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Chapter Text

The first letter Essek receives from Caleb Widogast is secreted into his pocket at some point during a tense interview with the Bright Queen. For the life of him, Essek cannot figure out how it was done. He doesn’t recall so much as brushing against the other man as he escorted the Mighty Nein out of the Lucid Bastion. 

Yet when he returns to his office, there it is, tucked into a nearly invisible pocket in his mantle — a piece of subpar parchment folded to vaguely resemble a cat’s face with tiny pointed ears. 

Essek tilts his head, examines it with curiosity, and then unfolds it gently. Inside, the writing is in dark indigo ink, the handwriting cramped and spiky, but precise. It is the handwriting of a man who has had to save and scrape for ink and parchment, Essek thinks. Someone who is accustomed to making them go as far as possible. It is addressed to him in a style somehow both formal and far too familiar that makes him smile despite himself. 

Herr Shadowhand —

Apologies for the subterfuge. A little fun on my end,  perhaps. Nott has been teaching me sleight of hand tricks, and this seemed a better practice than cheating at cards. I did not get the opportunity to thank you properly before, so I wanted to do so now. Your magic is beautiful, Thelyss, and I cannot thank you enough for sharing it with me. 

You will think me terribly forward, but I must say I hope it will not be the last time. I feel as though a fire has been lit inside of my brain. I have long dreamed of magic that delved into time and possibility. And to find it is real, I burn to learn more. I am sure you are familiar with the sensation. We are both men of curiosity, after all. 

Alas, I did not mean for this to turn into an entreaty. Only an opportunity to express my gratitude and my enthusiasm. I have had the experience myself, on a small scale, of being a teacher. I know the joys of an enthusiastic student. May I hope we are alike in this way as well? I am, of course, happy to share with you anything in my own spell book that you may find interesting.

We are often out of town on business, as you are aware, but I am at your disposal whenever we are in Rosohna. 

Yours, in hopes of further collaboration,

Caleb Widogast

It is … impudent. That’s the only word Essek can ascribe to it. He says that he will not entreat Essek for further spells and then does that exact thing in the next line. The cheek of it. The gall. He’s almost angry at how appealing he finds it. But, then Essek has always liked a bit of cheek, a bit of a challenge. Has always been a challenge himself.

It is, perhaps, justification to think that keeping the foreign mage happy will be to Essek’s benefit. But it is important for the Mighty Nein to be distracted —  whether by mysteries, mercenary work, or magic is not of particular importance. A combination may perhaps be most effective to keep their eyes off of Essek and the work he is trying to do.

It is a superfluous detail, Essek tells himself, that he finds Widogast such a compelling arcanist. Still, he can’t deny it’s true. The way he twists even simple cantrips into something all his own is fascinating. Revelatory. Essek cannot help but wonder what he will do with even the most basic dunamantic spells.

He can’t quite justify giving the man another spell just yet, but there is something he’s been working on that could use an outsider’s perspective. 

There are plenty of other things Essek should be doing. He has more than enough work to occupy his time. More than. Instead of doing any of it, he sits down at his desk, pulls out his personal notebook full of scribblings and half-worked spells, then smooths Caleb’s letter out across his ink blotter. 

Hmm. There at the bottom of the page, scribbled like an afterthought, is a postscript he missed. Something in Zemnian, which makes Essek sigh in forbearing irritation. He doesn’t speak Zemnian, and Caleb must know this. Bitte, brennen Sie nach dem Lesen.

With a huff, Essek casts comprehend languages and waits for his vision to clear and settle. Please burn after reading. 

Ah, he should have thought of that. He would have, of course. Eventually.  For a moment, though, Essek is stricken at the thought of anyone else knowing the contents of the letter. It is a bolt of shivering knowledge down his spine. If the Bright Queen knew he was teaching Dynasty magic to an outsider … Well, it would not be a pleasant reckoning. 

Essek jerks to standing, paces over to the fireplace. He rubs the parchment between his fingers, considering, then tosses it into the crackling flames, watches the edges go bright orange then black as the indigo words are slowly devoured by fire. 

When it is all ash, he takes a breath and turns back to his desk with a sour taste in his mouth. It doesn’t deter him from pulling a piece of parchment out from his collection and tracing out the beginnings of a spell he’s developing onto it. Equations printed neatly, he grabs another sheet and begins a letter of his own.

Once done, he sets it aside in favor of reports from the Dungeon of Penance. Essek hasn’t made up his mind, definitively, to send it. It’s only something he’s considering. Its presence nestles in the back of his mind, like a spot in the corner of his vision that he cannot shake away. When the hour grows late, and he feels obliged to return to his towers to meditate, he tucks the letter away in his pocket, still unsent. The next day, he learns that the Nein have left the city in a hurry. Correspondence, then, will have to wait. 

*

There is fresh, new grass beneath Caleb’s head when he wakes, the slanting pink morning sunlight shining into his eyes, and an insistent thudding above his head. His eyes flutter open fully and he sees a bird hurling its body insistently into the barrier of the dome he set up last night. A small white bird. A bird? No, not a bird. What is it?

Slowly, Caleb sits up from his spot curled near Nott’s feet, cautiously moving one of Beauregard’s splayed arms from off his shoulder. Fjord is keeping watch, but his back is to the dome, his guard directed outward to the open Barbed Fields around them. 

He blinks into the light until his eyes adjust.Caleb takes in the mist on the horizon, the giant tree  behind them standing sentry over their campsite. And still that little bird battering itself uselessly against the dome. 

Cautiously, Caleb reaches a hand outside of the magical barrier, thinking to shoo the poor thing away. When he does, however, it shoots directly into his hand. He feels not feathers or bone, but textured vellum. 

Cautious lest his companions wake, Caleb pulls his hand inside and looks at the creature in his cupped palm. It is a bird made of folded paper, its slightly tattered wings damp with morning dew. He runs a finger down its back and feels it give a little shiver that shakes some of the moisture from its pages. What in the Nine Hells?

“Woher kommst du?” he whispers to the creature.

In response, the bird that is not a bird ruffles itself once more and then slumps in his hand, lifeless. Gritting his teeth, half expecting some trap but unable to slack his curiosity, Caleb unfolds the paper bird. 

His eyes go wide as the contents are revealed, reaching up to scratch through his morning stubble while he studies the handwriting. It is an elegant, looping script he recognizes immediately from the few glimpses he got at Essek Thelyss’ spell book some days ago. He lets out a little huff of disbelief. When he wrote that note to the Shadowhand he did not really expect a reply in kind. He certainly didn’t expect one to reach him in the middle of the wilderness in the midst of a manhunt.

Caleb settles his back against the curve of the dome and smooths out the sheets of paper across his knees to read. 

Widogast, 

I suppose I must commend you on your persistence, if on nothing else. And your ability to surprise, which it seems is an endless resource for both you and your compatriots. Yet I find it important to remind you that our last lesson was but a few days ago. Surely you cannot be bored of my gifts so quickly? They were truly paltry if so. 

No, I will flatter myself that is not the case. You are simply … What is the word in common? Voracious. I think that is right. I admit a part of me would like to be able to meet that curiosity adequately. 

It is difficult, however. I don’t know if I’ve ever truly explained. It is not technically forbidden, as I have not asked permission, but my Queen would be very displeased if she knew I had shared spells with you. The Dynasty guards its magic carefully, as you may well have inferred. I am trusting very deeply in your discretion here, Widogast. You seem like a man well capable of keeping secrets. I hope I am not placing my confidence poorly. 

While I cannot offer you anything else from my spell book at this time, I do have something I think may spark your interest. It is incomplete, but I’ve been working on something new. I have included my notes so far on the enclosed page, and I would be very interested in your thoughts. Please do destroy this letter and the attached notes at your earliest convenience. It would not bode well for either to be discovered in your possession. 

There is a small gap, and then the letter continues in a postscript.

P.S. — Please do give my regards to Jester and thank her for checking in. It was good to hear that you are all well and making progress toward your goals. Her sending also gave me a way to direct this letter appropriately. I hope my little bird made its way to you with minimal damage. Your cat gave me inspiration, and I found I could not resist.

Quite seriously, it is no small accomplishment to make it safely through the Ghostlands and so far into the Barbed Fields without an experienced guide.Please be careful. One does not happen upon heroes of the dynasty every day, and I would be hard pressed to find another set were anything to happen to you. 

Regards,

E. Thelyss

There is a not unpleasant twist in Caleb’s stomach at the tone of the letter, simultaneously reprimanding and teasing. The way Thelyss deploys the word voracious … It is a game they are playing, he is well aware. One he is enjoying perhaps more than he should. A game with teases and tensions. 

Essek pushes him away in one paragraph, almost scolding, then draws him in the next. There must be a reason he is attempting to make them co-conspirators. A way to gain his trust? Or implicate him in something? It could be an honest warning, but something about the manner in which it was delivered reminds Caleb uncomfortably of his lessons at Soltryce. There is just a hint of something tactical to it. 

But whatever the Shadowhand is attempting to accomplish, in his efforts, he has also given Caleb something he wanted. A new spell. Or something close at least. Speaking of …

Caleb blinks up, heart pounding in his chest, and makes sure that he is still unobserved by any of his sleeping companions. Then he reshuffles the pages in front of him to find the beginnings of a spell. There are elements of banishment that Caleb recognizes, but if he interprets Essek’s crabbed rune work correctly, the goal would be to send the target back in time rather than to another plane. 

The paper in his hand shudders ever so slightly as Caleb’s hands tremor and the words echo through his mind. Back in time. Back in time. Probably only a few minutes, in the heat of battle, but the concept itself is tantalizing. The equations don’t quite work out, they are slightly tangled, but not in a way that feels impenetrable. It will take some noodling. 

Caleb’s pulse is rushing in his ears as he studies all the pages for a long moment, commits each line and rune to memory, and then crumples them into his fist as tightly as he can.

“Caaaayleb, what’s wrong with your face?” Jester asks after she stretches and yawns, waking Yasha with an unintentional kick to the ribs.

“It is called stubble, Blueberry,” he says. “Hard to shave on the road.”

“No,” Jester says, sticking her tongue out at him. “You look like Frumpkin when he catches a mouse. Why are you so happy?”

“Yeah,” Nott, rubbing her eyes, joins in. “Nice to see you smile, Lebby, but it’s not exactly your style, is it?”

Nonchalantly as he can, Caleb pockets the crumpled letter. It’s not that he doubts the Nein even the slightest, but they are none of them exactly subtle, and whatever this interaction with the Shadowhand turns into, it will require subtlety to control. He pulls a hand down his face from forehead to chin, contorting his mouth into an exaggerated frown as he does.

“This is better?” he asks. “We get to explore a wonder of the world today, you would rather I pout?”

“What are we pouting about?” Beau asks, stretching her arms in a yawn that just barely misses clocking Caleb in the nose. He misses the open spaces of the Xhorhaus already. 

“I’m going to make tea,” Caduceus says, rising and ducking out of the dome. “And breakfast.”

“No more mushroom hash, Caduceus!” Beau calls after him. “Please make me some bacon! Please!”

“I will help,” Caleb says, standing and walking out of the dome, which dissolves behind him like a soap bubble popping.

He crouches next to the fire while Caduceus readies a pot of water for tea, palming the note and dropping it into the flames as he does. Caleb watches until the paper is ash, then looks around. Across the fire, Caduceus is watching him, one eyebrow raised.

“Eventful morning already?” he asks.

Caleb gives a small shake of his head.

“Nothing too exciting,” he replies. “And nothing to worry about.”

Caduceus nods.

“Who wants mushroom hash?” he calls back to the group.

Beauregard’s groan drowns out any response from the others.

While the firbolg cooks, and the others begin to explore the Arbor Exemplar, Caleb starts to compose a reply to Essek’s letter in his head. He will have to come up with an innovative way to send it, when the time is right, to match Thelyss’ efforts. Animated paper. A lovely piece of magic that. Whimsical in a manner Caleb wouldn’t have expected from the stern-faced Shadowhand. 

He tamps down on the smile that wants to spread across his face, the warmth building in his chest. For good or ill, Essek Thelyss is apparently full of surprises.

Chapter Text

Essek has just closed the door of his office practically in Widogast’s face when there is an insistent knock on the door. The man is fixated on the scourger in the Dungeon of Penance. He may have been a scourger himself? Essek has chosen to tuck that little revelation away to process later. 

He had looked as though he was at the end of his rope when he sought Essek out — eyes bruised with sleeplessness, tone just on the edge of manic. He should go home before he reveals even more to someone less inclined to let these things rest.  

The hammering continues until Essek flings the door open to find the human wizard standing there with his fist still raised as though to knock again. 

“Oh,” he says. “I did not expect —”

“I have already told you I will do my best, Widogast —” Essek interrupts. 

“No, of course, I did not intend —”

“But you must understand that the matter is not wholly at my discretion.”

“I do,” the other man says, holding both hands up in surrender. “And I am grateful. For whatever assistance you can provide. I just, well, forgot. That I also intended to, er … To return some of your property.”

As he says this, Widogast flicks his eyes to the sides, taking in their surroundings as though in fear of someone listening in. At the Lucid Bastion, it is a precaution very well considered.

“Ah,” Essek says. “I see.”

The fine hairs at the back of his neck stand on end, everything in his body on alert as Widogast reaches into an inside pocket of his traveling coat and pulls out a small leather pouch. 

“Considering everything, a return seemed only fair, Herr Thelyss. I hope you find it satisfactory.”

“Thank … you?” 

Essek is momentarily puzzled, but holds out his hand to receive the item anyway. Widogast settles it into his palm, cupping the back of Essek’s hand in his own. The unexpected touch sends a wave of warmth through Essek’s body, radiating from Caleb’s palm. The tips of his ears twitch, and he worries lest the other man notice how affected he is by something so simple.

“I will leave you to your work,” Widogast says, removing his hand from Essek’s and bowing stiffly to him. “Good evening, Shadowhand.”

“Good evening,” Essek echoes, watching him stalk away down the hall. 

Once securely ensconced again behind the locked and chained door of his office, Essek examines the pouch more closely, weighing it in his hand before untying it and peeking inside. It is dust. Or perhaps not dust. Sand. Pouring a portion out into his hand, he finds it to be golden in hue and slightly warm to the touch, just a degree or two above body temperature. Essek cannot initially tell if that is because of a magical aura or because it has been tucked in close to Caleb’s body. 

He bypasses the question and instead casts a few diagnostic spells upon the sand. It definitely registers as magical, fairly glowing with transmutation magic, but there is no indication that Essek can find as to how to trigger its magical properties, or indeed what they may be. Curious indeed. 

Essek is already making a list in his head of the experiments he might try to get to the bottom of the little mystery, but he decides first to spread out the entire contents to get a better idea of what he’s working with. With that plan, he clears a spot on his desk of books and papers, tips the bag of sand out into his hand, and lets it pour slowly from his fist onto the cleared surface.

He studies the grains as they fall, glinting faintly in the light of the dim magical orbs he uses while he works and the fire crackling in the hearth. Essek is so focused on the minutia that he does not initially realize what is happening once the sand hits wood. 

Movement catches in the corner of his eye, and Essek looks down. The grains are swirling, arranging themselves into words in a familiar, crabbed hand.  With a soft susurration, a letter writes itself across the dark wood of Essek’s desk in golden sand. 

A smile so wide he must be baring his fangs spreads across Essek’s face as he watches the writing conclude. He leans in, fingers braced delicately against the desk, to read.

Thelyss,

I had planned on writing you a very different letter. It has been a good distraction over the past few days, in between disasters, to compose it in my head. I would tease you a little, for bothering to write me back when we were in the middle of a wilderness. And I would praise you a little for your ingenuity in sending it. It was a delight to meet your little bird. 

But I write to you now from Bazzoxan. We have just escaped the hellscape beneath the mountains, short one of our number and considerably worse for wear. It is not that we are unused to having our asses handed to us, but it has been a long time since we lost this much and gained so little in the process. 

Have you ever been to this place, I wonder? Colored by experience perhaps, but it feels rather bleak and hopeless. A city attempting to stand against waves of evil that can never truly be stopped. It is hard. I am sitting here in the gloom, keeping watch while my companions sleep, and waiting to see if something terrible will follow us out of the darkness or simply choose another path. 

This thing that has been released is beyond anything I have ever faced before. We will need a friend, Thelyss, in the battle that is to come. I very much hope we may depend upon you. That is foolish, probably. You have your own priorities, your own goals. But I am quite serious when I say that this is bigger than the petty squabbles between Empire and Dynasty. 

Plus, I may be wrong, but I begin to think you like us. Perhaps just a little? You won’t admit it, I presume, but trust there is no shame in it. I may be a gloomy motherfucker, but Jester at least has cracked harder eggs than you. And the others have their own special charms, I know from experience. I never intended to let them in either. And yet.

I will stop teasing, however.You may instead find us very tedious and demanding. You give little enough away.  

Onto what I intended to say all along. I have looked over your notes. It is fascinating work, and a very compelling premise. I am afraid I will not be the one to crack this equation, at least not right away. I have taken the liberty of making a few corrections to your calculations that I think will be conducive in fleshing out your concept, however, and I have a notion that may be helpful moving forward. 

I know you prefer to use a focus when casting. Yet I believe there is much to be said for the use of base components, especially in the development of new magic. The equation of a spell is, of course, critical. I am sure we feel a similar passion for it, in the absorption one can achieve through such work. But magic, Essek. Magic is half science and half art. I have seen your spellwork. I know you are well aware of this fact. For my own experience, I find the proper components can help shape a spell to your will, show it what you intend for it to be. 

My instinct tells me you may have good luck with hourglass sand. It is like building a physical metaphor, you see? 

I could wax rhapsodical about the nature of magic to you for hours, but I will save you the tedium and myself the ink. My watch is almost ended, though gods know how I will manage to sleep in this damned place. I have copied out my notations for your perusal, and I hope that you might find them useful. 

Write me back, Thelyss, if it suits you. It has been nice, conversing with you in this way. And I want to know how the spell turns out. 

Yours, in hopes of fostered friendship,

Caleb Widogast

P.S. I hope you enjoyed my delivery method as much as I did yours. It is also a metaphor. No need for burning this time. The enchantment will dissipate as soon as you sweep it away. 

Essek reads the last and lets his eyes track swiftly over to where Caleb’s spell notes have just concluded writing themselves out. Blindly, without daring to look away, he fumbles for his notebook in the top drawer, and copies them out. 

Once this fevered work is done he dashes a hand through the sand, smearing it into inert incoherence. That done, he sweeps all the grains back into the pouch and carries it over to the hearth, tossing it in and waiting until the whole is consumed. He knows Widogast said the spell would end without this measure, but Essek doesn’t feel in the mood to take chances. 

Bazzoxan. The word sends ice creeping through Essek’s veins. He tries to focus on other things, to think about the nature of magic, or Caleb’s stubborn refusal to make his casting easier with a focus, but he cannot. Insistent strings tug him back into the past. 

Without truly thinking it through, Essek flips to a fresh page and begins to write. It is done in a haze, ink smearing, fingers moving half a second faster than his brain. When he is finished, and emerges from the fog, Essek reads what he has written. He flushes plum and crumples the page. That certainly will not do. He has been writing as though to a friend. A confidant. Which Widogast is not, he reminds himself. He is a potential threat that Essek is keeping close for strategic reasons. That is all. 

When he leaves the Lucid Bastion that night to take his rest, however, the crumpled draft accompanies him stuffed hastily into a pocket so he doesn’t think on it overmuch. It will be a jumping-off point, if nothing else, he reasons. For something more restrained. For something better. 

*

Caleb feels as though he has been put through a wall when their feet finally hit ground and the cold snaps into his bones. Snow is falling in wind-whipped flurries, creating a lacy veil through which he can see a mirror-like lake and beyond it a smoking volcano. 

He takes a moment to assure that the Nein are all in once piece and moving before narrowing in on Thelyss, crouched a little ways off already drawing out the sigils for a teleportation circle. 

“Powerful magic is not without risk,” he snaps at Jester, who is groaning and stretching the aches in her muscles. 

Caleb crouches next to him while he draws and gives him what he hopes will be interpreted as an apologetic smile when the drow’s gaze flicks up to him. There is a vein visibly throbbing in his forehead and a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. 

He is a little surprised that Thelyss agreed so readily to take them here. Caleb, certainly, was not in the best place when they spoke last evening, and he can see how the off-hand comments of his companions —Fjord and Beau are speaking about his as though he isn’t still here — are creating a twitch in his left eye. 

“We will be in touch while we are here,” Caleb says. 

He wants to say more, but can’t think what that should be. His head is still swirling a bit from the teleportation mishap. He may well have a concussion. 

“Good,” Thelyss says, distractedly putting the finishing touches on his circle. 

Before he draws the final line, however, he digs into a pocket of his mantle and shoves something into Caleb’s hand. It is light and solid in his grip, wrapped in a bit of parchment. 

Caleb doesn’t dare look down at it to examine it closer, simple tucks it away for perusal later. His gaze is trained on Thelyss, who looks as though he may say something — mouth half open for a long moment before his jaw snaps closed.

He gives Caleb one sharp nod and completes the final line on the teleportation circle, disappearing in a powerful flash of arcane energy that knocks Caleb back on his ass into the snow. 

He lays there for a long moment, looking up at the swirling vortex of snowflakes, before rising with a groan and returning to his friends. 

Later, when the rest of the Nein have bedded down, in their room in heart of a volcano, Caleb wanders off on his own and finds a nook away from the central forge room where he can organize his components properly and write a little to his parents. His mind is jumbled, and he needs to find some sense of order. To set his purpose.

These tasks accomplished, he rubs at stinging eyes and turns his attention to the object in his pocket. He unwraps it from its parchment, revealing a smoky crystal about the size of a chestnut, cut with a narrow base and wide top. When he holds it close to his eye, he can make out faint scratchings along the exterior that may be runes. He cannot tell properly even when he holds it up to the light of one of his globes. 

At a loss, he smooths out the wrapping paper. Sure enough, there in a familiar hand is his clue. Spin me, it reads. That is all the hint he gets. 

Well, easy enough. Caleb sets the crystal on the stone floor, narrow end down, and gives it a sharp flick to send it spinning like the tops he played with as a child. 

It is a well-balanced thing, taking easily to the swift rotation. At first that is all that happens. The crystal spins with a soft shushshushshush. Then something in it catches the light of one of Caleb’s magical globes and the ceiling is dotted with warm amber light. 

The light swirls and shifts until the motes and beams thrown up by the crystal condense into words, and Caleb is looking at a letter written in light itself across the black stone of the cavern ceiling. The words rotate slowly as he stares, rapt with his head thrown up to take it all in. 

The first time he reads, the words blur together in his excitement over the method. It takes another two rotations for it to solidify in his mind.

Widogast,

You spoke much of Bazzoxan in your last letter, and the evils that lurk beneath it. I am, unfortunately, well acquainted. If you can take no comfort in anything else I have to say here, know I do not doubt the seriousness of your warnings. If something from beneath Bazzoxan has made it past the guard and is walking Exandria, then we must stop it. 

I visited the garrison often as a child, as my father was stationed there as a Taskhand to the Queen. It is a position now held by my brother, which is its own concern. Despite my familiarity, I do not think I truly understand the threat of the gateway there until I was a young man and my father died on an excursion under the mountain. 

It was my fault, you see. We fought before he left for his journey. We argued often in those days. I was never the son he thought I should be. But this was the worst argument we’d ever had. Religion is an odd thing, is it not? Perhaps if I had the ability to understand it better I would have stopped myself. But I did not, and he went below the mountain unprepared and distracted by my horrible final words to him. It is the greatest regret of my life, and I have known much to regret. 

That is not really a thing that should concern you, but it is very much at the forefront of my mind since receiving your note. It is also the best proof I can provide to you that I take your admonitions very seriously. If you need an ally in this, you may count upon me. And if you need a friend, I hope I will prove adequate to that title. I am not well-versed in such things. You shall have to tell me what is required.

Regardless, onto less dour conversation. I will heed your advice on spell components in this very specific instance, Widogast, if you will but consider the impracticality of your own stance as a regular course of business. You write very eloquently of the art and metaphor of magic. It is a compelling argument. In execution, however, it means you are walking around with bat shit in your pockets. 

If you would like to attempt a focus, I have several which I no longer use that I would be happy to lend you. Do write me back and let me know. I will have my housekeeper retrieve them from storage, and you may take your pick.  

I hope my crystal gave you no trouble in its interpretation. I trust you will find an appropriate way to dispose of it once you are done with it. I had a high bar to aim for. Your sand spell was a revelation.Truly Widogast. The workings of your mind. I have never seen such. 

Sincerely,

E. Thelyss 

Caleb stares up until the light of Essek’s words fade and the crystal slows to a stop and topples onto its side, rolling until it hits the heel of his boot. When he swallows, he finds his throat is dry. Gods, what is happening? 

He does not yet know if he dares take Essek’s words at face value, but he was unprepared for this level of openness from the man. In truth, it is probably a match for his own tone in his last letter. It had been written at the apex of his panic about the Laughing Hand, with all the vulnerability that comes from conversation in the darkest part of the night.

He tries to remind himself that openness itself can be a tactic. There is little that cannot be weaponized in the right hands, and Essek is a very clever man. The way he spoke of regret, though. It had resonated with something deep inside of Caleb. He cannot entirely dismiss it, nor can he fully give into it. 

At least Essek says he will help. He has already been helping. He took them here to the forge, after all. But it is another thing to see it written in his own hand. That he will be an ally. A friend, perhaps. 

Feeling even more at a loss than before, Caleb pockets the crystal, deciding he will toss it into the magma at the earliest chance he gets. That should dispose of it effectively. 

He gathers the rest of his things, fingers lovingly tracing the spine of his book before whispering “Gute Nacht,” and tucking it back into his holster. He will have to think about how to answer the letter later. It grows very late, and he should return to bed with the others.

Chapter Text

It is several days before Essek hears from the Mighty Nein, and when he does it is Jester once again asking for him to ferry them across the godsdamned world. Essek is beginning to feel like a coachman at their beck and call. 

It is a positive development, he tells himself, that they focus so little upon him unless he can be immediately useful. It is what he wants — their attention turned elsewhere. Why does it sting so, then? 

Essek’s level of irritation is only increased because he has yet to receive a reply to his latest letter from Caleb. It hasn’t been that long, of course, but he had begun to regret the contents of that letter almost the moment he put it into the other wizard’s hand. Every time he thinks back on what he wrote he cringes. And he thinks of it often.

How could he have revealed so much and not realized his error in the moment? He even re-wrote the light-blasted thing, and still he gave so much away. Essek had been shaken by the talk of Bazzoxan and overly charmed by Widogast’s magic. It had clouded his judgment horribly.

A fool. He has been a fool and there is no way Widogast will think him anything else after reading what he wrote. The only question that remains is how he will choose to react to the obvious weakness Essek has revealed — by retreating in revulsion or by pressing his advantage. 

He’s so tense that his back teeth ache from clenching his jaw so tightly. He has to close his eyes and force himself to relax before he knocks on the door of the Nein’s home once they arrive back in the city and he is summoned. 

Slowly, Essek attempts to adopt once more the placid, uncaring mask of the Shadowhand, and once he believes he’s accomplished this as well as can be expected, he knocks on their door. It swings open rather suddenly and he is presented to not just the Mighty Nein but a new companion. Another Aasimar, by the looks of her and the honestly disturbing halo hovering above her head. 

Essek greets them politely and answers their questions and mostly prevents himself from becoming physically tense when they do not know what their own plans are, or when Widogast asks after the imprisoned scourger again.

It has cost Essek more political capital than he would like to delay the execution by two weeks, and he cannot really determine why he did it except … It is perhaps a chance to learn more about Widogast and his past. That would at least go a little ways toward rebalancing the scales between them. Also, he is curious. 

The final insult comes when they request his help with a magical conundrum which, Essek sees in but a moment, requires little more than a dispel magic. He keeps his muscles loose, maintains his gentle float, but he can feel his ears twitch back against his head. Not even a coachman then. An errand boy. 

When he looks up at Widogast, the man’s entire face has gone red. He shuffles forward with downcast eyes.

“Ah, Herr Shadowhand. Before we depart, might I have a moment of your time?” he asks.

He nods, and Widogast's hand goes to the small of  Essek’s back, touching briefly to direct him out of the room. 

They end up in a kitchen. There are bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, a bowl full of slightly withered apples in a bowl on the counter. These things Essek notices before he turns to face Widogast. 

He is still red at the cheeks and at the tips of his ears, and he still does not meet Essek’s eyes. 

“I am sorry,” he says. “To bother you with that. Sometimes you overlook the simplest of solutions, ja?”

“It is fine,” Essek says, ignoring the way he can still feel the tingle of Widogast’s touch on his back. How long has it been since anyone dared to touch him like that? Casually. Incidentally. Surely decades at this point. It is disconcerting. “What can I do for you, Widogast?”

“Nothing,” he says, rubbing a hand through his beard. It has grown thicker since the last time Essek saw him. “I just …”

He pats at his coat, pulling something out of one of a multitude of pockets, and shoves it unceremoniously into Essek’s hand, withdrawing quickly. 

“I … It is not … I have been trying to conserve my spells. So it is probably not what you expected.”

Essek stares down into his hand. It is a letter. Just a normal letter with his name scrawled across its outer fold. 

“Oh,” he says. “Well. Thank you.”

“Ja,” Caleb says, nodding a little too enthusiastically. Is his face getting redder? Human coloration is fascinating.

“I just have to gather a few things,” Caleb says. “Before we leave. I will meet you in the foyer in a few minutes?”

“Alright,” Essek nods. “Go prepare, and I will take you madmen to your dragon.”

For the first time in the whole conversation, Caleb’s head rises, and he looks at Essek with a crooked grin spreading across his face. 

“Madmen is … Not incorrect,” he says. “But well intentioned madmen.”

Essek nods. 

“Just so.”

He waits until after he has delivered the Nein to their destination, put in a full day of work, returned to his towers for the evening, before he allows himself to open the letter. Essek settles down by his fire with a glass of wine and unfolds the parchment. 

There is an outer sheet of paper with nothing but his name on it, and inside it another sheet that initially appears completely blank. When Essek holds it up to the flame, however, he notices there are pinpricks in the sheet, some longer, some short and concise. It takes but a moment for Essek to recognize it as morse code. 

With a sense of excitement, Essek retrieves his notebook and begins to translate. When he completes the process, however, he finds only gibberish. He casts comprehend languages, but the spell does nothing to make sense of the nonsense letters. 

In frustration, Essek snaps the notebook closed, tipping his wineglass back to empty it. Then he opens it to his translation again and begins to examine the jumble. Except. Except perhaps they are not nonsense. There are clusters of the same letters that repeat themselves every so often. More often than they would if they were just random. A substitution cipher, maybe? Perhaps even polyalphabetic. Somewhere to start.

On a separate sheet in his notebook, Essek begins to sketch out a substitution square using common. Probably the best place to start. If Caleb has chosen to write in Zemnian instead, then this will take significantly longer.

It still takes the better part of the night. Essek is completely absorbed in the process. He has lieutenants to take care of encoding and decoding messages sent by the Dynasty’s spy network. But he has always enjoyed the mental exercise of decoding, the rigor required, the methodical processing of data. There is something to it. When he manages to translate the first series of pinpricks into an actual word, a rush of satisfied adrenaline shoots through him.  Friend, he jots down on a fresh sheet. A strange start, but a start nonetheless. 

Essek has finished his bottle of wine, and the night has slipped into early morning, by the time he completes decoding the message. He leans back in his wingback chair and breathes out a satisfied sigh before taking the time to actually read through what he has translated. 

Friend,

Your last letter gave me much comfort, and much to think on. 

May I first say that I am so sorry for the loss of your father, distant as the event itself may be. I am well acquainted with the emptiness that comes from such a loss. There is a gravitational force to the remaining crater, the way it never truly leaves you in even the brightest of moments, and certainly not in the darkest. I will carry the death of my own father and mother with me until the end of time. 

It is perhaps not my place to say, indeed I am sure that your closest companions have told you many times over, but it is clear to me that you bear no blame in the death of your father. He was going to war, Essek, there in the depths of the mountain. He was a solider trained for such. And nothing you said to him would  have overridden such training, however much you regret it. 

None of that may change the way you feel about the situation, but I hope you can believe it. Eventually. Sometimes the truth of the past comes to us in bits and pieces. Sometimes it takes years. I know it has for me. 

The past is a tricky thing, is it not? I have told you and your court a little, a very little, about my past training. But I feel compelled to tell you more, if only to explain my erratic behavior in recent days. 

I am not a scourger, my friend. I did not lie when I told you that. But I am about as close as one can get without being admitted into their number. When I was but a young man, a student at the academy in Rexxentrum, I was recruited by the head of their number, an illustrious member of the Cerberus Assembly itself, for special training. Myself and my fellow recruits thought ourselves very lucky to find such favor. We were not. 

The training itself was intensive, often physically painful. But the worst of it were the things we were asked to do to others, to those deemed traitors to our country. We took to such tasks with the ardor that only young patriots who have not yet learned to doubt can muster.  In such tasks I believe I exceeded expectations. 

The only reason I am not now a fully fledged Volstrucker is that I failed in my final assignment. No, that is not true. I succeeded in my assignment, but the task itself was so terrible that it broke my mind. I was cast aside by my former teacher and consigned to an asylum for a number of years. Forgive me, I will not relay the details here. I do not think I can bear it. 

I cannot be giving you much reason here to trust in my capabilities, I know, but I need you to understand, Essek, that I am sincere when I say I am no friend to the Empire. I love my country, but it is currently in the hands of men who forge children into weapons of terrible destruction. I have asked to speak with your prisoner because I wish to know if those weapons, once forged, can ever be unmade. Or at the very least turned against their masters. Can people who have done such things ever regain their soul? 

