Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“The notorious Cats. Witchers—but failures. Unsuccessful mutations. Madmen, psychopaths and sadists. They nicknamed themselves ‘Cats,’ because they really are like cats: aggressive, cruel, unpredictable and impulsive.”

(A. Sapkowski, Season of Storms, translated by D. French)

The witcher school of the cat is believed to have been formed by a group of students rebelling against their teachers; they were led by ruthless mages looking for a way to develop completely emotionless, brutal witchers and became the most violent and feared witcher school in the Continent, turning from monster hunters to spies and assassins. This school seeked individuals with a particular violent disposition, including women and non-humans. Sources report of a splinter group who rebelled in turn against the mages leading these experiments, seeking to reform the institution from within, but no reliable accounts exist of this.

—Effenberg and Talbot, Encyclopaedia Maxima Mundi, vol. XV

Among the elven races, the Aen Dhuibe (People of the Darkness, or dark elves) are the most mysterious and secretive. They inhabited the small kingdom of Dol Aine (the Valley of Light) in the long disputed region of Angren, until they were driven away by the Redanian army. The Court of Light, led by Queen Leylas Kryn, was forced into exile after the Nilfgaardian Empire failed to uphold its end of the concordat that ensured Dol Aine’s neutrality in exchange for protection.

—Annals of the Second Northern War

Caleb found the man he was looking for in a hut not far from the village.

He was standing on the doorway of the hut, to be precise, with his hands on his hips and—judging from his expression—a migraine, facing a group of villagers. From what Caleb knew of him, and from what he knew of villagers everywhere, the fact there wasn’t a torch or a pitchfork in sight was surprisingly good news.

“It’s the sheep,” one of the men said. “They are disappearing one by one.”

“And the chickens,” a woman added.

The man on the doorway raised his hands—to silence the bystanders or to conjure a firestorm from the sky, Caleb wasn’t sure. Since no fire rained down from the heavens, it was probably the former.

He was short, barefoot and with a lithe frame, and yet he had a presence around him that made you think you’d better do as he said. The clothes on him were not elaborate or rich by any definition, and yet their cut and the way they were layered and worn—the asymmetrical hem of his blue surcoat, the bright green sash gleaming in the sunlight, the strings closing the cuffs of his chemise around his wrists, the knitted half-gloves—had purpose and intentionality that went beyond the utilitarian.

He would also appear human at first glance. The illusion spell was convincing, but it shimmered a little around the edges if you looked at it just right.

Confident he’d found the man he wanted, Caleb looked for a spot of shade and leaned against the wooden wall of an outhouse, crossing his arms on his chest as he waited. The weather was getting warmer, but he was comfortable in his light armour.

“I will give you herbs that you may burn in your sheep pens and hen houses to keep the foxes and the wolves away,” said the elf, just as Caleb felt his eyes on him.

It was a quick, neutral gaze. There was no reason for the elf to recognise Caleb, after all, since their previous meeting had been short and not particularly pleasant. Many years ago, Caleb had been summoned to Dol Aine to be received by the Queen herself, who seemed to distrust humans and witchers alike, but didn’t turn her nose up at a spot of good old political assassination. Whatever she had heard about the school of the cat, though, it had been old news by then, and when it turned out that Caleb did, in fact, turn his nose up at games of powers leading to senseless deaths, he had been politely but firmly invited to leave.

The Queen’s advisor had said nothing. Caleb had noticed the dark elf staring at him only once, his eyes looking right through him as if he wasn’t even there. They had been remarkable eyes: Caleb remembered them well, but then he remembered everything well.

As he was considering this memory, the figure went back inside, all but slamming a rickety front door that looked like it could barely take it.

The handful of villagers started streaming back to the muddy Midcopse. “He’s in a foul mood today,” someone said. “Better come back tomorrow.”

Patiently, Caleb let the villagers disappear down the path, nodding when they noticed him but otherwise paying them no mind. Then he stepped out of the shadow.

The door to the hut was unlocked, and no trap sprung when he pushed it open.

“May I come in?” he said to the empty room.

The hut was simple: one main room with a stove, a table and a few cupboards. Some books scattered around, notes that revealed nothing when he glanced at them, a few jars and bundles of herbs that smelled medicinal. To his left, a doorway led to what Caleb imagined was a bedroom.

Since his request to come in wasn’t technically denied, he stepped inside, easing the door closed behind him with more gentleness than its owner did.

The bedroom had nothing but a closet, a table and a small bed (hay, burlap and cotton, from the look and the smell of it) pushed against a wall. No windows, no decorations, no personal effects. Caleb had seen the inside of a few mages’ homes, and he couldn’t see a speck of the opulence he was accustomed to here.

Maybe his man was fully committed to his disguise as a village witch. Or maybe, like any other mage Caleb had met, he had a trick up his sleeve.

But where had he gone?

Since he somehow seemed to be alone, Caleb dropped to his knees, checking under the bed for pentagrams or trap doors. Nothing there, or on the ceiling or any of the walls. He left the closet last.

It was not the lack of clothes that surprised him; more the fact that it wasn’t a closet at all.

The door opened on a huge room, with a high, wooden ceiling, columns and windows that let the orange-violet light of a clear sunset pour in like water for a warm bath. The space was filled with furniture: plush carpets, padded chairs and, most remarkable of all, rows and rows of hardwood bookshelves. A low, harmonious music played in some corner of this impossible library.

It wasn’t a closet. It was a whole demiplane.

Caleb wasn’t so surprised as to miss a shadow darting quickly from one bookcase to the next.

“Essek,” he called out. He walked over, poking his head from one aisle to the other—the carpets gave pleasantly under his weight, entirely as plush as they looked—until he saw him.

And the glyph on the floor between them, peeking from under a hastily repositioned rug.

“Country life has made you sloppy,” he said, side-stepping the rug to reach the mage. “What was that supposed to do?”

Affecting the look of someone whose plans to get rid of an unwanted guest hadn't just been uncovered, Essek placed a book back into its shelf with a weary sigh. “Teleport you very far away from here.” His tone was too acid for it to be a lie.

Without his disguise, the dark elf looked exactly as Caleb remembered him. The court fineries were gone, true, along with most—but not all—of the jewels. But seventeen years hadn’t brought a single wrinkle on his high, smooth dusky-violet brow, and his figure was as lean and svelte as it had been back then. He was wearing the same clothes as before, which meant they were either real or he liked them enough not to change them. His feet weren’t bare anymore, but encased in a pair of fine slippers. They also hovered a few inches above the floor.

“Essek Thelyss of the Aen Dhuibe, former advisor to Queen Leylas of Dol Aine and current village witch.” Caleb waited for a response and got none. He huffed in amusement. “You’re a tough man to find.”

The look Essek levelled at him could have melted ice. “That’s the purpose,” he said, “of being in hiding.” His tone was haughty, which somewhat soured the effect of his otherwise pleasantly accented voice.

Raising an eyebrow, Caleb gestured at the room around them. “You’re not exactly keeping a low profile.”

“I don’t let just anyone into my inner sanctum.” Essek turned towards him fully and tucked his hands in his sleeves with fluid, graceful movements. “Usually I place my traps much sooner than that, and with more accuracy, but I was curious to see how far you’d go. I remember you, vatt’ghern.”

Caleb didn’t flinch: he was used to being off-handedly addressed as ‘witcher’—or less tasteful equivalents—by people who didn’t bother learning his name. “I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be. It’s not a fond memory.” The elf’s lips curled in a barely-there smile. “But, as much as the consequences were painful, I have to admit it was amusing to watch someone say no to Leylas for a change. You clearly went through some effort to find me, Caleb Widogast. What do you want?”

So the Queen’s former advisor did recall his name. Caleb smothered his surprise and crossed his arms, making the leather of his armour creak. “Shall we go straight to business?”

Essek cocked his head, batting his lashes with faux courtesy for good measure. “Are you here for tea and gossip? I’m afraid I’ve run out of the former, and there’s nothing I could tell you about the state of the world that you don’t already know.”

“I find it hard to believe such ignorance, Shadowhand.”

“Don’t,” Essek said, his expression souring. “I don’t bear that title anymore. If I wanted salt rubbed into the wound while everyone around me complains about how tragically we’ve fallen from grace, I would have fled with the rest of the court.”

“How’s Skellige treating your Queen?”

“Ask her.”

“You truly do not know?”

“It seems my imperial messengers are a bit slow to reach Middle-of-Nowhere in War-Ravaged County.” Essek’s manners were evaporating along with his patience. “What do you want, vatt’ghern?”

“Information,” Caleb said hastily, before Essek found another way of teleporting him to the bottom of a lake. “About something called a beacon.”

As soon as those words left Caleb’s lips, Essek became as still as a statue. That alone was an interesting reaction. Caleb waited to see what would follow.

“Let’s talk,” Essek said.

They sat down on two chairs in front of a window. The landscape outside was blurred by the warped glass, and Caleb wondered what he would find beyond it. Neither this room nor what was outside of it were on the same plane of existence as the universe he knew.

It was a good reminder, if he ever needed one, to tread carefully. Despite his diminished status, Essek was one of the most powerful mages alive, as well as a former spymaster.

Caleb made a note to ask Essek about his demiplane later, if he proved receptive to that kind of conversation. The mage was as prickly as Caleb remembered, but he didn’t seem to have lost his appetite for complex magic even in exile.

As soon as they sat down, Essek spoke. “What do you know about the beacon?”

“Barely anything,” Caleb answered truthfully. “I was hoping you would enlighten me. I have heard rumours about a device from long ago, of Aen Dhuibe origin, referred to with that name.”

“Heard how?”

“Ah, read, mostly. An account from Geoffrey Monck.” Essek scoffed at that, but he gestured for him to continue. “Merely a footnote in one of his treatises about djinns, but intriguing. I thought if anyone could know something about an ancient Aen Dhuibe artefact it could be you, so I followed your trail.”

“My trail.” Essek was running the thumb of his left hand on his nails in a repetitive gesture. “How interesting. And why do you think I can help you?”

Caleb shrugged. “I was hoping you could tell me more about this beacon, and maybe point me in its direction.”

Essek stopped his repetitive motion. “Do you know about the elven ruins nearby?”

“I have heard someone mention them in the village, yes.” Caleb wondered what was his point.

“They are full of treasures, of many different kinds. Someone says they hold something… unique.”

Caleb couldn’t help it: he laughed. “It can’t be that simple.” But what if it was? he thought. What if, for once, things could go in the direction he needed them to? “Is this why you chose Midcopse as your hiding place?”

The elf’s face was as unreadable as a porcelain mask. “Perhaps.” He narrowed his eyes. “Did your human scholar talk about the endless tapestry of fate and chance, and promise you the ability to pluck a thread from it?”

A bit light-headed, Caleb nodded. That was a pretty close summary. “More or less.”

“And if such a thing existed, you think people wouldn’t have tried to go inside the ruins and retrieve it?”

Caleb remembered the tales he heard in the village as he passed through. “It seems some did, only they never came back.”

At those words, Essek smiled without baring his teeth. “Where did the rumours come from, then?” He rested his chin on his hand. “There is something in those ruins that interests me, beyond the mystical relic that’s rumoured to be there.”

Caleb waited for him to elaborate.

“Knowledge. Concrete, hopefully well-preserved documentation of an ancient civilisation. Danger, for sure. To be honest, I’ve been wanting to go there myself for quite some time, but I was deterred from going very far by my stubborn sense of self-preservation. With a witcher as an escort, though…”

Caleb kept his expression neutral. “I would certainly appreciate the assistance of an accomplished mage such as you. I’m worried about what it would cost me, though.”

Essek’s smile turned wry. “A favour. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“This is going to get me in trouble, isn’t it? I might try my luck by myself.”

Essek clicked his tongue. “Such little faith in me, witcher. I promise I won’t ask you anything you’re not willing to give me.” As Caleb regarded him, the elf assumed the most innocent, honest expression he could.

Caleb appreciated the effort, but he didn’t trust him. Still, he hadn’t lied when he said he could use Essek’s assistance. He knew both how dangerous elven ruins could be and how useful magic was.

“Fine,” he said.

Essek’s smile now looked genuinely pleased. “Excellent. When would you be ready to go?”

