Archive of Our Own

There are three Aeorian reversers lying dead in a circle around Essek.

For as painfully quickly as his heart is beating, he feels rather proud of his victory. Essek had never had much experience in combat before becoming entangled with the Mighty Nein. Exploring the praxis of the arcane theories he’d spent so many decades perfecting within the controlled environment of his home laboratory has repeatedly been a very humbling experience.

It is a very different thing entirely to torture a restrained prisoner than it is to fend off multiple ancient beasts that were constructed specifically with his demise in mind.

During their prior expedition into Aeor, with the entirety of the Mighty Nein volleying attacks of their own and diverting the attention of the guardians and monsters that set upon them, Essek had continually found himself holding back his deadliest spells for fear that a miscalculation in trajectory or distance would, not for the first time, catch his new and first friends within the boundaries of his work.

But tonight he has defeated three of the beasts entirely on his own and the torsion of their bodies render a gruesome illustration of applied Graviturgy across some frigid and forgotten street of Aeor. Even more impressively, Essek himself is hardly the worse for wear. His only injuries consist of what few bruises and scrapes he’d collected at the onset of the battle when he’d tumbled over the cliff that now looms over them.

His levitation spell has been an incomparable asset in his life in so many ways, but, like many other spells that served him so well in Rosohna, it is not well-suited for his current adventure. It is, as he has just verified by way of unanticipated field experiment, useless for detecting when the road is abruptly ending in a sixty-foot drop beneath him.

Essek briefly entertains the idea of pissing on the reversers, which is something Caleb has done a handful of times and something Essek thinks may ratify his membership within Nein. But he’d abandoned the safety of Caleb’s dome in the first place for privacy in which to relieve himself and the thought sits uncomfortably in his gut even as it occurs to him. So he retreats around the corner of a half-standing building to conclude the business he’d not had a chance to resolve prior to the interruption.

When he is finished, he returns to study the cliff face.

The cliff was presumably created in the crash and definitely created after Aeor was inhabitable. Where Essek stands now is a street and about sixty feet up is the same street and in the middle of that is a sheer drop. There is a building to his right which slouches forlornly against the scarp, its other half largely constituted by a pile of rubble up above them with only a few surviving beams to recollect what it had once been.

At the higher portion of the street, roughly a hundred feet from the drop and safely inside a building that seemed to have once been a cafeteria of some sort, Caleb is asleep within his dome. Until about three minutes earlier, that was where Essek had been preparing to bed down himself. But nature had called and, in spite of Jester’s near-daily inquiries into the regularities of Essek’s bowel movements and Essek’s personal endeavors to be at least moderately more forthcoming with personal matters, the thought of taking a piss near enough to the dome that Caleb might have possibly heard, seen, or smelled something was enough to still heat Essek’s cheeks with hypothetical embarrassment.

So he’d slipped away for only a few moments and then the reversers had appeared and he’d not paid close enough attention to where he was going and now he’s got an entirely new problem to deal with.

Most days, the present problem would not be a problem. Even just a few hours prior, it would not have been a problem. But Essek and Caleb had begun their morning fending off an attack from two absorbers and then a giant salamander that had been drawn to the sounds of the absorber fight. The afternoon subsequently had found them inside what had once been an impressive laboratory operated by a properly paranoid faction of mages and they’d each expended quite a number of spells in disarming the traps they’d encountered and retaliating against the ones they’d triggered.

And then there were the spells he’d cast just to impress Caleb.

All in all, it has been a long and trying day, which is how Essek is now stuck at the bottom of a steep cliff, his joints aching, dispossessed of his cloak, robe, and boots, and with only his most rudimentary spells still at his disposal.

The climb up would be, he imagines, perfectly feasible for Beauregard were she in his position, but attempting it himself would likely only serve to embarrass and/or injure Essek further.

With his magical reserves so tapped, Essek would need to shout if he wanted Caleb to come to his aid and that much noise would very likely put them both at risk of another attack. And though there is a vain part of him that would like for Caleb to appreciate his single-handed victory, he is loath to awaken him and force him to dispel the dome in the middle of his rest just to throw down a rope that Essek will likely be unable to climb anyway.

(And if he does call for Caleb, he will have to explain why he left the comfort and warmth of the dome in the first place, which he would greatly like to avoid.)

Besides, he thinks as he rubs his bare arms, it is not as if the cliff will stretch the full length of the city. He needs only follow it until it leads to another route back.

Aeor is always dark, which has proved an occasional frustration for Caleb but which is familiar to Essek. Unlike Rosohna, however, there are no streetlights to breakup the pitch and, now as he makes his way through the derelict streets, he is surprised by how utterly lightless the city is. The malformed buildings and piles of rubble, turned carts and carriages of unfamiliar design, those are easy enough to make out. But beyond them the shadows become overwhelming and the darkness twists into bizarre and threatening silhouettes that loom over him.

This deep in the ruins there is no snow, which is a small fortune. Intermittently, he will pass a small waterfall that pours from where the ground of the upper layers of the city have cracked open, but mostly it is too cold and the ice fills the holes.

Essek has always been a very intelligent man and, as this truly extraordinary past year has taught him many times over, this intelligence has made him unduly prideful. It is pride that emboldens him to imagine utilizing the Temporal Dock when their meandering path through the city returns them there. It is that pride that has created all of the many sins he’d love to rescind. Most presently, it is that pride that has consigned him now to wander the streets of an ancient ruin clad only in his underclothes.

As he searches for a route back to Caleb, he takes to alternating the placement of his hands. If he covers his nose and mouth, then his breath will warm his face but the cold air sinks into the backs of his hands and makes his fingers stiff and painful. If he shoves his hands into his armpits, then his fingers can warm up enough to be of some use, but his nose and lips sting and grow chapped.

Essek has not stopped shivering since the initial burst of adrenaline had faded and left him lightly sweating.

He had assumed as he left that the outside estimate of two minutes he might require to locate some privacy, relieve himself, and return to the dome was not enough time to make the process of reacquainting himself with his boots worthwhile. He’d been eager to avoid the effort of working his often-mutinous ankles into his stiff footwear, but by now even his thick socks feel like the thinnest linen and he is paying for this decision. His feet are heavy and painfully numb.

Essek finds a crater before he finds a way up. The shape of it is that of a spider, wide in its central part with spindling cracks reaching out across the ground in many directions. When he peers into it, he cannot see a bottom, but the edges of it are jagged to the limits of his vision like the rowed teeth of a shark. The crater is not large enough to cause him to turn back around, but, in order to continue on his path, he must work his way circuitously around its edges, meandering around the outstretched legs and following its odd turns.

The chill against the length of his ears grows and expands until it encompasses his head and his skull throbs. He adds to his rotation of hand placements: armpits, nose, ears.

Perhaps this is why humans evolved such absurdly small ears. They must be much easier to cover in cold environments. He envies Caleb’s.

Essek is faced with a sudden corner: the edge of a hole surrounds him on two sides and he cannot remember from which direction he came.

He turns and looks but he has, of course, left no footprints behind. Had he been walking, he likely wouldn’t have been able to make it far enough from the dome to encounter the reversers in the first place. He crouches down to see if his feet may have dragged against the ground, because he is almost certain he is cold enough that he would not have felt it, but he sees nothing.

The two paths before him look the same. Each follows the irregular but unmemorable rim of the crater and heads off into a mess of vague dark fangs that had once been buildings.

Essek attempts to estimate a distance of a few paces as he travels along the left path. When he looks again, he cannot say whether or not his surroundings have become any more or less familiar than they had been a moment ago.

He turns and goes back the opposite route and finds himself faced with much the same scene. To one side of him is an endless black pit, to the other lies heaps of rubble and distorted buildings.

He has no idea which direction he came from.

He has no idea where Caleb is.

By now he is a somnambulist, thoughtlessly wandering without direction. He has no idea how long he has spent in this state, at this task, how long he has been searching or what exactly he’s searching for. He does not know now if he should be hoping to discover a way forward or a way back.

The cold pierces icy claws into his joints and makes them ache worse than usual.

Aeor has not been kind to Essek’s body. The days when he cannot walk unaided have plagued him since his youth and the freezing temperatures of the far north have made even his good days markedly less pleasant. It was manageable enough at the outpost, where he remained largely indoors to oversee the operation and could easily make use of a fire or utilize his warming orb in ways that were not conductive to mobility. But the long days exploring beside Caleb have often ended with the sensation of ice shards becoming somehow lodged within his ankles and knees and hips.

It has been a blessing that humans require so much sleep because Essek has been able to make use of that time to get himself properly upright and moving before Caleb wakes.