I hope you will forgive me for being so straightforward in this letter. I know I cannot shock you. You move in the upper circles of government, and must be well acquainted with such men. Those who would seek victory no matter the cost to their people. They exist everywhere, though they do not always hold as much sway as they do in my homeland.

It is late as I write to you. We are in the mountains on our way to Uthodurn, and I dare not make too much noise both for fear of waking my companions and the things that lurk here beneath the earth. I hope you will forgive the simplicity of my delivery in this letter. I have a notion you might like a bit of a puzzle, but truly little could compare to your last. It is nice to see that your always elegant magic can also occasionally be so whimsical. 

Though I appreciate your offer of a focus, I am afraid you must leave me to my bat shit and my dust and my wires. I am old enough to be set in my ways, and I must be allowed to cast as I have become accustomed. That is not to say, however, that I would not enjoy looking through your magical cupboards. Perhaps you might invite me over sometime. I have enjoyed our exchange, but it would be very pleasant to have an opportunity to speak as openly in person as we do in these letters. 

I will end here. I hope to hear from you soon, Essek. 

Yours,

Caleb Widogast

Essek’s hand trembles as he runs his fingers back over the page where he has inscribed the translated letter. His pulse pounds in he ears. Well acquainted with such men. He traces over the words, feels them pressed heavy into the paper. 

Widogast knows. He must know. There is no other reason he would commit such truths to paper. It can be nothing but a message, perhaps a warning, that he knows the people Essek has been working with, knows them intimately and in the worst possible way. 

His throat is dry and his eyes prickle. He knew when he made his deals and handed over the beacons what kind of bedfellows he was choosing, but the details are stomach turning. Making children into weapons. What sort of task could break a mind like Caleb’s? What sort of horrors are they responsible for? Light, it is a nightmare. 

Blindly, Essek rips the translation of the letter from his notebook, folds it swiftly together with the original and goes to kneel by his fire. Hands still shaking, he holds it out to the flames until the corner of the paper lights. Essek watches as the fire creeps down the paper, devouring it slowly. He waits until the flames start to lick at his fingertips, searing skin before he releases the final corner and lets it fall into the hearth to disintegrate fully, cursing himself and stuffing his burned fingers into his mouth. 

Essek’s mind whirls. He places a hand over his own frantically beating heart and tries to breathe deep, to calm himself. How can he respond to this? Caleb has hinted he knows of Essek’s betrayal, but has made no threat as a result. Maybe he only suspects. Is digging to see what Essek will do. 

The question is what the man wants, what might persuade him to keep his mouth shut. And what can be done without confirming anything. He has made it clear he wants spells, and to speak to the prisoner. It is not a permanent solution, or course. Giving into blackmail never is. But it will buy him time. Time to figure out what exactly Caleb knows and what proof he has. 

Fighting through the urge to vomit, Essek forces himself to standing and straightens himself. He stalks over to the bookshelf and pulls a book out. It will surely not satisfy him for long, but it may just buy Essek a little time. 

His chest is still tight with anxiety and regret, but that is not a new sensation. Essek has learned to deal with it. He can learn to live with this too. He can. He must.

*

Caleb’s writing is unsteady as he copies the spells Essek demonstrated for him into his spell book. Across the library table from him, Essek’s fingers drum against the table while he looks over some paperwork of his own. 

In the seat next to Caleb, clearly bored out of her mind, Jester balances her chair on two legs and sends her spiritual guardians — chubby little hamster-sized unicorns — racing around the library. The two wizards steadfastly ignore this.

It is hard to process that he spoke with the scourger just this morning. Indeed, it has been but a handful of hours since Essek crushed the woman to death in front of his eyes. An involuntary shiver runs down Caleb’s spine at the memory of that display of power. Hm. Definitely not a healthy reaction. But Caleb is who he is. And he’s had a rough morning. Surely there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a little bit of effective spell work under the circumstances.

He’s honestly shocked that Essek is still here. Certainly Caleb had asked about new spells. He always asks. But he had expected to be put off for another time. Sometime close to never. He cannot understand what Essek hopes to gain from giving him such knowledge, and why he would do so if there is no benefit to him. 

Caleb shakes his head and forces himself to concentrate properly on the spell book in front of him, carefully completing the transcription for the Resonant Echo spell, mind spinning with all the ways he will be able to use it. 

Once the ink is dry on his work, he closes his own spell book, then Essek’s and pushes it across the table. 

“Vielen Dank, Mein Freund,” he says. 

“Ah,” Essek says, seemingly shaking off some kind of stupor. He has also had a long day, Caleb realizes. He must tired. “I hope you will find them helpful.”

“I am sure they will be very useful, in the fight ahead.”

“Good,” Essek says, standing stiffly and patting the folds of his mantle. 

He pulls out a small tome bound in cheerful yellow leather from some unseen pocket and sets it down on the table between them, sliding it forward with one perfectly manicured finger. The text on the cover is in undercommon, and beneath the title is a stylized image of a beacon.

“In that same vein, I hope you will find this helpful as well,” Essek continues. “It is a primer on dunamancy. One often given to students just beginning to learn magic. I do not doubt you will find much of it very simplistic, but the background knowledge may aid you in your studies going forward, and there are some basic but useful cantrips as well.”

“Oh,” Caleb says, holding himself back from grabbing the book and rifling through it immediately. “I … Thank you. I will read through it and return it to you swiftly, if that is alright.”

“No,” Essek says, sharply.

“Ah, well, if you would like to stay, I am a very fast reader. I just need to recast —”

“No,” Essek repeats. "That is, it is a gift. Nothing fancy. It was my own schoolbook when I was a boy, and I have no use for it anymore. It is yours to keep if you wish. You will do me the courtesy, I hope, of not paying too much mind to my notes. One cannot give too much credence to the ramblings of an eight year old.”

Caleb chuckles at this, thinking of his own unschooled forays into magic, playing with the hearth fire in his family home and burning the bottoms of his mother’s apple tarts. He had been on pig feeding duty for a week after that.

“True enough,” he says. “I promise not to judge them too harshly.”

“My thanks,” Essek says, with a twitch to his lips that suggests a smile. “You may find chapter five of particular interest.”

His eyes flick meaningfully up to Caleb’s as he says this, and Caleb nods once in acknowledgement. 

He takes his leave soon after, and Caleb submits himself to Jester’s well-intended coddling, unused to such thoughtfulness as he is. She is kind, but she does not really understand the things he’s done, and he cannot bear to explain. She would stop giving him that soft, sympathetic smile if she did, and Caleb is very afraid that might break him.

Instead of spilling his guts, Caleb invites her shopping and then guides her out of the library to check in with the others while he drifts back to the table and his new book. He’s still unsure what he’s done that would encourage such a gift. Maybe it is just a case of his annoying persistence paying off, but it feels like there’s something more to it. 

He would like to sit down and read the whole thing cover to cover, but even Jester will not be distracted for quite so long. Instead, Caleb flips through to chapter five. It’s all in undercommon, and he is about to cast comprehend languages when he spots a note scribbled in common in the lower left corner. 

Last words, first letter. E It reads. Realization dawns slowly, but when it does, Caleb cannot help but smile. Running a finger down the center of the page, he recites clearly “Bitte, brennen Sie nach dem Lesen.”

It takes a moment, and then the words on the page ripple like water in the wake of a skipping stone, and are replaced by new ones, these in common and in Essek’s familiar hand. Behind the letter, Caleb can still see the faint shimmer of the original text. It is a magical palimpsest. His fingers glance across the page once more half expecting them to ripple and replace themselves again, but they remain steady.

Caleb,

I thank you for your kind words about my father. I know that you mean well, but you must give me leave to keep my own counsel on this subject. I may one day come to see the whole thing differently, but for now I must live with my responsibility. With my guilt. 

You are familiar. The way you write makes me sure of it. I feel, when we discuss such things, that we understand each other clearly. And there is a certain relief to that.

I am honored that you have told me a little of your past, painful as it might be to recount such things. My regret for the terrors you faced when so young is sincere. I cannot say I did not suspect that the leaders of the Cerberus Assembly were rotten in some profound way. I would have to be naive in the extreme not to suspect. But suspicions can be all too easily cast to the side. 

I did not know of the methods they use to train their favorites, nor that they would apply such methods to mere children. You will say it is a nuance, and perhaps you are correct. I suppose it is important to me for you to know that if I had been privy to the details, things would be different. I know it to be a weak excuse. 

I am very sorry, Caleb Widogast. I do not know what else to say.

It is my hope that you will find this little tome of interest, though it is only a primer. It cannot hurt to have a good foundation for future lessons. You must tell me when you have finished reading it, and I will supply you with something more advanced. Your hunger for knowledge, Widogast, could rival my own, and I think you will find me well-equipped to satisfy it. I hope you consider these offerings agreeable. 

On that note, I cannot ask you to destroy this book after you have finished with it, as I have with previous missives. However, you must be aware that you being discovered with it would bode very ill for both of us. I am trusting you to keep this secret. I have faith my trust in you is not ill-placed. 

Feel free to write to me with any questions you encounter in the text. I look forward to your thoughts.

Sincerely,

Essek

Finishing the letter, Caleb sits back with a huff of disbelief. There is a kernel of warmth in the center of his chest that threatens to expand and spill out of him. 

It is touching, the careful way that Essek has approached Caleb’s confessions. It had felt only right to explain himself, after his insistence on talking with the captured scourger. Favors have a cost, after all. 

A part of Caleb wonders what the cost will be, then, of the knowledge Essek is now offering. But for a change, he is too happy to worry about such things. Not with new spells to learn, and magic to study, and the promise of more and more on the horizon. 

In the wake of the exhausting morning he’s had, the jolt of unexpected joy makes him feel almost intoxicated. Without thinking it through, he reaches for a sheet of scrap parchment and scribbles out a note for Essek. And in a fit of fancy, he uses a new enchantment he’s been meaning to try and opens the library window to send it off in the direction of his new tutor. Then another thought hits, and he thinks he might as well send a follow up. 

Caleb has lost track of the number of pages he’s gone through by the time Jester starts banging at the locked library door.

“Cayyyleeeeb,” she calls through the keyhole. “Come on, or someone else will buy all the fancy ink before we get there.”

He quickly finishes off his last note and folds it, tossing it out the library window in a rustle of paper and slamming it shut behind him.

“Ja,” he shouts back. “Ja, I am coming!”

*

Essek still has blood on his collar when he makes his way home and settles himself in his study. He should go back to work, back to the bastion. But after the interrogation, after he’d murdered that woman, he doesn’t think he can stand it.

If he stands still enough, Essek can still feel the sting of his own fingernails digging into his palms as he clenched his fist to cast the gravity sinkhole, can see Caleb’s eyes, full of pain but still unaccountably calm, as he clutched at his bleeding neck and nodded to Essek to finish the scourger.

For a moment he’d thought Caleb was dead, thought he’d have to stand there and watch him bleed out on the stones of the Dungeon of Penance. It is shattering how the very possibility had left Essek’s mind blank, his hand reaching for the power to rip a hole in the world. 

He just won’t think about it. It doesn’t mean anything. Except that he panicked. And he is in need of a drink. 

Essek is just pouring himself a glass of wine when he hears a tapping at the study window. Curious, he looks out to see if it has started to rain. Instead, he sees a white bird fluttering just outside the window, pecking insistently at the sill. 

But it isn’t a bird at all. 

Essek throws open the window and reaches out for the paper bird that flings itself into his grasp. It has a long neck and a sharp pointed beak, and when he unfolds it, Caleb’s writing is right there staring back at him.

Essek,

I hope you will forgive me reconstructing your spell, but I found it so delightful that I could not resist. And extremely useful. I wanted to thank you properly for your kind letter and for the book. I have spent so many years piecing together what magic I can from scraps that being presented with something whole is overwhelming. Thank you, Essek. From my heart, thank you.

Yours,

Caleb

The bottom of Essek’s stomach drops to the floor, along with his wine, spilling deep red across the floorboards. He reverse engineered the spell. Caleb Widogast reverse engineered his spell. After having seen it once. Having never even seen the casting of it. It is impossible. It should be impossible. 

Essek thinks back to this morning, to the gravity sinkhole he cast, and the way Caleb’s eyes had watched him as he did. Could he recreate it? Almost certainly yes. And what happens when rumors start spreading through the Dynasty that the Empire wizard is running around with war magic that only Essek and a handful of others know? Others who only know it because Essek taught it to them. 

He will be taken out into the ghost lands far from the reach of a beacon —not that it matters for Essek — and have his head removed from his body. He will be locked in the dungeon of penance and the key melted down to slag. 

“I am so fucked,” Essek whispers to himself.

His words are nearly drowned out by the rustling of paper, the flapping of wings. A flock of paper birds rushes through his open window and proceed to circle around him, apparently in an effort to get his attention. 

Breathing heavily, Essek plucks one at random from the air.

What method do you use to implement the homing capabilities of your birds? I used a scrap from your book, but I do not think you had any objects belonging to me at the time. And besides I feel as though you must have some more elegant method. I am very curious.

-C

He crumples it and lets it fall to the ground, plucks out another in the flock.

Caduceus has been experimenting with rice flour in his baking since wheat is not big in these parts. I think you would like the cookies he makes with candied ginger. May I send you a batch? You can let us know how they compare to traditional Xhorhasian sweets.

-C-

H sinks to his knees on the floor, ignoring the way wine soaks into his trousers. A laugh bubbles from his chest and out of his mouth, sounding high and panicked even to his own ears. He can’t even be surprised. Not really. One way or another, Caleb Widogast will be the death of him. 

Essek buries his head in his hands, trying his best to ignore the fluttering of paper wings.

Chapter Text

It is probably a good thing that the Nein make themselves scarce for almost a week. If nothing else, Essek doesn’t feel the need to conserve spell slots for teleportation while they are otherwise occupied.

He knows they are somewhere in the Empire, had declined Jester’s request to take them there himself. Blackmail or no, there are some risks Essek dare not take. His people check in with them by scry from time to time, and that must be enough for the Bright Queen to know he is taking the supervision of his wards seriously. 

In theory, at least, it should be a relief to have them out of the way on business, should take at least one stone from the pile that seems to be growing ever higher on Essek’s chest. But there is no relief to be had anymore. It is becoming difficult to breathe.

The messages coming from Da’leth request more information than they provide, and his stomach twists itself into knots every time he receives one, thinking about what the archmage has done, what he has allowed to be done. What Essek may have helped him do. 

And the Bright Queen ignores his advice more often than not, choosing to rely on the guidance of other advisors. Essek tries to tell himself that it has always been this way. He is in his first life, his only life, and she has never seen him as anything more than a precocious child — sometimes useful but never to be relied upon. Still, the guilty shadows in his mind tell him that it means she suspects something. Or worse, knows.

It feels as though everything is on the verge of collapsing on top of him, and he cannot tell any longer if he is seeing reality or only the shades of his own paranoia.

The feeling only increases when he meets up with the Nein, and they seem equally panicked and on edge. So flustered that they cannot seem to explain where they want to be transported. 

Dutifully, Essek teleports them to the Lotusden, but first he hears dissatisfied grumbling and then he is being asked to move them but a few miles away. Essek is clenching his jaw so tight he would swear he can hear it creak. 

“It’s on me,” Caleb says softly, suddenly right there by his side, His fingers curl around Essek’s forearm, warm and callused. “I should have been more involved.”

Caleb looks up at him from where he has positioned himself on a rock to begin drawing his teleportation circle, and Essek could swear the man bats his lashes at him. They are long and golden in the dappled light coming through the canopy of trees around them. 

The action makes Essek’s heart leap in his chest, and his mind to whirl. What? What is happening? It is one thing for the rest of the Nein to try and make nice with him. But Caleb knows him. Knows the things Essek has done and holds them deftly over his head. There is no need for him to … to flirt. 

“You know, Essek, you can always hang out with us if you need to until you get your spells back,” Jester says, rocking on her heels and smiling at him with her fangs glinting playfully in the waning light. 

“There would be nothing I would love more than to not be around you all for the remainder of this day,” Essek snaps. 

There was never really any doubt he was going to do what they asked. But he doesn’t have to be pleasant about it. He calls them all in to make yet another jump, and as he does Caleb gives him a soft, crooked smile and squeezes his arm again. 

Essek jerks out of his grasp with a grunt, watches the other man’s face fall minutely into a blank. Caleb puts his hands in his pockets and hangs his head, and it makes no sense. None at all. 

He tries to set it to one side, teleports the group to where they actually want to go, takes his leave as politely and quickly as he can manage. His mind is grinding the whole time, attempting to make sense of everything that has happened in the last hour. 

Back at the Lucid Bastion, one of the palace guards stops Essek before he can enter his office. 

“Shadowhand,” he says, making a shallow bow and clicking his heels together. “A delivery came while you were out. An unseen servant dropped off a package. There was no information on its origin, but we scanned it for any active threat and found nothing.”

He holds a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with rough twine out to Essek. Cautiously, he take it and returns the solider’s bow.

“Thank you,” he says. “I appreciate your caution. I’m sure I can handle it from here.”

As good practice, Essek places the package down on his desk and casts a few diagnostic spells to be sure. But beneath the mysterious stains and dusty fingerprints on the outer packaging, he sees a few dicks scrawled stealthily into the corners where the twine intersects. He has a pretty good idea of the package’s origins. 

Essek pulls the string on the package and tugs the paper back. Inside are two waxed paper packets. One, when he unfolds, it contains a handful of small cookies each about the size of a gold piece that give off a strong scent of ginger and cinnamon. The other contains a mound of dried tea leaves that smell lightly of jasmine blossoms when he hold a pinch of the mix under his nose. 

Essek shakes out the packaging, looking for anything tucked away or hidden, but there’s no note included with the offering. Curious.

He keeps an iron teakettle ready for hanging over the fire in his office, so Essek brings a pot of water to a boil and tosses in a handful of the tealeaves, leaving it to steep at his elbow while he reaches for one of the cookies and gives it an experimental bite. 

They are thin and crisp with a strong spicy hit that dances along his tastebuds. He tilts his head back and closes his eyes, enjoying the temporary quiet of the muddle in his mind. When his eyes flicker open again, a fragrant steam is rising from the spout of the teapot. 

Hm. It isn’t that cold in his office. Essek sits up a little straighter. The steam spirals up out of the teapot, thicker than it should be if it were just water vapor. As Essek watches, it shifts like a cloud moving with the wind and begins to form itself into letters, and then words. 

Essek rolls his eyes, but cannot help but smile. Magic tea leaves. There’s something cozy and nostalgic about the method of delivery. It makes Essek curl in toward the kettle as it writes its message in the air above his head as though to warm himself upon the words themselves. 

Essek,

I have yet to receive a reply since last I wrote to you. While I realize this may be because we have been traveling, and you engaged in important business, I do also worry I may have frightened you off by the enthusiasm of my messages.

I hope you will forgive me my eagerness, friend. It has been a long time since I had anyone with whom to openly discuss magical theory and application, and rarely if ever have I been offered knowledge without the expectation of recompense. One way or another. 

It is a thing I have been thinking about a lot lately. The cost of magic, and whether what we gain can ever be worth the price we pay. What does it mean for me that the answer is no, and yet I persevere? Gods, why do these letters make we wax so philosophical? I feel in some way that you will understand my ramblings. 

What I mean to say is that you have been very kind to me, and I had hoped for an even more open and enlightening correspondence between us. If, however, you would prefer to close this channel of communication, you need only say so. I promise not to harass you unnecessarily. 

Perhaps I am being too sensitive in my interpretations. You are, after all, a busy man. I will proceed as I wish to continue, then, and you must respond as you see fit. 

I have read the book you gifted me several times over since we have been on the road, and I find many  of its concepts fascinating. There is a passage I wanted to ask you about, as I am not certain my comprehend languages is rendering all the nuances. I understand that all dunamantic power is considered as ultimately coming from the Luxon, but there is some phrasing in the third chapter that suggests a deeper connection between light itself and time. I would appreciate any clarity you could provide on this matter. Or perhaps you might suggest further reading on the subject? It is one of my particular interests, and I would hate to muddle my understanding at the start. 

We are camping by the road tonight, about a day out from Zadash, and I swear to you Essek my ass will be happy to never see the back of a horse again once this journey is complete. I used to travel even by foot without much complaint, but magic spoils us all, does it not? 

Speaking of creature comforts, I hope you will enjoy those I am sending to you in care of Schmidt. The sweets I got on the recommendation of Jester, as they are a speciality in her home. The tea is, of course, courtesy of Caduceus, though I made my own additions to the brew. In a way, it is a gift from all of us. 

Last time I saw you, friend, you looked as though you had not rested in weeks. It is a look with which I am unfortunately well acquainted. I know you have much on your mind, much to keep you awake at night, but I hope you can find time to care for yourself. I cannot order you to your bed for a long rest, I am aware. But I hope I can at least, with this missive, encourage you to take a break and have a cup of tea. 

I hope to hear from you soon. 

Yours,

Caleb

For a long moment, Essek just savors the words as they dissipate into the air. When they are gone, he leans forward and pours himself a cup of tea, brings the cup in close to cradle against his chest, letting the warmth sit there and spread along with the delicate floral scent of jasmine. 

He takes a sip while he considers. It is hardly the letter of a blackmailer. I promise not to harass you unnecessarily… And earlier, in the swamp. Caleb gripping Essek’s arm, his smile soft and appeasing. The delicate flutter of golden lashes. Like something out of a bad romance novel.

 The equation doesn’t balance.

Caleb could simply make his demands. He doesn’t need to sweet talk or apologize or persuade to keep Essek on side. He doesn’t need to leave Essek gifts or console him over his losses or tell him any of his secrets. And yet he has. 

What conclusion can Essek draw but that he has been wrong? That his paranoia has persuaded him to interpret only the worst from Caleb’s letters. That the man, in fact, knows nothing of his treachery. 

It should be a reprieve, this new understanding. But Essek feels the now-familiar knot in his stomach unravel only to twist itself into a new configuration.

For a little while at least, he had believed that Caleb knew of Essek’s complicity with his former tormentors and still was able to look him in the eye, to speak with him, to write to him. There had been a comfort in that. To believe that someone knew his worst and found him still somehow tolerable. 

He realizes now that this fantasy could never be true. Caleb is not the sort of man to stand for such betrayal. It is far too profound.

It seems there are always new ways for Essek to discover himself a fool. Because he realizes simultaneously that this is true and that he cares. Cares what Caleb and the rest of the Nein think of him. Would like for them to approve of him. To see him perhaps as a friend. 

But their illusion of him as some benign benefactor will shatter soon enough. It must. He knows he can’t maintain the facade forever. 

Essek sighs and drains his teacup. He feels a sort of hollow resignation as he rises and straightens his desk. There are a few books in his home library that may aid Caleb’s understanding of the connection between the Luxon and time. With any luck, the Nein will be successful in their mission, and he can present them as a sort of congratulatory gift. 

He pours the remainder of the tea over the embers of his fire, banishes his lights with a snap of his fingers, then head out into the city.

The wind blows sharp as he heads down the stairs of the Lucid Bastion, and he wraps his cloak around him a little tighter to ward off the sting. It is early spring, and Essek cannot tell if it has actually gotten colder or if the effect is only in his mind. But he has his suspicions.

*

The sun burns high and hot over the harbor in Nicodranas when the Mighty Nein stumble en masse out of Yussa’s tower. Caleb winces at the brightness of real sunlight after the dimness of Yussa’s study and the artificial light of the Happy Fun Ball. 

Every muscle in his body aches, and when he looks around at his companions, Caleb finds they look not much better than he feels. There is a pounding headache building in the back of his brain like a thunderstorm, possibly related to the fact that his mind, which always tells him what time it is, is deeply disoriented and still attempting to calculate the time and date for two different planes at once. Is it Dualahei or Thunsheer? Noon or midnight?

He stops just outside the tower as the others argue over where to head next and closes his eyes to soak in the sunlight and allow himself a moment to adjust. The warmth feels good against his skin and slowly, slowly things shift back into place. It is 11 Thunsheer, 2:35 in the afternoon. His headache breaks like a parting of clouds. Better. Much better. 

When he opens his eyes, Beau and Jester have already sauntered off together, and by their discussion of tattoo ideas, Caleb reckons they are heading toward the docks. 

He’s about to head off after them when he feels an itch on the back of his neck like he’s being watched. Looking around, though, he cannot find any eyes on him save for those of a cat perched on a crumbling stone fence.

It’s a hairless black sphynx with large ears perked in his direction and forehead wrinkled in disdain. Its head is at least 80 percent eyes, large and smoky grey.

“Hallo there, little one,” Caleb says, approaching the cat slowly and leaning down to scritch under its chin. 

Lounging around his neck like a scarf, Frumkin lets out a low, dissatisfied growl at the presence of another cat, while the sphynx haughtily tilts its head to the side to allow him to scratch. 

Then it lets out an imperious “Mraow!” and looks at Caleb directly. Its eyes flash a distinctive lilac. 

Caleb takes a stumbling step backwards. He looks away and looks back, finding the eyes and the disdainful expression still unchanged.

“Essek?” he hisses, stepping back in close. “Is that you?”

The only answer he receives is a decisive flick of the cat’s tail and another sharp meow. 

“Ja,” Caleb says, in answer to an unasked question. “Not here, though. We have a ship in the harbor. Ah, would you like a lift?”

Cautiously, he extends his arm, jostling Frumpkin onto one shoulder to leave the other free for the sphynx. 

The cat gives a grumble but picks its way delicately up Caleb’s arm to settle on his right shoulder. Thus encumbered, Caleb rushes off to catch up with his companions. 

Boarding the gangplank onto the Balleater, Caleb passes Beau straddling a wooden chair backwards while Orly sketches the outline for a tattoo onto her back and up her neck. 

“Hey!” she shouts as she sees him. “Are you adopting strays now? We’re on the move, Caleb. You can’t keep picking up new pets.”

“He is just visiting,” Caleb says, waving to her and the rest of the girls before heading down below decks to his quarters. As soon as he makes it to his room, the sphynx cat leaps from his shoulder and onto a chest he uses as a desk set up beneath a large porthole window. 

Frumpkin nestles a little closer into his hair, and Caleb cannot help but smile at the territorial little creature. He gives him a scratch behind the ears and whispers “Best cat,” to him. 

The sphynx cat meows to get his attention, and when Caleb approaches, it stretches out its neck, showing off a delicate leather collar with a small silver sphere attached to it. The sphere gives a gentle tinkle as the cat shakes it in Caleb’s direction.

“This is for me?” he asks, and the cat gives a regal nod in response.

Caleb carefully unhooks the collar from its neck and examines the sphere in search of an opening. He finds nothing. 

The cat gives a frustrated growl and slaps one paw up against the glass of the porthole two times.

Caleb cannot help but crook an eyebrow at the creature with Essek’s eyes. 

“Are you sure?” he says. “I do not want to break it.”

The cat’s forehead creases further, and it repeats the gesture almost petulantly. The expression so perfectly mirrors that of an irritated Essek Thelyss that Caleb cannot help but grin.

“Alright, alright. Ich verstehe dich.”

Caleb takes the sphere between his thumb and forefinger and taps it against the glass of the window twice. He holds it there on the window for a moment and waits.

If he weren’t looking so closely, he would not have initially noticed the frost crystals forming out from the sphere. When he pulls it away, the crystals continue to trellis their way out from the initial contact point. It seems at first as though they will form only natural whirls and curves, but as they expand across the surface of the glass, Caleb begins to see in the empty spaces between the frost, the swirl of Essek’s handwriting.

He leans back, scared he might banish the letter with only the warmth of his breath. Still, he cannot help but stretch out a hand. It puts him in mind of winter mornings in Blumenthal, trying to find the patterns in the frost on the kitchen window until his mother scolded him to stir the oatmeal and take care not to let it burn. He can almost smell the warmth of cooking oats, apples and cinnamon.

Fingers skimming the whorls of Essek’s words, he reads.

Caleb,

Please send word as soon as possible that you and the Nein are safe and well. I pray, at least, that this will be your news. My sendings have been unable to reach you, and any attempt to scry upon your party has been rebuffed for the past month at least. 

Do not make that face, Widogast. You know very well you were being surveilled, and the reasons for it. You cannot now be angry with me over it. 

I must say, you have chosen the most inauspicious time to disappear. Things on the front lines are progressing much faster than any of us had hoped. We have much to discuss, but the details are too delicate for recording in a letter, even one which will swiftly melt away. I can only say that things look dire and are quickly reaching a head. We must meet as soon as possible. 

You are alright, aren’t you? I have told myself that you needed stealth while you pursued leads on Yasha’s location. It is not that I begrudge you privacy, but I do worry, and you disappeared so suddenly. I had no notion of you being gone from Rosohna for more than a few days.

I have, of course, entertained the idea that you are not merely delayed for the purposes of secrecy. If the worst has happened, then you will never receive this letter, so I will discard the possibility. 

If you have decided to cut ties with the dynasty, I hope you know that my friendship is not contingent on the politics or alliances of countries. I will still aid you in your quest. If that aid is still of any use to you. 

If you have decided to cut ties with me specifically, then I beg you will at least send me word that you are safe. I cannot ask for more than that.

To provide a small temptation, I have considered carefully your request for reading recommendations, and have compiled several books for you on the subject of the Luxon and time. It is a topic which has interested the dynasty’s most fascinating and iconoclastic thinkers. I believe you will find them well worth your time when you return. If you return.

I hope I will see you again soon, my friend, well and whole. 

— Essek —

Caleb finishes the letter, then reads it again. It is already starting to fade into condensation from the sun hitting the window at a low, late-afternoon angle. Despite that, he can practically feel Essek’s nerves vibrating off the glass. There is a rushed quality to his handwriting even in this form, a harried slant. Things must be very bad indeed for him to let such emotion leak through. 

Despite the bruskness of  Essek’s tone, he’s touched by the concern shot through the entire letter. The unexpected claim that he will stand by them even if they turn away from the Dynasty. Caleb is not sure he believes him entirely, but the care for them at least seems earnest. 

He turns from the message before it has completely disappeared and kneels down so he is face to face with the lilac-eyed cat. Cautiously, he runs the ridge of his knuckles across the creature’s cheekbone. 

“We are safe,” he whispers. “All of us. It is difficult to explain, I fear, but we were out of contact doing a service for a friend. I hope it will not be long before we can talk in person, but until we do, we could use anything you can find out about the Chained Oblivion.”

The sphynx’s forehead wrinkles, and it lets out a plaintive little yowl. 

“It is the best I can do,” Caleb says, though his chest twinges. “We will reconnect soon, I swear it.”

The cat lets out a little huff through its nose, then bats its head once against Caleb’s hand in what feels like acceptance. It leaps from the trunk to the floor and stalks away. Caleb is about to open the door for him when the sphynx stops, looks back at him one final time, and then promptly blinks out of existence. Well then. 

Caleb pushes himself up off  the floor and brushes the dust from the knees of his trousers. He returns to the porthole window, brings his face in close and breathes against it, revealing the ghost of Essek’s message still there in the glass. After one last look, he takes his sleeve and rubs until no trace remains. 

Chapter Text

“You know, I was quite taken by your familiar when I met him the other day,” Caleb says, flicking his eyes over to Essek and burying his smile in the warm wool of his scarf.

They walk side by side down the mostly empty street. Rosohna’s population keeps odd hours, and it is always dark here, but Caleb’s internal clock tells him it is 1:32 in the morning, and it seems like most of the city’s respectable citizens have long ago retired to their beds. 

They kept Essek late at the Xhorhaus after dinner, and yet Caleb was reluctant to say goodbye when he attempted to take his leave. Which is how he ended up escorting the drow home. Also Beau is here for some reason. 

Ahead of them, she prowls the street on alert, occasionally climbing up the street lamps to get a better view ahead. Caleb can’t decide if she really doesn’t trust Essek enough to allow him to walk the man home alone, or if she’s just letting her natural nosiness rule the day. 

Essek doesn’t look at him. He keeps his gaze steadfastly forward, but Caleb sees the corner of  his mouth tick upward. The silver chain that runs from lobe to the filigree cuff at the tip of his ear jangles as his ears flick in amusement.

“I’m afraid I have no familiar,” he replies, cooly. “Charming as your Frumpkin is, I have never felt the desire for one.”

“There is no need to be coy,” Caleb insists, bumping his shoulder against his companion’s and making the drow’s body sway lightly as he floats. “They can be quite useful creatures. And besides, you were cute as a cat.”

He looks more boldly over at Essek’s profile as he says this — back and neck held perfectly straight, sharp chin and nose, long ears now twitching against his hair and, yes, turning a dark plum at edges. Delightful. 

All of Essek’s features are sharp and delicate. Even his ankles, which Caleb saw for the first time this evening when the drow condescended to shuck off his boots, roll up his trousers and soak his feet in the hot tub with the rest of the Nein. 

Essek’s ankles are a shade paler than his face, with prominent malleoli, and are thin enough for Caleb to be able to ring one with a hand, were he bold enough to reach out. It had felt shocking to see the drow like that, bare and vulnerable. That pale stretch of skin had seemed somehow very exposed despite the fact that everyone else, including Caleb himself, had soaked completely naked. Caleb can feel the heat rising in his cheeks even as he thinks about it. The realization forces him to struggle for control and curse himself for a fool. 

“I will accept your dubious compliment, I suppose,” Essek replies, nose tilting up an increment. “But Melchiorus is not my familiar. He is a colleague. We occasionally collaborate on experiments which require input on two different planes. And I now owe him a very large favor for keeping an eye out for your party and allowing me to use some of his more unusual skills to contact you. I shall be editing pages about lunar influence on fey flora until my eyes bleed.”

“You collaborate with a cat?” Caleb asks, disbelief and amusement suffusing his tone.

“I correspond with a great number of mages across Exandria and beyond,” Essek says, eyes flicking to Caleb’s, an unexpected aura of desperation there. “And collaboration is important for any true comprehension of magic in our world, don’t you think?”