Caleb shrugged eloquently.

To his surprise, Essek stood up—or floated up, more accurately. “I will teleport us both to the ruins, then.” He scoffed at Caleb’s surprised expression. “I carry all I need with me. It’s not much, these days,” he added with some irritation. “And, as you can imagine, I don’t have many commitments.”

“I don’t know. Finding disappearing ovines and poultry sounds like a full time occupation to me.”

Essek didn’t dignify that observation with a reply.

🟍

“This isn’t how I left it,” Essek stated.

His voice was dry and a little affronted, which made Caleb inclined to believe him. He had his arms crossed under the short fur cape he had conjured, adding yet another layer to his attire.

Walking a little closer to the edge, Caleb examined the gap opening at the end of a large set of stairs leading down, not long past the archway opening on the side of a foothill that allowed access to the ruins. The stone floor had crumbled and the drop was so wide he couldn’t see the end of it, not even with the aid of the Cat potion he had drunk earlier.

“You’ve been here before,” Caleb observed. “What’s on the other side?”

“I can’t even tell if there is another side,” Essek retorted, but he joined Caleb at the edge. Even without any alchemical aid, his eyesight was better than Caleb’s by far. “I can see it now. There is a ledge that looks undamaged, and a passage to the ruins. I could try and open a portal there.”

“You should go first.” Caleb gestured to the elf’s floating feet. “Even if you miscalculate…”

“It’s rude to point,” Essek said in the same dry tone as before, and when he turned his back to cast his spell, Caleb smiled to himself.

The otherworldly glow of the portal flared so quickly that it hurt Caleb’s eyes until he shielded them. When he lowered his hand, Essek was gone.

He waited. And waited.

“Essek?” he called, and was answered only by echoes.

The portal’s edges started to flicker. There was no time to think. Wherever the portal led, he would find Essek on the other side.

The only reason Caleb didn’t curse as he stepped through was because he had no time to think of a suitable invective.

🟍

When he rematerialised, it was pitch darkness. The potion allowed him to see clearly, albeit in muted greys, but there was just nothing to see beyond two parallel stone walls at his sides. Even the glow of the portal had faded when it closed behind him.

He listened. He was alone.

“Essek?” he called again, and got the answer he was expecting. The silence was broken only by his own long sigh.

Combat was so much easier.

He did what he was taught to do in front of an impasse: rest, reassess, revise. He stilled as if in meditation, although he was still standing. He took stock of the situation: narrow walls, a low stone ceiling, a flat stone floor. A corridor. The passage behind him was obstructed by rubble, but it extended forward in front of him, disappearing into a darkness his eyes couldn’t pierce. He sniffed, and the smell was—for lack of a better term—cold. It was not the kind of musty dampness you would find in a cellar: the air had the stillness of a tomb.

He did the only thing he could do: he walked forward.

Soon the walls opened in a wider hall. Something hit Caleb’s senses all at once, and he realised it was air. An air current meant a passage, an opening.

“Essek?” he called again, with no result. “Damn portals,” he added under his breath. He didn’t know why they ended up being separated, but he could guess it wasn’t the intended effect. Well, that settled it: he would find his mage and get out of there.

The first lamp post lit up as he took his next step.

Blinded by the sudden light, Caleb froze, his hand flying to his back before his mind could formulate a conscious thought, ready to grip the hilt of one of his blades. It was just that, though: a lamp post, lithe and curved, made of metal and glass, and a mage light trapped inside the lantern, bobbing and swirling like a firefly. It cast a bright blue light around it and on Caleb, who was a few feet from it.

Slowly, he brought his hand down. He could almost feel his pupils contracting as they adjusted to the light, and as he looked around, he let out a long exhale.

As the presence of a lamp post suggested, he was in a street. The impression of open air around him wasn’t inaccurate: he could see the shapes of buildings around him, tall and broad, with archways, stairs, windows. There were terraces and columns, and even decrepit lawns, though Caleb could only guess at what kind of grass or plant could grow underground. In any case, the point was moot, since there hadn’t been anyone around to tend to them for centuries.

As he was slowly turning on the spot, his senses still painfully alert, he heard shouting.

He was too far to understand the words, but he recognised the voice.

Shit, Caleb cursed in his mind, then out loud, just to drive the point home.

He started running towards Essek, never stopping, not even when his presence made more lamp posts light up at regular intervals along the street he was sprinting down. Light made his sprint easier, and his keen senses were quick to locate the source of the noise: a crack in a wall of one of the buildings.

“Va vort a me, gram’a creutairean.”

It was indeed Essek. Partially reassured by the fact he sounded more angry than in agony, Caleb ran up to the building.

The elven mage was in the middle of the small, dilapidated room, which was relatively clear from rubble and detritus, and he was surrounded by a shimmering magic shield while screaming the whole thesaurus of Elven curses. Caleb wasn’t very fluent in Elder Speech, but he could recognise swearing in almost any language.

“Essek!” he shouted. “What’s going on?”

The string of very irritated elven curses that was curdling the air stopped as Essek noticed him. “You took your time!” he said in lieu of a welcome. “Get in here and help me!” The elf’s tone was impatient and angry, but there was something else under it, something Caleb could recognise earlier too, no matter the language.

Fear.

Caleb didn’t stop to consider which kind of horrible monster Essek might be facing. Without a second thought, he squeezed sideways through the crack while unsheathing his silver sword, the runes carved on it flaring as if hit by sunlight, spelling out an incantation and an intention:

Fate doesn’t bind me, for I make my own.

But there wasn’t any monster in the room, nor any beast or anything else.

Except…

There was something on the floor. Many things, writhing. As Caleb stepped closer, something landed on his face and he swatted at it instinctively, but it didn’t react. He looked at his gloved hand and he saw fine, clear filaments.

Cobwebs. It was just spiders.

“Kill them! Burn them!”

To Essek’s credit, the spiders were many, and although they weren’t as big as an arachnomorph—a swarm of those would have been a challenge for a lone witcher—some of them came close to that.

Tightening the grip on his sword and ready to cast the Sign Igni with his other hand, Caleb let out a sigh and he stepped closer.

🟍

“I hate spiders,” Essek said later, once the danger was gone. The floor between them was covered in the remains of charred and slashed arachnids, and the air was heavy with the smell of death. “Useless, ugly, disgusting creatures.”

It sounded like he was half complaining and half explaining. Caleb kept wordlessly cleaning his sword with a cloth. As the adrenaline dissipated from his blood, he took deep, controlled breaths, wiping the death he just imparted from his mind just like he was doing with the thick black ichor which had seeped into the fuller and the runes carved into the metal.

It was something, Caleb mused, to see Essek’s composure so ruffled for a change. Then again, maybe it was a more natural reaction than being able to kill without flinching or thinking about it twice. He didn’t know.

Eventually, Essek took a deep breath and seemed to steel himself for his next words. “Thank you,” he said, “for helping me.” He sounded a little incredulous. Perhaps it was just the lack of practice.

With his eyes still on the dull silver, Caleb found himself smiling. “Of course, Essek. All in a day’s work.” Satisfied, he tucked the cloth in one of his pouches and picked up Fate’s scabbard, letting the blade slip back into its leather-and-silver sheath with a whisper. “Now, if you don’t have any kittens I need to rescue from the top of a tree…”

“Don’t push it.”

As Essek finished cleaning his clothes with one last, quick spell, Caleb’s eyes were caught by something on the wall. He moved closer, sidestepping charred corpses and piles of rubble.

“Can I have some light?” he asked unthinkingly.

He expected a snarky retort, or a lecture on the use of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, but neither came. Maybe there was something in his voice, or maybe Essek was still shaken from his spider misadventure.

Or maybe, as Caleb realised when he found the mage already at his side, his attention had been caught by the wall, too. “An feainn,” Essek murmured, off-handedly tracing an arc in front of them. A luminous aura shone upon them, and upon the wall.

It wasn’t a fresco, as Caleb had thought at the beginning; shadows pooled in the stony divots and valleys of the bas-relief. Pieces of it were missing—likely the dust they were stepping on—but some sections were still in good condition.

“It’s a procession,” Caleb said, pointing at the lower margin. “There is only one whole figure left, but look: more feet.”

“Caleb.” Essek wasn’t looking at him: his eyes were captured by a detail in the upper part of the carving, and they were wide. “It’s one of my kind.”

Caleb shifted his gaze from Essek to the figure on the wall. Now that he was focusing on it, he noticed the long ears and the sharp cheekbones. “These ruins are a former elven dwelling, I don’t—”

“It’s a dark elf,” Essek interrupted him. He reluctantly tore his eyes from the wall to stare at Caleb with barely contained excitement. “I can tell. Caleb, these are Aen Dhuibe ruins.”

Caleb blinked. “You said you’ve been here before. You didn’t know that?”

Essek shook his head. If his feet had been on the ground, Caleb suspected he would be bouncing. “Never this far, not on my own. Do you know how rare Aen Dhuibe ruins are?”

Caleb did not. “Very?”

“Everything was believed to have been destroyed.” There was true emotion in Essek’s voice. “Everything. These are unique.”

“That would explain why an ancient Aen Dhuibe relic would be here,” Caleb mused as Essek floated closer to the wall.

“What? Oh, yes.” Essek didn’t even turn. “It’s hard to tell, but this could have been a religious site, or an official building. We should explore, look for more carvings. Or writings,” he added in a reverent whisper.

He sounded so genuinely excited that Caleb would have had a hard time saying no, even if he hadn’t been interested in the ruins himself. “You do remember why we’re here, right?”

Essek’s shoulders sagged a little. “The beacon, yes.” When he finally turned towards Caleb, his expression was unreadable. “I believe this is what in Common Speech you would call a ‘two birds, one stone’ situation, is it not?”

Caleb shook his head, but he was smiling. “Just be careful. And let me walk into any room first. This place has been abandoned for a long time, but the magic in it is still active. While I was looking for you, a row of lamp posts lit up.”

The interest in Essek’s eyes made them light up, just like the lamp posts. “That’s incredible. The magic is still active after all this time! I wonder…” Then he deflated a little. “Whatever’s here, it is interfering with my magic. We should do well to remember that. We’re going to have to find a way out that doesn’t require a portal.”

🟍

Of course, things went wrong as soon as they stepped into the next chamber. Caleb entered first, cautious and alert. His medallion didn’t start humming until Essek followed him inside, the cat’s head thumping on the black leather that covered his chest with each vibration, and by then it was too late.

He wasn’t keeping an eye on Essek when it happened, because the elf was walking behind him—well, not ‘walking’. He was doing his weird, show-off-y floaty thing, until he wasn’t doing it anymore.

Caleb turned around immediately when he heard Essek cry out, but his alarm simmered down to concern when it was followed by a string of muttered curses, as well as some mysterious clattering noises. His knowledge of Elder Speech was enough to appreciate the creative swearing as he quickly reached the elf, who was on the floor.

There was something different about him, and it wasn’t just because he looked in pain as he ran his hands over his left ankle.

When Caleb crouched beside him, something on the floor caught his attention. It wasn’t the rubble he was getting used to. Looking around, he saw things scattered around Essek: several books, a satchel of some kind, crystals, small bottles and jars, a few of which were cracked or broken. Thinking about the noise he heard after Essek screamed, it sounded remarkably like someone had carelessly cleared the top of a desk and sent everything on the floor.

It didn’t take long for Caleb to add that to the fact that Essek wasn’t floating anymore. “Something dispelled all the magic you had on you,” he observed. “A force field, probably, since I would have activated a one-time alarm spell when I stepped in.”

“Remarkable detective work,” Essek hissed. “Next time I’ll ask you what’s two plus two.”

Caleb thought he had no more tired sighs in him, but he was wrong. The fool was in pain, he reminded himself. He was allowed to be waspish. This time. “Are you hurt?”

Essek sniffed and seemed to bite back a scathing retort. When he tried to stretch his foot, he hissed in pain. “It seems I am,” he said, a little chastised.

Caleb studied the dejected look on his face, then let his eyes take in the rest of him. He knew mages liked to… touch up their appearance to meet the expectations of their rank, as they put it. It was second nature to all of them, he was made to understand. He had assumed that was true for Essek as well without even thinking about it.

