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Chapter Text

Spiders, it turned out, really were everywhere. He’d known they might have to fight spiders in Aeor -- the Might Nein had already found one. What he hadn’t expected was the vast chamber choked with webbing. Frost coated the silken strands, turning them crystaline in the warm glow of his Dancing Lights. Essek shied closer to him.

“How big is this room?” Caleb asked. It went on past the radius of his lights. Either lots of spiders or one really big spider. Maybe lots of big spiders, even.

“I cannot tell. The web gets too dense to see more than maybe fifty feet out.” Essek glanced above them. “Or up.”

“Still not afraid of spiders?” Caleb poked. Essek shot him a small smile.

“Ask me again once we pass out of here.”

They were quiet as they traversed the room, following the smooth-paved road that, in theory, would take them to the next sector. Caleb took point, methodically clearing their way of stray wisps of silk with a flame cantrip.

He felt the tug of...something. A string pulling taught. It was like he dreamt of the moment a hundred times. He had no way of describing it, but he’d already seen himself turn a thousand different ways.

That string pulled so tight, then all at once it snapped. He turned. He glimpsed movement above him, just barely. It tasted like Essek’s magic

Essek, who was no longer behind him..

Caleb’s gaze jerked up toward where he’d seen the movement. Nothing now, but he knew. Somehow, he knew unerringly Essek had gone the way of the movement. He traded out the warm glow of his Dancing Lights for the crisp cool light of the driftglobe. The fly spell came easily to his lips.

His inexplicable knowledge was only supported by the tunnel amongst all the webbing, leading up and through the ceiling. He followed, not bothering with stealth; his light would give him away, and Essek’s magic still echoed through his bones despite his absence. The tunnel twisted and wound, web even here, before opening into a large chamber.

He heard a heavy thud.

His light cast long shadows across the floor. In that steady play of light and dark, he saw a limp form.

Essek lay utterly still in the center of the chamber, red eyes wide. Unseeing? the white light of Caleb's driftglobe caught on the faintest threads of silver across him -- a gossamer-fine layer of webbing.

Was he breathing? Caleb couldn’t tell in the faint light.

Much as he wished to run to him, he knew bait when he saw it. There was nothing he could do for Essek now, whether he was breathing or not. Rage was as hot as his flames. It helped bury the fear that had a choke-hold on his throat.

He raised his light, searching for what could only be a monstrously big spider to have taken a grown elf entirely off his feet.

He kept an eye to the ceiling as he scanned the room, knowing it would be the most likely direction. In one of the pockets of his coat, he wrapped his fingers in a cat's-cradle. Fire had been working well against the sticky threads, and his Web of Fire had the precision to avoid hitting Essek.

The silence stretched for several long seconds.

A sigh echoed from the darkness.

“Leave, rivvil. He’s not yours anymore.” a feminine voice came from up and out of his circle of light. His eyes snapped toward the sound.

The … thing … practically dripped from the ceiling, eerily graceful on the single silvery thread that held it. It settled with careful steps over Essek’s still form.

The harsh shadows cast by the globe did no favors to the scene.

Perhaps she had been beautiful once. Echoes of it still remained. The frosty white light lit silver across her dusky skin, just as it did Essek’s. She was garbed in the same delicate threads that surrounded her. Her snow white hair, laced into tiny braids like webbing over her scalp, fell past her hips.

Hips that warped and meshed into the top of a bulbous, furred spider.

Eight spindly legs supported her bloated form, poised carefully over Essek’s body. He could just glimpse a long, hooked barb jutting from her abdomen.

He’d read of something similar once. Something pre-calamity, from when the drow were still subjegated by the Spider Queen. Some sort of punishment for her clerics who fell out of favor. Elves were long-lived, but not that long-lived. How old could their aberrations grow?

Her eyes glinted with the same red iris of drow in the dark. She watched him unerringly, a look of mild annoyance painted on her face.

“You are uninvited. Leave.”

He hadn’t expected intelligence.

“Give him back.”

She cocked her head at him.

“I’ve more claim to him than you ever did, colbluth.”

“He belongs to himself. Let him go.”

She laughed at him, leaned forward at the waist.

“He belongs, male, to me now.”

He needed her to move. With her directly over Essek, he couldn’t risk a spell. But if she was intelligent, she could be reasoned with.

“Why do you want him?”

She hummed, leaning back, less aggressive now.

“I don’t think you can understand. It’s been so long since I’ve seen one of my kin, and I’m so. very. lonely.” She punctuated each word with a step forward. Good. Caleb retreated, hoping it would encourage her advancement. A few more steps and he’d be safe to cast.