Now he's so stiff in places well beyond the typical bounds of his condition it’s as if he’s frozen solid. He is still shivering, which he recalls is a good sign, but that too makes him feel miserable. Each shudder pulls at his tense muscles, grinds his chattering teeth, makes him feel as if he might shatter here in the street and all Caleb will ever find are strewn shards of a selfish wizard whose arrogance has finally done him in for good.

A growl in the distance returns Essek to his body.

How near the creature is is unclear to him. The skin of his ears burns when he strains after the sound. When he holds his breath to keep quiet enough to hear better, his raw throat and frozen lungs feel stretched beyond their limits.

The landscape remains foreign and daunting. He has no idea how long he’s been wandering. He has no idea how many crumbled structures he’s passed. There are no landmarks he recognizes, no signs of whether he’s passed this way before already or not.

Perhaps he’s been out here for hours. Perhaps Caleb has already awoken to find himself abandoned in their small camp.

Caleb would know how long he’s been gone. Caleb always knows precisely what time it is and can measure intervals with only his mind like the most accurate clock. Essek briefly begins to ask before he realizes that he’s delirious.

It’s as if something has slipped between his fingers and he is faced with the fact that he can no longer find his way, whatever way that may be.

His skin has grown too tight on his body. His muscles are so tense that he aches in the few remaining parts of himself that he can still feel. The throbbing in his skull has only gotten worse.

Where he’d left Caleb, the buildings had seemed largely industrial. They’d occupied the past three days roaming between scientific facilities and wrecked laboratories and their collection of data has grown large enough that they have been stacking their finds very precisely to be certain they will all fit within Caleb’s amber necklace.

What Essek is passing now looks like homes. It reminds him, vaguely, of the houses he’d seen during his brief stay in Uthodurn. The exteriors here are made of simple stonework, the windows small to keep in the heat. Unlike most houses in Uthodorn, though, the nearest one has its roof caved in.

Essek takes a moment to consider the houses. If he can find some place to hide, from whatever distant beasts may be hunting him at this moment, perhaps he can survive four hours while he rests.

He is just so tired. He cannot recall the last time he struggled so much to keep his levitation spell about him. He’s used it almost constantly since he first devised it, thrilled to finally find a way to move easily and painlessly without advertising his physical shortcomings the way utilizing his crutches had always seemed to. The spell has become second nature over the past century, but now half of his focus is occupied with simply keeping his feet off the ground.

In no conceivable way could Essek’s legs take his weight now. He has long since lost any feeling in his legs which is an imperfect relief given how dubious it was that he could have stood, much less walked, on his own even at the outset of his misadventure and that will only be all the worse after this. Assuming, of course, that he survives this.

Another beastly sound echoes from an unsettlingly near distance. This is not the vague huff of a monster simply wandering about but something that echoes through Essek as a noise that is deeply and primally predatory. This is the grunt of something that is on the hunt, something that has caught his scent. It does not remind him specifically of the noises of any specific Aeorian hunters they’ve encountered in either of their journeys, but it sounds guttural and growling in a way that makes his heart seize.

He can no longer effectively strain to hear the sounds of the encroaching beast but he is certain he has heard its footsteps. It is far too near for his comfort and Essek is in no state to fight. His fingers are too stiff and numb to properly cast and his mind itself feels to be frozen over.

Up the road, at the edges of his vision where the structures bleed and morph together in shadow like the distorted, monstrous remnants of the Cognouza Ward, there appears to be a fully intact house with three visible standing walls and a roof that is still on top of the structure.

Essek propels himself toward the house, sticking to the edge of the street and painstakingly navigating around the piles of rubble. Even without walking, a stray rock or discarded brick can prove a hazard to Essek. Too many times, he’s realized only after the fact how long his feet have been dragging in the snow or tangled in the undergrowth, remaining oblivious until he strikes something or his toes begin to freeze.

Usually, his concern is only in preventing injury. But the lack of sensation in his feet has gotten so bad that now, when Essek fails to properly gauge the height of some long-crumbled piece of masonry, he does not realize his right foot has impacted something until his leg is jerked back and he is tripping.

It is so close to nothing but, in this state, it’s just startling enough and his concentration evaporates in that one moment. His levitation spell slips away from him and what should have been only a small falter, a minor bump and an inconvenience, a mildly painful bruise at the worst, leads to Essek falling and colliding with the bitterly cold cobblestones.

He manages to get his arms out before him to brace his fall but his hands are frozen useless and he strikes the ground on his forearms. The impact jars him enough to clack his teeth together and ends in his collapse on the ground.

Humiliation surges through him as one awful tempest of emotion.

He needs to retreat to shelter but rising to his feet is an impossibility now, which is just as well because his legs would be useless even if he did make it upright, so instead he uses his elbows to drag himself as far as he can. Unsurprisingly, this is not far. The strength is leaking from him with each aching breath and rocks dig into his forearms as he moves.

With gravel embedded into his skin, Essek’s bare shoulder strikes stone and he hauls himself into an approximation of a sitting position. He is spent.

The doorway is only a few feet away, but he can’t reach it now. Whatever meager protection it might have offered Essek will remain unknown and he is left where he is, slouched against the side of the home of some other heretic who died a millennia ago.

At least he does not feel as cold any more. He’s stopped shivering.

After a few minutes, or perhaps longer, or perhaps no time at all, Essek leans his face against the side of the wall. Lassitude swells up within him like the tide and he surrenders himself to it, letting it wash him away toward the complacency of his trance.

The edges of the world begin to dim and fade.

Heavy, open-mouthed breathing echoes down the street, reverberating off tortured and deformed homes, and Essek is towed back to consciousness by the frenzied beating of his heart. The panic bubbles up to his throat and rests there with no release.

The beast has been following him.

This will be a just ending for Essek Thelyss, he supposes. Gored in the street of an abandoned city, frozen from the cold and far from home, all in the pursuit of knowledge beyond, of fixing his past to his liking. He has been done in by his hubris and his audacious disregard for appropriate research safety for the final time.

He can hear footsteps now, just barely. Soft steps of a stealthy creature as it makes its way across the rubble and stone.

Essek may deserve to die for all he’s done, but he doesn’t want to. He is selfish this way, as he is in many ways.

It is close now, it will be upon him soon, and he cannot possibly flee. He has no spells left and, even if he did, he lacks the dexterity to utilize them. He cannot throw a punch, he can hardly make a fist, but he raises his sluggish arms and holds them up to block his face for all the protection it will afford him.

An absorber stalks into view, at last. Though difficult to make out at this distance, its skin seems to be covered in an odd pattern, a curious deviation from the other absorbers they’d seen this morning. It has its nose angled to the ground and its jaw hangs open to reveal long, sharp teeth and terrifying canines. He can hear its heavy, snuffling breathing.

Essek attempts to hold his breath and it is as if he can feel every jagged crystalline edge of the frozen air. His throat and lungs are lacerated from the cold.

The absorber lifts its head and turns toward Essek and he has a moment to feel the crushing weight of his sins before that narrows down to the cruelty of abandoning Caleb during their expedition.

One final, contemptible act before he goes.

The absorber lunges and Essek’s heart seizes.

But it does not strike, it does not bite or slash. It lands to massive paws on either side of Essek’s shoulder and shoves its enormous furry face against his.

Its face is furry.

Essek blinks and the absorber in his vision morphs into the reality of a large, thick-furred tiger that nuzzles against his cheek.

“Caleb?” His voice sounds like shattering ice and hurts leaving his throat.

The tiger chuffs and the warm air from his nostrils against his ear makes Essek dizzy.

It is too dark to make out color but, now that he is able to see beyond his panic, he can see that the shade of the cat’s coat matches Caleb’s hair and the tail ends in a tidy black stripe rather than an engorged eyeball.

“Caleb.” This time he speaks barely above his own breath, the name forming at his tongue rather than his larynx, half of it next to silent.

The tiger makes a noise that sounds more like the deep bellow of cattle than what Essek would expect from a feline and then its broad face distorts and resolves into Caleb’s creased expression.

Essek cannot tell whether the more appropriate adjective for Caleb’s countenance is distressed or doleful. His brow is drawn, his eyes are tight and shiny, and his lips are down-turned and pressed enough to mostly vanish into his beard.

He has only a moment to take in the sight of his friend, to see how hastily he must have dressed and how Essek’s pack is slung across his front, before Caleb pulls him into a hug.

Essek does not hug back. He has before, he usually does these days, though he feels amateurish with each attempt, clumsy and unpracticed. He has to think through where to place his hands, how tightly to hold on, whether to match a chin hooked over his shoulder. He feels incapable of such involved analysis now with his thoughts fuzzy and unfocused. His arms are too numb and heavy to properly reciprocate anyway and he may just ignite.