Underneath Essek’s illusions, as far as Caleb could see, were a slightly rattier surcoat than the one he had been wearing, a not-so-fluffy fur cape, and foot wraps instead of fine slippers. To Caleb’s surprise, the jewellery was real, and so was Essek’s face, for the most part. Caleb smiled despite himself: the humidity and the exertion had made his previously pristine hair curl and puff up a little, and—before reminding himself there was no point in having an opinion about it—Caleb thought he liked it better this way.

That was when Essek caught him staring. “Help me collect my possessions, instead of gawking,” he said, starting to pick up some of his things.

“Do you really need all this?” said Caleb, even as he started to reach for the belongings out of Essek’s reach. When the mage had said he carried all he had with him, he wasn’t expecting this.

Essek scowled, then gestured at the remains of a broken vial. “Well, that contained a healing draught, so yes, it would probably have come in handy to fix my ankle.”

“It’s probably just a sprain,” Caleb muttered under his breath.

Essek shifted the books he was holding in the crook of one arm to free his other hand. He twisted his fingers elegantly, and Caleb couldn’t help but notice the accurately trimmed nails he remembered from before were actually jagged and uneven. He arched an eyebrow at the thought of Essek Thelyss biting his nails, but he didn’t say anything.

As he was expecting, no magic happened. He waited until Essek realised it for himself before saying, “When I said anti-magic force field, I meant—”

“I know, I know, I just had to try.” Essek sounded more despondent than irritated. He huffed once, collected his thoughts for a moment, then placed the books on the floor and tried to stand up.

Caleb knew better than to interfere, but it was like watching a kitten trying to climb out of a copper bathtub. “How far do you think it reaches?” he asked, mostly to distract them both.

“How should I know?” Essek retorted automatically, pausing to catch his breath. He was still on the floor.

Caleb glanced at the elf’s hands, clenched into fists in the dirt, and went back to gathering without saying anything. He had managed to collect all the vials that didn’t break in the fall.

“Probably not far,” Essek added, in a milder tone. “Enchantments like these are usually localised, like traps or glyphs.” He looked down, sweeping the floor with a hand, reaching further to do the same on a tile closer to the entrance. “Aha. A rune, activated by magic. My magic, when I floated over it. Not a force field after all.”

The smugness in his tone was undermined by the fact that he was clenching his teeth against the pain, having jostled his ankle as he moved. As insufferable as he was sometimes, Caleb would have rather had him smug than in pain. “I was wrong,” he admitted easily. “Do you need my help?”

Essek opened his mouth just as something moved behind Caleb. He reached for his swords as all the vials he was holding dropped on the floor and shattered.

At first Caleb thought it was another spider, but it only took him a moment to realise his mistake. It was shaped like a spider, but when it stretched its legs it almost dwarfed Caleb.

And it was whirring. Its limbs and core were made of polished, solid metal.

Caleb’s mind hosted a neat taxonomy of dangerous creatures, a catalogue he could pull from almost instantly, but he had never faced anything like that before. Maybe it’s not hostile, he thought, right before the construct hissed like bellows, steam shooting out from its ‘abdomen’, and thrust the point of one of his long, sharp legs at Caleb’s chest.

It was quick but awkward, and Caleb dodged it easily. Fortune, then, he thought, drawing his steel blade. Fortune’s edge knocked aside the next attack easily, with an ugly noise of metal on metal. It would be a bit of a challenge, Caleb assessed, but he could take this thing one on one.

“Caleb,” he heard Essek say.

He visualised it clearly: severing his legs to hobble it, then a hit to its core. “I got this.”

“You might want to tell the others, too, maybe.”

The others?

Caleb’s hopeful mood soured considerably as another construct rolled forward, joining the first one. “How many?” he asked, just as he heard more whirring behind him. Ah, fuck.

“I see three of them.” From what he could hear, Essek had moved on the floor to hide behind him. Wise move.

Caleb raised the hand that was not holding the sword, quickly, and the constructs caught the movement just before the translucent sphere went up around him and Essek, shielding them from the attack.

When he checked on Essek, the worry on the elf’s face had been replaced by curiosity. He reached out, his touch making the barrier ripple. “It looks like an abjuration dome, but more rudimentary,” he observed.

Caleb almost snarked back, but he stopped himself. Essek didn’t mean to be rude: he was just stating a fact. Either exile had worn out his courtly manners or he just didn’t care anymore. Either way, Caleb was too busy to deal with that.

One of the constructs took Essek’s curiosity for an invitation and tried to claw at his fingers. Essek withdrew them immediately. “How long is the barrier going to last?” he asked Caleb.

Caleb, who was counting down the seconds in his head, had just reached the single digits. “Not long. Get ready.”

“To do what?” asked Essek. A good question: a mage without magic was the definition of pointlessness, and they both knew it.

Caleb adjusted the grip on his sword. “Surprise me,” he said before casting the protective barrier again a moment before the old one vanished, and then stepping out of it.

Fortune hit the first construct true, slicing two of its legs and unbalancing it, opening its core to a strike. Caleb might not have known what it was, but it fell apart just like it should have. A thick black ichor pooled out of the mangled metal, similar to blood but with a strong alchemical smell.

Caleb whirled away, careful not to turn his back to the other constructs. Unlike beasts, they couldn’t sense death in the metaphorical bloodshed Caleb had just caused, and they were not more cautious now that their counterpart had served as an example with its death.

As long as they stayed focused on him as the bigger threat and ignored the helpless sorcerer, it was fine.

As Caleb feinted and scratched the side of one of the constructs with his blade, he added more items to the list of information he had about these creatures: they didn’t seem to have any sight or sense of smell, so they had to sense movement. Just like the lamp posts, he realised. It made sense. Too late to do anything about that, but it was good to know.

He got rid of one of them temporarily by casting the Aard Sign. He turned, ready to finish the third construct, and found the space empty.

He knew Essek was in trouble without having to look. He looked anyway.

The third construct was not far from Essek, who was no longer covered by the Yrden barrier. Caleb had a sudden vision of metal claws rending fine (but not the finest) clothes and soft (or at least soft-looking) indigo skin.

“Essek, don’t move,” he said. “It cannot hear or see you.”

To his credit, even if his eyes were wide and Caleb could hear his heart beating frantically, Essek obeyed. He looked at Caleb. “Behind you!” he screamed.

Caleb whirled just in time to parry instinctively and to think, four constructs, then.

Pain ricocheted up his arm to his shoulder and back, and the force behind the hit sent him on the floor, making him lose his grip on his sword. From the clanging noise of metal against stone, Fortune had fallen somewhere too far to reach.

His shoulder was throbbing. That would hurt tomorrow. If he survived, of course.

You’ve been through worse, Widogast, he chided himself.

Looking up at the looming shape of the metal spider, he could see a place where the metal plates of the construct seemed to have come loose. He unsheathed one of the daggers strapped to his chest so he could jam it into it. It was pretty clear that the thing couldn’t feel pain, but several inches of steel in its mechanical underbelly surely had to be inconvenient.

The construct raised a sharp leg, ready to skewer Caleb through his leather armour. Or at least it tried, and it tried, without success.

It was the opening Caleb needed to slide away from under it and make his way towards Essek. The mage was hurt and without his powers, he couldn’t run or defend himself. It would have been annoying and inconvenient for Caleb to find a way out of the ruins by himself, sure, but most of all it was unfair towards Essek.

When he saw Essek still frozen against the wall, the construct still hunting for him like a deaf and blind hound, he only had one thought in his mind: Get away from him.

The pattern his left hand wove through the air was new and untested, plucked from observation, intuition, his rudimentary understanding of magic, and the mix of instinct and intelligence that nourished his penchant for creation.

When he completed the Sign, the monster was tossed to the other side of the room and hit a wall with a crash. It didn’t move again.

He didn’t have time to be proud of himself: the unmistakable noise of a dagger hitting the floor had him turn around and face the last of the constructs still standing.

He raised his hand to draw Fate from its scabbard, but the construct sensed his gesture, turning its unseeing head towards him. Caleb was too busy dodging it to pull out his silver sword and to notice the slippery pool of dark, oily liquid from one of the destroyed constructs, which had pooled behind him.

This time, when he fell, something in his right wrist gave in, and it was all he could do not to scream.

The construct moved closer, once again looming above him. Caleb, who was holding his breath against the foul smell of the black oil, was starting to feel dizzy from shock and pain. He raised his left hand to cast, but no magic responded to his call: it was too soon.

He didn’t understand what that loud noise of metal hitting metal was until he heard Essek say, “Let’s see how you like this.”

He was standing, albeit not so sure on his feet, and struggling to hold Caleb’s sword upright, which he had just used to hit the construct.

Caleb had just a moment to appreciate the startling image of Essek holding his sword, before he came back to his senses. Even if Essek’s hit hadn’t been strong enough to damage it, the construct’s attention was torn between the two of them now.

Letting the pain slide to the back of his mind, Caleb fell back into his training, rolling on the floor and rising on his knees on the other side of the construct in one fluid motion, at the end of which he was wielding Fate with his left hand.

The crack in the construct’s armour was a slash, now, and when he sunk his blade into it, as he had foreseen, the damned thing stopped moving. It also gushed dense, pungent oil all over his hand when he pulled Fate out of it, but Caleb was too glad to be alive—that the both of them were alive—to care.

When the inert metal husk fell on the floor, he could see Essek on the other side of it, panting a little and using Fortune as a crutch. “Was that enough of a surprise?” he asked.

Caleb, who was catching his breath as well, started laughing. After a moment, Essek joined him.

🟍

After healing himself with a potion, Caleb took his steel sword back and helped Essek to a safe-looking corner of the room, where they could lick their wounds and rest.

Caleb didn’t feel that bad, actually. It had been a while since he’d had a fight that had truly challenged him, and while mistakes were made, he had only the bruises his Swallow potion didn’t heal to show for them. And, after so many years, the lack of pain felt stranger to him than the alternative, just like when he found he couldn’t sleep properly in a bed after spending too many nights in a bedroll on the side of the road.

After unbuckling his scabbards and placing them on the floor, he turned towards Essek just to find the mage already looking at him. The elf was sitting on the ground, what remained of his possessions neatly stacked and arranged at his side, his left leg stretched in front of him and the other bent and pulled close to his chest with both arms. He had evidently used his fingers to try and fix his hair, which was now sticking in several more directions than before. He didn’t seem to mind, or at least he didn’t mind Caleb looking.

“How’s your ankle?”

Visibly bracing himself, Essek tried bending it and winced. “It hurts,” he admitted without preambles. “Severely. But I could almost walk on it earlier.”

Caleb considered that. “It was probably the adrenaline,” he said as he moved closer. “Will you be able to fix it once your magic comes back?”

“No, but I will be able to levitate. What are you doing?”

The question was prompted by the fact that Caleb was now kneeling beside him. When he reached out, Essek recoiled instinctively.

Caleb held back a sigh. “May I touch you?” he asked.

Essek didn’t reply, but he relaxed visibly. He tensed up again when Caleb gently took his leg to examine his injury, but he didn’t stop him either.

The elf’s leg was bare up to his knee under his tunic and surcoat, his shin skinny and almost completely hairless. His foot wraps, while relatively clean, had picked up some dirt and detritus during his short stint as a swordsman. Caleb took care not to touch the ankle as he propped Essek’s leg up on his own knees and started to unwind the wraps, wondering distantly if the elf would start breathing again soon or if he was determined to make himself faint for lack of oxygen.

“You’re covered in filth,” Essek said eventually.

“I don’t know how it works where you come from,” Caleb said calmly, “but killing is not a clean business. Assuming those things were alive in the first place,” he added. Once the ankle was bare, he placed a hand under Essek’s delicately arched foot. “Does it hurt?”

He could hear a hiss when Essek sucked in his breath. “It’s tolerable,” he said through gritted teeth.

Caleb shot him an unimpressed look. “I am barely touching you.”

“I’ve had worse,” he said stubbornly.

Caleb struggled to believe it. “Have you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Something in Essek’s voice and posture had closed off. Caleb let it be and focused on wrapping the cloth tighter around Essek’s ankle. There were several minutes of silence between them.