Then his gaze flickers away, and the tension that had risen temporarily is gone. Essek clears his throat and shakes his head minutely.

“Melchiorus is not a cat,” he continues, switching tacks. “He is fey, and can take many forms. I suggested a cat as the best way to contact you stealthily. After all, no one who knows you would expect you to pass a cat on the street without attempting to pet it.”

The bark of laughter that forces itself from Caleb’s chest echoes out into the night. 

“I am afraid you’ve got my number,” he says. 

“Well,” Essek says with a shrug. “Not that hard.”

“Could you two walk any slower?” Beau shouts back at them from halfway down the street. 

“We could if you like!” Caleb calls back, just to watch her scowl.

“It’s just left up here,” Essek says, raising his voice just enough to be heard at the distance.

“So come on, then!” Beau replies, throwing her hands up into the air and scowling in Caleb’s direction. 

“Ja, Beauregard, we are on our way,” he says.

They speed up until they reach Beauregard, and continue together toward an imposing black iron gate, behind which loom a series of three towers, some sort of golden mechanical device glittering in the starlight atop the highest. 

Essek invites them to breakfast in the morning, and they make plans to look over the spell Caleb has been working on. Then they say their farewells. Beau has taken a few steps away from the gate when Essek reaches out and snags one ragged end of Caleb’s scarf to stop him.

He stills, raising an eyebrow in question at his companion, who seems at first to struggle for words.

“I, ah, I hope you enjoyed the wine I brought to dinner tonight,” he says. “It is a speciality in the Dynasty. A frost wine.”

It is a strange shift to the conversation, and Caleb cannot help but study Essek’s face.

“I am more of a beer man,” he admits with a self-conscious cough. “But I enjoyed it very much. It seemed a good vintage. From what I can tell.”

“I am glad,” Essek says, shifting awkwardly from side to side, even though he is still floating a few inches above the ground. “I took the liberty of leaving a bottle for you especially in your room at the Xhorhaus, as you call it.”

“In my room …”

“Yes,” Essek interrupts him before he can get the question fully out. “Jester showed me where it was and allowed me a few moments inside. I believe she thought I was setting up a practical joke of some kind, or she would not have done so.”

“You were in my room,” Caleb says, mind whirring. 

An unpleasant zing of alarm shoots down his spine. He is beginning to trust Essek, but he cannot help the instincts that tell him anyone in his space without his permission is a violation. Caleb’s perfect memory brings up an image of his room as he left it last, and he begins to rifle through, looking for anything incriminating he might have left out in the open. 

“I promise that I did not pry into anything,” Essek says quickly, likely noticing Caleb’s distress. 

He left a pair of hole-ridden socks drying on the windowpane, Caleb knows, and he had been halfway through sorting some of his more unpleasant spell components on his desktop. None of his papers had been left out, but he will have to go though the drawers later to see if anything was disturbed or misplaced. Though rationally if Essek wanted to rifle through his things, he wouldn’t tell Caleb about his visit or leave a gift. Would he?

“I am sorry,” Caleb says. “I do trust you, Essek. It is just —”

“Difficult,” Essek concludes. “I understand. I should not have presumed —”

“It is fine,” Caleb says. 

He goes to worry at the ends of his scarf, an old habit, and winds up tangling his fingers inadvertently with Essek’s. They are thin, with knobby knuckles, and cold to the touch. 

Essek immediately releases the fabric and pulls back, then shifts until his back touches the gate, leaving the space between them open and cool. 

“I apologize,” he says, turning his face away from Caleb and staring down at his hands instead. “I will not keep you any longer. Perhaps I will see you in the morning. If you … Well, you know where to find me now.”

“I do,” Caleb says, fighting an unaccountable urge to step forward and crowd Essek against the dark metal gate to … To what? To comfort? To intimidate? He honestly isn’t sure.

“Goodnight, Caleb,” Essek says with a nodding bow, and then he is disappearing behind the gate with a creak of metal and absolutely no footsteps.

“Gute Nacht,” Caleb whispers to Essek’s rapidly retreating form.

Then he turns and hurries to catch up with Beauregard. 

Back in his room, Caleb finds the promised bottle sitting in the middle of his desk, nudged up next to a stack of smutty novels he’s been meaning to read through before loaning them to Jester. 

Caleb takes an inventory of his desk, looks through his drawers, but can find nothing out of place. He’s not even sure what he is worried about Essek finding, just cannot shake the vague unease in his chest.

Perhaps he will have some of that wine now. Caleb picks up the bottle. The glass is dark green, the cork sealed over with black wax, the label in swirling undercommon. Cautiously, he holds it up to the light, wondering if it is hiding another letter somewhere — beneath the label, notches in the wax on the seal, message in a bottle, something. But nothing stands out upon initial inspection. There’s not second layer beneath the plain label, no etchings in the glass. 

Running a thumb along the seal thoughtlessly, Caleb pulls out a mug from the piles of his possessions. He’s pretty sure it previously contained tea and not ink for his quills, so it should be safe enough to use. He uncorks the bottle with a penknife and pours a heavy glug, the liquid coming out a deep mauve. 

Collapsing in a creak onto his desk chair, Caleb closes his eyes and inhales.The scent of the wine is sharp with and undertone of dark, mossy woods. 

He takes a sip, holds the liquid in his mouth, letting the taste settle. He’s never been good at picking out the notes in wine, but it tastes to him like an overcast day, like the threat of rain, like leaves barely hanging onto their branches. 

Caleb.

The voice sends a streak of alarm through Caleb’s body, hair standing on end as he jolts up from his slump to look wide-eyed around the room while his heart pounds in his chest. It cannot be an intruder, though. He set out his silver string before retiring, as he does every night. And there has been no alarm in his head letting him know it has been crossed. 

Confused, his eyes flick around the room as he absently sips from his cup. 

Caleb,

I hope you will not mind the slightly unconventional delivery of this letter. I was inspired by the tea you sent me, and could not resist a little experimentation. 

Oh, that is interesting indeed. The voice is Essek’s. Of course it is. It was only because of the shock of the initial intrusion that he did not recognize it immediately. It is not like the messages he gets from Veth, nor like Jester’s rambling sendings, though. Those manifest as a buzzing in the base of his skull, resolving themselves into words echoing and jangling in his mind. 

This, however, is a message coming only indirectly from Essek. It must have been somehow imbued into the wine in his cup. It does not buzz or jangle. Caleb feels more than hears the words. They linger against his lips, as though the drow were leaning in close, whispering from mere millimeters away, the exhalations of his breath close enough to taste.

Tilting the liquid toward the light for examination, Caleb relaxes back into his chair. It looks no different than the wine they had with dinner. No shimmer of magic to be detected, at least not with the unassisted eyes. Except. Caleb cannot be sure if it is his imagination, or the scant lighting in his room that makes him perceive the liquid in the cup as so much darker than the wine Essek shared with the rest of the Nein. He swirls it and fancies it a dark well he might tumble down into. Foolish, but …

Wetting his lips, a little hesitant, he takes another sip from the cup, closes his eyes and listens. 

I wanted to impress you, I think. And isn’t that strange? Maybe you won’t think so, with my lifestyle and position. But believe me, Widogast, there is a vast chasm of difference between keeping up appearances and the drive I feel to make you look at me all wide-eyed and amazed. The former I must do for my own reputation and for the honor of my den. The latter, well, that is a newly discovered indulgence.

That word, indulgence, vibrates its way through Caleb’s body like a cold chill, and he relaxes into it, sinking down further in his chair and letting his head fall back.

“Consider me impressed,” he whispers back, shakily, and drinks again.

Not that I would expect you to admit to such a thing out loud. Not unless you were accompanying those compliments with a request for aid. Should I mind that more? I do not. Sincerely, I find the approach that you and your friends take refreshing. The directness of it makes me feel like my feet are on solid ground, rare as that occurrence is. I much prefer it to subtler politicking. And besides, I think I have given up the pretense that I would not take considerable effort to fulfill those requests. I was not very good at that deception to begin with. 

  Am I being maudlin, my dear friend? I suppose I am. It is only I did not expect to feel like this. It took me quite by surprise. I have always cherished my isolation. Took pride in it. I often thought my magic was better, stronger for setting myself apart.

Armor, perhaps. A protection. Because while I have family, and the honor of a den, and at least the occasional ear of the Bright Queen, I have never felt kinship here.There have always been contingencies that must be met to sustain those connections. And how long can I really expect to rely upon them?  

Regardless, It has been decades since I thought to wish for any company but my own. And yet your long absence, you and the rest of the Nein, left me unaccountably lonely. I worried. You know I worried. And I maintain that worry was reasonable, given the circumstances. But I also felt …

The hesitation lasts for an uncomfortably long moment, and Caleb shifts, bringing the cup to his lips to take another long pull, emptying it. He lets the wine settle against his soft palate to savor it, and once it is gone, his tongue darts out to lick the last few drops from his lips. 

His legs have spread open without him realizing, as though to make room for an absent speaker, and Caleb grips his free hand against his knee until he feels his knuckles going white, waiting for Essek to continue. At last the voice is back, ghosting against his seeking mouth.

I missed you, is what I am trying to say. Your nosiness and your demands and your kindness and your humor and your bright, bright spark. 

At spark, Caleb’s heart constricts in his chest. Essek does not choose words lightly, even as he rarely says exactly what he means. But the words run on before he can examine that.

All of you. I am happy to have you back in Rosohna, though I know I cannot expect you to remain for any length of time. 

I should not send this letter. I have read back over what I have written and found I cannot do so without cringing. It is unacceptably self-indulgent. Yet I fear I will deliver it anyway. Because. Because honestly, why the fuck not?

I feel like we are nearing the end of something. Open war if we are lucky, and the niceties of regimented conflict if not. Either way, continuing as we have been seems quite unlikely. So I wanted you to know, before this changes, how much your friendship, and this correspondence, have meant to me. 

Also, I have set aside several books from my personal library that I think would be of interest to you. Please do call for them before you leave town next. At your convenience, of course. Any porter at the Bastion will be able to direct you, though you may always just send a letter. 

I believe that is more than enough for now.. I remain, as always.

Yours.

Voicelessly, Caleb echoes Yours as though he is a child at some religious ceremony following the priest’s admonitions. The signature that would be present in another type of letter is implied rather than spoken. Something lingers in the silence where it would have been, heavy and portentous. 

Then the spell ends, and the almost presence he had felt before him dissipates like smoke. 

It takes a while for Caleb to rouse himself from the charged lassitude that had enveloped him, but eventually he shakes himself, straightens, stretches and stands. He almost feels hungover in the wake of Essek’s letter, mind and body both tender and unsettled.

He cannot help but feel a pang of kinship and concern at the way Essek spoke about loneliness, and their inevitable departure. Combined with the tentative vulnerability of Essek’s conversation with the Nein that evening, it’s clear he’s struggling. 

They are so similar, the two of them. Caleb had also needed friendship almost forced upon him, in those early days with the Nein. Without the pushing and prodding of all of his friends, in their way, where would he be? And if there is a part of Caleb that whispers he may want something beyond friendship with the other mage? Well, he’s an old hand at curbing such instincts. And now isn’t the time. Not yet.

If it is a push Essek needs, Caleb can certainly provide it. He has plans for the shards of glass he picked up at the Dawn Father’s Cathedral, but he might just spare a few pieces for a special project.

Caleb should go to bed. Were they anywhere but Rosohna, the sun would be threatening to rise. He goes to work instead.

*

The Nein take their leave rather quickly after Nott's spell fails. Their agitation is clear, and Essek feels for them. It had felt like a slap in the face even for him, after the dizzying heights of completing the spellwork, to have it end so abruptly and quietly with no results whatsoever. He cannot imagine what it must be like for Caleb, who performed the casting, much less for Nott herself.

He hangs back as they make their way down the tower steps and out his door, reluctant to insert himself into their business. Still, he cannot help but pull Caleb bak at the last moment with a hand on his shoulder. He regrets the touch almost immediately. It is surely and overstep. But Caleb doesn’t look offended as he pauses in the doorway, and he seems happy enough to agree to Essek copying the transformation spell for his own purposes. 

He tells himself it is merely a curiosity to be studied, a relic of an older form of magic, but he cannot completely silence the voice in the back of his head that says it might become very useful if the worst comes.

To tamp that thought down, he offers Caleb the books he’d mentioned in his last letter. 

“Or I could have a courier deliver them?” Essek suggests, watching the Nein retreat swiftly down his walkway. 

“No, no, I will happily take them now, if you can spare them,” Caleb says, rubbing his hands together nervously, as though he fears the offer will be retracted if he does not leap upon it immediately. 

Essek had set them aside in his drawing room for easy access if Caleb called for them, so he goes to fetch them, a stack of seven thick tomes that deal at least tangentially with time manipulation. It causes surprisingly little pain to hand them over.

Caleb thanks him profusely and balances them with his scruffy chin at the top of the stack and cradled arms beneath. He’s finally picking his careful way out onto the portico when he turns again.

“Ach, I almost forgot,” he says, shifting the precarious stack to one hand and rifling through his pockets. “This is for you.”

He holds out what looks to be a repurposed matchbox, secured with twine.

“I thought your last letter required a prompt response,” he says, meeting Essek’s eyes, mouth tilting sideways in an expression that isn’t quite a smile, but conveys a similar emotion.

“Oh.”

Essek takes the box from him, their fingers brushing as he does. 

“Th-Thank you,” he says, lowering his gaze from Caleb’s examination. “Very thoughtful.”

“We will see you soon, I hope.”

Essek nods.

“I too. But I will not keep you further.”

“Right, yes.”

Then Caleb is rushing after his friends, already out the gate and headed down the street. Essek watches the flap of his coat as he scurries away, and then he retreats back into his tower.

Without really thinking about it, he wanders back up to his laboratory, rubbing absently at spot on his collar bone where Caleb’s fingers had lingered when he’d pulled Essek in for a hug to celebrate completing the spell. 

Essek lets out a huff of displeasure at the direction of his own thoughts, then settles at his workbench to open the package. It tinkles a little as he undoes the twine, and he worries that whatever is inside may have broken from being toted around in Caleb’s crowded pockets. 

His first impression, when he slides the box open, is of brightly colored glass. When he reaches in to pull the object out, it becomes clear from the one hooked end that it is intended to be an earring. A statement piece indeed, a cascade of red, yellow, blue, green glass connected with rough worked metal beads. 

Essek holds it up for examination, allowing it to sway and tinkle pleasingly in his grasp. His heartbeat jumps a beat at the thought of Caleb noticing his jewelry collection and deciding to add to it. He cannot possibly know the significance of such a gift in Dynasty culture, the suggestion of it, or how his father had gifted his mother a new pair of pearl ear cuffs to announce his intentions to court her over three separate lifetimes. 

No, the gift itself has no significance. But still, it is pleasing. Too gaudy for Essek’s usual taste, and yet somehow still charming. Stretching, he holds the earring up to catch the candlelight for better examination. 

The blast of color nearly blinds Essek’s light-sensitive eyes. It is a silent rainbow explosion that staggers him. 

Wincing and blinking, he watches as the swirling rainbow maelstrom congeals into a more sedate prism on his laboratory floor, then cracks apart into what else but words. 

With a few motions, Essek casts immovable object to fix the earring in place before the candle. Then he stands and paces closer to where those rainbow-hued words flicker across his floor, superimposed over the runes carved into the tiles for more efficient casting.

Slowly, he circles, coming in closer and closer with each rotation as though pulled in by gravity as he reads.

Dear Friend,

You do me a disservice if you think I cannot admit when your magic impresses me. I who have been dazzled by your spellwork almost since the first hour of our meeting. I admit, at the time I thought the brand of magic you wielded must be common for Dynasty mages. But I have long realized that you are exceptional among your fellows. Your last letter was a brilliant example of this. It left me. Well. Dizzy, I  will admit to. Your letter left me dizzy, among other things. 

I must take care not to praise you overly, however, else you will think I want something.I do want something from you, as it turns out. But I hope it will not be something you are unwilling to give. More on that later, however.

I am concerned, Essek. Please do not be offended. But the tone of your letter seemed so hopeless. Do you think that if there is a truce that we will simply disappear into the ether? I assure you this is not so. We, all of us, consider your friendship very dear. I know our erratic schedules can make us often seem thoughtless, but I hope you can see past that illusion. 

We certainly hope to maintain your friendship no matter what happens with the peace talks. I hope you can believe me. But I think we would all prefer something different. And here I come to my request. 

You spoke of endings, in your letter. I agree that if we are lucky we may see the end of this conflict. But endings, Essek, also make way for new beginnings. What I wish to ask, friend, is this: Come with us. 

You say that you are lonely in your home among your people, and so I suggest that you leave them behind and join us in our travels. I am familiar with the feelings you struggle with. I was very lonely before I met the Nein. I was lonely even afterwards, by my own stubbornness. But they wore me down, you see. Forced me to see them as the friends they were. They will do the same for you, Essek. I promise.

I know the same offer was made to you last night, and perhaps you thought it a jest. I assure you we are sincere. Consider it, please. You have many obligations. I do not expect you to drop them all with no warning, but surely the Bright Queen can grant leave to an advisor who has served her so faithfully. And if she will not, know that the choice is still yours. We would protect you, friend. Each of our party has dangerous enemies. We are familiar with the risks involved, and we accept them.

I will also add that traveling with us will not mean an end to your cherished research. I believe you and I could make brilliant magic together. Indeed, my mind is already sparking with the possibilities of what me might achieve, you and I. 

We will have our ship at the peace talks, and I know you also plan to be there. If your answer is yes, you could pack a bag and join us then. It seems unlikely that Travelercon will be anything but a disaster, but admit it, you are curious. You could come and see the chaos for yourself. 

I do not mean to keep insisting. You must keep your own counsel and make your own decision. I only ask that you think on it as a very serious offer. 

As for me, now I have the idea in my head I cannot shake it out. You must know how much I have valued our letters, but it would be so much more not to have to communicate through snatched conversations whenever we stop in Rosohna and through clandestine letters. I imagine now a conversation that continues day to day, pausing only for us to take our rest. I have so much to say to you, Essek.

For now, though, I will leave off. Think about our proposal. And write to me. Either way, write to me. I shall miss your thoughts until you do.

Yours, 

Caleb

Essek reads the close of the letter and finds himself at the center of the conjured kaleidoscope. Caleb’s words shimmer under his feet, twisting and reforming themselves as the candle flickers. 

He sinks down to his knees and holds out a hand, letting chaos dance across his bony knuckles in green and yellow. Essek closes his eyes, colored light still flickering on the backs of his eyelids, and gives himself a full minute to picture what it could be like, traveling with the Nein. Trudging through the muck from one cursed and haunted location to another, fighting for his life on a daily basis, using battle spells recklessly just to impress Caleb Widogast, collapsing into his trance at the end of the day in a crowded bubble with all his friends less than an arm’s length away. 

It would not have been appealing a scarce few months ago, and now Essek can think of nothing he would wish for more. It is, of course, a pure fantasy. He lets his head hang low, heavy with the imaginary weight on his shoulders. 

If they knew the truth. If they knew what he’d done they would reject him. And they would be right to do so. Yet doesn’t he still owe them that knowledge? That choice? Doesn’t he owe them the truth from his own lips. Or, if he cannot bear that — and Essek knows in his heart that he cannot — from his own pen? 

If he opens his eyes now, he will have to see it again. Caleb’s entreaty. Come with us. He will not have the courage even for a letter if he sees it again. Essek fears he will rush to pack a bag and show up on the steps of the Xhorhaus begging to come along, hoping that he can outrun his mistakes with he Nein at his side. He cannot. The past is inexorable. 

Trembling, Essek raises his hand into the air and snaps his fingers, canceling the immovable object spell. He hears the crash and tinkle of Caleb’s gift hitting stone a second later. 

From beneath lowered lids, he senses the light retreat to the sedate semi-darkness he usually prefers for his work, kaleidoscope banished. It is only then that he opens his eyes and rises to his feet. 

Essek sets off in search of parchment and ink, kicking the broken glass and twisted metal in his path to the side as he goes with an aching chest. He has a letter to write, and it is best not to delay. 

Chapter Text

Caleb,

If you knew me truly, you would never make such requests of me. Never pull me into your circle, or embrace me as a friend. I have betrayed you, terribly and irrevocably. Admitting it feels like removing my own heart from my chest, and yet —

Rip. 

Essek tears the piece of paper from his notebook. His nib has pressed so hard into the page that it has torn through at the full stop after irrevocably. He is curled in on himself on the floor by the fireplace in his laboratory because he had felt the need of a little exterior warmth. Armed with only his notebook and a pen, he has been trying very hard to find the right words. They will not come. 

He crumples the beginnings of the letter into a ball and tosses it into the waiting flames. He sounds crazed. He feels a rising frenzy pounding in his veins. It can’t be done like that. He will have to start again.

My Dear Friend,

I regret I cannot accept your very kind offer to travel with you and your companions. I fear I have carried out a deception upon you and the rest of your party. A deception that began upon the first moment of our meeting. I would beg for forgiveness, but I am sure that none can be forthcoming in this case. You see, my allies in these ill deeds have been none other than the villains in your own dark history. You may as well include me amongst your tormentors. I have done them enough good already to be counted in their numbers.

Rip. Crumple. Toss.

Too formal for a confession, surely. It has always been Essek’s chosen defensive posture. Back straight, enunciation clear and concise. Not a word or comma out of place. There is a certain comfort in wrote formality. But if there is ever a situation where Essek does not deserve the comfort of old habit, it is here. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. He owes Caleb more than that after everything. Maybe it would be better if he could just let everything out. Essek puts pen to paper once more, attempts to write without thought, to allow his words to flow.

Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me …

Rip. 

This one he does allow to linger in his hand, just tosses the fluttering paper directly into flames and watches as they eat golden-edged holes into his pathetic mewling. Eventually, the page fizzles into nothing but dark ash, and Essek’s pinned gaze is freed.

The point is not absolution. That is impossible. The point is to let Caleb know of his error. Of his misplaced trust. Perhaps Essek can be an object lesson, if he cannot be of any other use to him.

Widogast,

You are a credulous fool, and I had thought better of your intellect and discernment. I expect such drivel from your companions — naive waifs every one — but you should be capable of higher thought. 

So think, mageling. Think why I, a wizard a century your elder, a man with the ear of a Queen and power over time itself would bother to fetch and carry for you. To walk you through dunamacy lessons that should be the province of children. To trade secret missives like we are schoolgirls with an overbearing tutor.

It was because it was useful to me to keep you distracted. Happy and distracted and looking always at some threat far away from me.

Did you truly believe it was because I was fond of you and your little menagerie? That you had worn a soft spot in my brittle heart with the power of friendship and positivity? 

Young man, it was all a feint. I betrayed you even before I knew you existed. I stole the beacons and delivered them to the Cerberus Assembly. I lit the sparks of war. I and the mages who tried to forge you into a weapon, once upon a time. And to keep you from this knowledge I coddled you and gave you little treats and took you for outings around the continent. It did not take much in the end. Disappointing. 

So no, Caleb Widogast, I will not be joining your troop of clowns and jesters. I will not trade my position to sleep rough and battle monstrosities. I am not your ally, and I never have been.

I have never been anything but a villain, my darling little idiot, and I do not think to be redeemed.

Yours as Ever,

Essek

He signs his name with a dramatic flourish and sighs. It feels good to allow himself to be properly venomous, to put all of his worst thoughts and impulses down in stark black ink. Essek’s fingers flutter across his own looping script. His back garden is still half dug-up. The jasmine vines may never fully recover. He could easily pull up enough clay to cast the spell he and Caleb reconstructed. He could change his form, send the letter, and disappear somewhere far from the Dynasty’s reach. He could do it. Perhaps even should do it. 

Essek tears the sheet out with a careful hand. He folds it in half, and then into quarters. Then he rips it into very precise strips. These he sprinkles into the fire, conjuring orange sparks from the flames as they lick up the scraps. 

One more time, Essek dips his nib into the pot of ink at his knee. He writes again, the work of only a few moments.

C —

I have never deserved your trust or your friendship. Please do not ask me to try.

—E—

It is not really a letter. It is a reminder for himself. Essek closes his notebook and tucks it into a pocket close to his chest. He has always been a coward, and there is no reason that the current situation should change that. Given access to time and every word in every extant language, he would only ever choose the wrong ones. 

Perhaps even sending the wrong ones would be better than nothing, but he cannot bring himself to do it. He rises on unsteady legs and brushes ash from his knees. 

Caleb has lived in ignorance for this long. It will not hurt to allow him to do so a little longer. Maybe the writing will come easier tomorrow. 

Of the many lies Essek tells himself daily, this is one of the more blatant. He doesn’t really believe himself, but the delusion is enough to tamp down the urgency in his chest for now. He has work to do, after all. An ocean expedition to organize. Essek cannot be bothered just now with trivial correspondence.

*

Caleb waits only a moment or two after Essek drifts below decks to follow him down. He cuts it almost too close. The other wizard is already tracing his hands in the somatics for a teleport when he catches up, the shimmer of magic already heavy in the air.  

It is a sharp, petty pleasure to counterspell the action just as Essek completes the motions. The other mage swivels around in the cramped hallway, on high alert. His shoulders sag a little in relief when he recognizes Caleb standing a few feet away.

With a snap and a shudder of refracted light around his frame, Essek’s well-coifed blonde disguise fades and he floats in front of Caleb as himself. His white hair has been blown into a rat’s nest by the whipping sea air, and the apples of his cheeks have been burned a dark mauve by the sun, even through the clouds summoned by the Dynasty ships. 

Caleb’s stomach twists, seeing him in such disarray. He is usually put together so precisely. 

“That was unnecessary,” Essek says, mouth twisting into a grimace and eyes twitching between Caleb’s face and the floor. “I would have delayed my departure if you had but asked.”

Slowly, he descends until his feet touch wood. Caleb strides forward until they are separated by less than an arms length. This close, he is struck at how he must look down to meet Essek’s gaze. He often forgets he is the taller between them. The floating, yes, but also Essek’s general demeanor. 

“Well,” Caleb replies, voice coming out annoyingly hoarse. “Better safe than sorry. I didn’t want to miss you. Who knows when we shall see each other again.”

The drow’s face scrunches into what may well be dissatisfaction before it very pointedly smooths into something calm and neutral. 

“Of course, you have much business to occupy you,” Essek says.

“As do you,” Caleb counters.

Covering your tracks, he thinks, bitterly. Telling more lies. It would not sting so much if Caleb hadn’t believed, at least at the end, believed so fervently that Essek was sincere. It was not so long ago that he pictured Essek with them at the conclusion of the peace talks. Only he had imagined helping his friend find a satisfactory berth on their ship, huddling together over notes in the mess, taking measurements of leyline movements beneath the stars on the top deck. 

It had been so clear in his mind. But instead they are parting like this. Uneasy. Uncertain. Unmoored. And the worst of it is that a part of him still wishes for Essek to stay, to ignore the truth he knows now, to put all the lies behind them for the future he had dreamed up in his head. Caleb doesn’t get what he wants, though. What else is new?

“I suppose I do,” Essek nods. “But it may not take long for me to wrap up my business. Perhaps we might still —”

“I just wanted to give you this, before you leave.”

Caleb can’t listen to the end of that sentence, so he interrupts, proffers the pearl with a flourish, holding it between thumb and forefinger. He had chosen it carefully from his small collection, going back and forth several times. It is relatively small, about the diameter of a copper piece, its hue a dusky pink, glowing with a deep-sea luster. 

He had almost selected one of his black pearls. He has one almost the same quicksilver grey as Essek’s eyes. But he was afraid of the message a black pearl would send, and he was struck by the idea of how this one would look against Essek’s skin. He imagined it resting against his breastbone on a chain or dangling from  a pointed ear. 

Caleb blushes at his own thoughts, then he extends his arm, holding the pearl out to Essek. He had spent almost the entirety of last night figuring out how to enchant it properly. Maybe it wasn’t really urgent, but it had felt that way in the dark with the sea rocking beneath him.

“Ah,” Essek eyes the gem warily. “I would not want to dip into your supply. It will not be easy to restock components at sea.”

“I assure you, I will not feel its loss too keenly,” Caleb says, noting the tick of Essek’s tightening jaw at his words and almost, almost regretting them. “Besides, I selected this one particularly for you. After all, you might need a little luck on your path, Ja?”

“A little luck,” Essek echoes.

Caleb does not miss the tremble in Essek’s hand as he reaches out and plucks the pearl from his fingers. He very carefully touches only the pearl. 

“Well, thank you, Master Widogast. A generous gift. Luck would not go amiss in my situation.”

Essek holds the bauble in his palm, watching it roll between heart and lifelines. It gleams even more brightly against his purple skin. Just as Caleb knew it would. 

He shakes himself internally. He has been a fool, and continues to be. He had second-guessed himself several times since last night, and now can do so no longer. The letter is in Essek’s hands now. It is done.

With a sharp inhale of breath through his nose, Caleb makes a sharp bow and takes a step back.

“Farewell, Shadowhand,” he says, eyes trained on Essek’s face.

The drow’s gaze flicks up from the pearl in his hand. He wraps his fist around it and pulls the fist against his chest in an almost-salute. 

His eyes pierce through Caleb, but he says nothing as Caleb takes another step back, another, and then turns and flees up the stairs to the open deck. He waits in the doorway, shadow behind him, sunshine bright in his eyes, to see if Essek will follow, will call after him. 

Instead, Caleb feels a wave of magic wash against his back, the unmistakable feeling of Essek teleporting away. 

Hanging his head, he steps out into the light.

*

Essek waits as long as he can before examining Caleb’s gift. He waits until after his bags are packed, his correspondence informing colleagues of his relocation are sent by courier, his servants dismissed, and the spinning leyline clock at the top of his highest tower is wound down. 

His towers are dark and empty of anything Essek values. Which means that the silvered china, the family portraits, and all of the strange Luxon art his mother has gifted him over a century of birthdays are still in place, ready to collect dust, while all of his books and research materials have been meticulously packed away and shrunken down to fit into a single steamer trunk. He’ll teleport to the coast, then take a ship north across the frozen sea to Eiselcross. 

The scroll containing his reassignment to Vurmas outpost had been signed by the Bright Queen days ago. He told her his nerves needed a break, after helping to usher the dynasty through and out of a war. He almost thinks she believed him. After all, younglings on their first life are prone to dramatics, and she has often been indulgent of him in this way.

“A change is as good as a rest,” he had told her during his audience, and she had snorted unceremoniously at his expression.

“Perhaps so, but I also think you are also keen to get a better look at the artifacts coming out of the north, my Shadowhand. Is it not so?”

He had not denied it, and she had not denied him the permission to go, for a time at least. In truth, Vurmas’ distance from Rosohna is far more tempting to Essek than its potential artifacts.  Which for him is quite an extraordinary truth. Harder to send executioners to him when teleporting in the far north is nearly impossible. A very desirable location indeed.

So now Essek sits at one of the benches in his laboratory, cold seeping quickly into the tower heights without fires in the grates or servants busy in the kitchen. He conjures a lilac orb of light over his shoulder and pulls the pearl Caleb gave him out of his wristpocket where he had secreted it after the other wizard fled from him.

He considers it, rolling it from palm to palm. It is soft as an inner rose petal and glows a pale, burnished pink. It must be a letter. Essek knows it in his bones. And yet he is not sure he wants to read it. No matter what hope the Mighty Nein gave him aboard their ship the night of the dreaded confrontation, Essek cannot imagine it to be anything but a farewell.

He had been foolish to take the approach he did with the Nein, after they discovered his treachery. He had hoped vainly that if he acted normally, things might start to actually feel that way. But he had been foolish, of course. How does it feel? Beau had asked him, and Essek had answered honestly. Freeing. 

It had been freeing, seeing his former tormentor — the man the Umavi had charged with Essek’s religious education once upon a time — in chains that might have been destined for Esssek himself. Short-sighted perhaps, to mix his own personal revenge up in the bigger plot, but he cannot regret it, and he hadn’t bothered to put on a pantomime for the Nein.

They hadn’t wanted honesty from him, though, not then. They had wanted contrition. Penitence. That has always been one of Essek’s particular weak spots. It is different from from regret in a way he has never really grasped. Essek could feel the disappointment rolling off them in waves when he said his farewells. 

And then there had been that awkward encounter with Caleb. The way he seemed to look through Essek and see all the bile and poison inside. At last seen it, really and truly. 

If this is the last letter he is to receive from Caleb, he wants to savor it, even the pain of it, at his leisure. That impulse competes, however, with the ever-present desire to know in Essek’s chest. It is little wonder which wins out. 

You might need a little luck on your path, Caleb had said. 

Essek takes the pearl and holds it to his forehead, summoning his magic to cast Fortune’s Favor, just as he had once taught Caleb to do. Then he leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. 

He feels the familiar wash of magic through his body, the heady rush of potential  that the spell always carries with it.The clarity comes on slowly. At first Essek sees only sees stars — the familiar flicker of light across the darkness of his eyelids that comes when he presses too hard against closed eyes to try and banish a headache.

The flickers eventually resolve into spikes and loops — Caleb’s handwriting, standing stark against the darkness. The letters shift by increments as he reads, pulsing from lightening white to the red of the last rays of sunlight at sea. 

Friend,

I address you as such in foolhardy hope. Or maybe it is just force of habit now. Dear friend, you called me when you last wrote me. Did you laugh afterward, when you thought of how I would take to such endearments? Were you scoffing at me behind my back every time I claimed that intimacy between us? I do wish you would enlighten me. I am very curious.

Please do not think I am attempting to rescind anything I said to you on the night of your revelation. I stand by those words. I believe you can be a better man. You can make better choices. I believe it for you as I believe it for myself. Because we are the same, you and I. Men with blackened souls who somehow find themselves in a position to continue living despite their deeds.