More than ever, contact with Caleb feels like pressing himself to a lit stove. There is a fire within Caleb’s veins, roiling just under his skin, and Essek often feels the heat of him just standing at his side. It is like nothing he has ever felt before and it excites and intimidates him in equal measure but, in this moment, it burns.

“I woke up and you were gone,” says Caleb. He speaks in between quick and heavy breaths. His chin is pressed to Essek’s shoulder and the bristles of his beard scratch across Essek’s bare skin like sandpaper. “I thought you were beside me.”

Guilt as this act of desertion wrenches Essek’s gut, aided by the pressure of his pack which Caleb had to bear for him. “I am sorry. I promise you, that was not my intention.”

“No, no.” It is only two words, or one word repeated twice, and still the expanse of understanding held within it soothes him.

He breathes in and the warmth of Caleb’s embrace makes the air go down more easily.

After a few long moments, Caleb exhales heavily and pulls back.

Essek’s chest aches at the loss of contact. His lungs frost over.

Caleb moves his hands from clutching the back of Essek’s undershirt to feel gently around his numb arms. “Are you all right? You are very cold,” Caleb observes.

When he rubs his hands up and down, small beads of ice flake off Essek’s skin.

Caleb makes a noise of dismay. “Here, here, we will get you warmed up, you will be all right.” He quickly unwinds his unreasonably long scarf from around his neck and shoulders and wraps it around Essek instead, looping it around his head so that it covers his ears as well. “I have been looking for you for forty-six minutes. How long has it been since you left the dome?”

Essek has not the faintest idea. He could have believed twenty minutes, perhaps. That seems about the full sum of time he can recall of his ordeal. Clearly he is even more disoriented than he’d realized, and Essek is well aware that he is disoriented. On that, at least, he has some clarity.

While Essek does not know the spell himself, his time in the Mighty Nein’s company has given him enough familiarity with Polymorph (more than enough, to be honest) to know that its duration is only an hour. At forty-six minutes, Caleb had been rapidly approaching the time limit on what was likely the dregs of his magical reserves. The day’s challenges had demanded the majority of Caleb’s spells as well. It’s quite possible that Essek could have damned them both with his modesty and hubris, leaving Caleb equally as stranded.

At least Caleb would have been able to find his way back to the original site, though Essek doubts his ability to scale the cliff unaided and the dome would have dispelled at his departure.

“Essek,” says Caleb, which causes Essek to remember he’s been asked a question, though he finds he cannot quite recall what it was.

Something on the topic of their campsite, perhaps.

Caleb produces a sound of unease from the back of his throat and rubs his hand over his mouth. He removes first Essek’s pack from his front then his own from his back. “We need to get you warmed up. It is too cold for you to have been out here for so long.” He removes his own coat and maneuvers Essek’s body until it is wrapped around him.

Caleb’s coat is deeply Empire in its design and that, combined with the color he cannot see at the moment, leaves Essek feeling odd in donning it. He has never worn brown before. The fur lining is soft but it still seems to score his skin like steel wool when Caleb returns to rubbing his arms.

“I am fine. I am warmed enough,” says Essek. His jaw is not responding properly and the words come out in a clatter. This manner of imprecise speaking could kill a spell before it’s even begun. This is precisely the kind of thing he has trained to avoid since the earliest days of his studies.

“Ja, well, this is just not correct, actually,” says Caleb. “And that you think so is troubling. Excuse me.” He drops his right hand from Essek’s arm and begins to fumble blindly into the pocket of his coat. He probes fruitlessly for a moment, still rubbing at Essek’s right arm with his free hand, before he drops that hand too to reach into the pockets of the other side of the coat. “I am thinking backwards,” he comments, with a brief huff of air that may have been laughter just as easily as it may have been frustration.

At last, Caleb produces a handful of phosphorus and four amber lights appear in the air, hovering just over their heads. The light is dim enough to not hurt Essek’s eyes and bright enough for Caleb’s pupils to contract and allow him to actually see his surroundings in his own form.

The globules float outward, bobbing gently in some unseen current, and wash their grim surroundings with gentle amber light. They do not go far, only twenty feet or so, and hover in a small enough semi-circle that, with whatever luck he has saved up for having such an enormously unlucky day, no roaming salamanders or Aeorian guardians will notice from afar.

Beneath this light, Caleb turns his head and gives to their surroundings a consideration that he must not have given when he was moving with his nose to the ground and restricted to the simple thoughts of a large feline predator. He buttons the coat closed over Essek’s chest without looking, misaligning the buttons but successfully enclosing Essek within.

“Caleb, please,” says Essek, indignant at the mollycoddling. The coat is really a bit much, his skin is growing painfully warm and prickly beneath it, even though his legs are still numb and his fingers are useless. He further proves this by attempting to unbutton the coat and failing to acquire any traction on the buttons.

When Caleb looks back to face him again, Essek sees that his expression is harried and frantic. “Stop it, stop it, Essek, bitte.” Caleb pulls Essek’s hands away from the buttons and holds them in his own. Caleb’s fingers are so warm that Essek worries his own hands will melt away to nothing and leave him a useless, handless wizard for the rest of his days. “You are not thinking well. That is from the cold, it will do this. It confuses your mind and your body and makes you act against yourself. But you need to warm up. You do. Can you trust me?”

Trust is still by-and-large a new experience for Essek.

He’s certainly familiar with the concept and Essek is no stranger to the theoretical. But he’s had little chance for any practical application of trust since the early days of his career, even well before accepting the title of Shadowhand. His position at the Bright Queen’s side had demanded he give little and his own choices had ensured he’d earned none for himself.

And then a bedraggled group of mercenaries with two human slaves argued their way into the throne room and now he hungers for it voraciously.

He relaxes his arms, lets his hands go even limper in Caleb’s hold. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. I trust you, Caleb Widogast.”

“Thank you.” Caleb’s face is tense and drawn and he rubs Essek’s hands between his for a moment longer so that Essek once more fears becoming kindling. “Can you walk? If I help you stand, can you walk?”

Essek earnestly considers lying. Caleb has just asked for his trust, and he’s claimed to give it, but already that is being put to the test.

It would be a pointless deception. The falsehood could only hold for as long as it took Caleb to get Essek even partially to his feet. But Essek’s instinct has always been to steadfastly conceal when his legs cannot hold him. Decades prior, this had meant awkwardly supporting himself by clinging to furniture and the walls until he was forced to admit he could not do so subtly. And when he’d resolved his bad days by ridding himself of any need to use his legs at all, it had made sense to not bother utilizing them on his good days either. Once he was always floating, it was simple enough to deny that doing so was ever obligatory.

But he is trying to be more honest. He would like so much to earn the trust he’d shattered before he and Caleb had ever met, the trust that the Mighty Nein had offered back to him before he’d truly deserved it. He has wept before them, he has given voice to his unsavory actions and moments of fear already.

So he admits, “No.”

This seems to be confirmation of Caleb’s established hypothesis because he nods without surprise. “All right. Well. That is all right. We will figure something out, we just need to get to someplace a bit more safe than this.” He draws himself to his feet and takes a step toward the building Essek is collapsed against. There is a gaping hole in the wall beside the impressively-intact door. “I will be back in a moment. I am going to find some place to put up the dome again. Do not move.”

“That is entirely beyond my capabilities at the moment,” says Essek.

He cannot decide what to make of the pinched expression that crosses Caleb’s face when he looks back at Essek.

Then Caleb gingerly steps into the mangled home and Essek is alone again.

He feels less panicked, having been found now, though they are not out of the woods as of yet. There are still numerous unpleasant fates which may yet befall them before they manage a long enough rest to properly cast or flee.

His heartbeat feels steadier within his chest.

With his teeth and his numb, clumsy hands, Essek manages to manipulate Caleb’s scarf into place so that it covers his face up to just below his eyes and it becomes easier to breathe. The sting of the bitter cold air is cut down through the heavy yarn and even this breath is not warm enough yet to become stifling.

It will be a relief, he thinks, when this moment will have never happened.

Caleb returns, no longer carrying their bags, after an indeterminate length of time during which Essek’s legs steadily lose any remaining sensation and the prickling pain along his arms and chest and neck worsens.

He crouches down before Essek with an appraising gaze over his half-bundled form. “We are going to walk now. I am sorry but I did not know if I had the time to spare so I failed to grab your boots or any of our bedding when I left. We will have to make do with what we have, but I can make the tower for once I’ve rested.”

It is unusual that Caleb is offering such a luxury. He has not summoned the tower since they arrived, the high level of magic it required deemed unwise when unnecessary given the unpredictability of Eiselcross and Aeor in particular. They’ve spent every night so far camped in the dome.