She didn’t follow, though. She kept Essek in the cage of her legs, stinger almost directly above him. Caleb let the cat's-cradle slip from his fingers; the risk of hitting Essek was too high. Instead, he gripped a fistful of phosphorus.

With a word -- and a silent apology to Essek -- the driftglobe flared bright as the sun. whatever she was, she was still part drow, and if those familiar red irises were anything to go off then the light would be just as painful to her.

Sure enough, she shrieked and threw up an arm to guard her eyes. As she moved, Caleb brought up his phosphorus-coated palm and dug two fingers into the center with a deft twist.

Flame sprung to life under her: a circle of fire ringing Essek, angled so none of the heat would touch him. She kept her hand up even as she scrambled to escape the Wall of Fire, her shout turning into an ear-splitting wail.

“Wizard,” She shrieked, "I'll eat your hands first!” She moved, scuttling frightfully fast towards him.

She caught one of his arms, lifting him nearly off his feet as she sunk razor teeth into his forearm. He yelped as he felt her scrape bone. He focused a brief moment, the stone in his bag flaring briefly warm, and his plans melted away from him along with his fear. All that was left was an animalistic rage as his form swelled into an enormous ape.

She snarled something foreign, but the somatics were familiar to the fading, thinking part of his mind. Something Caduceus had cast once. Somewhere, some part of him recognised the Harm spell just before it hit. It was his last coherent thought before agony set in and washed away everything but “rage” and “protect”.

The fight slipped away from him. Pain. The heavy blows of his fists. Rage and rage and rage.

Agony.

And then knowing washed back over him as his form died.

He was under her. The simpler mind of the ape had guarded him from the fear. Now, her blood covered face snarled at him. That stinger dove toward him.

And it happened again. He could see that barb plunge toward him a thousand times, watched as the poison stilled his body for her to ravage. It happened over and over again until, all at once, she missed. Something snapped, and Essek’s magic washed over him again. those thousand potential hits shattered. The stinger scraped against stone as Caleb rolled away.

She snarled something and waved a hand. The wounds on her body knit closed. One snapped leg popped back into place. Shit. Cleric. Right. The cat's-cradle was back around his fingers. He slammed it down and undid all that fresh healing in a column of flame.

She screamed and was on him again. He flung up a Shield as her teeth raked for him once more. Tears washed down her face from squinting past the bright light, likely the only reason she’d missed despite the spell. His palm was still coated in phosphorus. Not true dust, but close enough.

Change, he willed. Be dust.

The spell hit, eerie green against the pure white from the globe. Her scream echoed through the chamber. It somehow seemed to last even as her form crumbled into dust and pale flecks of ash.

For a moment, all he could do was breathe. Then he was scrambling, knife already in hand as he skidded on his knees to Essek’s side.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”

Breath was shallow, but still there. Eyes, silver now in the light, squinted up at him through tears. He cursed himself silently and spoke the command word that would dim the driftglobe. Should’ve been his first move.

He brushed the tear tracks away as he worked the knife under the hair-thin threads of webbing. They kept catching the blade. Finally, he growled in frustration and dropped the knife all together. He grabbed two fistfulls of web. His hands lit with a low flame and the threads turned to smoke in his palms.

“I’ve got you.”

Chapter Text

There’s a hand over his mouth and a pain in his back before he can even think of reacting. There is no scuffing noise as he’s dragged back; his feet hadn’t been on the ground. He releases the levitation spell as he he claws at the new arm now circling his chest, trying to kick out with his feet, to drag a heel, anything to make noise, but he finds himself held off the ground -- no grunt of exertion, simply a slight flex in the muscles holding his arms pinned to his sides.

He tries to scream, to call out to Caleb’s retreating back -- even gagged it would be some muffled sound -- only to find he can’t. his body is going limp. His voice sticks in his throat. He watches in shocked horror as he’s dragged up and away from the warm glow of Caleb’s lights, further into the webbing. The arms around him are humanoid for all their owner moves among the web as easily as any spider.

Caleb doesn’t turn. Essek can see the moment stretching out as he reaches for the core of his magic. He will not turn for several minutes.

He needs Caleb to turn.

He can see the moment fracture under his will, the times Caleb keeps going shifting to him glancing back at the welling of Essek’s magic. It’s not enough now, though; he can see him turn a hundred different ways and never notice him. He reaches deeper. It hurts -- it always does to tug at possibility like this -- but, finally, he sees a moment where Caleb’s eyes flick up. He’s human; there’s no way he can see Essek in the dark. But he must see something as his eyes grow focused. It’s enough.