In the end, Essek was the one who broke it. “That spell you cast earlier.”

His voice was gentler than it had been. Caleb scoffed softly. “Hardly a spell.”

“You tossed that thing to the other side of the room with a flick of your fingers. That’s a spell, and a nice one at that. It reminds me of my own gravitational magic.”

Caleb focused on aligning the layers of cloth properly and not at all on Essek’s words.

“Was it a witcher Sign?”

“Sorcerers are really like dogs with a bone where magic is concerned, aren’t you?” Caleb’s tone ended up being more irritated than he intended, and he sounded petulant to his own ears.

Essek, though, didn’t look offended, and he surely wasn’t deterred. “It looked very advanced, compared to the parlour tricks I’ve always seen you cast.”

“You really need to work on your compliments.”

Essek waved those words away like so many bothersome but innocuous flies. “Can I see it? I would love to study it more closely.”

Caleb finished tying the ends of the foot wrap and dared a cautious look at Essek, trying to gauge if the earnestness in his eyes was genuine or a trick. Then he shook his head. Trusting a mage was never a good idea, even when they weren’t acting untrustworthy.

“See it how?” he asked anyway.

Essek levelled an unimpressed look at him. It wasn’t very different from how he usually looked at Caleb, but with some added disbelief for good measure. “Can you replicate it?” he asked, enunciating slowly. He gingerly took his leg away from Caleb’s lap, pulling his layers down to ward off the chill. “I can’t go anywhere until my magic comes back anyway.” He reached towards a rock not very far away, roughly the size of his fists. “Tog,” he whispered, twisting his hand until his palm faced the ceiling.

The gesture was familiar enough to Caleb, since it was the one he was trying to replicate in his crude imitation of that same spell. It was obviously more elegant and refined than his version. It was also completely ineffective.

When he looked at Essek again, the elf was looking back at him expectantly. “Show me,” he insisted.

Caleb hadn’t felt this particular kind of unease since his training days. Part of him wanted to show off, and that was even worse.

“I would rather not,” he said in a tone that he hoped would bring the argument to an end.

He was sorely mistaken. “Why not?” the elf insisted. “Caleb, I think you have a gift. I don’t understand why you want to deny it.”

“This is the thing with you mages, isn’t it?” Caleb’s reply was so suddenly vehement that Essek looked taken aback. “You can’t contemplate the thought that not all kinds of power should be exploited.” He shut his mouth then, bowing his head. He looked at his hands and found them curled into fists. He relaxed them, inhaling and exhaling slowly.

He expected Essek to take it personally and act offended, but once again the elf surprised him. After a fairly long silence, he asked quietly, “Have you ever received any formal training in this?”

That part of Caleb’s memory was kept carefully under lock and key, but sometimes he felt things rattling behind those closed doors. “Of a sort,” he replied noncommittally. “Not like you have, surely.”

“Sometimes the right teacher can make all the difference.” Essek’s tone was so gentle that Caleb couldn’t help but look up at him. His expression matched his voice. The cold arrogance was gone, and instead of the belligerence Caleb expected there was a cautious earnestness. “I am interested in your magic for itself, Caleb, not because I wish to exploit it. If you’ll let me, once we go back, I would like to help you understand it better, so you can wield it as a more effective weapon. I don’t want to wield you as a weapon.”

After some resistance, something in Caleb melted and settled. It was truly remarkable, that this man—this mage—understood the distinction. There was a part of Caleb that wanted to distrust him out of habit, but he believed Essek when he said his only interest lay in magic, with no ulterior motives. That disregard for the consequences was probably also Essek’s fatal flaw, one that Caleb understood very well. Once upon a time, he would have related. Bren had been exactly as reckless.

Without warning, he flicked his hand as he had done before, in the heat of battle, and the rock Essek had tried to levitate earlier floated gently in mid-air. Then, when he rotated his wrist, it hit the wall next to Essek and fell on the floor, disappearing among the other rubble.

To his credit, Essek barely flinched, but the points of his ears trembled for a few seconds. “Slower, Caleb,” he only said. His lips were thin with displeasure or the effort to repress a smile, Caleb wasn’t sure. Maybe both.

Something unpleasant churned in his stomach. It was one thing to show off with magic he barely understood, possibly saving Essek’s life while he was at it; it was entirely different to let a specialist study his handiwork closely, warts and all.

As it was to be expected, Essek didn’t pick up on his discomfort. He looked around quickly and picked a book from the top of the stack, holding it like an offering. “Here, try it again with this.”

Caleb sighed. “Don’t get mad at me when I smack your face with it.”

“You won’t,” Essek said confidently, but he extended his arms a little further.

It was an excess of caution: as Caleb tried the same gesture he did before, but slower, the volume didn’t even tremble in Essek’s hands. “I’m not like you,” Caleb said, telling himself there was no reason to be ashamed. “Witcher Signs require only a little power. This kind of magic is more complex and taxing.”

The elf was wearing a look of studious concentration, his brow slightly furrowed under his ridiculously tousled white hair. “I have a few notes,” he said.

Irritation spiked through Caleb and he tamped it down nervously. “Good for you.”

As he expected, Essek ignored him and put down the book, moving closer to him. “Speed and control don’t always go hand in hand. I think I see what you’re trying to do, which is similar to the spell I tried to use earlier but more elementary, and with that little—” He made a quick wave with his hand, gracefully imitating what Caleb did in a way that made his former attempt feel like a child’s drawing next to a masterpiece. “It seems like you’re trying to do two things at the same time, which is why your somatics aren’t clean. See?”

Suddenly Caleb’s personal space was invaded as Essek leaned in, physically lifting his arms as he kept expounding on the hygiene of his somatics or whatever he was on about. His hand was tiny against Caleb’s vambraces, his fingers thin and tapered. Now that Caleb could have a good look at them, his nails were very clearly bitten.

When Essek took his hands to correct their position, Caleb raised his head to look at him. He was so close he could see the pores on his face. Did the magic cover them before, or was it just something Caleb hadn’t paid attention to? For someone whose presence was enough to fill up a room, Essek’s frame and bone structure were exceptionally minute and delicate.

Essek stopped talking and made eye contact. “Am I talking to myself?”

Blinking, Caleb cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he made himself say, not without a small internal struggle. He deserved the reprimand, but he didn’t have to like it. “I was listening,” he lied.

With an incredulous scoff, Essek let his hands go, straightened and picked up the book he had discarded earlier, putting it back on the pile. He stubbornly avoided eye contact.

“I am sorry,” Caleb said, now genuinely contrite. “Please, Essek.”

There was a sulking silence. Then, “‘Please’ what?”

This time, Caleb kept his sigh confined to his mind only. “Please, could you teach me?”

Essek lifted his head and blinked slowly. “Magic is a serious business, Caleb.”

“I know.” He wondered how much he had to say, how much Essek needed to know. How much he wanted him to know. “What you said earlier about teachers,” he started, and then couldn’t go on.

After a moment, Essek started to speak. “I have been around many people who think they can use other people like objects and discard them just as easily.” His tone was gentler, now. “They cultivate their loyalty with flattery, with promises, with affection. The latter, sometimes, is genuine. But you should be your own person, Caleb. You belong to no one but yourself.”

Caleb noticed he was holding his breath, and he forced himself to exhale. “I know,” he said. “I know.”

“And yet you still wear that medallion and call yourself a witcher.”

Caleb didn’t say anything.

“Do other witchers use Signs as extensively as you do? Making up their own, creating variants?”

“I have tinkered,” Caleb admitted.

Essek huffed a laugh, and Caleb looked up at him. He looked pleased. “Do you come up with spells often?”

“They’re not spells,” Caleb repeated.

“Of course they’re not. Do you keep notes somewhere?”

If Caleb could have blushed, he probably would have now. “I have some notes.”

Now Essek definitely looked like he was suppressing a smile. Excitement made his youthful face look properly young, for a change. “You have a spellbook.”

“No, they’re just…” Caleb stumbled on his words. Conventional wisdom said witchers couldn’t feel emotions. He often wished it was true. “It’s just a bunch of notes I took. Of things I’ve seen.”

“Of magic you’ve seen,” Essek corrected him. “Spells. That you keep in a book.”

The teasing was going to give Caleb a headache. If performing his rudimental magic in front of Essek made him feel inadequate, showing him his—dammit—his spellbook was going to be mortifying.

He was going to regret this, he knew.

He reached inside the pouch he had strapped on his belt and thigh, where he kept potions, tools, ingredients and keepsakes, and pulled out a battered, loosely bound notebook. He knew its contents by heart, and he was perfectly aware of how his messy notes were unfit to be seen by anyone but him.

He gave it to Essek nonetheless, or at least he tried. Instead of taking it, the elf just stared at it. “What?” Caleb asked.

Essek’s eyes moved from the rough leather cover to Caleb’s face. “Nothing,” he said hastily, his expression changing quickly from surprise to solemn neutrality. He took the book from Caleb with both hands, holding it with an unexpected amount of care, as if it was a precious relic and not some hastily cobbled-together nonsense.

Feeling inferior to nobles, mages and scholars was not an unfamiliar feeling for Caleb, but it was usually something those three did on purpose to remind him he was inadequate. To put him back in his place. And Essek was all three at the same time. But the feeling didn’t come from him; it was all Caleb.

Ignoring him to the best of his abilities, Caleb picked up his silver sword. It had not survived the fight unscathed, but it would have been hard to tell for anyone who didn’t know Fate intimately. The black ichor was beginning to dry. He should wipe it away, a task that would require a great deal of focus, which had the welcome side effect of taking his mind away from the thought of Essek, his spellbook, and Essek reading his spellbook.

There was some movement at the periphery of his eyesight, and then Essek was sitting right next to him.

Incredulous, Caleb looked up. He didn’t say anything, but his stare was eloquent enough.

“I’ll need help with your shorthand,” Essek explained, pointing to the first page as he spoke.

Something alien swelled in Caleb’s chest. He had seen Essek’s delicate fingers conjure creation from thin air, tearing the fabric of reality apart and pulling at the threads of potential within. Essek was an expert in his craft as much as Caleb was in his, if not more, just by virtue of having had more time to devote to it.

But then, he had also seen those same hands trying and almost failing to lift Caleb’s sword earlier that day. “I’m giving you fencing lessons after this,” he said, resting the blade he had unsheathed on a knee while he fetched a cloth from his pouch.

It was meant as a light threat, but as he got to work he noticed Essek following his quick, practiced movements for a moment. “You know, I might take you up on that,” he said evenly.

Chapter Text

Essek’s magic came back after an hour. During that time, he studied a good part of Caleb’s ‘spellbook.’ Soon he found a quill and an inkpot that had survived the fall from his extraplanar pocket and started making notes in the margins, pointing out adjustments and mistakes while also praising a few of Caleb’s workarounds.

Even if he kept feeling the occasional urge to tear the notebook away from Essek, Caleb started paying close attention to Essek’s observations. They were sensible and useful, and his compliments—doled out with the same practical earnestness as his critiques—were genuine.

“I wish more magical practitioners had a fragment of your resourcefulness,” he complained. “Complacency is the killer of discovery.”

As soon as he could lift himself back up with his magic, Essek made his belongings disappear again and insisted on examining the chamber they were in. Caleb tucked away his notebook, now enriched by rows and rows of markings in Essek’s minute, precise handwriting, and followed him.

There was no surviving furniture in this room either—“Looted or rotted,” Caleb observed, with a nod from Essek. The only point of interest was on a wall: a long inscription in an alphabet Caleb wasn’t familiar with.

Essek identified it as a version of elven script, probably a specific Aen Dhuibe alphabet. “This may be an unprecedented discovery, and I don’t have enough paper to make a rubbing of it,” he said wistfully.

Caleb cleared his throat. “That may not be necessary,” he said. “The rubbing, I mean. I can write it down for you when we go back.”

The look Essek gave him was the same one he had reserved for his spellbook: intense, curious, and openly interested. “You are full of surprises, Caleb Widogast,” he said eventually. “A perfect memory?”

Looking at the wall without really seeing it, Caleb shrugged. “It has served me well so far.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Essek replied evenly.