Now that the suggestion has been made, Essek fully realizes an unparalleled yearning for a hot meal prepared by spectral cats.

“All right,” he agrees.

Caleb hooks his hands beneath Essek’s armpits and begins the undertaking of pulling him to his feet. Essek helps by pathetically scrabbling at the wall behind him, which hurts his palm from the rough textures and the chill. Once Essek is upright, he is only being held aloft by Caleb’s grip. He wavers unsteadily in place. His knees refuse to lock, his ankles turn in, and he cannot get his feet properly beneath him.

“I am a piddly human wizard man with overcooked noodles for arms,” says Caleb, humorous and concerned at once. “I do not want to drop you, Please try to hold on to me tightly.”

Essek would laugh at the idea that Caleb is contending with feeble limbs when the only point of comparison around is Essek, but this is not actually very funny. Essek’s hands are sluggish and his grip on the collar of Caleb’s gambeson is limp. Caleb’s hold on him is better, but still a bit precarious and he is certainly no Yasha, or Jester or even Fjord. There is little strength between them.

Progress is slow and uncomfortable. Essek has always been slight of frame but his body feels unbearably heavy now. Gravity has been within his mastery for a long time and he so rarely has to bear the weight of himself unaided. His legs shake, his ankles repeatedly bend the wrong way, and at one point his left foot catches on a loose stone he doesn’t see and he fails to notice until his full leg is jerked backwards and he nearly falls.

“Sorry, sorry,” says Caleb. He adjusts his hold on Essek and grips at his middle more tightly. “That would have been helpful earlier.”

“I’m sorry?”

“When I was tracking you before. It was much more difficult to find your trail when you’ve left no footprints or contact with the ground. Even as a tiger, I had a hard time finding your scent. Aside from where you, uh, left your mark, I mean.”

The chill is abruptly dispelled by the heat that rushes to Essek’s cheeks. His face burns, thankfully covered by the scarf and turned away from Caleb to at least partially obscure his mortification.

Of course the tiger would have smelled the puddle he left behind.

Knowing that Caleb has encountered Essek’s bodily refuse fares poorly in his stomach and leaves him feeling even more vulnerable, quite a feat when current circumstances have already left him half-clothed, shivering, and relying on his friend to even walk.

He is more excited and determined to return to the T-Dock chamber and undo his mistakes than ever before.

Caleb has no further comments or inquiries on the subject, fortunately, and they enter the building without discussing it further.

There is little left to tell Essek about the ill-fated occupants of this home, with the furniture long-rotted and the personal effects spoiled and strewn. A bookshelf lays on its side, its contents scattered before it. The books spilled across the floor are basically dust. Shattered crockery and cracked vases litter their path and Caleb steers him awkwardly and somewhat unsuccessfully around the small hazards.

In a small alcove to the left of a collapsed hearth, Caleb has cleared them a small space free of debris and set down both of their packs.

Caleb helps him to sit and Essek begins, humiliatingly, to waver as soon as Caleb pulls away and must be propped up by his own pack. When it is clear he will not fall on his side, Caleb turns away and begins to cast the dome for the second time this night.

Though, it is possible that it is no longer night. Essek certainly doesn’t know anymore.

The edges of his thoughts fizzle and dissipate into the cold air, ghostly and intangible. The dizziness has abated only slightly, now that he’s on the ground and slouched enough that his mother would wince should she see him now.

Caleb is not slouching, for once. He has turned his back to Essek and, without his coat, his skinny frame is all the more obvious. The tautness in his shoulders and the rigidity in his spine have him almost shaking. Head down, Caleb whispers the verbal components of his dome spell and worries a small glass bead between his fingers.

Amber overtakes Essek’s vision in between two dozy blinks and the air around them immediately begins to warm.

Caleb stays crouched with his back turned, breathing audible and a bit heavy. He sniffles and runs his hands over the top of his head so the hair that has escaped the tie settles behind his ears.

Essek forces his hands awkwardly back through the coat sleeves and attempts to warm his fingers with his own body heat. His fingers prickle, small embers catching in his bloodstream. As the dome warms, it gets more difficult to keep his head upright and he lets his chin fall toward his chest. His usual upright posture for sleeping is going to be beyond him tonight. Perhaps he’ll simply slide into his trance slumped against his pack.

He is exhausted, he certainly needs the rest, but his mind still attempts and falters to catch hold of coherent thoughts and Essek maintains a tenuous hold on consciousness as Caleb takes a short series of noticeably quick breaths.

When Claeb turns enough that Essek can make out his features, the exhaustion is clear to read on his face. He looks as weary as he had during their frantic pursuit toward the Cognouza Ward last year, his eyelids lowered and his forehead a map of creases. He rises from where he’d remained kneeling to rummage through his own gear and produces their kettle.

Fire comes quickly at Caleb’s beckoning, just as it always does, and he sets the filled kettle within the flame.

Their bedrolls have been left behind in Caleb’s haste, but they have a few spare blankets packed and Caleb layers one down on the stone floor, brushing away debris with his chapped hands, and draws another around Essek’s shoulders.

Rather than prepare tea, Caleb presents Essek with a cup of very hot water. “Here. Drink this. It will warm you from the inside,” he says, and it surprises Essek how thin and flat his voice is.

Wrestling his hands free from the coat takes longer than Essek would like and, once he does, the tin seems to scorch his trembling fingers at a touch, even though the water never reached a boil.

Caleb helps him to drink, his rough hands guiding Essek’s.

As promised, the water does make him feel warmer from the inside. Gentle heat blooms in his mouth and throat and chest and slowly radiates outward. It makes him feel steadier and, when Caleb pours him more water, Essek holds the cup to his chest where he can soak the warmth in through his skin.

By the time the second cup is empty, the warmth has spread to his belly, though the ache of the cold persists in his limbs and face.

Caleb takes the cup away, but keeps his hold on Essek’s hands. He runs his thumb along the length of Essek’s fingers gently and methodically. “I think that we should check you for frostbite,” he says. “But I am realizing I do not know its signs on your skin tone.”

“Nor do I, if I am to be honest,” Essek admits with some shame. He doesn’t know the signs on any skin tone. He’s been stationed in Eiselcross for too long to not feel embarrassed by his ignorance, but he’d never been any kind of healer and his duties overseeing the outpost required little time spent in the snow or the infirmary.

The sensation of Caleb gliding inquisitive touches across Essek’s skin makes him shiver. The inspection is thorough and he kneads at Essek’s knuckles and fingertips in a way that sends sparks up Essek’s arms. “I am going to try to tell by touch then. Make sure that everything is all as it should be.” His nails and calluses scratch at the surface of Essek’s skin during the investigation.

Essek can feel his own pulse beneath Caleb’s every touch. Sensation ignites where he’d gone numb. His blood thaws and rushes through his veins in a roar.

Caleb sends scurrying, probing touches up Essek’s trembling wrists beneath the too-long sleeves of the borrowed coat and then redirects his examination upward. He uncoils the scarf from around Essek’s head so that it falls around his shoulders the way Caleb wears it and then runs a finger up the arc of each of Essek’s ears.

Heat rushes to his face and ears beneath Caleb’s touch so quickly that he feels dizzy from it and Essek has to blink spots from his eyes.

Caleb traces up the helix of Essek’s ear all the way to the tip, then down the back and down around the earlobe until his fingers reach the edges of Essek’s jaw.

Essek tries to not exhale, this would leave his breath to fill Caleb’s face. Caleb’s eyes are turned away as he focuses on the sensation of touch and Essek keeps his eyes trained on Caleb to try and focus on anything else.

“Okay, well, I think all of this feels good so far,” says Caleb. He briefly teases Essek’s earlobes, pinched between his thumbs and the sides of his pointer fingers, before letting up and drawing back his hands. “It would be easier to know if I knew what I was looking for but by touch you seem well so far. Cold, obviously, you know this, but your skin does not waxy or stiff. That is what I do not want to find.”

“Ah,” says Essek, more or less. It is difficult to speak without opening his mouth or breathing out. His tongue feels oddly heavy in his mouth and, despite having just consumed two full cups of hot water, his throat has become tight once more.

Whatever torpor has come over him departs rapidly as Caleb reaches for Essek’s feet. A jolt of distress moves through him as sharply as when he’d heard the approach of the imagined absorber. As odd as it had been to have Caleb rubbing his fingers over his ears, the idea of having someone else prodding at his feet is deeply unpalatable.

He’s had more than his desired share of others manipulating his ankles, knees, and hips for examination. Though it’s been decades since Essek’s seen a physician for his legs, unnecessary now that he’s solved his ambulatory trouble himself, the embarrassment of airing his physical shortcomings still lingers.