Essek catches that thread, a single one among thousands, and pulls. Pain laces through his core, and he can feel himself pour away into the spell. He feels a sudden snap, like broken glass shattering in his soul, and the moment solidifies. He has just enough time to hear his name on Caleb’s lips before he disappears from view.

The tunnel winds. He sees more webbing coating the sides as they ascend. He’s at a loss as to what has him, but the fear is steadily growing. Part of him is still screaming. As the tunnel opens into a new chamber -- one less choked by the web in it -- A soft, feminine voice cooes at him.

“There we are.” 

She speaks in undercommon, but her voice is accented similar to the oldest souls in the Luxon. Some archaic twist to her vowels, thicker than he’s heard even from the queen. Then she grips him by the shoulders and turns him around to inspect him.

More than one part is screaming now. 

Before him, holding his limp form easily off the ground, is what can only be a drider -- a drow twisted by the Spider Queen to mesh with the body of a giant spider. They aren't supposed to exist any more; it had been centuries since the drow had served her, not since the Calamity. Yet here one stands, eyes sweeping appraisingly over him, face twisting into a satisfied smile. 

“Oh my dear thing, we’re going to have so much fun you and I.” The word she uses for him is as outdated as her accent -- male playmate and servant and slave all mixed in one word. 

He can feel the panic creeping in as she lowers him. Her long, barbed legs scoop him up with a bit of silk. She turns him over in it, and even if he could move now it wouldn’t matter. He wants to scream, but it’s trapped in his throat, and somehow that just makes it worse. He can feel tears gather as he fights whatever venom she pricked him with, but his limbs remain unresponsive. His breathing is coming too fast. He can’t breathe.

Light blooms from the hole in the floor. 

The drider drops him all at once. He can’t catch himself like this, and his head knocks painfully against the rock floor. He catches her scuttling up among the webs out of the corner of his eye. Caleb rises through the tunnel he’d been dragged through. The driftglobe in his hand paints the severe look on his face closer to anger.

He can’t move. He wants to call out a warning, but he can only barely breathe. For a single moment, Caleb’s eyes meet his. The rage he sees there is startling. It warms him despite everything. That’s for him . But Caleb’s gaze moves on, scanning the room. He’s too smart to approach. 

The drider must see it, too. She sighs in the darkness. 

“Leave, human. He’s not yours anymore.”

Caleb is snarling something, the drider responding, but Essek can barely hear them over the screaming in his head.

He’d been an idiot. He should’ve let Caleb walk on. He’s going to get him killed.

“Not without him.”

He can’t. This is a creature pre-Calamity. Feared and despised even then, even among his kind -- the ones that created them. Caleb can’t hope to fight her, especially not alone.

There’s a moment of silence.

There's no shift in Caleb, no sudden conclusions or decisions to be made. He simply says a word and suddenly the sun is in the room with them. The drider shrieks. Essek wants to, too. He can’t turn away from the blinding, painful light. 

“Wizard,” the drider snarls, “I’ll eat your hands first!” She would play with him. Eat him a piece at a time to see how long it took for him to break.

She hadn’t cared about Caleb; she’d only wanted Essek. How could he have been so selfish as to bring him into this?

Just go, he wants to shout, let her have me. 

But Caleb won’t. Now that he's here, the only way he's leaving is with the drider dead. Essek squints against tears from the bright light and watches Caleb cast.

Caleb had a tendency to keep his polymorph spells saved until he was injured, a buffer between his life and their enemies. Now, he starts with it, form swelling into that pale ape Essek has been slowly becoming familiar with.

The fight is ugly. 

The drider doesn’t attempt to poison Caleb, likely he's too large now for it to be effective. Possibly the reason he’d chosen the form in the first place.

She has teeth, though, and spells. She keeps up a slew of Inflict spells between trying to chew through the ape’s fingers when he manages to grab her. 

In the end, she is clinging to his face, limbs digging in, and casting what could only be a Harm spell. The sound the ape makes as its form shudders and blurs will haunt him, Essek can already tell.

Then it’s just Caleb under the drider. She jabs at him with her stinger and Essek’s heart freezes. 

Everything else does, too; he almost doesn’t realize he’s reached for that wellspring of possibility again.  

If the first time had been painful, this time is torturous. Everything aches, and he can feel himself sifting away even as he holds the world suspended. 

Finding the right thread is easier this time -- or at least it’s quicker. Fewer possibilities to sift through. Pulling it into reality, though, is another thing entirely. It feels like tugging on razor wire -- biting and cutting, leaving him bleeding somewhere he can’t see. It feels like something breaks, but Caleb rolls out of the way all the same.