But the affinity between us does not stop there, does it? We have been in bed with some of the same evil men, I suspect. Me, they trained not only in the arcane, but also in the arts of persuasion and deception. I suspect you have learned many similar lessons in your time. 

It is no doubt small-minded of me that this is the point I have dwelt upon the most in recent days, but I find I cannot set it aside. How much of it was real, Essek? 

I suspected you of using us for so long. But you had changed my mind entirely. The casual intimacy of your letters, the open way you spoke to us that night at the Xhorhaus, the way you opened your home to us and offered your help so freely. You had me utterly convinced of your sincerity. I thought you really cared. For us. For me. 

Am I a fool, friend, for believing such things? 

Your sins are you own. I cannot judge those because I have enough of mine to shoulder. But the idea that you cultivated my affection only to better hide your treason. That. That makes me very angry. 

I do not know the point of this letter anymore. My mind is a tempest. I think a part of me just wanted to set down in words my own small, personal injury at your hands. 

That is not all, though. I do want to know quite desperately. I want to hear from your lips or read it in your hand. To set the whole ordeal in its proper order.

Tell me it was the truth, Essek. Tell me it was a lie. Either way, say it plainly. You owe me that much. 

Caleb

Essek holds very still while the words fade away. He tastes copper and knows he has bitten a hole in his own lip while he read. When he does at last open his eyes, the negative-image ghost of the letter floats in his vision. It is an effective haunting.

He thinks if he had the right words to reassure Caleb he might carve them onto his own skin to try and prove his sincerity. Nothing comes, however. Nothing but a sucking wail that seems to vibrate through his entire being. 

It is good the servants are gone, that he has no friends to come and wish him a safe journey. It means there is no one there to hear him in his wordless shame.

Chapter Text

The sound of crashing waves beats insistently against Caleb’s eardrums. Above him, the night sky is heavy with threatening clouds. Before him, there is only roiling, foaming sea. He stands barefoot at the edge of the surf, boots and socks abandoned further up the beach. The waves roll in, breaking against his bare ankles, and then pull back, taking the sand beneath his feet with them as they go.

The sensation of having the ground beneath him disappear resonates uncomfortably. 

It’s well past time that he should be asleep, but just the idea of it makes his jaw clench, his teeth grind. This bloody, gods-forsaken island. If he sleeps, he might forget. 

He is worried he might already be forgetting. His mother’s eyes were blue, of that he is certain,  but can he pinpoint their shade? He is almost sure they were a soft cornflower, but mightn’t they have been sapphire? The possibility exists, and the uncertainty twists and slithers in his stomach, insidious.

He cannot forget. He cannot forget. If he forgets them, then he will forget his plans. And if that happens, then they will truly be gone. Again. He cannot bear it. He cannot …

He’s been trying to hide it, trying to remain calm, but it is difficult. His panic had started to build this morning when Jester, Fjord and Caduceus had woken up and begun stumbling over the details of their lives. Fjord hadn’t even been able to remember his own name, for gods’ sake. It could be all of them tomorrow. Easily. And all he can offer to combat that are pretty pictures dancing across the ceiling. 

Not even that, he realizes. Essek had been right that components at sea were hard to come by. He has no more jade. They will not have that flimsy protection tonight. 

Caleb has has rethought the letter numerous times. He has received no word from Essek since their last, tense parting on the ship. He did not really expect it, but the silence still feels like an echoing thing. A dark cavern he might tumble into if he doesn’t take care. 

He is still not sure he can trust his drow friend. He likely should not trust him, but Caleb has found his initial incandescent anger at the man fading in the days since they last spoke. It is something, he supposes, about that momentary look of intense pain he saw on Essek’s face — jaw tight, eyes downcast — when Caleb waylaid him belowdecks. 

He’s not certain he will ever discern exactly what is going on in Essek’s head, knows it would be a mistake to fully put his faith in the man, is frustrated that he must continue to remind himself of this truth. And yet, who else can he turn to? Because Caleb knows — deep in the part of his chest that tells him when a new spell is perfected, or when a fireball will hit its perfect target — that if he summons him, Essek will come. 

It is an instinct completely separate from the known facts, contrary to the wounded ache he still feels when he thinks about the secrets he spilled into all those letters. But it is persistent.

Maybe all his worry will be for nothing. It could all work out. They could defeat Vokodo, free the island of his magic, and carry on with their plans for Travelercon. Caleb has never been one to shy away from a calculated risk. But this one feels like far too much. He cannot risk losing himself. Not again. 

The components of this spell at least are easy enough to come by on the island, had to be with the slapdash nature of its creation. A fish scale, a handful of seafoam with which to trace the runes, and of course a bottle to protect his message. The latter he pinched from Beauregard after they finished one of her remaining bottles of Lionett wine over dinner. The glass is a dark green, nearly opaque, Caleb’s letter already stoppered inside. 

He had begun noodling with the idea the first time they went to sea, was taken with the romantic notion of it. But that was before he had come by a regular correspondent. There had been no one to appreciate the magic, or respond in kind, and so it had sat unfinished in the back of his spell book, unnecessary until tonight. Now when it will become both a backup plan and a final, desperate bid for help. The spell could fail. Or his message be ignored …

But no. Essek will come. Caleb just has to find the courage to call for him. The waves crash and retreat, and he takes note of the sensations he feels — the sea breeze ruffling through his hair, the water drying salt-sticky on his skin, the bitter bile taste in his mouth, the unbalancing tug of the tide, the cool glass against his palm. 

Caleb crushes the fish scale to dust between two fingers and smears it across the peeling wine label, then he mutters the incantation, pulls his arm back and launches it with his full strength into the sea. He feels the magic flowing through him, a string tugging taut across his sternum, stretching out into the inky blue. 

It is so dark he cannot see the bottle hit the water, but he hears the distant splash. What more can he do? The message will take a while to reach its destination, but that is alright. Essek will come. And in the meantime, they have a god to kill.

Wearily, Caleb steps back from the water, collects his shoes, and picks a quiet route back to camp.

*

If they provide no other enticement, at least Essek’s days are too full for him to think overmuch. He is grateful for the small mercy. 

It seems there is always something to capture his attention at Vurmas Outpost, always some call for him to intercede. In such an intense climate, the business of everyday life become a puzzle to be solved, a challenge to overcome. Supplies, security, mapping the territory, the search for artifacts below the ice. All the business of the dynasty in the frigid north are now ultimately Essek’s responsibility. 

He is busy nearly all the lighted hours of the day, which is most of them this close to Zenith. The sun is punishing even this far north, reflected by the white expanse of snow. But it is worse when the sun sets, even for the drow in their company’s number. It is then that the temperatures drop from merely cold enough to cause injury to cold enough to kill. When the sun sets, even those on guard duty huddle next to heat orbs or makeshift bonfires. 

When the dark comes, Essek follows the tradition of all the other outpost residents not on duty and retreats to his chamber. It is a small stone room at the top of the battlements. The room is meant as mark of his office — allowing him to keep watch over his people from a window with many elemental protections worked into its glass. 

In terms of practicality, Essek might prefer a room on the ground floor, close to the always-lit fires of the kitchen and refactory. But he values privacy and the respect of leadership enough not to force a move. 

So at nights in Eiselcross, Essek wraps himself in sweaters and furs, huddles close to his fire and works on a letter to Caleb. 

It has been nearly a month since he said his goodbyes to the Nein. Nearly a month since he read Caleb’s last letter, and he knows in his heart he should have returned it long before now, given some sort of explanation for himself. Assurances of his loyalty. Entreaties for forgiveness. Anything. 

He cannot bring himself to do it, not because he doesn’t want to, but because he senses he will get only one chance to convince the man of his sincerity. If even that is still open to him. One chance, and he must not squander it. So the letter must be perfect. 

He took several weeks pondering just the delivery method. He dreamed up countless flashy magical trinkets shivering in his bed at night, but eventually discarded them all as a distraction and ultimately lacking in the humility he wishes to display here. He has some, after all. He created magic for Caleb to delight him, yes, but also because he wished to be admired and praised by him. Those instincts will do Essek no good in his current endeavor. 

The solution came to him one evening lingering in the kitchens after supper with Meliara, the outpost’s bugbear cook, watching her rocking in her chair by the fire knitting a bobble-topped hat.

“Can you teach me to do that?” he had asked, and she had looked at him with surprised eyes that had then immediately narrowed to appraise him, gaze lingering on his long, spell-scarred fingers. 

“Aye, I reckon,” she had replied after a very long period of quiet assessment, rocking all the while. “But you’ll need to supply yer own yarn. And I wouldn’t say no to enough to make meself a new shawl.”

She fingered the wool of the shawl around her shoulders pointedly, and Essek nodded his agreement to the price.

“Did you have a preference in color?” he asked, pulling a stool closer to the fire to watch her knobby fingers work her needles in a swift, confusing pattern.

“Green,” Meliara replied. “To match me eyes.”

The next shipment of supplies to the outpost had included a crate packed full with skeins of soft wool yarn.

It had not taken Essek long to master the basic stitches, enough for his purpose at least. He is using their old code — morse code convoluted by a secondary polyalphabetic cypher. It is easy enough to translate into a simplified bobble stitch pattern, though he finds the process of the knitting itself time-consuming. 

It is better for the time it takes, for the eking out of each precious word. It means Essek must write deliberatively, making sure that each word is the right one, that every line is worth the ache it brings to knuckles already throbbing from unfamiliar cold. Some nights he manages whole paragraphs that please him. One frightful night he re-reads over his work thus far with questing fingers — nearly two feet in length — and then unravels the whole thing in disgust. 

Mewling, he curses himself. Histrionic. Essek resists the urge to toss the yarn into the fire for its offenses. It is his own fault, though. He will approach the thing fresh tomorrow with clear eyes and honesty. Caleb deserves that much. 

Most nights he manages a few careful lines, sitting cross-legged on the stone floor, curled in close to grab every bit of light and warmth from the fire. The wool he has chosen is soft to the touch, a shifting hue of orangey-red that reminds him sometimes of Frumpkin’s fur, sometimes of Caleb’s own hair, and sometimes of the glow of a flame cupped delicately in a fireworker’s palm. 

Caleb is fond of scarves, and the one he wore the last time Essek saw him was fraying at the edges. Perhaps even if Essek’s message falls on deaf ears, his gift will be accepted. That would, at least, be something.

There was a time I thought you knew the truth of me, and it was the most peace I had felt in many years,  he writes with clacking needles one evening. It was fanciful to believe you would tolerate me with this knowledge, I know, but I am not immune to magical thinking.

On another night, when the snow of a blizzard beats hard against the window and a chill wind seeps through its many protective enchantments, he confesses: You have asked how much of our correspondence was truth, and I do not know how to express it. All of it. None of it. My letters to you, my dear friend, were more true than I intended them to be and still less true than you deserved. 

Essek resists the urge many times to unravel all his work once more and leave things as they stand. Does he really deserve to defend himself in this way? The sharp final line of Caleb’s last letter is the only thing to steel his resolve. That sharp demand : You owe me that much. 

Essek will pay his debt.

But not this night. Tonight, instead of sitting down to his knitting Essek is allowing himself the indulgence of a warm bath. He gives into the desire infrequently enough, generally sponging off with water from a basin in the corner of his room like the rest of his soldiers and using prestidigitation to handle the most stubborn grime. 

This evening, however, he found he couldn’t face the thought of breaking through the thin layer of ice on the surface of the basin to get to the water beneath. Besides, it had been a rare uneventful day at the outpost and he has spells to spare to fill the collapsible metal tub he keeps tucked under his bunk with freshly conjured water and to magically heat it to a perfect scald.

Essek is just tipping in some of his preferred bath oil — a subtle rosemary scent — and trailing fingers along the surface of the water to distribute it, when he is startled back from the tub by a loud pop. The sound is like the uncorking of a bottle of champagne, but multiplied many times over until it echoes in Essek ears. 

He finds himself sprawled out on his ass, confused and grumpy. None of his own simple spells should have caused such a reaction, but the unmistakable ozone smell of powerful magic sizzles in the air. 

Essek clambers up to his knees, eyes searching the room for anything out of place, but finds nothing. Finally, he peeks over the edge of the tub and sees the surface of the water rippling and there, floating in the middle, a green glass bottle. 

Tentatively, and tensed for potential blowback, Essek reaches out and brushes his fingers against the glass. Cool and solid to the touch. 

He lifts it from the tub and turns it in his hands, tensed shoulders relaxing the moment he sees the waterlogged label still clinging to the glass. Lionett Winery. A very good vintage of merlot, or it was once. 815 PD. Now the bottle is empty but for the vague outline of a rolled piece of parchment, visible only when Essek holds the glass up to the firelight.

A message in a bottle, then. Essek cannot help the smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth. It is such a charming piece of magic. Impossible not to see Caleb’s fingerprints upon it even without the label. 

He doesn’t open it immediately, taking time to examine it instead. There is a nonzero possibility that Caleb has chosen to incorporate the true message somewhere on the outside of the bottle. But he can find no tell-tale notches on the label, no meaningful warp to the glass. 

Essek brings the bottle close to his face and exhales a long, warm breath over the surface of the glass, but no hidden message reveals itself. Maybe he is stalling. He feels nervous about what Caleb will have to say to him after so long a period of silence. 

There is nothing else for it, however. He takes a steading breath and uncorks the bottle with a dull pop, upending it to slide the parchment out into his hand. The page has clearly been ripped directly from Caleb’s notebook, one edge jagged and a dark purple stain creeping up one end from some stray drops of wine left at the bottom of the bottle. 

Clutching the message and the vessel, Essek crawls closer to the fire, pulls one of the furs warming there on the grate around his shoulders. Once he is settled like an old grandmother at the hearth, he unrolls the parchment and reads.

Shadowhand,

I regret trespassing upon your goodwill again, as I fear your supply may be dwindling, but I find I must. Your presence is required on Rumblecusp, in the Swavain Islands. 

It is a most urgent matter now as I write to you, and will be even more pressing by the time you receive this message. The spell I have used was all I could manage with the materials to hand, but it is new and unpredictable. I suspect it will take several weeks to wend its way to you, by which time our circumstances may be quite dire.

To be bold, Essek, I need you. Please come. 

The situation we find ourselves in would be difficult to believe were it anyone but the Nein. The island that Jester has selected for Travelercon is ruled by a demigod who steals the memories of those who stay here. The ones who remain long enough become little more than servants to this creature’s will. 

Tomorrow we will attempt to kill the tyrant, but if we should fail I worry that death may be the least of our concerns. We may lose ourselves rather than our lives. Do I need to clarify that I find the former far more terrifying?

I wrote to you once, what feels like a very long time ago, about the years that I spent in an asylum. I told you that my mind broke. I wonder, friend, if you understood what I meant? I spent years disconnected from the boy I had been. It was like wandering through a vast, foggy landscape, unable to find any discernible path. Except I didn’t know there was a path to find. I was just wandering, mindless, filled with a pain I had no power to comprehend. 

It was not until a very kind and holy woman, a fellow inmate of Vergesson, healed me that the fog cleared and my memories returned. 

I own many nightmares, but few are more powerful than the one which strips me once more of my mind, and my past, and my debts to the dead. And now it is becoming reality. 

I hardly need to tell you that we will stay and fight regardless. You have met us. We will always be foolhardy. But I do not know if we can win this battle. I do not know if we will recall in the morning that we intended it. 

If you have not heard from us by the time this letter reaches you, then we have failed and are more than likely the mindless servants of this creature. I do not know who else to call upon, and I don’t want to disturb the others unduly with my planning for the worst. You must come and take us out of this forgotten place, Essek. I beg you.

I realize I am presuming much considering the silence from you these many days. Believe me, I have felt each one. But I am desperately hoping that not all you wrote to me in the past was a facade, and that you do hold some little love for us. It is a calculated risk. If I am wrong, well, I suppose forgetting is akin  to forgiving. 

Make haste. 

Caleb

The paper flutters from Essek’s hand and he barely has the forethought to kick it towards the fire before he is out the door and down the stairs that lead to his chamber, searching desperately for a guard, for anyone. 

He finally encounters another person down a hallway on the second landing, a sentry walking a slow patrol.

“You!” Essek shouts, struggling to remember the man’s name in his panic. “T-Timeon.” 

He manages as the sentry pauses to face him. He must look a fright, Essek realizes belatedly — steam-damp hair falling down into his eyes, dressed in his pajamas with a wolf pelt wrapped around his shoulders. No wonder the man is looking at him like he’s half mad.

“Shadowhand,” the sentry greets him after a confused pause. He stands a little straighter, clicking his heels together in an informal salute. 

“Go now to the Starguide’s chambers, wake them if you must, but tell them they are charged with the care of the outpost, as I am called away on very urgent business. I should be gone no more than forty-eight hours, but I will send word if I am to be delayed any longer than that. You understand?”

“Yes sir,” Timeon replies. “But wouldn’t you rather speak to the Starguide yourself?”

“I’m afraid I cannot. Time is of the essence. Go now!” 

The last he barks at the man sharper than he should, but the adrenaline is coursing through his body like a drug. 

“Yes Shadowhand,” the man says, dipping into a sloppy bow before turning heel and rushing to the stairs. “As you will.”

Essek beats a hasty retreat to his room. He changes into traveling clothes, cursing as he fumbles at buttons, then grabs the bag he has had prepared since he came to the outpost — filled with emergency supplies, healing potions, components.

The only thing that takes much time is locating the right map among the pile on his desk. It is not one he has had much cause to consider, covered in a thin layer of dust that Essek blows away while he searches for the right island. 

It is little more than a tiny dot upon the map. Essek only hopes it will be enough. He takes a deep breath, fixes the dot in his mind, and is away.

He teleports directly into the crest of a heaving wave, and comes up spluttering and treading water. It is the height of midday here, because of course it is. Essek winces in the bright light and searches the horizon. He can just see a strip of shimmering white beach in the distance, the impression of tall trees. 

Groaning, he begins to swim.

Essek is drenched and exhausted by the time he crawls his way onto the beach and into the sparse shade of a nearby palm. He really is lucky he didn’t teleport himself into the heart of the island’s volcano, though he wishes he could have managed dry land at least. 

He’s a dab hand at teleportation, but it’s a challenge with places he’s never been before, and for some reason crossing bodies of water always throws him off a bit. There’s no magical reason for it. It’s all in his mind. But then, so is every spell he casts. 

Essek muses on in this way while he catches his breath and regains the feeling in his legs, and then he stands, straightens his spine, and marches off into the woods, casting mage armor before he goes as a precaution. It won’t do to get himself killed on a rescue mission. 

Every nerve in Essek’s body is alight with fear as he picks his way through the thick jungle underbrush, sending out hopeful messages in different directions as he goes in an attempt to locate Caleb or another of the Nein. He should have planned this better. He should have planned this at all, but as soon as he’d read Caleb’s message he’d been filled with the need to go, to respond. Make haste, Caleb had said, and Essek took such a plea rather seriously. 

He hadn’t been prepared for the desperation in that letter. He knew that Caleb’s past was a dark one, but he hadn’t thought about the reality of this detail, about years lost in a mindless haze for a person whose mind is so bright and brilliant. It cannot be allowed.

Essek is willing to help, but that doesn’t change the fact he’s deeply unqualified for the assignment. He doesn’t know anything about the jungle, or the dangers that lie here, though at least his floating provides some stealth. 

Or he thinks it does. Right until he walks directly into the path of an eight-foot-tall bear. 

Of course nature wants to kill me, Essek thinks as he readies a gravity well in his hands. Welcome to the club. 

Before he finishes his spell, though, the bear seems to shift underneath its skin, and in a moment Essek is facing not a murderous creature, but a young man with a dopey smile.

“Are you looking for check-in?” he asks. “Only we weren’t expecting you so we didn’t send the welcome party.”

Essek lets the spell dissolve in his hands and blinks at the man.

“What?” he says.

“We don’t have your reservation, but we do have a vacancy on a nice stream-side villa,” the man continues. “Would you like me to carry your bag?”

“I am not here to stay,” Essek says, clutching his bag tighter to his side. “I am looking for the Mighty Nein.”

“Oh, sorry mate,” the boy replies. “You missed them by a fair few weeks.”

In the end, Essek does follow the boy back to the village. The resort? There, he immediately sees evidence of the Nein’s presence. The stage carved with artistically-rendered dicks, the tiki bar with a sign that proclaims it “The Beaurebar.”

He sits in his still-damp clothes, sips at a glass of pineapple juice spiked liberally with rum and listens as the boy, Keiren, and a few of the other villagers tell him the whole saga. Vokodo, the spell they held over the island, the Nein’s defeat of the monster, the celebration of Travelercon, a visit from the Moonweaver. 

The plot is straight from a pulp novel, and Essek doubts not a single word of it. 

At least they are safe, he think to himself. They are safe, and they have their memories, and they are off doing what he is certain will turn out to be even more foolish, heroic things. 

Of course Caleb might have sent word to him that there was no need to rush to their aid, but Essek supposes he cannot really be offended by the lack of such a message. Not after his own silence.

Likely he assumed the experimental spell went awry, or that Essek would choose to do nothing even if he received the message. That thought makes him sink a little lower in his seat. 

Could Caleb really believe him so unfeeling? Of course he could. Essek has given him no reason to think he holds any faith with them. He has attempted no explanations, no apologies except those wrung from him that awful night in Nicodranas. 

It is one thing to reach out in desperation to anyone who might lend a helping hand, and another to consider your true allies in the clarity of victory. 

Or perhaps, a tiny voice in Essek’s mind whispers, perhaps he simply forgot. It is such a small thing, a letter thrown into the ocean in the middle of the night. Such a detail could easily slip through the weave of a healing spell, could it not? Remain forgotten when everything else is recovered? 

It is so much kinder than his normal thought pattern that Essek shakes the idea off immediately. None of that nonsense, he tells himself firmly, and returns his attention to the story.

Eventually, he takes his leave, thanks the villagers for their hospitality, leaves a generous tip at the bar. 

His clothes are mostly dry now, at least, and he makes his way to the beach to attempt a teleportation back to the outpost. It is a trickier proposition than he would like, the wild magic of the north makes any big magic, particularly travel spells, perilous. But he knows the place well, and he can’t exactly use traditional methods to make his way back. He has abandoned his post. If he is gone for long, the Bright Queen will hear of it. The last thing Essek wants is her attention upon him. 

So he takes the chance, just like before. And just like before, he fucks it up. Rather unpleasant little pattern, that.

At least he doesn’t teleport himself into a glacier. Just into a snowbank that he has to dig himself out of in a scrambling panic. When he surfaces from the snow his clothes are soaked through again and, after examining nearby landmarks, he determines he is more than half a day’s hike from Vurmas.

With a heavy sigh, Essek wraps his damp cloak a little tighter around his body and trudges back toward his duty.

Chapter Text

They have been carrying around the body a of dead Cerberus Assembly member in a sack for days. They are being pursued by a villain who communes with dead mages and can nullify magic. They are sharing visions of a city from before the Calamity floating through the Astral Sea. They are trying to stop the apocalypse, apparently. And they are standing in the middle of his room, plying him with spiked hot cocoa and asking him to join them on what sounds disturbingly like a suicide mission. 

Essek necks the cocoa in one swill, allowing it to burn its way down his throat. The whiskey helps sustain the heat. It is something to steady him, at least. Something to help him maintain composure despite the swirl of emotions coursing through his body —panic, shame, curiosity, fear for himself, fear for them. Light, why must they court danger in this way? It cannot be coincidence. 

It is done now, though. The die cast. So what can Essek do but mitigate the danger they bring? For himself and for them. It’s possible he’s being watched, so he has to send them away even if they do seem offended at the idea. They think him a coward, and they are right. But it isn’t the only thing that motivates him. Does the distinction matter? Maybe it doesn’t. 

He resists the urge to look at Caleb when the Nein start grilling him on teleporting in and out of Eiselcross. He wants to see what is happening in his face, but is simultaneously terrified of it. Does he suspect that one of Essek’s unpleasant trips away from this post was on his behalf? Does he remember the letter at all? Best not to know, perhaps. To not torture himself with wondering. 

The task at hand. That must occupy him now. His back straightens, his jaw clenches. He stares at the wall between Jester’s horns and Fjord’s shoulder. A list of things to do starts to unfurl in his mind. 

Guards at the the known entrances to the Aeorian tunnels, sending stones distributed to key personnel, possible aerial patrols. It might be worth the expense of a few high-level polymorph spells a day. Essek doesn’t have many allies, but the Nein are charming, are they not? They make fast friends. Surely they can call upon more assistance. Yes, yes that is for the best. 

Is it worth a trip back to his library, or to the Marble Tomes to do further research? No, he might be waylaid, or arrested. It would come at such an inopportune moment. That is Essek’s luck. Perhaps Uraya could pull a few tomes for him, relay pertinent details through sending. Too late to have any commissions completed, or  to send for more healing potions, though. Not for any amount of money. They would never reach him all the way up here in time. 

He says his farewells to the Nein with lists still running through his head. Not entirely sure whether out of abstraction, self-preservation, or both. He can’t let himself relax into their company. It will be a distraction he cannot afford in the days going forward. He knew that the second Jester wrapped him up into a hug to greet him, squeezing him so tight and so close, no hesitation. 

It will be easier when they are gone to do what must be done. Essek has always found it easier to float above, observing from a distance. He is standing at the door, ushering the Nein out, and he is creating the roster of rangers who can be trusted to seek out any unknown entrances to the ruins, floating, floating. Trembling maybe just a little, unsteady in the air. 

Then he is down on the ground, gravity tugging at him heavy and nearly painful, centered on his right arm. Because Caleb is there, pulling him close with a clasp around his forearm, fingers digging in, the heat of him palpable even through Essek’s many layers. 

He is right there, beard grown out, bruises blooming purple under his eyes. His eyes. That clear blue that Essek craves and dreads by measures.

“Just breathe,” he says, low and gravely, voice only for Essek’s ears.

Caleb Widogast possess his own form of gravity. He is a planet, a sun, a star, and the force of being pulled to him makes all the breath leave Essek’s body in contradiction of the man’s words.

“Just … breathe that fresh air,” he says. “Time. Time. Not weeks, not years. It takes time.”

Is it a warning? A promise? Essek wishes he could tell. 

Before he can do anything more than mutter a pathetic “Indeed,” Caleb is gone, following the others to their quarters, and Essek is left alone with only the ghost of Caleb’s touch on his arm.

He closes the door to his own chambers, meanders over to his desk with the vague thought to start making notes when he notices something out of place. A square of parchment with ragged edges has been stuck onto the stone wall over his desktop, right next to the green glass Lionett wine bottle that is all Essek has left of Caleb’s last letter. He has been using it as home for his favorite quills. 

Essek’s heartbeat picks up. He recognizes the handwriting before he understands it. Along one side, Caleb has sketched the silhouette of a tree, one long branch stretching out across the top. From that skeletal branch is a rough sketch of a kitten with tabby stripes, claws gripping at the wood, body hanging down and belly exposed. 

Halte Durch is scrawled below the kitten’s dangling feet in a bold script. He has to cast comprehend languages to understand, and once he does it startles a laugh from him. “Hang in There” indeed.

Essek runs a caressing finger over the text, smile still tugging at his lips, breath coming a little easier than before after the catharsis of laughter. He tugs at the parchment, thinking to tuck the note away in his spell book, but he meets unexpected resistance. 

He tries again. It is stuck fast. Light knows what kind of adhesive Caleb has used, but no matter the approach Essek takes, it refuses to budge. He flops down into his chair and laughs until tears prick his eyes. 

“Ridiculous man,” he mutters, wiping moisture from the corners of his eyes. 

He touches two fingers to his lips, places them against the precarious kitten’s forehead, then straightens himself and heads out with a list of orders to relay.

A few hours later, he knocks on the door of the room the Nein are in, thinking to at least offer to bring them dinner. The door swings open at his contact, the room beyond empty and cold.

It is for the best, of course it is, only he thought they had planned to spend the night. The night which is swiftly coming on. Essek does his final rounds, checks that the guards on the ramparts have adequate warming globes, then retreats to his room, his fire, and his knitting.

The scarf, he thinks, is almost done. Though it is sometimes hard to tell. Essek is just struggling with the ending, the valediction. It’s hard not to think of it as a final letter. The things he has written … How can it not be? Even if they don’t die beneath the ice in a week’s time. 

Essek picks up his yarn and needles, and makes a new start upon the close. 

The Mighty Nein return to the north bringing somehow even more chaos than they had the last time they were here. This time, Essek sits at the big conference table trying not to chew through his lip while they make a case for allying themselves with Trent Ikithon of all people. 

They must be mad. The impact of too many head injuries have finally set in. Essek knows almost none of the details of what transpired during Caleb’s training with the Cerberus Assembly, but he knows the aftermath. If this man was his teacher, how can they countenance the idea of working with him? Essek has met him only a few times, and each interaction left him with his skin crawling. 

Ikithon will betray them. Of course he will. But maybe they think the same of Essek. Perhaps they think of them in the same way. The Nein are practical in their way. They will work with whoever they must to achieve their bigger, nobler goals. 

He had thought to focus all his efforts on this new danger they presented, on the threat of Lucien and Cognouza. But perhaps he must be a failsafe instead. Essek can move silently. He can be invisible when he needs to be. He can follow, watch from a distance, be ready to strike when the viper in their midst lashes out. He might not be a match for Ikithon one-on-one, but a surprise ally might give the Nein a fighting chance. 

They seem shocked when he objects to their plans, and Essek feels anger drumming in his temples. These people must know better than he what their friend has endured. Then it is Caleb making the argument to him, trying to convince him. One hand is against his heart, the other is laid out flat on the table before him, arm extended in Essek’s direction as though he is reaching out to clasp his hand.

For the first time, it hits Essek full in the chest how young he is. How young and beautiful and  still full of a ragged, persistent hope. Essek has to do what he can to protect him, doesn’t he? 

So Essek makes his argument, and strips so the Nein can examine him for marks of betrayal, and leaves to allow them to decide who they want to fight with them, not at all hopeful about whom they will choose.

There are still preparations to be made, however, because the wicked receive no rest. He gathers his supplies for a journey, because he is leaving the outpost this day, one way or another, and heads down to the map room.

He is pulling the sketches from the latest party to delve into the Aeorian caverns, when he hears a muted cough behind him and whirls to find Caleb in the doorway, blinking into the dim interior.

“Essek?” he calls.

Essek casts his dancing lights up into the air, purple motes illuminating the room adequately for human eyes. 

“Here,” Essek gathers the relevant papers. “We don’t have a comprehensive map of the tunnels below the ice, but these are the records from the most recent exploration party that returned to us.”

He holds the papers out in Caleb’s direction without looking at him, affecting a cool nonchalance. He hopes.

“If you let me know which path you intend to take, I will follow at a distance,” he continues. “I will not be far if you require aid.”

Caleb doesn’t take the pages from his hand, even when Essek jostles them just a little to catch the man’s attention. 

“I think we would all prefer it, Essek, if you were a little closer to hand,” he says instead. 

Essek pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers. He will certainly have a headache soon, can feel it building already in his temples.

“Caleb,” he says, wearily. “We have discussed this. It is the best course of action.”

“We have decided that the best course of action is to make this journey with you rather than my old teacher,” Caleb replies. “We feel we can trust you more.”

It is hardly the most glowing of endorsements. Essek knows not to read too much into it. But he cannot help the way the word trust from Caleb’s lips makes something in his chest glow. He brings a hand up to cover his mouth, certain it is doing something mortifying, and nods, giving himself time to gain composure. 

“Well then,” he says after a steadying beat. “I am prepared to leave whenever you are.”

The papers, then, get stuffed into his own traveling bag, already slung over one shoulder. At the top of the bag, carefully folded, he is presented with a mass of orange yarn. Essek tugs it out and cradles it in both hands. Best do it now, he realizes. Who knows what will happen once they slip below the ice.

“You are coming?” Caleb is saying when he looks up, already halfway out the door.

“A moment, if you will.”

Caleb pauses at Essek’s words, waiting for him to approach. And he does, holding the scarf out in front of him a bit like a shield.

“You may not want it,” he says, thrusting it forward, looking at the toes of his own boots rather than at his companion. “But your current one is getting rather ragged, and it is very cold out there.”

“Oh,” Caleb says, taking the scarf from his hands, running questing fingers over the weave. “It is very fine.”

At this Essek snorts. 

“It isn’t,” he says, and it’s true. The pattern is one that only makes sense once you realize its true purpose, and he was very messy with the casting on and off. “But it should at least keep the wind at bay.”

He attempts to sidle past Caleb through the doorway, eager not to dwell on it too much, but is waylaid by a hand on his shoulder. He looks up, but slantwise, taking in Caleb’s ear, the curve of his jaw. Essek feels only capable of taking him in by tiny pieces.

He removes his hand once sure that Essek has stopped, holds the folded scarf back out to him. For a moment, Essek thinks he is rejecting the gift, and feels his stomach drop. Then Caleb clears his throat.

“Will you assist me?” he asks.

He’s already pulling off the old scarf, stuffing it into one of his coat pockets.   

“Of course,” Essek says, voice faint. 

He unfolds the scarf and takes a steadying breath. Caleb bows his head forward, and Essek lays the scarf around the back of his neck. He wraps the fabric once, twice in loose loops, then gathers the ends together to tie them in a knot at the base of Caleb’s throat, doing his best to focus only on his hands, the wool, the next step in the process. Still, he cannot help noting the feel of Caleb’s warm breath against his bowed forehead as he works, the smell of new leather, ink and ozone the man carries with him. 

His fingers accidentally brush the warm, prickly underside of Caleb’s jaw as he is tying the final knot, and he can feel the other man’s pulse jump, has to bite down hard on his own tongue to keep from reacting. 

Finally, Essek tucks the ends beneath the lapels of Caleb’s winter coat and steps back. 

“There,” he says with a sharp, final nod. “Ready?”