While Caleb studied the inscription, Essek started picking a construct apart, complaining to himself about the oil staining his hands and taking some of its components for further study. As soon as Caleb was certain he had the inscription safely stored in his memory, Essek used his magic to clear the rubble away from another door, and they started making their way—slowly and cautiously—down an empty corridor that seemed to wind around the building. All the while talking about what a lucky find they just made; Caleb, who hadn’t forgotten how they almost lost their lives a couple of hours ago, said nothing: he didn’t want to sour Essek’s good mood.

Their luck ran out soon after that anyway.

“We’re going in circles.” Caleb’s sense of direction had been telling him something was wrong for a while now, but he only figured out what when he spotted the same pillar with the same chipped edge for the third time.

Essek kept drifting for a few more seconds, then slowed down. He looked around and sighed. “You’re right.”

Caleb walked up to him. “Is it worth it to keep going?”

The expression on Essek’s face was conflicted. “I feel like this place was designed to keep intruders away,” he said slowly, “which means there was something precious hidden somewhere, something that might still be there. We’re very likely the first to go this far for centuries, maybe millennia.”

“Or we’re not, and those who did died a very sad, very avoidable death,” Caleb pointed out. “Open a portal and get us out of here, Essek.”

“You remember what happened the last time, yes?”

“I have found you once,” Caleb said simply, “I can find you again.”

Essek’s lips were pressed into a thin line, but he didn’t say anything.

“You have enough to work on,” Caleb said, trying to sound reasonable and not impatient, and falling somewhere between the two. “This trip has not been pointless.”

“But you haven’t found what you were looking for,” Essek said. His voice sounded strained, as if he was making himself say those words.

Caleb supposed caring for another’s desires was a fairly new experience to Essek. Then he chided himself for that somewhat uncharitable thought. Yes, Essek seemed as arrogant and selfish as any old wives’ tale about mages at first glance, but Caleb was starting to see another side of him, one that he could respect, maybe even like.

And it was true, he hadn’t found what he was looking for, and this had been the most promising lead in a while. But it was clear that they were outnumbered and unprepared.

“We can come back,” he heard Essek say. “Make a trip of it.”

Caleb felt himself smile before he realised what he was doing. “Well, we know what we’re facing now, and if we get a chance to prepare properly…”

“We do make quite a team,” Essek agreed.

When the mage took his hand so they could step through the portal together—“it should minimise the risk of being separated again,” Essek explained very sensibly—Caleb found that he didn’t dislike the idea of spending more time with him.

That was, of course, before the three teleportation mishaps that brought them increasingly off course.

“I’ll deal with them,” Caleb said, tired and resigned, when the room they landed in proved to be guarded by two more mechanical spiders. He had barely unsheathed his sword when he felt movement beside him.

“Not on your own, this time,” Essek said with determination, stepping up beside him with his hands raised.

A moment later, Caleb parried a blow aimed at Essek.

“While I appreciate the help,” he said, “stay behind me.” He didn’t wait around for an answer, pushing the construct away with the Sign Aard while keeping an eye on the other one.

He wondered how Essek was going to help, if his magic was even suited for combat. He had his answer a moment later, when both constructs stopped, straining against an invisible force.

Keeping them in his eyesight, he turned towards Essek, who was tracing quick somatics with his hands. “Bhanna enaid,” he said, and a faint glow shimmered over both the constructs.

What— was all Caleb could think before Essek said, “Hit one of them and you’ll hurt both!”

It was easy to trust him, which should have scared Caleb, normally. As it was, he was just grateful for Essek’s presence.

Now that he knew their weak spots, he could make quick work of the constructs. As Essek said, the damage he dealt to one was mirrored by the other, and overall it was a very short fight. The sound of metal scattering to the ground, harmless and inert, was the most pleasing Caleb had ever heard. He straightened his back and found that he was only a little sore: nothing that a couple of hours of meditation couldn’t take care of, although evening was fast approaching and he wouldn’t have minded some actual sleep.

And it was all thanks to Essek’s spell. “That was a handy bit of magic, my friend.”

“It was nothing,” Essek said, with a smug smile that said the opposite.

The room they had ended up in was blocked, completely cut off from the outside, so Essek opened another portal which led them to the top of a building. Caleb was about to walk to the edge and peer down, but as he moved he noticed the ground under his feet was soft and crunchy. He crouched.

“The bad news is, we’re in a nest,” he said. “Judging from the remains and the fresh droppings, a recently occupied one.”

There was a disgusted sound from Essek. “And the good news?”

“Our host is not here at the moment.” Caleb straightened again. He had seen enough to reach a couple of conclusions. “Also, we’ve probably found what’s stealing animals from your village.”

“It’s not my village and I honestly could not care less about that,” Essek hissed.

“I meant that if it can get in and out, so can we,” Caleb said curtly. “If you could get us to a high enough point…”

“I’m trying.” The sorcerer twirled, stumbling inelegantly when his movements were impeded by a bone protruding from a foetid mound of unmentionable matter. “I’m sorry this is not a problem that can be solved by killing it,” he said, “but you’re welcome to try, while I find a way to make my magic work in a place that’s designed to mess with it.”

His next portal didn’t open out of the city, but they landed in what had to have been a garden. Every hypothetical vegetation had to have disappeared a long time ago, but there were still paths delimited by rocks, and huge stone vases, planters and long-dried-up fountains.

Caleb was turning towards Essek with a question on his lips, but he forgot it as soon as he saw the mage sway lightly in his hover. His reflexes were quick as always, and he caught him in his arms before he could collapse on the ground.

“Do not faint on me, Essek,” he said lightly, still holding him. Whatever spell kept him floating had disappeared, but he still had to weigh less than Caleb’s armour and swords combined.

It was a testament to Essek’s exhaustion that he didn’t try to fight; he just closed his eyes. “I think I need a little rest,” he whispered.

“We’ve had a long day.” Caleb adjusted his hold until he was carrying the wizard properly. “Let’s find a place to rest.”

There was a circle of stones nearby, close to the basin of an ancient fountain, a sort of small square. It would be far from comfortable, but it looked safe. By the time they reached it, Essek was feeling good enough to stand on his own.

His hand seemed to linger on Caleb’s vambrace for a moment before he stepped away. “Thank you,” he said simply, and Caleb just nodded.

As Caleb looked into his satchel and made a stock of what little food he had with him—dried meat and some hard tack, and not a lot of water—Essek cleaned himself with a few simple spells that didn’t seem to tire him out like the multiple teleportations had. Caleb observed him silently, thinking of the possible applications of a similar Sign.

When Essek was finally satisfied with his level of cleanliness, he sighed. “I don’t suppose it would be wise to light a fire,” he said.

Caleb shook his head. “Even if it was, I wouldn’t know what to fuel it with.”

After a moment, Essek nodded, then he raised both hands, pulling a necklace above his head. It was a simple metal chain, and the pendant was shaped like an hourglass. “This will only last four hours, and it needs a day to regain its power,” he said.

Caleb was about to ask what ‘this’ was, when Essek upended the hourglass and placed it on the ground between them.

The incantation was immediate: as soon as the first grain of sand hit the bottom chamber of the hourglass, the world around them changed. The air got warmer, the dirt on the ground turned into grass, and a canopy of trees opened overhead to show the starry expanse of the night sky. The darkness was brightened by a nice campfire, and they were both sitting on comfortable cushions. The only clue that they weren’t on another plane altogether was the faint vibration of his medallion.

Across from him, Essek was sitting cross-legged in a meditation posture, clad in purples and midnight blues and with his hair once again meticulously coiffed. When he looked down at himself, Caleb saw with relief that he was still wearing his armour, and his swords were at his back as usual.

“I didn’t think you’d appreciate a makeover,” Essek said. “Was I wrong?”

“You weren’t. I don’t suppose your illusion also provides food and drinks.”

A rueful laugh. “Ah, no, I haven’t accomplished that yet. But this enchantment gave me comfort while I was on the road, sometimes. Maybe I will tinker with it a little more.” He yawned, a surprisingly spontaneous display for him. “Please forgive me, I need to rest.”

He didn’t wait for an answer before closing his eyes and falling into a state that Caleb would have called sleep, if Essek hadn’t been sitting up.

The elf didn’t move as Caleb proceeded to strip himself of his armour as well. The fire may not have been real, but its warmth spread through Caleb’s skin into his weary muscles and battered bones. He knew it was probably his mind conjuring up sensations, whatever the magic wanted him to feel, but it was comforting all the same.

He thought about Essek, alone and on the run, his home lost—perhaps not for the first time, if the legends were to be believed. It occurred to him that he didn’t know how old the elf was, how many wars and pogroms he had seen. How much blood he had spilled.

He unpacked half of his rations and ate in silence. He got halfway through before he realised he wasn’t hungry.

After an hour, Essek finally stirred. He blinked and looked around for Caleb, exhaling a long sigh when he saw him by the fire in his breeches and shirt, polishing one of his bracers. Most of his armour had already been cleaned and was neatly arranged on his left with his swords; the other bracer and his boots were on the right.

Essek shifted closer to the fire, warming his hands. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked simply, and Caleb’s movements faltered for a moment.

He had mostly got himself and his thoughts under control again. The repetitive, soothing motions helped.

Also, he had the feeling maybe Essek of all people would understand. The thought scared him and drew him in in equal measure. He knew the wise thing to do would be to deflect or lie, but there was a part of him that wanted to shake a reaction out of this unlikely travel companion. Maybe he was just tired of pretending people’s words and assumptions didn’t bother him, and he wanted to set the record straight for once.

“What you said earlier, about me solving problems by killing them,” he started, then he exhaled sharply. “I am not just a murderer.”

He waited for a comeback, and when it once again didn’t come, he looked up. Essek seemed pensive. “I know you aren’t,” he said slowly.

“I have been trying to do the right thing for so long, Essek.” He tried to keep his voice low and controlled. “So long, only for people like you to assume I’m still the mindless killer I was trained to be.”

There was a sigh from across the campfire. “Caleb.” Essek’s voice had lost its previous edge and was now tentative, almost soft. Almost pitying.

Caleb’s rage erupted, white hot and sudden. “That’s not my real name,” he said before he could stop himself. Essek recoiled a little at the outburst, but he didn’t say anything. “You don’t know how witchers were made, do you? How we were taken as children, or sold by our parents for half a crown, and trained, shaped, ‘forged,’ as my master used to say. ‘Awakened.’ Tortured.” The words were painful in his throat, but he pushed them out nonetheless. “Our training was brutal. ‘Accidents’ happened. But that was not all. The mutagens that sharpened our senses, that turned us into perfect killing machines… only one in ten children survived. And even those who didn’t die… we did, in a sense. Only we kept on going.” He bowed his head. “While you learned your parlour tricks in your fancy magic school or trailed behind the Queen at banquets and parties, children were murdered to keep you all safe.” He chuckled, a humourless laugh. “If only it had worked.”

He expected Essek to lash out as well, to react with cold fury as he had done in the past. He hoped he would.

Instead there was a long silence, interrupted only by the crackling of the fire, and then a quiet, “You speak of it in the past tense.”

Looking up towards the stars that weren’t real, Caleb worked his jaw for a minute, bracing himself against an onslaught of memories: the screams when his comrades fell one after the other, the acrid smell of chemicals spilled on the floor as the hurricane of signs and spells raged in the fortress, the feeling of his blade sinking into his master’s heart.

It never came. He couldn’t tell if time had eventually dulled his perfect memory, or if it had to do with talking to someone who was not, and never would be, in a position to judge him. He really couldn’t tell.

He looked at the bracer, who was shining in the light of the magic campfire, and set it down by his side. He could feel Essek’s pale eyes on him without having to look, as if his gaze had its own gravity.

“We made sure it stopped,” he said eventually. “I made sure. No more children at the stake.”

There was an intake of breath at his side, followed by a controlled sigh, and then the rustle of fine robes being smoothed.

If he tries to comfort me, I will walk away, Caleb thought distantly.

“I hate parties.”

Forgetting his stubborn determination to avoid looking at Essek, Caleb turned towards him. He didn’t know if the air of haughty, courtly detachment he managed to conserve in almost every situation was due to his elven heritage or simply to him being Essek.