If this current inspection continues all the way to Essek’s feet it may cause him some pain but, more alarmingly, will mean Caleb taking an intimate look at toes when they are likely curled into blatantly unnatural angles.

Because he’s in no condition to pull his legs away from Caleb, Essek raises his hand to stall him instead. “That’s all right, Caleb, thank you. I’m fine.”

The way Caleb’s mouth and eyes crease at the edges makes Essek retroactively all the more able to recognize his friend behind the face of a giant orange ape. Concerned and unwilling to be dissuaded.

Some part of Essek is flattered, or at least knows he should be flattered, but he still feels the same affront he always has.

“If you will let me, I would like to check your feet too. This is important. This is important, what I am trying to do. We have already used so many of our potions but if you have already caught frostbite, we will use one on you now or I will use my stone if the damage is bad enough.”

“I’m sure that is unnecessary.”

Caleb’s frown deepens. “Well, you know, I think that maybe you are acting out of pride right now, but you were outside barefoot for at least an hour, at least, and it was only ten minutes ago that you were unable to walk.”

“Yes, this is true,” Essek admits. Caleb’s an adventurer, he certainly knows more about the assorted injuries and maladies that one encounters living out of doors, but he is misattributing symptoms now.

“You can of course correct me if I am wrong, but I think you would not care to lose any of your parts,” says Caleb.

“You’re not wrong. And I do appreciate your concern. However, I...” Essek takes a moment to sort through his thoughts and translate them into their shared language. His Common is very good, but until recently he had never utilized it enough to need to think in it as effortlessly as he does in Undercommon or Elvish. That his mind now feels still muddled and brackish is not making things easier. “I do not think things have progressed as much as you think they have. I think that you have found me just in time.” He offers a smile. “Yet again.”

“Hm.” Caleb sits back. “That is good, then. Your skin, it does not feel painful where it was exposed? If it hurts when it is warming back up, that is a bad sign. That is something we will have to resolve.”

Essek is grateful for the specific wording of the question and he does give it some consideration. For all the pain he feels now, it is all of his usual brand. “No. No more than would be expected.”

Caleb nods. “Good. Good, good.” He smiles the weariest smile Essek has ever seen.

“This is a familiar threat to you?”

“Well, you know, I lived on the streets for many years before I met you. I had no home before the one you gave the Nein and I.”

“And now you make your own at will.”

“Yes. And, um, it was not so bad in Rexxentrum as it is here, obviously, but we will do the trick I know to warm you up while you rest.”

With Caleb’s assistance, Essek eases down to lie on his side. It is an embarrassingly tedious process made worse by how he is still softly shivering.

Once Essek is on the floor, Caleb removes his own boots then lifts the edges of the blanket and slides in underneath himself. He unbuttons the coat and pulls Essek in close so their chests are pressed together.

Lightheadedness consumes Essek once again and he’d like to attribute it to the new position, to the endeavor that had simply been the process of lying down, to his body’s response to the rising temperature of the dome, but most likely it is from how rapidly his heart is beating.

One afternoon midway through their stay in the Blooming Grove last year, Essek had looked up from the Clays’ herb garden and squinted through the sunlight to make out the blurry shape of Caleb unsteadily making his way from his interview with Beauregard in a beeline to where Veth and her son sat on a quilt, stringing discarded buttons into garish jewelry. He’d watched Caleb drop to the ground, pull Veth into his lap, and sit for nearly an hour with his arms wrapped around her middle and his face pressed to her back. All the while, Veth readily and easily balanced comforting her friend and entertaining her child. All the while, Essek marveled at the foreignness of such a display and desire.

Until meeting the Nein, the idea of being held by someone had always struck Essek as uncomfortable. His family had never been particularly affectionate in any measure, let alone physical. At first, Jester’s hugs had seemed to prove Essek’s predictions correct. He’d felt awkward and uneasy. The way Jester clung to him made him tense, had pinched his arms, had overwhelmed his senses.

But those instances had been, for as excruciatingly extended as they’d felt in the moment, rather fleeting moments of contact. And until now, he and Caleb have not experimented with physical intimacy much deeper than that. Caleb’s lips to his forehead or his cheek, Caleb’s hands on his shoulder or his forearm, Caleb’s arms holding him tightly but briefly.

Now Caleb guides their bodies into an interlocked position, maneuvering Essek’s stubborn limbs into place with his hands. He holds Essek flush to his chest so that his forehead rests against Caleb’s collarbone and gently draws Essek’s legs upward by the backs of his knees, until he is in a nearly fetal position, and then he slots Essek’s numb feet in between his thighs.

Essek worries he might combust. He fears scorch marks across his front, his feet turning to ash at the heat of Caleb. His own blood burns as it returns to his extremities.

Caleb exhales heavily through his nose. “Oh. This is bringing back some memories for me.”

“Unpleasant memories?” Essek asks of his friend’s chest.

Caleb hesitates in a way Essek can feel through the places where their skin touches. “Some parts, yes. Not all of it.” He sounds uncertain about his own opinion on the matter, as if he is considering and reconsidering his position even as he speaks.

“You and Veth?” Essek recalls again the garden and the sight of them curled together in the dome when it had been a crowded puzzle with eight occupants (and a cat and a weasel) and Caleb delightedly sweeping up his goblin friend into his arms when the three of them at last completed the Transmogrification spell.

“No. Well, yes, then too, but no. As a student at the Soltryce Academy, quite a while before I met her,” says Caleb. “When Master Ikithon was displeased with our progress as students, when he felt we were not strong or cruel enough, he would banish us to the coldest rooms in his tower and lock us inside for the night as punishment.”

The precise nature of Caleb’s relationship with Trent Ikithon has never been spelled out for Essek but it has seemed simple enough to mostly unravel on his own. Essek’s personal interactions with Ikithon before he’d arrived to burn down the Clays’ family home had been brief and courteous but, even at his most unkind and most selfish hour, Essek had found himself deeply frightened by the man’s cruelty. Not enough to dissuade him from his crimes, he had been too single-mindedly consumed with his pursuits, but enough that Caleb’s vague allusions and animosity toward the Scourger program, and the Assembly, and the Empire itself had turned Essek’s mind quickly to Ikithon’s yellowed skin and hateful eyes.

“What did you do? How did you respond?” asks Essek. His jaw still feels tight but the words move more easily through his throat, now that he has drunk the water and settled beneath the layers of blankets to coax them out. He can smell Caleb’s breath, feel the warmth of it against the top of his head.

“What else? We became stronger. We became crueler.”

The tune of Caleb’s self-loathing is achingly familiar. This is the recognition that has cemented their bond, securing the ties begun by their shared interests in the arcane. They’ve acted unkindly in the name of their pursuits and now both of them bear the weight of their sins.

Caleb’s sins, whatever they may be, cannot contend with Essek’s. It is helpful, in ways that are both small and unfathomably significant, to see the man Caleb has become and to be seen by Caleb, however erroneously, as having the potential to do the same.

“I’ve seen cruelty,” says Essek. “In others. In myself. You are not so disgusting as you think, Caleb Widogast.”

Caleb exhales and his breath ruffles Essek’s hair. He disagrees but does not protest.

“What was it you did in this tower?” Essek asks.

“Ah, we did this.” Caleb’s hand slides down Essek’s back and he draws them even closer together beneath the blankets so Essek is engulfed fully in his warmth. “Among other things.” There’s a chuckle the cause of which evades Essek.

When Essek recalls how to speak, he says, “That was very clever of you. What else? What more did you do to keep the cold at bay?”

“Things which I think would require a longer conversation between you and I,” says Caleb.

After successfully dodging the topic as it was volleyed toward him all year by Veth and Jester and Beauregard, Essek has very nearly stumbled into it on his own. He flushes, embarrassed both by the topic and his failure to catch on before he’d asked.

It’s odd; he’d never flustered at the topic of sex before the Nein began casting him as the subject. It wasn’t of any particular interest to him, but he’d suffered no unease at its discussion.

Though the same could be said for matters of bodily functions. If he recalls correctly, it had been a subject of conversation at his first encounter with the Mighty Nein to no discomfort of his. He’s certainly dealt with it enough in the prisons to necessitate a particular degree of tolerance. And now his unwillingness to confess to requiring those same functions himself has resulted in all of this.

“I see,” he manages at last.

“Are you feeling warmer?” Caleb asks, saving Essek the trouble of attempting to generate a new topic of conversation. Perhaps he feels the flush of his cheeks against his chest.

