Work Text:
When I run out of words to say
Am I still not telling the truth?
We will find out in the end
He was huddled at the edge of what Caleb had referred to as a Tiny Hut, staring out into the dark, ruined room, floating a few inches off the cold hard ground while his--friends? Associates? Fellow adventurers?--slept behind him, and it was the first time Essek Thelyss been entirely calm in months. Possibly years.
It was his newfound sense of certainty, he mused, idly scratching behind Frumpkin’s ear. Even before he’d begun to dabble in heresy, he’d lived most of his life looking over his shoulder. Nothing was a sure bet. Nothing was safe. Someone was always watching, waiting for the moment he slipped up, waiting for him to fail. The stakes might have gotten higher in recent years, but he’d been rolling the dice for as long as he could remember.
Not knowing when his time would be up had been slowly driving him mad. Now that he’d decided he wouldn’t be returning from Aeor, it was like a weight had lifted from his shoulders. An object caught in the pull of a dark star could move only ever onward towards the center. That was comforting.
The decision hadn’t come easily. At first, he’d told himself there was a decent chance he would survive. He wanted to believe it--he still had things he wanted to do. There were artifacts in this very ruin he wished he had more time to study. He wanted to speak to his brother again, to repair what had been broken between them. He wanted to help Caleb defeat his old enemy, Trent Ikithon. He wanted to teach Caleb Gravity Fissure. He wanted to find a way to remove the Eyes from Caleb’s person. He wanted--
His fingers paused their attention to Frumpkin, who meowed quietly in protest. He renewed his scritching, and Frumpkin purred appreciatively.
Such hopes and desires had kept him going for a time, but they soon became their own heavy burden to carry. Now that he had a few failures under his belt, success seemed less certain than ever, and the consequences of failure were greater than they’d ever been. Would the Nein even want to speak to him again once they’d accomplished their goals in Eisselcross? Would he find out in a few years time that they were dead at the hands of some new enemy? Would he himself die with a poisoned knife in his back before he could earn their trust again?
He dared a quick glance behind him. A few feet away, Caleb was curled into a ball, knees tucked tight to his chest. He was using one of his books as a pillow. Veth spooned him from behind, and his face was dangerously close to one of Beau’s feet. Sleeping in a place like this--going unconscious on purpose --seemed unthinkable to Essek, but the Nein had no choice.
Essek didn’t want Caleb sleeping anywhere but in a comfortable bed. Preferably in a room with locks on the doors. Arcane locks.
He turned back to his watch. He was getting distracted again.
“Give ‘em Hells,” Lucien said in Caleb’s ear, before stepping back.
Essek scrambled to his feet from where he’d fallen out of the air when Lucien had turned his gaze on him. That had all been very undignified, but it didn’t matter now. Lucien was turning away, laughing quietly, as Caleb reached for his component pouch. To Essek’s left, Jester was shouting as Yasha tried to grapple Beau. To his right, Cree was advancing on Caduceus.
Caleb started to cast. Lucien was looking away; Essek could try to get his own spell off. But all of the spells he had prepared would risk hurting Caleb, and that wasn’t an option. With little else left to him, Essek took a page out of Yasha’s book and threw himself at Caleb, wrapping his arms around his waist and squeezing with all the non-arcane force he could muster.
They were fairly evenly matched in terms of strength, though Caleb had a height advantage that was not insignificant when Essek wasn’t floating. Essek gritted his teeth and held on as Caleb tried to wriggle out of his grip, both of them stumbling from side to side. (It probably looked highly undignified.) In the chaos, Caleb managed to get his hand into his component pouch, and promptly burst into flames.
Essek screamed as the Flame Shield ignited, shutting his eyes against the bright light even as he felt his cheek blister where it was pressed to the shoulder of Caleb’s coat. The scent of his own burning hair filled his nose. Every nerve screamed at him to let go, and he drew upon all of the willpower he’d cultivated in his training as Shadowhand to maintain his hold.
