Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I am still skeptical about the efficacy of this plan. It is haphazard at best and has virtually no contingencies. We don’t even have the full guest list. Are we confident we want to go in without any further strategizing?”

Caleb suspected Essek was having a bit of buyer’s remorse over agreeing so readily to help with their most recent assignment given that he was visibly suffering from their planning process. He had greeted their return to Rosohna with a sort of jittery subservience which Caleb was still trying to decode, and was uncharacteristically eager to assist them when asked. Caleb was too busy trying to reconcile his own complicated emotions at this partnership to give too much sympathy to Essek’s obvious stress.

Beau, meanwhile, was socking Essek in the shoulder with a bit more force than was necessary. Essek let out a soft gurk before schooling his features. “Dude, this is the most we’ve planned out any of our heists, stop your whining.”

Essek looked extremely alarmed.

“Besides,” Jester put in, giving a final twist to the elaborate updo she had worked his magically elongated hair into, “you are going to be a snack once I’m finished. Not that you’re not already! But, I mean, get all the gentlemen and ladies swooning, you know? No one will be able to look away!”

“It’s okay to be concerned,” Caduceus put in placidly, “but as someone who also got to come into this group and their methods late, I can assure you it is much worse than anything you can imagine so you’re better off just not worrying about it.”

“Not certain you’re helping, Deucy,” said Fjord. “Really Essek, it should be a pretty straight forward process. You distract the Head Matron, Veth steals the key to her vault off of her, the rest of us get the Soul Ruby out of the Children of Malice’s possession, Beau mans the get-away mounts, and we’ve found yet another trinket for the Dynasty to focus on instead of further prodding with the Empire. Everyone wins. I mean, except for Lolth’s crazyass followers.” He straightened his own formal attire while trying to look confident. It was not convincing.

“And if something goes wrong, we’ll just kill everyone,” Yasha said softly. In the silence of the room she added, “that was a joke.”

Veth, who had turned Essek’s face away to apply some subtle makeup, regarded the drow thoughtfully. “It’s like you were born to be a honeypot. I think this should be our go-to strategy from now on. Let’s test it.”

She swiveled his face towards Caleb, showcasing a silver eyeliner accentuating his angular eyes and a shimmering highlight along his cheekbones that haloed his pale freckles like starlight. Delicate wisps of hair framed his face in a stunning balance of elegance and allure. Caleb choked on his tea.

“We’re good to go!” Beau proclaimed.

---

This is asinine, Essek thought bitterly, slowly spinning his way through the elaborate dance steps on the ballroom floor to shift himself closer to the Head Matron. She was likely one of the most dangerous drow alive with a known appetite for weaker males, and he was willingly flouncing his way into her web with a tenuous exit strategy at best. Essek was beginning to worry his most notable personality trait was a complete lack of survival instinct.

There were numerous deflections he could have given the Mighty Nein when they approached him with this plan: the Shadowhand should not be involved in the activities of mercenaries, the Shadowhand was above a blasted honeypot scheme, the Shadowhand was frankly unsettled by the predatory nature of Lolth’s high priestesses. All were ultimately irrelevant. How could he argue the Shadowhand’s image when he hardly knew who he was supposed to be anymore? He was adrift in the sea of his own bad choices with no mooring to drag him forward. What did the duties of the Shadowhand even matter to him at this point? Repairing his fragile bonds with the Nein superseded any weak protest he could offer; there was little he would refuse them at this point. And of course, they had sent Caleb to make the request. However humiliating that particular weakness was, it was a weakness all the same.

He tried to distract himself from his horrendous life choices by taking in the gala around him. The opulence of the party was only offset by the décor. While Essek had always been uncomfortable with the pervasive theocracy of the Luxon, the religion at least had taste. Appropriate ornamentation for the Children of Malice appeared to heavily feature rivers of blood, a truly unacceptable number of spiders, and large, obsidian reliefs of the screaming damned. Not only did it put a damper on the festive spirit, it was just tacky.

He was saved from his judgement of the gauche skull-shaped goblets against the far wall when a hand closed over his elbow. He glanced up with as demur of an expression has his face would allow to see a hulking orcish woman staring dispassionately down at him.

“Her Dark Eminence would like to inspect you further. Come.” Not waiting for a reply, she tugged him towards the dais where Vivurk Tonn lounged on a giant horned throne. The Head Matron tapped idly at full maroon lips as she watched him approach, giving an unsubtle once-over of his form. Her cruelly beautiful features were thoughtful. Flattering, if it had come from someone who was her polar opposite. Vivurk licked her lips and Essek felt his testicles try to retreat into his abdomen to socialize with his kidneys. This was a terrible idea.

“Join me,” Vivurk’s husky voice commanded as they reached the foot of the dais. She waved languidly to a smaller throne to her left. It was understated, only composed of about forty thousand skulls and spiders. “Entertain me through this drudgery and you will earn entrance to my personal chambers tonight.”

Who spoke like this? It was as if she had picked up a tome titled “So You Want To Be an Evil Caricature With Distressingly Sexual Overtones”. She arched an eyebrow, impatient. Essek narrowed his eyes coyly and tilted his chin in defiance. It was a gamble. The Children held the archaic tradition of complete submission from their males, and sauciness would either ensnare her or cost him his head. He used to think he was good at calculated risk.

Because she was not the Mighty Nein and had the decency to fit his expectations, she snorted, clearly amused. “Oh yes, you will do very nicely. Come, morsel.” The orc gave him a shove towards the dais. He placed a punitive swirl of gravity in her left shoe so she would trip as she left.

“That’s my cue. Keep it going, hotboi, I’m moving in. Youcanrespondtothismessage.” Essek didn’t see Veth anywhere, but that was the point wasn’t it?

“You honor me, Eminence. I will entertain however you desire.” This felt like a new low, which he supposed was a distinction given his already impressive list of character flaws. He arranged himself primly on the proffered seat only to immediately have a spider leg jab into his left asscheek. Espionage was the actual worse. “How would you have me? Converse, that is.” Veth’s cackle rang though his head. It was insulting but not surprising to know she had wasted a cantrip specifically so he could know she was mocking him. Below, he saw the camouflaged Fjord and Caduceus playing at canoodling near the doors to the treasury. They’re in position. I can’t believe this may actually work.

“Share your thoughts on the guests,” Vivurk murmured, sounding half asleep in her boredom. “You look like you have a mouth on you. I want to see it work.”

Oh yuck. He would gladly obey her order if only to ignore the implications of that statement. His eyes scanned the crowd, resolutely not settling on Caleb’s current tiefling form winding through the crowd or Jester’s half giant who was spinning an undisguised Yasha like a top. “There is hardly anything to comment on,” he replied in a mimic of her languid tone. “Would you like me to note the Ironeye looks terrified of his little hired courtesan? He must know you can’t handle a drow if you’re not down to plow, and he knows he’s not up for the task.” The Head Matron gave a bawdy laugh, startling the dancers around her who gave uncertain smiles before resuming their steps. “Or perhaps I should note Daev’yana’s conspicuous absence. Not that I miss his tedious droning. That is a tongue that doesn’t know how to pleasure in any form.” Vivurk looked positively gleeful, and Essek felt a brief stab of pride at a job well done before reminding himself that being able to talk shit with the Spider Queen’s mouthpiece was probably a shameful accomplishment. “As for Icozrin-“ he paused, eying the harpist in the corner and factoring in Vivurk’s sideways glance. “You know, they are stunning. No complaints there. Can they join us tonight, perhaps?”

The Head Matron rested her chin on her palm, propped against the armrest closest to him. “It seems I have finally snagged a pretty little morsel with some semblance of a brain. Go on, treat, you are earning yourself a great many favors.”

Essek was bizarrely torn between gloating over his obvious success and the visceral NOPE of all her food analogies. He couldn’t tell if she was just deeply into oral innuendo or if her intended evening activities would legitimately end in cannibalism. His eyes skimmed back to the crowd, looking for another source of-

His mind screeched to a halt as his eyes locked with Verin’s.

With Verin’s.

WITH VERIN’S.

His brother gaped up at the dais, a stone in the middle of the flowing dance. “Esse-“

Tiefling-Caleb linebacker tackled him.  

The two went down in a pile of flailing limbs and shouts from the surrounding party-goers. Essek was half out of his chair, quite aware of who held the strength advantage there, but some sort of innate sense alerted him to the fact that the damage had been done. His gaze swiveled to the High Matron whose expression was the most delighted and predatory he had seen all evening.

“I thought I recognized those beautiful eyes, Shadowhand.”

The following sequence of events processed in his mind as chaotic stills.

A flash. His dunamancy tore through the room, pushing their reality a step to the left where he avoided her first attack, allowing him to paralyze the Matron in her throne as time around her locked.

A flash. The orc guard lunged with her massive warhammer, two strides from crushing his skull before the gravity pull in her left shoe hobbled her and sent her crashing down the stairs into the guard detail that was rushing towards them.

A flash. The dance floor was invaded with a violent cacophony of sparkling hamsters, horns sprouting from their foreheads to gore the Gloomwatch that had come spilling into the ballroom.

A flash. A giant fucking demon had bypassed the need for a vault key and went crashing into the treasury with Fjord and Caduceus (now reverted to their normal forms) mounted on its hulking back.

A flash. Veth was inexplicably on the ceiling, hunkered like a spider and firing a crossbow into the crowd like a nightmarish wraith worthy of Lolth’s lore.

A flash. Essek’s eyes met Caleb’s, and for a moment there was beautiful, entropic fission as Caleb filled with magic and ropes of fire tore through the ballroom, corralling the party goers and guards away from the main group.

Essek read the move as clearly as if Caleb had cast Sending. As Vivurk remained a statue in her throne and the guards at the base of the dais flailed in a tangle of limbs, Essek shot skyward, scooped Veth off the ceiling (shrieks and protests), and landed in the protective cocoon of Caleb’s flames. With one hand he touched gently at his bruising, now human eye. The next moment, Essek’s hand outstretched to his idiot brother, forcefully pushing him into a deep trance.

As the screams of the party goers escalated, Beau threw open the doors to the ballroom with a resounding “what the FUCK!”

“They have the Ruby!” Jester abruptly shouted, her features vague as she recovered from the Sending.

Right. No time like the present to burn an 8^th level spell slot.

Throwing out his hands, Essek opened a gravitational vortex that sling-shotted Fjord and Caduceus back up from the treasury, hauled Beau (and through the collection of reigns tied to her belt, the conglomeration of mounts), into the ballroom, and lifted himself, Caleb, Jester, Veth, and Yasha above the seething mass of confusion to unify them all near the ceiling.

“Mount up?” Beau shouted over the screams, glee painted on her face.

Essek glanced back down into the ballroom. The demon ape was rampaging through the tasteless china. Caleb’s flames were herding the Children into small groups of panic and chewing through a couple of heinous tapestries who truly deserved their fate. The High Matron was starting to rise from her throne, eyes rabid and fixed on Essek. And below it all, Verin. Unconscious on the black marble floor.

“Drop me and go,” Yasha stated calmly. “I’ve got him. We’ll rendezvous near the lower Barbs.”

He didn’t dare question her. As Yasha thundered onto the tile and unceremoniously flung Verin over her shoulder, Essek slipped onto a hovering mount behind Caleb and gripped reflexively at the other wizard’s shirt. He reversed the vortex, catapulting the startled mounts out of the hall and into the night in a steak of stars, all the while wondering just how the hell this was his life now.

---

They regrouped relatively unscathed and with their quarry. It was about the least subtle mission Essek had ever been a part of and he was beginning to have a suspicion that all of his previous machinations had been unraveled by messy, idiotic luck. He couldn’t say he minded.

“That was cool as hellllll!” Jester crowed, sprawled out on her back in the grass and staring at the night sky. “Can Essek gravity rocket us everywhere now?” A few paces off, their shaking, spooked mounts huffed clouds of panicked breath into the cold night air.

“That was pretty badass,” Beau mused, a larger concession than he had expected her to make. “Though I seriously need to learn a way to disguise myself. Being the get-away chump is boring as hell. I missed all the good stuff.”

“You can take my place next time,” Fjord murmured, his head between his knees. “Please, Essek, just leave me to die in the clutches of the enemy next time. It’s a better fate than that gravity fuckery.”

“You’ll be alright,” Caduceus murmured, offering him a cup of tea that wafted a ginger steam. Fjord took it gratefully. “Not too bad, all things considered. Are you a bit more comfortable with our methods, Mr. Essek?”

“Absolutely not. I frankly dread the next “plan” you all come up with. It is a statistical anomaly that this entire group isn’t dead.”

“In our defense,” Yasha stated, coming out of the gloom and settling down next to Beau, “it seems the Aurora Watch had a somewhat similar plan to us, but we pulled it off much better. I found a group of them on the outskirts of the palace and dropped your whoever-he-was off to them. They seemed to be delighted that the High Matron chose you over him.”

Essek sighed, hiding his face in his hand. “My brother. Verin is my idiot little brother. I can’t believe we almost all died because we were both targeting the High Matron.”

“Sweet!” Veth crowed. “We got the hot brother!”

Essek felt like his face was on fire, hidden in his palm. This was not the notoriety he had dreamed of as a child.

“The brilliant brother,” Caleb murmured beside him with a companionable shoulder bump. The complement was so surprising Essek silently choked on his own spit. “Perfectly able to balance innuendo and the most seamless casting I’ve ever seen. As soon as you’re rested, I would be greatly interested in how you modified the effects of a spell you had already cast.”

Essek peeked between his fingers and couldn’t help the twitch of a grin.

This group was pure chaos and utter madness with a gravity that the Dynasty’s best graviturgist couldn’t resist. Whatever strand of fate had allowed them back into his life, he was going to clutch at it with all the strength he had.

Chapter Text

It was a blessed three days before Essek had to deal with the consequences of his actions. His mother was getting soft.

The Xhorhaus was its usual low-grade bedlam with the Nein back in residence as he and Caleb attempted to pour over their notes, frantically chasing a new spell they were on the verge of cracking. It was a dream he didn’t care to wake from. Fragile (so fragile), but hopeful. After an excruciating sequence of halting half-conversations, cautious small talk, and several awkward if oblique discussions on morality, Caleb had begun to thaw and allow them to slip back into collegiate collaboration as if it had never been dropped. Essek was mystified that they routinely met at the Xhorhaus instead of at his towers (where they could ponder and calculate without interruption), but in truth his life had been too silent in the interim where he feared the Nein had moved on from him. It was right as he had been contemplating severing his Rosohnan ties that they had catapulted back into his life and injected color back into his world. He didn’t deserve them, but he did crave their friendship and he was selfish enough that he leapt at the opportunity to rejoin them instead of distancing himself as he should have. Which was all to say, the distracting clatters and exclamations currently happening throughout the house were almost as welcomed as Caleb’s prodigious insights into spell creation.

“I can’t say why, but a reverse abjuration glyph seems more appropriate here,” Caleb mused, tapping at their partially constructed spell as the house shook with a minor explosion. Essek hummed in acknowledgement as there was a pounding on the front door. He marked the thought in the margins while Lord Biylan’s indistinct shouting filtered into the library. Veth’s shrill riposte was equally indistinct as Essek squinted at their equation.

“But then, with that inverse surge, would we-?” Essek asked quietly, altering a variable that had been nagging at them for the past two days. There was further commotion in the foyer and the door chimes sounded as if they had been thrown to the ground before there were two twangs and the squawk of a bird. It was probably fine. Essek was too distracted by the uptick in his own heart rate. This was genius. It completely bypassed-

“Ja,” Caleb said breathlessly while scratching a furious note at the bottom of the page. Oh, that was brilliant. That was utterly brilliant. Essek gripped at Caleb’s arm, seeing how the final pieces were coming together. Caleb glanced up, his face transformed by elusive joy, and in that moment, Essek-

Looked up to see his mother’s retainer in the doorway. Dear gods.

“Essek,” Deyzya greeted joylessly. Her tone stated she didn’t care what he was doing because she would be disappointed regardless. “The Den Mother orders your presence immediately.”

Whatever he had been feeling a moment earlier shriveled, outsourced by overarching dread. The familiar mantra started up immediately in his mind. You are the Bright Queen’s Shadowhand. You are your own drow. You are capable of mature and civilized conversation-

“Are you in trouble, Essek?” Jester asked timidly from where the rest of the Nein were crowding into the library doorway. All but Veth, who could be seen in the hallway exchanging rude gestures with Lord Biylan.

“Ah, um. Den politics,” he stated diplomatically at the same time Deyzya deadpanned, “yes.”

The Nein looked back and forth between the two drow before Jester offered softly. “Of course we don’t want to keep her waiting. She is clearly very important and probably busy- my mama is always busy- I bet she is beautiful too, I mean, how could she not be-“

“Why are you still talking?” Deyzya asked rhetorically. She snapped her fingers for Essek to stand, which he was already doing anyway.

“Ah, well, it’s just, we were all kind of responsible for what she is probably upset about, and we haven’t even properly met her yet, we should really bring over some pastries-“

“Four of you can come if you shut up immediately,” Deyzya stated. It was oddly accommodating of her. She clearly liked Jester.

---

In the end, the procession included Jester (because of course it did), Caduceus (for his much needed insight), Fjord (for whatever an abundance of charisma would get them, which was probably nothing), and Caleb (who had stuck to Essek’s side as if it hadn’t been a question, and wasn’t that just a whole other emotional crisis waiting to be unpacked). Under different circumstances Essek would have enjoyed watching their reactions to his ancestral home. It was difficult to preen when one was about to be systematically dismembered by their centuries-old matron, however.

Deyzya halted before the doors leading to the Chamber of the Larks. Not as bad as The Forum of Hushed Whispers. Better if it had been the Gilded Dining Hall. Prognosis was guarded.

“Essek Thelyss, Shadowhand,” Deyzya announced in a dull and unimpressed voice upon entering the chamber, “and representative members of the Mighty Nein.”

It was a bit absurd adhering to courtly decorum when the room only held his mother and brother, but his family had a reputation to live up to, and that reputation was pretentiousness. That was probably clear by the fact Deirta Thelyss was in full, luxuriant formal robes and Verin was in complete war attire for a family meeting. Essek always wore his mantle so consoled himself that he was the least ridiculous.

“You bring outsiders to this, Essek?” His mother asked coldly, her eyes glimmering like homicidal amethysts. “You know what? Fine. Let them witness this. The two of you deserve it. Verin, I swear on the Luxon, if you say one word right now I’m stripping you naked and leaving you in the Coronas.” His brother’s mouth snapped shut and whatever joy that may have brought Essek vanished when her attention swung back to him. “Stop bobbing in the air like a ponce and sit down,” she commanded. He sat.

There were several uncomfortable beats of silence. “You went to a party,” Deirta started. Deadpan. “You went to a pre-orgy of the Children of Malice. Verin, I expected you would have enough good sense not to get into something like this. Essek, I would have hoped you would have been cunning enough not to get caught. And yet here we are. Which one of you would like to explain to me why the Bright Queen has asked Den Thelyss to personally deal with ‘a matter in Dumaran’? In case you are curious, Essek, that matter happens to be the High Matron Tonn demanding you be handed over to her court immediately, else there are martial repercussions. It is noted this is a mark of her goodwill, as she could be asking for both of your heads.”

“Well you see,” Jester broke in as Essek closed his eyes and braced himself, “it really wasn’t his fault. We approached him about helping with a mission from the Bright Queen- which we totally completed and now the Dynasty has the Soul Ruby, so you’re welcome for that, it’s super pretty and really powerful- but we needed Essek as a distraction and he was like super good at it, Vivurk wanted to climb him like a tree. You should be very proud. Like, she was INTO it- is it weird to hear about someone wanting to ride your son into the ground? I don’t have a very good feel for these things, but we are talking like, Rhino Sex level of bedroom eyes-“

“I get the picture,” Deirta interrupted dryly.

“ -anyway, we could have pulled it off and gotten out of there before she broke the bed with him, but our cover was blown when he shouted out Essek’s name in the middle of the gala. So. You know. Just making sure you have all of the infor-”

“You will be silent now,” Deirta commanded, a weak strand of dunamis adhering Jester’s lips together.

“That hardly seems necessary-” Caduceus started before Deirta snapped over the top of him “Respect your elders and shut up.” Caduceus looked so startled at being addressed in such a way he automatically went silent.

Deirta regarded Fjord and Caleb for a moment, both of whom raised their hands in supplication and remained silent. She gave one firm nod and shifted her attention back to Essek. “I see continuing to associate with this group is your self-flagellation, so I will approve of that. What I will not accept is your tarnishing the Den’s reputation. This is now the Den’s problem because you couldn’t find a more subtle way to go about this than acting as, what, a heretic gigolo? You are the master of whispers, Essek, for fuck’s sake.” Verin let out a single, quiet giggle but went silent when she leveled a finger at him. “Essek at least completed his mission, however boorish and disastrous his methods were. You didn’t even get that far, my supposed tactical genius.”

Deirta’s nostrils flared for a second, looking at the two. “The elders warned me not to birth two children so closely together. They warned me it would be nothing but headache. I should have drowned one of you. How are you fixing this?”

“If I may, Umavi?” Caleb questioned quietly. Briefly taken aback by his soft Zemnian accent and apparent ability for basic decorum, Deirta indicated for him to continue. “Your son and I have been creating a new spell, something that is unknown even to the most accomplished archmages because it is our own design. I believe, given the proper resources, we could infiltrate Dumaran and collapse their inner sanctum to resolve this political embarrassment. If we unseat Tonn, we upset their entire hierarchy. The Children are doing nothing but hampering the Kryn’s desire to be seen and respected as civilized society. Den Thelyss would be exclusively praised for a decisive hit against the Dynasty’s next great enemy in a strike suitable to this esteemed Den’s reputation.”

Essek’s thoughts were ramming unhelpfully into a wall over Caleb’s causal offer of assistance and artfully worded non-lie. A hungry glint had entered Deirta’s eyes. “You are the human who presented the beacon, are you not? Known for your bold and decisive moves. Your tactics align with our Den’s. What is this grand spell you and Essek have devised to fix all of our woes?”

“I mean only the greatest respect, Umavi,” Caleb whispered, “but even the most secure location could have ears.” What Caleb was doing was so beautiful it stole Essek’s breath away. This gorgeous, diabolical human.

Deirta was nodding thoughtfully. “Yes, at least one of you has common sense, very good. I have heard the ways of the Mighty Nein are… frequently unorthodox. You understand this will take a bit more finesse than just making things explode?”

“Of course, Umavi. We will have the utmost discretion knowing we carry Den Thelyss’s name with us,” Caleb reassured, like a liar.

Deirta reclined back in her seat, her eyes shifting to a softer purple and a smile opening her entire face into a more motherly expression. “This is acceptable to me. Verin, I want you and a squadron of your most elite soldiers guarding your brother and his hero-wards. The Vermaloc Wildwood is no place to go without protection.”