He considers the question. His thoughts feel disjointed still, his mind sluggish and glacial in an affront to his affinity for time. His body is impossibly heavy in spite of his usual mastery over gravity. He is too warm in places. The blood has returned to his veins and, with it, rushes all the sensation he’d lost in his adventure.

“Yes,” he decides. “I believe so.”

“Good,” says Caleb. “Good. Please rest, Essek.”

Essek has no intention of protesting Caleb’s suggestion and he is already complying before Caleb begins speaking. Consciousness slips from him the moment he relaxes his grip on it and, by the end of his thought, he is hardly awake enough to notice the heavy, shuttering exhale Caleb emits before he tightens his grasp and presses a kiss to his hairline.

Essek’s sleep is restless. He is troubled by monsters with icicles for teeth that bite deep and rend his flesh. He drifts deeper than he has in decades, lucidity far beyond his reach, and dreams that the cold has frozen his heart in his chest.

When he wakes up, he can’t move.

His thoughts, at last, are back within his command but his body is not. Essek’s joints are locked tight, stiff and painful enough to knock him into consciousness between one heartbeat and the next.

In their sleep, his and Caleb’s positions have changed. Essek is no longer curled against Caleb’s chest, but is instead lying on his back beside him. The warmth of the dome has seeped into the blanket beneath them as much as it possibly can and the blankets and coat around him are sodden from his sweat.

His body aches more deeply than he can ever recall and, despite having what must have been at least a full night’s rest, exhaustion still weighs Essek down to the floor and leaves him sick to his stomach.

Essek takes a more detailed assessment of his body’s present functionality than he’d had the wherewithal to perform last night. As he’d insisted, he’s managed to avoid frostbite and his toes do still respond satisfactorily aside from a surprisingly negligible ache and the fact that his feet are still trapped between Caleb’s legs.

His ankles and knees are painful.

His hips are excruciating.

Disentangling himself from Caleb is agonizing business which requires several breaks to rein in his unsteady breathing and bite down any cries or groans.

And once he’s finally free, he has nowhere else to go, and remains still lying on his back on the ground.

For as infrequent were the days in which his legs did not fail him, rarer were the days in which his hands did.

Essek is a wizard. Being able to rely on his hands is paramount to his craft beyond what language can convey. His somatic components require precision to the smallest twitch. Glyphs and sigils can only function with technical exactitude or else serve only as intricate works of art.

Though the right side of his body, pressed to Caleb’s front, fairs somewhat better, attempting to raise his right arm to cast his levitation spell proves futile and only leads to Essek hissing through his teeth too loudly.

Caleb’s breaths are even and sour against Essek’s cheek and he sleeps on.

An hour or so passes and Essek accomplishes the small victory of propping himself up against his pack. He cannot quite manage getting himself fully upright, but he is no longer lying flat on his back. His shoulders ache a bit less, his elbows operate passably now that he’s worked at them. Essek attempts to practice closing his fist, drawing his arm up to his chest, but there are raised icicles driven into his joints, and his wrists and fingers are too stiff. He could perhaps hold a cup unaided now, a marked improvement over the embarrassing ordeal last night, but the levitation spell is outside of his reach.

The hot water he’d swallowed has settled low in his body. This is going to become an issue far too quickly and he is not yet prepared to handle it.

When Caleb begins to stir at last, it is still too soon and Essek is no closer to getting up than when he’d first lurched into consciousness.

He waits, his breath held tightly within his aching chest, and hopes for some miracle to restore his body to a prime it has never known. Or, at the least, for Caleb to rediscover his slumber and give Essek the lengthier privacy he evidently requires to restore his preferred veneer.

Neither of these things occur and Caleb blinks the crust from the corners of his eyes and squints blearily at Essek’s drawn face. “Oh, you are still waking up as well?” There’s some surprise in Caleb’s voice and his words are weighed down by the gravity of his weariness, his accent swallowing several consonants whole.

Essek had missed it last night due to the snow flurry that had overtaken his thinking, but it’s clear now both in reflection and just from looking at the man before him that Caleb was exhausted too.

Caleb looks tired more often than not, with dark smudges beneath his eyes and a stooped posture that at times makes Essek’s own back ache in sympathy, but as of late this has all been undercut by a particularly bright spark and animation to his words and gestures.

Now Caleb is wrung out, looking more like he had after Yasha had been taken in Bazzoxan or in the aftermath of their fight with Ikithon.

Caleb clears his throat a few times and wipes at his eyes. “Are you warm enough? We have a little under three hours left in the dome but, if you are not, I can summon the tower for us. Or I can teleport us away now.”

Essek certainly doesn’t want to leave Aeor. Not yet, not until their bags overflow with forgotten knowledge. Not before they make their return to the Genesis Ward and its great and alluring treasures. He also has no idea how he could possibly make the move to the tower. He can’t even sit up unaided at the moment or cast his levitation spell. Becoming mobile enough to cross the threshold seems insurmountably daunting.

“‘A little under three hours?’” he repeats, in part to give himself just that much more time. His jaw aches at the words but his voice sounds markedly less wretched than it had before he’d rested. “Caleb Widogast, I’ve not known you to be so imprecise with your timekeeping.”

“Two hours and forty-nine minutes now, but it was fifty when I said it. Is this helpful for formulating your decision?”

“Indeed. Yes. It is very helpful, thank you.”

Caleb sits up, though he stays on their makeshift bedroll, and stretches in place. His joints crack and pop noisily. His gaze is leveled at Essek’s hip such that the stray thought harries him momentarily that Caleb may somehow be able to see each point of failure within Essek’s body. “Well, um,” says Caleb. “If you prefer to stay here for the time being, I think that we need to have a talk.”

“Ah.” Essek should get ahead of this, admit the entire embarrassing story right now along with the other things he’d foolishly decided to keep to himself, but the words stick to his tongue and refuse to leave his mouth and all he manages is a curious noise and a raised eyebrow.

“When I found you last night, you seemed like you were pretty out of it.” Caleb makes a vague, shaky-handed gesture at his own temple. “You know, the cold will do this to you. It will make your thoughts unclear, make you not yourself. That is what it was like, am I correct in this?”

“Yes,” says Essek. “After a while, I felt a bit like I was… grasping for something out of my reach in just trying to collect my thoughts.”

Caleb nods.

For a minute or so, he simply sits with his arms around himself and Essek’s anxiety begins to brew before eventually Caleb says, “I’m sorry. What I want to say, this is not something I have had to explain before. It is, um… well, you know, you are not the only one new to being able to trust.”

Such a statement thoroughly dispels any conjecture Essek had regarding the direction of this conversation.

“Well, I woke up in the night and you were gone and you did not reply to my Messages. It made me very worried.”

Shame wells up. “I am so sorry, Caleb. Truly. I did not intend any of what happened. I only expected to be gone for but a moment.”

“No, I– I know this. I know this. But that is something of my point, actually. I think that I have been… reckless in assuming that we would not need to plan for becoming separated. I would hope that last night is enough to convince us to not do so again on purpose.”

“At the very least, I think I would prefer to be clothed the next time.”

Caleb nods distantly and doesn’t seem to register Essek’s feeble attempt at humor. His brow is drawn, his expression like his face has collapsed. At length he says, “I am a broken person. More so than I have perhaps let on to you, which is not fair of me. There is a chance– it is not likely but there is still a chance– that I will… go away. In my mind. And leave you here by yourself.”

Essek examines the words in his mind but finds he cannot fully discern their meaning. “I am not sure I understand.”

“Um…” Caleb rubs at his upper arms distractedly, his gaze downcast and far off. “Sometimes, not– not often but sometimes, I, um… I break. My mind will leave me and everything is just fog. No thought.” He takes in a single quick breath between each sentence as he speaks. “It does not happen randomly and it– it has not happened in some time, but I think that it is something you should know.”

Essek tries and fails to picture Caleb as anything but sharp-minded and somber. He attempts to dredge up his very first impression of the human slave in leathers and chains, dragged filthy into the Queen’s court. But his memory is faulty and has conformed to suit his current understanding of Caleb. He cannot unsee the ridiculous rationale behind the Mighty Nein’s scheme and Caleb’s brilliance shines through all of the recollected mud and pretense.

“And if this is to happen?” he asks after his contemplation. “What then? I would like to help you. How would I be of aid?”

Caleb has turned his eyes towards Essek, affect flat as he keenly watches for his reaction, and he shrugs uncertainly at the question. “I don’t know. Keep me safe, if you can.” He shrugs.“Veth will cuddle a bit but I do not expect that from you. And, really, that is more for after anyway.”

“These… breaks of yours will end on their own then?”

“Usually.”

“‘Usually.’” Essek raises an eyebrow. “And how long would I expect to see such a thing last?”