“What?” he asked.

A dismissive wave with an elegant hand. A couple of rings glinted in the light of the campfire. How had bandits not killed him when he was on the run? “Banquets and parties, you said. I never followed Leylas to those.”

They sat in silence for a while longer, and when Caleb probed at the rage he never stopped feeling, he found it had lost some of its edges.

“You know, for the common folk there is little difference between witchers and mages.” Essek’s tone was deceptively light, and Caleb turned his gaze on him. “Maybe we’re not so different after all.”

Caleb hummed. “A relic from the past, to be shunned or used to scare children.”

Essek’s smile was bitter. “A relic from an old world, indeed. Doubly so for me.” He met Caleb’s questioning gaze, and the bitterness increased. “Surely you know of how the Aen Dhuibe were shunned and cast aside by our cousins, the Aen Elle. Sent back into the underground they thought we belonged to. Until, according to the legend, we reemerged in this world after the Conjunction.”

Caleb knew the story, just as he knew there was a grain of truth in every legend.

“And then we were feared and ostracised in this world, too. We had to fight for our right to exist, and many still think we don’t have any.”

“I imagine that’s true for you as a sorcerer, too,” Caleb said quietly.

When Essek shook his head, the fire danced on his hair and in his eyes. “Those who are born with innate magic are precious among the Aen Dhuibe. In a way, I was lucky to be born one of them and not among your folk. But now… yes, now I know how it feels to be feared and hated while also expected to serve when I’m needed, and be thankful for it.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Caleb replied. “I don’t know if witchers are needed anymore.”

Essek regarded him pensively, and Caleb looked back. It had been a while since the last time he had talked with someone like Essek. Someone who understood him.

“The world is changing,” he added, and Essek bowed his head in silent agreement. “There used to be a monster in every backyard once upon a time, and we needed monsters to fight them. I don’t think it’s true anymore.”

“Is it because the world has become less monstrous,” Essek asked, “or more?”

Yes, Essek understood all too well. Caleb looked down at his hands and didn’t reply. He had no answer.

🟍

“I have an idea,” said Essek in the morning.

Calling the previous night restful would have been a euphemism for Caleb, but it apparently brought some counsel to his friend. “Let’s hear it,” he said as he strapped his swords to his back. He had slept with most of his armour on, or at least tried to, while Essek kept watch, and spent the rest of the night meditating while the elf rested.

“I was thinking about the nest,” Essek went on, pausing to take a bite of hard tack. He somehow managed to look gracious as if he were at court, but the illusion was somewhat undermined when he continued with his mouth full. “If we can reach a good vantage point today, like that one was, we might be able to see a way out. I was thinking a tower, if we can find one, or the top of a tall building.”

“That’s a very good idea,” Caleb said with seriousness, earning a pleased smile.

The choice fell on a spire not far from where they’d spent the night, the tallest building around—so tall even Essek couldn’t see the top.

“I’d say it could have been used for astronomical observation, if we weren’t underground,” Essek commented.

“I hope there are stairs,” Caleb said. “You might not need them, but I do.”

Essek clicked his tongue and started looking for the entrance.

🟍

Once they had traversed a dark corridor leading through very thick walls, they reached a circular chamber. It went up, and up, and up, making Caleb suspect that the tower was just an empty cylinder from top to bottom, although it was hard to tell for sure, since he couldn’t see the ceiling.

“I can’t see it either,” Essek whispered, with reverence or nervousness (or both) after Caleb asked him. “It just seems… hollow. What was the purpose of this place?”

“We’re not here to find out,” Caleb reminded him. “We’re just looking for a way out.”

Essek sniffed. “I know.” Then he cocked his head, looking at the centre of the perfectly round hall. “What’s that?” he asked.

Caleb looked down and saw a huge humanoid statue, roughly twice as tall as him. Its stocky limbs and rough appearance looked remarkably out of place compared to the rest of the room with its graceful architecture. It took Caleb three seconds to look at it more closely and understand it wasn’t a statue at all.

Why isn’t anything ever easy, Caleb thought as he unsheathed Fate, reaching out with his other arm to stop Essek from moving forwards.

“Stay behind me,” he said, “and get out. It may not activate if we are careful enough.”

Of course Essek did not move. “What do you mean?”

Cursing silently at Essek’s stubbornness, Caleb opened his mouth to reply. Right that moment, the eyes of the creature that wasn’t a statue flared with unnatural brightness.

“Golem,” he said. “Get out!”

With the noise of stone grinding against stone, the golem’s head turned towards them. When it raised a foot with a surprisingly fluid movement, and then stomped it back on the floor, the ground shook.

Walking backwards without tearing his eyes away from the golem, Caleb took in something he had dismissed earlier: the floor and walls were fractured, with cracks crossing them like a spiderweb. A pattern emerged, and Caleb cursed at himself this time for not noticing that the golem was the epicentre.

This tower had not fallen into ruin. It had been almost destroyed by its guardian.

“We have a problem,” Essek said behind him.

“Bigger than our friend here?” Caleb asked ironically.

It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but Essek replied anyway. “Yes. We’re trapped.”

Caleb looked behind him quickly and saw that the opening they found, a huge stone door kept open by a half-destroyed architrave, had now collapsed when the rest of the lintel fell down.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Indeed,” said Essek, who was now beside him. The elf was remarkably calm, which confused Caleb more than if he had been panicking.

“We have no way out,” he pointed out.

Essek’s reply was swallowed by a thump, and then another, and then another. They both turned to the golem, which was charging them. Caleb knew a thing or two about golems, their partial vulnerability to fire, and the fact that their size made them lethal up close but easy to dodge.

If you weren’t trapped in a corridor with no way out, of course.

Even if it was pointless, his instinct took over, and Caleb raised his sword and prepared to cast a sign. The last five seconds of his life would have been rather underwhelming, had Essek not been here.

But Essek was. “Hold onto me, quick,” he said, as he began casting.

Caleb did not know what instinct he was obeying then; he just listened to the part of himself concerned with his own survival, and that part was screaming at him to trust Essek, so he did.

He felt a tug and an incredible pressure on every atom of his being, similar to the feeling of stepping through a portal but not quite as excruciating. When he opened his eyes again—when had he closed them?—he had his arms around Essek and he was looking over his shoulder, just in time to see the golem run down the last stretch of corridor and hit the door, right past the place where they had been an instant ago.

The tower trembled and shook, and Caleb held his breath as the golem disappeared under an avalanche of rock as the corridor collapsed on it. He listened out for the vibrations of stone rumbling and settling, reverberating under and around them until they finally ceased.

Not a full minute elapsed before Essek cleared his throat. “You can let me go now,” he said, even as he pulled his own hands away from Caleb’s waist, where they had landed.

Up until that moment, Caleb hadn’t noticed how tightly he was holding the elf. Essek fit nicely in his arms, he thought, and then pushed the thought away as he stepped back and created some distance between them.

“We need to find a way out of here,” Essek said matter-of-factly, looking everywhere but at Caleb. He hesitated, opened his mouth, clasped his hands, then drifted away without saying anything else.

Caleb sheathed Fate again, wondering what Essek could possibly be hiding from him.

Chapter Text

“Caleb, come here.”

Looking over from the patch of floor he was examining, where a series of grooves on the tiles might have hidden a trap door, Caleb saw Essek standing in front of a painted wall on the other side of the room. He rose from his crouch and walked over.

As soon as he was close enough, Essek reached for his arm without turning from the wall, the scene painted in such a way that the shapes were easily recognisable even in the muted glow of Essek’s magic lights.

“Look,” Essek said as he pointed. “More dark elves. It’s the same iconography we’ve seen in that other building: a procession, maybe? But there’s the part I don’t understand,” he went on, dragging Caleb with him in front of another panel. “That’s the sun—a metaphor for enlightenment?… and those are Aen Dhuibe kneeling under it… and this,” he added, pointing at a geometrical shape, “is the beacon.”

The first thing Caleb noticed was that Essek’s hand was trembling. When he eventually turned his attention to the wall, he saw a pentagonal shape hovering above the hands of a kneeling dark elf. Then he looked at the elf next to them and the two on the other side: they were both about to hold a beacon. “There’s several of them,” he observed. “But you’ve always talked about the beacon.”

“Exactly.” Essek’s voice was low and excited, and he let Caleb’s arm go, pressing his joined hands on his lips for a moment as if in prayer. “Was this a temple? Is this a lost story of my ancestors? Do more beacons exist? Where do they come from?”

Caleb shook his head. “Essek, I know this is a lot for you, but…”

“I know, I know.” Essek let his hands fall, sounding as frustrated as he looked. “We need to look for a way out. But this is—this could change everything for my people.”

Instinctively, Caleb reached out to grasp his shoulder. “Essek,” he said, waiting for the elf to reluctantly face away from the wall and towards him. “We will come back.”

It was meant to be reassuring, but if anything Essek looked even more conflicted. “Caleb, I…” he started.

And then he stopped, one ear flicking in the direction of the destroyed doorway. They both turned that way, and a moment later Caleb unsheathed Fate: he had heard it too, the unmistakable murmur of shifting rock.

“It can’t be still alive,” Essek said, raising his hands to cast.

Caleb shook his head. The golem was never alive to begin with. “Keep looking for a way out, I’ll distract it. Essek,” he insisted when the elf opened his mouth to protest. “Trust me.”

A series of complicated expressions followed on Essek’s face, but eventually he nodded and drifted away. Caleb gripped Fate’s hilt tighter and walked in the opposite direction.

By then, the rubble had moved and shifted enough for him to see the golem emerge from it. Its rough, uneven surface looked barely damaged. Even before it had emerged fully, he was turning what passed for a head towards Caleb, eyes bright like small suns.

Freeing itself from the remains of the tunnel with two mighty steps, the golem charged. Caleb ducked easily out of the way, slashing at the golem’s shin. Fate struck true, but it bounced away: the golem’s skin was as hard as stone. If the creature had survived several pounds of rock falling on it, it wasn’t going to be felled by a sword.

But Caleb didn’t want to destroy it, just to keep its attention on him. He had an advantage, at least: with adrenaline flooding his body and his senses as sharp as ever, he was fast. No golem was going to touch him if he didn’t want to.

Behind Caleb’s cold blood, however, there was a pit of fear: he knew he was fighting something that had one single purpose—killing intruders. Right now Caleb was at the top of its list, and it had an advantage of its own over him: one of them would get tired eventually, and it wasn’t the golem.

“Caleb!” he heard Essek call. “I’ve found it! A door!”

“Good job,” Caleb replied as he dodged a clay fist as large as his own waist, twirling and striking again, this time at the golem’s back. He could practically feel his sword losing its edge hit after hit. “Open it now!”

Then two things happened at once: there was a different noise, a loud, creaking, painful sound of an ancient mechanism being activated—and the golem stopped.

As he stood in the middle of the room, panting, Caleb’s immediate relief was replaced by dread. The golem turned its head, followed by its whole body, towards the source of the noise. He followed the direction of its eyes and saw Essek standing near an alcove, his hand pressed on a rune on the wall. The back of the alcove was slowly lifting, disappearing in the architrave above it.

The golem stood for a long moment, then moved. Its purpose was to guard this place against intruders after all, and Essek had just become a more dangerous threat.

“Essek!” Caleb shouted, but the noise was too loud.

He tried the same Sign he had used against the metal spider. The golem didn’t even stop. He was powerless. No, he thought. “Essek! Run!”

Caleb could see the moment Essek saw the danger. He saw a shimmering ward surround the elf, the same one he had used against the spiders.

Just like Caleb’s Sign, it was no match for the full force of a golem’s attack: Essek was swatted away like a fly, ending up on the ground several feet away.

He lay there motionless.

Caleb couldn’t have said how he did it exactly. Sometimes, when he was in combat, his body took over his mind, turning him into a creature of instinct and muscle memory, of strength, perseverance and a willingness to survive, and most of all to kill. He didn’t like surrendering to the killer, but sometimes he had no choice.

This was one of those times.

The golem’s eyes were two gemstones, he found out. After running towards it and jumping on its back, he broke one of them with his dagger, then was tossed on the floor. The impact of his fall on the floor punched the breath out of him, and probably also broke something. He could taste blood on his tongue.