Essek went still. Despite Caleb’s words it was too much. Too much to ask them to stay. Too much to expect them to help clean up more of his messes…

“Mother, we can’t just pull back from Bazzoxan for-”

“Mother, we have no need for brute force-”

“Did I stutter? Perhaps you will both consider your actions before wandering into a Lolth-orgy in the future. That will be all.” Her attention turned once more for Fjord. “You are the only one who hasn’t opened your mouth during this ordeal. Have you anything to say?”

“No Ma’am.”

“Good. You and the human are my favorite. Now everyone get out.”

---

Verin stopped Essek in the hallway once they were well out of their mother’s hearing with a yank on his shoulder. Essek bristled. “What the actual fuck, Essek?”

“I should be asking you the same,” Essek growled, mood fragile from the maelstrom of guilt and glee and dread all clawing for dominance inside him. He just wanted to live in the tiny bubble of reality where he was allowed to study books and craft spells with Caleb. If only for a bit longer. If only so he could feel like he was repairing instead of destroying something for once in his life. Instead, they were being relegated to religious (and somewhat sexual, highly violent) field work. Revolting. In truth the situation wasn’t Verin’s fault, but in this moment it was totally Verin’s fault. Essek’s years of carefully schooling his expressions all seemed to evaporate around family. His ears pressed back in ire. “Last I checked, betrayer gods weren’t popping out of the bowels of parties. What were you hoping to accomplish there?”

“We are not talking about me,” Verin said, showing his fangs. “We are talking about you. We are talking about-” he flailed his hand wildly, encompassing Caleb and the others. “Since when do you work outside of Rosohna?” Laughable. “Since when do you do dirty work?” If only he knew. “Since when do you socialize?” A fair point, but one he was in no mood to concede to his brother.

“You know,” Jester said sweetly, “you ruined our plans and punched Caleb in the face and Yasha still saved your life. You should be nicer to us.”

“Are you all blind or just braindead?” Verin asked. “He is a heartless snake and will sacrifice you all as soon as it fits his scheme.”

Essek felt a feral wave of violence building inside him, too shaken by how on the mark that statement was to his most visceral fears at the moment. Don’t make them leave. Don’t make them remember, a childish part of him whined as his hand inched towards his components pouch. Before he could do something their mother truly would punish him for, he was startled to feel the four of the Nein gathering around him, looming angrily in a show of solidarity. Something hot lodged in Essek’s throat at such unanticipated support.  

“Forgive me,” Verin sighed. “That was cruel-“

“Go back to your righteous garrison, Verin,” Essek hissed nastily, “where all your choices are so straightforward and mindless. We don’t need you for this.”

It was his brother’s turn to be overly expressive, ears perking straight up before flattening against his skull. “Do they know you have to give yourself pep talks in the mirror to get over your imposter syndrome?” Verin asked abruptly. Oh that utter piece of shit.

“I was too busy telling them you couldn’t read until you were twelve,” Essek shot back.

“I was already forming dalliances with my peers at that point. Tell them about your relationship experience, brother.”

“It is far less pungent than the fact you have uncontrollable gas when you trance.”

“That is a LIE-“

“Children,” Deyzya called out calmly, “you are making a scene.” She flicked both of them on the tip of the ear, a harsh sting that harkened back to their first decades. “Go home before you embarrass yourselves further.”

Verin cleared his throat, straightened his uniform, and gave a stiff bow. “Forgive me for my behavior. I will contact you all when our forces are ready for departure.” He gave a military turn and walked with impeccable posture down the hall.

“Your brother is a little bit of a dick,” Caleb murmured in the quiet hall.

“I think it’s nice,” Caduceus stated warmly. “Brotherly affection. Nothing better. Mine used to punch me in the kidneys until I would pee blood. Shall we go have some food and unwind?”

---

“You have GOT to be shitting me,” Beau shouted back at the Xhorhaus where they were passing around platters of baked goods and bottles of wine. “You sparked ANOTHER war?”

“This time with his sexy wiles,” Jester said with an eyebrow waggle.

“Or being complicit in burning down Tonn’s summer home. Either or,” Essek murmured, sipping straight from the bottle he had claimed as his own. There was a certain thrill to being so uncouth, but more than anything he needed something to smooth over the jitteriness of being allowed into their fold again. Of feeling this friendship and acceptance again. It was almost enough to wipe away the background guilt he was feeling over lashing out at Verin. “Regardless, we will have to plan for this next mission if you are certain you wish to come.” He gazed mistily at Caleb who was flushed and a few cups in as well. “You are- are an inspiration for how you handled mother, but now we have to deliver on a deus ex machina that doesn’t exist.”

“Weren’t you nerds just spending the last three days making a new spell?” Veth asked, popping a cupcake whole into her mouth.

“Ja,” Caleb responded. He shared a look with Essek before shifting into a sequence of somatics. Casting while inebriated was staggeringly foolish. Caleb, naturally, managed it flawlessly regardless and Essek’s own impaired mind ignored how lucky that was to register only “attractive”.  In the dim evening, five flame-bright cats leapt onto the table and started swatting and tumbling amongst the plates, playfully tackling each other before rounding up the dirty dishes and waddling in a procession to the sink. “It’s a prototype right now, but will be a permanent helper spell for displaced families trying to rebuild. Something bright in the world, ja? We figured it was time to start channeling our efforts into the sort of healing our magic can do. Not so helpful for exploding evil cults however.” Jester sniffled a little as the others watched the cats play in the suds.

“She specifically requested no explosions,” Essek reminded, “but I suppose we best get to work on this new spell we have obviously already created.”

It may have been the wine, but despite the looming threat of travel and the knowledge he would need to face Verin and everything he embodied, Essek couldn’t help but feel warm. He glanced around the table of… of not-yet-lost friends. Caleb’s eyes glowed as they looked at each other, and his blood sang with the knowledge they were going to make magic.

Chapter Text

Essek bit back a groan and rubbed at his forehead. He was not hungover, because hangovers were not something he did and he certainly didn’t do them after passing out on a living room floor in a pile of people. He had standards.

Oh gods. Gravity was shimmying around in his head like a cavorting asshole. He tried to snatch at it with dunamancy and felt a bit like he had done a backflip while lying completely still. The Nein are a horrible influence, Essek concluded with a hard swallow.

His mother must never find out.

He squinted open a cautious eye, muttering a curse at the soft light that leaked over from the kitchen to kick him straight in the retina. The majority of the Mighty Nein looked as rough as he felt, spilled across the scattered cushions on the living room floor. Veth was near his head, curled around a table leg like it was her only tether to the ground. Beau and Yasha were a scowling thrombus in the middle of the room, muscular arms wrapped around each other while Jester perched on Yasha’s thigh, intently sketching. Though he could not see him, Essek felt Frumpkin at the small of his back, rumbling a deep purr.

Essek’s hand flexed, registering that his fingers were sifting through thick, soft hair. Oh. Caleb’s face was buried in his stomach. Oh. Well that was nice at least. At some point when his faculties were fully functioning he would have an appropriate spiral into panic and over-analysis, but for the time being Essek’s hand continued stroking. It earned a contented hum and a nuzzle from Caleb that caused the muscles of his stomach to spasm pleasantly.

The peaceful half consciousness was ruined when Beau jolted up in response to the sound of someone being violently ill. She kicked Yasha in the process, who grunted in surprise, rolled over, and sent Jester toppling across the floor. “You good?” Beau called blearily into the morning air.

“Just wine, not sea water,” came Fjord’s miserable and baffling reply from somewhere in the next room. Beau gave a thumbs up to the room at large and toppled back onto her cushion.

“We should start preparing for the day,” Caduceus stated softly in the tone of a man who was used to dealing with hungover teammates. He placed steaming cups of tea next to each pile of person, working his way around the room. Essek hastily cast a prestidigitation with his non-Caleb hand and a hoarse murmur because he still had some presence of mind to accommodate his bottomless font of vanity. He felt his hair shift back into place right before Caduceus entered his line of sight to offer a soft smile.

“Not our best accommodations for a guest, I apologize. How are you feeling?”

“I am perfectly fine, thank you,” Essek replied in the most polished voice he could muster. It must not have been very convincing, as Caduceus gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder, careful not to dislodge Caleb.

“It is understandable,” he murmured soothingly. “Sometimes, you have to accept family for the root system it is. Nourishment comes from the rhizomes.” He shuffled away as Essek squinted at his retreating form, trying to puzzle out if he was still impaired or if that just made no goddamn sense.

“Caduceus knows things,” Beau confided, having flopped her head his way to watch his struggles. “Also, what the fuck man. You are all coiffed and shit, just like that? No one wakes up in the morning looking like that. You are gonna give us all a complex as we travel together. Caleb! Wake up, you’re drooling on Essek.”

Caleb muttered something uncharitable sounding in Zemnian and rolled over so he was no longer cuddled against Essek. This was not an improvement, Essek thought dourly. He forced himself to sit up now that there was no motivation to continue dozing. Frumpkin gave a displeased ‘mrrp’ at the loss of heat and trotted over to curl up against Caleb, lucky bastard.

“Have Jester contact me once you all have made preparations and packed. We should meet near the Firmament Gardens before nightfall- the Penumbra foothills are safest when travelled at dusk.” Beau gave another bleary thumbs up as Essek levered himself to his feet. That was not better. His toes briefly lifted off the ground but that was definitely not better. His feet thump back to the floor and he took several rigid, purposeful steps over to the table to sit down for a moment.

“Would you like to accept the Traveler into your life this morning?” Jester asked cheerfully (and loudly), wiggling the fingers of her outstretched hands as she approached his chair. Essek suspected the haughty look he was going for just looked vaguely nauseated, so tilted his head forward into her hands. Lesser Restoration tingled through his limbs, calmed his stomach, and improved his entire outlook on life. Bless clerics. He took his first deep breath of the morning without regret.

“Thank you. Please let me know if you need help today, otherwise I will see you all this evening.” He paused at her bright grin. “Yes?”

“Oh nothing,” she sing-songed, picking her sketchbook back up to idly tap it against her thigh. “He probably would have enjoyed waking up next to you, but I know you are busy. Another time perhaps.”

Essek blinked rapidly as she skipped off to investigate the breakfast Caduceus was starting to plate. Add that statement to the pile of things he needed to have a quiet panic attack over in the near future. Jester wasn’t wrong about how busy he was, however. There was a lot to accomplish in the next few hours, and he couldn’t afford to sit in the Xhorhaus in dazed introspection. He collected his mantle from near the door and headed out into the morning, feeling oddly as if he was doing a walk of shame.

---

Beau and Jester kept giving him looks all morning, and it was starting to freak Caleb out. When he tried to ask Caduceus about it, all he got was “life is just so neat sometimes. Really wonderful.” He associated with the weirdest fucking people.

---

“So,” Beau started conversationally, sidling up to one of the Aurora Watch waiting with the Nein in the gardens. He was at military attention for no goddamn reason. “This forest we’re going to has giant spiders and shit, right? I could really use something to stretch my muscles on this fieldtrip.” She gave a swing of her staff for emphasis.

The guard spared her a brief glance before staring back into middle distance. “And shit,” he confirmed with a level of disdain that brought her back to the days of early Essek. “It would perhaps be better to spar with your party members and leave the wildlife to us. The Vermaloc Wildwood is not a training ground for low level adventurers.”

Beau felt a grin tugging at her face. “Buddy. Let me teach you a thing about the Mighty Nein. We will be covering your ass. As far as I’m concerned, we’re on babysitting detail because Matron Thelyss wanted to ensure our whole party got a serving of punishment. You aren’t protecting us from shit.”

His only response was a disdainful snort. Alright then.

“Let’s test it out a bit, huh?” Beau offered, holstering the staff on her horse’s saddle and turning into a Patient Defense stance. “Come at me, bro.”

The guard shot a glance towards Verin who was too busy glaring at the ground to acknowledge the situation. “We don’t have time for this,” the guard settled on. “We need to be ready and at attention for when the Shadowhand arrives.”

There was a distinct reverence in how he said the title that was cute as hell.

“Essek is still speaking with his information network to deputize a few of his higher informants. He doesn’t want the whisper web dormant while he is gone. His words, not mine,” Caleb contributed from where he was seated in the grass, reading in the light of a globule. Verin rolled his eyes while several of the waiting guards broke rank to wander over to the wizard. “I’m sure you have at least a few minutes yet. He mentioned clarifying some details about the stronghold we are heading towards while he was at it.” Several voices started up, asking Caleb further about what he had heard.

The guard facing Beau seemed to thaw a little bit and finally succeeded in catching Verin’s gaze. Verin gave an exasperated sigh and a ‘go ahead’ motion. The guard turned back to Beau with a curt nod before removing his chitinous helmet and outer armor, leaving him in padded leathers.

Beau had naturally stuck Essek with Caleb in the squishy wizard category, so hadn’t paid much mind to his slight build. It was surreal to see a martial warrior in front of her with the same willowy frame. He was even shorter than Jester and had about a third of her muscle mass. “Are the Thelysses the beefcakes of the drow? Why are you all so tiny- shit!”

In a blur, the guard charged towards her with a pivoting backhand she barely deflected. The limb that slid along her arm turned to gray smoke, and Beau felt her arms yanked backwards as a foot launched into the small of her back. Using the momentum to roll into a forward somersault, she flung the actual drow over her head into the grass and managed to land a stunning strike to his solar plexus with a cycle kick. She had barely gained her feet as another shadow fist clocked her in the cheek, sending her sprawling sideways.

Beau sat up slowly, wiping at the blood from her split lip. The guard, with a wheeze and the shadow melting into his chest, also sat up. Slowly, they grinned at each other.

“Beauregard,” she introduced.

“Calzen,” he responded. “I’ve not fought against a monk before.”

“I’ve seen an Echo Knight, but he kicked a lot of our asses,” Beau admitted with a grin. “Rematch?”

“Already bleeding. Beauregard is clearly in full form. Are the rest of your ready?” She glanced over to see Essek making his way to the courtyard. It was a bit jarring to see him in full Shadowhand mode. She hadn’t realized how much he had relaxed his guard around them for the past few days until faced with this throwback persona, hovering with a cool expression and a raised chin. It made her want to punch him a little bit more than usual, but it was obviously serving a purpose- the Aurora Watch snapped to attention and fell into rank without another word. Aww, they were afraid of him. She hoped she would have the opportunity to expose what a hot mess he was without making Caleb all uppity.

Following obediently behind him was- well it was sure a thing.

“Oh, of fucking course you bring an arborscythe,” Verin muttered, exasperated.

Whatever Essek’s mount was- arborscythe?- it looked like someone had tried for a diresquirrel but the only raw materials they had to work with were snakes and knives. Its large black eyes and cute little rounded ears were at odds with the horrorshow of teeth in its wedged head. While the majority of the fluid body was covered with muted purple scales, the big bushy tail appeared to be composed of blades and spines. It chittered a greeting and Beau half expected to hear a baby start crying.

“It looks like it would want much more sporting food than you guys,” Caduceus was trying to reassure the Empire horses. They looked about ready to shit out their souls.

“Right,” Verin stated, unimpressed with the whole situation. “Aurora Watch, mount up.” They remained stationary, exchanging panicked looks, until Verin gritted out, “at your leave, Shadowhand.”

Gods was this ever a mess of a powerplay. The brothers seriously just needed to give each other wet willies like normal siblings. She’d have words with Essek if he didn’t get his head out of his ass soon. Or throw a pretty wizard at him to distract him from his douchery.

Essek made a complicated hand gesture that apparently meant something to the soldiers who saluted as one and went to fetch their own mounts. Mounts which turned out to be some sort of hell-chicken/dinosaur chimera. “Cassoracious,” Calzen whispered. “Both mounts are native to the Vermaloc. You aren’t, uh, terribly attached to the horses, are you?”

They did look pretty unrideable at that moment, shaking and sweating around the swarm of predators.

“Forgive me,” Essek spoke smoothly. “I had forgotten your moorbounders were still up north. Do you have spare mounts, Verin? We can pick up more in Deepriver Mine.”

“The standard five,” Verin said, eyeing the remainder of the group.  

“Jester, can you and Veth double up? They look hulking, but the cassoracious are mostly feathers and can’t handle too much weight.” Jester and Veth shared a fistbump and wandered over to one of the birds that was staring murder at them. “Widogast, with me.”

“Ja,” Caleb agreed easily, snapping his book shut and climbing to his feet. 

Ah, that made a lot more sense than Essek forgetting a detail. Beau watched Caleb greet the arborscythe while Essek packed his mantle so one of the spikes wouldn’t gouge out Caleb’s eye. Beau gave a snort before wandering off to fall in hate with her own murderchicken. That tension was gonna snap at any minute, and she couldn’t wait for it to be twice as awkward with Essek’s brother as witness.

“You look like a Chad,” she informed the feathered monstrosity who gave a warbling screech in return. Very Chad of him. She was unreasonably excited for what was ahead.

Chapter Text

Miraculously, their menagerie of a group left somewhat on time. By the time they would make it out of the Ghostlands, the local rocs would be roosting but the gloomstalkers wouldn’t yet be active. It was a delicate balance Verin was used to striking on his trips to and from Rosohna, but there were several chaotic variables in this party that were difficult to account for.

Said chaotic variables appeared to be enjoying their crash course in cassoracious riding. Verin motioned for Viedrar and Igug to pull ahead and scout the entrance to the Ghostlands, seeing as any nasties in a 3 mile radius would hear them coming. The tiefling and halfling were a flailing mess on the bird they were valiantly trying to race through the streets of the Coronas. The human monk, their apparent opponent, was faring far better, though had thus far destroyed three carts of wares and had run over a half-orc. Another gesture and Calzen dropped back to pay for the damages.

The party’s own half-orc, who Verin had erroneously assumed was the level-headed one, was spending the ride poking at his mount’s various colorful waddles to see which prod sent the bird into a biting, hissing rage (it was all of them). With a sigh of building resignation, Verin motioned Aulanonia and An’rak over to talk about husbandry before the idiot lost a hand.

The remaining two at least seemed to be avoiding conflict with their birds. The barbarian woman was riding with a stoicism of deep concentration and an occasional murmur to her mount. The bird was the only one of the group who looked entirely cowed and submissive. That really shouldn’t have been possible for the species. The firbolg on the other hand (whose coloring alone was going to be a nightmare for camouflage), seemed to be gossiping with his mount. The bird would intermittently make squawks, thrumming, and chatters as if laying out its complaints about the group.

They hadn’t even left the city and Verin felt like he was trying to herd toddlers. He was of course aware of the rumors of the dynamic mercenaries that had put down roots in the heart of Xhorhas, but despite the destructive swath they had left in Bazzoxan, he had assumed the stories were exaggerated. He simply could not reconcile this group of hyperactive idiots with the diplomatic liaisons and fearsome warriors they should have been based on their deeds. Nor could he fathom how his brother had tolerated extended exposure to them.

Essek, even when they had been kids, was ever the reserved introvert. He could play at being cordial, but was only truly happy when holed up and studying. As Verin watched the tiefling and halfling guide their bird to run on the side of a building, breaking a window and kicking a washer woman in the face, he simply had to wonder what the fuck.

Through apparent desensitization, Essek looked unbothered by the commotion and chaos, distracted by the conversation he was having with the human arcanist as they wound through the shouting foot traffic on the arborscythe. This Essek, who tolerated the casual contact of sharing a saddle and wore a small but sincere smile instead of a cool and distant smirk, was a near stranger. Verin had no idea how to handle this person. That was not only disconcerting but also dangerous where Essek was concerned.

“You look like you just took a sip of a shitty beer dude. Why the sour face?” Verin glanced over to see the monk had pulled up next to him, apparently choosing a more sedate pace as they stepped out onto the western Hallowed Path to enter the Ghostlands.

“You are done racing then?” he deflected. In the distance, he saw Viedrar and Igug release their echoes. He motioned An’rak forward to join them and circled a motion to Calzen, who swung around to the flank of the arborscythe as a sentinel to the distracted wizards.

“Oh hey, with the disdain I see the family resemblance. And yes, Chad definitely took the trophy.” She gave her cassoracious an affectionate pat, inciting a screech and a pivot of the beast’s head that allowed it to look backwards and snap at her face. She dodged easily, looking enamored.

“But Rainbows came first in our hearts!” The tiefling cried, spinning the bird in exuberant circles as the halfling let out a hoarse, triumphant scream. Aulanonia was already moving towards the decaying hands crawling out of the ground in response to the commotion when the firbolg looked up from his gossip.

“No, that’s rude, hands to yourself.” His staff glowed briefly and Aulanonia stopped her rush with an incline of her head as the rotten limbs retracted back underground with a shriek.

“While I appreciate the military precision happening here, relax a bit, huh?” the monk continued. “We’ve got this. Save your efforts for bigger bads.” Verin glanced skeptically back to the arborscythe where Essek was turned half around in the saddle to see the human’s excited gesticulations. Both quite clearly didn’t know or didn’t care that Calzen was cleaving in half a skeletal wretch scuttling on all fours right beside them, hair fully obscuring its face.

Ah. Didn’t care apparently. After the creature stopped twitching, Essek, still turned in the saddle, loosening the reins to allow the arborscythe to snap up one of the halves in its nightmare jaws and hork it down in two jerking swallows. Blessed Luxon.

The monk followed his line of sight and misinterpreted his revolted expression as they all moved into a swifter pace. “Oh, I known, they’re nauseating right? You don’t even know the half of it man. It’s honestly a blessing to have Essek with us though. Caleb would try to talk to us about magical theory before this. Now we can just throw the nerds at each other and let them geek out, leaving us alone.”

Verin couldn’t help his huff of laughter despite the surreal wrongness of Essek apparently having a friend. The human had accomplished what all the other dunamantic wizards in Xhorhas had not. “You’ve suffered through ‘the staggering expanse of possibilities’ rant then?”

The monk managed to punch him cordially in the arm despite the bumpy pace they were setting. His armor vibrated with the force. “That’s nothing compared to ‘just needing two more hours, Beauregard, this is…is groundbreaking information’,” she mimicked in a truly horrendous approximation of a Zemnian accent, “and then never hearing shit about what that information actually meant in any sort of real world application. Wizards are the fucking worst.”

“You seem well versed in this aggravation,” Verin mused, feeling a small spark of camaraderie for the human- for Beauregard. “Are the two of you related?”

She snorted, the noise causing her mount to jump in the air and kick in irritation. She kept her seat admirably. She honestly wouldn’t make a bad soldier. “Gods no. Caleb is like a surrogate brother to me now, but I didn’t know him before we started traveling together. I solidly wanted to kill him for a good month. Now it’s only like 50% of the time that I fantasize about ringing his neck.”

