Chapter Text
“I simply do not understand what the purpose of such an endeavor would be if not for sparring. Is it an Empire custom?” Essek’s brow furrows as he leans forward in the Salon’s plush settée, and presses his steepled fingers to his chin. “I certainly have not seen it at the outpost—there is of course plenty of snow there, but it’s difficult enough to keep warm there that throwing snow at others is frowned upon. Snow is also unusual in Rosohna—rain and hail is more common, but I have hardly seen, ah… hail - fights .”
“Essek! It’s not an Empire custom, it’s just fun with snow, you know?” Jester pouts at him. “I used to do it with Bluud when we’d visit my mama’s chateau in the mountains. And Caleb says the Empire gets lots of snow and that he used to when he was little, but it’s more a Winter’s Crest thing than an Empire thing anyway. We figured it might make you nervous to be in the Empire though so Caduceus and I are planning to make snow for it to happen at the Blooming Grove!”
“And this would be… a team event, of sorts?” Essek asks tentatively.
Jester grins widely, and Essek notes with some apprehension that her tail has begun to lash behind her. “Yes yes yes! I just wanted to throw some snow at people but Veth and Beau caught on to the idea and thought about making it into a sort of official game, I think. But we need you for it to work!”
A flare of warmth lights inside his chest at the words, though he’s not certain if it’s deserved. “Why exactly did you need me for this?”
Jester rolls her eyes. “Well, obviously because you’re super cool and I think you’d be amazing and so good at it with all your fancy gravity magic, and I definitely want you on my team. But also, Caduceus doesn’t want to fight, he said he’ll be the referee, and it only works if you join because that makes eight with Kingsley so the teams can be even.”
Essek nods cautiously. “I am… certainly curious, and it does sound like fun. What exactly are the parameters of this fight?”
Jester bounces to her feet out of the overstuffed armchair that had been progressively enveloping her and excitedly rounds to face him. “That sounds like a yes, Essek! Is it a yes?”
The corners of his mouth twitch up into a soft smile as he resigns himself to his fate. It’s impossible to say no to her. “I think so, Jester.”
Jester beams at him. “Okay okay okay!” she says, extending a hand out to Essek, who rises from his seat and tentatively takes it. “Come on then! Veth and Beau are already in the War Room, we need to plan everything out.” Essek floats alongside her, gently tugged along by the hand as she trots out of the salon and takes the stairs two at a time.
It isn’t until they reach an unfamiliar door emblazoned with a sword and crossbow on the fourth floor that Essek realizes that there isn’t a War Room in the Tower. Or at least, there wasn’t , because when Jester pushes open the heavy door, it swings forward to reveal a room that certainly wasn’t there the last time Caleb cast the Tower. It’s evocative of the chamber they had called the War Room in the Xhorhaus, with reddish Vermaloc paneling, maps and chalkboards lining the walls, and a long, imposing table in the center of the room surrounded by high-backed wooden chairs. Upon further examination, the chairs appear to be mobile, with a single pillar holding up the seat, and the bottom of it branching into an array of five spoked legs that each end in a wheel.
Essek barely has time to take all of this in before registering that the room is currently inhabited and the source of some apparent argument as Veth and Beau gesticulate wildly on the far end of the room. Jester skips forward to hurl herself into one of the chairs and the momentum slings her around, face alight with glee.
Veth turns to Essek as he tentatively drifts into the room. “Hot boy! There you are! See, Essek will back me up on this. Stealing a flag in enemy territory is a much better way of having a snowball war than just hucking snowballs into someone’s face and that being it!”
Beau snorts and faces Essek, arms crossed. “Yeah, Mr. Super Secret Shadowhand Spy over here would agree, wouldn’t he.” Essek winces, but Beau continues on brusquely. “Capturing a flag isn’t a snowball fight, it’s just espionage. Throwing snowballs until you get hit and are out is tradition. You only want to do Capture the Flag because you’re sneaky enough to steal it!”
Veth stamps her foot on the ground. “Oh, as if you don’t want to do just that with a knockout game because you can deflect missiles, so no one could ever hit you and you’d win automatically!” she screeches. “Essek, tell her I’m right!”
