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Caleb wakes first, the first thing he’s aware of is how warm the room feels, the warm air shocking on his cold face. Then it’s the taste. The familiar buzzing taste of a healing potion on his tongue, the way it seems to fizz based on flavour alone.
He hears stirring next to him, and then a mumble that could only be Jester. He focuses on the dark room surrounding him, focuses on seeing past the faint glows on magical items in an otherwise pitch black space, though the gently glowing, recognisable shapes of the Star Razor and Holy Avenger let him know quickly that Fjord and Yasha are here too.
He feels weak. So, so very weak. Something in his side is hurting, and as he thinks about it he realises that he can feel something wet on his skin there. He can only assume it’s blood, based on the smell surrounding him.
He hears more stirring, and a faint whooshing noise as he sees a shape block his view of the Star Razor. He’d know that sound anywhere.
“Essek?” he hears a raspy voice. Ah, it seems Jester recognised it too. “Why do you look like that?”
Stupid. Stupid Caleb. Jester, tiefling. She can see in the dark.
He raises a hand, and it feels so, so heavy, but it find its way to his component pouch, grabbing immediately onto some phosphorus, which he clutches and brings into the motion that has always come so easy to him, though now the spell, the cantrip he’s used so many times only summons one, feebly glowing globule. It grants him enough light, though, through the flicker, that he can see the stirring bodies of the entire mighty nein beside him.
And he can see what Jester means.
Essek’s hair is much longer than he’d ever seen it, seeming to be just about shoulder length, though it’s pulled into a messy ponytail at the back of his head. He wears the same mantle he’d always worn, the hem of the cloak looks battered now. He turns to look at Caleb, and his face is… Sunken. He looks emaciated, like he’s on the brink of starving, like he hasn’t rested in days.
Caleb stares at him, and Essek gives a weak smile, his whole body sinking as his feet come to rest on the ground.
He maintains eye contact with Caleb as he speaks, though he seems to be addressing the Nein at large. “I did it. Welcome back, my friends.”
Caleb opens his mouth to reply, but before he can say anything, Essek exhales deeply and slumps into a pile on the floor, all signs of life leaving his body.
One hour. That’s what Caduceus had said, as he’d started casting.
One hour, three offers.
Jester was going first. She clutched Essek’s hand as she talked.
Caleb isn’t listening. That exchange is between Jester and Essek. Maybe Artagan and Melora if they care to listen, but Caleb doesn’t know where he is right now. And he’s not sure what may have happened to the gods in the time they’ve been out.
There seems to be some presence, though. Caduceus’s staff is glowing as he channels his spell through it, holding the diamond firmly between his fingers as he mutters his incantation.
Caleb is sitting on the other side of the ‘room’. He knows he’ll be asked to offer to Essek at some point, but he’d rather put it off as long as he can.
For now he’s sitting across from Beau. Silently sorting everything that was expelled from Essek’s pocket dimension upon his death.
A familiar spellbook that once may have tempted Caleb more than anything is now shunted far to Beau’s side of the pile. He thinks if he touches the book he may be sick.
There’s more collections of notes here. They’re all written in Undercommon, and occasionally Beau looks at something with interest. Caleb doesn’t want to ask. If there’s anything of interest here, Essek can share when he’s back. He’d want to share it himself.
So Caleb’s sorting through components. Changes of clothes. The outfit Essek had been wearing when they’d seen him last, however long that may have been.
He pats down the fur on the collar of the cloak a little as he folds it neatly and sets it to the side, picking up another robe from the pile.
As he moves this one, however, he hears the thud of metal on solid ground, and then a rolling. He looks down, and sees what he recognises instantly as the Happy Fun Ball.
He puts out a hand to stop it, and meets Beau’s eyes as she raises an eyebrow. He shrugs, setting it neatly in the collar of Essek’s winter coat to prevent it from rolling, and goes back to sorting clothes.