Verin gave a bark of laughter, relaxing for what felt like the first time in days. “Count yourself lucky you weren’t saddled with that mess at birth.”

Beauregard groaned, throwing her head back as if pained. “I don’t even want to think about it. I assume even at age 5 Caleb was very seriously lecturing his toys about the arcane.”

Verin had to huff another laugh at the mental image. “Essek was always obsessed with studying, but I don’t think he became truly insufferable until his twenties when his grasp of dunamancy ‘so clearly surpassed anything we have witnessed before, in this life or others’. That was about the time Mother started taking note, and the following decades were a scheming spiral of politics, ‘for the good of the Den’ of course.”

It was only as Beauregard gave a sympathetic hum that Verin straightened in his saddle and looked closely at her features. He never discussed family- it was political suicide. He wasn’t an idiot, but he could never keep track of what innocent statement could be weaponized by another Den. Essek in particular was a very popular topic for people to approach him about. Watching her shrewd eyes, he felt the Friends spell crack.

Spinning, Verin caught the glance of the arcanist.

For whatever information she was harvesting, Beauregard seemed surprised to see the interaction. Right, just the wizard then. Verin gave a swift kick to his cassoracious, earning a deep, angered hum before it charged towards the arborscythe. His sword was in his hand before he even registered he had reached for it. He barely began to raise it when an intense pressure locked his limbs in place. The sword fell from his grasp but continued to float along with the trotting mounts. He turned to Essek, whose eyes glinted with cold fury.

“I meant no harm,” the wizard stated in a soft, flat voice. “I simply thought you would benefit from an extra push to get to know us. Beauregard is very engaging if you give her the chance.”

“Caleb, man,” Beauregard had rushed up behind him and joined the conversation just in time to sound exasperated. Despite himself, Verin still liked her. He refused to be patronized by every wizard he came in contact with, however.

He disregarded the humans entirely and turned to Essek. “Keep that Empire piece of shit out of my head or I’m gonna take his.” Essek’s expression somehow became colder and the pressure built just to the point of being uncomfortable to breathe.

(“Verin, dude, read the room,” was a whisper on his periphery.)

“You will not address him that way just because you cannot fight off a simple modified cantrip.” Gods, Verin wanted to punch Essek in his condescending face.

“There’s some weird shifting in the hills,” An’rak interrupted, rejoining the group and warily taking in the situation. “We would do well to be on our guard.”

Verin spent one more childish moment glaring at his brother before he caught the movement An’rak was talking about. Very large movement. Very bad movement. Oh Luxon.

“Essek, release me,” he demanded urgently. Whatever other (extensive) personal failings Essek had, the bastard was incredibly intelligent. Hearing the tone, he dropped the gravity bind immediately and turned to look at what was catching Verin’s attention. Genius prodigy or no, he wouldn’t be fast enough to react to the hulking shift of stone. Verin acted on instinct, yanking Essek out of the saddle as his echo sprang to form and latched onto the asshole wizard friend and pulled. The four of them toppled to the ground and skimmed over the rocks, a thin barrier of levitation saving their skin as the arborscythe veered in surprise and through sheer luck missed the clamping jaws of the horizonback breaching out of the rubble.

“Hey guys! We decided Fjord’s deathturkey is named Avantika. Cause he’s riding her but we know who holds the rei- MOTHER OF FUCK.” The halfling and tiefling had joined their cluster just in time to see the massive eruption as the horizonback skittered with unsettling, supernatural speed out of the ground and shook off boulders from its mountainous shell. It was easily the largest creature Verin had ever seen and gave off waves of rancid rot as it reared back for another attack.

“Okay, so this is fun,” called the firbolg. “This thing’s not undead, but it’s not not undead? It’s doing some crazy stuff to my senses. The verdict is it’s bad though.” Sickly green shot from his staff but seemed to flow harmlessly off of the marred carapace. He cheerfully flipped off the tortoise.

Acknowledging that blatantly obvious tidbit of information, Verin struggled to his knees before Essek grabbed him and the human and pulsed them all backwards in a nauseating blur of movement that narrowly avoided a gargantuan stomping foot. Verin’s echo was not so lucky and dispersed within the billowing clouds of dust. That attack had been far too fast for the beast’s size. A flurry of arrows retaliated only to ricochet off of the tortoise’s hide, seemingly unnoticed. A bizarre, mechanized spectral confection bonked harmlessly against the beast’s head.

“Not good, NOT good,” huffed An’rak. She had attempted a launch her massive bugbear form off of Igug’s boost to hamstring the monstrosity but had instead simply broken her sword. 

“Are we running?” Asked the half-orc who came skidding up on newly-dubbed-Avantika. “We’re running, right?”

“Yes, fall back!” Verin called to the general vicinity. If the tortoise didn’t manage to finish them off, the other denizens of the Ghostlands certainly would after hearing all of the commotion. He watched as the barbarian and outlying knights heeded his warning and took off from the conflict while Calzen, Igug, and An’rak sent their echoes dashing in the same direction.

“Caleb, I may be able to restrain him briefly, but I’ll need you to get us far away and quickly, yes?” Essek whispered. As he spoke the tortoise reared up and slammed its feet into the ground, sending shock waves through the surrounding rubble. They were spared from the quakes by virtue of the levitation, but all of the cassoracious jolted and faceplanted into the stone, scattering their riders.

“Uh, ja, okay, I’ve got this. For twelve? Twenty? Fuck, okay, I’ve got this,” the wizard raised his arms in an intricate set of crossing movements before throwing his right arm forward. With a muttered word, a disc of light rotated beyond him, opening a shimmering portal that the echoes, monk, firbolg, tiefling, halfling, and half-orc all redirected towards. Seeing it open, Essek turned back to the horizonback and spread the fingers on both hands out in front of him.

A deep, rumbling bass pulsed through the area as the false twilight went black. Behind the tortoise, a distortion of space ignited into a halo of stretched light, framing a pitch black centralized orb. The tortoise’s frame and the surrounding rocks seemed to stretch, blurring towards the spatial anomaly. Letting out a guttural roar as fissures cracked across its carapace, the horizonback attempted to lunge but appeared locked in place by the pull of the vortex behind it.

“I can’t believe that worked. Go. Go!” Essek demanded, not taking his eyes off of the distortion. Verin turned, snagged the reins of the prone birds as he sprinted, and dragged them towards the portal. In front of him, his remaining echo knights shifted into the place of their dashing echoes and catapulted the 500 feet the arcane gate afforded them before rapidly forming a rear guard to the mercenaries waiting beyond. As soon as he was through, Verin turned to see the human catch the darting arborscythe before snagging Essek around the midriff and hoisting them both onto the mount. There was one final, unearthly roar from the horizonback before the wizards were through the portal and the disc dissolved in a dispersion of light.

There was a single moment of silence where the group stared disbelievingly at each other before an eruption announced the departure of Essek’s gravitational fuckery in the distance.

“Ride now, freak out later,” Verin commanded, leading them all at a full dash into the true night spreading across the Penumbra range.

---

Galloping on a giant scaled squirrel for hours on end was by far the most uncomfortable mode of travel Caleb had experienced. Its strange serpentine movement took a good half hour to acclimate to and he had squeezed the breath out of Essek on more than one occasion as he started to slip during the abrupt directional changes it seemed to make with the complete whimsy of a sadistic asshole. He was chafed in unconventional and intimate areas, and truly had only stayed in the saddle as long as he had because of the threat of being skewered by the barbs in its tail if he fell.

By the time the first scraggly, crimson leafed trees came into view, he was about to take his chances just going on foot. Thankfully, the group tapered off into a leisurely walk, allowing their mounts to take in heaving mouthfuls of air. Too exhausted to be embarrassed by the move, Caleb leaned forward and thunked his forehead against Essek’s shoulder. It was so simple to fall back into this easy contact with him. Caleb didn’t let himself acknowledge that he had missed the thrill of it.

“How many days of travel is this again?” he asked despondently.

He felt more than heard Essek’s soft laughter. “Four or five to get there, though what we just did should have been the worst of it. We can’t do a full sprint through the Vermaloc.”

“I will not have inner thighs by the end of this journey if we do,” said Caleb morosely, to which Essek responded with a soft ‘ermph’ and nothing more. “Tell me, why couldn’t we just have you teleport us? I miss those days. We should bring that back. For nostalgia.” Essek remained conspicuously silent, and Caleb sat up, the aching in his everything suddenly forgotten in the face of his curiosity. “It is, in fact, remarkably inefficient to do this on foot when we have magical means.” Still silence. “Essek?”

Caleb craned his head over Essek’s shoulder, trying to get a look at his face. There was a very real possibility that was a blush. Fascinating.

“It was the Bright Queen’s decision,” Essek responded at last after a glance around ensured they were too far away from their companions to be heard. “She felt I could use some character building. I believe her exact words were ‘Your competence makes me forget how young you are, Shadowhand, and how little you’ve seen. I matured through hard fought travel through the land, learning the people and places. Perhaps it is time to take you out of your books for some real life experience if you are getting urges to be so rash.’”

Caleb managed to tamper down the laughter bubbling in his chest. “Was that her exact verbiage? Urges?” In a very undignified move for a person of his position, Essek jabbed an elbow into Caleb’s stomach. “I’m only asking if you got a lecture about teenage horniness in front of a national council from someone who is a combination great grandmother and religious figure.”

“You are not humorous. This is horrific, and also the Mighty Nein’s fault if I may remind you. The high council’s opinion means nothing to me, but this is over a solid week of no decent accommodations following days of tedium. Bad food. Bad beds. No heated baths. It is barbaric.”

“The harshest of punishments Her Eminence could have meted out,” Caleb agreed, though he suspected mirth was making its way into his voice.

“Hey!” Veth called out from where the others had stopped. “Stop canoodling on the murdersquirrel and circle up!”

Caleb tenderly dismounted the arborscythe, rolling his eyes as he hobbled while Essek floated down effortlessly. It was weirdly more grandiose to see him floating in just his fitted pants and tunic. Perhaps Caleb had grown too used to the fluttering mantle. Regardless, he envied the man for not requiring any movement from his legs.

They had barely made it to the circle of their party under the thin canopy when the female drow spoke up eagerly. “That was Event Horizon, right? Holy shit, I’ve only had lectures on it. None of us have seen it in action. That was so fucking cool. What the hell is your magic threshold that you beat out the strength check on a horizonback? That’s pinnacle technique for Graviturgists obviously, but I bet you’re creating your own features for the class at this point. We’ve all heard of your modifications to the Manifest Echo for dunamancers- do you think the reverse is possible? Modifying Graviturgy and Chronurgy features for Echo Knights?”

“Aulanonia,” Verin called, clearly embarrassed.

“Come off it, boss,” the orc murmured good naturedly. “That was sick as hell, and I want to hear his answer too.”

Apparently in high spirits from the battle camaraderie and the gentle stroking of his ego, Essek inclined his head. “It was Event Horizon, though it was sheer luck it actually took. I was just looking to slow him so that our fleeing would accomplish anything.” Essek’s prolonged exposure to Jester also appeared to be training him to endure verbal onslaughts. “You flatter me with the praise, and while I think there are fascinating implications for cross-disciplinary application, it is a better conversation for a lecture hall I think, not the Vermaloc.” He glanced over to where another of the drow Echo Knights had skewered a scorpion the length of a forearm to a tree with a dagger. “We will all reconvene in the Marble Tomes after this is all over and revisit gravituric theory, no?”

“Fucking sweet,” the female bugbear murmured from where she was lounging against a non-scorpioned tree.

“All things considered,” Essek continued, “the entire party did remarkably well. The coordination your group has is impeccable.” He looked directly at Verin. “It was well executed. We were lucky to have you all with us.”

Verin, who until this point had been prickly and standoffish, seemed to light up. Ego (or perhaps pathological need for validation) was apparently genetic. More so, it seemed the brothers may not have such a bad relationship as their initial impressions suggested.

“Yeah yeah,” Beau broke in, “everyone who doesn’t have punching as their only option for fighting against a mountain was a real badass. Can we talk about how fucked up that thing was? It was the size of a village but was moving with a speed of… something really fucking fast.”

“And it smelled unnatural,” Caduceus contributed.

“And it broke Rainbows’ nose,” Jester whined before turning to coo over the crack in her bird’s beak.

Verin nodded, crossing his arms. “It was not the usual fair of the Ghostlands. It shouldn’t have been undetectable until we were right on top of it either. I’ll include it in my report tonight, in case there is a bigger threat brewing right on Rosohna’s doorstep.”

“Report?” Jester questioned while stroking at Rainbows, who was making pitiful peeping noises, milking the situation. “Who are you reporting to?”

“Mother, of course. She will relay any information she thinks is pertinent.”

“Oh my gosh, you call your momma every night as well? I always try to call my momma, I miss her so much, she’s so beautiful and nice and smart. I always got the sense drow weren’t as bonded to their parents but your momma seems really cool, I can see why-“

Verin, looking overwhelmed, wandered deeper into the grove to help his group with evening preparations as Jester followed, chattering in his wake.

“We’d best set up for the night as well,” Fjord stated. “Was the verdict the dome? It won’t fit a group this large.”

“Leomund’s Tiny Hut will suffice,” Essek said. “Verin and his group will have their own camping accommodations.”

“Perfect!” Veth replied. “Let’s get cracking then! I can’t feel my ass and want to go to sleep. Here,” she passed Essek a pot, which he stared at as if it were a bomb, “help Yasha prepared some grub. Cay-Cay and I will find some sticks for a fire.”

“There are leaves and twigs all around us-” Caleb started reasonably before being yanked deeper into the underbrush.

“Only the finest kindling for our fire!” Veth called over her shoulder before ushering him deeper into the cover.

“Veth, what-”

She turned once they were out of sight and earshot from the budding camp. “Are you okay?”

He blinked down at her, seeing only open and earnest concern on her face. “Of course. I’m a little sore from the ride but didn’t take any major damage from the battle.”

She regarded him for a moment. “I meant with Essek. I wanted to make sure you are comfortable with things. I can’t say I like this, but I suppose I’m not surprised. I just wanted to check this is really what you want. We can still kidnap Astrid.”

“Is WHAT what I want?” Caleb asked, baffled. He didn’t even know how to respond to the Astrid comment.

Veth glared, as if he was being purposefully obtuse. “What would you say was the best thing to happen to you this week?” She asked as a complete non sequitur.

“Our spell,” Caleb replied without hesitation, the warmth of their success still pulsing through his veins. It was not just the spell they had brought to life, but the possibility, the promise, of more to follow. It was that the concept had been Essek’s idea. That he was starting to see some promise, some hope of…

“And if we weren’t traveling right now, who would you want to be spending time with?”

“Veth, what is the point of this? You know we would be studying further. It’s rare to get the opportunity to share ideas and there are so many possibilities we have in mind-“

“Can that perfect recall of yours describe the details of the Ghostlands we passed through?”

He shifted uneasily, thrown off by her rapid-fire and seemingly unconnected questions. “To be honest, I wasn’t paying as much attention to the surroundings-“

“If you had to make out with one person in the group right now, who would it be?”

Caleb stopped short, blinking down at her in surprise. Oh. Oh no. Oh no. Physical attraction to Essek was nothing new, but he had been segregated firmly into the “look don’t touch” section of Caleb’s mind for so many reasons. The power dynamic was no longer relevant though, and now they had begun to rebuild a fragile trust… Caleb squeezed his eyes closed. It was a terrible idea. Essek was still figuring himself out. Caleb was still figuring himself out. But gods he had wanted him. Still wanted him. Wanted him MORE. Fuck.

“Yeah, welcome to the party champ. Aside from Essek himself, you were probably the only one who was unaware. I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting yourself into before you spent five days grinding on each other on the back of a hairless squirrel.”

Despite the sudden and devastating knowledge that he wanted to utterly wreck Essek, that was about the least sexy way to frame the situation he had ever heard.

“Look,” Veth said softly, taking a more sincere tone. “I get that he is hot if you are into the scrawny wizard aesthetic, and that you project a lot of your own history onto his situation. I just want you to be careful. You’ve stumbled upon the one person who can go toe to toe with you for psychological issues, and we still don’t fully know or understand Essek’s motives moving forward. I’m not telling you what to do, I just want you to be careful. Also, I intend to give him my best shovel talk, just so you know.” She turned to head back to camp before glancing over her shoulder. “I see you spiraling into laments about how unworthy you are of this. Knock it off. If this is what you want, you deserve it, and once you decide to act on it it will happen. He’s a hormonal mess right now in case you haven’t noticed.”

Caleb spent another moment in the underbrush by himself, flabbergasted. Hormonal mess? What did that even look like on Essek? He was smiling more, Caleb supposed. Trying to interpret people’s emotions was a living nightmare.

Caleb snapped Frumpkin into being, taking comfort in the cat rubbing against his leg before Frumpkin gave a low growl at the underbrush and shimmied his way up to Caleb’s shoulder. Caleb probably would have spent longer processing the information Veth had just dumped on him if he hadn’t felt a something with about twelve too many legs skitter over his foot. He could just as easily have an emotional crisis back at the campsite, he decided.

Returning to the rest of the group, he saw Yasha demonstrating slicing a large tuber with a sword and Essek watching skeptically. At hearing Caleb’s return, he glanced up with a small smile. The dappled moonshadows from the foliage played across his face, curving along his straight nose and high cheekbones and causing his eyes to glow softly. Caleb’s stomach swooped. WHELP. Caleb swallowed dryly, turning away just as he caught Essek’s confused, troubled expression, smile dropping.

Gods fucking damn it. If this ruined their ability to work with each other, Caleb may actually get in a shouting match with his own dick.

Chapter Text

There was something uniquely uncomfortable, Essek discovered, about going through his evening routines in a group where he was used to being solitary. He was suddenly self-conscious about something as mundane as washing his face and combing his hair, helped in no small part by the contrast of Fjord going straight from eating dinner to face planting into his bedroll, Veth muttering to herself judgmentally while making painfully direct eye contact, and Jester proclaiming in abject delight “are we going to have a spa day every day with Essek now? Glamping! Whoo!” All were distressing responses to basic hygiene.

Essek had sleepwear in a pocket dimension he had been contemplating on how to change into with any sort of modesty, but decided to forgo it entirely and sleep in his clothes like a vagrant. Beau was currently mocking him for moisturizing his hands; he couldn’t imagine she would be more accepting of something as indulgent as sleepwear. It was a miracle the entire group didn’t just sleep naked he supposed.

Getting any sort of trance was going to be the next big hurdle. Without the aid of alcohol, there were just so many noises and so little space with the group. Even attempting to be quiet as each settled into Caleb’s dome, there was breathing and grumbling and shifting that had his ears twitching every two or three seconds. It was partially this that had him stating, “I need far less rest than the rest of you. I am happy to take first watch.”

“Congrats, that is your best selling point yet,” Fjord mumbled from his bedroll as he slung an arm over Jester and got in a shin-kicking match with Beau for legroom. On Beau’s other side, Yasha gave a quiet smile.

“Wake me for the next watch then,” she offered in a hushed voice before settling down in the pile of Nein.

As if a switch had been flipped, the entire cloud of chaos that was the Mighty Nein was asleep and in various amplitudes of snoring. He looked over the group- his friends. His friends- and suffered through a wave of protective affection. For all their teasing, there was something intimate and wonderful about getting to see them in the quieter commonplace moments. There was probably a metaphor to be made about Essek floating cross-legged at the edge of the dome and out of their reach, but he was honestly too happy by the quiet domesticity of it all to get too introspective on that front.

It was only partial solitude in any case. A short time into his watch, he felt a warm pressure at his thigh and glanced down to find Frumpkin seated on a boulder next to his hovering thigh, eyes very seriously surveying the surrounding woods.

“I appreciate the extra pair of eyes,” he confided to Frumpkin, indulging in scratching under his chin. Frumpkin’s soft purr was a soothing addition to the other small noises of the night as Essek thoughts inevitably turned to Caleb.

Essek had, rather predictably, already ruined something.

Essek was getting his second advanced degree in self-sabotage at this point, but generally he was at least aware of his poor decisions when he was making them. He glanced back to where Caleb was bedded down with the others, fast asleep but with a small frown still wrinkling his brow as it had earlier in the evening. Even troubled, his face did something to warm Essek’s stomach and fill him with a skittish sort of anticipation. He allowed himself three breaths of enjoying the sensation and Caleb’s image before he tore his gaze away, feeling stalkerish.

They had spent the entire evening riding together, mulling over their next creation, quietly planning the up upcoming infiltration, and at times, gleefully talking shit. It had been... good. He had missed all of the Nein, but the loss of Caleb had been a sickening, constant ache. As someone who valued time alone, it was a foreign sensation to crave endless time with another person. It was perhaps unhealthy just how much Essek enjoyed being around Caleb, but he couldn’t remember anyone or anything beyond his research that had ever so thoroughly captivated him.

Which made Caleb’s sudden stoicism all the more jarring. As soon as he had come back into the camp, he had been evasive and withdrawn, barely making eye contact.

Had Essek said something to upset Caleb? Emotional manipulation and transactional bargaining had been mainstays of his life up until meeting the Nein, and while he had been trying desperately to avoid them, he did occasionally slip up. He honestly couldn’t recall saying anything to that effect though, and it was driving him mad. Perhaps Caleb had simply been reminded of who exactly Essek was and was uncomfortable with their proximity. Essek swallowed dryly.

Whatever the problem, he would have to address it in the morning. Frank conversation and any degree of emotional vulnerability were anathema to everything he had been taught, every step from toddler through government official. The thought made his skin crawl. Yet it was madness to assume he could hold on to the Nein in this rare second chance if he wasn’t willing to make some personal sacrifices. They were more than worth the scorn of his society and his personal humiliation. And if it meant a chance to continue interacting with Caleb…

Essek had been coping with being drawn to Caleb’s mind for virtually as long as he had known the man, and he was uncomfortably aware that this attraction now encompassed Everything Caleb- his mind, his voice, his eyes, his rare smiles. Having him back in his life… the concept of losing him a second time… Essek let out a long breath. He would talk with Caleb. Suffer through honesty instead of suffering through the ambiguity. If Caleb was revolted by the idea, it would help Essek move on. He hoped.

Several moments passed. Frumpkin batted at the air, chittering at a moth flying just beyond the dome.

It wouldn’t hurt to just think about the possibility though, right? The possibility of their currently rekindled friendship superimposed with little moments of intimacy. Of a hug for no reason in particular, just to feel their heartbeats pair. The warm pressure of surreptitiously holding hands as they compared notes. Another dunamantic breakthrough, celebrated by feeling the warm slide of Caleb’s lips on his-

Essek was yanked from his increasingly embarrassing musings by the sound of skittering. He turned to see the bedroll by Fjord’s feet start to move before a giant wolf spider hatchling scuttled out. Huh. A nest must have been scooped within the subterranean radius of the dome. Essek had just started to levitate the hatchling out of the area when Fjord’s eyes shot open, staring directly that the spider hovering right over his face.

