyond their blood.
“Well, good luck,” Essek says, raising his glass in a toast. He wishes it was something stronger than wine. “And congratulations.”
Verin toasts and takes an unseemly gulp of his wine.
It’s the last they see each other and the last they speak, for a very long time.
Scene 3: Reconciliation
The sun is blinding when Essek arrives in Bazzoxan, a brief pit stop on his way to Jigow, where he will board a ship bound for Eiselcross. He doesn’t know if he’ll return to the life he’s used to, and the weight of every bad thing he’s done in his life has been hounding him since his last encounter with the Mighty Nein. The last thing he wants is to die without having spoken to Verin, whether Verin forgives him or not.
He ignores the stares of the soldiers as he makes his way through the barracks to the once-temporary building that serves as office to the Taskhand and knocks on the door.
Verin’s long hair is firmly bound into a practical braid at the back of his head, no traces of the den’s signature twists. That’s the first thing Essek notices. The second is that his brother is still taller than he is.
“Essek?” Verin says, before remembering himself. “I mean, Shadowhand Thelyss. Please come in.”
Essek glides over to Verin’s desk, taking in the war table that takes up most of the room, and the parchment strewn across the desk, and the books precariously stacked against one window. It reminds him of the constant clutter on Verin’s side of the nursery, and later in Verin’s bedroom, though this clutter speaks more of a man with too much work for the number of hours in a day than of a child who enjoys organised chaos.
“What can I do for you?” Verin asks, shutting the door.
“I’m leaving the continent for some time,” Essek says. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be away but I’m off to Eiselcross.”
“Finally getting into combat?” Verin asks, the words barbed to stick in Essek’s mind.
“No,” Essek says, trying not to wince because they do stick. “No. It’s more of a supervisory role at one of the excavation sites around Aeor. I just wanted to say goodbye.”
“You wanted to say goodbye,” Verin echoes incredulously, leaning against his desk as Essek circles the war table just for a way to avoid keeping still. “We haven’t spoken in years.”
“I know,” Essek says. He takes a deep breath and looks Verin in the eye. “And I’m sorry, for everything. I’m not asking your forgiveness, but I want you to know that I regret pushing you away. I regret our falling out. I regret...Father. All of it.”
Verin stares back at him, stroking the side of his head and dislodging several strands of hair, which he promptly takes to twisting around his fingers. “Are you dying?”
“What? No,” Essek says, too quickly if Verin’s expression is anything to go by. “I have just had… a lot of time to think after the peace talks. You’re somewhere dangerous. I will also be somewhere dangerous soon. I do not want us to be on bad terms for the rest of our lives, in case they are shorter than expected.”
“You could have written a letter,” Verin says. “But you came to tell me.”
“Do you remember when we wanted to be partners?”
“A child’s stupid dream,” Verin scoffs.
Essek looks at the war table, at the patterns of tiny Aurora Watch soldiers trying to press in on an unyielding abyssal rift. “Then we were both stupid children. I know there’s little chance of that ever happening now, with the roles we’ve found ourselves in, but I think about it sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Verin says, almost hesitant. “Me too. Essek?”
Essek lifts his gaze cautiously.
“Don’t die,” Verin says. “You owe me that much, if you ever want my forgiveness.”
Essek would give anything to promise that. He smiles, trying not to let it waver. “I’ll do my best.”
After that, the tension lifts from the room enough for them both to breathe. Essek can feel the minutes ticking by, and Verin’s open inkwell is drying out on his desk, but they stand together over the war table and Essek listens as Verin goes over the current strategies his forces are employing.
He does his best to commit the moment to memory.