Caleb paints white dust up his arm, not the usual components for a disintegrate spell, but the basic somatics are the same. Another time, Essek will marvel at the changes Caleb makes on the fly to compensate for the change in materials. Now, he can feel the throb of his heart as hope starts to weigh in against fear. The drider shrieks, an ear splitting thing that Essek hopes won’t also haunt his memories. 

Her form begins to crumble into flecks of pale ash.

Essek feels like he’s shaking, even though he knows he can’t even twitch because of the venom. She’s gone. He knew the venom would outlive her, it only makes sense, but somehow the reality of it is so much worse than his logic should allow. He can barely even believe she’s dead. Caleb hadn’t left a body behind. It’s a blessing; there’s no corpse to stare at waiting for some twitch of movement. The pile of ash should be a reassurance. It does nothing for the fear that had been welling the whole fight.

Then Caleb is there. The day-bright light dims to a bearable level.

“I’ve got you.”

Essek could've sobbed in relief. He’s so very tired, and he can barely breathe for the venom in his veins. He’d been helpless before, yet for all his fear then it had still been his friends who’d had him. This… This is different.

“I’ve got you,” Caleb says again as he burns away the silk, breaking Essek out of his fledgling panic.

Chapter Text

Caleb hauled him into his lap, one hand swiping away the tear tracks on Essek’s face.

“Spider venom usually lasts an hour.” That was spiders though, not aberrations made by the Spider Queen. “It’s been seven minutes.” He hoped it would be the reassurance he intended.

With a palm on Essek’s chest, he could just feel the rapid, shallow flutter of his breath. Caleb selfishly gathered him closer as his adrenaline from the fight faded, leaving him cold, aching, and with a sharp pain in his forearm. All he could see was that brief moment before the spider-bitch had appeared, where he couldn’t tell if Essek had been breathing.

He called his lights again, the candle-lit orange so much kinder than the surgical white of the driftglobe. He spread them about the room, eyes flicking about for any movement. Just because she was dead didn't mean they were safe. He didn’t think anything would try for them in the wake of the fight, but there was a chance she hadn’t been the only spider in the area. Hopefully anything else had been scared off by the sound of combat.

“Ten minutes.”

He longed to cast the dome, but Esek still looked frightfully pale, even in the more forgiving light of his globules. He was conscious -- there was awareness in his eyes -- but it did him little good for the venom in his veins. Caleb shuttered at the thought of being so helpless in the face of the last fight. No, he wasn’t putting Essek down until his color returned and breathing eased. 

“Twenty minutes.”

Thirty five minutes in, Essek finally managed to force his throat to form sound. 

“S’ry”

“You have nothing to apologise for,” Caleb murmured back immediately, pressing his lips against Essek’s hair, “You did something I could feel it -- like falling into the Expanse.”

Essek shifted slightly, but the venom still held him limp. Caleb hiked him up higher against his chest.

“Time. ‘S hard.”

Caleb barked a laugh.

“I would expect so. That’s not nothing. I’m surprised I’ve never seen you do it before.”

“Hurts.”

And at that his mirth was gone. 

“You’re injured?” 

But Essek shook his head.

“Aches. Takes too much.

“It’s not a spell, is it.” All spells had components, even if just a word. Essek had done it while completely paralyzed. Essek gave a poor approximation of a shrug.

“St’rted as one.”

Caleb hummed in thought. He’d have to have Essek explain the intricacies of it once he was back on his feet. 

Fifty minutes in, Essek began to shiver. Caleb couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. 

“I’m putting up the dome, mein Freund. Can you sit on your own?” 

Essek made a soft sound, but managed to lean up off Caleb’s chest some. Between the two of them, they got Essek braced up on his own. If anything, the tremors got worse. Caleb had a feeling it wasn’t the cold. 

Caleb slipped out from behind Essek and moved so he was before him. He carefully cupped Essek’s face.

“I will not move more than five feet from you, okay?”

Essek managed a nod. He tracked Caleb as he paced out the circles needed for the dome.

Once the dome was up, Caleb couldn’t help his sigh of relief. Safety. They had time, now, to recover. He turned back to shuffle over to Essek -- found him swaying where he sat.

Caleb caught him by the shoulders.

“One hour. How are you feeling?”

Essek’s hooded gaze had remained locked on him. He gave a shakey, empty grin. It did nothing to reassure Caleb.