Essek just barely cast Silence in time to prevent Fjord’s screams from waking the others. As he continued to float the spider out of the dome and set it gently in the underbrush, Fjord went into some sort of silent tirade, likely decrying that he knew Essek was still a traitor and out to kill him. Essek sighed, watching the half-orc struggle into sitting and summoning his sword. He had always been one of the more excitable members of the group, but this was ridiculous. The appearance of another hatchling at the foot of the bedroll was the momentary Fjord-meltdown-distraction Essek needed to reach into his component pouch and cast Sleep at a truly preposterous level to knock Fjord unconscious before his flailing woke Jester or Beauregard on either side of him. He could only hope Fjord would slip back into natural sleep when the spell wore off.

Releasing the Silence as well as the second hatchling into the underbrush, Essek settled once more on the boulder, dividing his attention between the woods and the sleeping area. The additional hatchlings and the subsequent game of reverse-whack-a-mole was a soothing distraction from his own thoughts. Counting became naming became increasingly absurd naming (nests were large) became ranking on who was most desirable as a pet. Well, right up until Malekith Caduceus Ironwill Dawnbreaker III the Passive-Aggressive, Possessor of a Ninth Leg topped the list only to be immediately and graphically devoured by a fanged screamer once released from the dome. That was a bit of a downer. Essek cast Faerie Fire on Malekith’s remains as a final send off and as a brand of shame for the screamer.

Essek really needed to rest.

As if hearing his thought, Yasha woke on her own and came over to join him.

“There aren’t that many hours until we need to get up. Go get some rest and regain your spell slots. I can handle the remainder of the watch,” she whispered once reaching him.

“The woods have been quiet. We appear to have bedded down on top of a giant wolf spider nest though, so keep an eye out for any further babies.” He passed her a spider carcass a bit larger than Frumpkin. “Beauregard stomped on this one in her sleep if you are feeling peckish at all.”

Yasha gazed up at him with open fondness. “Thank you. You have many redeeming traits. I am glad you are with us. I will save a bit if you feel like having some in the morning. Have a good rest.”

Interacting with Yasha was always a bizarre juxtaposition of being soothed by her soft-spoken demeanor and being on-edge with the constant knowledge she could snap him like a twig. There was a difference between Verin’s stockier build and Yasha’s arm being the size of his torso. He gave her a half smile that said “I value you, thanks for not breaking one of my bones with a violent sneeze” before he made his way over to the sleeping cluster.

He came to the only open spot and gave a small, defeated sigh: Yasha’s vacated position lay between Beau and Caleb. There was no reason he had to take the spot. He was more than capable of trancing while hovering.

He crawled in between the humans and curled slightly into Caleb’s side.

---

Caleb came to slowly, drifting quietly in between asleep and awake. His mind was taking stock of his location and the last day when- ah. Yes. World altering realizations of emotions. He took another moment to rest with his eye closed before finding some degree of resolve. This could not happen. Essek’s friendship, collegial mind, and kindred passion for ongoing research was too important to ruin with the utter disaster that was Caleb’s relationship to sex. Caleb could and would get over a crush in the name of keeping these things intact.

His eyes opened to Essek curled beside him like a cat, face tucked into an elbow leaving only his soft white hair visible. It was in a painfully endearing rat’s nest, the antithesis of its general elegant style.

Caleb could and would get over his crush in another five minutes.

On its own volition, Caleb’s hand reached out and combed through that puff of hair to get it in some semblance of order. Almost immediately, wide violet eyes appeared over the line of the dark arm and Caleb found himself staring at a very awake Essek while his fingers twined into the man’s hair.

“Uh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-“

“No it’s- it’s quite alright. You don’t have to stop.” That was a sudden sort of blooming warmth in Caleb’s stomach he hadn’t allowed since he was a teenager. Hesitantly, he continued sifting Essek’s hair back into place.

“Should we get them, like, a courtesy curtain or some shit?” came Beau’s unsubtle whisper before being shooshed by Jester. Caleb couldn’t be bothered to feel embarrassed, too focused on Essek’s own hand reaching out to trace along his jaw, catching on the stubble and sending pleasant tingles rushing down his nerves.

“It’s been a while since the beard has made an appearance,” Essek noted, voice rough and accent heavier with his recent trance.

Caleb could and would get over his crush in another fifteen minutes.

In this strange exploratory liminal space, Caleb traced a finger up across the ridge of Essek’s pointed ear, surprised at how soft the skin was. Essek seemed to short circuit at this, pupils dilating and mouth dropping open in a small gasp and oh wasn’t that interesting-

“SPIDERS!” Fjord shouted, shooting upright on his bedroll as Essek gave a body-wide flinch at the noise. In the next instant Fjord swung a wild look in their direction and before Caleb knew what was happening he had taken a lumpy pillow straight to the face.

“FJOOOOOOORRRDDDDDD!” Came Jester’s irate shout.

“He was- he- trying to kill us-“

“And as you can see,” Essek responded dryly, “I was wildly successful, what with how dead you are right now.”

Caleb struggled free of the musty material and sat up, feeling gingerly at his nose. Making direct eye contact with Fjord, he incinerated the pillow in his hands. Fjord looked a pitiful combination of mournful and deeply confused.

“He actually saved you all from spiders last night,” Yasha put in quietly from the boulder near the edge of the dome. When Caleb turned to look, she was chewing nonchalantly on a spider leg as if it were a piece of jerky. “So, you know, the cockblock you just did was kind of rude.”

“No hanky-panky in the dome!” Veth shouted, sitting bolt-upright in her own bedroll and whipping her head around the area blearily. “Everyone leave room for Melora between you!”

“Why are you all so loud in the morning?” Essek asked rhetorically as Jester gave a frustrated shout, grabbed both Fjord and Veth from their bedrolls, and frog marched them out into the cooking site to lecture them further. Veth’s incensed screams at being toted like belligerent luggage brought the partially clothed Aurora Watch running from their own camp and commenced some sort of group-wide altercation about acceptable conduct first thing in the morning.

“Alright kids,” Beau said, giving a broad stretch before standing up from her own bedroll, “you heard the mom friend: no hanky-panky in the dome. But for the love of the gods get this heart eyes shit out of your systems before coming to breakfast.” She paused next to Yasha, dropping a kiss on the aasimar’s head. “Come on, you are brushing your teeth or Jessie’s not going to come near you for the rest of the day.” Yasha gave a resigned look down at the partially eaten leg before tossing it into the nearby bushes and following Beau out.

The dome was blessedly quiet from the mass exodus and Caleb was thankful to Beau and Jester for the rare moment of privacy they had orchestrated. He turned to look at the final member of the Nein still in the dome with them and found Caduceus blinking back placidly. Caleb raised his eyebrows.

“What? Oh. Is this- oh I get it. Alright then.” Caduceus ambled his way out to the communal area and over to Fjord, who he patted amiably on the shoulder after seeing him still out of sorts. 

“Are all mornings so dynamic with this group?” Essek asked awkwardly in the silence.

“I’m afraid so. You really should not be surprised by this finding though. Ah, um. Well. About earlier-”

“I have something for you,” Essek blurted before looking irritated with himself. Caleb blinked, caught off guard by the abrupt change in tone as Essek started to open a pocket dimension. “I had designs to give it to you as we set out yesterday, but our departure was also a bit more eventful than I anticipated. I was able to secure this before leaving…” an immaculate book materialized into his hand, gilded cover not half as impressive as the elegant Tome of Leadership and Influence spiraling across the top.

Caleb’s mouth went dry.

“I know it’s not your usual fare, and I actually found a couple of other sourcebooks that are more your speed for when we get back to Rosohna, but for what we may need to do on this particular quest…”

Caleb accepted the book slowly, heart singing with the weight of it in his hands. Setting it in his lap, he glanced up at Essek who was watching him nervously, hands templed in front of his mouth.

Caleb probably could not and definitely would not get over this crush. He supposed it wasn’t a crush anyway.

“Thank you,” he said simply, unable to voice just how little of that thanks was for the book itself. Before everything had collapsed around them, he had been prone to casual affection with Essek, one part challenge and one part manipulation. Caleb took one of Essek’s hands now and gently kissed his palm before nuzzling a cheek into its hold for no more ulterior motive than because he wanted to. It was an invitation in its purest form.

He could feel the chaotic flutter of Essek’s pulse against his jaw. After another moment, Essek’s other hand came up to cup Caleb’s face, a thumb running hesitantly across his cheekbone.

“I know now is not the time,” Essek stated after seeming to take a bracing breath. “There is logistically no worse place than the Vermaloc for this. I am also aware we should be putting our energies towards the upcoming infiltration, as even with clear minds it is going to be a psychological tightrope act. There is so much yet to be said between us and so much we have yet to clear up. But.” Caleb looked up to see Essek staring with devastating earnestness at him. It was breathtaking. “I just want to be clear. I desire you, so, so desperately,” Essek’s voice cracked before he cleared his throat as Caleb’s heart attempted to beat its way out of his chest. “In any and every capacity, to whatever level you are comfortable with, for however long you would tolerate. I care for you, to a crippling extent, and I want to permanently be the person I am when I’m around you. There is so much I regret about my previous actions, but disappointing you is something I struggle with daily. This is not some sort of act of atonement. I still haven’t found how to move forward with that. I just know I want to be with you while I work through it. I don’t want you to feel obligated by this though. Say the word and I assure you we can continue exactly as we have been- I will be content.” Essek swallowed audibly, and it took Caleb a moment to realize his pale freckles appeared so vivid because of a spectacular blush.

Breathless and momentarily robbed of words, Caleb tilted forward to rest his forehead against Essek’s. “I am very out of practice to all of this,” he responded carefully, “and can’t guarantee I won’t make you hate me by the end of things. We are both… deeply flawed, and I think there is much that each of us has yet to share with the other. But… my mind is quiet when I’m with you. Whenever we are together, I can see the amazing things we have yet to accomplish instead of just the slideshow of my past sins. I see the same in you. The man you could be- the man you are becoming- is so much more than the man you have been. If you are asking to be that better self with me… there is nothing I want more.” A soft laugh escaped him, causing a thrilled smile to light up Essek’s face. Feeling foolish, Caleb bumped his nose against Essek’s. “We will get through this disastrous farce of an assignment, and once we are back in Rosohna I would very much like to investigate the “any and every capacity” portion of that offer. I will be honest: I would absolutely explore it now, but the risk of envenomation by something while your body is distracting me is unacceptably high. The thought of Jester’s glee at hearing I need to be cured of poisoning acquired while getting dicked down is utterly horrifying.”

Essek’s choked laughter was the best sound in Caleb’s living memory.

---

Jester had been as active and boisterous around the camp as possible: helping to make breakfast until Caduceus’s silent killing intent had chased her away, arm-wresting and winning against the Aurora Watch’s bugbear (An’rak! She had been learning names!) to the cheers of the rest of the guard, and helping Beau clean her saddle and boots after Chad had vomited all over them from gorging on rotten fruit.

It was maddening, like waiting for a cake to rise and not being able to peek in the oven.

The oven in question finally ran out of time and dissipated around ten minutes beyond her flurry of activity. She looked over eagerly to-

Find the wizards conferring over a book.

“Oh come ON,” she proclaimed, stomping her foot and capturing the attention of the campsite. “What do you guys WANT? We give you like, the most privacy of anyone in this stupid camp and you aren’t even making out?”

“No hanky-panky in the dome,” Caleb and Essek responded in a tandem monotone, not looking up from their book. Oooh, they were so FRUSTRATING.

“I’m sorry, what?” Verin asked beside her. He had been a bit less rigid and formal this morning, even good-naturedly joining in the impromptu wrestling match his soldiers had started up. Jester suspected selecting an “elite guard” entailed selecting his closest group of personal friends if their dynamic was anything to go on. She had hoped the dicks he had yet to find drawn on his armor would further help him unwind throughout the day, but at the mention of his brother the overly proper posture had returned. Everyone around Jester had so many issues.

“Ugh, they are being STUPID. Essek has been in love with Caleb since like, they MET, and Caleb was all “hurr durr I’m so dark and tortured I don’t deserve love” only then he remembered that Essek is like, super hot and smart and like, flawed enough to vibe apparently, and now he wants to make ALL of the babies with him but of course he is Caleb so he has to be CONFLICTED about it and I thought they had FINALLY gotten around to hooking up after all of the morning groping so we gave them some alone time and all we get is THIS,” she pointed angrily to the two wizards who were still comparing notes.

Verin’s face had gone on a progressive journey of horror at Jester’s explanation, but she was used to inciting that sort of response in people.

“You owe me ten gold,” one of the drow (Viedrar!) said, joining them with a bowl of Caduceus’s vegan breakfast stew they were eyeing with mistrust.

Verin made a strangled sound. “Essek is not fucking their arcanist-“

(“Not for lack of trying!” Jester reminded.)

“-and I am hereby putting a moratorium on this topic. There will be a fine for anyone who brings it up.” He raised his voice to be heard through the camp. “Everyone start finishing up. I want to make Deepriver Mine for camp tonight.”

Caduceus made his way over to them with Fjord in tow at hearing the call. He offered a cup of tea to Verin, who looked at it as if it were poisoned. Viedrar snatched it up and dumped it over their stew before resuming eating. Caduceus looked briefly scandalized before turning back to Verin. “I figured you should know Oolong reported her group saw a party of what I think are dragonborn from her description deeper in the woods while they were hunting last night. She couldn’t say what they were doing, but felt they were dodgy.”

“Who the fuck is Oolong?” Viedrar asked over Verin’s pained silence.

“Caduceus’s cassoracious!” Jester put in. “She is as insightful as he is- we should definitely listen to her!”

“Oh cool, we’re using the turkeys as lookouts now. Also, Verin, not that I’m complaining, but why is your armor covered in penises?”

Verin looked down, seemed to be frustrated to the brink of tears, and started wandering deeper into camp. “Because I’m losing control of my life,” he said in parting. Jester could sense she was right on the brink of a good friendship with him and would have chased after him if she hadn’t had something even better occupying her attention.

“Caduceus,” Jester sing-songed, glad to have some unwitting conspirators to talk to. “What do we do about that?” She waved her arm over to their studious teammates who were now chatting animatedly but still did not have their faces on each other. Viedrar, who had remained behind, continued shoveling tea-stew into their face and glanced back and forth between Jester and Caduceus avidly.

“Oh, well, there’s not really anything to do. It is blossoming all on its own. It’s really nice they’ve found an oasis in each other.”

“Wait, that really is a thing that’s happening?” Fjord asked in alarm. “Like, I know they spend a lot of time together, but it’s actually-“ he made a couple of rude hand gestures. Jester was so proud of him. “And are we…good with that?”

“Yeah, they are absolutely about to go at it against the next available tree,” Veth said, popping out of nowhere and scaring the living daylights out of the group. “And I still don’t trust Essek as far as I can throw him, but Caleb needs some sort of stress relief and he is about a decade overdue for a good fucking, so needs-must I guess. I want you all to keep an eye on hotboi though. One shady move and we shank him, okay?”

“I think he’s too busy being in love to be shady! Do you think they’re gonna get married? It might be good for international relations! I bet the Bright Queen would arrange an amazing wedding,” Jester gushed.

“I think both of those scenarios are oversimplifying what’s happening here,” Caduceus added with a half smile. It was honestly the most logical (and because it was Caduceus, likely the most accurate), but Jester was enjoying the fairy tale appeal at the moment and wanted to believe in an uncomplicated romance for just a bit longer. The group turned back to look at the two wizards only to find Verin was talking seriously with Essek. His earlier derpy smile was long gone. Caleb was-

“For fuck’s sake, we’ve made it so much worse,” Veth lamented, watching Caleb stare wistfully after Essek before walking directly into a tree. Recovering and looking around anxiously to see their group watching him, he seemed to deflate, flush, and hurried over to the arborscythe with a pointed “guten morgen, eichhörnchen”. The arborscythe chittered like old nails being pulled out of wood, waved the cloud of knives that was its tail in greeting, and had a moment of frantic digging to uncover a humanoid leg that it presented to Caleb as a gift. Aww!

“Yeah, so that’s a mess,” Fjord noted. “Now I do feel kind of bad about this morning. Perhaps we can get them a private room at this town we’re going into and give them a bit of time to work it out.” Jester waggled her eyebrows at him because really, wording.

An amused snort reminded them that they had an onlooker, and they all turned to see Viedrar looking absolutely gleeful.

“I’m gonna level with you: this trip is pretty much the best thing ever and is going to be gold for the garrison gossip mill. In case you are unaware, the public image of the Shadowhand is some weird conglomeration of child prodigy, acclaimed academic, and the boogeyman. From Verin, we get that flavored with “scheming older brother”. From you all, I have heard you refer to him more with the irreverent ‘hotboi’ than his title, and you seem to view him as some sort of slightly risky cock-for-hire. And don’t even get me started on you all. Heroes of the dynasty and international liaisons of peace, but also just a solid mass of bickering, screaming, and public property damage. I absolutely respect your prioritizing getting your wizard laid over strategizing how to not die in the fortress of the Children of Malice. I mean that sincerely. This is the most entertainment I’ve had in my life, and I never want it to end.” Viedrar stood up and passed their empty bowl of stew back to Caduceus. “Thank you for…everything really. I’d best go pack, but please feel free to continue mulling over the sex lives of the Deliverer of the Beacon and our head interrogator. You are all a gift.”

“You know,” Caduceus said idly, “I kind of feel like we were just gleefully reprimanded?”

“No, they were TOTALLY in support of our actions,” Jester insisted. “Beau can keep Calzen, Viedrar’s going to be my best friend. VIEDRAR. COME BACK. DO YOU WANT TO WRITE A LOVE STORY WITH ME? VIEDRAR HOW MANY SYNONYMS DO YOU HAVE FOR ‘ENGORGED’?”

Chapter Text

It was time to put the fear of god into a pretty boy.

Well, that was probably optimistic. Essek lived with the constant knowledge that he could be tortured and executed by two separate nations at any given moment, so threats of bodily harm from an overprotective best friend were laughably weak. What Veth did have at her disposal were his well-guarded anxiety and awkwardness, which were ripe for the needling. Less “fear of god” and more “crippling discomfort”, but she was flexible. Veth was not above emotional terrorism if it meant keeping Caleb safe. Also, it sounded fun.

It was child’s play to slip through the campsite undetected between Beau continuing to wage morning warfare with her cassoracious, Jester continuing to shout fledgling porn at the Aurora Watch, and Verin continuing to drift through the encampment in a cloud of dick-clad disdain. The only attention Veth earned, naturally, was Caduceus’s. Sitting peacefully in the center of the camp’s chaotic churning, he was enjoying a final cup of tea with his bitching cassoracious (that bird had a LOT of grievances to air). One of his large ears flicked as Veth moved through the shadows of the saplings, and though he didn’t make eye contact, he smiled quietly into his teacup. Veth chose to interpret that as endorsement.

On the far end of the clearing, Caleb and Essek were being gross and smitten. Sure, it looked like they were efficiently donning packs and reorganizing the saddle, but they kept shooting quick glances at each during the packing. Caleb kept smiling when he caught Essek looking. Despite herself she liked Essek, but seeing Caleb’s aura of quiet happiness renewed her resolution to dismember the drow if things went south.

Veth made sure to remain silent until she was about three feet from them. “I’d like a quick word,” she stated politely, making Essek fumble the components pouch he was securing to his belt and causing Caleb to jolt forward with a muttered Zemnian expletive. Satisfying. “Caleb, why don’t you go… curry the arborscythe or something. We will only be a minute.”

Caleb briefly glanced between her and Essek, worry causing his brow to knit. Essek shot him a half smile and tilted his head in the direction of the arborscythe, earning an eyeroll. Veth found she was mildly irritated by the non-verbal communication. Being on the same wavelength as Caleb was her thing and she had never been very good at sharing. Seeming to sense this, Caleb gripped her shoulder in passing, a thanks and a warning in a single gesture.

“I would imagine customs vary between our people,” Essek started once Caleb was out of earshot, “but is this where you list which of my organs you will send back to my den should I ruin our agreement?”

His calm veneer was incredibly irritating. She was going to snap that confidence like an errant finger.

“Is that how you view this, Essie?” she asked benignly. “An agreement? I’m not certain if this is a drow thing or just an age thing. I know how old men like their contracts and formalities.”

Essek blinked. “Old-? Essie?”

“You both can do what you want, but Caleb has needs. Do you have potions to help performance? A great-great-grandfather like you, I would assume you have some sort of magical crutch already prepared. Focused anti-gravity spell maybe?”

Watching Essek’s ears perk up and features flush a shade darker was like tasting blood in the water. “I’m not- that’s not a- we are not having this conversation.”

“We really are though,” Veth said, channeling a goblin grin. “If you tell me what needs assistance, I can help. Is it the arthritis? The lack of lust? The actual mechanics of getting it up?”

Essek stared hopelessly at the sky for a moment, which Veth took as a personal victory until she caught his soft laughter.

“Let us assume I can keep from dislocating a hip. I’m sure we’ll be fine; not all of us need Rhino Sex and a vicinity to Jester’s mother to fuel a physical relationship,” he replied smoothly. It was a flex, as Essek was nothing if not one-upmanship personified. His flaunting of details from Nicodranas was less annoying due to the fact he had the wherewithal to banter at all.

“Don’t be so hasty to dismiss aid. Caleb will be quite a reach for you- you’re very short.”

Veth was suddenly levitating, and for a singular instant she thought she was going to be crushed like the captured volstrucker. Instead, she shifted a few feet to the left and avoided being trampled by Chad, who now had Beau hanging from his neck in the midst of an impotent half-Nelson.

“He’s barely taller than me and matters of height are…not an issue in any case,” Essek replied slyly, joining Veth in hovering to avoid the flood of spiders that skittered out of the underbrush with the disruption. “I’m surprised honestly. I assumed you would have targeted my previous actions or personality as deal breakers. I have no prepared rebuttals for physical complaints, as I have never received any before.”

Arrogant fucker, Veth found herself thinking with near-unacceptable fondness. Alright, prod a different area. “If you are so confident, who am I to stand in the way then? I suppose I’ll have to be happy he picked you over Yussa, who is even older, shorter, and more accomplished. You’re like diet-Yussa.” Ah, there was the pressure point. Essek’s amused expression took a dive. If he had enough information to know about her and Yeza’s reunion, he would surely know who Nicodranas’s titular tower wizard was. “He doted on Caleb as well- taught him the teleportation circle, in fact.” Essek’s mouth opened and closed for a moment. Veth smiled sweetly. “Caleb is practically catnip to other wizards, isn’t he? That brilliant mind is in high demand. Oh, you thought you were his only tutor?”