When he raises his head to look at Caleb, the man’s pupils are blown wide, and he is chewing at his bottom lip in a way that makes his entire face turn down. He must not have gotten the dancing lights bright enough, Essek realizes. He always forgets how limited human vision can  be. 

After a moment, Caleb clears his throat, hands going up to smooth the scarf down and tuck it tighter beneath his coat. 

“Ja,” he says. “We should be off.”

*

Caleb is alone in the dark, and something about that feels right. Not completely alone, of course. Veth is there, asleep with her head pillowed on his knee. It reminds him of their early days, when they would find a hidey-hole in some alley to squirrel themselves away and get a little rest. Before they even had coin for a room at an inn. 

They would always sleep curled up together, and he had taken comfort in the feel of another body next to his, in the rise and fall of someone else’s breath as he sought out sleep. It is still a comfort to have her close to him. Even when his mind is a tangle, and the fear of the enemy heading toward them is a shard of ice in his chest. 

The rest of the Nein are tucked away in the tower, taking their rest, while Caleb keeps watch and waits. He syncs his breathing with Veth’s gentle snores and lets his mind wander its own knotted path. He thinks of Jester’s head on Fjord’s shoulder at dinner, of Yasha’s hand resting heavy across the back of Beau’s neck as they crept down one of the ice tunnels, of the best way to get Veth back to her family if worst comes to worst, of starlight shining in Essek’s hair.

He thinks, and while he thinks his fingers twist and untwist themselves in the ends of his scarf, running across the odd pattern in ember-colored wool. There’s something strange about the series of knobbles and depressions in the weave, something a little too uniform, and somehow familiar. 

The starlight in Essek’s hair, and the way he had looked down at Caleb and said “I’m pretty sure, young man.” There is something off. Something he recognizes. He pets his hands over the wool like he would Frumkin’s soft fur. Essek …

He should have realized it right away. Their old code. It’s definitely Essek’s name there, at one uneven end of the scarf. He never said anything, and Caleb never thought to look for a letter in something so mundane. It’s not the other wizard’s style. 

He never thought to look for a letter at all. Not after this long. His heart thumps painfully in his chest.

With fumbling fingers, Caleb reaches for the other end of the scarf. He closes his eyes and reads. 

Caleb,

Even as I sit down to start this letter, I know I have left it too late. Too late, at least, for it to have much impact on your opinion of me. Perhaps that is how it should be, in the end. 

Still, as you said in your letter so many weeks ago, I owe you this much. The honest truth, as well as I can manage it. 

You have asked how much of our correspondence was truth, and I do not know how to express it. All of it. None of it. My letters to you, my dear friend, were more true than I intended them to be and still less true than you deserved.

The first time you wrote to me, I thought it was impudent on your part. You were so bold in asking for more spells. I was charmed by that boldness, despite myself. Thinking back on it now, I see how much I wanted to accept the hand of friendship you extended to me for its own sake. I could not allow that thought then, however. 

At the time, I allowed only that it was good to ingratiate myself with you and your party, so that you would not be suspicious of me. I wanted to keep you happy and distracted, so that your attention would not fall upon my own misdeeds. My goal was manipulation. I will not deny that.  And if we are being honest, Caleb Widogast, wasn’t that your goal as well? 

I will not pretend you had any secret as horrible as my own to hide. I know what I have done. But the truth remains that manipulation was always part of our relationship. You wanted spells from me, and favors, and transport. I wanted to distract you, and to make you like me. It could never have been a friendship based upon honesty. Not with the way it started. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. 

It was real to me. I cannot think of any way to convince you, but it was. In contradiction of all my best efforts, I found myself revealing more and more of myself to  you. And I treasured those secrets you gave me in return, not because of what I might do with them, but simply because they were yours. 

There was a time I thought you knew the truth of me, and it was the most peace I had felt in many years. It was fanciful to believe you would tolerate me with this knowledge, I know, but I am not immune to magical thinking. 

In spite of myself, I had come to consider you and the rest of the Nein my friends. I have little experience with such things, as I think I have told you before, but I do not know what else to to call it — this combination of annoyance, admiration, tenderness and fascination — but friendship. 

And how could this revelation be accompanied by anything except guilt? I nearly confessed it all to you, after you invited me to join you at sea. I wrote it so many ways, but the words were never right. Then the opportunity passed, and you knew the truth anyway. In the worst way possible. 

I imagine that if you want anything to do with me in the future, it will be in an effort to reform me. I may even be hungry enough for your company that I will allow myself to be reformed. But you asked for truth, and I suspect once you have it you will want nothing to do with me at all.

You once said to me that the difference between us is thinner than a razor. What I need to tell you, Caleb, is that you are wrong. We could not be more different. Not in our hearts. My dear friend, you are a good man. Maybe the best I have ever known. You may have sins that weigh you down, but it is clear that you regret them. That they are heavy on your heart. You work each day to atone for them.

I will pay my debts to you. Here is the worst and most honest confession I can give: I do not regret what I have done. 

Not as I should. I feel guilt for how I have fanned the flames of war. There are countless deaths that lay only at my feet, but I knew that would be the case before I acted. I accepted that bankrupting debt long before I stole the beacons. 

What I still believe, in the deepest part of myself, is that my actions, and all of the horrifying consequences of them, would have been worth it if things had gone as I planned them. There are few consequences I would not accept to understand the truth of the Luxon. 

You will not understand this. You saw very little of our religious culture during your time in Xhorhas. It is an accepted truth in my country that the Luxon is the great refiner of souls, that consecution and rebirth through its power is the only path to true knowledge and enlightenment. 

Ultimately, however, we know very little of these artifacts except that they are very powerful. We do not really understand how consecution works, how it may change a person, what pieces of them return when they are reborn. And the leaders of my country have no interest in bringing light to these mysteries. They want only faith and compliance from their people, and I could never give that. 

Refusing consecution was the first time I openly defied my mother, the Umavi. I would rather die than submit myself to a power I do not understand. You know better than anyone the horror of a mind that does not belong to you. I could not do it. I could not.

It was this decision that angered my father so much that ran to his death beneath Bazzoxan, as I once recounted to you. My mother covered the whole business up in order to preserve the honor of the den. I was about your own age at the time. Very young. I still thought I might convince them that study was needed, that understanding the Luxon should be our ultimate goal.

It became very clear to me, however, that our leaders would never allow such a thing. The state of things was ground into me over many years. Decades. Eventually, I saw that the only way to do what I knew must be done was through an alliance with an outside force. And then Ludinus Da’leth came calling.  

Would that I had met you sooner. 

I chose my allies very poorly, and I can make no excuse for this. When I learned of your own history with the Cerberus Assembly, I was horrified. Knowing that I had aligned myself with such people, well, it made me face head on the horrors of what I had done. I already knew them, of course, but I had tried my best to set them to the side. If only so I could keep moving forward. 

What does it say about me that the thing I regret most in all of this mess is how I hurt you? Surely nothing good. On those days when I accept the soul as a thing separate from mind and body, I know that mine must be irrevocably corrupted. 

I will not beg for your friendship. I am aware enough to know I do not deserve it. I will beg only this much: that you will continue to call upon me when you are in need of help. I would still be your ally, if nothing else. Your last letter gave me some hope that I do not ask this boon in vain. 

What more can I say to you? You have been my dearest friend, and I have been nothing but a traitor to  you and yours. That is as plain as I can manage. 

I will miss you, Caleb Widogast. I will miss your voice in my head and your words burned against the back of my eyelids. Even the ones that hurt. I know you will do great things, and I hope you will summon me when I can be of aid. Until that time, I remain. 

Yours,

Essek

Caleb feels his way through the last line with a shuddering breath. Then he knits his fingers through the yarn of the scarf and clings. He has to cling to something, and he doesn’t want to disturb Veth’s rest.

He does not know what to do with a letter like this, and lines tangle in his head, vying for his attention. You have been my dearest friend. Would that I had met you sooner. I do not regret what I have done.

He feels so many things, but mostly what he feels right now is tired. So very tired. It is exhausting keeping Essek at a distance, a thing he has to concentrate upon in order to achieve it. He has fuzzy memories of being an ape earlier in the day and holding an injured Essek close like a baby, proffering him up desperately to the clerics to be healed. It is blush-inducing to consider. 

Caleb desperately wants to forgive the drow, to resume their old camaraderie. And he believes him when says their connection was real. He can feel the desperation in the very stitches. It was real to me.  To me, too, Caleb can’t help thinking, throat sore from strain. 

That moment of deep doubt aboard the ship has faded in the intervening weeks. It is true manipulation was always a part of their relationship, but he cannot really fool himself into thinking that’s all there was to it. Not for long.

Essek refuses to make things easy though. As ever. He cannot simply say “I have done wrong and I will change.” He must shun regret even while accepting blame, and what is Caleb to do with that? 

Impossible man. Caleb is so fond of him. 

He doesn’t want to make himself into Essek’s punishment, doesn’t want to force a separation to prove a point, or try and mandate some nebulous reform. 

He wants his friend back, the one who is clever and smug and shy and guilt-ridden and certain  all by turns. He wants him back, and he is so, so tired of pretending otherwise. 

Caleb clings to Essek gift, and makes a decision in the quiet dark of Aeor. Then all his thoughts are burned away in a flash of light, and in Frumkin’s plaintive wail.

Chapter Text

The cottage is cold and dark when Caleb unlocks the door that evening. He should have waited to buy the little house in the Tangles. Waited until after the trial was over, until things had settled down. But he’d made the decision in a fit of optimism in the warm, glittering days of high summer when their victories in the north were still fresh in his mind and it felt like his earnings from the Nein’s adventures were burning a hole in his pocket.

Then came the fall. 

He’s been so busy with the Cobalt Soul, first planning strategy, and now with the trial, that he hasn’t even had time to furnish his new home properly. There’s a pallet on the floor in the big upstairs room, a couple wooden chairs by the fireplace, an uneven desk with a book stuck under one leg that currently doubles as both workspace and a place to take meals. 

Normally, Caleb simply casts the tower inside and enjoys the kind of luxury only magic can provide, but he’s too drained for that tonight. The impatient snap he uses to get the fire going in the hearth is about the extent of his magic just now, but the fire has always come easy to him. 

Intellectually, he knew this was coming — that in order to ensure his old master was convicted he would have to testify — but he wasn’t prepared for the physical reality of it. He’d spent six full hours giving testimony and being questioned, expects the same again tomorrow. And every minute had felt like having the skin flayed from his body. 

Now Caleb is wrung out and ground down, a bag of bones dragging himself through his door and dropping heavily into his desk chair. 

Perhaps he should be surrounded by his friends right now, rather than closeted away in this dingy little house on his own. But he’d made Beauregard promise to keep the others away for his testimony. He couldn’t bear the the thought of Jester, or Yasha or Veth sitting in the courtroom and listening to him relive all his sins, every horror of his misspent youth. He’s sure they would be sympathetic, kind, comforting. But would they ever be able to look at him the same way afterward?

He could have accepted Beau’s offer of a drink back at her temporary rooms in the Rexxentrum Soul, but in truth Caleb feels ill-suited for any company just now. His mood is dark and bitter, and he doesn’t want to take that out on people he cares for. The cycle has to stop somewhere.  

Frumpkin’s silent companionship might be soothing at a time like this, but Frumpkin is off on his own adventures in the Feywild. So instead, Caleb reaches for the next best thing.

The notebook has been an unexpected comfort in recent weeks, having arrived quite unexpectedly by courier back in Sydenstar. It had seemed unlike Essek to send him anything in so mundane a fashion, but what Caleb found inside the butcher paper-wrapped package was far more in the drow’s style.

It had initially seemed just an empty leather-bound notebook, embossed with a swirling gold pattern down its spine to give it a little style. Caleb had unwrapped it and pondered it curiously, turning it this way and that to try to understand. Then he had opened it to the first blank page — creamy vellum, pleasant to the touch — and begun to sketch out a runic sequence he’d seen frequently during their trip into Aeor, the meaning of which he is still unsure. It has elements of a sending spell, but there’s something different there. 

Public broadcasts?

The words that appeared in deep blue ink beneath Caleb’s black-inked sketch were in a familiar, flowing hand. It was definitely not his own spiky scrawl, and for a moment, he thought he was losing his mind.

He blinked, shook his head, rubbed at his eyes. The words were still there, but beneath them he watched more form in Essek’s writing. Caleb? What do you think?

Caleb laughed out loud, hand coming up scrub at his mouth. It was incredible. 

How? He wrote, ineloquently, and waited for a reply, leg rabbiting up and down in impatience. 

Naturally, Essek dodged the question.

I thought it would be useful, he wrote. For collaboration. There was a pause, and then in smaller letters, more. Are you angry? You do not have to use it.

How could he be angry? Caleb wondered. It is beautiful magic. They will be able to create spells together in this way, even with Essek in Eiselcross and Caleb in Rexxentrum. 

No, he wrote back. It is brilliant. Now, tell me more about this broadcast theory.

He still hasn’t worked out the details of the enchantment, though he had immediately set about trying to unknot the spellwork of the notebook without nullifying it. He’ll get there. And perhaps he’ll make something for Essek in return once he does. There are a few ideas he’s been noodling with.

In the meantime, he and Essek have been working on how they might recreate the long rest spell they used in Cognouza with more practical power sources.

It is a good distraction. Essek doesn’t ask about Ikithon’s trial or the Cerberus Assembly. He asks little of Caleb at all. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Most of the time Caleb considers it a good thing. Most of the time he thinks it is a mercy to not have to discuss such matters with at least one person in his life. The rest of the Nein try to be gentle, but are much too prone to digging in to try and make him talk about his feelings. 

Still, he cannot help the niggling thought in the back of his head that the reason Essek doesn’t ask is that he doesn’t want to know. Maybe he wants to think of anything but the Cerberus Assembly, and his own history with them. Or maybe he simply doesn’t care. Does he care?

Regardless, they trade notes back and forth on spells, work out rune calculations in tandem. And Essek has taken to writing meandering, gossipy letters to Caleb about his days at the outpost. He hears which of the rangers are suspected of carrying out covert romantic affairs, and gets the recipe for the outpost cook’s famous goulash. The secret ingredient, apparently, is an entire bottle of gnomish stout cooked in with the purple worm meat to make it tender.   

This night, having rejected all other comforts, Caleb lifts his head from where it has flopped agains the worn wood of his secondhand desk and reaches for the notebook again. What he is hoping is that Essek is still awake in his tower room in Vurmas, and they can work a little more on the long rest spell. Caleb has suggested they attempt ground brumestone as a catalyst — Pumat Sol has said he just might be able to source some for him for a truly exorbitant price —  but the calculations of how much they might need will be arduous and exacting. Neither of them have attempted it yet. 

What he finds instead, when he flips through the filled pages, is a long block of text in Essek’s hand.

Caleb,

I have finally succumbed to the indignity of wearing a hot water bottle beneath my clothes. I resisted for as long as I could despite Meliara’s urging. You will think me vain, but I worried how it would affect the line of my outfits, so I thought to make do with only warming charms. That was before the days started getting shorter and, incredibly, colder. I thought I had seen the worst the weather in Eiselcross could offer, but I did not consider the shrinking daylight hours. 

I shudder to think what true winter will be like, when I am told the most light we will see is a sort of gray twilight at midday. I suppose it doesn’t really warrant worrying over. It is unlikely I will be here for that long.

Anyway, the water bottle I secure to my torso with a long flannel strap. Over that, I wear a set of long underwear, followed by a tunic, a sweater, my warmest winter coat, and then a fur-lined mantel. After all that, it is mostly bearable to be out of doors, but I do waddle a bit like an over-stuffed chicken. The only mitigating factor is that every other person with half a brain is similarly attired. We are all equally ridiculous. 

I would say that it is the coldest I have ever been, but that is not quite the truth. We have discussed before the particular challenges of teleporting into Eiselcross. The last time I was called away on business, I hurled myself right into a snow bank coming back.I nearly drowned trying to dig my way out, and then I had to walk half a day against the wind to get back to the outpost. That, I think, was the coldest I’ve ever been. Cold to the center of my bones. My clothes were soaked through before I even began the journey, and they started freezing stiff not long after that. 

When I got back, I was in so clear a foul mood that all the guards on duty stepped aside without question. Uraya told me I looked like a moorbounder after a bath. I cannot say their description was entirely fabrication.

So. It may not quite be wet moorbounder in a blizzard cold, but that is not saying much. It is lucky that the caverns below the ice remain more temperate, or we would get very little accomplished at all from Fessuran through Misuthar. I have delved a little below with a few of our rangers, but I admit that none of my companions so far have been half so interesting in their observations or, indeed, interested in what we find as yourself. I shall keep you apprised of anything new we discover. Have no fear.

In the evenings, I have been knitting a hat for Jester. I persuaded Meliara out of some of her green yarn, and am making decent progress, though hats are a little more complicated than my usual fare. I wonder if I might impose on you to make a few measurements for me the next time you see our dear cleric? I think I have made good guesses, but I am not sure that the horn vents are the right size. If you could be stealthy about it, I would be very grateful. I want it to be a surprise for her birthday, otherwise I would ask her directly.

I am being called down to dinner, so will end here. The Yetis raided our last supply shipment and took all the meat stores, so it will be lentils and pickled vegetables again, as it has been for the last fortnight. You cannot imagine the resultant horrors. 

I hope you are well, friend. I will write again soon.

Yours,

Essek

Caleb bites his lip to hold back a grin. The image of Essek as a grumpy moorbounder cub is both humorous and charming. He can almost perfectly capture the man’s expression in his imagination, pouting and murderous as the same time. 

He is curious what business called Essek away on that ill-fated trip, whether it was worth the pain he suffered for it. He is almost tempted to pen a reply, to ask for more details. But how would he even start?

Essek has long ago stopped requesting that Caleb write him back. He did, the first few times. Dropped hints, all in an upbeat hope to hear from you soon manner. Caleb has tried, on numerous occasions, but he ends up only sitting in front of the blank page and floundering. What can he say? Each day now feels like wading through a swamp. Simple acts like rising from his pallet take almost more effort than he can muster, so a thing like organizing his thoughts and feelings into paragraphs is wholly overwhelming. 

He can manage a quick note here and there, and is grateful for the distraction that comes from complex magical calculation, the way such work sends all other concerns to the back of his brain, if only for a short time.  

It is a thing Essek seems to have grasped rather quickly. He doesn’t ask for replies to his messages anymore, but he keeps writing. And Caleb is silently grateful. Essek’s letters feel like a warm hand on his back, supporting but undemanding. And very often coming exactly when Caleb needs them the most. Like tonight. 

Essek, when he writes, is more open than he was before. He is still sharp, on occasions even catty, but he is also self-deprecating in his anecdotes and funny in his observations. And Caleb likes hearing him talk about the friendships he is forming with his companions in the north. It makes him feel as though Essek will be alright even without Caleb and the rest of the Nein keeping an eye on him. Even after Caleb leaves. He will be alright, and that is one blessing at least.

With a heavy sigh, Caleb reaches for his pen. he runs a caressing hand across the letter, marvels at how he can feel the impression of Essek’s nib under his fingers. The way he pressed down harder when he wrote the word indignity, the way his words crowd a little closer together when he writes of Jester, energized somehow. They make the other man feel closer — these details, these imperfections.

Only a moment of hesitation, to see if any words come. When they do not, he turns the page and begins work on the brumestone calculations.

*

Every time Essek writes Caleb a letter, he tells himself it should be the last. The exercise is beginning to feel futile, if not downright pathetic. 

Is he making a nuisance of himself, he wonders? Is Caleb’s refusal to respond to any of his missives an attempt at redirecting Essek’s energy? Hinting that their communications should be solely academic? 

He doubts his actions every time he puts pen to paper. But then he remembers a soft caress across his cheekbone, warm breath against his ear. Don’t be a stranger. He doesn’t want to be. Not anymore. So he perseveres. 

His anecdotes are getting increasingly ridiculous. In his last letter he wrote about the time his father took Essek and Verin camping. It had been an effort to harden them both, to train the soft city-dweller out of them, not an attempt at familial bonding. But Essek had smoothed over that little detail as best he could. He focused instead on  his first very disastrous attempt at fishing which led him — weakling that he was — sputtering and floundering in the middle of a rushing river, out-muscled by a very stubborn sunfish. 

Verin had found the whole ordeal endlessly amusing after he’d swum out and rescued his elder brother from the rushing current. His father had been … Less entertained. But then his father always was, so that was hardly worthy of note. 

He’s been trying to keep the tone of his letters buoyant. Jester says that Caleb has been in a dark mood lately, and Essek can hardly imagine the weight on his shoulders just now with Ikithon’s trial underway. He cannot bring himself to mention the trial in his letters. To do so would be cruel, certainly. The last thing Caleb must need now is further reminder of his troubles, or impertinent questions from casual acquaintances. 

Essek has been applying to Beauregard every so often for updates in lieu of any other avenue. Jester would happily provide him with information, but she’s bad with details. Beau is much more informative, if also more surly about sharing with him. 

He last spoke with the monk about a couple of weeks ago, when the prosecution was wrapping up its case. It’s anyone’s guess how long the defense will take, or how much deliberation will be required after that. The trial could still take months more. 

Essek runs a finger down the spine of his notebook, tucked into the bookshelf over his desk, before pulling on his gloves. Perhaps he should give it a rest with the letters after all. Caleb can’t have much time for reading them, and he’s running out of amusing childhood stories unless he makes a move from creative editing into outright lying. That probably wouldn’t be productive.

With a sigh, he heads down into the outpost courtyard to welcome in the latest supply caravan. Happily, he learns the yetis haven’t waylaid this shipment. The outpost will be properly rationed for the first time in many weeks, meaning both his soldiers and Meliara will be in significantly better moods. 

Unloading and storage of the supplies take a couple hours, and Essek orders a ration of whiskey to the troops who aided in the process and is about to offer the caravan’s head scout the seat by the kitchen fire to take his meal — a spot most prized among outpost residents — when the man in question approaches him first.

“It’s Elanin, isn’t it?” he asks, offering the bugbear a bow made stiff by his many layers. “I hope you’ll take a meal in the kitchens where it’s warm before you retire. We’re very grateful for your work.”

“I will, thank you, Shadowhand,” he replies with a nod, then brushes some of the ice from his beard. “Feel like my marrow’s froze through. I’ve a special delivery for you first, though.”

He digs through his pack and eventually pulls out a thin envelope that he presses into Essek’s gloved hands.

“Was waiting for you at the harbor depot when we picked up the supplies. Thought I might as well bring it along.”

Essek fumbles in his pockets until he comes up with a gold piece to give the man for his trouble.

“I would appreciate your discretion, Ranger, nearly as much as the supplies you brought,” he says, slipping the coin into the bugbear’s hand and meeting his tawny eyes. 

“Of course, sir,” the ranger replies. “Never really been much for gossip.”

The envelope is slipped into an inner pocket of Essek’s coat while he makes sure everyone gets their meal and a warming drink. Only then does he make his way on unsteady legs back up to his own chamber. 

The insistent drumbeat of his pulse hasn’t left Essek’s ears since he saw the first flash of the envelope, his own name written in a familiar cramped hand on the outside. 

Shadowhand Essek Thelyss, Vurmas Outpost, Eiselcross 

It’s light in his hand. Caleb clearly hasn’t written him sheets and sheets. No friendly, gossipy letter between friends rests inside. If he wanted to send a pressing message, Caleb could have used the notebook Essek sent him much more swiftly than posting a letter to the far north would take. 

He’s making a point, then. Essek has a guess what that point might be. Shocking he was not dismissed sooner, really, but brushes with death tend to make one feel generous. He has tried and tested that generosity, and now it has run out. 

He stares at the envelope in his gloved hands. Well, not opening it won’t change the message. He pulls off his gloves with his teeth, letting them fall where they will, and rips the envelope open. A single piece of paper flutters to the ground. It is a rectangle about the size of a calling card, lying there by the toe of his boot, and Essek has to take a deep, unsteady breath before he is able to bend down and pick it up.

It is only five words. Five careful words in Zemnian.

Brennen Sie vor dem Lesen

Burn Before reading. Essek really must apply himself more to his Zemni studies, because that makes no sense. Yet when he casts comprehend languages, the translation is confirmed. Burn before reading. Before reading what? 

“What are you up to, Widogast?” he mutters, turning the card this way and that. His curiosity has almost completely overtaken his anxiety. He tries holding the card close to the firelight to see if any further message appears, but finds nothing. He runs his fingers carefully over paper surface, feeling for anything that might be interpreted into words. 

Essek flips the card over and over in his fingers, considering. No other clues. Just five words. Not much room for alternate interpretations. With a flick of his thumb and forefinger, Essek sends the scrap of paper fluttering down into the fire.  

He watches as the flames eat through the center of the card, turning the paper first a blistering orange before it blackens into ash. The ash fades to grey and floats up out of the fire, tiny smudged motes that rise and shift with the draft leaking through his window. 

Essek sighs and scrubs at his face. He cannot fathom what Caleb is playing at. Is he meant to interpret something profound from the words on that note? Is he too much an imbecile to understand? He blinks up to find those grey motes still floating in the air. 

No, not floating. They are still. Hanging in the air as through suspended in invisible amber.

“What?” he whispers to himself before he feels a rush of magical energy fill the room like a wave of heat. The wave hits the motes and lights them up with an internal fire. They glow a molten gold and start to swirl through the air, a rushing tornado of embers that lick at the hem of Essek’s coat and sear so close to his face that he can feel the heat off of them. 

Essek’s breath catches in his throat as the manic swirl of sparks slows. He blinks, steps back, tilts his head to look at the newly suspended embers to get a different perspective. 

His name is suspended high up near the ceiling of his chamber. Below that, the words unspool in glowing pin pricks of fire hovering gently together. The glow hurts his eyes. That is certainly the reason for the prickle he feels there.

Essek,

I must apologize for being so tardy in responding to your many kind letters. You have been a most reliable correspondent, and I have failed to reciprocate. I cannot quite explain my silence in any concrete way. It was only that I could not manage to write. I hope you can forgive my silence despite my poor excuses. 

The company of your letters has been a great comfort to me during these long, dark weeks.

I write now, however, with a purpose. 

I find myself at loose ends at present. My former master’s trial has concluded.I send you the very excellent news that Trent Ikithon will remain in prison for the rest of his natural life. A fitting and hard-won punishment for such a man, and I hope his fate will be a warning bell for the rest of his fellows in the Cerberus Assembly. 

This conclusion means my presence is not currently required in Rexxentrum. And I have it in my heart to travel once again. 

We spoke once, you and I, of a leisurely journey down into the Aeorian ruins. Time to explore properly, to understand the workings of our ancient forebears. I would propose that we commence this adventure at your earliest convenience. 

It will take me a few days to gather the proper supplies, but after I have done so, I plan to begin the trip northward. I expect to be at your disposal within the week. I hope very much that you will join me at that time. 

If your duties will not allow an extended leave of absence, I hope at least to make a short visit with you at Vurmas. At least long enough to muster myself for a solitary journey below the ice. It will be good to see your face once more, my friend, whether or not you can accompany me. 

I hope to hear from you soon regarding your intentions. Also, if you wish me to bring any particular supplies for you from Rexxentrum, I shall be happy to do so. Until we meet again, I remain,

Yours,

Caleb

The words shimmer behind Essek’s eyes even when he blinks, burned there as though he has stared for too long at the sun. Mesmerized, he reaches a hand out to run his fingers through the glowing swirl of Caleb’s signature. 

The letter smear in the air, and Essek’s brain melts to a white blank before the pain of seared flesh jolts through his system. He pulls his scalded fingers back from the ruined letters and holds them close against his chest, tears of pain creeping out of the corners of his eyes. 

He curses himself for an idiot as he clutches at his injured fingers and watches  as the glowing fire slowly dissipates from the words, molten gold leached from them until only the grey impression of a letter hangs in the air above his head. 

Essek is still staring up at the ghostly paragraphs in awe when there is a sharp double knock behind him, and the door of his chamber flies open, letting in a sharp gust of freezing air. 

“Sir, you cannot just —” a voice cries. Timeon, Essek realizes vaguely. 

Most of his attention is still focused upward as the frigid breeze scatters the remains of Caleb’s letter, sending them swirling and floating slowly downward until most of Essek’s chamber is covered in a thin film of ash. 

He blinks, turns to meet whoever has invaded his privacy with a sharp reprimand.

“Traditionally, one waits for a response before … Oh.”

The words flee Essek’s mind completely. Caleb Widogast is in his doorway, cheeks pink from the cold, hair windswept, eyes sparkling. 

Their gazes meet, and the other man steps into the chamber. He is right beside Essek in three long strides, leaving footprints in the dust as he goes. 

Caleb stops abruptly a few inches from Essek. Slowly, he reaches out and brushes his fingers through the curls that tumble onto Essek’s forehead, sweeping away the ashes clinging there. 

“You are a bit of a mess, my friend,” he says in a gravelly whisper. 

Essek can feel his lips trembling traitorously. 

“Yes,” he replies, swallowing a hiccup of laughter. “And whose fault is that, do you suppose?”

They break simultaneously into laughter, and before he can do anything else, or catch his breath, Essek is pulled into the circle of Caleb’s arms. The other man squeezes him with a comforting pressure and kisses his temple with icy lips. 

“I confess I did not think about the debris when I sent that letter,” he says, still chuckling. 

“No,” Essek agrees. “Nor the speed of traditional post, it seems.” 

His arms are squished between his own body and Caleb’s, and he reaches up to grab at the scarf around his friend’s neck just for something to cling to. It is the one Essek made him. His chest warms knowing Caleb still wears it. 

“Have I been quite rude?” Caleb asks, pulling back enough to look down into Essek’s face. 

Essek just rolls his eyes. 

“I suppose I shall forgive you this once.”

A throat clearing pulls them both apart. It is indeed Timeon in the doorway, sword drawn, though lowered.

“Shadowhand?” he asks, eyes flickering between Essek and Caleb, who still has an arm looped lazily around Essek’s waist. 

“It is fine, Timeon,” Essek said. “Master Widogast is a friend of the Dynasty, and welcome here. Will you go down to Meliara and ask her to send dinner for two up to my chamber this evening? We have important business to discuss.”

Timeon acquiesces with an awkward bow, sheathing his sword and closing the door behind him.   

When they are alone, Essek steps out of Caleb’s loose grasp and begins prestidigitating his room clear of grey dust. While he does, the other man walks over to the fire to warm his hands.

“I would help,” he says. “But I never got the hang of that spell.”

“Yes I know,” Essek replies. He redirects his cantrip for a moment to tug Caleb’s hair smooth in its ponytail, undoing the work of the winter wind. “I am afraid it shows.”

Caleb merely shrugs and laughs at this. 

“So what do you think, then?” he prompts. “About my proposal? Will you come?”

Essek turns now to face Caleb properly. The man has not been still for a single moment since he entered Essek’s room — shifting restlessly, poking at the fire, fidgeting with his clothing. Perhaps he is simply filled with energy now without the weight of Ikithon’s trial on his shoulders. Still, Essek cannot help but think there is something unsettled in the energy that emanates from the man in waves. 

“Would you really go alone?” He asks, stepping in closer to the warmth of the fire, closer to the Caleb.

“I would prefer to go with you,” Caleb replies. 

Which is not a denial. Essek’s heart clenches a little at the thought of the danger a lone traveler would face in the depths of Aeor. 

Of course he has not intention of allowing such a thing, even if he had not already been thinking it might be best to leave the outpost behind. His treachery will not slip the notice of the Bright Queen forever, indeed he can hardly believe it has done so for this long. 

No, Essek must move on soon. So it might as well be now, and with Caleb as his companion. 

“I would also prefer that,” he says. “But I will need a few days to prepare for a long absence. Can you wait that long for me?”

He can sense the impatience in the way Caleb shifts from foot to foot. 

“It would be sooner, if I had not just this moment received word of your plans,” Essek pushes. “Though I suppose it is not as though you had any more immediate way of contacting me.”

That hits home, causes a flinch across Caleb’s face. Dammit, he intended that only as a tease, not as a barb. 

“I thought to impress you,” Caleb says softly, looking at Essek through a veil of lashes. 

Something twists in Essek’s stomach. The look reminds him a little too much of the early days of their acquaintance, the way Caleb would flirt ostentatiously. To get something he wanted. What does he want now that Essek must be seduced out of? That he would not grant willingly? 

“You succeeded,” Essek says, trying for a soothing tone. “You always do. But I still need a few days. I cannot just abandon my post.”

The dissatisfaction in this response is clear from Caleb’s storm-clouded face. Essek is missing something. He has proposed a leisurely journey into Aeor, but he is acting like there are hellhounds at his heels. What is he missing?

He waits for Caleb’s reply even as he calculates how quickly he might prepare for his departure from Vurmas. It is clear his friend can’t actually be allowed to set off on his own. It will be messier than Essek would like. It will mean more suspicion, Dynasty bounty hunters sent after him much sooner than he had hoped. Still, it can be done. 

“Of course,” Caleb says after a long silence, his shoulders slumping as he concedes. “There is no rush, of course. I am just restless.”

Essek lets out a silent sigh of relief and nods, hoping it seems as though he believes this explanation.

“You need to stretch your legs,” he says, lightly. “It is understandable. There will be food soon. Shall we start planning our route?”

He floats some pillows and blankets close to the fire, and gestures at Caleb to make himself comfortable.   

The Aeorian maps, such as they are, are still in Essek’s papers. He has been making additions where he can in rough sketches. He rifles through the papers on his desk while Caleb settles with his back propped on a pillow and begins to remove his boots. 

Essek stills, hand on a map, at watches from the corner of his eye. There is a hole in one of his socks, right at the end where one of his toes pokes through. The socks themselves are fuzzy and knitted with pattern of little orange cat silhouettes. 

A painful thump pounds against Essek’s chest, like a creature trying to beat its way out. He waits for it to settle before taking the map and heading over to join his friend.  

