Chapter Text
"You'll all fucking pay for this, assholes! You think I won't find a way to kill you? I killed the fucking Plank King!"
“Is he one of the magic ones of the nine?”
“I don’t think so. Nothing substantial anyway.”
“Are you all fucking listening to me? Captain Tusktooth will wreck your whole shit!”
Kingsley cursed about everyone he could see as the drugs wore off, but the arcanists around him seemed more than well prepared enough to counter his magics. He was pretty much helpless as they kept him in some long hold person type spell, levitated through the hallways of this cold tower, stripped of all his stuff.
Soon they were throwing him in a drafty stone room unceremoniously.
With that, the magic was gone, and Kingsley was pissed.
For a while he pounded on the door, but it must have been reinforced with magic.
Fucking wizards.
He should have known better to get drunk off his ass in Bysaes Tyl, he supposed. There was a reason Fjord and Jester avoided sailing that far north. Too many Crownsguard looking after all the elves there, and too close to all the unpleasantness in Rexxentrum. Easier to just ask one of their friends that could teleport to take them somewhere safe.
Caught up in his own self-chastising, he almost missed the soft groan from the corner.
Shit.
He didn't even have his swords.
Now was not the time to be stuck in a room fighting an undead creature with nothing but his fists. Could he use that weird blood magic on his fists? He’d never tried before. It was easier to just use his scimitars like all the other pirates he knew. Other than whatever the fuck Jester was still doing with an axe, and what Fjord did to make his sword appear in his hands. That would be useful right about now.
Kingsley whipped around to face the threat and saw a crumpled figure on the floor, shivering cold. Red hair, matted, dirty and far too familiar. Was that blood?
Shit.
"Caleb?" he whispered, reevaluating everything.
No movement. No recognition.
Shit, shit, shit.
Kingsley knelt down, very gingerly gathering the wizard in his arms. He was cold. "Caleb? Can you hear me?"
Caleb shivered and frowned, curling up against Kingsley’s chest and holding himself around the middle like he might break apart otherwise. With the strength of his shivering, that might not have been far off the mark.
“Mollymauk?”
“Not quite, dear.” Ignoring the little pang of sadness at that, Kingsley just tried to brush the hair away from Caleb’s head. It didn’t actually look like there was a wound there, just blood. Not a knock to the head that would have made Caleb forget the past couple years.
Caleb winced and curled up even more. “Vergib mir, Kingsley," he said, not long after.
“Not sure if you’re speaking another language, or just gibberish, but I think you’re the last one who should be apologizing.” He could just tell it was an apology. Not that he knew Caleb that well, even when he had hazy dreams of pinning the man against a wall, of kissing him on the forehead, of teasing him until he blushed or smacking him on the ass with his tail.
For now, he’d just take not being called Lucien as a win. Even if it sounded like the original owner of this body had flirted with Caleb too, surely he’d never been this kind.
And it definitely seemed like he would need every win he could get in here.
“Where are we?” Kingsley asked, partially to assess Caleb’s mental acuity, and partly to figure out how in the Nine Hells they were going to get help.
Caleb took a deeper breath, and his next words were much more coherent. “The Pearlbow Wilderness, near the Vergesson Sanatorium. How… How did you get here? Where did they find you?”
Kingsley took a deep breath, trying to figure out exactly how that was supposed to make him feel. First of all, Caleb was well enough to form full sentences that made sense and proved that he probably hadn’t sustained brain damage. Secondly, he had no fucking clue how he ended up in the middle of nowhere in the woods, or how to answer that question. And third, Caleb said “they” as if he knew these assholes. That wasn’t a good sign. In the back of his mind, Kingsley was still hoping this was some horrible attempt to ransom them. The Mighty Nein had an awful lot of coin, enough to motivate nearly anyone.
This sounded like different tricksy wizards, and that was dangerous.
“I was drinking in Bysaes Tyl,” he said. “Not really sure how they dragged me all the way out here, but things got a bit fuzzy after my fifth drink.”
Caleb seemed to shrink even further into himself. “I’m so sorry.”
“You keep apologizing,” Kingsley said, trying to just be relieved that Caleb was still speaking. “It’s not like you're the one who locked me up. How long have you been here?”
He should have answered quickly. Caleb always knew what day it was, what time it was, everything down to a t. To not have that immediate answer was worrying. The answer he got was even worse. “What… What day is it?”