Essek cleared his throat, lowering her back to the ground with a subtle flexion of his wrist. “It was foolish to think so, certainly,” he said, all traces of earlier jesting gone. “I appreciate what you are doing here, but it is unnecessary. What damage I already inadvertently did is more than I can stomach. I will not hurt him if it is at all within my power. I am as confused as you for why he would wish to pursue something with me, and while I am selfishly overjoyed at the prospect, I will also not begrudge him if he finds better offers.”

UGH. Essek was no fun with this new sincere emo side they unearthed during his forced reveal. He and Caleb really were peas in a pod of self-hatred. To make matters worse, he remained hovering. Veth was shocked to find she felt a bit bad at making him lean into one of his coping mechanisms. Apparently her conscience was growing. What a terrible discovery.

“Oh, stop looking so crestfallen. You’re the one he’s actually pursuing, aren’t you? I guess there are more terrible choices he could have made. Barely. Don’t let the banter get to you, though,” Veth said, letting her own tone drop into full seriousness. “Purposeful or otherwise, should you hurt him, I will find every little weakness and insecurity in that mess of a brain you have, and I will push until you break in ways the Cerberus Assembly wishes they could achieve. Oh, and it would be your ambiguously functioning dick going back to Thelyss. You know, just so that both of our customs are satisfied.” She regarded him for another moment before digging into her dress pocket. “I’m glad we’ve come to an understanding. If you can make him happy, I’m happy. I saw you didn’t get breakfast; have some pocket bacon.”

He haltingly accepted the meat with a forced smile. “You are sending a lot of mixed messages here, but this is… ah… very kind.”

“I’m being incredibly straightforward- I want my boy happy. Just know one wrong step and I’ll FUCKING KILL YOU.” Essek looked back in alarm at her sudden change in volume. She smiled sweetly before letting her expression drop flat and indicating between her eyes and him. “Go on. Go nerd out with Caleb and your unnamed frot-squirrel. If we stretch this out any longer it’s just gonna get awkward.”

“Light forbid. And he has a name,” Essek replied absently, which was really not the modifier he should have protested.  She found herself curious though, and at her raised eyebrow, he hesitated a moment longer. “…Wexkae.” That sounded entirely fake and she was about to call bullshit, but the arborscythe raised its head at the name and chittered excitedly. Oh gods, the rows of teeth were mobile. It probably meant something pretentious, like “soulblighter” or something. She’d have to ask Beau later. It didn’t take understanding, however, to send him a judgmental stare and point meaningfully at him one last time before melting back into the underbrush.

Veth decided to observe for a few moments longer from the maroon-tinged shadows as Essek shook his head and floated over to where Caleb had just stashed the saddle in his vault of amber. Essek promptly fed the pocket bacon to his sentient bag of fangs before sharing enough of the conversation for Caleb to go red-faced. His apparent flustered stammering earned a look of unsettlingly soft affection from the drow. Essek curled a finger, summoning a book from the ground and pressing it gently into Caleb’s anxiously restless hands. Caleb’s flighty movements halted around the leather binding and his flush settled as he stared down at the book for a moment. Glancing up, Caleb lifted a hand to touch lightly at Essek’s temple in thanks before giving a self-depreciating smile and tilting his head toward Wexkae. A quick smatter of apparent banter later they were hovering onto Wexkae’s back as some sort of gravitational spell anchored them in place of the saddle. The murdersquirrel then took three springboarding bounds off the surrounding trunks to launch vertically into the canopy of the Vermaloc, disappearing from view. Those fuckers.

“We’re going to get an arboreal view of what’s lying in wait and will report back,” Caleb’s voice was suddenly clear in her mind with the Message. “Do try to refrain from further speculation on our dicks or how we will use them while we’re gone.”

Veth grinned as she carefully worked her way back towards camp. The underbrush churned with creatures she was glad not to see directly. “I’ll let everyone know to wait until you get back for such conversations.”

“Keep pushing and I’ll go to the other extreme with keeping you posted in graphic detail,” Caleb warned, and Veth couldn’t help the bright laughter it startled out of her. Her perfect, brilliant, asshole boy.

Veth made a quick detour over to the Aurora Watch whose conversation in Undercommon was useless to her but a frisking of unguarded pouches got her seven gold, a healing potion, a small bundle of what may have been skein (scandalous!), and a piece of weird meat. She didn’t risk searching Verin’s pouches as she drifted past aside from depositing the skein inside one of them.

“The wizards are our eyes in the sky,” Veth greeted as she came up to where Jester was painting closed the defect in Rainbows’ beak. “They’re squirreling around in the upper branches right now, so we should probably get underway lest one of them is knocked unconscious by a branch or something.”

“Oh my gosh,” Jester stated in delight, “they are up in the branches all by themselves for LONG periods of time just clinging to each other? I should have known Caleb had a plan to get more time alone!”

Beau approached, finally firmly seated on Chad. “Yeah. Great. Because no one is more prepared for dealing with an ambush than Caleb and Essek. I actually can’t wait to play rescue. I seriously need to punch something before the day is out.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Verin warned grimly, now atop his own cassoracious as the rest of the Aurora Watch pulled up behind him. “We’re bound to encounter creatures you’ve never seen before, and they are all extremely dangerous. Stay close and stay alert.”

---

The Mighty Nein were very, very bad at staying close, and “alert” was off the table entirely.

The ride oscillated between cacophony and what had to be magically aided stealth. One moment they were creating a rolling crash upon discovering just how well suited the cassoracious were to running through the dense underbrush, and the next An’rak watched as they entirely avoided the detection of a Giant Spider’s tremor-sensing web, ducked past a scavenging Ettercap, skirted a giant vermillion gila, and snuck directly under the nose of a sleeping broad leafed viper.

It was done with such innate competence that it made no sense whatsoever when Fjord took a moment to rest against a tree during a group break only to be consumed by the fanged maw of the trunk in a flailing of limbs. Before she could even raise the alarm to start proper protocol for extracting him (a delicate and precise application of fire, a surgical incision into the wood, and a stasis spell), Caduceus had peeled back the bark with a curtain of lichen and a chastising comment to the tree. As Fjord was extracted, looking irritated but not nearly as shaken as someone should have been for almost being digested by local flora, Veth and Jester came over and stabbed a knife into the wood. For some gods-forsaken reason, this seemed to lock open the mouth of the tree. The little tiefling then proceeded to sink her hands into the flesh-like innards of the trunk and extracted several pulsing glands, unconcerned by the botanical screams.

At seeing the horrified faces of the Aurora Watch, Jester shrugged with comedically bloody hands. “What? You never know when a novel acid will come in handy!” She yanked out the knife, left a little stone arch at the base of the tree, and in the next instant was back on the cassoracious. Veth took the reins while Jester started finger painting a dick of tree-blood onto the saddle. Then they were off into the underbrush again with a whoop.

Who were these people?

An’rak had to spare a moment to respect how personally tailored the Umavi had made this punishment for Verin. For someone who thrived on order and reason, being put in charge of watching the Nein was a curse of religious proportion. Of all the insults to his sensibilities, however, Verin seemed the most troubled by the fact that they genuinely seemed to like the Shadowhand. This was how she and Calzen found themselves spending the afternoon trying to farm information from Fjord and Caduceus on the nature of that friendship. 

It was not going well.

“It is such a unique way you explore novel environments. Are you all always so bold?” Calzen was asking.

“You can only be as bold as the surroundings allow,” Caduceus stated in a mellow voice, thereby telling them exactly nothing. Fjord was too distracted trying to bat spiderwebs off his armor to answer.

“It is such an extreme dichotomy from Kryn methods,” An’rak joined in. “Do you journey with the Shadowhand often? For one so well versed a subterfuge, it must be a jarring method for him.”

Caduceus blinked his large eyes. “I have no idea what any of that means.”

So had gone the last two hours of conversation. An’rak had never met a firbolg before so was uncertain if his cunning was a race trait or just Caduceus specifically. His deft dismantling of the interrogation was master level; he had so summarily stonewalled them with feigned idiocy that she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he was an intelligence operative for one of the other nations. She would have to warn Verin.

Leaving Calzen to beat his head against that wall, she scanned the rest of the group for a better option. Beauregard, with the quiet morning ride, had graduated to aggressively challenging every creature she came in contact with and was becoming progressively more frustrated without conflict. As An’rak watched, she was shouting “get back here and fight me you fucking coward!” at a barbed owlbear who was shuffling off with a pensive look over its shoulder. When Veth wasn’t calling out every hour on the hour that the wizards weren’t dead, she appeared to be assembling a bomb on the back of a galloping cassoracious. Jester was cute as a button, strong as an ox, and absolutely not worth the headache. That left Yasha.

As An’rak went to approach the barbarian, Yasha abruptly dismounted, unsheathed a greatsword, and with a feral shout lunged to carve through a pile of vipers easily four times her size. Seeming to shake off the venom from the one snake who managed to strike her before being cleaved in two, she went a bit deeper into the brush and returned shortly with an unassuming flower and a small satisfied smile. 

An’rak really, really wished the wizards weren’t in the canopy. By process of elimination the Shadowhand’s little consort was the only viable information source for the group at this point. He certainly seemed to be the sanest of the bunch. Being around the remainder of the Nein made her feel like a character who had not leveled up enough to be part of the party. She was used to crass and bawdy soldiers, but there was something certifiably and merrily unhinged about this group.

Resigning herself to another conversation with Fjord (who was at least charming in his vague responses), An’rak turned just in time to see Caduceus abruptly halt his mount. As one, the other members of the Nein stopped their respective antics and watched him in quiet anticipation. It was an unsettling transition.

“That smell,” Caduceus started quietly, staring into middle distance with a frown. “It’s the same. Not undead but not not undead. Like the giant tortoise. I don’t…”

“Got it,” Veth stated abruptly. “Caleb and Essek are on their way back. Caleb said to circle up. Something’s wrong with Deepriver Mine. He was Calebing and being all cryptic but will give us the deets when they get here.”

“Is it wise to have them come back to the area?” Caduceus asked. “It has the same feel as the Ghostlands right now.”

His caution was irrelevant: with a soft rustle there was suddenly a wide fanged grin in the upper branches that resolved into the arboscythe’s nearly reptilian face. As it spiraled effortlessly down the vertical trunk, the Shadowhand and Caleb came into view, their bodies parallel to the ground but (somewhat predictably) not feeling gravity’s pull with the position. The human still had his nose in a book, but a little fey creature was perched on his shoulders, surveying the woods attentively.

“There is a complication,” the Shadowhand stated as they reached the ground, right before a draconic devil erupted from the surrounding forest and attempted to tear into his abdomen.

The next few moments unfolded as a strange parody of battle. The air before the Shadowhand shimmered with an arcane shield, causing the devil to ricochet off of him and bounce backwards into Caleb’s own shield. It ping-ponged back and forth for a second before the Shadowhand flung it away with a disdainful flick of his wrist, sending it cartwheeling through the air to land at the feet of Fjord’s cassoracious. Fjord looked down in surprise before summoning a sword out of thin air and leaping off of his bird to stab the devil through the chest.

“…okay?” Fjord asked in clear confusion as the devil spasmed and went limp. Its draconic features slowly started to collapse, shifting into a putrid gray ooze that pooled on the forest floor before slithering back into the underbrush where the devil had come from.

“Well that can’t be good,” Caduceus noted unnecessarily.

The Shadowhand guided the arborscythe closer to the party, putting Yasha between them and where the devil had appeared. It was a strategic position aside from the fact the barbarian was back to investigating flowers and hadn’t even readied for battle yet.

Three more devils materialized from the foliage, stalking the edges of the party. An’rak glanced to Verin for formation orders, but before he could open his mouth Beauregard was moving.

“Yes. FUCK yes. Hell fucking yes.” She ran up the side of a trunk and swung effortlessly from a branch to meet the devils halfway. “I can finally,” Beau shouted with a cracking downward punch to the nearest devil, “fucking,” a knee to the gut, “FIGHT SOMETHING.” A haymaker slammed into the draconic skull, rocketing the demon into the underbrush in an explosion of leaves and a stray flailing spider.

“I get the sense your group could benefit from counselling,” Calzen stated beside Fjord.

“You have no idea,” Fjord responded before bizarrely proclaiming “eldritch blast” and lackadaisically lobbing three beams of crackling green energy into the next devil. There was another explosion of gray ooze. The third devil didn’t even wait to be struck before collapsing back into ooze.

“Do you feel entirely superfluous right now?” An’rak asked Viedrar, who had come up on her other side during the skirmish. They shrugged, gave a considering look to the situation, and started to sip from a flask while watching the proceedings.

Giving up on a lost strategy, the slime seemed to collect in on itself and slithered up into a towering, undulating column of grayish globules. It was embarrassing that it took seeing haunted faces flickering through the ooze for An’rak to connect the dots.

“An oblex,” An’rak called out to the group. “It’s a fucking undead oblex. We were seeing simulacra.” Identifying it certainly didn’t explain what one of the memory eaters was doing outside of the Underdark, however. Nor did she have the opportunity to postulate on it. With her words, two tentacles whipped forward and flailed against Igug, raising purulent welts across his arm. An additional fetid tentacle of screaming faces snapped forward and lashed around Caduceus’s forehead, pulling him from his cassoracious.

“Oh. No. That is some nasty business, no. Absolutely not,” Caduceus stated with unnatural calm that further cemented An’rak’s conviction he was some sort of special ops. A soft green glow suffused him, burning away the shrieking tentacle. In the next instant, he slammed his staff into the ground, causing an explosion of verdant vines across the forest floor. The oblex gave a haunting chorus of moaning shrieks before toppling over backwards and awkwardly flopping itself back into the forest like a lugubrious slinky.

“Okay, a couple of fun points,” Caduceus stated, rubbing at goo still caught in his fur and clambering back into his saddle. “One: nobody get close enough to allow that to happen again. I’m pretty sure it just tried to eat my brain. Two: that Turn Undead only lasts for a minute, so maybe we should talk as we walk? Three: obviously we could take that thing if we needed to, but I get the sense there are a LOT of them oozing around in the bushes. We might be better off going to the source of this mess.”

“As I was saying before we were interrupted,” the Shadowhand spoke up, “a complication. The outskirts of Deepriver Mine are in ruin and teeming with zombie duegar. We may find the necromancer who is reanimating oblexes by looking at the center of that undead horde.”

“Fucking sweet,” Beauregard proclaimed, cracking her knuckles. “Were there any ghosts? I can also punch ghosts.”

“I am wholly unsurprised by that. I will be sure to alert you if I note any specters that need punching.”

“Hey,” Caleb called, grabbing the Shadowhand’s attention with a hand on his shoulder. “I’m eager to fight alongside you, but I know outright conflict isn’t your preferred terrain. Be careful, ja?” His eyes darted over An’rak and her colleagues before he leaned in and murmured something unintelligible. The Shadowhand shrugged, looking unbothered, and in the next moment two shadow mages sprang into existence. Aulanonia gave an exclamation of delight at the arcane echoes as the wizards then took a moment to press a pearl to each other’s foreheads, briefly suffusing each other in a flash of dunamantic possibility.

An’rak released her own echo on instinct (it was a logical preparation), but her attention remained fixed on the mages. The human knew dunamamcy. The human knew dunamancy. She glanced to Verin, who flailed an abortive “what the fuck” gesture that the Shadowhand merrily ignored.

“Gods this is a mess, I love it,” Viedrar gushed, releasing their own echo and looking fondly over their acquired allies. “How in the Luxon’s bright light are we going to coordinate attacks with this lot? It feels like we’ve acquired an anthropomorphized Deck Of Many Things.”

“You’ve answered your own question, I think,” An’rak responded. “Let the cards fall and hope we don’t die.”

In the next instant An’rak registered a vibration in the ground that was building rapidly in volume and magnitude. That was all the warning they had before a fucking Neothelid exploded out of the ground, scattering them all into the underbrush with the force of its entrance and making a small clearing of fractured trees to accommodate its height. Their preparation period had officially ended it would seem.

An’rak had been with the Watch for close to two decades and had seen all manner of creature crawl out of Bazzoxan’s depths. The gargantuan worm was daunting with the rotting flesh of its undead hide dripping into the detritus of the forest floor, but staring up at the towering column of its body should have only filled her with anticipation. It was the sibilant whisper through her mind that turned her blood to ice and locked her muscles in place with horror.

“There they are, they are, they are. Little thoughts and weakling hearts. I feel your breath and it desecrates, an insult, yes.”

Her eyes were dragged up the worm, climbing and climbing with a knowing dread until she reached the comparatively small figure at the worm’s neck. Long tendrils splayed down the smaller creature’s chest, cephalopodic features dry and ghastly. She couldn’t say how she could tell the glowing sulfurous pits that were its eyes were filled with madness, but they certainly were.

An’rak had never personally fought a Mind Flayer. No one in her lifetime had fought a Mind Flayer Lich. They were so fucked.

“Hey who’s the jetsam looking motherfucker?” Beauregard called, seemingly unaffected by the crippling terror gripping the Aurora Watch. “Sup squidface! You the jerk-off who’s zombifying the area? Fucking party foul, asshole. Get your crusty ass down here and atone for your bullshit.”

This was how An’rak was going to die.

“This is so illuminating on how your group manages to get into the situations we hear about,” the Shadowhand stated bleakly.

“Mouthy little foodstuffs, hardly any brain for a snack, oh yes-“

“If she didn’t say it someone else would,” Caleb responded, voice shaking but sounding on firmer footing than An’rak felt. “Right. Ja. Okay. This may as well happen.”

The Shadowhand gave a single huff of hopeless laughter before seeming to remember himself. “Verin, can you and the Watch keep the Neothelid off of us if we deal with-” he waved a hand at the Illithilich as shadows started to condense around him, engulfing his chest and spiraling down his arms in churning, opaque armor. An’rak felt actual physical weakness at the relief coursing through her. They were outclassed in a deadly way, but she had not factored in having one of Rosonha’s elite going into the fight with them. Verin looked similarly surprised and was doing just as bad a job at hiding his relief.

“-will carve your flesh into rotting toys-“

“‘Avinsin’ if you lose control of the situation and we need to break,” Verin called back.

“We haven’t already lost control of the situation?” Fjord pondered.

“-make your souls scream in eternal agony as your husks-“

“Hey dude?” Beauregard called up. “Trying to have a conversation here. Can you hold on the evil monologuing until it’s your turn to talk? You’re being really distracting right now.”

In response, the lich hissed, levitated off the Neothelid, and released a churning miasma of Cloudkill.

---

“Talk to us Essek,” Beau shouted, snapping open her fan and sending a blasting Gust of Wind to disperse the poisonous cloud. It had the unfortunate side effect of sending the small army of Echo Knights and their shadows tumbling further into the woods, but she was sure they would understand. It was just helping them get into flanking position of the rotting worm anyway. “Why is everyone shitting their pants over this guy?”

Essek levitated his way off of the murdersquirrel as he finished armoring himself in shadows. “Mind Flayers, or Illithids-“

Beau rolled her eyes. Fucking academics. “SUCCINCT, Essek.”

Irritation seemed to burn its way through his unease if the sharp look was anything to go by. Good. An irritated Essek was a focused Essek. “Mind-eating slavers from outer space. So psionic, so magic. Liches extra bad.”

“Magic on magic or punch the magic?” Beau asked.

“Punch the magic. Emphatically. Direct magic against it will be challenging.”

Fucking yes. She gave him a thumbs up that he seemed insulted by. This entire Tonn debacle had been a dry spell of Beau not contributing anything to the group beyond exploding one slime devil. She was all about being the secret weapon against the Rosohnan boogeyman.

The magic users, hearing direct attacks were out, lit her up in a series of spells that felt like a hit of something illicit. Caleb’s Haste rocketed into her, turning her surroundings into a vivid crawl as Caduceus’s Holy Weapon ignited across her gloves and Jester’s Bless made her muscles feel weightless. Something undefinable from Essek settled around her arms and sent snaking shadows to dance about the bright aura of her holy weapon gloves.

Time to fuck shit up.

In an explosive lurch forward, Beau swung up into the branches, leaping from tree to tree and gaining enough height to reach the levitating bastard. With an adrenalin fueled grin, Beau drew back a fist and-

Rocketed right through the illusion of the lich. Fuck a DUCK. Pivoting midair as the mirror image dispersed, she caught sight of a second lich right as a skeletal limb reached out and clamped a hand around her forearm. Beau had a brief moment to wonder how something could be dry and clammy at the same time before pervasive whispering tendrils snaked into her brain.

Beau blinked, stilling on a branch.

“Fight these heathens,” the Illithilich whispered. Yes. That sounded like a better idea than what she was currently doing.

She turned with her master to face the group as a tiny voice raged in the back of her mind before going still and silent.

Her master hardly needed the help. Right as the half orc covered himself in icy armor and the barbarian gave a haunting battle cry, her master turned, tentacles flaring, and released a rippling blast through the area that dragged screams of pain out of the fighters. The little shadow wizards exploded into smoke as all but the human and drow stilled and became immobile.

Check that. The human, the drow, and something that just released a volley of bolts into her master’s chest. Letting out a wheeze of anger, he turned in the direction of the attack just as the area was cast into twilight and filled with clouds of stars. Beau blinked up at the beauty of the constellations before they seemed to ignite in a chain reaction, filling the area with a radiant explosion that sent her plummeting to the ground. Beau closed her eyes in silent clarity as her back hit the forest floor and the breath was knocked out of her. Her mind picked calmly at the tendrils from the Illithilich, carefully releasing the control it had planted in her brain until she was able to take a deep breath on her own. She sat up to the sound of passionate Zemnian expletives, and yeah. Seriously. Fuck this guy.

Whatever space explosion Essek had done had wiped out the remaining mirror images, but Tall, Dead, and Creepy didn’t seem any worse for wear. As Beau watched, a bloodied Caleb was replaced by an infuriated Capeleb who let loose a deafening roar and yanked a startled looking Essek out of range of a lash of tentacles. Unfazed by the loss of his original target, the lich turned and lashed around the frozen Yasha instead. Though Beau lost Haste with Caleb’s transformation, time seemed to slow as she watched the tentacle engulf Yasha’s head. Rivulets of blood snaked down Yasha’s neck as the lich’s face snapped forward and with a wet crunch, Yasha went limp. The lich was dragged back by another gravitational vortex before it started its meal, but Yasha lay motionless on the ground where it had dropped her.

Beau didn’t know she was screaming until she tried to take a breath and choked. She didn’t know she was moving until her fist crushed into the alien bone structure of the Illithilich’s face and split the skin along her knuckles. She didn’t know she was about to die until she was pulled back from her attack and her attack and her attack and her attack and her attack by the sucking pull of Essek’s gravity and watched those tentacles, still covered in Yasha’s blood, barely miss her face.