“Caleb!” Essek heard Veth, though he wasn’t sure where she was. “Caleb! Snap out of it! Please! ” She sounded like she was crying. They were both suddenly knocked off their feet, and Essek lost his grip, biting back a grunt of pain as his burned body impacted the ground and rolled. He looked up to see Caleb--or whoever was currently wearing Caleb’s face--snarling and struggling with some sort of net contraption that had him by the ankles. Before Essek could react, Caleb saw him, and his face twisted with a vicious hatred Essek had never seen on him before. He sent an orb rolling towards Essek and muttered, “ Fajar .”
Essek fell back, the pain in the rest of his body briefly outshone by the pain in his eyes, clawing at his face with singed and blistered fingers. Some part of his mind had enough functionality left to wonder if the entity possessing Caleb was wise to Drow physiology, or if this was Caleb’s own knowledge being cruelly used against him. When he’d recovered himself enough to open his eyes again, Caleb was already standing up, halfway through the somatic component of Disintegrate. His blue eyes, hazy to Essek’s damaged vision, were narrowed and lightless.
So be it, then. Essek remained on his knees, lifted his face to meet Caleb’s gaze, and waited.
And Caleb hesitated. Only for a second--just long enough for his cold, empty eyes to linger on the burns covering half of Essek’s face, his fingers trembling and faltering—but it was enough time for Fjord to come barrelling out of nowhere and knock Caleb back to the ground.
“Go!” Fjord roared. “Get Lucien!”
Essek knew a command when he heard one. He scrambled to his feet, wincing, and looked for Lucien. He was facing away, and holding Jester by the throat.
The moment Lucien looked back at Essek, he’d be powerless again. But there was one way he could make this opportunity count. He backed up until he was at the very edge of his range, and cast Tether Essence.
Lucien turned around, his expression confused. He had apparently noticed the spell, but couldn’t identify it. He looked away from Jester, turning his suffocating gaze on Essek. That was fine. Anti-magic fields didn’t dispel magic--merely suppressed it until it was out of range.
Essek turned and sprinted for the other side of the long chamber that was serving as their battlefield. At the other side, the floor crumbled away, leaving a precipice. When he reached the edge, he spun around. Lucien had dropped Jester, and there was a look of dawning horror on his face.
“Hey! Fuckhead!” Essek shouted at Lucien, and tipped backwards over the edge.
The first few feet were still in range of Lucien’s field, and he wondered if he’d miscalculated. But then he fell a few more feet, and he felt the tether spring back into being, tying his life force to Lucien’s.
He closed his eyes, and did not cast his levitation cantrip.
Caleb returned to his mind in time to find his body nearly crushed under a couple hundred pounds of armored half-orc. He stopped struggling, and Fjord rolled off of him, running after Jester, who was shouting and crying and running towards the other end of the hall.
“Lebby!” Veth cried, and hugged him from behind. He jumped and winced, but the attention didn’t sting as much as he’d expected. It seemed he’d made it out with only a few bruises.
“Is everyone alright? What’s going on?” Beau ran by, followed by Yasha, in the direction of Jester. Caleb looked around the room. Everyone else was following Jester as she ran. Lucien lay some meters away, motionless with Jester’s axe through his chest. With Veth’s help, Caleb had just managed to get to his feet when he made out what Jester was screaming.
“ Essek! ”
Caleb’s heart ground to a halt. Essek was nowhere to be seen. He remembered attacking him-- burning him, but then--
Jester was transforming into a giant blue owl and soaring down past the edge of the cliff. It didn’t take long for Caleb’s keen mind to put the pieces together. He swallowed his bile and followed suit.
The caved-in half of the hall was a mess of crumbled stone and ice, and the drop ended after about forty-five feet. Already Caleb could see that the snow at the bottom was stained red. Jester’s bird form shrieked with dismay and reverted to her usual form a few feet above the snow, landing and falling to her knees next to the broken body of Essek Thelyss.
Caleb dropped his Polymorph a little too early, slamming into the ground hard as he scrambled to examine his friend. He barely felt the pain from the impact as he reached for Essek, hands hovering just over his body, barely touching. His beautiful fur-lined coat was blackened with soot, and the skin on the right side of his face was red with angry blisters. His right leg extended at an odd angle, most likely broken in the fall. His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted and unmoving, a trickle of blood drying at the corner of his mouth.