“Yeah, Essek, tell Veth I’m right” Beau says with a sniff.
Essek is frozen to the spot as he looks between the two women demanding his support. “I, ah… I am not sure that I know enough about this to make a judgement yet. What exactly is it that you are debating over?”
He buys a moment of time as he lowers himself into one of the odd wheeled chairs, and pushes his feet against the spokes so that he slowly turns to face Jester, and then back around again. Essek is pleased to find that it is exactly as enjoyable to spin in as it looks, though he does so with a modicum of grace, in contrast to Jester, who has made enough dizzyingly fast revolutions that she has careened to a slightly cross-eyed halt. She grins and her eyes drift to meet his gaze, as she pipes up. “Guys, calm down! I only just got Essek to agree, you can’t overwhelm him with this so quickly, jeez! Besides, we haven’t decided on anything yet anyway. What have you got so far?”
Scowling, Beau steps back to reveal the schematics on the blackboard behind her, and says, “So. We’ve been trying to plan a snowball fight. And I want to make this good, because Yash has never done one, and if we’re gonna go to the trouble of making it snow for a bunch of days in the Blooming Grove, then it’s gotta be awesome. But we can’t decide how exactly we want to do it. Traditionally it’s just a free for all—”
“—which is what I originally wanted!” Jester interjects.
“Which is what Jester originally wanted when she suggested it, yeah.” Beau continues. “But we talked it over, and we think some kind of competition would be a lot more fun, and she’s on board, right Jes?” Jester gives a thumbs up as she continues to spin. “But there’s lots of ways to do it. I think teams are mandatory because if we’re going all out for this—magic and everything—we gotta make it balanced.”
“True that!” Veth cries, clambering onto a chair of her own. Both she and Beau have calmed enough to seat themselves, so now everyone is at least in a chair at the end of the table, though spinning at various velocities. “I mean, let’s be honest… no offense, Jester, but if it were every person out for themselves, Fjord would be taken out in less than a second and I want to see him get clobbered for at least a minute!”
Jester stifles a snicker. “Come on, Veth, Fjord is very good at fighting and stuff!” she says, and Essek notices her tail start to lash again as she grins wickedly. “But… if it were just me against him, I’d definitely kick his ass.”
Secretly, Essek agrees, though he doesn’t let it show on his face. Jester is a formidable foe, and in such territory as a ‘snowball fight’ he would certainly not like to be on the opposing side as her. He leans forward and says, “I agree that teams will need to be balanced, regardless of what we choose as the actual mechanism of play. I personally would not like to find myself on a team as the only caster opposed by the likes of you two,” he nods towards Veth and Beau, who both preen slightly. “Caduceus is not participating, correct? If this is the case, we should probably not place a large premium on healing in the rules since we would not be able to evenly distribute our clerics. Perhaps we could even disallow it, if the goal is to… ‘knock-out’ as Beauregard has so aptly put it.”
Veth nods thoughtfully. “I don’t know that we need to disallow it entirely, but that’s good to consider if we go the knock-out way, then people don’t need to be actually knocked out. I’m sure Jester would have a terrible time with no healer.” Jester sticks her tongue out at Veth. “But I digress! How should we split up the teams?”
Essek purses his lips. “Well, Jester wanted me on her team, and Caleb and I would of course be together, so we would need to balance the rest of the casting load—perhaps Fjord, Veth, and Kingsley would be a well matched opposition?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa—slow your roll there, hot boy! You and Caleb definitely can’t be on the same side. Sorry, but each team needs a wizard. Otherwise you’d both pull some stupid dunamancy catapult shit,” Beau interjects.
“Agreed,” Veth says.
Essek feels a chill as he realizes he will be fighting against Caleb in this scenario, and a nervous flutter in his stomach begins to stir. Would Caleb resent him for it? Things with Caleb had been tentative, but wonderful, and he doesn’t want to complicate that. Since Essek left the Nein in the Blooming Grove, he had only a few interactions with Caleb, mostly for logistical reasons. Now that he was on a brief leave from the Vurmas outpost and visiting the Nein in Rexxentrum, he had seen more of Caleb than he had in months, and the strange charge between them had been palpably thick in the air. And to think of upsetting that by fighting Caleb? Even for fun, it would be… hmm.