Jester stands up, and makes her way over to Beau and Caleb, tears staining her face. She sits down beside them, and Caleb knows she’s going to ask him to take a turn convincing Essek to come back, but before he has time to think of an excuse to not go right now, Veth meets his eye and stands up from where she’d been sitting, sitting beside Essek and clutching his hand in both of her own as she starts to talk.
The three of them continue sorting Essek’s things in silence for a while, ignoring each other for the most part, before Jester leans over to Caleb.
“Psst. Caleb.” He looks up with a start, and turns to what Jester’s gesturing at.
“Your haversack?”
“Yeah.” She opens the bag, and pulls out a second, identical metal ball to the one Caleb had found in the remains of Essek’s pocket dimension.
Caleb can feel the colour drain from his face as he looks between them. Identical, in every way.
There’s no reason for Essek to have another one, right? There was only one ball, surely. There only needed to be one. But there must have been more. Why would Essek duplicate it? How could Essek duplicate it?
He feels the need to identify both of them. To see if they both are what they seem to be. But he’s drained of spells. He’s exhausted. Even a ten minute ritual seems like a terribly daunting task right now. He doesn’t know how Caduceus is managing it.
Besides, the twenty minutes to identify the two of them could mean Essek staying dead.
Jester tucks her own ball back into her haversack, and they continue sorting.
Caleb’s mind begins to wander as he sorts through Essek’s components. He just wants to know what happened. He can see, across the room, Yasha is carefully patching up Fjord, who seems to be injured the most of all of them, but Essek didn’t have a scratch.
He remembers fighting the Tomb Takers, and going down in that battle. He remembers seeing Yasha losing her rage and falling, lifeless, on the floor behind Lucien. He remembers watching Jester be grabbed around the throat by Lucien, watching the dark blood stream from her face as she tried to kick her way out of her grasp. He remembers a scimitar, cold and sharp, entering his side. He remembers losing vision as his friends fell around him. He remembers seeing Essek there, just as scared as the rest of them. Bloodied.
What had happened to him?
“Caleb.” He hears Veth’s voice, a little hoarse. Understandably so, he can see the blood stains she’s tried to wipe from her face, and the tracks that tears have engraved down those on her cheeks.
He sighs, dusting off his hands as he stands carefully. He’s been healed, but his side is still sore.
He kneels beside Essek’s torso, accepting a kiss on the head from Veth as she leaves the drow’s side, and glances to Caduceus, whose eyes are closed on concentration as he channels the spell.
He takes Essek’s hand, still slightly warm, though he knows that’s only because Veth had been holding it just moments prior.
“Essek.” He doesn’t know where to start. He has so many things he wants to say to Essek, wants to ask him, but they’re all things he’d want to tell him while alive. What could make a good enough offer to let that happen?
He takes a deep breath, keeping his voice low, as not to disturb the others.
“I have… so many questions. I don’t doubt you’re the one responsible for our being alive, so I guess I should thank you first. I can’t possibly imagine what you did, but you saved us. You’re brilliant. You always have been.”
His hand finds his way to his component pouch as he speaks.
“I know we’re very similar, Essek. And I know that I’d hesitate to come back, if I’d died like this. Dying for a cause, isn’t that right, friend? Better than being executed like a coward.”
He pauses for a moment, and realises he’s started fidgeting with a pearl in his free hand, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. One of the pearls he’d recovered in Aeor.
“But I need you to return to us. If there’s one thing this family has taught me, it’s that we’re always worthy of redemption. Always worthy of learning, of growing. You have much to learn yet, Thelyss, but we all care about you, more than you’re willing to accept.”
He presses the pearl to his lips, holding it there for a few moments as he squeezes Essek’s hand, then brings the pearl back down, pressing it to Essek’s forehead.
“And you owe me, Essek. You owe me a trip back to Aeor. Just like I owe you a copy of our transmutation spell. You can’t get out of a promise this easily.”