It was fine. Bren didn’t mind the pain.

For better or worse, he was a witcher. He didn’t know if his affinity for magic would have made him a sorcerer in another life; he only had this one. His former masters had taught him to channel his gifts towards one thing and one thing only, and he had spent the better part of his life trying to unlearn that lesson, trying to be a protector instead of a murderer—and sometimes being a protector only meant he got to choose who would live and who would die.

Sometimes it was a hard choice. Other times, however, it was very easy.

It wasn’t just a Sign, of that he was sure. It wasn’t a spell either, or at least not one he had ever seen and copied. Essek would know what to call it, a distant part of his mind thought. For now, he didn’t care: he just focused his will on setting his enemy—the thing that had hurt Essek—on fire, and he did it.

The half-blinded golem took a bit longer than a living creature to die, since it also couldn’t feel pain. The noise the clay made as it cracked, hissed and fell apart was remarkably similar to a scream.

It was the noise that shook him out of his altered state, the noise and the heat. His eyes were burning, tears running on his cheeks, and those were burning, too. He took a deep breath, then another. His name was Caleb Widogast, he reminded himself, and he was a protector.

Essek. Propping himself on his feet with the help of Fate, he grit his teeth against the pain, hobbling to where the still form of Essek lay on the floor. His eyes were open, and they followed him as Caleb let himself fall on his knees beside him.

The sword fell with a clang as he gathered the elf close. “Essek,” he whispered, curving over him as if he could protect him. It’s too late, a voice inside him whispered.

Stubbornly, Caleb hushed it and kept hoping. It was the only thing he could do.

A cough brought up blood to Essek’s lips. “You’ll have to find your way out on your own after all, vatt’ghern,” he whispered.

No, thought Caleb, with finality. “Can you heal yourself?” He knew Essek lost all his potions early on, but there had to be something. “Do you have herbs, any remedy?”

Essek laughed weakly, then winced at the pain that caused him. “For a migraine, yes. Nothing for this kind of ailment, I’m afraid.” His hand came up, unexpectedly, to rest on Caleb’s face. It was shaking.

Caleb covered it with his own gloved one. “Don’t speak,” he said, when he saw the elf’s lips trying to move.

As always, Essek didn’t listen to him. “Maybe the world doesn’t need witchers anymore,” he murmured, “but it needs protectors. It needs you.”

That amount of heartfelt honesty pierced right through Caleb’s armour, breaking his heart. There was a surge of denial in him as he held Essek tighter. They sounded too much like last words, and if this insufferable, arrogant elf thought he was going to die in Caleb’s arms, he was mistaken.

With a last sigh, Essek closed his eyes. “Va fáill, me elaine deith.”

His hand slipped from under Caleb’s, falling on his lap.

Much like during the fight with the golem, Caleb felt a fire ignite inside him. But this time he wasn’t surrendering to his old self. He took Essek’s hand, holding it tight. “No,” he said. “I don’t accept this.” The calm of his tone was like oil on water, hiding the fury underneath.

Essek didn’t say anything.

Caleb clenched his jaw. A long time ago he had sworn nobody would die because of him that didn’t deserve it; that he would protect instead of hurting, that he would defend instead of hunting. He intended to keep that oath.

All he had was one Swallow, a potion that would be lethal as poison for anyone who was not a witcher, but that would heal Caleb immediately if he took it. If only there was a way to share that…

His subconscious connected the dots before he did. He recalled Essek’s gestures perfectly, and his words. ‘Hit one of them and you’ll hurt both.’ Hurt one to hurt two. What if it worked the other way around, too?

He didn’t waste any time, and the thin thread of hope inside him pulled taut as he traced the runes in the air over Essek’s forehead and felt magic stirring within him. “Bhanna enaid,” he whispered, and the magic surged, swelled, enveloped the both of them like a warm summer breeze.

Warmth settled in his guts, heavy and honey-sweet, and he hastily reached for the last of his potions, downing it. As the concoction worked, delivering him from a pain he noticed fully only after it was gone, he could imagine all too well the face Caduceus would make at this unorthodox healing method. Thinking about his friend, Caleb said a quick prayer to Melitele for it to work, and while he was at it he sent a wordless invocation to the entity this temple was dedicated to. He didn’t know what it was, but he hoped the intention behind the thought would count.

And apparently it did—or maybe it was just a combination of divine intervention and his own sharp mind, which had saved his life many times, and now had saved Essek’s, too. When Caleb felt the elf move in his arms with a moan, the relief was so stark and overwhelming that his vision swam.

When Essek’s eyes finally opened, he blinked a few times, taking in his surroundings and, eventually, stopping on Caleb’s face. His brow creased. “That tasted foul. What have you done this time, Caleb Widogast?”

Caleb closed his eyes and drew Essek against his chest, ignoring his half-hearted protest. “Only saved your life, Essek.”

He braced himself for a retort that never came. What he felt instead was Essek’s arms close around his waist, timidly at first and then more strongly.

He also felt something else. Surprise, hurt, and a deep, staggering affection. He didn’t remember feeling anything like that since it was burned out of him—out of Bren, he corrected himself—by his training and by the mutations. By the Assembly and their goal to create a stock of emotionless, ruthless, unstoppable killers.

He let Essek believe his motivations in finding the beacon were selfish because it was simpler, but it was so much more complex than that. Of course he would benefit, in the end, from destroying the Cerberus Assembly at its roots, before it could perpetrate any of its crimes; but so would so many people, so many children. His friends, his former lovers… his parents. He had avenged them when he killed his former master and dismantled that horrible institution, but revenge didn’t bring back the dead, or undo any of the suffering in those who survived. He didn’t want to go back so he could be Bren again: he wanted to change the past so he could keep his promise of making the world a better place than he found it.

And maybe the beacon didn’t have this much power. But he had to try.

“Caleb.”

He looked down at Essek again. He had never heard him say his name in such a way. He had never heard anyone say it in such a way. It wasn’t far from the tone Essek used by the campfire last night, but it was also so different. ‘Tenderness’ didn’t even begin to describe it.

Essek was looking at him with wide eyes, his lips parted.

And then, in a whisper, “Bren?”

Caleb’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. He was speechless.

He’s not what I believed him to be, he thought… but it wasn’t his thought. He didn’t talk to himself in Elder Speech, and even if he had, that one wouldn’t feel so… detached from his own mind.

Is this selflessness even possible? A decent man? I suspected—and yet I have lied to him since the beginning—but I had my reasons. Yet he is good—he deserves it. I can trust him. Perhaps I will aid him in studying it. Yes, I will give him my beacon.

The realisation was slow but crushing in its undeniability. They weren’t his thoughts.

A bond between their souls. A connection between their minds.

Those were Essek’s thoughts.

And then two words in particular stood out. My beacon.

“You have the beacon,” Caleb said before he could stop himself.

To his credit, Essek didn’t try to deny it. That would have been impossible, given that Caleb could see the truth as well as he was seeing Essek’s pained, guilt-ridden face.

Essek closed his eyes, as deep lines furrowed his brow.

Sensations flooded Caleb’s brain in an instant that covered months, then decades, and he closed his eyes too as they turned into memories of a life that wasn’t his. He didn’t just witness the pain and the discomfort of Essek’s early years; they were his pain and his discomfort as he struggled with a body that fought him at every turn, with an ache that sat deep in his bones, and limbs that wouldn’t cooperate; he felt the elation when he discovered he could bend reality, change it at will, and the ways he found to make his existence more tolerable. Floating was just the most conspicuous of his clever little tricks, one that distinguished him and set him apart from everyone else. It was just as well: nobody had been close to him to begin with.

He was Essek as Caleb remembered him, richly dressed and silent, always a step behind his Queen, witnessing her attempts to keep the dark elves’ precious neutrality during the war and warning her against their enemies, to no avail; making contingency plans up until the enemy troops crossed the borders of Dol Aine and marched on Rosohna, its capital, occupying the throne room itself. He saw Northern uniforms and mercenary soldiers alike turn the Lucid Bastion into an army camp, while the South did nothing.

He felt Essek’s loneliness and isolation—a thread that ran through his whole life but had never been as stark as at that moment. He felt his fear and rage as if they had been his own, and in many ways Caleb understood those very well.

He was Essek as he stole his people’s most precious relic out of concern, and because he believed himself to be the only one who could keep it safe and protect it. The man he framed so he wouldn’t be hunted down escaped, defecting to Redania and allowing Essek to hide in Velen without being followed.

He was Essek when he found the hut near Midcopse, trying to make a living as a village witch, hating every part of it at first once the relief wore off, and then slowly coming to appreciate the quiet—when the villagers weren’t bothering him. He had been careless at first, though, and when a young girl who had come with her mother to buy herbs from him snuck into his room and asked him about ‘the big glowing stone with the stars inside’, Essek modified both their memories, but hastily, sloppily. Thus the rumours started of a hidden elven treasure in the ruins near the village.

Then he saw himself, the handsome witcher who came asking for that very same treasure, understanding none of it. It was strange for Caleb to feel nervous irritation towards himself, and even stranger when it started to morph into respect, into trust, into…

The tether linking their minds together frayed and dissolved, and Caleb shook his head, as if waking up from a vivid dream. “You have always known there was no beacon here,” he said, opening his eyes again.

Essek’s breath was shallow, and he recoiled slightly when Caleb spoke, as if the words were hurting him. “I am sorry,” he whispered.

Caleb should have been angry, and part of him was. Part of him was always angry, and he was practised at keeping that anger at bay. The thing was, Essek’s regret was real. He had felt it. In the blink of an eye, he had come to know this man as well as he knew himself.

“I am sorry, about everything,” Essek added slowly. “I didn’t mean to pry into your memories. Your past is yours. But it was wrong, what they did to you,” he added, looking straight into Caleb’s eyes. He licked his lips, hesitating. “It’s also nothing the beacon can fix, I’m afraid. But it hasn’t been studied thoroughly yet. I wasn’t allowed to do that before, and now that I have free access to it, I don’t have the means I used to have.”

Caleb looked back at him and said nothing.

Essek was guilty of so many things, and while he didn’t regret all of them, he wasn’t proud of what he did. He reminded Caleb of himself, and while he wasn’t sure if he considered himself a good person, Caleb knew bad people, and Essek wasn’t one of them.

And now he was offering Caleb… hope, of some sort. His search for the beacon was a hopeless quest, he knew that from the beginning. But the beacon was real and something maybe could come of it, with Essek’s help.

“I understand if you don’t want anything to do with me anymore,” Essek said, interrupting the flow of Caleb’s thoughts. “I could hardly blame you.”

“I have done terrible things, Essek.” Caleb held Essek’s surprised gaze and went on, “It’s been hard to forgive myself, and I can’t say I have reached the end of that path yet. All I know is that, if I don’t forgive you, I will never be able to do the same for myself.”

A sad, self-deprecating smile, that Essek mostly directed at his own empty palms. “And how does one go about forgiving himself, Caleb Widogast?”

That was an excellent question. With a sigh, Caleb pulled them both upright. The healing potion had done its job, but it had only acted on the worst of the damage: he still felt sore and bruised. “One step at a time,” he said, holding his hand out to Essek.

The elf hesitated for a few seconds, then took it. “Thank you,” he said, holding Caleb’s hand for a meaningful moment. Then he straightened his back. “Are you ready to go?”

And the fact was, Caleb had been, up until a moment ago. Now, his eyes fell on the door Essek had partially opened during the fight with the golem. “We should take a look in there.”

“Have you hit your head?” Essek asked drily.

“No. I mean, yes,” Caleb admitted, gingerly touching the back of his head, where his scalp was still tender. “But I think that construct may have been guarding something, and, well… it’s not guarding it anymore.”

Essek fidgeted for a moment. “You want to explore further.” It wasn’t a question, but a probe. A cat gently putting his paw on a surface to see if it would give or hold his weight.

Caleb shrugged. “If you want.”

“I do,” Essek said immediately. He looked surprised by his own eagerness, then he shook his head and his composure broke into a determined, beautiful grin. “I do,” he repeated.

Caleb found himself answering with a matching grin.

🟍

Sunlight.