Jester was stunned. Caduceus was stunned. Yasha was dead. It played like a mantra with the beat of her heart.

Another shower of bolts came from the hidden Veth only to bounce off of the lich’s Shield.

Essek was deposited gently into a tree as Capeleb turned, roared, and slammed a fist into the frail undead fucker. He went down in a gratifying pile of limbs, prone to Capeleb’s next raging swing. Beau waited for the satisfying crunch of bone. Instead, a haunting word echoed through the woods, sending a chill down to Beau’s fingertips. The ape was gone. Caleb dropped.

There were tears on her cheeks, which only registered as she had to rub at her eyes to clear her vision to see if Caleb was breathing. She couldn’t fucking see if he was breathing.

Nauseated by her hiccupping gasps, Beau once more lurched toward. They had to end this. They had to end this and get the clerics back in the game, or….

Her job was made easy for her. A precisely placed crossbow bolt shot through the sulfurous pit of its left eye socket. Another in its right. Another in its neck. A tree next to the lich exploded, filling the air with huge splinters of wood that briefly hung suspended before being pulled back towards the lich to skewer through its chest, its legs, its arms. Pinned against a tree by natural and crafted projectiles, it didn’t have any tricks left at its disposal as Beau fisted her hand in its tentacles and ripped.

The re-dead corpse hung limply from the tree as Veth finally appeared, screaming for the clerics. Essek appeared to be having a pretty legitimate panic attack. Beau couldn’t breathe.

Oh, the worm was still flailing around the woods.

Okay. This was a better situation. This could be handled.

Beau approached Essek, wiping at her eyes. There was a fight to be fought yet before she would allow herself to process exactly what was going on with Yasha and Caleb. Essek was for sure hyperventilating and kept bobbing into the air for a second or two before touching back down, the entire time staring blindly at Caleb who was very dead but it was okay, it was okay, he wouldn’t be.

“Hey, Essek, man, if that worm comes our way, we are totally fucked right now, you understand? Jester and Caduceus will fix this, but I need you to help make sure they are safe while they’re doing that. We lose one of the clerics and this all goes to shit.” She placed two fingers to a point on his neck and released a small pulse of ki to reset his breathing pattern. He gave a gasp as if coming up from underwater.

“FUCK!” Jester’s voice broke through the clearing. This was okay. There was still enough time. They were going to be okay.

“Go on dude, go work out some ire. Caleb will be right as rain by the time you get back.”

Essek’s eyes finally seemed to clear before there was anger. Pure, unadulterated anger twisting his features. Beau’s face was a mess so the grin she felt tug at her mouth was probably ghoulish. Oh well. “Go fuck it up, huh?”

Essek once more started levitating and collecting shadows around himself, cloaking his body and turning his eyes black. The forest just beyond where the Nein were scattered plunged into darkness. He rocketed towards the sound of conflict.

Veth was yanking at Caduceus who had just come out of his stunned state, so Beau went over to where Jester was sobbing quietly and shakily pressing a handful of small diamonds to Yasha’s chest. With a gentle caress to her horns, Beau seated herself and pulled Yasha’s head into her lap. In the next moment Yasha jolted with a gasp, then another. As a soundtrack of splattering rotting flesh filled the area, Yasha’s breathing became more even and she cracked open her eyes.

Beau smiled down at her as Jester pressed her face into Yasha’s neck. Beau was pretty sure she had snot all over her face, but Yasha had seen her in worse states.

“Hey beautiful. Hot off the press: Mind Flayers are actually really fucking scary.”

Yasha gave a soft huff of laughter before groaning. “I think, maybe, we shouldn’t have another battle today. I think we are having an off day.”

Beau couldn’t help her own bark of hysterical laughter and took a moment to gather Jester and Yasha closer to her. It was an indeterminant amount of time before they were all willing to let go of the embrace and get to their feet, wiping at their faces and straightening their clothes. By the time Beau registered her surroundings again, Essek and the Aurora Watch were back in the area, their mounts were back and grooming themselves of slime they acquired during an apparent concurrent oblex slaughter, and Caduceus had stabilized Caleb and was in the process of a group prayer of healing.

“Okay,” Viedrar was saying from where they were slouched against a tree. They inhaled wetly before Caduceus’s prayer settled over the group. As the wound over their ribs closed, they looked on the brink of reverent tears before turning their attention back to Essek. “Okay, hear me out. Garrison life. The pay is abysmal and the housing averages 3.7 rats per bed, but you get short term disability, free dental, and a 10% discount at the local merchant. Am I selling this well? We have beef goulash every Folsen if that helps. Shit, please come live with us and beat stuff up. We’re practically friends, right… Essek?”

“No.” Essek, who had been chased away from Caleb’s side by a harried Caduceus and still had human blood on his hands, appeared to be in a state of prime bitchiness.

“Okay. Sorry. Fuck, you’re still cool. Sorry.”

“Please ignore them, Shadowhand,” Aulanonia implored. “They will be summarily beaten for their insolence later.”

Jester, who dealt with her own trauma by soothing others and was well versed in identifying wizards in a bad mood spiral, decided to intervene. “Don’t be cranky Essek!” she stated brightly as she came up beside him with open arms and an expectant smile. Giving a defeated sigh, he allowed her to loop her arms around his waist and suffered the embrace in stoic silence as the Aurora Watch goggled. They had no way of knowing it was viscerally impossible to deny Jester a hug. “Don’t mind him, he’s just grumpy because he’s had to go more than 24 hours without bathing and now has goo on him,” she stated, grinning at Essek’s exasperated expression. They all knew it was 5% bad hygiene and 95% transiently dead Caleb, but Jester’s excuse allowed him to keep the aloof persona. “He’s very fastidious you know. Don’t worry Essek, you still smell nice.”

Verin had the look of someone trying and failing to do complicated mental math. Jester, meanwhile, turned her attention fully to Viedrar with a huge smile. “Anyway, of course we are all friends. We’re not very good at staying in one place, but maybe we can plan another visit to Bazzoxan in the future. Have a combat picnic! Right now, though, can we discuss what the hell just happened? That was a nested doll of SUCK.”

“Yeah, like a shitty necromantic onion,” Fjord agreed as Star Razor popped back into whatever dimension it rested in. He pushed to his feet after Caduceus’s healing completed. “Just to confirm for the party, because I wouldn’t want Beauregard to be confused-” oh fuck him, he was such a posturing piece of shit, “-the original monster was a devil that was then consumed and replicated by the oblex, who at some point was killed, reanimated, and controlled by this undead squidmotherfucker, who… was up here and not down in the Underdark just for the shits?”

“No Illithilich is a paragon of mental wellness, but that creature had clearly been driven mad. It was much sloppier than the average Mind Flayer and didn’t even try to escape when the battle started to turn against it,” Essek stated. The implication that they had just been partially murdered by a weaken, shitty Illithilich was horrifying. “Something in the Underdark drove it mad and to the surface,” Essek concluded while gently extracting Jester’s arms as the embrace lingered beyond his comfort.

“How in the seven fucks do we always find these sorts of messes?” Fjord asked, seemingly oblivious to the powerplay of affection happening. “I’m going to go become a farmer.”

“I could provide you the bodies for your fields,” Caduceus replied fondly as the two shared a smile entirely inappropriate to the subject matter. Caduceus then turned his attention back to Caleb for a final round of personalized healing.

“Okay, disregarding that the firbolg is apparently a serial killer, anyone else concerned about the Abishai?” Aulanonia asked. “The draconic devil,” she clarified when she was greeted with silence.

“That is the part of the encounter you found disturbing?” Fjord asked, picking at a piece of rotting worm that had stuck to his shoulder.

“It is more the implications of it,” Essek explained. Being a walking library appeared to be how he coped with trauma. “The only other time we have seen devils has been from the rifts you assisted in closing. As this encounter was a smorgasbord of Underdark denizens, it stands to reason the devil that the oblex recreated was originally encountered in the Underdark.”

“And I would imagine the only way to find a new rift would be to systematically comb the countless miles of cavern down there. Unless you could find and interrogate whoever opened it that is,” Caleb concluded, finally sitting up. He was nearly knocked back down as Veth collided with him in a violent hug and a litany of something murmured into his neck. Caleb returned the hug tightly before clambering to his feet with a grunt and setting Veth back down. His joining the party immediately transformed Essek’s expression into something warm and hopeless. As was becoming their habit, the two gravitated towards each other leaving virtually no personal space. Nearly out of view, Essek gripped tightly at Caleb’s wrist.

“And there’s still the original horizonback,” Verin noted. “If the firbolg’s nose is to be believed, that suggests there is some sort of ancient undead oblex on Rosohna’s doorstep. Hopefully only an oblex. I think we should secure the area, see if there are any survivors left in the city, and then contact Mother to see how to prioritize things.”

With a collective groan, those still sitting got to their feet. Beau honestly could have gone for bedding down for the night to process the day’s events, but she supposed that was what compartmentalization was for. Jester, meanwhile, looked thoughtfully over the bedraggled group. “All previous joking aside, I do think a shower is in order.” Beau was almost afraid to ask, but she didn’t have the time to as a torrential rainfall dumped over the group, presumably an inspired and unwelcomed continuous use of Create or Destroy Water. The group stared at Jester in sopping displeasure after the deluge stopped, but in fairness, it was a more sanitary displeasure. Besides, however much Essek looked like a cat that had been thrown into a lake, the small sphere of repelled water around Caleb’s spellbook proved he could have stayed dry if he wanted to.

It was in that moment that Caleb abruptly froze with an exclamation in Zemnian. He whipped his sopping head towards Essek.

“That’s it. That’s it! What we- the, the- the, em, the-” he waved a damp hand in irritation, as if trying to catch the words in Common that were evading him in his excitement. Seeing his struggle, Essek pinched out some functionally damp components from the pouch on his belt for a quick spell, and with a look of glowing gratitude Caleb was off in a near continuous, frantically excited stream of Zemnian. It was completely incomprehensible what had him so worked up, but it appeared to be captivating Essek as well. His neutral mask started to slip as he gave fevered little encouragements of “yes, I see” and “oh, that’s- brilliant!” By the time Caleb paused to catch a breath, Essek was nearly vibrating with boyish excitement over whatever information he had received. Caleb, with a fumbling hand, cast his own Comprehend Languages and then it was Essek’s turn to tear off in rapid-fire Undercommon, the fastest Beau had ever heard him talk. 

“It’s like watching those bizarre mating dances the moor-storks do,” Viedrar commented before Aulanonia punched them in the side. “It’s my native language and I don’t have a fucking clue what he’s talking about. You following any of this?”

“Shut up shut up,” Aulanonia hissed, watching with wide eyes as the two wizards gesticulated wildly with escalating frenetic glee.

Jester glanced to Beau for help. “I know how to ask where the bathroom is. He’s dropping like 17 syllable words here. I’ve got nothing.” Beau always felt guilty denying Jessie anything, but much like Caleb’s Zemnian, even what she could translate were clusters of terms like “parabolic dunamantic dispersion”. They were speaking a third language in their foreign languages.

It was nearly ten minutes of continual back and forth (during which time Fjord gained considerable favor with the group by pulling most of the water back out of their clothes) before the wizards reached some sort of conclusion to the brainstorming. Caleb cupped Essek’s face with an unfettered adoration that Essek mirrored by grasping his wrists and bringing their foreheads together. It was a surprisingly intimate gesture given the audience, but recent events seemed to have shaken Essek’s remaining fucks out of him. They stood there for several more moments, eyes closed and oblivious to their surroundings as they shared breathless, giddy laughter.

“Ah shit,” Igug growled from the back of the group. “Sorry boss, I ship it.”

“I know, right?” Jester whisper-squealed.

“It’s cute as fuck is what it is,” An’rak admitted gruffly. “Look at them, being all nerd-smitten.”

“How can you be fixated on romance right now when we are watching an evolution of dunamis as we know it?” Aulanonia asked, clawing out a journal she started scribbling furiously in. “I obviously only caught one side of that incredible conversation- they were spitballing theoretical dunamantic relativity and multiverse manipulation at just a staggering level of intrinsic understanding- but what I could pick up is unheard of. Ground-breaking. Rule breaking. I would be dry-humping Calzen right now if I had just had that conversation.”

“Ew,” Calzen said.

“Okay,” Viedrar conceded, “revolutionary magic, but also I think we just watched their version of foreplay in broad daylight. Back me up on this Verin. That is the Shadowhand’s “I want sexytimes” face, isn’t it?”

A soft chime rang out. “Oh look, Mother is calling,” Verin evaded with obvious relief.

“Don’t shtup on the border of a possible massacre you two!” Veth called out. “Your dicks might get haunted!” Caleb cheerfully flipped her off without looking. Cracking open an eye, Essek gave a subtle motion of his freed hand and caused her to backflip into a mud puddle with a squawk.

---

As the rest of the party left Caleb and Essek to their canoodling (that naturally only lasted long enough for them to get out their respective spellbooks and start scribbling furiously), Jester went to the far edge of the new clearing and settled in to sketch for a bit. She would have to find a work around for being incapacitated, because tracking that fight and not being able to do anything was horrible. She added some harsh, dark shading to the sketch in irritation.

Verin finished his conversation with the Umavi as Jester moved on to her third sheet of angry drawings. She considered moving as he called over the rest of the Aurora Watch, but they didn’t seem bothered by her vicinity.

“The Lens is teleporting in later tonight to see if they can locate the lich’s phylactery and to start work on identifying what is going on in the Underdark,” Verin stated. “Until then, Deepriver Mine needs to be secured. I’m counting on you all to do that for us. Mother says it’s paramount we keep with this Tonn mission and to speed up our travel as much as able. I don’t know if Essek knows something he’s not telling us, but Mother certainly does. This mission is being given disproportionate priority.”

“We’re… splitting up?” Aulanonia asked quietly.

“No. Verin, come on man, don’t do this.” Viedrar stared imploringly. “We just encountered a fucking Illithilich. We watched the Shadowhand squeeze a Neothelid’s guts out like a tube of toothpaste. Caduceus does party wide healing. Please don’t leave us behind now. This mission is so cool.”

Verin gave an exhausted sigh. “You were supposed to hate this entire assignment. You all are the worst best friends ever.”

Viedrar looked the most sheepish Jester had seen them look. “I’m sorry! I was expecting your brother to be a regular dick, not a likable dick. He gets all dorky over his nerd crush and explodes things with his found family of diplomat-assassins! They are all fucking disasters who somehow routinely Murphy’s Law their way into success and it is a gift to watch. Also the entire party is weirdly attractive? Look, the truth of it is seeing how happy they make each other and watching them play off each other is just amazingly cathartic after all the war tensions we’ve been living through. It feels wrong to abandon all of this part way in.”

“If Viedrar could move past their own desires for a moment, they would also point out you’re asking to go into the most dangerous leg of this trip without backup,” Calzen put in quietly. 

“You all know I’d rather have you with me. But we are soldiers, and Deepriver Mine is just regular citizens surrounded by the Undead. I have no idea how the confrontation with Tonn is going to go, but I’d wager Essek and his merry band of psychopaths are going to manage just fine. A baker trying to ward off an undead dark dwarf has far worse chances. You are staying here to protect the people. That is a direct order.”

“Fucking lawful good hardass,” Igug murmured with a half-smile.

Verin socked him in the shoulder, which Igug had the good graces to mime staggering back from. “Go collect your things. I’ll update the Mighty Nein and we’ll break paths shortly.”

Verin shouted in dismay at the impromptu dogpile of a group hug before the rest of the Watch returned to the central clearing. He took a moment and a calming breath before moving to follow them. Jester caught Verin’s eye as he turned back and smiled widely. To her surprise, he made his way towards her after a contemplative look and a heavy sigh.

“May I join you for a moment?” he asked, catching a glimpse of the sketches in her book she was working on. He didn’t deign to comment on the incredible shading of her decapitated lich, so that was a point against him.

“What did you want to talk about?” She invited, biting her lip as she worked to get the shape of the flames coming out of the lich’s butt just right.

“You no doubt overheard I’ll be stationing the rest of the Watch here as we move forward to Dumaran. I was just…”

Jester looked up when he tapered off into silence. Verin was visibly struggling with what he was trying to say, but she could sense interrupting him now would derail him. She added more swords to the slaughtered lich to give him time to collect himself.

"I’m… daunted by going forward without backup… without my friends. How do you interact with him so easily?" he asked at last. She had expected something along these lines but was further surprised as Verin then plowed forward in a rush of words. “I barely understood him before, and I don’t understand him at all now. I’ve known Essek for over a century, and he is an entirely different person around this group. I was disdainful of your friendship because I assumed you were blind to his charm, but I got it backwards, didn’t I? He’s the one charmed by you all, and I don’t understand how you got there. Essek hasn’t let me close in decades, but I could reconcile that with Essek not confiding in anyone after he donned the Shadowhand mantle. He had crafted himself into an aloof bastard and that was no reflection on me. But now you are all this tight knit group and he still hates me and… I’m having difficulty adjusting to that.”

Jester put her sketchbook down slowly and willed her tail to stop flicking with the sadness she was feeling. Wordlessly, she dug into her bag and pulled out a double chocolate muffin to give him. These conversations were always better with a confection to focus on.

“You know,” she stalled, trying to find the right words as Verin accepted the muffin in confusion, “the Dynasty is so cool and advanced, and your sense of culture is really great! But it makes me sad how much of yourselves you lose in being who you think you have to be. It seems to be poisoning all of the relationships we have seen. Essek was assigned to us as the Shadowhand, but he has only ever been Essek to us. I think maybe the fact that we weren’t Dynasty and had no expectation of who he was supposed to be helped us meet who he actually is? It’s hard to explain. It’s like you with the Watch- you were being fun and dorky this morning, until you thought you were supposed to be wearing the commander persona, and then you became very… um… austere. I don’t think Essek hates you, but I think he does dislike the life you remind him of. And if you are happy with the Taskhand persona, then that’s okay! Some people just naturally don’t get along, and it would be just as bad to change yourself to accommodate Essek. But if you act the way you act because you think that is what he requires of you… maybe don’t do that? I don’t know. I get that it is harder to show, like, the “real” you in case you get rejected then too. I’ve felt that and it sucks. But I also feel like you would be happier regardless of his opinion if you let that side out more.” She sighed, twiddling her thumbs a bit. “In some ways it’s easier for us. We are strange broken people who don’t slot in very well to the rest of society, and I think that made it easier for us to share and bond over who we really are. Silver linings, you know? So like, ignore being all smart and proper and Taskhandy- what is it you like?”

She looked up to find Verin staring at her with glassy eyes. He quickly shoved a huge chunk of muffin in his mouth and glanced away as he chewed. “Shit, that’s really good actually.”

Jester grinned. “I know, right?”

Verin swallowed with difficulty, cleared his throat, and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. It was a mundane action endearing for how unrefined it was. “I, ah. I really love brawling. A lot. I’m quite good at it, which is something of an embarrassment to our aristocratic family.”

“Oooh yeah!” Jester enthused, giving him a fist bump. “Beau and I once broke a bar in a brawl for money. We should totally fight when this is over. It would be super fun to punch you!”

“That is strangely sweet, thank you. We should definitely punch each other in the future. I also really enjoy the frankness of the barracks I think. Our entire society is built on being understated and playing a game of unspoken cues. It’s refreshing as hell to wake up and have Igug tell me at breakfast that I look like shit.”

“Woof,” Jester exclaimed with a heavy sigh, “neither of you is a very good fit for Dynasty standards, are you? I wonder if it comes from growing up with an Umavi?”

Verin blinked in surprise. “What are you talking about? Essek is the pinnacle of charming obfuscation. He is the Court and Den darling.”

“I don’t think he sees it that way. The Shadowhand maybe, but not Essek. That’s more a conversation you should have with him though,” Jester suggested gently. “It will take some doing maybe, but I think you both still really care for each other beneath all the expectation of your Den.”

Verin snorted. “I wouldn’t get too carried away. I’m more looking for getting to a point where I don’t worry about him murdering me in my sleep.”

“Well, he hasn’t murdered us yet and we are much more annoying. Come on, let’s update the others and maybe we can all have a feelings jam tonight. It may actually be the best time to hash out a conversation with Essek- we’ve had some of our most productive talks with him after he’s had a shit day and his guard is down.” She grinned widely. “He’s ripe for teasing about his feelings for Caleb.”

Verin stared at her as if the very notion were inconceivable but stuffed the remainder of the muffin in his mouth and offered her a hand up. She grinned broadly. She knew they would become friends.

As they made their way back into camp, the Aurora Watch already had their packs ready and looked to Verin expectantly. Jester heard him suck in a quick breath at her side.

“Mom says we need to get a move on,” Verin stated, forced casual and immediately grabbing Essek’s attention with his informal wording. “My crew will take care of Deepriver Mine. We’ve been given permission to haul ass towards Tonn.”

“And by ‘haul ass’ you mean…” Essek prompted.

“Yeah,” Verin replied with a grin. “Teleport that shit.”

“Praise everything locked behind the Divine Gate,” Essek said, snapping closed his spellbook and sticking it back in a pocket dimension. “I have an 8^th level left and a vague recollection of what a few of the villages outside Dumaran look like. Let’s play the odds.”

“Oh hey,” Beau said, “Teleportation has a passenger limit right? Guess that means Chad is staying with the Watch. What a loss this is for me.” Chad warbled menacingly.

Veth patted Rainbows, who was too busy trying and failing to peck at the dappled sunlight on the forest floor to care. “A chapter is certainly coming to a close. We should get some of these things in the future to have as our very own and then abandon them shortly thereafter. Is Wexkae staying too? We max out at nine people for teleportation, don’t we?”

“Wexkae,” Verin stated flatly. “Are you fucking serious.”

Essek studiously ignored his brother and surveyed the Watch before passing the arborscythe’s reins to Aulanonia. “Take care of him please. He’s very friendly.”

Aulanonia, at a loss for words, gripped the reins and nodded vigorously. Essek tolerated the affectionate headbutt from Wexkae as the Watch mounted up and picked up the spare reins. Aulanonia gracelessly clambered up the arborscythe, still looking out of sorts. There were quiet goodbyes to the Watch and mounts alike before the split couldn’t be put off any longer.

“So, um, don’t die permanently. Visit soon,” Viedrar said awkwardly to the group before they and the rest of the Watch turned and headed towards Deepriver Mine.

“You guys are the best!” Jester called at their retreating backs and earned a few acknowledging waves in reply. “Alright, Mighty Nein and the Drow Brothers, let’s get this show on the road.” She held out her hands as they all formed a circle.

“You don’t need to handhold for Tele-” Verin started to say as the disconcerting swirl took hold and rocketed them into another small Vermaloc clearing with markedly more spider webs but less undead body parts.