He feels himself choke back sobs as he continues forcing, tears streaming down his face, and burning in his tired eyes.
“If I could have left the Nein by dropping dead, Essek, I would have done so long ago. But we’re fucking stubborn, and we’re not going to let you escape us that easily.”
Caleb’s hands are shaking, but he holds the pearl stubbornly in place. He can feel it denting into his fingers, and the force with which he’s pressing it into his thumb is painful, but he doesn’t care.
“We have so much work left to do, you and I. I’ve made spells of my own and I know you have too. We could do so much together. But to do that I’ll need you back. Then I can show you my creations. We can share them. Just come back to us. Come back.”
He can’t bring himself to talk anymore, and he hears the pearl roll onto the floor as his grip loosens.
He hears Caduceus stop muttering, and feels the large, warm hand on his shoulder.
It’s over. The spell’s over. Essek didn’t come back. Caduceus squeezes gently, and Caleb collapses into his side.
The rest of the Nein start to make their way over. Jester starts muttering to Caduceus about another spell, one that might work better.
Then Caleb feels a twitch, a slight shift, in the hand still grasped in his own.
The fingers tighten around his, and he hears a shaky breath come from the body in front of him.
They’ve had some time now. They’re all of them tapped for spells, but Caduceus has brewed a tea he claims will help to invigorate them. He hands them out around the circle, and Essek seems to be clinging to his as if it’s the only thing anchoring him to this plane. Whichever that might be.
Caduceus hands the last mug to Fjord as he sits between him and Yasha, and Fjord nods his thanks, flinching a little as the warm mug comes into contact with what appears to be a nasty burn on his right palm.
Essek is wrapped in his winter cloak beside Caleb. Neither of them have stood, the rest of the Nein only gathering around them, sipping at their tea as they attempt to collect their thoughts.
Of course, it’s Beauregard who speaks up first.
“So. Are we like… Safe here?” She’s staring into her drink as she talks, not looking towards Essek, but he answers as if she was.
“We should be.”
“And where exactly is here?” Fjord asks, eyes darting between Beau, Caleb and Essek.
“Ah. It’s a demiplane of my own creation. Sealed away from time. Nothing will progress in the outside world as we’re in here. It’s worked for me for...” he pauses, “About five years. My time, not theirs.”
He gestures vaguely behind him, and smiles as he meets Caleb’s eye. Caleb becomes suddenly aware of the awestruck look on his own face.
Beau leans forward, doing her best to hide a wince as she does so. “Essek, what did you do?”
“It’s a long story...”
“We seem to have infinite time.”
Essek lets out a small laugh. “This is fair. Alright,”
He adjusts his position a little, and takes a long drink of his tea before continuing.
“When we fought the Tomb Takers, I don’t know what you remember, but it did not go well. You all fell, I panicked, and fled. I’d heard you talking, though, of this… archmage’s bane. You called it something else, I don’t remember what, but you’d mentioned it when we’d taken inventory earlier. Gave a brief on what it was.”
He gestures to Jester, who helpfully pulls out her haversack.
“I knew Jester had it, so I took her bag, and I cast banishment on myself. I don’t think they cared enough about me to bother counterspelling. I think they just thought me a coward.”
He takes another drink, looking to Caleb for a moment and smiling as he continues, “But you’d mentioned time effects in those halls, so I solved its puzzle, and was helpfully transported but a room over from where I needed to be to slow down time. It was chronurgy doing that, did you know that?”
Essek looks around the group, and they all shake their heads.
“It was fascinating. Made my job far easier as well. I slowed it so that a minute out here was a year in there. It’s as far as I was willing to push its time distortion.”
Essek sighs, tilting his head back to look up. “That place is fascinating. Incredibly dangerous, but fascinating. I stayed to the few rooms I knew were safe. And I worked. I found some notes of his on demiplanes, and I altered them to fit my own needs.”