“Here.” He started divesting Essek of his layers, searching for any injuries. He found a tear in the back of Essek’s coat. Before he could get much farther, Essek caught his hand where it rested on his shoulder.

“Caleb, your arm.”

“I’ll deal with it in a moment.”

“Caleb.”

“Just- let me do this.”

Essek’s tired eyes searched his for a long moment before he released him with a sigh. 

“You should take a potion,” He said, but he didn’t try to stop Caleb again. 

“In a moment.” He hiked Essek’s shirt up to inspect the wound on his back. It didn’t look too bad. A single puncture wound, not terribly deep. It must have been from her stinger, where she’d poisoned him. 

He rolled their coats into makeshift pillows, Spread their cloaks on top of each other as some meager bedding between them and the rock floor. Gently but insistently, he ushered Essek to lay down. Essek frowned at him, and with a flick of his wrist -- still slightly less graceful than his norm -- a potion appeared in his hand. He held it out to Caleb.

“Ja, ja.” Caleb rolled up his bloodied sleeve to check the bite. Unlike the wound on Essek’s back, this one was deep. He remembered the scrape of teeth over bone and repressed a shudder. He was lucky she hadn’t taken the whole chunk of his arm out. He didn’t fight Essek over taking the potion. Puncture wounds were hard to keep from being infected, even ignoring the constant ache of the wound.

He hesitated a moment before laying behind him, tucking Essek’s head under his chin and pressing close. It may have been too bold of him, but he was reluctant at best to be seperate from him after the encounter. 

“Is this alright?” Caleb whispered. Essek had gone completely still.

“Yes,” Essek whispered back. Something in Caleb eased. He tried not to think too hard about it. They’d been in close quarters in the dome before, never mind the fact that usually Essek was sat up while he tranced. This was just… a little closer than normal. That was all. 

---

He woke later with a sharp breath, the image of Essek alone with the aberration clinging to his mind even with his eyes open.

But Essek was still pressed against him. He’d rolled over sometime in the night, arm now thrown across Caleb in kind. His head was still tucked under Caleb’s chin, warm breath washing across Caleb’s throat. 

For a moment Caleb couldn't help but bask in the warmth and the proof of life pressed so close to him. Then the time sunk in. It had been eight hours and Essek was still asleep. Asleep, not trancing. 

“Essek?” He murmured, concerned. Essek hummed and pressed closer to him, still not fully awake. “Essek, are you alright?”

He knew the moment Essek realized where he was. He froze, breath held. 

“It’s been eight hours.” Caleb tried, not sure how to assure him without making it more awkward. Why had he given into that selfish urge last night? Essek was quiet for a long moment. Caleb didn’t push him. He wouldn’t keep him if he decided to push him away. 

“Manipulating possibility takes… energy. I usually have to rest more after it.”

“Usually as in…?”

“Always.”

Caleb nodded. He needed to rest between making his transmuter stones, why wouldn’t Essek need to rest after literally changing the future .

“You’ll have to explain this thing to me some time.”

“It will take a while. There’s a lot of dunimancy involved that we haven’t covered yet.”

“I look forward to it.”

There was a long silence between them. Not necessarily uncomfortable, but Caleb could tell something was on Essek’s mind.

“I’m sorry,” Essek’s voice was small. 

“Schatz…” 

“I could’ve gotten you killed. I should’ve let you keep walking.”

Caleb leaned back, catching Essek by the chin so he couldn’t look away.

“I would’ve burned that room to ash to find you. I would’ve gone into that fight with fewer spells had you not intervened.” 

Essek’s eyes slid closed to avoid his gaze. 

“By all rights You should’ve died.”

“Essek-” His hand shifted to cradle the back of Essek’s head. He pressed their foreheads together. “I would not have left you.”

“She didn't want to hurt me, not like she did you. She wanted to… keep me.”

Caleb felt the shudder run down Essek’s spine. 

“Not the worst thing I’ve fought.” Caleb assured, tucking him close again.

“But this time you were alone .” 

Cognoza, possibly the worst they’d ever faced, they’d at least had the whole Nein with them.

“I wasn’t, though,” Caleb reminded, “I had you.”

Essek barked out a flat “Hah”. 

“What little good I was, sat there like a discarded doll.” His voice was bitter.

“You literally changed fate, schatz. I would not have won that fight without you.”

It wasn’t the right thing to say though. Essek shivered again ducked against Caleb’s throat.

“You should have left me.”

Caleb leaned back so he could see him again.

“No.” 

He then pulled him closer and pressed their lips together. Essek made a surprised noise, going so utterly still. A moment later though, he was gripping Caleb’s shirt, sinking into him.