“Okay, since we are not saving the lives of the innocent, petition to just bed down for the night and be done with this day?” Beau asked. She was greeted with a chorus of support.

“Sweet. Drowbois, you good with taking first watch? A regular watch this time. Wake Fjord and Caduceus after two hours so you can get a full night of sleep and recover properly.” Jester asked sweetly. Caleb was already starting the ritual for the hut as Caduceus distributed some bread and preserves for dinner.

“If that is necessary,” Essek replied warily, clearly sensing a trap.

“It won’t be so bad,” Verin said, earning a skeptical look. “Besides, I want to hear how we plan on entering the keep. Your planned approach to Tonn is probably stupid.”

Essek narrowed his eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, I can only assume you have something planned that would be an appropriate approach to handling the sleeper agents in the Dynasty, like the original honeypot plan was. But we’re not. Vivurk Tonn is one of the few visible figureheads of the Children of Malice. She isn’t going to be fazed by Dynasty laws or decorum because she doesn’t see herself as part of it. You need to be using the loopholes of Lolthian society. The Spider Queen is a scary, vindictive bitch. We’ve seen the results of followers that displeased her at Bazzoxan. Find tenets that will make Tonn fear displeasing Lolth. That’s the way to take control at the beginning of this meeting.”

“Do you have ideas already?” For the first time since the trip began, Verin had Essek’s undivided attention. Verin smiled widely and started outlining a few obscure laws. Jester hid her own smile in her arm as she bedded down with the others and looped her tail around Beau’s leg. The two drow were still murmuring softly by the time she fell asleep.

---

For the third time since Essek had curled up at his side, Caleb felt Essek jolt out of his trance and lay in anguished silence beside him. The drow muttered a curse in Undercommon when he lost a battle of wills with himself and reached out a tentative hand to feel for Caleb’s heartbeat. Caleb could easily forget that Essek wasn’t used to adventuring and that watching several of his friends nearly die earlier was a novel and jarring experience. Wordlessly (because he remembered that feeling, and the firm desire to Not Discuss It), Caleb threaded their fingers together. Going rigid at feeling Caleb awake, Essek gave another murmur of something less harsh sounding before returning the clasp. Emboldened, Caleb tugged gently, rolling Essek into his side. There was a tense moment of silence where he was convinced the other man was going to stand up and walk away entirely. In the next breath however Essek seemed to melt into the embrace and laid his head on Caleb’s chest, ear pressed directly over the beat of his heart where their hands had just been resting.

“This is going to garner so much ridicule in the morning,” Essek stated in the barest breath of a whisper while decidedly not moving. Fjord and Caduceus, currently keeping watch, glanced back at hearing the quiet murmur before fully turning their backs for what little privacy they could offer.

Unbidden, Caleb once more found his hand going to Essek’s hair, sifting through the fine strands and scratching lightly along his scalp. In the moment his focus had only been to lessen Essek’s distress, but it felt absurdly good to have his body pressed against him. I want you at my side every night, he thought brazenly, recklessly, and buried his face in Essek’s hair so he didn’t have to acknowledge his own blush. As if giving himself permission to feel these emotions had opened some sort of flood gate, his desires spiraled at a catastrophic rate.

“We are very crass,” he murmured for only Essek’s ears, “but not so crass as that. We all understand trauma and what is needed to work through it. Besides, cajoling is this group’s love language. Even if they say nothing in the morning, it is an inevitability for the future. You are one of us.” Essek could no doubt feel his heart rate pick up at that somewhat hopeful proclamation.

Essek gave a soft, satisfied hum that vibrated along the skin of Caleb’s chest pleasantly. “Well. If it is an inevitability…” He took in a shaky breath. “You were dead today. I have dealt with death my entire life, but this felt different and I don’t understand how you all are going on as usual.”

Caleb sighed, rubbing a hand at the base of Essek’s neck and feeling him shiver pleasantly. “It gets easier. This is not uncommon for us and is part of why the danger you feel you must protect us from doesn’t daunt us much. You just have to find the best way to process it and then move forward.”

“How in all the far-reaching hells was our conversation just this morning? Time is a specialty of mine and it feels like a decade happened today. This party is exhausting.”

“Welcome to the Mighty Nein,” Caleb teased lightly, because really, what a mood that was. His undershirt stirred with Essek’s huff of laughter. It was only another minute and forty three seconds before Essek went completely loose limbed. Smiling into the darkness of the dome, Caleb found his own sleep shortly after.

Chapter Text

It seemed like next to no time that Caleb woke again to hushed whispers and the feeling of the dome dissipating.

“Let them sleep,” Yasha was saying. “Another half hour won’t cost us much.”

“We’re awake,” Essek muttered from where his face was still mashed into Caleb’s chest.

“Mrrgh,” Caleb either agreed or protested. With Essek’s warmth pressing into his skin, Caleb’s brain politely informed him this was now the third night in a row they had slept next to each other. It hiccuped into a brief frenzied freefall of overanalysis, went to static as Essek shifted and attempted to curl deeper into his side, and ended up going muzzily silent as Caleb surreptitiously breathed in the pleasant scent of Essek’s hair.  

“Oh, I didn’t realize you could see them,” Verin was saying. Squinting over his shoulder, Caleb saw Verin positioning himself to angle the mirror he was holding so whoever was on the other side had a straight view of Caleb and Essek.

“Essek. I was unaware diplomatic missions required interracial exhibitionism.”

Essek’s eyes snapped open as every muscle in his body went rigid. Using Caleb’s chin to hide the gesture, he hastily prestidigitated the sleep lines off his face and put his hair in order before bolting up into perfect posture to address Deirta Thelyss.

“It was for the purpose of strategic…strategy,” he blurted, trying to look awake but only achieving ‘gently manic’. Great. Sleepy Essek apparently had all the guile of a cornered Lord Thane. Which was to say, none whatsoever.

“Were you fully sleeping?” Deirta’s scandalized tone would have been better suited to finding Essek huffing suude. “In the middle of enemy territory? With citizens of the empire? Is an illness fogging your mind?”

“Forgive me for intruding once more, Umavi,” Caleb addressed, seeing Essek flounder. He sat up slowly, trying to ignore the feeling of being caught doing something illicit. There was nothing inherently scandalous about what she had just seen but seeing Essek so immediately off kilter made Caleb nervous by proxy. “I doubt he had any other option with the level of magic he used to help destroy the Illithil-“

“I’m really not interested in your honeyed tongue right now, Widogast. As far as I am concerned you are the worst influence of this lot. Be silent.” Caleb’s mouth snapped shut on reflex. Deirta Thelyss had a crippling combination of gravitas and “waspish mother” that made her commands impossible to ignore. She turned her attention back to Essek. “Sleeping. Honestly. Why not just have him touch your neck while you’re unarmed.” She did a subtle double take at Essek’s expression. “Essek.”

There was a cultural cue Caleb was missing here.

“I highly doubt this was the reason for your call,” Essek responded stiffly.

Deirta spent another four judgmental seconds in silence. “Why can’t you just have ill-advised trysts like the rest of your siblings? The three of us will be discussing this when you get back. You are correct, however. Before we got sidetracked by your emotional debauchery I was contacting you to alert you we have heard from Vivurk. Her correspondence was along the lines of claiming that the entire Vermaloc is under Dumaran sovereignty, and as such any slaughter of the fauna is not to be tolerated.”

“Wait wait wait,” Jester interrupted. “She’s spinning this as we like, poached her undead mind flayer? Is it even possible to poach something undead? This lady sucks.”

“This is a revelation? She is the leader of a terrorist organization that worships the betrayer god that enslaved my race for millennia,” Essek pointed out.

“Yeah but, like, now we know she is obnoxious.”

 “Be that as it may,” Deirta continued, silencing additional comments from Jester with a twitch of her eyebrow, “she is demanding arrival by tomorrow due to these transgressions.”

Essek’s eyes narrowed, clearly catching some meaning in those specifics. Deirta looked almost placated at seeing the response.

“I will leave it to you how to work that back into your favor, but I would not attempt to shift the timetable. Alert me before entering the fortress and after this business is complete. And darling? If you are planning on consummating this… whatever you believe this to be, save it for the privacy of your home please. I’ll have to intervene if orgies are becoming a recurring deviancy for you.”

The mirror regained its normal reflective surface as the clearing filled with an awkward silence.

Caleb caught Essek’s microexpression at the last moment. Counterspell barely triggered in time to keep Essek from launching Verin into a tree. Verin was too busy laughing himself sick to appreciate the gesture.

“By the Luxon, it was all worth it for this. I can’t breathe.” He wiped at his eyes, grinning at Essek’s slightly pinched expression and flattened ears that constituted a thunderous glower for him. “Oh, stop with the look,” Verin said among stray giggles. “It was done as a favor. Well no, it was done to watch you shit yourself and also as a favor. You are usually too in control of yourself around Mom to present this… this in any believable manner. She would think it nothing more than a lowkey act of rebellion. Mom had to see your actions in situ to know and understand your level of affect. By the time we get back she will have had time to process it and accept it.” Verin perked up. “Oh! Hey! Here.” He lobbed a gold coin to Essek who made no attempt to grab it. It halted in the air right before hitting his shoulder and continued to hover there. “For that competition we had going decades ago. You were the first to make Mom speechless.”

“I am in your debt,” Essek stated with a disarmingly pleasant tone. “You won’t know where, you won’t know when, but I will repay this.” He rocketed the coin back into Verin’s forehead in emphasis. Verin’s yelp nearly drowned out the mirror chiming again.

As Verin sheepishly took a morning report from Bazzoxan with a coin imprint on his face, Caleb leaned closer to Essek. “Apologies, did I make it worse? Your mother is a formidable woman- I didn’t want you facing that alone.”

Essek ran a hand over his face. “You couldn’t have made it any worse than I already made it for myself, not to worry. I… wholeheartedly apologize in advance for whatever awaits us back in Rosohna.” Caleb’s lips twitched at the sheer absurdity of being lectured by someone’s mother about a… relationship? It was somewhat unclear what she was upset about given her glib discussion of trysts. He opened his mouth to ask Essek only to have Beau forcefully inserted herself between the two of them.

“The wizards are helping me gather water or some shit,” she called over her shoulder before pushing them both deeper into the woods, kicking spiders as she went. As Caleb was reflecting on the negative connotation he was developing for clandestine forest conversations, Beau turned to them both. “Okay, let me be real fucking clear about something: I don’t want details. You understand? DO NOT give me details. But I think we need to talk about this. I’m the last person to lecture on who someone can fuck, but Momlyss was giving the vibe that uncomplicated physical release isn’t what’s happening here. You can be however sappy and sentimental you want to be, but we need to know if this is more than you two getting boners over each other’s big brains. The Nein is a family, and if something is going to change our dynamic we should know about that.”

Caleb stared miserably back into the face of Beau’s Expositor morph. He really, vehemently wished he could have hashed out the “what are we” conversation with Essek prior to her inserting herself. In an alarmingly short span of time, he had come to rebuild a cautious trust with Essek, had gotten lost in the man’s brilliance, (re)consumed by his attractiveness, and dared to let thoughts drift both carnal and long term before promptly dying. It was a lot to process. He knew the attraction was mutual, but he couldn’t see how to politely tell Beau that even he didn’t know if this would be an academic partnership with bonus dick-touching or if it was building to something he still wasn’t certain he deserved. No matter how he arranged the words in his head he was liable to get punched.

“Now is not the time to address it,” Essek stated cautiously, watching Caleb’s face and seeming to deduce that the mortification ball had now bounced into Caleb’s court. “We are focusing on the task at hand and will likely have to wait to get back to Rosohna before discussing personal matters.”

Beau clapped her hands together. “You’re really not though, because you keep staring longingly at each other, and cuddling, and whatever the fuck neck touching is, so this is a here and now problem. It’s one thing when this shit is going on within the party, but you are an outside factor. You have been an amorphous entity the entire time we’ve known you, man. Every time I think I have a grasp on who you are and what your goals are, you eel into some other form. Caleb is a fucking asshole but he doesn’t deserve to be manipulated or hurt beyond what’s already happened, so I need you to be real upfront about intentions right now.”

Essek shot Caleb another look, slightly more panicked around the edges this time. Caleb could commiserate. He was caught between avoiding the topic entirely and feeling obligated by Beau’s sincerity. It was awful.

“I am…quite compromised,” Essek spoke first to Caleb’s surprise and ratcheting heartrate. What did that even mean? What did Caleb want that to mean? “So I’m leaving the degree of our relationship up to Caleb. We aren’t deflecting by saying it will likely be sorted in Rosohna. I respect that this complicates things, and I want to give it the proper attention and consideration both for Caleb and for your family, which we can’t do,” he gave a deep sigh and condensed the air around himself to gently push off three spiders the size of cats skittering up his side, “in the present situation.”

Beau stared at him shrewdly for another moment before her eyes widened in dawning surprise. Before Caleb could suss out what that reaction meant, Beau realized her own spider covered appendages and started windmilling her arms violently.  “You guys are on the same page about this?” She asked after she had at least decreased her spider density while looking like a complete lunatic.

“Yes Beauregard.” A spider was tapping its way across Caleb’s skull. This entire forest was an aggravation. “Are your questions satisfied?”

Beau glanced back and forth between the two of them, “Whatever man. I’m… happy for you guys or some shit. Ugh. Stop looking at me like that. Can we end this conversation? We’re ending this conversation. But mark my words Essek: don’t think I won’t punch you into next week if you slip back into evil scheming.”

Essek’s expression was studiously serious as he responded, “I can confirm there is minimal evil scheming on the docket right now. I’d much rather dedicate time to contemplating how being out of Rosohna has shown me Caleb’s eyes are the most stunning, sparkling blue in the sunlight. I feel almost-“

“UGH. STOP.” Beau threw a spider at Essek’s head, which he caught in the same sort of null gravity net he had used on the coin earlier. She leveled a finger at him as the spider swam through the air to the nearest tree. “I know what you are doing, but it’s fucking effective. Don’t say another word or I’m going to defensively puke on you.”

“I think she’s warming up to me,” Essek commented dryly to Caleb. Beau threw her hands in the air with another “UGH!” and stalked back to camp.

“My beautiful eyes?” Caleb asked in amusement once Beau was out of earshot.

“Your group speaks of genitalia so glibly that being lewd wouldn’t have had any shock value. Besides, I made a vow to be honest with you all and I quite like your eyes.”

It was ridiculous that this was what caused a blush to crawl up Caleb’s neck. Right along with another spider. How could the forest ecosystem feasibly support this sort of overpopulation? In the next moment, Essek’s cool fingers were brushing against his overly warm skin, extracting spiders to deposit them back into the underbrush before lingering a bit longer to play against Caleb’s hairline.

“You know, when I dared to envisioned this, I was quite a bit suaver and less in a state of constant mortification.”

Caleb gave a thoughtful hum, reaching up to trace a thumb along Essek’s high cheekbone. “Well, overinvolved family is at least giving us something to bond over, yes?”

“Only overinvolved family?” Essek asked with a grin. It seemed to be in these small moments that Caleb was struck by just how handsome Essek was. It was an objective fact that he was distractingly attractive, but with the haze of self-deprecation, his immaculate image ruined by yet another spider dropping onto him from the branches above, and a smear of travel dust down the side of his face that prestidigitation hadn’t quite reached, Caleb felt desire as a painful clench in his chest.

“Ah,” Essek said quietly, staring back intently. “Just as I said. Such a stunning blue.”

Really, it was both predictable and something of a relief when shouting came from the campsite. Without an intervention Caleb was absolutely certain he would have been kissing Essek. While incidental poisoning was still a very real concern, he was also coming to find that he wanted something bit nicer than a spider-infested forest ten paces away from their friends for the occasion. Caleb had never considered himself a romantic. Had never seen the need. What was happening?

Essek thunked his forehead against Caleb’s collarbone with an exasperated huff of laughter and Caleb gave himself the consolation of combing a hand through Essek’s soft white hair. He appeared to be developing a bit of a fixation. “That was quite a suave line, for what it’s worth. But come, we’ll have no end to the razzing if we don’t investigate what has everyone worked up. At the very least we should verify they aren’t getting attacked by something.”

They were not.

The two returned to the clearing to see the Nein crowded around Verin’s mirror. The mashed together faces of the Aurora Watch stared back as the excitable one- Viedrar -seemed to be in the middle of an impassioned rant.

“- they’re not telling us much, but there is some funky shit going on around here. Firstly, is Thelyss the Mob? We are up to our eyes in Thelyss. The reinforcements, the Lens agents, the archivers- all Thelyss. Not that we don’t love you two, but even the ones who aren’t owning up to being Thelyss have that Thelyss vibe.”

“And what is that?” Verin asked pleasantly.

“That right there, you patronizing bastard,” Viedrar laughed. “Congenially haughty? Even the description sounds pretentious.”

“So you’re saying Umavi Thelyss is completely controlling the information that comes out of Deepriver Mine?” Beau prompted, leaning forward.

“Exactly! It’s creepy as all hell. Oh, and hey, on the topic of creepy? These little zombie dark dwarves have an upsetting number of limbs. That’s not a thing is it? Get dead, get more appendages? Because these little buggers are universally wrecked.”

“A couple of them have extra mouths too,” Calzen contributed blandly over Viedrar’s shoulder.

“And all of the Thelyss operatives seem chill with that?” Beau pressed.

“So chill,” Viedrar confirmed with a crazed, meaningful stare.

“Please stop encouraging her,” Fjord pleaded. “Conspiracy theories are a personal weakness for Beau.”

“Fuck you Fjord, even you have to admit we are dipping toes into something much larger than a political booty call. Essek! Are you in on this? Does your mom have some sort of super scheme with Tonn to unleash the undead or something? You better not be fucking us over man. I was serious about the punching.”

Essek’s expression was the refined cousin of a pout. “I truly don’t understand how you can look at the last three days and think any of this would be by my design.”

Veth grinned, sizing up Essek and Caleb. “Awww, someone looks sexually frustrated. Did we ruin your sensual spider sojourn?”

“I am never going to forgive you for sending us away from witnessing all of this firsthand,” Viedrar confided to Verin before being pushed out of the frame by Igug.

“The question here, boss, is what we should be doing with this situation. The city is pretty much under wraps at this point. Cuddles here is the only one really contributing by felling some trees for reconstruction." He gestured behind him to where Wexkae chittered animatedly, curled his dagger-tail around a sapling, and did a quick spin around the trunk to send the tree crashing to the ground. He sat back on his haunches, looking pleased. “Yes, very good you destructive maniac. Anyway, should we keep an eye on the goings ons or get out of here?”

“Don’t forget to mention the cache of documents on Dumaran,” Aulanonia put in as she weaseled her way to the front from under Igug’s arm. “I found it while shadowing a few of the archivers. Not just trade reports and censuses, but city outlay and floor plans if we can get to them. That may be helpful, correct? If we could get that information to you?”

An’rak remained silent at the back of the group, eyes fixed unblinkingly on Caduceus.

Verin shrugged, looking over to Essek. “It can’t hurt. If things play out as we hope we shouldn’t need it, but captain paranoia over here already has about seven contingencies that information would help with.”

“If I had been allowed contingencies for the first Tonn encounter we wouldn’t be in this situation,” Essek shot back. Caleb blinked in surprise at the clipped response. Essek was…grumpy. The constant ribbing and being pushed out of his comfort zone paired with his continued unease from the recent battle seemed to be taking a toll on his usually tightly controlled personal presentation. For someone who was usually so removed from such messy situations, it must have been overwhelming. While a part of Caleb was glad Essek was getting to experience some real world consequences of other people’s political scheming, the other part of him was reaching out to rest a hand on the small of Essek’s back in a covert show of support.

This had the interesting and unanticipated effect of causing Essek’s entire face and neck to flush a richer, darker color, which in turn caused Aulanonia to taper off in the middle of her complaining about Deepriver Mine’s idiotic record keeping system.

“Thankyoufortheinformationwe’llbeintouch,” Essek spit out before batting the mirror closed and ending the call.

“Hahahaha oh my god you are such a fucking disaster,” Beau mocked, seeming to take in the situation immediately.

“The cultural disconnect here is obscene,” Verin added cheerfully while Jester waggled her eyebrows and Caduceus murmured a gentle “that’s nice.” Essek pinched the bridge of his nose but shifted to press into Caleb’s side. Worth the accidental humiliation then.

 A broad hand fell on Caleb’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, for letting yourself have this,” Yasha stated quietly, as if knowing that encouragement was exactly what Caleb needed to hear. She then shuffled forward a few steps and gave an exaggerated stretch. “Wow. That was a lot of good information. We should probably pack. And focus on travel. We all have a lot of things requiring our attention. Right now. Let’s do them.”

Bless her awkward, awkward soul.

---

Caduceus settled comfortably against a fallen vermaloc and took a moment to appreciate the enchanting and sinister fungus he found flourishing there while the rest of the group finished with their packing. True quiet moments were rare with the Nein, but he could sometimes carve out small pockets for the utility of speaking with the Wildmother.

It took a bit of time to achieve the centered focus needed. His ear initially flicked with hearing Fjord’s good-intentioned approach to Essek (“Just so we’re clear, we all really care about Caleb-”, “I’ve already had overly invasive conversations with both Veth and Beauregard. You don’t need to do this.”, “Oh thank the gods. Let’s never speak of this again.”) which was followed by a brief but firm conversation Caduceus had with a horde of spiders about respecting personal space. Finally settling, he let the Wildmother’s presence warm him as his fingers dance over the fascinating fungus.

“This feels like a step in the right direction,” Caduceus murmured, watching as Essek haltingly tried to help with the packing before being shooed back to Caleb by an exasperated Beau. “Is it foolish to trust him again with something so precious?”

A cool, brisk breeze rushed through the clearing. Caleb and Essek seemed to unconsciously lean into each other as Caleb looped another run of scarf around his neck. Caduceus smiled quietly.

“Will our current level of planning be enough to keep the group safe in this meeting with the Children?” Jester was making faces behind Verin as he spoke with a Rosohnan official. It was a good thing she was too charming most of the time to cause an international incident.

The stilling of the breeze into uncertainty was anticipated, but he had still felt the need to ask. Caduceus inhaled the rich earthen scent of the forest and abruptly sneezed from the fungal spores.

“Is Lolth the one who is influencing events around us?”

The breeze was restless and uneasy through the clearing, not so much in uncertainty as confirming a partial truth. Curious.

“Hey Cad!” Beau’s voice broke through his pondering. “Stop chatting up the wood rot and get in marching order!

The Wildmother’s presence dispersed on a final breeze through the crimson leaves as Caduceus’s attention turned to the rest of the party who were now watching him curiously. He picked up his staff with a serene smile and situated himself at the back of the group, ignoring their questioning looks. Time for that later.  