Chapter Text

There are thick, Marquesian-style rugs covering the floor of Essek’s room in the tower tonight, when he floats upstairs after dinner. 

The room’s layout and accoutrements have shifted nearly every day that Caleb has cast the tower since their journey began. Subtle shifts, mostly. A result of Caleb’s brain constantly tweaking and adjusting until things are just right. He does the same with most other spells, sometimes honing them into near-perfection, sometimes spinning them off into something new. Essek’s brain works in much the same way, so he can appreciate the fine-tuning. 

The partition between study and bedroom went first, as they do nearly all of their work together now, down in the cozy library with its high walls of books and squashy couches and long tables for laying out research. There is still a small desk for Essek to keep his papers, set below a stained-glass window that now depicts a busy Vurmas outpost with its guard fires and forges alight, and the auroras glowing green, blue, purple in the night sky. 

The rugs are a very nice addition, and he foregoes his slippers as he prepares for bed, releasing his floating cantrip to sink his toes into the fluffy ply of the carpets while he changes into dove grey silk pajamas and a long robe, brushes his hair and applies his favored moisturizer. 

The tower noodling, as Caleb will insist on calling it over Essek’s objections, has been very intensive as of late. One night Essek had made his way to his room, exhausted, to find that the comfortable four-poster bed and chaise he was accustomed to find there had both been replaced by a single hammock handing from the ceiling, rocking in a non-existent breeze.

Essek isn’t prone to criticism of the tower — he isn’t rude, and even some of Caleb’s more off-the-wall ideas seem to him to have artistic merit — but he’d had to put his foot down after that one. He’d had to trance down in the library in order to get any rest at all that night. 

He had hoped that the frantic energy he’d sensed in his companion when he first showed up at the outpost would dissipate once they set out on the road. But it has only seemed to build — a constant, low-lying nervous thrum amped up by a few degrees each day. He’s tried to address his concerns a few times, tentatively, but each time he does Caleb insists he is fine. 

Some moments are better than others. Caleb is at his calmest when he has a puzzle to set his mind to, and Aeor provides those in excess. They are happy when they are working together, or so Essek thinks. Nevermind that his companion seems occasionally prone to vibrate into atoms. 

He’s pondering this mystery and removing his jewelry before settling in to trance when there is a knock at his door. Sometimes the cats will bring up a glass of warm mulled wine, or delicately-spiced golden milk before bed, though, so it’s not that unusual. 

When he opens the door, however, he finds no spectral cat, but Caleb himself dressed only in his shirtsleeves and trousers.

“Hallo,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Oh,” Essek replies, startled by his friend’s unexpected appearance. They had said goodnight less than an hour ago in the library. “Is everything alright?”

“Ja, ja,” Caleb assures. “I was just thinking. We are nearing the T-dock room, if memory serves. Perhaps we should take another look at your maps and plot out our route for tomorrow. Just for efficiency’s sake.”

Well, they have been rather haphazard in their explorations thus far, guided by their own interests rather than any set plan. Essek cannot deny the sensibility of planning more carefully. He steps to the side, and Caleb gives him a wan smile as he enters. 

“I apologize,” Essek says as he closes the door. “I didn’t realize you had a particular goal in mind with this trip. We could have been plotting our route from the beginning.”

“No goal,” Caleb says with a shake of his head. “I have enjoyed our meanderings. It was just a thought I had.”

“Just a thought …” Essek echoes, watching Caleb pace the length of his room, hands gripped behind his back, gaze flickering haphazardly across Essek’s belongings — discarded clothes placed over the curved arm of the chaise, bottles of skincare product laid out haphazardly on a side table by the big brass tub, notes for the day still unsorted on his desk. Essek flushes a little at the mess. He normally sorts, straightens and packs in the early morning hours when his trance is completed, but the other man is still sleeping. 

It seems as though Caleb was nearly ready for bed as well — feet bare, hair loose about his shoulders, buttons on his shirt undone enough to reveal a hint of russet chest hair. He cannot have any conception of how he looks just now, Essek thinks, biting his own tongue in a sharp, internal reprimand.

Hoping to set an example, he settles himself on the bed, legs tucked beneath him.

“The maps are on my desk, if you want to bring them over,” he says, patting a spot on the goose feather mattress beside him.

“Ah,” Caleb says. 

He stalks over to Essek’s desk, shuffling through the piles of paper there. When he turns back to Essek, however, he holds not a map in his hands, but the green glass bottle that Essek uses to hold his quills. It was needlessly sentimental to bring it with him on their journey. But he would have missed it if he’d left it behind, and it doesn’t take up much room anyway.

Caleb holds the bottle up to the light emanating from the stained glass window, turns it this way and that, then looks at Essek with a crooked, mischievous smile on his face.

“Did you steal this from Beauregard?” he asks.

Essek feels his body stiffen at the inquiry. 

He doesn’t remember. Of course he doesn’t remember. 

Essek could tell him now. All about the call for help Caleb sent to him and how he responded. He could even spin it into an amusing story — nearly drowning himself in the ocean and running directly into a werebear once he made land. It is funny, from a certain point of view. 

Still, he hesitates. They have come a long way since the Nein learned of Essek’s treachery, but it is still a shadow looming over all of his interactions with his new friends. His lies remain a fact, his loyalty must be taken on faith. 

What happens if Caleb doesn’t believe him? If he calls Essek a liar now, after everything? He doesn’t think he could stand it. So he relaxes his body by increments, twists his lips into a smile, shrugs loosely in response to Caleb’s question.

“Something like that,” Essek says. “I don’t believe she will miss it.”

Caleb hums in response, runs a finger over the bottle’s label, sets it carefully back in its proper place.

“The maps are in the back,” Essek offers. “Under the language primers, if I remember correctly.”

He hopes Caleb won’t notice they are Zemnian books. Essek tries to do a little work each day on this new language, but he hasn’t yet mentioned this to his friend, and it would be embarrassing to be found out in this moment.

The other wizard continues to hover over Essek’s desk, but he doesn’t reach for the maps. He simply stands there with his back to Essek. They sit in silence for a long moment until at last Caleb whirls to face him, hands that had sat loosely at his side balling into fists.

“You have never asked me about it,” he says. “Not once. We have been each others’ sole companion for weeks, and you have said not a word. You wrote me dozens of letters, and never mentioned it. Do you really not care at all?”

It is a though he is continuing a conversation he’s been having in his own head. Essek doesn’t know what exactly he’s being harangued for, but his hackles rise all the same. On instinct, he goes stony cold, cannot stop his jaw from clenching.

“I beg your pardon,” he says in the familiar, clipped cadence of the Shadowhand. “If I am being accused of something, you shall have to be more specific.”

“The trial, Essek,” Caleb grinds out, one fist curling up into his own loosed hair and tugging harshly. “The thing which has occupied nearly all my waking thoughts for months. You act as though it never happened. Are you really so reluctant to hear news of your former colleagues.”

It might as well be a slap to the face for the way it sends Essek reeling. He fights not to physically recoil, to maintain his composure.

“I —”  The words tangle themselves in his mouth and refuse to be expelled. “I —” 

“Will you really not ask me, even now?” Caleb’s tone shifts in an instant from angry to sad and lost. 

Essek has never wanted more to throw off the trappings of adulthood and respond just as a child might. He would like, in short, to burst into tears and run from the room, protesting his own innocence as he flees. But it is his room, and he is more than a century old. 

He lowers his eyes from Caleb’s pleading face to focus on the bedclothes — a warm, umber velvet — and his own hands, which still clutch one of the tinkling silver chains he wore to dinner. Its match is still attached to his left ear, hanging between a filigreed tip cap and a stud in his lobe and swinging as his ears twitch back defensively.

“Beauregard kept me informed of trial proceedings,” he says, eventually. The words feel thick and bitter in his mouth. “You may, of course, check with her to confirm this. It seemed … Unnecessarily cruel to ask you to recount the news merely to sate my curiosity.”

In lieu of a response, Caleb lets out a jagged exhalation. After a long beat, Essek forces himself to look at the other man. He is leaning against the desk now, shoulders slumped, one hand covering his mouth. 

“So you know everything, then? About my testimony? I did not think you could and still…”

The question comes so soft, so small, so incomplete.

“I know you testified, and that it was a difficult thing,” Essek says. “She asked me to check in with you, after the first day.”

“You wrote to me about fishing,” Caleb says, a ghost of a smile creeping over his lips before floating away. “She didn’t tell you what I said, then? In court.”

Essek blinks, shakes his head. 

“You have written to me about your past, a little at least. I didn’t need details from Beauregard to know it must have been unpleasant.”

“The details are rather important,” Caleb says. With what seems like great effort he pushes himself off the desk, starts to pace again, slow and plodding. “Will you ask me now?”

“Certainly not,” Essek says, too sharply. He regrets the tone almost immediately, and forces himself to gentle it. “My dear friend, there is no need for you to recount anything to me which causes you further pain. I do not require it.”

“You don’t understand,” Caleb hisses. “You don’t know what I am. How can you … You have confessed all your sins to me and I have kept mine for myself. If we are to continue, you should know. You should know.”

He redirects his course around the room, and in three steps he is at the side of the bed, crouching down and looking up into Essek’s face imploringly with a hand on his knee. Essek can feel the heat of him through the thin silk of his pajamas. It is almost unbearable. 

“Please, Essek,” he cries, soft and low.

I know you, Essek thinks to himself. How can you think I do not know you?

He doesn’t say that, however. Instead, he pats a spot on the bed beside him, runs a thumb over Caleb’s knuckles before removing his hand from its perch.

“Come,” Essek whispers. “I will hear whatever you wish to say.”

 The words seem to unspool a little of the tension in Caleb’s body. He rises, shuffles himself onto the mattress across from Essek, and reaches for one of the books that rest always in the double holster across his chest.

“I do not know …” he says, and then: “I cannot. It is all in here.”

He places the book down, pats its plain leather cover, and pushes it across the bed until it bumps Essek’s knee. 

“It is all in here,” he says. “You will read it?”

Essek cannot imagine how Caleb’s spellbook will unlock any deep personal mysteries, but he nods all the same, taking it up and flipping it open to the first page.

He finds a jagged blur of words that fill the page from top to bottom without punctuation or spacing. Essek can hardly make any of it out, save for a few words he recognizes and which are repeated over and over Mutter, Vater and gouged deep into the paper many times Entlaste Mich. Absolve me. 

Essek feels a tight ball of worry forming in his stomach. It is not a spellbook. For one, the paper is not of the correct quality. For another, it is written in charcoal rather than more expensive ink, smeared in some places by the writer’s hand and — he suspects with a sinking feeling — tears.  

If there is a spell on this page, it is of the kind a small child would imagine. A desperate plea. A wish. Make it better, undo it, forgive me.

He turns the page, expecting to find more desperate repetition. Instead, laid out in a neater hand, a familiar hand, he finds a letter.

Essek’s Zemnian, he realizes immediately, is unequal to this translation. He dares to look up at Caleb — expression hooded and unreadable — and to make a gesture to his eyes, a request to cast comprehend languages. 

Caleb nods, and Essek casts efficiently before turning his attention back to the book, to the letter.

Mother and Father,

I am a little better this morning. The friend who helped me to acquire this book has also aided me in making money enough to purchase some bread and soup, and my mind is clearer now that I have eaten, and slept a little. It is easier to do so when someone else can split the watch in the night. I still suspect that I am being hunted.

The burdens of life are easier when they are shared. You taught me that, both of you. You see I do not forget.I have done quite enough forgetting for the rest of my life. At Vergesson. 

You would like my new friend, I think. Nott is her name. She is an eccentric, but has been very kind to me. More kind than I deserve. In addition to stealing this book for me, she has helped me acquire a spellbook, in which I have written everything I can recall from my days at the academy. It is a paltry collection of spells, truly, but it is a start. 

You would not approve of the stealing, probably. I know you raised me better than to be a sneak-thief. I promise you I will put aside such things when we are reunited. I will be the son you deserve. But before I can do that, I must find a way to undo what I have done. Until then, I fear such moralizing must be set aside. There is nothing I can do that could blacken me further, anyway. I am a man of ashes.

When I dream, I dream of your forgiveness. Your lips upon my forehead, the belief that there is a path forward for me, in the light of your regard. When I wake, however, I know the difference between dream and reality. But I swear to you that I will make right this horrible wrong. I will hear your voices once more even if it is only to hear you curse me. I will cherish even those curses from your lips.

We are not so far from Blumenthal just now, in Eberswald. I remember father and I coming here on festival days. One year we saw a bear in a cage, and I wanted to free it, but you carried me away. I was inconsolable the whole way home. Not even an apple tart could tempt me out of my tears. 

Just a few days ago, I walked by some the same fields we passed on that cart ride, maybe with some of the same cows still standing by and gnawing the grass. There is something almost humorous about that. I have traveled so far from the child I was, and have landed myself so close to where I began. A part of me longs to set off down that familiar road to home, but I know I will not find what I hope to see at the end of it. 

I will have to leave familiar climes if I am to achieve my goals, anyway, so it is better not to be seduced by the fantasy of homecoming. 

I will write again soon, hopefully to tell you of my progress. Nott and I have plans of moving on to a larger town soon, maybe down toward Trostenwald.

Until then, all my love,

Bren

For some reason it is the signature that sinks first into Essek like a gut punch. Who is Bren? Has he been using the wrong name for his friend all this time? Is he the last to know? Why was he never corrected? It is the smallest thing to focus on, to panic over. Easier, perhaps, than interpreting everything else alluded to in the letter. 

In the end, it is Caleb’s voice that pulls him out of his spiral.

“I killed them, Verstehen Sie?”

His voice is rough. Guttural. And when Essek manages to pull his eyes from the book in his lap, Caleb is looking down, running fingers up and down the raised scars on his forearms, like a blind man reading a book. What history does that text detail? Essek is beginning to understand. 

“It was my final test,” Caleb continues, sinking into a monotone. “Before becoming a Volstrucker. The one that — The one that broke me.”

The whole story spills out of him then, a recitation like a child before an exacting tutor. The memories of treason Ikithon implanted, the decision made by the three children, the fire which always came so easily, the screams, the break. 

Understanding comes like the tolling of a bell. Essek can feel it vibrating through his body. 

They will reach the T-dock tomorrow. Caleb had mentioned it casually, as though he was tossing the knowledge away with his off hand. But of course there was nothing casual about it. When is this brilliant man not thinking ten steps ahead? This man who was forged into a weapon as a child; who was led to unspeakable violence; who broke and mended and found a way to carry on and still give grace to those who hurt him. This man who made a wish — an impossible wish — and found a way to grant it to himself. 

Oh, Essek thinks. Oh, you are leaving me.

He allows himself that moment of selfishness, lets it settle like a stone at the bottom of a pond, waits until the ripples of it have faded from the surface of his face. Then he reaches a hand out to Caleb and wraps it gently around his wrist. 

The touch immediately arrests the other man’s movements. He is still as a statue, muscles taut under Essek’s fingers. 

“Come here,” Essek says. “Please.”

He tugs weakly, and Caleb follows, crowding himself into Essek’s lap, pressing his face into the crook of his neck and letting the weight of his body slump into Essek’s embrace. The sobs that follow are nearly silent but all consuming, making every muscle twitch and tense. 

Essek can feel the hot flow of Caleb’s tears soak through his robe and tunic. He clutches him tightly, running fingers through his hair and making soft shushing noises. It is not an attempt to quiet him, just to let him know Essek is there even when he has no words adequate to the moment. 

“Shhh, shhh,” he whispers until the sobs have faded to quiet snuffles and Caleb’s body has gone limp in his arms. 

He allows them to sit in that silence for a time before pulling back an inch or two so he can look down into Caleb’s face.

“Let us go down to the library,” he says, running a thumb over the rise of Caleb’s cheekbone. “I will make you some hot tea. It will help you sleep.”

Caleb says nothing, but comes pliantly enough when Essek takes his hand, twines their fingers together, and leads him out the door and down to the library. Once there, he situates the other man on one of the squashy leather sofas and wraps a soft crocheted afghan around his shoulders.

“Can you wait here?” he asks, kneeling before Caleb and adjusting the blanket. “I will be back in a few moments.

The look in Caleb’s red-rimmed eyes is hollow, but he nods his agreement and Essek bustles out of the room.

It is an awful thing, to leave him alone right now, and Essek knows it. He could easily call one of the cats the fetch tea. But he needs a few moments to himself. Is desperate for it. 

He barges his way into the kitchens despite yowls of protest from the herd of cats who are apparently already making preparations for tomorrow’s breakfast. Essek pays them little mind as he stalks over to the stove and searches out the teapot. 

The teapot with its cheery poppy pattern is on a high shelf to the right of the stove, and Essek has to levitate himself a few feet up to reach it, floating down to the ground once he has it. 

The porcelain is cool against his palms as he holds the teapot cradled in both hands. The pattern is an old-fashioned one, even by Empire standards. It might look at home on the table of a farmhouse in the Zemni Fields, perhaps nestled in a hand-knitted cozy to keep the tea warm. 

In one fluid motion, Essek raises the teapot above his head and hurls it down with a crash onto the tiled kitchen floor. The crack of the impact, mixed with his own frustrated howl sends the spectral cats scurrying out of the kitchen with dismayed hisses. 

Once all the air has escaped his lungs, Essek straightens, breathes in deep, pushes his hair out of his face, and casts mending. The shattered piece of porcelain float slowly up off the ground and knit themselves together into a whole that lands with a soft thunk into Essek’s hands. 

If only everything were that easy to set right. Not a fracture or a scratch.

He places the repaired teapot on the counter, adds a couple of spoonfuls of chamomile and lavender tea from a tin, fills it with water from the gently roiling kettle on the stove and waits for it to steep, and his heart rate to return to normal.

Essek adds a teaspoon of honey to a pair of colorful, mismatched mugs, pours in the steeped tea, and then carries them back to the library.

When he re-enters the library, Essek finds Caleb unmoved from the position he left him in, staring out into a darkened corner of the library. 

He does look up, questioningly, as Essek approaches, and Essek kneels down again, placing a mug in Caleb’s hands, wrapping the other man’s fingers around it so he might soak in some of its warmth and blowing carefully on the steaming surface.

“Drink that,” he says. “It will make you feel better.”

A hollow promise. He settles himself on the opposite end of the sofa with his own mug, sipping at the still scalding liquid for lack of anything else to do. At least the lightly floral aroma of the steam is comforting. 

Essek worries his thumb over the rim of his mug, searching for something to say that doesn’t feel either inane or loaded. Maybe if he weren’t the worst person on Exandria he would be better at this. A better friend. A better support. Just better…

Those thoughts fly away with a jolt, however, when a body collides with his own. Caleb nestles into Essek’s side, tangling their legs together and resting his head upon Essek’s shoulder. He lets out a little sigh of relief as he settles into the contact, and Essek’s heart jolts against his ribs.

He doesn’t have the heart to fight the contact, insinuating an arm around Caleb’s back to pull him in a little closer.

“Will you read to me?” Caleb asks, voice a drained husk of its normal tone.

Essek snorts at the request. 

“Read to you?” he asks. “You know every book in this library by heart. You pulled them from your own head.”

In response, Caleb gives a shrug and a huff.

“Ja, but I would like to hear your voice.” 

What response can Essek make to that? He surveys the bookshelf, selects what appears to be a thick transmutation tome and summons it with a crook of his finger. He adjusts the afghan a little more securely around Caleb’s shoulders before flipping to the introduction.

By the time Essek has made it to the third chapter of the book, the teacup is dangling precariously from Caleb’s hand. He rouses a little when Essek takes it from him, still half-full of tepid tea. But he settles back down almost immediately, burrowing into Essek’s side.

Another chapter, and his steady breathing has been replaced by soft snores. Essek sets the book aside, shifting as little as possible so as not to disturb him. On any other day, Essek might easily trance just like this — the library dark and shrouded, Caleb close and warm. Tonight, though, it is impossible to clear his mind properly. He is not even really making the attempt. 

They may never be this close again. He is overcome with he desire to remember every detail — the way Caleb’s hair falls over his eyes, and his forehead crinkles in his sleep; the ink, leather, woodsmoke smell of him; the exquisite pain of Caleb’s head on his shoulder. 

Essek turns his head ever so slightly, brushes a feather-light kiss against Caleb’s furrowed brow. 

“Oh my dearest friend,” he whispers into the unhearing dark. “Who will I be without you?”

Chapter Text

You are Invited … 

Essek flips open the thick, candy-floss pink invitation with trepidation. He is greeted immediately by a shower of pink and gold glitter tumbling down to his feet.   

To a Party!!!

What: Caleb’s Housewarming Party

When: 17 Cuersaar, 7 p.m.

Where: Gewirrstraße, The Tangles, Rexxentrum. Cottage at the end of the lane. (Look for the Unicorns!)

Please RSVP

Below the text, there are two stick figures — one with horns and a giant lollipop, one with a scarf and beard — enchanted to do a jerky, animated dance.

Essek cannot help but grin. Caleb had mentioned Jester trying to talk him into a party in his new home. He’s glad to hear his friend has given in to her demands. He knows it’s been hard — how could it not be hard — to go back to Rexxentrum and pick up his life there. 

They have talked about it a little, the struggle to move forward with a life different than the one you had planned for, to look on the decision he made in Aeor not as a failure but as a choice to take this present and make it better rather than reliving the mistakes of the past. 

Maybe Essek understands only a fraction of the struggle, but he hopes he helps. If nothing else, he thinks he has proved a person to whom Caleb can express even his worst impulses. Essek is unshockable. He will always be the worst between the two of them. 

He flips the card this way and that, making sure he has missed nothing, finds what he is looking for on the back of the invitation, tiny letters at the very bottom. 

Please come. I promise it will be safe. -C-

It causes an irrational uptick in his pulse. He has not yet seen Caleb’s home in Rexxentrum, though his friend has hinted a few times at a visit. He doesn’t want to bring danger to his doorstep. But he has spent the last few weeks in the wilds of Issylra with not a hint of another person, much less a Dynasty bounty hunter. Surely it must be safe enough now. For a short visit at least.

“Ah-hem.”

Essek looks down to find the tiny quickling who had delivered the invitation smiling up at him with an unnerving mouth full of razor teeth. The creature takes the invitation from his hand, holds it out in display and jabs a jagged-nailed finger at the final line.

“R … S… V … P” it hisses at him. 

“Ah,” Essek says, nodding in understanding. “Please inform your mistress that I will be happy to attend.” 

The quickling nods excitedly.

“Yesyesyes,” it says, and is gone with a spray of moss and dirt. 

Essek bends down and picks up the invitation where it was dropped, tucks it away in a pocket. Well, something to look forward to, then.

*

Caleb almost misses the knock on the door, with the party in full swing. 

Jester and the Traveler have come up with a variation of her thaumaturgy spell that allows her to blast songs she remembers from her youth at a truly unholy volume. Also most of the lyrics are explicit enough to make even Caleb blush. 

Over the din of the music, Beauregard is in the kitchen pouring very stiff drinks for Astrid and Eadwulf and loudly detailing the blow-by-blow of her latest sparring match with Dairon. 

Somehow even louder, Veth is coaching Luc through target practice with his crossbow. Highly unfortunate that the target she has selected for the young one is Fjord’s top knot. 

So when the knock comes, Caleb barely hears it. It is probably one of the neighbors come to complain. He really must develop some kind of noise-dampening spell for such occasions. They cannot always be in the tower, after all.

“Entschuldigung,” he says as he swings the front door open to a blonde stranger. “The noise. I know. We will be quieter …”

He could not say exactly what it is that tips him off. There is the way the face of the man in front of him drops almost imperceptibly. There is the potted plant he clutches to his side, which seems not at all the type of thing a stranger with a noise complaint would carry with him. There is the hint of unsteadiness even as the man stands with boots planted on Caleb’s front stoop. It is almost … Well, it is almost as though he is floating. 

“Beg pardon, friend,”  he says with a dawning smile. “We thought you had been unable to make it after all. I am glad we were wrong. Please come in.”

He steps aside, holding the door open, and the man steps over the threshold. 

“Who the fuck is that?” Beauregard shouts from the kitchen, and Caleb sees the man’s fingers tense around the clay pot in his hands. His eyes, however, are trained  on where Astrid and Wulf lean against the counter. 

“Manners, Beauregard,” Caleb shouts at her. He steps into the man’s sphere, placing a hand on the spot that he estimates will be the curve of Essek’s back. He has made himself taller to accommodate the floating. 

“It is alright, friend,” he whispers, only for Essek’s ears. “They have agreed that anything that happens tonight will be strictly confidential.”

It is strange indeed to see what is clearly one of Essek’s most skeptical expressions flicker across a human face with pale, Zemnian-blue eyes.

He sighs dramatically, but lets his disguise drop with a shimmering like heat coming off of stone. 

“If I am murdered by Empire assassins, I will haunt you viciously, Caleb Widogast,” he mutters, dropping out of his float and flicking invisible dust off the lapel of his traveling coat.

“Essek!” 

The screech, naturally, comes from Jester who tackles Essek into a hug so swiftly that Caleb can barely get out of the way fast enough. He swears he can hear the cracking of Essek’s spine as she spins him.

“We haven’t seen you for months and months!” she is saying. “ What have you been doing? And why are you late? I wrote the time in the invitation.”

“I apologize,” Essek says, with what little breath remains in his body. “I have been many places. I wanted to make sure I was not followed here, and creating a false trail took longer than anticipated.”

“I forgive you,” Jester says, giving him one final squeeze. “This once.”

Caleb allows a few minutes for their friends to greet Essek — Yasha enveloping him entirely in a protective hug, Beau punching his shoulder with an intensity that sends him stumbling, Fjord offering a firm handshake, Veth pulling him down to her level for an aggressive kiss. 

When they have all had a chance to say their hellos, he approaches and takes possession of Essek’s elbow. 

“Come,” he says. “I will show you where you can leave your things.”

When he tugs in the direction of the stairs, Essek follows without comment. Side by side, they make their way up the stairs to Caleb’s bedroom, now also home to a pile of coats and scarves and bags and miscellany that his guest saw fit to bring with them. Caleb shuts the door behind them, and it serves to dampen the ruckus below. 

“I hope you did not go to too much trouble on your way here,” he says, watching as Essek turns, taking in the details of the room — sturdy four-poster bed with thick hangings to help keep out the winter chill, fire crackling in the fireplace with the rag rug placed in front of it, bookshelf crammed full of the books either too sensitive or smutty to be displayed in the common area, nightstand where a tall stack of those volumes has migrated. It’s nothing fancy, but Caleb has at least made it more inviting than it was before, that pallet on the floor more fitting of a cell than a bedroom. 

Normally, it would not be a room that Caleb has to be bashful about. There is something about Essek set down in the middle of his private space, however. Something about his careful scrutiny of the furnishings, the way he runs a hand over the quilt on Caleb’s bed, that makes him flush and his stomach twist. 

The last time they saw each other was in Aeor, the destruction of the T-dock still a fresh wound that Caleb could feel oozing in his chest, Essek’s words still echoing in his head. Will you do it? I will help. He is still a little shaken by the faith Essek put in his hands  in that moment. Does not know what to make of it now.

Taking a bracing breath, Caleb approaches his friend’s back, places hands upon his shoulders with the intention of helping him out of his traveling coat. The style of it is very much in the vein of Caleb’s own coat, sturdy brown leather with plentiful pockets and a furred collar for warmth. There are none of the sharp edges of the mantles Essek favored when they met in Rosohna, though he does recognize a familiar elegance in the cut of the fabric, the way it sits upon Essek’s delicate frame.

“May I?” he asks, over Essek’s shoulder, can feel his friend straighten his posture.

“Thank you,” Essek says, allowing Caleb to slip the coat from his shoulders. 

Beneath, he wears an Isylran-style high-collard tunic in a mossy green with billowing sleeves tucked into sleek black trousers. Caleb swallows, takes the time to fold the coat over his arm and smooth it of wrinkles.

“This is for you.”

Caleb looks up from where his thumb is tracing at a scuff on the leather to see Essek holding the terra cotta pot out to him. A plant with striped, pointed leaves tinged purple at the edges tumbles over the sides.

“Oh,” Caleb says, setting the coat aside in favor of the gift. “It is lovely.”

“It should do quite well inside, provided you give it a sunny spot.”

“Thank you,” Caleb says, running a finger along the edge of one of the leaves. “You did not have to bring me anything.”

“It is your housewarming party,” Essek says, just a hint of chiding in his tone. “I rather think I did.”

Caleb clears his throat, pulls his eyes away from the plant to see Essek standing very straight, hands behind his back, eyes still skimming around the room.

“I will find a spot for it,” he offers. “If you would like to go downstairs. Beau will be happy to pour you a drink, I’m sure.”

“Of course,” Essek says, with a single sharp nod.  He stops at the door of the bedroom to look back. “It is good to see you again, Caleb.”

Then he is gone. 

The plant finds a home on the windowsill, and Caleb turns to Essek’s coat. He has been considering this spell ever since Essek sent him his very innovative notebook, wanted something to match and compliment such a gift. And he thinks it is ready to test it. He needed access to a piece of Essek’s clothing. Now he has that, it is only a matter of casting and hoping it goes as planned.

When he is pleased with his work, he makes his way back down to the party. 

The music is still playing when he comes down the stairs, and most of his furniture has been shifted to the edges of the room to make space for a dance floor. None of this is surprising. The shock come when he realizes Essek is one of the two figures in the open space. He and Jester are performing what appears to be a complicated court dance, full of twirls and turns and forms made with entwined arms. 

He stops at the bottom of the stairs to watch the way Essek’s cheeks tint plum with exertion and Jester giggles when he twirls her in a circle and lifts her feet from the ground. 

The song ends, and they both take a step back from one another and bow formally. Caleb cannot help himself. He steps forward and asserts himself by clearing his throat.

“Might I cut in?” he asks. 

“Of course you may,” Essek says, and Caleb and feel his pulse ticking upward. 

But then Essek is placing Jester’s hand into Caleb’s and stepping away before he can clarify what he meant. 

“I think I will ask Beauregard to make me another drink,” he says.

The soft strings of a waltz funnel in via Jester’s spell, and she smiles up at him as they come together into proper form. In his periphery, Caleb watches Beau pouring Essek what appears to be a very large whiskey. 

“Cayleeeb, you’re stepping on my feet.”

“Apologies,” he says, shaking himself into better awareness. He tightens his hold around her waist and picks up the pace so they are actually dancing in time now. 

“Something has you distracted,” she sing-songs into his ear as they cut a circle around the room.

“With our friends? Constantly.”

Jester ignores his attempts at re-direction with a click of her tongue. 

“Is it any less complicated now?” she asks.

It takes him a moment to recall the silent conversation they had in the depths of Aeor so many months ago. He cannot help the way his gaze pulls magnetically to Essek, now curled into the window seat with his whiskey and Yasha for company. 

“In some ways, yes,” he admits. “In others, I’m afraid it has only become moreso.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Cayleb,” Jester insists. “You like him. And you deserve to be happy. Why does it have to be so complicated?”

He cannot help the huff of frustration that escapes him. There’s no denying the truth of her words. He does like Essek, and he’s given up at least lying to himself about that fact. 

It may be ill-advised, it almost assuredly is, but the connection between them, that pull, feels like a natural force. Gravity or sunshine or the tides of the sea. He thinks sometimes he could only really be satisfied if he were able to burrow under the man’s skin, pull his fingers through his mind as one might brush through a lover’s hair, to know and understand every part of him. To claim it. 

“Maybe we are not good for one another,” he whispers into Jester’s ear as he pulls them into a spin. 

In response, Jester sticks her tongue out at him, a little pout on her lips. 

“Maybe you’re just being a chicken shit,” she says with a smile that shows her sharp eyeteeth. 

It startles a laugh out of him, and he covers it by dipping her dramatically and making her giggle along with him.

“Ja, maybe so,” he says, once they are both upright once more. “But it is difficult, Blueberry. I’ve grown accustomed to having him now. To talk to, I mean. As a friend. I’m not sure Essek is at all inclined towards romance. What if I scare him away? Something is better than nothing, after all.”

He knows Essek must feel something for him, but there are so many possibilities for what exactly that feeling might be.

“Well, the flesh city didn’t scare him away,” Jester says, looking up at him with a wicked twinkle in her eyes. “And being hunted didn’t keep him away from your party. Maybe he’s a little braver than you think.”

In the window seat, Essek tips his head back to laugh at something Yasha has said, his neck a long beautiful line against the darkness of the night outside.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Jester.”

The song is winding down, and they have slowed into a gentle sway in the middle of the room. Jester sighs and reaches up to scratch through his beard.

“I want you to have nice things,” she says. “You’re allowed.”

Caleb bites down on his retort. But I don’t deserve them. He is trying. He bought a bed, and chairs that don’t wobble, and a sofa. He let Jester pick out the rugs and the curtains. But he still feels a little unsettled in this new environment, made just for himself and no one else. A waste of luxury, except when it is full of everyone he loves, like now. 

“Well,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe.”

The music transitions out of a waltz and into a ballad that Caleb is sure will have some bawdy twist to it. Jester steps back out of his hold. 

“Uncomplicated it,” she says, poking him in the chest to emphasize each word. 

Then she whirls around and skips off, throwing herself into Fjord’s lap.

Caleb just stands there in the middle of the room for a long moment. Then he slinks over to the window seat.

“You must be kidding me,” Essek is saying. He has a hand on Yasha’s shoulder, looking nearly ready to shake her.

“Caduceus is the one who recommended it. Even sent us a bag to help with the roses. It really works.”

“Bone fertilizer,” Essek says, shaking his head. “I suppose it makes sense.”

“And dead people tea,” Yasha says with a shrug. “Don’t tell Beau, though. I think she might feel the need to ask where the bones came from.”

“Certainly a mistake,” Essek agrees with a nod. “My lips are sealed.”

“You’re a good — Oh, hello Caleb,” Yasha says, noticing him standing at odds nearby. 