Caleb began to drift away, as if he was outside of himself. His surroundings spun, and he noted in a detached sort of way that he was tipping sideways. Jester was saying something, but he couldn’t hear it. He kept leaning over until he slumped down, lying alongside his motionless friend in the snow, staring at his profile.
The next few seconds seemed to dilate into hours, days, weeks as Caleb’s immaculate sense of time abandoned him completely. He lay there, locked in the hellish eternity of a single second, until Essek gasped and his eyes flew open.
“Just stay still, okay? Everything is going to be fine,” Jester was sniffling, laying a hand on Essek’s chest as it glowed with green light. “Artie’s going to fix you up, and then the Wildmother is going to fix you up even more, and then you’re going to be good as new, okay?”
“Hey, man.” Beau had joined Jester at Essek’s side. “That was quite a fall. Bet you broke just about every bone in your little body.” Her tone was more gentle than teasing. Yasha landed beside her, wings extended, and laid a hand on Essek’s shoulder.
“It’s not much, but I can help a little.”
All Caleb could do was push himself up and watch the burns slowly recede from Essek’s face. Eventually, the redness lifted from the whites of his eyes as well, and he shifted his head to look at Caleb, blinking with recognition.
“Are you well?” he rasped, lifting his hand to weakly grasp Caleb’s knee. Caleb would have laughed hysterically, had he been able to find his voice. Was he well? He wasn’t the one who had just taken a five story tumble after being set on fire.
Caleb nodded, and briefly tried to smile. Then he buried his face in his hands and shook his head.
The Nein were victorious, but no one felt much like celebrating. The immediate threat was gone--and with it, their last hope of saving their old friend Mollymauk. And while Caleb and Beau were themselves for now, the Eyes—and the threat they posed—remained. The mood at the dinner table inside Caleb’s tower was thus closer to tentative relief than any sort of revelry.
Essek only stayed long enough to eat a small bowl of stew before disappearing into the guest quarters, explaining that he needed to trim his singed hair. Neither he nor Caleb had said a word all evening. Jester had tried valiantly to bring the mood up with increasingly outlandish dessert requests for Caleb’s cats, but it was clear that she was feeling weary. Eventually, Beau and Yasha retired to Beau’s room, Jester and Fjord went to soak in the hot tub, and Caduceus left to commune with the Wildmother, leaving Veth and Caleb in the dining room.
Once they were alone, Veth pushed away her plate of half-eaten chocolate cinnamon roll with raspberry-peppermint frosting. “Not one of Jester’s better ideas, I’m afraid,” she joked. When Caleb only managed a quiet huff of laughter in response, she sighed, and fixed him with a more serious look. “How are you, Caleb?”
Caleb stared at his hands and shrugged. “I am myself, for the time being.”
Veth snorted. “You sure are. I feel like I can smell you blaming yourself.”
“Am I wrong?” Caleb curled the hand that held the new eye into a fist. “It was my choice to read that book.”
“You couldn’t have known this would happen. It was just a book ,” Veth insisted. “You’ve read so many books and nothing like this has ever happened.”
“That battle was too close,” Caleb muttered, shaking his head. “My--lapse--almost got us all killed. Or worse.” He clenched his fist tighter, and watched it tremble. “And now I am once again at the mercy of forces that would take my own mind from me.”
Veth’s smaller hand reached out and covered his fist. “Are you angry with Beau, too?”
Caleb blinked and looked at her. Her tattoos glittered slightly in the soft light. “What?”
“She’s as much to blame as you are. She made the same choice you did.”
“I…” Caleb looked away. “It’s not the same. I should have known better. I should have stopped her--”
“Caleb. Beau isn’t stupid. If you should’ve known better, then she should have too. And she knows how you get--if you ask me, she should have stopped you .” Veth sighed, and leaned against him so their shoulders pressed together. “I don’t actually blame her, though. We all went along with it.” She scowled at Jester’s experimental cinnamon roll. “It was just a fucking book .”
Logically, Veth was making sense. Emotionally, Caleb still felt like packing his bags and disappearing into the depths of Aeor, where he could never harm his friends again. He idly wondered how long he could sustain himself here. He would have plenty of food and water, if he kept casting the tower…
“It’s going to be okay, Caleb,” Veth assured him, breaking him from his fantasy. “We’re going to figure this all out.” She prodded the side of his face with the blunt end of her fork until he turned to look her in the eye again. “Are you feeling guilty about barbecuing our criminal friend?”