He considers what it would be like, to use graviturgy to lift up a large cube of snow, and then drop it on Caleb and the opposing team. Essek imagines Caleb buried in the snow, Caleb sputtering out of it with cheeks pink from cold and snowflakes clinging to his eyelashes, Caleb whipping out his catmint and casting Cat’s Ire to return the attack with an assault of his own. In his mind’s eye, Essek sees the spectral orange cat’s paw whipping white fluff at himself, knocking him down with the force of it, Caleb grinning as he stands over him triumphantly, only to receive a faceful of snow as Essek hits him back with a catapult of his own...
The feeling in his stomach morphs from a cold apprehension to a pleasant fluttering thing, warming his insides as he loses himself in thoughts of competing with Caleb and showing off a bit to each other. Perhaps this would be for the best after all. In fact, he could even—
“Snap out of it, Essek! You can pine later, we’ve got to figure out the logistics.” Beau’s sharp voice cuts into his daydream, and he starts slightly as he is zipped back to the present. “So. You and Caleb are on opposite teams. I’d be a hypocrite if I let me and Yash be on the same team, for the same reason. Jester wants you on her team, and I think at this point the couples would all be split up anyway.” Essek’s mind goes blank as he hears the word ‘couples’ applied to him. He opens his mouth to interject but Beau continues on before he can get a word in edgewise. “So let’s say you, Jester, and Yasha on one team, and me, Caleb, and Fjord on the other. That leaves Kingsley and Veth. And, in the interest of fairness, I think you should have Veth.”
Veth nods. “She’s right, you know,” she says to Essek matter-of-factly. “We would be too powerful if we were on the same team.”
“I love it!” chirps Jester. “But then we still need to know how we’re playing the game itself. Capture the flag or knockout? Or—or what about if we did a timed game with points! Like every time you hit someone with snow you get points and it only lasts a set amount of time?”
“I like that idea,” Essek cuts in smoothly. “However, what I am wondering is why we need to choose? Perhaps it could be a tournament of sorts, with three separate games? Each caters to different strengths, after all—if each were equally weighted, best of three would probably be the fairest.”
Veth slams her fist down on the table. “Amazing!” she crows. “I knew we kept you around for a reason, Essek. Good work, hot boy! A tournament!”
Beau grins widely. “Yeah, I love this. Let’s check with the others, but I think this’ll be the way to go. We got teams, we got three different games, we got clerics who can make it snow—it’s on! I’ll go get Caduceus and we can work out rules together since he said he’d be the ref.”
Veth hops down from her chair. “I’ll go with you. There should be at least one person from each team coming up with the rules,” she says as she narrows her eyes at Beau. “No funny business!”
They exit the room, leaving Essek slightly overwhelmed by the speed and intensity of the conversation. He leans back in his chair and continues to rotate gently. Jester, already spinning at full speed, reaches out to grasp the lacquered edges of the table to stop herself and blinks at him. “Thank you so so much again for agreeing, Essek! It wouldn’t be as much fun without you. Plus, you know. It might be fu-un to fight against Caleb!” Her eyes twinkle as she smiles up at him. “I saw your face when you realized you’d be on different teams! He’s very competitive, you know,” she whispers conspiratorially. “I think he’ll have a lot of fun with it. And besides, fighting is really hot. You’ll get to show off all your fancy spells to him. He totally thinks they’re super sexy.”
Essek feels his face heat up as a blush creeps across his cheeks. “Excuse me?” he gets out. The tightness of the high collar around his neck begins to feel uncomfortably restrictive, and he glides his spinning to a halt to face Jester.
She wrinkles her nose at his expression. “Oh, come on Essek! You have to have noticed all the drooling he did whenever you cast a spell in Aeor. I know it’s been a while since we fought the city and all that but he’s still super into it.”
“That isn’t—I’m not sure that’s quite—I don’t know,” he finishes lamely.
Jester leans forward and gazes at him earnestly. “Don’t worry about a thing, Essek! I’ve got your back on this, just trust me, okay? I know how these things go. I’ve read so many romance novels, getting competitive is like, the most exciting thing you can do, and this is going to be great.” Her eyebrows lift slightly as she looks at something over Essek’s shoulder. “Anyway, thanks so much for all your help with the rules,” she says loudly. “I’m glad you said yes and I’m going to go check with Fjord and Yasha and Kingsley! Bye!”