“Ah, hallo,” he says, awkwardly. “Talking of the garden, then?”

“Yes, well … Oh, I think Beau is calling for me.”

She stands abruptly from her seat, jostling Essek as she does. They all three of them turn to where Beau appears to be trying to bully Fjord into an arm wrestling contest.

“I do not think …” Essek says.

“You need not leave on my account,” Caleb says at the same time.

“No, no,” Yasha says, already creeping away. “She definitely needs me.”

Essek clears his throat, and pulls his feet underneath him to make more space on the cushion of the window seat. 

“Did you want to sit?” he asks. When he looks up at Caleb, his pupils are wide and dark, his hair just a little out of place. His cheeks are a bright plum that makes the pale freckles there stand out. Oh, he is already well into his cups.

Caleb takes the spot Essek has made for him, wondering how Yasha managed to fit. It is quite a close squeeze with the two of them, their knees and shoulders pressed together. 

“You are quite a fine dancer,” Essek says, shifting beside him so he can look up into Caleb’s face. His head is leaned back agains the warped glass of the window, and it reflects half his face in a way that makes Caleb feel nearly drunk. 

He shakes his head, both to shake off the compliment and the disoriented feeling.

“Alas, I can only waltz,” he says. “Your court dances are a mystery to me.”

“And I never learned the waltz,” Essek says. “It was considered quite scandalous at court, I suspect because of its Empire origins.” He pauses for a moment, considering. “Maybe also because of the hold.”

Caleb snorts at this. 

“I suppose it is quite close,” he says. 

“Intimate,” Essek hums in agreement. “You will have to teach me. I am curious.”

It is a minor miracle that Caleb does not choke on his own tongue then and there. As it is, he cannot help nervously clearing his throat.

“Pardon me, I think I might need a drink.”

Essek looks down to his own glass, empty but for a few slivers of ice. He nods as though he has come to a decision and reaches a hand lazily out to the counter where Beau has lined the beverages on offer for the evening. A crook of his index finger brings the desired whiskey bottle floating over in their direction.

Caleb nearly fumbles the bottle as it comes toward them with more force than he anticipated, but he does secure it in the end.

“I could have gotten up to fetch it,” he says, laughing.

“Ridiculous,” Essek replies with a shake of his head that Caleb feels rather than sees. It is only in this moment that he realizes Essek’s head is resting on his collarbone. Where once they were touching, now they are tangled. “I am very comfortable. I cannot spare you.”

“I would hate to disappoint,” he whispers, watching his breath ruffle the crown of Essek’s hair. He uncorks the bottle, takes a long, burning pull, then passes it over. 

“Thank you,” Essek responds politely, also drinking directly from the bottle, glass abandoned somewhere amongst the pillows. “Your home is very cheerful. I’m glad you decided to furnish it at last.”

“Well, it seemed only practical,” Caleb says, accepting the bottle as it is passed back to him. “Also, Jester is very hard to deny when she puts her mind to interior decorating.”

“Or anything else,” Essek agrees. “I do wish you had consulted me on the curtains however. They truly are frightful.”

He reaches out to flick the bright floral curtains. Caleb had also had doubts about the noisiness of the pattern, but Jester had seemed so taken with them that he had given in. 

“Shall I redecorate, then? With your assistance?”

“I would be happy to provide guidance,” Essek replies with a sniff.

“Good,” Caleb says. “I would wish you to be comfortable here.”

It seems to him that he and Essek are breathing in time now. When the other man shifts to look at him, his lips brush one of the the pearl buttons on Caleb’s shirt. He would like to place his hand upon Essek’s exposed throat, feel his pulse beating there, pull him in closer. His brain feels fuzzy, and he’s not sure he can blame it entirely upon the whiskey. 

Essek looks up at him, then, his ears twitching up charmingly, his pupils still wide and dark and intoxicating. 

“Truly?” he asks so quietly that Caleb can barely hear him over the din.

“Essek …” He begins, not truly knowing how he intends to finish the sentence.

Good, perhaps, that he is interrupted by Essek sitting up abruptly, nearly knocking Caleb in the nose.

“I … I apologize.”

“Was?” 

“I have insulted your home,” he says, scrunching his face up in displeasure. “I think the whiskey may have gone to my head.”

Essek sways gently from side to side as he looks at him imploringly. Caleb cannot help but reach out to hold his face between his hands to still him, run a thumb over his pulse point. His heart is racing. 

“I am not insulted,” he says in what he hopes is a placating tone. “And it is a party. Most of us are a little drunk. You’re fine. You’re fine right here.”

Essek starts our shaking his head, but ends in nuzzling into Caleb’s palm.

“I will have to teleport,” he says, expression doleful. “And I will end up somewhere embarrassing again.”

“You cannot mean to go tonight,” Caleb says, trying to soothe. “I intended you to stay. You may have the sofa. It is very comfortable. Or you may sleep in my bed. That is. If you would prefer privacy. You may have the bedroom. Alone. Of course.”

“I will not banish you from your bed,” Essek says, softly. 

Which, Caleb notes to his own damnation, is not an outright refusal. But then Essek continues.

“However, if you do not mind, I may take the sofa. I do not feel quite …”

“Of course,” Caleb says, and it is good at least to feel a little tension flow out of Essek’s body.

“Hey, are you two done making out?” Beau shouts from across the room. “Because I was promised poker tonight.”

“Ooh, ooh! We should make it strip poker!” Veth exclaims.

“Oh dear,” Essek says, eyes widening, ears pinned tight to his head.

“She probably won’t talk them into strip poker,” Caleb tries to reassure with a  hand on Essek’s shoulder. “Come on.”

His friend doesn’t look convinced, but does allow himself to be pulled up and led over to the rest of the group where they are crowded around Caleb’s kitchen table, already dealing out cards.

The rest of the night is a bit of a blur. There is more drinking, various levels of undress — Caleb loses his scarf, suspenders and shirt. Essek remains firmly buttoned up, Caleb suspects by using magic to cheat. Honestly he’s mostly impressed that his friend can manage illusion magic after they collectively empty the whiskey bottle and Beau pulls out the rum. 

In the end, Caleb had made his dome in the middle of the living room like old times and they had all fallen asleep in a pile together, Luc tucked away to bed up in Caleb’s room many hours before. Astrid and Wulf had made their farewells after a single round of poker. Not everyone takes easily to the Nein’s antics.

Caleb falls asleep with his head pillowed on Essek’s thigh while the drow trances on the edge of their cuddle puddle. Veth is tucked up against the small of his back, spooning Yeza. Jester has hold of one of his ankles, her other hand tangled in Beau’s hair, head resting on Fjord’s chest. 

He wakes, confused and disoriented, only a few hours later, to find his pillow gone, and Essek outside of the dome pulling on his coat and tying his boots. He disentangles himself from his friends and crawls out to meet him.

“Are you going so soon?” he whispers. Outside the cottage, the sky is grey with only the faintest hints of dawn. “It is early.”

“I should not have stayed so long,” Essek replies. “But thank you for your hospitality. Your home is … Ah, it suits you very well.”

“I hope you will visit again soon,” Caleb says over a stifled yawn. “My door is always open to you.”

“I will write,” Essek answers, which is not what Caleb said at all. “Please tell the others I said goodbye.”

“I — I will, yes. But —”

He is interrupted by Essek stepping forward to place a hand on his chest and a kiss on his cheek. It is barely a whisper of contact, high on his cheekbone, and even that scarce contact leaves Caleb’s nerves buzzing.

“It was good to see you, friend,” Essek says, pulling away slowly. 

Then before Caleb can say more than a dumbfounded “Yes, it was,” he is out the door. 

He tries to go to sleep after that, but finds it difficult. 

When the sun rises properly, the rest of his friends begin to rouse and take their leave with their hangovers and their promises to visit soon.

By noon, Caleb is alone in the cottage once more. He brings Essek’s potted plant downstairs and places it on the sill of the kitchen window for company while he fries eggs and tomatoes and mushrooms to make a breakfast adequate to soaking up the alcohol still jostling through his system. 

It is a nice day. Peaceful, bright. The sun is high in the sky and sends dappled rays through his window to dance across the floor. Caleb eats his breakfast, drinks overbrewed, milky tea and attempts to find patterns in the sunspots on the floorboards. 

Except … No, it isn’t his imagination. The pattern is already there. He could swear it is, flickering as clouds pass somewhere up above. Not just a pattern, letters. Not just letters, words. 

Caleb’s eyes flick to the window, where Essek’s plant sits. It has perked up, stretching its tendrils up high so that the sun shines directly through its leaves. The pale striations that Caleb had taken as merely part of the natural leaf pattern last night let more light through than the dark green portions. The combination of shadow and light casts a message on the ground around him. 

He walks the room until he finds the right angle for viewing and grins as Essek’s message reveals itself.

Caleb,

It may not quite be a magical tree to plant upon your rooftop, but it seemed to me only appropriate that your new home feature something green and growing. 

I received much help from Mr. Clay in the selection of this gift, and you must apply to him if it gives you any trouble. I am responsible only for the enchantment of the leaves and keeping it alive in the days before your party.  The enchantment is temporary. It shall not take long for the leaves to grow their own way, so you need not worry about these words always falling across your floor. 

The plant itself is known commonly as a wandering pilgrim. I found the name quite evocative, having recently embarked upon a much more transitory lifestyle. You too have known your share of wandering, friend. I am glad you have at last found a place to call home. There is no one I know who better deserves a little rest and peace. 

I have found traveling thus far to be not entirely unpleasant. I have, as you know, an often restless mind, and new landscapes mean there is ever something new and interesting on the horizon. I must thank you once more for allowing me the use of your dome spell. I have been spending much time in the wilderness of late, and it has come in very handy. Much easier and more secure than a tent. 

Camping, you may guess, is not my favorite activity. I am much more accustomed to cities, but this tack seemed safest for the moment. 

I received a sending several days ago from Uraya, who was my second-in-command at Vurmas Outpost. I had thought myself prepared for such an eventuality, but I confess I was caught quite off-guard by their anger. The depths of their disappointment. Perhaps I should not have been. Uraya is a very devout acolyte of the Luxon, and therefore has felt the sting of my treachery from multiple sides. 

I did not expect to feel it either. Not like this. I had not anticipated growing so attached to my companions at the outpost, and there is a fresh ache in my chest at what they must think of me now the truth is revealed. 

The only recompense I can think to give them is my head on the executioner’s stone, and I find I am still far too selfish for such a thing. 

You must forgive me, friend, for growing maudlin. I meant only to let you know that I am sticking at present to the wild lands. With this precaution, and the step of laying a few misdirecting teleportation pathways, I suspect I may attend your party without bringing any additional danger to your door. 

The same may be said if you have any need of my assistance in the future. You have many powerful and loyal friends to call upon for aid. I know this. But I hope you may count me among their number, even in exile. 

I will write again soon, and hope you will do the same. I am excited to hear how you fair with your tutoring and your experiments. You may always reach me via notebook without fear of detection.

Yours,

Essek

A brisk autumn breeze blows through the kitchen window, shifting the leaves of the potted plant and scattering Essek’s letter into sunspots and shadows. There it is again, Essek promising to write to him, as though Caleb had any intention of doing without their correspondence. 

He sips his tea and rubs absently at his cheekbone. The spot Essek kissed in farewell still fizzes faintly beneath the skin, though it must be all in his mind. It was dangerous, perhaps, to invite Essek into his home. Because now that he knows what it is like to have his friend here in his space, relaxed and open, he can’t imagine foregoing such a pleasure for long. Besides, it cannot be good for the other man to remain isolated. 

He puts aside the worries he and Jester spoke of last night. There is no need to rush to anything. Things can just be simple for a while, can’t they? Don’t they both deserve as much?

The man left only a few hours before, but maybe it is already time to make use of the spell Caleb inlaid into his coat. Standing from the remains of his breakfast, Caleb goes in search of pen and paper.

*

A parasol, Essek finds to his dismay, does not do nearly enough to ward off the sun in the desert far outside Ank’Harel. He walks for several hours, trying to keep his skin from burning by hiding under the narrow shade provided by the parasol Jester gave him so long ago. 

Eventually, he allows he will not make much progress during the height of the day, and finds an outcropping of rocks to hide under and make camp, summoning the dome Caleb taught him to make. 

It is blessedly cool inside the temperature control of the dome, and Essek leans back against its curve and nearly empties one of his canteens. This is hardly ideal, but if he travels at night and sleeps in the heat of the day, it should be tenable until it is time to move on to a new location. 

He digs through the pockets of his long-discarded coat looking for the book he is half-way through, thinking to do a little studying before trancing. Instead, he finds something unexpected in the lower left pocket. It is a paper bundle wrapped around what feels like a collection of small stones. 

His initial thought is the Luc has been through his belongings last night after he was sent to bed. Looking for treats, no doubt. He would have been disappointed with what he found, but it seems he may have accidentally left something behind as well. 

Essek pulls the object out and finds it is a packet made of brown butcher’s paper. He unwraps it and finds a handful of small, round cookies covered in a layer of powdered sugar. Tucked in with the cookies, is a slip of paper that Essek unfolds carefully. He is unsurprised, in the end, to recognize Caleb’s handwriting there.

Dear Essek,

I hope you will not mind too much my taking liberties with your clothing. I have watched you many times casting your wristpocket spell, and I have come up with a variation that I think we will both find useful. 

To be succinct, I have made the pocket in which you found this package a shared space. You will have access to anything I place there, and vice-versa. In this way, we may pass both objects and messages between us. I naturally took inspiration from your wonderful notebook, which has been invaluable as we collaborate on spells. 

The only advantage here, is that in addition to telling you that you would enjoy the pfeffernüsse I found at the market this afternoon, I can also share them with you. I warn you they are laced with a good amount of black pepper and can be quite spicy. But then I recall you are fond of spicy food.

It was very good of you to come to Rexxentrum last night, and I hope it will be the first of many visits. I find now that I am more settled that I am excited to play the host. I have missed your company, after being so constantly together in Aeor. Seeing you last night only made your absence more stark.

Speaking of, would you be amenable to come to dinner next Folsen? I make a very decent chicken stew which I think you will enjoy. Do let me know.

Yours, etc.

C

There is no reason for Essek to be shaken by the letter, and yet he is. It presents such a strong contrast to how he thought things would be just a few weeks ago. 

Not long ago, he thought he would never see Caleb again, that his friend would slip out of his life like sand through his fingers. He had steeled himself for that absence, for the hollowness that must follow.

He found his night in Rexxentrum both intoxicating and disorienting for exactly this reason. The space he had expected to be empty had been suddenly so full. Caleb right there beside him, in his space. So close he could feel him breathing. Claiming that proximity had seemed the only way to quiet the little voice in his head that tells him the rug will soon be pulled out from beneath his feet. That all this happiness will soon be gone.

He had let himself go a little too far last night, he is certain, had taken liberties. As usual, his friend has be generous with his forgiveness. 

He is unsure  what to do with this new invitation. With its casual tone and the expectation that it is one of many to come. My door is always open to you, Caleb had said before Essek took his leave this morning, and he could read nothing but sincerity in the man’s voice. 

He shouldn’t go. He can only bring trouble to Caleb’s door. But his friend seems deeply unconcerned with such things, so perhaps he is being paranoid. Over cautious. Essek finds himself very persuadable. Wants too much to be in Caleb’s company to protest very much. 

There is grit in his eyes, and sunburn sinking deep into the skin of his neck and cheeks, and Essek cannot keep himself from smiling almost painfully as he pens an acceptance and slips it  quietly into his pocket.

Chapter Text

Selected letters between Essek and Caleb, Cuersaar, 836 PD through Dulahei, 837 PD.

Essek to Caleb, Written (Poorly) in Zemnian, secured inside a pamphlet entitled “Securing Runic Integrity in the Creation of Permanent Teleportation Circles”:

Mr. Widogast,

I am thanking you sincerely for your hospitality on the evening of Folsen last. To see you, it is a pleasure always. Very excited I am about our progress with the long rest spell. 

Would you honor me with the recipe for the stew you made for dinner? I was very taken with it. I offer in exchange this writing on traveling circles. I found it on a recent trip to Ank’Harel and remembered your interest in such a thing for your home. The city is beautiful, but I think I must soon be moving on. You are correct that the sun does not agree with me. 

Please forgive me my bad Zemnian. I must call upon your help sometime in practicing my conversation. I have been looking at my dictionary this whole time, but I cannot do so when talking. Might we try when next we meet? I cannot return your invitation, but I can offer to provide dinner. They make a roasted lamb here that I am certain would please you. At your convenience, naturally.

Yours as Ever,

Essek

Caleb to Essek, wrapped around a rose bud with white petals tinted pale pink at the edges:

My Dear Essek,

I confess I had no idea that your Zemnian studies had progressed so far. What a delightful discovery. I can imagine no better pleasure than the chance to talk with you in my own tongue. I have been remiss, having learnt little Undercomman even with all the time I spent in Rosohna. My mind was very much elsewhere. Perhaps you might begin to teach me? We have always operated best when we participate in an exchange of ideas, do we not?

I made a quick trip down to Zadash yesterday, and Yasha asked that I pass on a sample of the roses in her garden to you, along with an invitation to visit and see the whole yourself when you have the time. I know you are in no position to begin cultivation, but I thought this one particularly lovely. She has also asked if you have been receiving her messages. I have mentioned her unique messages, have I not? If you would send to her, it would be a kindness. 

On one point in your last letter,  I really must object. I never said the Ank’Harel sun did not agree with you. I merely commented upon the proliferation of your very fetching freckles. I thought it clear this was intended as a compliment. Are you being disingenuous because you wished me to repeat it? I can only assume this is the case. You are too clever by far to misunderstand.

I will certainly take you up on your offer of dinner and conversation. Would next Yulisen suit? You might stay the weekend, if you have the time. I can cast the tower and we can move on to practical experiments for the long rest spell. We have been needing to begin for some time. Theories, after all, can only take one so far with magic. Eventually one has to act. 

I await only your word to begin preparations.

Yours,

C

Essek to Caleb, enchanted to appear on the wrapper of a butterscotch candy once eaten:

Caleb,

How delightful an interlude this weekend was. I sometimes think your continued hospitality is the only thing maintaining my sanity. And it will be a while, I think, before I am able to enjoy it again. 

I am almost certain I saw an operative from the Lens when I returned to Ank’Harel on Miresen. I trained the man, I should recognize him. It was only a glimpse of a familiar face in the bazaar, but it shook me quite badly. I should have known better than to return to a place so soon after leaving it, but I thought to make a final visit to that fine magic shop I mentioned to you. Stupid of me. I have moved on to Uthodurn, with several waypoints in between, but I cannot yet rest easy. 

Apologies, friend, for being so dour. I just did not expect them to catch wind of me so soon, especially an entire continent away. 

On a lighter note, I hope you enjoy the candy I have slipped into our pocket. Butterscotches, I have discovered, are a particular favorite of the old men of the region. You are of course a young, spry thing, but you do keep company with at least one cranky old man. Good of you to indulge him.

I know you and the Nein spent a little time here during your adventuring. If you have any messages to be delivered or charges that may be carried out discreetly while I am here, I should be happy to be of service.

Yours,

Essek

Caleb to Essek, encoded and etched into a smooth grey stone about the size of a palm:

Dear Essek,

Do write back to  me with haste and assure me you are not too angry with me. You would never say so while we were with the others, but I noticed your grumpy face when you thought no one was looking. You cannot fool me.

It was not entirely my fault you were so accosted. Only I did let slip to Jester that you had quite a shock and seemed jumpy. It was she who insisted we plan a group trip to Uthodurn. It presents no danger to you, you know. Our last visit to the city was well-documented, and we have known allies there. Any observer would realize it is completely in-character for us to pay a visit to our good friend Reani.  

I am very interested to know what you thought of our druid friend. I confess It is difficult to think of an odder couple than you two, but I hope she can provide some companionship for you while you remain in town. She really is a good egg, as they say. Although I would not tell her much about your past. She is evolving, but her judgment can still be harsh. The young, you know, can be so prone to absolutes.

I know you likely took a focus for teleportation purposes on one of your previous visits to me in Rexxentrum. However, in case you forewent this step, I will let you know that the rock on which this letter is inscribed was previously part of my cottage. I pried it from the lintel of the front door myself. I know you said it may be a while before you feel safe in returning here, and I do respect that. I only wish to assure myself that when you wish to come to me, you may do so without incident. 

It was very good to see you safe and well, friend, even if you were being very grumpy.

Yours affectionately,

C

P.S. How many times did Jester attempt to heal you during our visit? Fjord and I have a bet. I shall not tell you my guess so as not to skew the results. She is dear, is she not?

Essek to Caleb, on a piece of paper ripped from his notebook, slightly crumpled:

Caleb,

If you wish me to assure you that I am not angry, then I am afraid I must be silent. There was absolutely no call for you to tattle to Jester, and even less for you to encourage your friends into this particular half-baked plan. They need little enough, and you know this. 

You are so clever. Why do you sometimes insist upon acting the fool? I feel like I am losing my mind sometimes trying to contain the blowback of the wrongs I have done, to prevent it from harming any of the people I … Anyway, it was foolish, and I am very cross with you.

What is the point of me staying away if you will all barge in and put yourself in danger anyway? 

Do I need to keep things to myself in future? I can admit it has been nice to have someone to share with as I travel, but perhaps I have abused the privilege. Discretion has a place, and I should be more aware of it. 

I hate that you took an unnecessary risk for me, and I am sincerely asking you not to do it again. As a friend. 

Essek

P.S. It was seven if you don’t count calm emotions, nine if you do. I was not injured in the slightest, and I did tell her that. She is very dear. You all are. 

Caleb to Essek, written on the back of the previous note, smoothed out and folded:

Dear Essek,

Indeed. What is the point?

I am afraid, friend, if you wish us to suddenly stop caring for you well-being your wish will be in vain. You are one of us now, and nothing I could do will prevent any of our friends from barging into your life when they feel barging is necessary. I can only reassure you that we take care of our own, and we are very capable. 

So, now you have accepted the futility of fleeing, come to dinner tonight. I will cast the tower and we shall both be safe as houses. You may bring a bottle of wine to make up for your very bad manners in Uthodurn. I forgive you, by the by.

Yours,

C

Essek to Caleb, appended at the bottom of the previous message:

Fine.

Caleb to Essek, sent as a parcel of enchanted Go stones in purple and orange that shift to form their message upon being placed upon a Go board:

Dear Essek,

I am going to send a fireball right up the ass of that self-righteous gnome. I swear, Darvish only invites me to speak to his classes because he enjoys the opportunity to undercut me. One would think he would get bored eventually. 

I know you will say I should simply refuse his requests, and perhaps you are right, but that would feel too much like giving in. And I cannot abandon the students. You know I love my private pupils, but every time I speak at the academy is a new opportunity to reach so many more young minds. 

The entitlement that is burned into their brains from such a young age. They learn everything of power and nothing of history or consequences. It is dangerous even without the addition of ill intentions. I am the proof. 

Forgive me for ranting, but I have to be so cautious to keep my composure in front of Darvish and his ilk that it is a relief to be able to let out a little of the frustration. Getting angry with him would only make him feel he is winning. The students, at least, show promise. I had two stay after lecture to ask questions today. That is something, is it not?

Consider these Go stones an invitation to a rematch. I had never played before you taught me last week, and trounced me so thoroughly, and I cannot help but wish to redeem myself. I swear I am not normally a dullard when it comes to games of strategy. I was only a little distracted during your lessons. 

Incidentally, I mentioned to Jester that you have dipped a toe into the fashion of the Taloned Highlands since your relocation, and she wishes for you to pick out a dress for her. She was captivated when I described the sheer layers which you wore so well the other night. 

Alas, I have wasted all my planning time this week preparing for Darvish’ lesson, and now I must go and prepare for my own pupils for the week. I hope to hear from you soon.

Yours,

C

Essek to Caleb, on the exterior wrapping of a bar of lavender-scented soap:

Widogast,

If we are going to continue to share custody of this pocket, I must insist you pay better attention to what you put into it. This is the third time I have placed my hand  inside only to discover you have used it to collect some of your noxious spell components. 

If you will stubbornly refuse to use a focus, you could at least keep your materials away from me. It is one thing to go looking for my reading glasses and find bits of charcoal or a handful of ash, but I quite draw the line at guano. 

I have used as much prestidigitation as I dare, given the enchantment, but I have decided the scrubbing should be your job. Perhaps it will serve as a reminder. 

After you have finished cleaning, you may make it up to me by buying me dinner. There is a lovely little seafood restaurant on the Dominion Ring in Yios. I shall expect you there at 7. 

Regards,

Essek

Essek to Caleb, on a shard of sea glass enchanted to reveal its message in ripples when placed under water:

Caleb,

I am aware I should apologize for my ill temper in my last message. I am reluctant to do so, however, as it led to such a glorious night with you in Yios.

What a pleasure to share a meal with you looking out over the glowing waterfalls. Blue is an excellent color on you, in case no one has mentioned it to you before. I thought the band acquitted themselves well despite being unaccustomed to playing waltzes. Much better than I did, though I hope you will help me improve with more practice. 

I will, at the least, apologize for stepping on your toes so many times. You were very gentlemanly to carry on despite my missteps. 

I never traveled much outside of Rosohna before my exile, and I have made my peace with journeying alone. The result is that I have never before known the joys of traveling with a well-matched companion. What a thing it is to be able to take the hand of a friend and lead them down an unknown street to discover, well, who knows what?

I will never forget the look on your face when we found that outcropping of rock pools off the Venture Ring, and those strange anemones glowing inside. When you leaned in to get a closer look, your eyes turned that same luminescent aquamarine. You are a wonder, Caleb Widogast. Always. Such a mix of curiosity and bravery and kindness.

Will you laugh at me if I admit to you that when I need to feel very brave myself I put my hand into our pocket and imagine you on the other side of the world doing the same thing, your fingers twining in mine? 

I have never been whimsical in my entire life. What have you done to me?

This sea glass is from the pools we visited the other night. I thought you might want a souvenir from your trip. 

Until next time, I remain.

Yours,

Essek

Caleb to Essek, written on the back of a receipt pad for Brenatto’s Apothecary:

Dear Essek,

I am so sorry to have worried you, friend. I know I was meant to meet you in Vasselheim for the Matron’s Masquerade, and I am sad to have missed it. I was especially anxious to see your costume. I’m sure whatever it was would have been very intriguing.

As I said when you sent to me, I have been most hideously ill. A flu of some kind, I believe. Veth insisted I come down to Nicodranas so she and Yeza could take proper care of me. It is a good thing I went when I did, as I went from feeling a bit poorly to being quite out of my mind with fever. It is the only reason I didn’t think to tell you I would not be able to make our date.

I know it was very rude of me to stand you up in such a manner, and I have been kicking myself over it now that I am coherent again. You should know I will be here in Nicodranas a little longer. I have my mind again, but I remain weak even for me, and I still lose my breath so easily. Veth will not hear of me leaving, and I am a poor enough invalid that I am grateful for her help. 

It is so strange. I do not think I have ever had a sending from you. We began this game of letters so early in our acquaintance, that they always seemed superfluous. I have had so many sendings from Jester that I just assumed they were all of a piece. 

How different it was to have your voice in my head. Closer and more intimate than whispering into my ear. I wish the message had been less urgent, and myself less delirious so I might have relished it more.

I hope I did not say anything too ridiculous. I remember the sensation more than the substance of the message. I will let you know when I return to Rexxentrum and perhaps you can come and visit. I do miss you, and I am most regretful to have missed our last outing.

I am sorry, again, that I did not reach out sooner. You may feel free to remain cross with me. Only do take a little pity on your poor, sick friend, and do not scold me too much. 

Yours,

C

Essek to Caleb, wrapped around a health potion vial:

Caleb,

I am relieved to hear that you are on the mend, even if you still do not feel quite well. 

Your absence in Vasselheim should probably not have caused quite the degree of panic it inspired in me, but you know I have grown more prone to anxiety in recent months. Under the circumstances, I believe it to be understandable. 

I thought of you waylaid by Lens operatives or in the clutches of Cerberus mages once more and, well, that was that. 

Do not fear you said anything too embarrassing. You mostly spoke in Zemnian. I think it was about being behind on lesson planning, though you spoke rather quickly, and you know I still struggle with verbal translation. But it assured me at least that you were not captured or killed, and you mentioned Veth. I was able to get the full story of your illness from her. 

I am sure she and Yeza both are taking very good care of you, but do indulge me in accepting this potion. It will make me feel a little better knowing you have it. If you have need of anything else during your convalescence (More books perhaps?) you need only apply to me and I shall provide as best I can. 

It is not remotely your fault, but you did give me such a scare, you must grant me leave to be a little overbearing.  

Yours,

Essek

Caleb to Essek, written in ink visible only under starlight:

My Dear Essek,

What an unexpected pleasure your visit was. I had no notion of you coming to see me in Nicodranas and I hope you did not inconvenience yourself too much in making the journey.  

As I write, you have not been gone even an hour. I am tucked up with a blanket and a cup of tea on a lounge chair on Veth’s veranda. Because I have been a good boy and performed the herculean task of removing myself from bed, I have been allowed honey and a tot of whiskey in my tea. I confess it is a very pleasant end to an even pleasanter day. Close to perfect, barring only that you had to leave. 

It was very good of you to take me out on a walk to stretch my legs. I am not yet steady on my own feet, and Veth and Yeza are not quite of a height to help support me. I think the sea air was good for my lungs, and the sunshine was certainly good for my soul. Also you looked very charming with your parasol and your clever little glasses with the smoked glass lenses. So there is that as well.

May I confess something to you, friend? When I am in an optimistic mood, and perhaps a selfish one, the future I have imagined for us is not unlike today. I will have retired to some warm climate that is gentler on the joints than Rexxentrum could hope to be, and you still come and visit me from time to time. 

By then, of course, I will be a doddering old man with more grey than red in my beard, and you will still be young and beautiful as ever. But in this daydream, you have not yet tired of your old friend. When you come to see me you offer me your arm for support, just as you did this afternoon, and we walk together along the promenade and down to the shore so that I may dip my toes into the surf and turn my face up into the sunshine. 

And when I grow tired we amble slowly back to a little cottage, where of course there is always room for you, and we perhaps drink to absent friends, or talk of the latest magical publications, or play a game of Go. You still beat me, as is the proper order of things. 

It may be, in the end, that you find you do not have a taste for watching acquaintances grow old and decrepit.I cannot say I would blame you. But that is why it is a daydream. 

Anyway, that time is still many years away. I must remind myself that I am not yet ancient, it is only my muscles and lungs have momentarily decided to be obstinate. I am afraid the tea has turned my mood maudlin. You will be good enough to forgive me, will you not?

I hope that your visit has at least reassured you that you need not continue to ply me with tinctures and health potions. I am staying with two talented apothecaries, after all. Besides, I am recovering quite well, all things considered. I allow I am still weak, but I am improving a little every day. The fever is long-since passed, anyway. It is only my old vigor that is being stubborn in returning.

I am very grateful for the books you brought with you, however. Veth and Yeza have been very kind in their care and attention, but their library leaves a little something to be desired, at least if one is not deeply interested in picture books or potion making. Your selections will keep me occupied for quite some time.

————

I have paused a moment to take a better inventory of what you left me, but have returned now. I do not know whether to be proud or scandalized. Essek Thelyss. I do believe you snuck at least three romance novels into a stack of very serious academic tomes. How thoughtful of you. 

It will be another week or two, but when I am back in Rexxentrum I hope I may depend upon your coming to visit me once again. It will give me something to anticipate, and I believe will greatly aid in my recovery.

Until then, dear friend.

C

P.S. Is this ink not a remarkable invention? I brag only because I cannot claim sole credit for it. Jester and I have been working on it jointly for a while now. She wanted something to help her pass on what she will only refer to as “Secret Pirate Messages.” I think we both know she is going to draw invisible dicks on every surface she encounters. 

Essek to Caleb, paper bird message sent at some time during the night, perched upon his windowsill the morning:

Caleb,

Do not be a fool. You may have my arm, and anything else of mine that you wish, for as long as you deign to put up with me.

Yours enduringly,

Essek

Caleb to Essek, sealed with a black and white speckled feather:

Dear Essek,

I am happy to announce that Veth has at last deemed me healthy enough to return to Rexxentrum on my own. I cannot tell you what a relief it is to finally feel like myself again. I have never been a runner, but now I can take full breaths I feel I could run laps around the city. 

Veth and her family have been so kind. While I am pleased to be better, I confess it may be a little lonely adjusting to living on my own once again. The quiet will be startling. Luc is always peppering me with questions, and after i started feeling a little better I started to teach him a little magic. He can cast message now, and is a proper menace with it. I will miss that.

In honor of my return to the Empire, Yasha and Beauregard have proposed to throw a dinner at their home in Zadash. They have asked very specifically that I invite you. Are you, by any chance, available this coming Conthsen? 

I think you will enjoy seeing their home, and most especially the garden Yasha is cultivating. The flowers, as I have mentioned, are lovely, but she has also recently acquired a small brood of chickens, all of whom I am assured are delightful, if mischievous, creatures. The feather I used in sealing this letter is from one of her fanciest chickens. She sent it to me, and it was so pretty I thought you might enjoy it. 

If you are free to come to dinner, you might also consider coming back with me to Rexxentrum afterward for a visit. Do take pity on me and help stave off the loneliness of solitary living a little longer. 

Until then,

C

Essek to Caleb, tucked inside a sachet filled with rosemary and dried orange rind:

Caleb,

I can tell you have been feeding the stray alleycats again because I made the mistake of leaving one of my handkerchiefs in our pocket, and when I pulled it out again it smelled aggressively of dried sardines.

You know, don’t you, that any of those poor creatures that you insist on feeding would gladly follow you home and accept a life luxury with a soft pillow and full bowl and a doting papa? What I mean to say is that you don’t need to consign yourself to scraps of feline affection. You can just steal one. After all, has there ever been a house cat obtained by honest means?