His gaze snaps down to meet Caleb’s again, and he can see pure, academic excitement behind Essek’s eyes.
“And there were notes on time travel. Real notes, from a mage of the arcanum era. It was fascinating. I spent two years or so working there, before I was confident enough in the make of my demiplane, before I was confident that its duration was indefinite, and it could exist outside of the Material Plane’s timeline, and I moved here.”
“What did you eat?” Jester interrupts, “Where did you poop?”
Essek smiles. “Halas had essentially a lifetime supply of sustenance beads in his halls. That helped.”
Jester frowns in melodramatic disappointment and gives a thumbs up.
“So what, we died?” Beau asks.
“Well, yes. In all the time I was in both here and the halls, I believe a few hours passed outside. I don’t believe any of you survived that encounter, even by clinging to life.”
The Nein nod solemnly, and Caleb looks to Essek, who answers his question without his even asking it.
“We’ve established well that unassisted time travel, at least, is dangerous. I found a way to travel back in time, just a few hours, across planes. I knew it would weaken me. I believed it would probably kill me. I believed your collective knowledge of the Somnovem, and its potential to save this reality, to be worth that risk. My life was forfeit either way. I transported myself to a moment where I knew you would all be alive, and transported you all here. Thankfully my work served well, my body stayed intact, and I had enough time to heal you all.”
Caleb barely processes himself leaning towards Essek, grabbing his face and pressing a kiss to his cheek.
“You are brilliant!” he says, resting both his hands on Essek’s shoulders, “The Aeorians could hardly figure that out and you had it down in five years?”
Essek smiles, averting his eyes, but not pulling away from Caleb as a heavy purple flush makes its way across his cheeks.
“I had a lot of help from a Zeidelian archmage, to be fair.”
Caleb shakes him, just a little, too fueled by excitement to be stopped by the state of his body.
“Do not downplay your excellence. You are remarkable. Absolutely incredible.”
“Are they going to kiss?” Jester whispers, easily loud enough for everyone to hear.
Essek’s ears prick up a little and he pulls away from Caleb, face still deep purple, and downs the rest of his tea.
“So do you know the current state of Cognouza?” Fjord asks, setting his drink down, “If you brought us here from the past, does that mean time is frozen from the point you left it, or the time you picked us up?”
“Ah, I do not, and it should be the time I left it. The time travel was temporary, and as far as I know, which is hopefully a lot considering I made much of the spell, this specific demiplane was made at that point in time, so once it’s dispelled, time should resume at the point it was made. It’s limited in its uses, but it served me well.”
Caleb’s mind starts racing with ideas, and Essek catches his eye once again, expression firm. “It’s powerful magic, Caleb. Bending time and reality. It shouldn’t be used lightly.”
Caleb nods. “Understood. I’d be interested to see what that combination of spells could be used for, especially with more than one mage working on them.”
Essek seems to smile despite himself. “It would be interesting. Perhaps for later, however.”
Fjord nods, and attempts to stand, prevented by Yasha and Caduceus’s hands on each shoulder, holding him gently to the ground.
“We should all rest while we have Essek’s demiplane at our disposal. Essek, do you know where this will expel us once we leave?”
“Wherever I please. Do you have requests?”
Beau leans forward, meeting Fjord’s eye, “We’d want to be back at Aeor, since that’s where we assume the city would be coming back. Then if it hasn’t been released-”
Fjord looks to Jester “You have a spell that can transport us across planes, right?”
Jester nods. “Anywhere we need to be. I can take us right to them.”
Fjord smiles. “Fully healed and filled up on spells, especially with the Takers already beaten up, we should be more than a match for them.”
Beau holds out a fist to Fjord and he bumps it with his own, flinching as he’s reminded once more of his injuries.
The Nein start assembling their beds, and Essek grabs Caleb’s arm for a moment as he moves to stand.
“I’m holding you to that promise of continued study, you know.”
Caleb nods. “I wouldn’t dream otherwise.”