With that, she hops rapidly out of her chair and speeds away. Essek, perplexed at her sudden exit, turns in his chair, and a thrill runs through him as he sees Caleb leaning against the doorframe. Jester squeezes past, and Essek swears he catches a wink from her before she darts out of sight.
Caleb looks much the same as he did when Essek saw him at breakfast that morning, though his copper hair is starting to escape its tie, and loose strands frame his face. Blue eyes meet violet as Caleb gazes at him, a smile creasing their freckled corners. He makes his way into the War Room, running his fingertips over the glass map cases that line the side of the room. Essek’s eyes follow his hand, and he notes that there are some new ink splatters there, though it’s hard to tell from color alone if they’re from arcane or mundane ink. Caleb wordlessly pulls out a chair next to Essek and sits down next to him, leaning closer than would seem strictly necessary. A whiff of worn leather and fresh parchment makes its way into Essek’s nose, and it’s all he can do to not breathe it in as deeply as he can. Instead, Essek composes himself, and looks up to meet his eyes.
“So I see they’ve roped you into it too,” Caleb says amusedly. “Veth asked me last night if I was interested. She asked me to make this with my next recasting for the very purpose of planning it.” He gestures at the surrounding room. “Usually this is where Yasha’s room would be, but she and Beau only needed the one.”
Essek nods diplomatically, gathering his wits about him. How is it that every time Caleb is near him, it takes so much effort to control himself enough to form even the simplest of thoughts? The fluttering in his stomach that had quieted before rears up in earnest, and Essek can feel it begin to make its way up to his chest with the realization that he is alone with Caleb, and in closer physical proximity than he has been for months. “Indeed, Jester convinced me,” he manages. “I have never partaken in such an event before, but it sounds like it could be fun. It would be good to visit the Grove, and I would certainly like to see the phenomenon of Jester and Caduceus controlling the weather,” he babbles. As he feels the words tumbling out of him, he is flummoxed—the expression on Caleb’s face surely can’t be more distracting than the fact that he is so close that Essek can smell him. And yet, he can’t help but glance down at Caleb’s mouth while he speaks, because the movement of Caleb’s slightly chapped lips as they stretch into a half-quirked smile is utterly hypnotic.
“Well, my friend, I am certainly glad you agreed. Snowball fights are a time-honored tradition in the Empire, one that I am pleased to be able to share with you.” Caleb leans closer, and Essek wonders if he has simply hallucinated the nearly imperceptible movement. “I hear we are to be on separate teams.”
“Indeed,” Essek notes. “To balance out the wizards. After all, too many in one place is—”
“—trouble,” Caleb finishes. “Of course. Well, Essek, I look forward to it.”
Essek nods. “May the best mage prevail,” he says solemnly.
Caleb stands from his chair, and Essek thinks he is making to leave before Caleb pauses and turns back to him. The fluttering creature that was pulsing in his chest moves on to jumping wildly into his throat as Caleb places a hand on his shoulder and leans down to him, his mouth brushing up against Essek’s ear. Essek goes rigid, and every ounce of his willpower is directed to stop his ears from flicking wildly as Caleb’s stubble grazes the sensitive shell of his helix. The pleasant warmth pooling in his belly grows to a sudden intense heat, and every nerve in him alights as he feels Caleb’s breath on his ear. His nose is inches away from Caleb’s shoulder, the leather and parchment smell growing stronger and mingling with the warm, singular scent of his skin, and Caleb is so close , he could just move forward slightly and Essek could bury his face into his scarf and reach a hand out and—
It is then that Caleb murmurs into his ear and Essek’s mind ceases to form coherent thoughts.
“I intend to.”
Caleb straightens up, gives Essek’s shoulder a gentle push, and makes his way out of the War Room.
Essek is left breathless and stunned, spinning gently in place as his odd chair makes slow revolutions. His brain manages to put together a single thought in Caleb’s wake, and for a good five minutes, he can think only one thing.
What in the world has he gotten himself into?