I know you have been feeling a little lonely of late, and perhaps an animal companion would help with that. It is just the thing to make your little cottage feel like a home.If you would like assistance in selecting a good specimen, I am happy to come to help you choose. We will find one with a good disposition who will hopefully not shred all your best shirts into ribbons. I do have to still be seen in public with you from time to time, after all.

In the meantime, the sardines can go in literally any other pocket. Please. You have so many from which to choose.

Yours,

Essek

Caleb to Essek, note folded into an origami cat:

My Dear Essek,

I warn you I consider anything that ends up in our pocket to be joint property. If you will leave your handkerchief there, you must come to terms with it occasionally being used to wrap up dried sardines for the strays. Perhaps you should be more careful with property. 

As to bringing one of the poor darlings home with me, it is difficult to explain. Not complicated, really, but difficult. I haven’t lured a cat home, as you so roguishly suggested, for the same reason that I keep refusing Astrid when she asks me to take on a permanent teaching position at the Academy.

I do not feel truly settled here. Rexxentrum was my home for many years. I dreamed for many more that it would be a home for me again. That I could make it so. But I don’t know if it’s true. I cannot even point to why I feel this way. Why I’m resisting putting down proper roots. 

Do not mistake me, I am not unhappy here. The city is full of interesting people, things to do, people to see. I adore my pupils. It is wonderful to walk outside my door and hear my own language floating on the breeze. Everything should be in proper order. I simply cannot get past there being something missing here. Everything feels just a degree off to me. So until I figure out what it is, why it is, the Kätzchen will have to wait.

Maybe it is just my nature to be unsatisfied with the way things are. Or mayhap I gave up the chance of anything feeling like home long ago. Sacrificed it on the pyre of my ambition. I truly do not know, friend.

Scheiße, I have written myself into a melancholy mood. I don’t suppose you would be free this evening to come and pull me out of it? Your company is always an effective antidote. 

Essek to Caleb, accompanied by a packet of seeds:

Caleb,

I am very sorry I was unable to come to you last night. I was traveling all yesterday and so did not have the resources to make it to Wildemount when you summoned. You know I would have been there otherwise.

I have relocated for a time to the continent of Tal’Dorei. A little mountain town I think you would like very much. There is still snow on the ground here despite it being really nearly spring. 

The sight of flurries falling all around the clock tower in the central square when I arrived last night was such a lovely image I wish I could have captured it to send to you. 

I have read over your last letter several times, trying to think of what I can say to give you comfort. I lead such a rootless life myself that I am not sure I’m qualified for the job of chief counselor on this topic. What I can say, is that often the life you envision for yourself and the one you end up living are diametrically different. And that is not always a bad thing. 

I once thought I would spend decades, centuries even at the right hand of the bright Queen, leaving Rosohna only for the occasional political meeting. Stuck always in one place. I am probably a bad example. My life is only different because I have done terrible things and am running away from the consequences of my crimes. 

But I will maintain that I would not trade the life I once imagined for the one I am living now. Because this one has you, and the rest of the Nein. Friends who have become like family to me despite the disdain with which  I once regarded both concepts.

What I mean to say, friend, is that you need not consign yourself to any life which fails to satisfy you. You have people — myself always included at the top of the list — who will support you in any path you take. You do not have to be a professor in Rexxentrum if you find it does not suit. You can have that peaceful retirement by the sea you once spoke of, or join me on the road, or become a hermit up in the frozen north if it suits you. Though you shall have to make exceptions for some of us if you choose the hermit life. I do not really count as company anymore, after all.

The world is open to you, Caleb Widogast, and you deserve nothing less than all its bounty.

At the market this morning, I acquired these seeds, which I am assured will grow into something very special. I hope you will plant them when you do feel ready to put down roots. 

Yours,

Essek

P.S. If you are still in a mood, do let me know, and I will join you at your convenience.

Caleb to Essek, tucked into a seed catalogue:

My Dear Essek,

How good you were to come and chivvy me out of my dull mood last night. I hope you know I do not expect you to always be at my beck and call, but it did help a good deal to lose myself in discussion with you.

I always miss you as soon as  you are gone, of course, but that is the way of things.

Your seeds sparked an idea. Do you think I should put in a garden this summer? There is room enough behind the cottage, and it is all walled in, so it could not get too out of control. Would you help if I made the attempt? And are there any particular vegetables you prefer? I will naturally plant some green beans, but what else shall we attempt? Feel free to circle anything that looks interesting, and I will make an order.

Also, Jester will be in port next week and wants us all to have brunch at the place she and Fjord just bought. Will you come?

Yours,

C

Essek to Caleb, on the paper wrapped around a bear claw, still warm:

Caleb,

Do you think these will suit for brunch? I do not really have a taste for sweet things, and so I can never tell what will please Jester. I can only deduce she prefers as much sugar as possible. That cannot be all there is to it? 

I thought a dozen would do, but do you think she has invited the rest of the crew? I should probably bring extras just in case.

Also, Caduceus recommended a few books to me, and I believe it is about the time for planting cabbages if we want them to flourish. Shall I come a few days early to make a start? We have not even tilled yet. 

Am I being too eager? You must let me know if I am. If you do no protest, I will see you in a few days.

Yours,

Essek

Caleb to Essek, on the back of a short grocery list:

My Dear,

If you are still in Whitestone, would  you mind picking up a wedge of that excellent Cantal for dinner? I am making Käsespätzle, and I think it would be a good addition. If you have moved on, I trust to your excellent taste to select something equally suitable. 

I have  already decanted the wine. See you soon.

X C

Chapter Text

“Essek?” The gentle tapping at the door makes him flinch and hunch even further over the desk. “Essek, will you not let me in?”

Essek grits his teeth, but does not reply. What could he say? He can barely think what to write. The panicked scrawl on the page beneath his hand is evidence enough of that. He’s struggling to connect his thoughts, and his hands have been shaking, making everything difficult to read.

In a fit of disgust, he crumples the whole thing and tosses it into the wastepaper basket.

“Bitte, Essek,” Caleb’s voice comes again. “I only wish to talk.”

What had Essek been thinking? He wasn’t. Stupid. Stupid. He takes a deep breath in, holds it until he cannot any longer, then releases it slowly. He forces himself to unclench his fingers where they have knotted in his hair, smooths out a fresh sheet of parchment, and tries again.

He had let his guard down, was the thing. Essek’s guard around Caleb is a flimsy thing to begin with, at least it is nowadays. Whittled down to only the most necessary precautions. There are so few lines between them anymore. And still Essek had found one, and crossed it, and ruined everything. 

They had been making breakfast together. They could easily have stayed in the tower and had the cats whip something up for them, but Caleb, when not on the road, has turned out to have quite the interest in cooking. So when his companion had risen this morning and found Essek in the library, Caleb had dismissed the tower and they had gone down together to the cottage kitchen. 

Essek had been charged with slicing tomatoes and mushrooms while Caleb manned the frying pan. Essek looked out the kitchen window to the garden, fresh green shoots just now starting to poke out of the dark, neatly-tilled rows and by his shoulder Caleb hummed something jaunty — a polka, maybe, that Essek couldn’t quite place — and the scent of cooking bacon filled the air. 

Idyllic is what it had been, and Essek had let the comfort of it relax all of his final defenses. They worked around each other almost like a dance, Caleb side-stepping to let Essek throw the vegetables in the pan, both performing a little twirl and switch so Caleb could pick some fresh thyme from the window box to add to the eggs. 

When Essek had reached up to one of the high shelves for the jar of chili oil, employing his usual cantrip to float, Caleb had tugged him back down by his wrist like an errant balloon, and they had ended up chest to chest. 

“Be careful with the chili, dear,” Caleb had said, crooked grin on full display. “I want to taste my meal.”

They had been so close that his breath ruffled the curls on Essek’s forehead, and the little crows feet around his eyes crinkled deeper when he smiled. Essek had felt so bright and buoyant and easy that he might have been made of sunlight itself.

“Someday I’ll teach you to appreciate spice,” he murmured.

Then, without at single thought in his light-blighted head, he stretched up onto his toes and planted a gentle kiss on that beloved, lop-sided mouth.

He’d been so dazed and happy that, when he blinked his eyes open, it had taken a full five seconds of staring at the shocked, rictus expression on Caleb’s face to realize he’d done anything at all out of the ordinary. 

When realization hit, it was like a bolt of called lightning, searing through all of Essek’s nerve endings at once. 

He’d taken a halting step back, directing his eyes to the stone floor.

“I-I didn’t …” Essek had stammered, but had been unable to find the end of the sentence. 

Instead of trying, he fled up the stairs and into the bedroom, throwing the bolt as he did. 

And now Essek has to find a way to apologize. To set the affront of the liberties he has taken right again. To do that while knowing that it will never be the same between them again. Never so easy or carefree. Because now Caleb knows what Essek truly wants from him, and it is something he would never willingly give.  

The words consume him so much that he only tangentially notices when the knocking on the door ceases and soon after is replaced by a gentle pawing and an inquisitive meow. 

One of the strays that comes and goes from Caleb’s home on a regular basis now, no doubt. He still refuses to keep one for a pet. Instead, he installed a cat door and keeps the water and food bowls in the kitchen filled for any enterprising felines in need. The tradition is entrenched despite the night that Essek had roused from a trance on the sofa to find a razor-toothed possum staring at him from a nest it had made of his coat. 

The noise he had let out at the sight was perhaps not quite dignified, but had hardly been worth the giggles he received from Caleb on that occasion. Only after he had dismissed the fireball that had been twitching in his palms when he ran downstairs at the sounds of Essek’s distress, or course.

But Essek has no time for fond memories, or for worries over stray cats as he signs his name with a forceful jab to the end of the letter. 

The best thing, surely, will be to leave Caleb in peace. Safe alone in his home without Essek’s unwanted presence. Able to put up wards if he wishes to bar Essek from returning. 

He will, perhaps, never see the cottage again. This place where he has been so happy. The very thought is staggering, but Essek can’t stay to dwell upon the wound. 

He folds the letter and addresses it, placing it in the center of Caleb’s desk before running one last palm over it to smooth the edges. Then he stands, unbolts the bedroom door, and teleports away.

*

Caleb’s ears twitch curiously when he hears the snick of the bolt. His yowls and his pawing at the door had produced no effect in the past few minutes, but now perhaps something has changed. 

A few slaps of his paw, and a handful of headbutts, and the door is swinging open. Caleb pads through on light, silent feet. He sniffs, and the sharp scent of ozone makes his nose tingle and his whiskers twitch. He sneezes. 

He can’t quite recall now why it was so important to be on the other side of the door. There’s no one here. But there is a familiar smell. The smell of a person. His person was here, not so long ago. Caleb’s tail twitches happily at this knowledge, and he prowls through the room, looking for the place where the smell is strongest. 

That place, in the end, is the desk by the window. Caleb stretches his legs to leap gracefully up onto the desktop. There’s a piece of paper there that makes an interesting crinkle when he paws at it, and this amuses him for a few minutes until he notices that the paper just so happens to be directly a the center of a midmorning sunbeam. 

Sunbeams are very pleasant things, Caleb thinks, appreciating the crinkle one more time as he stretches his ginger paws and then curls up in a ball to take a nap in the sun.

Caleb is awoken abruptly when he tumbles off the desk and onto his ass as his polymorph spell fades. A piece of paper flutters down into his lap where he sits, stunned and smarting. It takes him a moment to remember what he had been doing and why. 

He’d polymorphed into a cat hoping a feline presence might soothe Essek, but even plaintive kitten yowls couldn’t persuade him to open the door. Essek had been very upset. Why had he been upset? Caleb’s brain is still fuzzy. Furry, rather. He shakes himself a little. 

The paper in his lap has his own name scrawled across the front in Essek’s handwriting. Which means he is gone. He must be. Essek was upset, and now he is gone. Because …

Schieße. He’s gone because Essek had kissed him, kissed him like it was nothing. Like it was natural. And it was. But then Caleb had frozen — shocked and unbelieving — for a few crucial moments.

“Ach, Ich bin ein Arschloch,” Caleb mutters to himself, letting his head thunk down into his hands.

A knot of worry forming in his stomach, he unfolds the page that Essek left for him. Inside, naturally, he finds a letter.

Caleb,

I can do nothing but beg forgiveness for trespassing upon your person this morning. It was an uncalled for transgression and I have no excuse to offer but my own foolishness and my blighted imagination. 

Please be assured that nothing of the kind will ever happen again. It was a lapse. A terrible lapse, but I can control myself. I will. If I am ever again welcome in your company.

You would, of course, be fully in the right to banish me forever from your presence. I deserve that punishment, for this and numerous other sins. Believe me when I tell you I would feel it as such. 

I hope only that your thus-far unprecedented mercy in the face of my personal sins will hold out a little longer. 

What I fear the most, more even than you turning your back on me at last, is that this new knowledge of my desires will cause you to look differently, more harshly, upon our shared past. Please, Caleb. Dearest one. You must believe me when I tell you that nothing about our friendship has been a lie. 

You know me. I have told many lies. Schemed and scraped and manipulated to get what I wanted. It was my way of life for more than a century before you came crashing in. But the trust and companionship that we have forged between us, that is something different entirely. It is, perhaps, the only thing in this rotten world which I can consider as sacred. 

It is true that I have loved you for these many months. Loved you longer, perhaps, than I would ever care to admit to myself. But I knew from the beginning that there would be no use in scheming for a romance between us. My actions before I met you, my treason, prevent it. I accepted this as a clear-eyed fact long ago.

But unrequited love is not so bad a thing. Not when I can have our letters and our conversations, our visits and our experiments, our petty arguments and our games of Go and our garden. You have granted me so many boons, Caleb Widogast. I could not possibly hope for more. 

It is with upmost selfishness that I pray you will not take these numerous blessings away now that you know my true feelings.

Whatever you decide to do with me, I am certain you will need time to make up your mind. To decide whether or not you will be done with me forever. Perhaps it is wishful thinking on my part, to consider it will be a difficult decision. But I will wait, if waiting is required. And I am here whenever you are ready. If ever you are. 

Until that time, I remain.

Yours,

Essek

There is a threatening tightness in Caleb’s throat as he finishes reading. The fear and anxiety Essek must have felt while writing it practically leak from the page. Because he thinks Caleb does not love him. No, he thinks Caleb cannot love him. A cold shudder of dread works its way through his body at the possible future Essek has painted for them, parted forever. Strangers. 

The dread is followed almost immediately by something different, a ticklish fluttering in his stomach he recognizes and has always tried his best to tamp down before now. A feeling very much like hope. 

What a dear, ridiculous man he is, to think Caleb could ever bear such a thing. He will have to be disabused of the notion as soon as possible.

The most efficient thing would be to send immediately, but something about that strikes Caleb as wrong. Some things must me done properly. Especially ones so long delayed as this. Essek has fled, but Caleb is familiar with many of his boltholes now. He has a notion of where to seek him out, and what to do once he does.

Despite himself, a smile twitches at Caleb’s lips. He pushes himself up to standing, and seeks out a fresh sheet of parchment.

*

Essek had protested when Jester first pressed the key into his hands. He hadn’t wanted, still doesn’t want, to be an imposition upon his friends. But she had insisted with an exasperated: “But Eeeesssseeek, we’re barely there anyway. You’d be doing us a favor if you stopped by. You can water the plants!”

If there were ever any plants to water in Jester and Fjord’s little house by the sea, they have long-since dried up and been discarded. Now the only flowers are the ones that Jester has painted on the walls — on the outer facade, throughout the first floor, and up to the tiny attic room that is meant for guests. There is a field of wildflowers across one wall in the room — Essek counts six dicks hidden within the mural before he even sets his bag down. 

That done, he slumps down on the end of the bed and sighs. He’s grateful, now, that she forced the key on him. Grateful for the care she’s taken with him. And yet also, perhaps wickedly, grateful that she and Fjord are at sea just now, and that he can be alone to nurse his wounds. Self-inflicted though they may be.

Essek feels as though all the energy left his body the moment he landed in Nicodranas. His stomach is a tangle of knots, and his veins feel as though they pump nothing but regret. And yet. And yet perhaps this was inevitable. Could he really have gone on pretending forever to feel less than he felt? 

Maybe it is better to have the truth out now, rather than years down the road. Now there is still the faintest possibility that he may be forgiven. He clings very desperately to that possibility. 

His self-pity is interrupted by a light tapping against the glass of the window. 

It hardly ever rains in Nicodranas, Essek thinks, but perhaps the weather has decided to match his mood. He closes his eyes, thinking the rhythm of rain on glass might make it easier for him to trance. He doesn’t need to yet, strictly speaking, but being just a bit outside of his body right now sounds nice. 

The tapping grows sharper, more insistent. It seems far more in line with a torrent than a gentle spring rain. Essek blinks his eyes open and looks out the window. 

It is a perfectly bright, sunny day. Essek’s view of the sea wall and the water below is marred only by the pale crepe myrtle that hangs over the top of the window like a fringe, and the little russet bird tapping insistently at the window pane, a folded piece of parchment grasped in its beak.

Essek’s heart give a little flutter as he throws the window open. It is a new interpretation of their old method of sending messages, but Essek recognizes Caleb’s signature style. 

“Well, come along then,” he says to the little creature, who immediately hops onto the sill and drops the folded paper into Essek’s waiting hand. It chirrups at him, then unfolds its wings and flutters up to perch upon the slanted beams of the roof. 

Essek will have to think of a way to persuade it down and out of the house soon enough. For now, however, he is transfixed by the paper in his palm. 

His name is just there, in Caleb’s bold writing, and Essek feels as though his heart is held in a tight fist, slowly squeezing the life from him. 

It seems too soon for any sort of reply from Caleb. He had expected days, if not weeks, of silence. Now Essek cannot work out whether the swiftness of this letter is a sign of good or bad things. 

Either way, the grip around his heart tightens further, and Essek has a name for the sensation now. It is dread.

Gritting his teeth, Essek forces himself to unfold the parchment, scans the very brief missive, feels his stomach drop like a stone, out of his body and through the floor, and down into the center of the world. 

Essek, 

I fear I cannot accept your apology. You are sorry for entirely the wrong thing. 

Yours,

Caleb

He is holding the paper so tightly in his hands that it rips right down the center. Essek feels his knees wobble beneath him. It is no more than he expected, really. He was preparing for dismissal. He was prepared. Only he did not expect it so soon, or so short…

“Will you not ask me?”

The voice at his back nearly separates Essek’s soul from his body. He whirls on his still unstable legs to find Caleb there in his room, leaned against the wall as though it were the most natural thing in the world. 

“I-I had quite forgotten,” Essek stammers. “Your fondness for polymorph.”

Unbidden, his hand has come up to clutch at his chest, like a startled old woman. 

Caleb could not present a more vibrant contrast. He is dressed casually for the warm Nicodranas spring in a linen shirt and his book holsters, his posture loose. He is somehow contriving to look up at Essek through golden lashes, his very presence accompanied by a breeze that carries the scent of blooming flowers and the sea. 

“It is quite a lapse in your memory, my dear,” Caleb says, his mouth tilted down in that odd way that Essek knows indicates amusement. “Essek, will you really not ask me?”

It stings, to be considered amusing just now. Of all the reactions Essek had envisioned, this was not one of them.

“Ask you what?” He manages, voice trembling. 

“You know very well,” Caleb says, raising his head to look Essek full in the face. There is a flash of determination in his eyes that cautions Essek that this is not the time to play dumb, even if he would like to. 

This is so much worse than being reprimanded or mocked in a letter. To have to face him like this is almost intolerable. The only thing worse will be when he is gone.

“What —” Essek has to pause, to swallow, to find a reserve of stillness in himself, somehow. It is difficult. “What is the right thing to apologize for?”

“For leaving,” Caleb responds solemnly. “Without kissing me properly.”

Essek is vaguely aware of staring. He feels himself blinking at a distance. But all of those bodily functions occur separately from his mind, which is a perfect white-hot blank. 

Mind and body are jolted back together when he stumbles forward — nearly falling on his face — and finds he has already covered half the distance between Caleb and himself. He completes the journey still a bit dazed. 

Essek stops once he is close enough to smell that familiar scent of leather and ink, to see the prickle of stubble along Caleb’s jaw and see the crinkle of the crows feet at his eyes when he smiles. 

And he is smiling now, bright as anything, as Essek fumbles to take his hand, bringing it up to brush his lips reverently across Caleb’s knuckles. He does not mistake, he thinks, the sharp inhale the action elicits.

“I am so sorry, dearest,” he says. “For not staying to do things properly. Is there anything I can do to set it right?”

“I—” Caleb pauses to lick his lips, a motion Essek cannot help but echo. “I have every faith in you.”

It is as easy as giving way to gravity, Essek finds as he leans in and kisses Caleb for the second time that day. His lips are warm and rough, and they slot against Essek’s as through they were meant for just this.

Essek’s heart is still in a vice-grip of uncertainty until the moment those lips part, and Caleb is kissing him back, pulling him in with an insistent grip to slot their bodies together. Then Essek melts in relief and allows himself to be maneuvered in whatever way that Caleb likes. 

What he likes it seems, is for them to be as close as possible, and Essek has no complaints. He takes this opportunity map the jut of Caleb’s jaw with his lips, finds the soft give of his throat and skims it with his fangs just to make Caleb shudder and cling. 

“You did not kiss me back, before,” Essek whispers into Caleb’s collarbone, feeling his cheeks heat as he does. He both doesn’t want to break concentration on this magic they are weaving together and has to understand. “I believed I had … overstepped. Horribly.”

A hand under his chin pulls him gently from the safe harbor he’s found in Caleb’s shoulder, guiding him up until they are eye to eye.

“You did not give me very much time to understand what was happening,” Caleb says, a smile playing at his lips. “And I was very shocked.”

“I thought I must be an open book to you.”

Essek leans one heated cheek into the palm of Caleb’s hand, closes his eyes to get a little relief from the intensity of that gaze. He feels a rough thumb skim over his cheekbone. 

“I don’t think either of us have been very good at hiding how much we feel for each other,” Caleb says, his lips brushing featherlight against Essek’s eyelids, first one, then the other. “But we never bothered to specify what those feelings were. I was writing you love letters long before I realized what I was doing. But you have always been more controlled in your affection than I.”

Essek bites down hard on his tongue at the warm sensation of lips on his forehead. His stomach sloshes with guilt and desire, remembers the last time he was kissed in that spot. Love letters. His were, certainly. But Caleb’s … Well, he is just beginning to see the shape of it. Of the meaning hidden between the lines on the page. 

“I never felt in control around you,” he whispers. “You unbalanced me from the very start.”

“Is it awful if I say I liked seeing you unbalanced sometimes? That first night you came to see me in Rexxentrum, you were —”

“Drunk,” Essek says with a little groan. “Terribly drunk.”

“Charming,” Caleb corrects, fingers sweeping up into Essek’s hair, rubbing gentle circles into his scalp and no doubt making a nest of his hair. “And maybe a little drunk, ja. You kissed me before you left and I thought maybe, just maybe. But you had given me so little indication that you … That is, I did not think you cared much for physical affection. And that would be fine. I thought there was no need to overturn the boat, as it were, so long as we could have a life together. That is still the most important thing to me, Essek. I don’t know how to do without you anymore.”

There is a catch in his voice when he says the last, and Essek’s eyes fly open. Desperation suffuses Caleb’s face when he looks down at Essek, his eyes shining and wet. Even after all this time, it’s baffling how well Caleb can read him. 

“You are right that I do not generally care for, ah, physical relationships,” he says, and instantly feels Caleb’s body tense, preparing to pull back.

That simply won’t do. 

Essek fists the back of his shirt, pulling them flush together. His body is a warm, solid line against Essek’s own, simultaneously calming and …. Well, not. He tilts his head up to trace the way Caleb’s face contorts in confusion.

“But you must realize, Caleb Widogast, that you are the rare exception to all of my rules.”

He feels the tension release from the other man’s body, the way he sinks bonelessly against Essek.

“Is that so?” he asks, voice a warm puff of breath across Essek’s neck that makes his ears twitch up in interest.

“I want you in every way it is possible to want, dearest,” he says, bringing a hand up to cup Caleb’s neck and pull him down into a bruising kiss. 

It is a point to prove, and a desire to indulge, and it is a long time before either of them pulls away to take a breath, and take stock. 

There is a bruise forming just shy of the hollow of Caleb’s throat, and his shirt buttons have been undone enough to reveal a thick thatch of gold-red hair. Essek can feel his cheeks and chin sting with scrape of stubble against his skin, and his tunic is hanging on only by one shoulder. 

He blinks, breathing heavily and finally remembering where they are. One of his hands comes up to Caleb’s chest to hold him in place, fingers scratching absently across his skin. Caleb whines and stretches down to brush lips over Essek’s fingertips.

“I would very much like to continue this discussion,” Essek says, feeling tipsy and overwhelmed. “Only — stop that, Caleb — I have a dreadful fear that Jester will know exactly what we have done in this room the second she gets home.”

Caleb freezes at that, looking around the room with consideration. 

“Schieße,” he curses. “It does sound like something she could do. What, ach —” he reaches out to grasp Essek’s hand to stop his scratching. “Let me think, my dear. What shall we do?”

Essek cannot help but turn their hands so he can place a kiss in Caleb’s palm before looking up into that beloved face.

“Take me home, Caleb,” he says. 

“H —” Caleb’s laugh is as light as a bird in flight and just as joyful. “Home. Ja, I think I can manage home.”

And, with only one hand for the somatics — the other wrapped firmly around Essek’s own — he does just that. 

Chapter Text

Essek wakes to a slanted beam of sunlight shifting into his eyes. He winces, squints, mutters under his breath about inadequate window hangings, and shifts away from the light and toward the opposite side of the bed. 

Which is … Empty. He shuffles his body over into the unoccupied space where Caleb ought to be and flops face-first into the pillow there. It’s cold, which is irritating, but it still smells of Caleb — leather, ink, magic … perfect. The combination is so soothing that it threatens to lull him into another nap. 

It’s been ages since Essek slept properly. He doesn’t really need to do so under most circumstances. But it had been a long, emotional day, and he found himself quite worn out. It had been nice to drift off with Caleb wrapped around him like an octopus, face smushed into the hollow of Essek’s neck and already snoring softly. It is less nice to wake up alone after their first real night together. The first after being honest with each other, at least. The first of many, Essek hopes. He would like to be reassured of such by a sleepy Zemnian with bed-ruffled hair, but that comfort will apparently be denied him.

Caleb’s absence makes him tetchy. The more he contemplates it, the more upset he becomes. He stretches and turns, trying to find a comfortable position, he takes his frustration out on the pillow, punching it several times to persuade it into a less irritating shape, then slips his hand underneath it to curl up again.

The glare of the sun is somehow even worse from his position on Caleb’s pillow. Essek growls, levers himself up to give it a few more punches, but when he looks down at the dappled light that dances across the sprigged cotton, his eyes catch on a pattern.

Essek rubs at his eyes, tries to focus. As he reads, he feels an embarrassingly soppy smile spread across his face. 

My Dear,

Difficult as it was to tear myself from bed this morning, I thought it prudent not to linger over-long lest I make a fool of myself. It is probably not the done thing to spend as many hours as I might wish memorizing the patterns of your freckles or studying the way you snore. Yes, you do snore, Schatz, do not contradict me. It is quite endearing. 

To wake this morning and find you so comfortably sleeping in my bed, in my arms. Well. Have you ever longed for something so completely that to have it at last feels almost too much to bear? 

I have been trying to think of how to tell you. How to explain what I feel. You know me, my dear, and the workings of my mind. I cannot rest until I can quantify a thing, put it into its proper configuration, write it down on good quality paper with the right ink. And this thing between us is so much bigger than a spell or incantation. So I must try. 

Essek Thelyss. I love you like the chiming of a clock. With the same slow, inexorable tick of time passing. Now it is sunrise, now mid-morn, now teatime. Now I love you, and I love you, and I love you. Clicking ever onward. It would be a monotony did it not strike me fresh at each new turning of the cog. Now it is time to put the laundry away, now to wash the dishes, now to sweep the floors and I love you new and old and always. 

I felt the truth of it in my marrow long before I understood the shape of it. You have been by turns my puzzle, my tutor, my bane, my weakness, my friend. I hope you will always be my friend. But nearly as much as that I wish for you to simply remain mine, as I am yours. 

When you are ready — and if I have not yet scared you away with my blathering — do come downstairs. I am making eggs and bacon the way you like them. Sunny-side up, plenty of chili oil, wholegrain toast. 

X,

C

With a sigh that is half laugh, Essek buries his face in Caleb’s pillow and feels the magic of the letter dissipate around him. It is a tickling, fluttering feeling, like movement of moths wings yet warm as morning sunlight. 

He shakes his head a little at the giddiness in his own heart, then he hauls himself out of bed and steals Caleb’s robe from off the bedpost. He runs his fingers over the sun-warmed pillow once more before heading downstairs, where his breakfast and his wizard are waiting.

 *

Caleb is sitting on the stoop of his cottage stringing beans. It is a pleasantly warm summer day,  and the harvest from the vines slowly climbing their way up the frame of the front door has already been plentiful. 

It is a soothingly mindless task. He snaps off the two ends of each bean, pulls the attached string, and tosses the prepared vegetables into a clean bowl resting by his hip. He used to perform this task for his mother, sitting in the dirt while she weeded the garden and hummed a tune under her breath. 

He hums to himself now, one of her favorites — a song in a minor key about wanderers in the wilderness — and in the back of his mind he considers whether or not Essek will be home tonight for dinner and if he should steam the beans as his partner would prefer or cook them with a little bacon fat as his mother used to do when he was small. Caleb sighs. Sometimes compromises must be made, even if it does result in inferior green beans.

He has moved on to pondering the components for a new spell that he and Essek have been working on in their downtime when his fingers snag on something in their monotonous work. Caleb blinks himself back into awareness of his surroundings and looks down to his lap where his thumb is worrying over the sharp edge of a piece of paper. A piece of paper sticking incongruously out from the exposed end of a green bean. 

“What in the hells?” Caleb mutters. 

He uses the edge of thumbnail to split the bean down its seam and opens it up. There, rolled into a tight cylinder, is a piece of pale paper sitting stark against bright viridian. With a delicate touch, Caleb plucks it from its nest and unrolls it. It is longer than should be feasible given the space constraints, though it was clear from the beginning that some magic must be involved in order to secret a message into a green bean. 

“Magic beans,” he says, shaking his head. Sometimes Essek’s whimsical streak catches him completely off guard, and it is always delightful.

He blinks away the glare of the sunlight and reads.

My Dear Friend,

Do you remember, I wonder, the spring you wrote to me about your reluctance to adopt a cat? You were struggling to find a place to feel at home, and I sent you these seeds to plant when you found the right place for them.

If you are reading this letter, then those seeds have flowered and fruited. My sincere hope is that the man to whom I now write is settled in his mind and in his bones. That his roots are set deep and strong in welcoming ground.

There is nothing wrong with seeking. I begin to think that will ever be my path, and the prospect is not entirely unpleasant. But if anyone I know has ever deserved the peace of a friendly patch of earth, it is you. I can already see your face turning down into a grimace as I write that. Stop. You really must trust my judgment on this issue, Caleb. I am older, and one should respect one’s elders, you know. 

Can I share with you a very selfish wish? In the distant future — my future, your present where you are no doubt happy and contented and papa to at least half a dozen cats —I hope against all reason and just deserts that there is a spot in your garden plot reserved for me. I hope that we are still such fixtures in each others orbits that there is a bench beneath some shady apple tree or a break in the strawberry bushes that you look at as you tend your charges and think of as solely mine. 

It is the height of solipsism, is it not? To set out to claim a such a place of honor in someone’s heart and home? But you know all my worst traits by now. You will not be shocked or surprised. 

I must admit to myself here and now that this little bit of time travel I am attempting is not without its risks. It is just as likely that when this letter finds you, you will have to search through your very reliable memory for a recollection of your old friend Essek. Maybe we have fallen out or drifted away. Maybe some of my sins have finally caught up with me. 

If that is the case, my dear friend, I do beg you will sometimes pause in your gardening or teaching or spell crafting or cooking — whatever task fills your happy days — and spare a thought for me. I can safely assure you that you will never be far from the mind of my future self, whatever that fellow’s fate may be. 

Perhaps you will even be kind enough to take the time to sit down and write your old friend a letter. I am certain he longs for a missive from you just as much as I do, having just sent you a different letter in a different time. 

In the present I am still in Whitestone. I have been badgering the local stonemasons to learn who designed the town’s remarkable clock tower as I have several questions I would like to put to its inventor. I am also hoping for a letter from you inviting me to dinner.  

I feel very foolish sometimes, when I admit to myself how hungry I am for your company. For your time. For you words. Knowing it may be many years before you read this is making me reckless. Write me a letter, Caleb Widogast. In the present. In the future. In any time or age. 

Love,

Essek

Caleb’s throat is painfully tight. He runs his fingers across the valediction, wonders if he could read it only by feel by now. 

Essek has signed letters to him thus countless times in recent months. On gossipy letters left in their coat pocket, in steam on the bathroom mirror, on short notes left on the kitchen counter telling him to buy more milk or not to feed Ermentrude because the grey tabby who has adopted them has already had her supper.

This, though. This is the first time Essek ever signed a letter to him with love. He wrote it down and sent it off to Caleb in a time capsule, biding its time. 

“So dramatic, my dear,” Caleb says, folding the letter tenderly and placing it in the front pocket of his shirt. This one deserves to be properly archived. 

He blinks until his vision clears, then gathers up his harvest and looks down the winding cobblestone street that passes his front door. There, just turning the corner, he sees a familiar blond figure. Caleb smiles to himself. He should make a start on dinner. Essek will be hungry when he gets home.