“A minute. An hour.” Caleb’s voice drops quieter, a bit more choked, and his eyes turn upward to roam the concave ceiling of the dome. “The longest was, um, eleven years.”

Essek blinks. “I’m sorry?”

A human’s lifespan is only a tenth as long as a single life of a drow. A brief and fleeting thing. For Caleb, a decade would be a considerable fraction of his life.

“How old are you, Caleb?” The Mighty Nein had pestered Essek with the same question during their first dinner together and Essek had not even thought to ask it in return.

It is certainly not a common question within the Dynasty. Often it serves little purpose. Centuries pass and lives come and go. What good does it do to ponder over the disparity in ages when someone a century your junior may have already lived to senectitude three times over? There was always more interest in lives, not years.

“I am thirty-four years old.”

A third of his life.

Essek means to sit with this information for long enough to properly digest it and assimilate it into his understanding of Caleb, but his silence seems to bring Caleb some unease because he begins to quickly and stumblingly elaborate. “When this happened, I was sent to an asylum for those years. And I do not really have any memories from that time. Maybe that is obvious. But I was not… I was not really there. Here.” He gestures at his head with a fleeting hand as his gaze drops down to his lap. “Um. I don’t know what happened while I was there, but after eleven years there was another patient who was also there who helped me. She… well, I don’t know what she did, but she brought me back and made my, um, madness go away. For the most part. I am still crazy, you know, but I’m usually present. And usually I will come back on my own. Usu–usually.”

Essek nods without thinking but Caleb is looking anywhere but him.

“You know, I did not intend to keep this information from you. It seemed irrelevant. Or I hoped it would be irrelevant.” Caleb presses the side of his thumb to the bridge of his nose and Essek doesn’t look quickly enough to discern if he is fending off a headache or wiping a tear. “Maybe it will. I don’t know. I have not had any of these, um, episodes, I suppose you could call them, since Trent Ikithon’s trial. That was the most recent one. I would like to believe they are gone. That there would be no reason for you to ever know.”

“They have taken enough of your life already.”

“Yes.” It’s an exhalation. “But I am being naive, I think. After last night, I cannot bear the idea that I might put you in the position of suddenly not being able to rely on me without explanation. In case I wander off when I cannot think or I am suddenly of no help in a fight.” He turns back to look properly at Essek now, not meeting his eyes but still watching his face with an expression of fierce remorse. “I am sorry, Essek, that I did not disclose this before you agreed to follow me down here. That was not fair of me. I should have told you so you could make an informed decision.”

“This would not have changed my mind,” says Essek. “I would not have made any different decision, had I known ahead of our setting out. I would have made the same choice.”

It is the truth. Despite it all, for all the desperate close-call monster fights and rough sleeping conditions, the lurking hidden traps, the dangers of the other hunters and tomb robbers who are scavenging the leftovers of this society as well, for the bitter cold and persistent ache in his body, for the anxiety that last night’s disaster has dredged up within him and how disorienting and frightening the entire ordeal had been, for all the pain Essek now suffers for his own hubris and his own inconvenient propriety, he cannot think of a single place in all of Exandria he’d rather be.

Caleb must understand the depth of Essek’s sincerity because he smiles. It is a tight and wry smile that is familiarly self-deriding, but he smiles all the same. “Thank you, Essek. But, still, it was wrong of me to bring you down here thinking you could rely on me more than you can.”

Their relationship has been composed of a sort of self-recognition. Essek had seen a familiar appetite and aptitude for arcane knowledge within Caleb. Caleb had seen a familiar contrition within Essek. Now Essek sees a familiar self-doubt, a bodily mistrust he’s known for far too long, and before he can think through his decision, he says, “Caleb, I can’t walk.”

Immediately, Caleb turns to look at him with alarm and opens his mouth to say something but Essek hurriedly interrupts whatever that might be to correct himself.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That is untrue of me to say. Obviously I can walk, you have seen me do it before. But it is not without great strain and great difficulty, so most days I find it more… advantageous to avoid it altogether. Both physically and socially.”

“But you do not mean you were injured in your scuffle with the reversers.”

“They did not touch me, no.” The memory of this helps restore a bit of Essek’s ego in the wake of his admission. A few hours before, he’d fought and killed three beasts specifically engineered to combat magic practitioners and they’d not managed to land a single blow on him. “This is something I have dealt with since my youth.”

Caleb nods. “Would you say, perhaps, that this was information regarding your health and ability that you withheld? Because it was personal and hopefully irrelevant.”

“Indeed.”

Caleb laughs. It’s not a laugh Essek has heard from him before, it’s too breathy and wobbling. Although Essek has largely become convinced of Caleb’s genuine affection for him, the sound of it still causes his gut to drop.

To his credit, Caleb notices and apologizes even as he is attempting to cease his laughter. “I am sorry, Essek. I do not mean to make you uncomfortable.” The threadbare mirth he’d managed momentarily leaves and he grows earnest once again. “You were well within your rights to keep this to yourself.”

Embarrassed as he always is at the attention he’s summoned to his condition, Essek says, “There were many in my life who expected very little of me. I have found it quite… gratifying to prove they were wrong.”

“We are speaking of both profession and mobility.”

“Yes.”

“And of our shared pursuit.”

“Certainly.” He glances up to see where Caleb is looking and he cannot decide if he’s pleased that it is at him. “And I apologize for my secrecy. I know I have done more than enough of that. Please understand, when we met, I had reason to assume we would only ever be adversaries. It seemed… rather imprudent to provide you all with knowledge of my shortcomings.”

“I have been in similar situations as well,” says Caleb. “Truly, though, you only impress me more, knowing you devised this spellwork specifically to assist your needs. You clearly were very successful.”

In truth, Essek would have continued his charade as long as he could. Perhaps through the end of Caleb’s life, assuming they remain close for the duration. Essek would very much like for them to do so, certainly, yet for Caleb’s kind words, it is deeply uncomfortable to unveil himself like this. It is one thing to acknowledge his disability in conversation with people who’d known him before he’d devised his personal levitation spell. But he’s never before had reason to admit it to anyone who had only ever seen him move easily and steadily, whose primary experience of Essek’s mobility was scored by Jester’s delighted gasps and ‘oohs’ at his displays.

“Will you tell me,” says Caleb, “how long you had been sitting there when I caught up to you last night?”

Essek thinks back but, although his thoughts are once again within his command, that period of time is lost to a flurry. “I don’t know entirely. Ten minutes, perhaps, or an hour. I was very confused at the time and I’m afraid that I lack your... prowess in that area.”

“But it was a bit, then. It was not moments before I arrived.”

“Yes. For some time at least. My hands were too cold to recast my spell so I was not able to leave. To continue my disoriented wandering.”

“Well, then I will ask you the same question that you posed to me. If this happens again in my presence, how would you like me to respond?”

Even though it is indeed much the same question Essek had asked only a few minutes prior, he feels unprepared to examine it himself and he flounders at conjuring an appropriate response. Something about Caleb directly suggesting Essek may be unable to aid himself makes the back of his neck itch. A hurt and irritation as old as Essek rears within him.

When he does not get a reply, Caleb asks, “Do you have other means by which you get around when you cannot cast? Or where magic is not an option?”

“No,” says Essek. “I have not had need to do so in a very long time.” He is surprisingly embarrassed to be caught so unprepared, a feeling that creeps over and smothers his indignation. He’d once found that same preparation to be too embarrassing to undertake and he’d made a poor habit of forsaking his crutches on days that started out well. Even when at the time he knew that he was all but guaranteed to regret his choice, he’d too strongly wanted just to revel briefly in the fantasy that he might not. That perhaps this would last.

“So if you should lose the spell again, we will be repeating something like last night.”

“I have no intention of losing it again.”

It’s a foolish thing to say given his current circumstances, still awkwardly propped up against his travel pack, unable to disentangle himself from the blankets Caleb had wrapped around them. But, to be fair, he would argue that it should not count as losing the spell when he cannot summon it in the first place.

“Still,” says Caleb. “There are places even within the Empire, in places like Zadash, where measures are in place to prevent spells being cast or to dispel existing ones. And that is in the Empire. This whole city we’re in now is a baited snare for wizards like us. We might very easily find ourselves repeating some of the evening, even if you are to swear off pursuing any passing monsters in the middle of the night.”

“You make it sound as though I rushed off intending to fight the beasts on my own.”

Caleb looks surprised and frowns. “Oh. I’m sorry. Did you not?”

Why had he said that?

In truth, he knows why. It had pricked at his pride that Caleb would think him that reckless. But that misconstruction was certainly a better excuse for why he’d strayed so far from their camp without any warning.