Caleb scowled at her and pulled away, a spark of anger catching in him at her flippant description of what for him had been a terrifying incident. “Ah, fuck,” Veth muttered. “Sorry, sorry. I was trying to be funny and it came out… bad. Sorry.” She caught his shoulder, and the spark faded away as quickly as it flared. “I was trying to say--he knew this would be a crazy ride when he chose to come here with us.”
“He came because we asked him to.” Because he felt guilty. Because we have the blackmail material of a century on him .
Veth blew a raspberry. “Not like I held him at crossbow-point. You know, Caleb, sometimes people just decide to do things because they like you and they want to help you.”
Caleb shot her a sideways glance. “I thought you didn’t even trust him.”
“Hmm. Well, I wouldn’t say I like him,” Veth mused, “but it’s hard to keep holding things against the guy after you’ve been in a few near-death situations with him. Maybe he screwed over the entire continent, but he’s got your back in a fight; I know that much.” She looked him in the eye, face soft. “And you need people who have your back.”
Because I won’t always be around. She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to.
“Anyway, he’s probably up in his room, moping. And you’re down here, moping. Maybe you should go talk to him and then you can mope together.”
“He probably doesn’t want to see me right now…” it was a weak excuse, and Caleb knew it.
“Please! That guy is obsessed with you. Of course he is; you’re so talented and smart,” Veth gushed. “You could teach him so many spells.”
“He is still a great deal more advanced than I am, Veth.”
“No way.” Veth was impressively unconvinced. “I’ve never even seen him make a fireball.”
Caleb shook his head and smiled ruefully. Veth’s insistence on putting him up on a pedestal could be frustrating at times, but she only meant well.
“Look,” said Veth. “You don’t believe me when I say this isn’t your fault. But maybe you’ll believe it coming from him. You know, because he’s a sad nerd like you.” She yawned. “I’m exhausted. I’m gonna go pass out.” She patted him gently on the shoulder again before making her way up the tower, leaving Caleb alone with the tower cats.
Caleb sat at the table for a few more minutes. Then he turned to one of the cats, a fluffy tortoiseshell who had taken over one of the empty seats. “Elena, can you go and check if Essek is asleep? Or trancing?” With a slow blink of acknowledgment, Elena hopped down from her perch and trotted away. She returned a minute later and leapt into Caleb’s lap, purring.
“ Danke .” Caleb thanked her with another minute of scritches before gently setting her down and making his way to Essek’s room. He knocked on the door immediately, in the interest of not giving himself time to wuss out.
A few moments later, and Essek was at the door, his hair indeed just a little shorter than it had been before the battle. “Oh,” he said, faintly surprised. “Hello, Caleb.”
“Hallo. Am I disturbing you?”
“Not at all.” Essek stepped back and gestured for Caleb to enter. He wasn’t wearing his coat or mantle, and Caleb was struck--not for the first time--by how small he looked without his layers.
“I hope the accommodations are adequate? I tried to reproduce something of your home tower, but I am no expert on Xhorhassian decoration.” The lights in the room were dim, but bright enough for a Drow to see colors by, and the stained glass window depicted the skyline of Rosohna, with the addition of the tree on the roof of the Xhorhaus.
“They are more than adequate,” Essek smiled slightly as he looked around the room, and as best as Caleb could tell, the look was genuine. “Your memory is as impressive as your arcane skill.”
Caleb ducked his head at the praise. “As long as it is not too off-base.”
“I assure you, you have a fine grasp of Xhorhassian decoration.” One of the corners of Essek’s smile quirked up a little higher.
Caleb couldn’t help chuckling a bit at that. “I will take your word for it.” After a few seconds of standing around a bit awkwardly, Essek motioned for him to sit, and they sank into the pair of comfortable chairs Caleb had placed next to the modest bookshelf. Essek had a little cup of cocoa sitting on one of the empty shelves, which he retrieved before sitting down.
(He had not had any ulterior motives in mind when he had decided the sitting room would have two chairs. None at all.)