“Folsen,” Kingsley said. He was pretty sure, even if they all blended together on the sea. Typically he made a point of asking in port, and he’d just asked the folks in the tavern last night at Bysaes Tyl.
Quickly doing the mental math, Caleb said. “Six days, thirteen hours, and forty eight minutes. Roughly. I wasn’t… focused for some of that.”
“Are you okay?” Kingsley asked, pulling back again to look at the human in his lap, who had thankfully stopped shivering. It was freezing in this stone tower, but his infernal blood was kind enough to make up the difference.
Caleb shrugged halfheartedly, then winced at the movement. “I’ve had worse.”
“You’ve bloody died before, Caleb,” Kingsley reminded him. Those were memories he really, really didn't like. “That doesn’t mean shit.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’ve been better too, I suppose.”
Kingsley sighed. “No shit. Well, show me the damage. I’m no cleric, but Jester taught me some first aid before I fucked off.”
“It’s…” Caleb faltered. “It’s not pretty.”
Raising a brow, Kingsley gestured to his scarred torso. “I’m no stranger to blood, love.”
“You don’t remember three fourths of those,” Caleb muttered, but slowly worked to unclench his arms from where they’d been wrapped firmly around his abdomen.
Kingsley had seen all of Caleb’s scars. They were something that Kingsley took some solace in when he first started this life. Sure, Fjord had that one gnarly scar across his face that made him look all the part a pirate, but no one looked quite like Kingsley. But if the pretty wizard could have all those scars on his arms, there wasn’t any reason Kingsley couldn’t be scarred to hell and be damned pretty too.
There were plenty of other reasons he liked Caleb’s company, but that was definitely a good one in the beginning. He didn’t mind the flirting either. Or that lovely tower…
What he wouldn’t give for that right now.
“Don’t suppose you could summon your nice tower and let me bandage you up?” he said, trying to keep a straight face as he saw the extent of the damage.
Every fucking scar had been reopened with surgical precision, and Caleb was probably shaking just as much from the godsdamned trauma of it all, on top of the blood loss. Caleb had been right. It wasn’t pretty. It made his blood boil.
“I… I can’t,” Caleb said, flinching away once more. “If I could cast, I could teleport us to the Mollymauk. Or send a message. You can’t even receive one. This tower is warded against any magic. Has been for years.”
“Years?” Kingsley asked, looking around the tower for a moment, taking things in, instead of just wishing for the magical one. “You’ve been here before?”
“Unfortunately.”
The tower was in disrepair, and looked like it had been for decades. Brick and mortar was rotting away to nothing, the window panes had long been broken and boarded up, leaving a horrible draft in the air. It was not a place to be this late in fall.
“It’s worse in the winter,” Caleb said as if he read Kingsley’s mind, curling up more.
Kingsley’s first instinct was to hold the man tighter, but that might manage to hurt him more. “It’s always used… like this?” he asked. He knew there were plenty of pirates that delighted in torture, but he certainly wasn’t one of them. It was one of the reasons he got rid of the last Plank King.
Caleb only nodded, eyes far away.
There was a sadness, a desperation, to them that told Kingsley he was the victim, not the torturer. He’d only heard bits and pieces of what the man had done in his youth, and didn’t particularly care one way or the other. That was probably his favorite part of Beau’s journal about Mollymauk. Caleb didn’t particularly care who Molly had been before, and was fine with second starts. And then thirds. Might as well extend him the same courtesy.
“Are you warm enough?” Kingsley asked, deciding to change the subject. No more dwelling in the past.
Caleb seemed to realize he was practically sitting in Kingsley’s lap then, cheeks gaining a little color as he nodded. “Yes, sorry-”
“Stop apologizing for everything,” Kingsley mumbled, gently depositing Caleb on the stone floor and ripping up the bottom of his flowing shirt. Untucked from his tight black pants, it was pretty long, enough to make two decent strips into bandages without exposing much of his undershirt. “Hold out your arm? Or rest it on my leg if you can’t lift it that long.”
“You don’t have to.” Caleb was looking on, practically horrified at Kingsley ripping up his shirt. "I… I don't…"
"Need it? Deserve it? We both know that's bullshit, so come on." Kingsley patted his knee. "Right or left?"
Very tentatively, Caleb put his left hand down on Kingsley’s knee, barely touching him. With the other trembling hands, he pulled up his shirt sleeves, revealing the mess of his forearms.
He didn't see any way to properly clean them, but he could at least stop any blood flow so Caleb didn't have to keep clutching them. "Tell me if they're too tight."