Essek does his best to scramble for an excuse but he comes up wanting. “Forget I said anything, please.”

Caleb’s expression is creased and displeased. “No, please, friend. Why did you leave, then?”

Of course he has reason to be displeased. The excuse Caleb concocted on his behalf created a brash but overall gallant Essek who had risked his safety to defend Caleb even as he slept. Meanwhile, the actual Essek had sneaked off without warning and abandoned Caleb alone in the middle of his rest for furtive purposes.

Essek has relied on subterfuge and deception for most of his adulthood. It had been necessary in his career and personal pursuits alike. It was pivotal in furthering his heretical studies that, had they been discovered, would likely have precipitated his arrest if not execution. His life has relied on his ability to convincingly tell a lie more frequently than he now finds comfortable, but that experience should be of great use for him here.

“They caught me unaware, that is all,” he says, because it is the truth and the best lies, the lies that are easiest to sell and sustain are the ones that are nearly not lies at all.

“So you had already left the dome when you encountered them?” Essek had not expected to see this distress on Caleb’s face. “Did you call for me? Did I not hear you?”

“No, I did not call for you. I handled them myself,” Essek points out. He’d defeated the monsters handily and had felt, for a brief moment, the way he’d felt back in Rosohna before the Mighty Nein had arrived and muddied everything. For a moment, he’d once again felt powerful and imposing.

Caleb’s eyes are downcast as he kneads stiffly at his arm.

The uncomfortable churning in Essek’s gut is now from guilt as well as embarrassment. “I had simply… gone to stretch my legs.”

Perhaps this is the most pathetic lie he’s told in his life.

The conversation is beginning to remind Essek, unpleasantly, of his previous unveiling in Nicodranas. How he’d been reduced to clumsily casting for lies in the face of Jester’s beaming curiosity, feebly offering up transparent excuses that could have fooled no one.

He’d even been unable to move his body for a time during that particular encounter. What an apt parallel.

It is abundantly clear that Caleb does not believe this lie for a moment, but he nods a few times and says, “All right,” as if he is simply going to accept that Essek has lied to his face.

Essek is taken by surprise at how powerfully he abhors this. Worse than whatever humiliation may lie on the other side of discussing his bodily functions is accepting deceptions as so fundamental to their relationship that they do not deserve protest.

It has been so long since Essek felt such deep kinship as he feels with Caleb, so long since he’s been able to give and receive trust, and he feels terrified to have jeopardized that.

“Well. I left because I had to–” Essek has not, to his recollection and perhaps not ever, had a conversation which required him to select a preferred colloquialism and he has to pause now to decide which he will use. None of them are particularly enticing. “–piss. I did not want to do so near where you were sleeping because I did not want you to know.”

Caleb gives a startled laugh and Essek’s face instantly heats up.

“Essek, you have seen me take a piss.”

“I’ve looked away. I am respectful.”

“Well, you know, I think you are likely the only one of the Nein who has. We are a close bunch, we have all seen each other go. Perhaps it could be considered a rite of passage within the group.”

“Is that why Jester so regularly inquires if I’m pooping?” He is further embarrassed to have had this same thought last night even as he finds it gratifying to be affirmed.

“She is just being silly. But the rest of us, we would camp often. It is unwise to wander off too far or alone, for reasons we have seen last night among others. That kind of privacy can be dangerous.”

“I am beginning to learn that,” Essek agrees reluctantly.

“Ja, but, you know, we are all very comfortable with each other. If that is too intimate for you, then that is that. I just hope you do not stray quite so far next time.”

Never in his life has it occurred to Essek to view relieving oneself in proximity of another as an act of intimacy, but it does not seem entirely wrong now that Caleb has framed it as such.

It is true that all of the forward momentum of their relationship has come from admitting increasingly private information, though perhaps it is comical that they came to reveal personal sins months before Essek was able to confess to having basic bodily functions.

The conversation, discussing both his urinating and his mobility struggles as well as having learned now about Caleb’s so-called madness, leaves Essek feeling both raw and buoyant at once. The humiliation lingers and warms his cheeks, sits awkwardly within his chest, but he feels looser and in startlingly high spirits from admitting two deeply private things and not receiving any derision for them.

“Well, we need to have a talk about something more immediate too,” says Caleb. “I have recovered my spells, I assume you have done the same.”

“Indeed,” Essek agrees, rather unprepared for the shift in conversation and responding more on instinct. It is not technically a lie. His arcane reserves have been replenished, even if the stiffness in his hands will preclude him from utilizing any spells with somatic components.

“So. We can continue our journey as before, if you feel up to it. If you do, I will be able to lead us back to the rest of our belongings. Or I can cast the tower and we can call this a day of rest, give ourselves more time to recover. Or… we can leave. I can take us home. Or to someone’s home, anyway, probably neither of ours.”

The idea of leaving is strikingly repellent to Essek and he instinctively struggles to sit up straighter at the suggestion. “We cannot leave. Not yet. We have come so far and there is so much to uncover, still.”

“Ja, ja.” Caleb nods. “I feel the same way, but that is likely the crazy wizard in me talking, so it is good to put it out there, I think. To remember it as an option.”

“True enough.” Essek has certainly fallen victim to his own curiosity and hubris more times than he can recall.

Wizards are, indeed, fucking trouble, as Caleb had said the last time they’d come to this place.

“Well, then, what would you prefer?”

Essek’s instincts are to continue on. Once he gets his levitation spell under him, he will be capable of taking the journey back to their previous camp and reuniting with his boots and other abandoned possessions and they can continue on in their expedition. Pushing himself beyond his body’s limitations has long been customary for Essek.

For perhaps the first time in his life, he fights this.

“I would love,” says Essek, “to have a hot bath.”

Caleb smiles and leans forward and says, as if it is titillating gossip, “I can pull a hot tub out of the closet whenever we’d like.”

After all of the cold leaching into his body, the awful stiffness of his swollen joints, there is little else in the world that sounds quite so enticing to Essek as the Mighty Nein’s hot tub.

“And the cats will serve us a much better breakfast than our rations.” Caleb gathers up his material components, the wand and the shards of colorful glass, and begins to arrange them at the edge of the dome, along the back wall of their current shelter. “Just be prepared to slap me if I turn into a sheep.”

“I very much doubt that I could injure you sufficiently with my bare hands.”

“I will trust you to do as much as is necessary, then.”

The time it takes for Caleb to cast the spell is just long enough to allow for Essek to realize he is about to put to test their previously-discussed intimacy. Anxiety ripples through him. Admitting weakness and foul habits in conversation is one thing. To have to demonstrate them is another. And the multiple cups of hot water he’d consumed last night ensure that he will have to demonstrate them both.

The door to the tower flares into existence with a curious burst of butterflies from Aeor’s own wild magic.

Essek takes a deep breath. In spite of their talk, humiliation is already beginning to rise within him. “Caleb.”

“Hm?”

“I will… require some assistance, if you do not mind. I cannot get up on my own.”

“Oh, of course.” Caleb agrees easily, readily, as if he does not have to consider this at all. He offers neither derision nor mockery nor patronizing comments. He simply slides their gear through the door and turns back to Essek, his expression easy. “How do you want to do this?”

Before he’d designed his levitation spell and disguised his disability beneath a gimmick, Essek’s life had been brimming with acquaintances and perfect strangers alike who would eagerly appoint themselves authority over Essek’s mobility.

That Caleb does not assume he’ll know best is gratifying enough to even soothe some of the string of Essek’s next confession. “I think it will be helpful if you can support me from behind. I’m afraid I won’t be much help and I apologize, but I need to… relieve myself again.” He grimaces. “I’m very sorry.”

“That is not surprising, you drank a lot of water while you were warming up,” says Caleb, demonstrating none of the revulsion he should be entitled to. “You are not so disgusting as you think, Herr Thelyss.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Ah, you said the same to me last night. It was a call back. Never mind.” Caleb waves away the confusion between them with his hands. “I mean that I do not mind helping.”

“Thank you.” The mortification leaves Essek almost breathless and Caleb’s lack of disdain makes him feel lightheaded. He is not sure what to do with this much relief or gratitude.

His affection for Caleb feels daunting in its enormity.

Caleb is not strong enough to lift Essek easily, but once they get their arms suitably around each other, he successfully pulls him upright and steadies him on his mostly-useless feet without incident. It is still painful but, now that he has Caleb’s support, that pain feels bearable.

“We will perform your rite of passage,” says Caleb. “And when you are even more officially a member of the Mighty Nein, then we will celebrate by getting you into a hot tub.”

“Caleb Widogast,” says Essek, “there is nothing else I’d like more.”

And every word of this is true.