“So, ah,” said Caleb, fidgeting with the fringe of his scarf, which was currently looking rather worse for wear. “You had a rough go of it today. Are you alright?”
“I am quite well, thanks to Jester and Caduceus.” Essek was a skilled liar, but the answer came a touch too quickly.
“Well, I wanted to say that I am very sorry for--for what happened during my loss of control.”
Essek shook his head, brow furrowing. “You have nothing to apologize for. You were not yourself.”
“Maybe so, but it was still my magic that--that burned you.” Caleb went to scratch at his arms without thinking, and restrained himself from doing so at the last second. “In any case, I feel I must apologize for not making it more clear that, in the event that I was taken over by the Eyes, I was to be neutralized. I discussed it with the others, but I did not make it as clear to you, and you were hurt because you tried to restrain me. I am sorry.”
The furrow of Essek’s brow grew deeper. “You expected me to attack you?”
Caleb nodded sheepishly. Essek pursed his lips. Caleb continued, “We brought you along hoping you would be willing to risk your life for the greater good, but… you don’t have to risk it trying to save me from my own folly.”
“You make it sound like you’ve deceived me,” said Essek softly. When Caleb met his eyes, they were sad in a way he hadn’t seen on Essek before. “But you’ve been quite forthcoming. I took the risk on my own.”
“I know it may sound strange, considering all the risks we’ve asked you to take so far, but I hate to see harm come to you down here.” Before Essek could reply, Caleb pushed on. “Since I began to travel with friends, instead of fending only for myself, I’ve feared my presence would put them in danger. And it--it has.” He clenched his fingers around his scarf so as not to fidget. “I fucked up when I used Dunamancy where I shouldn’t have, and I really fucked up when I tried to read that stupid book, and now… well. You, too, are in danger because of me.”
Essek clutched his cocoa with both hands, staring at the marshmallows for a moment before turning back to Caleb. “I’ve been in danger for a long time, Caleb. And I’ve come to realize that I much prefer being in danger because I am helping you, rather than because I chose to do something dangerous for my own gain.”
Something warm swelled in Caleb’s chest at those words, though he still disliked that Essek was in danger at all. “Then you can hardly continue calling yourself a coward, friend.”
For some reason, that was what seemed to finally put a crack in Essek's carefully constructed visage. He broke eye contact and set the cocoa aside, one ear twitching agitatedly, before he schooled his features back into impassivity. “That’s... kind of you to say.”
“It’s only the truth,” Caleb insisted. Essek chuckled quietly. It wasn’t a happy sound. “Do you find it so hard to believe?”
When Essek’s eyes met Caleb’s again, they were strangely bright. “Caleb, I thought you knew that I followed you down here to run away. Truthfully, it is a relief to--” He broke off.
“A relief? What do you mean?” Caleb searched his face. Essek’s jaw worked as he swallowed hard.
“I refuse to burden you with the calculations of my existence.”
The warmth in Caleb’s chest turned hot, aching. “Are things so dire for you, out there?”
“No,” Essek replied, voice nearly a whisper. “They are not.”
“But…” When the pieces clicked into place, the heat became a crushing grip on Caleb’s heart. “Oh, my friend. Did you come here expecting you would not walk out again?”
“Of course not.” But it was too late; the walls had already crumbled. Essek’s lies were as thin as paper, and half as sturdy. “I have many projects still in the works. The expeditions I could send here once we are finished--” his voice was quavering.
“Essek,” Caleb whispered, leaning closer to where Essek sat. Essek quieted down. He was looking away again, and his eyes were the color of the sky over Rosohna, indigo-violet and swimming with stars. “This is a risky mission we are on. But that does not mean it must be a suicidal one.” He laid a tentative hand on Essek’s forearm, moving slowly in case the touch wasn’t welcome. “I would like us both to leave here alive.”
“And I am a coward, because I would prefer to stay.”
“No,” said Caleb firmly. He slid out of his chair and kneeled in front of Essek so he could grasp both of his arms, looking up into his face even as he tried to turn away. “You are just very deep in a very dark tunnel right now. You’re having trouble seeing all the possibilities.”
“I’m an expert in possibilities.”