It was so unexpected that the full meaning of what Caleb was seeing didn’t sink in at first. They had been walking up a stairway that winded around the tower, slicing its thick walls like a lindworm’s trail, going ever up.

The light became ever stronger as they made their way into a large circular chamber, until it couldn’t be denied anymore. It poured in from an opening in the vast, cracked glass dome that surmounted the top chamber: a sharp pillar of light splitting the darkness. The whole room was heavily damaged, with the walls torn down, the floor ruptured and broken, and covered in glass shards like a spring snowfall.

Relief was a sweet, heady feeling. “That’s our way out,” Caleb said to Essek, pointing at the ceiling. “The top of the tower must be above ground level. Can you bring us up there with your magic? Essek?”

When he looked at him, Caleb realised Essek probably hadn’t heard a thing of what he had just said.

“It can’t be,” he said under his breath. Caleb didn’t think he realised he had spoken in Elder Speech.

He was looking at the middle of the room, right where the sunbeam hit a stone pillar, a pedestal of some sort. It was holding something that shone under the light, refracting it.

“Don’t,” Caleb said when Essek moved forward. The elf still didn’t seem to hear him, and Caleb grasped his arm, stopping him physically. He pointed at the stone floor, with its cracks and pointy glass shards.

“That’s not an issue for me,” Essek countered.

“Fair. But I can’t follow you.”

When he touched Caleb’s arm, Essek’s hands were shaking. “There’s a beacon,” he said. “There’s a beacon. In this room. There is more than one. Unless I’m mistaken, I…” He was lost in thought for a second, and Caleb could almost see the calculations he was running in his mind behind his eyes. Then he looked at him again. “Caleb, I have to see this through.”

If he had harboured any hope to convince Essek to let it go, Caleb now understood there was none. “I understand.”

As he was scanning the room for threats, he felt something on his hand. Essek had taken it. “Thank you,” he said, holding for a moment longer before letting it go.

Caleb looked at Essek as he drifted towards the centre of the room, and he kept his eyes open.

🟍

The attack came, as it was to be expected, from above. The creature’s presence was betrayed by its shadow, as its wings and long, scaled body blotted out the light.

Unsheathing Fate, Caleb felt his eyes adjust to the sudden gloom. A scream erupted from the cockatrice’s horrible beak. And then it plunged.

Caleb reacted instinctively. He crossed the floor on light feet, jumping over the gaping holes and stepping on the glass, sword at the ready, and made the Sign Aard to push the beast away from Essek, who had backed away when he saw the monster, leaving the precious relic behind. The force of Caleb’s Aard knocked it off the pedestal, sending it on the floor with a hollow, echoing sound, like a bell toll; its light scattered across the sea of glass shards.

The Sign also slammed the cockatrice against a wall, from where it fell to the floor on unsteady legs.

It was small, Caleb noticed. Not quite a chick anymore, but barely more than that. It held something limp and furry in its talons. Caleb hesitated: it was alone and hungry, and they had trespassed in its territory. Sure, this not-quite-chick would grow up to become a dangerous predator, but it wouldn’t kill humans unless provoked.

He could imagine what the villagers of Midcopse would say if he told them that. In the best case scenario, they would hire him to slay the beast, and he would accept, because at the end of the day he was a witcher.

Eventually it was the building that made the choice for him. A crack, a rumble, and the floor was tilting under his feet.

A few things happened at the same time.

The wall the cockatrice was huddled against was split by a fracture that went up to the ceiling, sending dust and more glass shards raining on them. Something heavy hit Caleb on the head and another chunk of rock knocked Fate out of his grasp. The cockatrice sensed his distraction and lunged at him with his claws and sharp beak. Caleb was lucky, because it was more focused on escaping with its prey than killing him: it didn’t wait around to disembowel him, just leapt over him, knocking him to the ground. Caleb hit the floor, glass shards embedding in his gloves and trousers and even his cheek, just under his left eye.

For a long moment, the pain was blinding. When he could see again, Fate was in front of him. He made to reach for the hilt, when the floor bucked like a wild horse and started to crumble from under him.

He remembered the seemingly endless tower, all that empty, echoing space, and wondered how long it would take for him to hit the bottom. As the floor disappeared from beneath him, he waited for the fall.

It never came.

A moment later, he was moving, but towards the border of the room—towards safety, and straight into Essek’s arms.

“This room is falling apart,” the elf said in a hushed, sombre tone that almost belied his fear. “We need to go.”

Still dazed from the pain, Caleb looked up. For a moment, Essek’s profile was stark against the light as he turned towards the middle of the room. Caleb remembered the sea of glass shards, at the middle of which still lay the beacon. He thought he could see its strange light reflected in Essek’s pupils, dancing on the frown on his forehead, turning his white locks indigo and lilac. It was, of course, impossible—if he was here, in Essek’s arms, it meant the beacon was gone—but Essek’s intentions were plain, easy to read in his countenance.

There was nothing he could do or say to make Essek change his mind, to make him stay with him, and perhaps he was just too tired and in too much pain to fight, but Caleb wasn’t even sure he had the right to do so. What was the life of a simple witcher against a priceless artifact, one Caleb understood to be more precious to Essek and his people than anything else?

There was relief in accepting that this was the end, and just a little bit of sadness. Letting his head fall back, Caleb closed his eyes.

He opened them again when Essek slapped him on his right cheek. “Don’t you dare pass out now, Caleb Widogast.”

“What are you doing?” Caleb asked as he let Essek half pull him to his feet, half drag him upright.

“I’m taking us the fuck out of here,” Essek replied calmly.

Caleb’s heart ached for the loss of Fate, but he could have another sword made if he got out of there. Unlike real cats, he only had one life. He squeezed Essek’s forearm. “The beacon?”

Essek closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. “We have one at home,” he gritted out. “Let's go before you hit your head again.”

That was more or less when Caleb lost consciousness. And that time, when everything went black, it stayed that way for a while.

🟍

Caleb woke up to the orange-violet light of a sunset. His internal clock informed him it was nearly midnight.

His first thought was that he must have hit his head again, after all.

He scanned his body for any pain. He found none, not even the headache he was expecting. He opened his eyes, finding himself lying down on a chaise longue with a pea-green silk upholstery. He was wearing a dark blue shirt and soft linen trousers, and nothing else. It was another clue he was not asleep, since he had never dreamed anything like that and he didn’t think he ever would.

His attention was caught by the huge window in front of him, through which sunlight poured in. The glass panes covered the entire wall: he was in a solarium, he thought, or a greenhouse. Beyond them he could see the gentle slopes of grassy hills and a distant mountain ridge, jagged and snowy.

Dol Aine, his mind supplied. Before the invasion. A place that only existed in the memories of those who had lived or travelled there before, and one of them happened to be a powerful mage with his own demiplane, one he could shape any way he wanted.

The mage in question was floating next to his chaise, holding a book on one knee and twirling a lock of his hair with his other hand. Essek was wearing a dark, loose tunic that left his sharp collar bones bare. Something settled in Caleb when he saw him, like releasing a long-held breath. The elf looked clean and tidy again, which at least corresponded to Caleb’s impression that some time had passed since his last memory. There was something about him, though, that was different from the Essek from before; maybe it was the loose way his clothes were draped on him, or the fact that his hair looked clean but a little messy. It was something that, had it been anyone else, Caleb would have called softness.

When he shifted on the chair to see him better, Essek’s ears twitched and he looked up from his book with wide eyes. He was barefoot, Caleb noticed; his injured ankle didn’t look swollen anymore. He didn’t even bother putting a marker between the pages; the book fell on the floor as he uncrossed his legs and dropped to Caleb’s side.

“You’re awake,” Essek exhaled, without concealing his relief. He closed his mouth, looking a little dumbfounded by his own reaction, and his hands did a complicated little dance before settling on the upholstery next to Caleb’s arm. “I wasn’t sure—are you in pain? Do you need anything?”

Turning more comfortably on his back, Caleb allowed himself a moment to just look at him, enjoying from up close the way his violet skin turned wine-dark when he was flustered. He thought about pressing a thumb on Essek’s round cheekbone, right where he could see a cluster of white freckles, but he feared the man might combust.

What he did instead was perhaps worse, though, because when he searched for one of Essek’s hands and held it, the elf stopped breathing altogether.

“You brought us back,” Caleb said. “You brought me back.”

Essek’s mouth opened and closed. “Of course I did,” he whispered, his face turning deadly serious. “You haven’t transcribed that inscription for me yet.”

It was good to laugh again, even if it made Caleb feel a little dizzy. He touched his head gingerly with the hand that wasn’t holding Essek’s, right where he remembered being hit the second time. His scalp was tender, but it didn’t hurt as he knew it should. “Did you heal me?”

Essek shook his head. “As much as I would love to take credit, I am not that well versed in the healing arts. I contacted an old acquaintance who owed me a favour. It is their doing. They almost brought you back from the brink of death, they said.”

“I hope it was a huge favour they owed you.”

“I owe them an even greater one now,” Essek admitted freely, with a shrug of his slender shoulders. “I don’t care, as long as you are safe.”

It was the most unselfish sentence Caleb had ever heard him utter, and it wasn’t even delivered in a pained or uncomfortable tone. He stared at Essek, full of surprise and wonder and other feelings he didn’t have the time to contemplate long enough to name, and then he stared a little more, just because he could. There would be time for that, he hoped. They would have at least a little time.

Maybe Essek misunderstood the intensity of Caleb’s stare, or he was unable to process it, because he broke eye contact, fidgeting with his free hand with one of his cuffs. What he said next was not what Caleb was expecting. “I gave it back.”

Caleb blinked. Then he straightened, pulling himself up until he was properly sitting. Essek went to take his hand away, but Caleb didn’t let go.

He didn’t press. He knew there was no need to. Essek took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I know I promised I would give you access to it,” he said, with what Caleb believed to be genuine regret. “But, Caleb… it wasn’t mine to keep in the first place. When my acquaintance went back to the exiled court in Skellige, I gave it to them.”

When he opened his eyes, he looked afraid. And yet he faced the judgement he thought he would see in Caleb’s eyes.

“We don’t have to talk about it right now,” Essek said quickly, without giving Caleb time to reply, to say that he understood, that he couldn’t have been prouder. “We don’t have to talk about it ever. I understand if you… if I…” His voice trailed off as he looked for a way of saying something very undignified while sparing both their dignities.

Caleb had half a mind of letting him flounder a little more. He took his other hand instead, running his thumbs over the back of both of them with all the tenderness he could muster. His own hands—those of a killer, a fighter, a witcher—were rough against Essek’s smooth skin. Speechless for once, Essek looked at their joined hands as if he had never seen them before.

“You know, they say something about near death experiences,” Caleb said. “Something about how they make you see things more clearly. Give you a new perspective. Make you reconsider, change your mind.”

Essek kept looking at their hands and didn’t say anything.

“For so long I was looking for a way of changing my past.” Caleb didn’t know when he stopped wanting that; he only knew that the words he was speaking were true. “But now I’m a little more interested in what the future might hold.”

Essek looked up then, and his lilac eyes were wide with apprehension and hope. He was leaning closer and closer.

When Caleb kissed the back of his hands, one after the other, he was pleased to feel Essek shiver from head to toe. “You know, I do understand Elder Speech a little,” he said, more lightly. “Not enough to hold a conversation, but I have a very good memory, and I remember something you told me.”

He glanced up to see Essek’s complexion darken considerably. “What I told you when I thought I was about to die doesn’t count,” he pointed out. “Not all near death experiences need to be spiritually enlightening.”

Notably, he didn’t pull back his hands.

“Oh, I think it does count.” Caleb turned Essek’s left hand and brushed a kiss right in the middle of his palm. “I have never been called ‘my beautiful flame’ by anyone before.”

This time Essek pulled away from his grasp, but just so he could hold Caleb’s face. His eyes were burning, and they were still very close.

Caleb could feel warm breath on his lips. A moment before they touched Essek’s, though, he pulled back. “About that favour I now owe you…”

“I stopped counting favours long ago,” Essek said hastily. “And I did say I wouldn’t ask anything of you that you wouldn’t want to give me. So shut up and kiss me, Caleb Widogast.”

And neither of them talked for a while.