"Ja," Caleb breathed, breath shaking almost as badly as his hands.
Kingsley kept talking, to try and keep his mind off the pain. “So why do you think we’re here?”
“Bysaes Tyl is Ludinus Da’leth’s hometown,” Caleb said softly. “They want to know what information I have on him, so they know what to expect from the Cobalt Soul. They… They likely know that I care more for the members of the Mighty Nein than myself. And you showed up in his hometown, the closest one not intimately known to the Cobalt Soul.”
“You know you can’t tell them anything, right?” Kingsley said, looking up from his work for a moment.
Caleb had his eyes closed, but his brows were furrowed.
“Prisoners without more useful information that could act as very incriminating witnesses don’t live long,” Kingsley went on. The hostages that were taken alongside them probably wouldn’t live any longer, though he didn’t point that out. He could take a little torture. Probably.
Caleb remained silent. When Kingsley was done with the first arm, he gently tapped the top of Caleb's hand to get him to switch.
He finished as quickly as he could, satisfied that the bandages would keep whatever grime was in this tower out of the wounds. “There. Better than nothing, yeah?”
Kingsley looked up at Caleb, trying not to panic when he saw the tears making little clean tracks in the dirt gathered on his face after lying on the floor for six days. He looked younger like this, scared and hurt. Beau’s journal said he lost eleven years in the sanatorium, and he really did look like a scared kid now. “Shit, sorry. Are you okay?”
“Entschuldigung, Astrid,” Caleb mumbled, going to wipe the tears away and wincing at the pain in his arms.
Fuck.
Deep breath.
No time to panic.
“Caleb, you’re alright, yeah?” Kingsley said, wiping the tears away for him. It was a stupid thing to say, but he couldn’t think of anything else. He’d read about Caleb getting lost in his head, in his past, but never seen it. And as much as Molly got results by slapping him out of it, Kingsley really doubted that was the correct response to this kind of trauma. “I don’t really know what to do, but I’m here.”
Caleb looked up at him with watery eyes, only emphasizing how deeply blue they were. It was startling, like the ocean captured inside. “Es tut mir leid,” he mumbled, still far away and starting to shiver again.
At least that he could help with. “Come here,” Kingsley said, pulling him closer. “Get warm again, okay? Just relax.”
That was such shit.
Caleb curled up again, shivering in his lap once again, mumbling in Zemnian and just as lost as when Kinsley had been thrown in here.
Slowly, the man he held close fell still, breath evening out into a well deserved rest.
As soon as the tension left his shoulders, Kingsley’s stomach growled, reminding him of how he hadn’t had a proper meal since the night before. It was the lack of water that would get him first though. When had Caleb last been properly fed? Or given water? The man was practically skin and bones to begin with.
He looked after Caleb, listening for footsteps or other signs of impending danger that didn’t come. There was a shadow under the door that shifted occasionally, likely some kind of guard. Likely heavily armed, if not a fucking wizard. Not someone Kingsley could deal with while unarmed and trying to protect Caleb, if he ever managed to break the door down by force.
It looked like there was no way out of here, as optimistic as Kingsley usually tried to be.
They were fucked.
At least they were together?
Eventually their friends would come looking for them, right?
Would they find them here?
He didn’t even know what part of the world Jester and Fjord were in. Beau and Yasha he hadn’t heard from in months, and Veth and Caduceus were retired.
Would there be anything left for them to find, when they got around to it?
The later it got, the darker the tower got, until he could no longer see any colors in the dim moonlight. As time passed, the little hope he’d been holding out that Jester’s usual nightly message would break through the anti-magic wards of the tower slowly shriveled away. What would he even say in twenty five words?
Kidnapped by evil wizards, near shitty Sanatorium with Caleb in gross cold tower. Come quickly, with help probably. And healing potions, or magic or whatever.
That was probably too vague.
Abducted by Cerberus Assembly bastards, they’ve been hurting Caleb for information. He’s… not okay. Near the Vergesson Sanatorium, weird cold torture chamber tower. Come quick.
His mind went through more and more iterations of what he might say, if Jester’s spell came through, though the hope in him disappeared completely as the moon rose higher in the sky.
Kingsley gingerly kissed the top of Caleb’s head and looked up at the moon. He could only see Catha, and just barely at that, through one of the boarded up windows. For the first time in his life, he sent up a prayer. Normally he left that to the clerics, and he hadn’t really gone as heavy towards the Moonweaver as his brother.
But tonight, he was willing to try just about anything.
Help.