“Then why are you so eager to throw yours away?” Caleb couldn’t help clutching harder at Essek’s arms. There was a tremble to them that hadn’t been perceptible without touch. “You didn’t have to use that spell. You could have stood your ground and fought.”
“I had to take him down before Fjord was forced to hurt you. It was the most expedient option.”
“It was my mistake. My responsibility.” Caleb searched Essek’s face, trying to catch his eyes again, but they darted around the room, evading him. “Essek, I won’t have you take on the consequences of my poor choices as well as your own. I won’t accept that.”
“But I want to,” said Essek brokenly. He squeezed his eyes shut, and a single tear slid down his cheek, like a falling star. “I can never fix what I’ve done, but I can fix this . I can help you.”
“Not if it means giving up your life,” Caleb hissed. Essek shook his head violently.
“I want to give my life to you. I have no better use for it.”
“I’ll help you find one.”
“Stop,” Essek sobbed. “Stop offering me things. Not when I can never pay you back. Please, I have nothing left--”
Blinking away his own tears, Caleb leaned forward until his forehead was pressed to Essek’s chest, where he could feel his heartbeat fluttering like a bird. He moved to grip Essek’s trembling shoulders fiercely. “Pay me back by surviving. Pay me back by giving yourself a fair chance. And if you won’t do that--then do it because if you get killed when I’m the one who did something impulsive and foolish, I won’t be able to forgive myself.”
After a few moments, Essek sniffed and said, “I’m… confused.” There was a note of petulant frustration in his voice. It was new, and rather endearing.
“What’s confusing?” Caleb clambered into the chair with him. It was a cozy armchair, spacious enough to accommodate a scrawny human and a petite elf--if they pressed close. His face went a bit hot when he realized what he’d done--Essek wasn’t Veth; this wasn’t normally how Caleb soothed Essek, but the instinct had felt so natural, and he’d acted entirely without thinking. Fortunately, Essek didn’t attempt to move away or otherwise indicate that he was uncomfortable. In fact, he relaxed a little bit; slumping against Caleb’s side.
“You brought me here to help you, but you don’t accept what I offer...” Essek curled in on himself a little more. “I don’t understand. You are more than justified in asking anything of me. So why don’t you?”
Caleb felt he was beginning to understand what Veth had said earlier. He took Essek’s hand and squeezed it gently. (It was rather clammy.) “It’s very simple. You are my friend and I like you.” Essek looked at him like he’d grown a second head, and Caleb laughed, a bit wetly--the look on his face and angle of his ears reminded him of a surprised Frumpkin. “I want your help, I did bring you to help, but not at the cost of you .”
“I… but…” Essek was the very picture of utter bewilderment. Caleb wondered at how utterly dominated his daily life must be by transactions and favors, if this simple declaration that his friends had no interest in exploiting his debt had him gaping like a fish out of water. Still, it was a bit hypocritical of Caleb to laugh. Essek assumed that every kindness incurred a debt, favors to be called in at a later date; while Caleb assumed his friends were only kind to him because he had somehow tricked them into it.
“It’s alright,” he assured Essek, leaning into him. “It takes time for people like us to get used to things like this.”
“I’m still afraid,” Essek whispered, leaning back. “I don’t know what awaits me outside of Aeor. I don’t know what awaits you .”
A week ago, Caleb would not have been so sure he wanted to maintain ties with Essek after this expedition. There was so much else to worry about, much as he missed the unique understanding they shared; and it had been so difficult to be sure if Essek was truly sorry for his betrayal, or if he was just sorry to have been caught. He hadn’t even been sure if he’d ever really known Essek--if the person he found himself missing in quiet moments had ever existed, or if it had all been a carefully constructed facade. A shadow cast by a stranger.
But you couldn’t keep up that sort of a performance in a place like Aeor. It broke you down to your component parts and laid bare machinery you didn’t even know you possessed. This small, sorry man with hastily trimmed hair and tears in his eyes was the real Essek. No flashy magic or expensive clothing. No titles or towers. Just Essek.
“Whatever is waiting, we will find out together,” Caleb promised. And Essek turned his face to Caleb’s collar, and Caleb buried his nose in Essek’s hair, and neither of them were alone.