The morning trek was uneventful. Aside from some hulking shapes in the shadows of the forest that didn’t approach their party, the largest obstacle was some stinging nettle that kept finding Caduceus's ankle. He was otherwise able to enjoy the boisterous friendship developing between Verin and Jester up the line. The drow seemed to be compensating for his earlier seriousness by sharing bawdy barrack stories that had Fjord blushing and Jester and Veth cackling. At the front of the line, Beau and Yasha were taking the carving of a trail as an opportunity to flex their muscles theatrically for each other. Directly in front of Caduceus the wizards were conversing quietly, heads bent together.

Caduceus didn’t quite catch what they had been talking about, but Caleb appeared to be glitching internally as he rubbed at his arms and opened his mouth without sound. Ah. Likely their ongoing struggles with affection then. Caduceus couldn’t help but be glad for the honesty being injected into that particular relationship. The two had been dancing around each other since meeting, but always with a dour note of manipulation. It seemed the recent days had encouraged Essek’s budding honesty to push it into sincerity. It was lovely really. Caleb needed to hear he was worth affection and love as much as possible from as many people as possible.

Seeming to come to a decision, Essek hooked a finger under one of the chains around his neck and pulled a necklace over his head, revealing a large gem pendant. Both wizards paused a moment to let him secure the necklace around Caleb’s neck and tuck it in next to his protection amulet. Essek gave a bashful pat Caleb’s chest where the necklace lay under his shirt and looked as if he were going to step away before Caleb raised his hand questioningly. At Essek’s small, lopsided smile, Caleb fitted his hand to the back of Essek’s neck and briefly rested their foreheads together. Caduceus was continually surprised by how much pride he felt watching his friends grow and flourish without his help. He was also self-aware enough to realize his joy at having Essek join them also had a bit of selfishness in it.

Essek was a rare gift to the group. A puzzle piece they didn’t know they were missing. His effect on Caleb was obvious, but beyond that his very presence was pushing Beau and Veth to move beyond their desire for vengeance. And for Caduceus? For Caduceus, Essek was another lost but recovering friend, one more excuse to stay a bit longer, offer a bit more guidance before returning home.

As if hearing Caduceus’s thoughts, Caleb drew back, a wistful look on his face. “It could always be this way, you know. We extended you an invitation to the Mighty Nein- that still stands. We could make an adventurer of you yet.”

Essek gave a delighted peal of laughter (earning a startled look from Verin up the line) until he realized Caleb wasn’t joking. “Me? Adventuring? Caleb, disregarding the sheer logistics of resigning from my position- which is laughable in its own right- have you seen me? I flinch at the possibility of a shoulder punch. My gut instinct at any sign of conflict is “teleport away”. I insist on proper grooming,” his manicured hand trailed a careless swirl of lights as he waved in the direction of his artfully maintained hair. “I would be an abysmal adventurer.”

“Do not be so sure, friend.” There was such a softness to Caleb when he focused his energies on someone he cared about instead of stewing in his own head. It lifted the years from his face. “Your instincts are that of a wizard in a group of adventurers. If you didn’t want to hide or flee at conflict, you would be routinely knocked unconscious. As for accommodations, we… frequently have a better option than the dome, one which I hope would fit your standards.”

“Caleb. Widogast,” Essek stated flatly as his expression took on a mock-severity. “Are you telling me I have been sleeping on the ground for the past two nights for no reason?”

“Ah…” Here, a brilliant blush, “there were plenty of reasons.”

“Do share.”

Caleb once more scratched absently at his arms as he stared into the underbrush. “Part of how our group bonded in the early days was through the close proximity and sharing watches.” Caduceus wrinkled his nose, unpleasantly reminded of Ikithon. It was a truth, but not the truth. Essek seemed to have a similar thought as he continued to regard Caleb with a bland expression. Caleb gave a defeated huff. “But…well, the first night it was a request from other party members. Some still feel the need to needle you a bit. I indulged because I was uncertain of how I would need to allocate magic on this journey. I honestly didn’t have the reserves last night.”

“Hmm, that I find more believable. Is there more?”

“I-“ Caleb faltered for a second, betrayed by his fair complexion once more. Caduceus was continually astounded by just how much blushing was involved in courting. It seemed at least one of them was completely out of sorts at any given moment. “The other accommodation is my own creation. I value your opinion very highly and perhaps wanted a bit more time to fine-tune it before I presented it to you.”

Essek gave a soft huff. “Caleb. When has your magic ever been anything short of exemplary to me? It could be some sticks holding up a magical tarp- cat themed, I assume- and I would adore it because it would feel like your mind.”

Caduceus really would have enjoyed spiraling further into the pleased warmth of hearing such a personally tailored compliment, but he was distracted by a tree on his periphery suddenly growing a face and scowling at him before giving him the middle finger with one of its branches. Rude.

“Everything alright Caduceus?”

Caduceus must have lost some time as Caleb and Essek were now quite a bit ahead of him and looked less on the brink of combusting from their emotions. The face seemed to melt into the dappled shadows. It was entirely possible Caduceus was having a bad trip from something. He wondered if the fungus or the nettle was to blame. Things got weird fairly regularly around the Nein though, so it wasn’t an immediate cause for concern.

“Oh. It’s. Reality is having a bit of an oopsie. It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

“A bit of a-“ Essek repeated, brows furrowing as Jester skipped backwards in the line to join them.

“Heyyyy Essek! While you guys were in your cute whisper session we got to talking about how we don’t really know anything about Vivurk Tonn beyond the fact she is kind of goth and down to clown. Can you give us a brief rundown since we’re about to do a home invasion?”

Essek gave one more hard look to Caduceus, which Caduceus tried to dismiss with a bland smile despite the sudden illusion of the tree branches behind him turning into tentacles. It really was probably fine.

“You haven’t already had some sort of debrief-? Never mind.” He cleared his throat, seemingly trying to switch gears from the previous conversation. “She is an embodiment of our darker roots. A paradigm for what much of the world still see drow as, honestly. I haven’t interacted with her directly beyond our recent encounter, but by reputation she is known to be pernicious, vindictive, and cruel.” That description went over Caduceus’s head, but Essek’s tone translated the “kind of a jerk” quite easily. “We must tread lightly around her and seek a diplomatic resolution to her spurned pride if at all possible. As with the ancient society, she is Head Matron by merit of her strength. She’s likely one of the strongest spellcasters in Xhorhas.”

“Stronger than you?” Yasha asked from the front of the now very attentive line of travelers.

Essek gave a humorless bark of laughter. “Yes. Very much stronger than me. Why do you think this entire situation is so stressful?”

“What the fuck man? You were sold to us as like, a generational prodigy,” Beau said.

“In matters of dunamis, Beauregard. I’m powerful and resourceful for my age but I wasn’t born with a magical volcano inside of me. Magic is cultivated and she has had half a millennium to do so. I may be stronger in dunamis, but in raw power? Absolutely not. If she were so easily dispatched by magic, don’t you think the Bright Queen would have done so by now?”

“We didn’t take her as the murdering-political-opposition type,” Jester said with a sedate twirl of her skirts.

“Every politician is the ‘murdering political opposition’ type when given the right opportunity. Tonn is still in power and able to be a visible entity for the Children of Malice due to her strength. We were very, very lucky in our previous encounter.”

“I don’t suppose we could call on the Inevitable End to menace her, could we?” Fjord asked. “Being Lolth’s assassin may hold a bit of weight.”

(”WHAT,” Verin’s question was ignored).

“I think we’re still in the ‘live and let live’ stage of our friendship,” Jester stated sadly. “Not quite to the doing favors part yet based on when we last spoke.”

“’Favors’? Is that what we’re calling political assassinations now?” Fjord asked dryly. “Is there a way to, I don’t know, dampen the blast if it comes to that?”

“Magically suppress her?” Verin chimed in. He appeared to be picking his battles with what information he was pressing for, which boded well for his ability to continue with their group. “I have some options but nothing that wouldn’t also make Essek and Caleb completely useless.” Essek made a gesture that was probably considered rude in his society.

“Beyond exhaustion ruining her focus,” Caleb contributed, “I’m not aware of any means either with the supplies we have and without being blatantly obvious to her court.”

“Well that’s it then!” Jester crowed. “I would assume surface drow outside of Rosohna sleep or trance or whatever during the day, right? So we just keep her awake until our meeting and she’ll be too sleep drunk to explode us!”

“That is-“

“I don’t think-“

The drow brothers paused and stared at each other after speaking at the same time. Verin made a pleading face, as if asking Essek to translate.

“A lot is riding on our hope she will remain civil,” Essek stated, uncharacteristically looking back to Verin for some sort of back up. “Her temper is well documented without sleep deprivation.”

“I’m with Jester on this one,” Fjord stated. “We don’t have a lot of bargaining chips here and from what you’ve described, it is unlikely she will play nice anyway. Historically these situations usually end in conflict for us, so I’d rather have the benefit of her sloppy casting if it comes to that.”

“Yeah, we’re better off just assuming this is gonna go to shit,” Beau contributed with Yasha’s murmured agreement.

Veth tapped her crossbow against her shoulder thoughtfully. “It’ win-win. Either we have an upper hand in battle or she just has a rough couple of days if it ends diplomatically. She’s kind of a piece of shit, so I support it.”

“Hm,” Caduceus contributed, tracking the sickening undulations in the ground his eyes were seeing but his feet weren’t feeling. The disconnect between his senses was a bit nauseating.

“Majority rule then!” Jester said with a broad smile. Verin outstretched a hand in protest just as she pointed a finger to the sky and started talking. “Essek Escort here- we’ll be punctual! No orgy, right? Essek’s mom says no. Would you have even-? He’s shaking his head no- OH SHIT I-“ Fjord made a chopping motion, causing Jester to sigh heavily. “Man, I really thought I was getting better at these things.”

Essek was covering his mouth with steepled hands and staring towards the sky in distress. Verin looked speechless. Before either could react further, Jester’s expression went vague. After a moment, she puffed out her cheeks.

“Well, I’m certainly not relaying that. She really is very rude!”

“Oh Light,” Verin said simply, clutching at the hilt of his sword.

“There should be an inn fairly soon,” Essek stated in a strained voice. “Perhaps we should secure accommodations before any further, ah, action moves.”

“Fine by me! We’ll need to send one off, what, every 3 hours or so? Caduceus, I know you don’t usually Send but would you be able to help?”

Caduceus gripped at his staff and gave a hard swallow. “That should be doable, though I’m feeling under the weather. Perhaps a bit of a break first?”

He was met by a chorus of concerned voices, which was really quite nice aside from the fact they had a slight distorted quality that made his head ache. He didn’t want to be a bother, but it was nice to have the group aware that something was off. The remaining journey was a disorienting and nightmarish blur of twisted faces and whispered words. One of the less enjoyable forests he had been in for sure.

“-proceed?”

Caduceus blinked and startled out of some sort of haze. They appeared to have reached a hamlet during his distraction. A good portion of the Nein were already inside an inn. From the open door, Caduceus could see Fjord charming the goblin innkeeper into some rooms.

Essek’s hand was lifted slightly, likely keeping the door open with a string of dunamis. He was giving Caduceus a searching, troubled look.

Caduceus strode forward. He wasn’t sure what had been asked, but if it was important Essek would probably repeat it. Instead, he stared down at the drow thoughtfully, uncertain if there would be a better time to say something. It felt like the beginning days with the Nein, taking a moment to acknowledge flaws and reassure him there was still a space for him.

“I don’t know if you need to hear this, but it’s clear you feel remorse over your actions,” Caduceus stated kindly. “It’s clearer still you are uncertain about how to make up for them, or even if you can. Take a breath. Some of the greatest sins of the world are a mixture of greed and misguided intent. What you have found, however, is a group of people willing to be your eyes and your heart. Know that it is enough to allow yourself to grow and love, and to trust those people to guide you when you can’t guide yourself. Let them help you be a better person today than you were yesterday, and a better person tomorrow than you are today. All of us have had to make the same journey and will walk with you. Also, there is a squid on your leg.”

Essek, who until that point had a raw and vulnerable expression, blinked hard, squinted down at his leg, and looked cautiously back up at Caduceus. “Is that… a metaphor?”

Caduceus patted him on the shoulder, realizing the squid was likely another hallucination. Oh well. “You’ll figure it out,” he said warmly before entering the inn.

It was the last coherent conversation he registered. At some point they must have carved out a space in the common room for drinks and a meal. Though it felt immediate, the sun was low in the sky when Jester’s hands were on Caduceus’s temples, spreading cool waves of clarity through his mind. Caduceus gave a grateful sigh and felt his eyes truly focus for the first time in hours.

“That took a Greater Restoration,” Jester said in a small voice, wringing her hands. “Something was really super wrong.”

“There were land tentacles,” Caduceus agreed. “It was really weird. I thought it was a poisoning from something, but now I think it was something more evil. Or sick? Unnatural. Everyone else is okay?”

“Yeah man,” Beau stated as she came down the far stairwell to join them. “You’re the only one who got all loopy. Did your spiritual journey show you anything useful?”

Caduceus shook his head and accepted a cup of tea from Yasha with a smile. “Just distortions and bad feelings. It seems something is twisting this forest as well. Is this a known problem?” He asked Verin, who was lounging back in a chair with a drumstick about four times too large to be a chicken. Verin shrugged.

“Not that I’ve heard, but we are pretty isolated in Bazzoxan. Rosohna usually doesn’t bother updating us on anything short of major changes with the Empire. Essek would be the better person to ask.”

“Not right now though, am I right?” Jester said with an eyebrow waggle that made Verin snort into his meat.

“Why?” Caduceus asked. “What’s happening right now?”

“I ushered them off to one of the rooms when Dispel and Identify didn’t do anything for you. Convinced them that we would continue troubleshooting your brain and they should go “talk” so we could focus instead of being constantly bombarded by their pining,” Beau said.

“I hate to burst this voyeuristic bubble, but I can almost guarantee they really are just talking,” Verin said, grinning as he chewed. He was the first drow Caduceus had met with bad table manners. It was surprisingly endearing. “We should go retrieve them and hash out if this changes any of our plans.”

Jester held up a finger for a moment and looked upwards with another Sending. “Just so you know, that language is off-putting to new friends. This is why you have to meet people through orgies… I’ll bring some cupcakes?” Fjord made the slicing gesture. “Okay, sorry, we’re good for another three-“ her expression went vague. “She sucks so bad you guys. I won’t even feel bad about destroying her home after this. ANYWAY, I don’t know what you are going on about Verin. They’ve been suffocating us all for the entire journey in their cloud of wanting to bone.”

Verin leaned forward, slapping a handful of gold on the table. “20 gold says they aren’t anywhere near fucking.”

“You’re on!” Jester shoved forward a pile of gold. Veth, unsolicited, added gold to Jester’s pile.

“Normally I’d get in on this but I’d rather pretend I’m not taking any part in conversations about Essek’s sex life,” Beau said with a twist of her lips.

“It’s to your benefit. Essek has a bit of a reputation of being an ice queen, even on rare occasion he agrees to a tryst. Unless he’s virtually blackmailed into it I doubt we’ll be interrupting anything."

“First of all,” Jester stated, “Caleb would never. Secondly, you are so going to eat your words.” She tapped a finger thoughtfully on her lip. “It wouldn’t bother me but I bet they would feel weird about a scry. I don’t want to interrupt with a sending… Hey Artie!”

Verin jumped a good half a foot in his chair as a cloaked figure materialized beside him.  

“You called, Jester darling?”

“Who the fuck-“ Verin started.

“We need to ask our friends some questions, but they might be fuuuuucking. Are they about to get all down and dirty?”

Artagan’s face split into a grin. “Ah, this feels like our childhood antics. I’m nostalgic!” Verin was gesticulating wildly to the party who were all ignoring him. Artagan briefly flickered away from the common room before coming back to perch on his chair once more. “Very boring stuff. All talking and wistfulness. Dreadful.”

Verin was too busy having a conniption to gloat.

“Mannnnnn. Maybe the physical stuff really isn’t his thing? Well, since we have you here anyway, what else should we ask guys?”

“Is Caduceus now safe from whatever was affecting him?” Beau asked.

Artagan gave a shiver. “Oooh, that whole situation has a bad feel. I don’t really understand it, so who can say? It seems like there are much better ways to hallucinate though.”

“Useless as usual,” Beau muttered as Jester shoved her lightly.

“Do we have a chance of making it out of the Children of Malice’s fortress if we go forward with this?” Yasha asked quietly after the area had remained silent for several moments.

Artagan’s smile somehow grew. “There’s always a chance. That’s what makes life so interesting! Who knows what might happen? I wonder if you are focusing on the biggest concern though? Well, in any case, this has been shockingly dull so I’m off to find better entertainment. Ta!” Between one blink and the next, the chair next to Verin was once more vacant.

“What just happened?” Verin asked desperately.

“You’ve just met the Traveler, Jester’s god-“

“You summoned a god to confirm if my brother was fucking?”

Beau made a seesawing motion with her hand at the word “god”. “Believe us, that sort of stuff is what he does best. At least we can now see if Essek has any insight on this stupid forest. Though with that confirmation I’m even more confused as to why Momlyss was all uppity this morning over seeing them sleeping.”

Verin was still staring at the recently vacated chair as if investigating the air would somehow make what he had just witnessed make sense. “Just because they aren’t screwing doesn’t mean he isn’t being so embarrassing,” he responded at length. “It… gods, Essek is so extra in everything else he does I shouldn’t be surprised he is this extra when infatuated, we just haven’t seen in before. It’s great. I’m trying to think back on my Empire studies for an appropriate comparison. Maybe reading sappy poetry in a courtyard? Serenading up to a window? It is an archaic gesture from when our entire race was backstabbers, so those signs of trust are peak romance novel shit. Mom wouldn’t have been bothered if she caught them in the throes. She was bothered by seeing him being sentimental.”

“Aww,” Jester cooed. “Let’s go get his thoughts on evil forests and then maybe we can talk romance novel tropes! Who knew Essek was a secret romantic?”

Verin’s attention was finally dragged from Artagan’s vacated chair to fix Jester with a distressed look. Jester gave an answering grin, a thumb’s up, and a fanned display of her personal collection of porn. Verin responded by completely draining whatever was in his tankard.

---

In what had to be the strangest sequence of events in an already bizarre trip, Caleb and Essek had been deemed useless to Caduceus’s convalescence, were ushered up several flights of stairs to the dubiously dubbed “penthouse suite” by a flustered Beauregard, and were then shove into the room while Beau muttered contritely about a lack of dogs and waterslides before slamming the door in their faces.

Essek, for lack of any other way to respond to the situation, sat primly on the edge of one of the beds. While the party’s intent was obvious, Essek was insulted that they thought he would be at all interested in fooling around while one of their members was… possessed? In a fugue? Whether they could be of help or not, Essek wasn’t quite at the level of adolescent horniness needed to completely ignore that situation.

He turned to catch Caleb watching him carefully, intelligent eyes cataloguing whatever the hell Essek’s face was doing.

Essek’s mouth was dry. Beyond the complete inappropriateness of Caduceus being incapacitated downstairs, he wasn’t certain how to verbalize that hasty groping was so far off the mark of what he desired it was comical. What he wanted- it was too much. It wasn’t a forest makeout session or a rushed fuck in a backwater inn. It wasn’t even a trip brainstorming new spells.

He stared helplessly back at Caleb. His attraction wasn’t just to Caleb’s constellations of freckles, rare and treasured smiles, or lithe body… those were all components, yes, but Caleb was more than the sum of his parts and what Essek desired from him sprawled out before him like the grey spirals of dunamantic possibility. He was desperately, embarrassingly eager to explore just how their bodies slotted together and what he could do to derail that brilliant mind into thoughtless begging, but that was meaningless if the act itself was meaningless. Essek hadn’t encountered this level of vertiginous desperation for a person before. The knowledge that he could- and probably would- mess this up if the circumstances and intent were not absolutely perfect was paralyzing.

Essek swallowed the sudden and illogical urge to blurt that he wanted to pick apart the complexities of space and time with Caleb at his side. Today. Tomorrow. A week from now. Ten years from now and a century from now and in their next lives, Luxon and the gods be damned. It was humbling to realize, after a life so driven by that one focus, that he could be just as happy never getting all the answers if it meant he was able to analyze failure with Caleb murmuring in commiserating frustration right next to him. Caleb was a different sort of joy, a different form of ecstasy, than what Essek had envisioned for his life, but every moment he was able to spend with this brilliant, perplexing human only drove him into further desire. It was as if in the last few months he had known Caleb, he had casually stumbled upon something he hadn’t realized he had been looking for in one hundred and twenty years. To cheapen the sheer magnitude of what he felt with some contrived… He gave a frustrated laugh, hiding the rueful movement of his mouth behind his hands.

It was too much. He was always too much. It had been under a week since he had even rejoined the Nein. He was still in the thick of questioning if atonement was possible let alone if he deserved it or if he had the ability to avoid further missteps. There were about three different stages of getting out of his own murder he had yet to tackle, and steps beyond that to ensure association with him wasn’t a risk to those he cared about. Yet here he was plotting the rest of his future without any say from Caleb. Oh look, now he was having an emotional and existential crisis in a shitty Dumaranian inn. Typical.

He listed sideways to flop onto the lumpy mattress, taking a moment to quietly wallowing in his own awkwardness. Off-balance and desperate to break the heavy silence, he grasped at the first unrelated thing that came to mind. “Dogs are not a prerequisite for human courtship somehow, are they?”

Essek was going to fling himself out the window to end this incredibly painful experience.

“Ah, well, some of us require cats instead…” Essek looked up in alarm to see the corner of Caleb’s mouth twitching. Oh. Teasing. That was good he supposed.

His thoughts continued to scatter like erratic fireflies when Caleb sat on the floor and propped his chin on the edge of the mattress. A strand of his vibrant hair snuck free from its tie and curled near Essek’s cheek. Essek gripped at the rough sheets to keep from tucking it back behind Caleb’s ear.

“I would say I’m about as enthusiastic for this setting as you seem to be. Our friends have good intentions, but…hm.” Caleb was close enough that his words were a warm tingle across Essek’s face. “Would you laugh at me for saying I would like progression of whatever we are doing to be on our own terms? I’m not terribly interested in just the first horizontal surface we can find.” I would burn cities for this man. I would refrain from burning cities for this man, Essek thought hazily before being mentally sundered by the depth and extent of that sentiment.

Something must have shown on his face, or else it was just his quiet hyperventilating that prompted Caleb to give a firm nod. “Enough of that for now I think.” After a thoughtful moment, Caleb raised his hand and combed back some of the hair that had splayed across Essek’s forehead. Essek’s spiraling anxiety turned to white noise. “I have a question for you.”

“Yes?” Essek’s voice was hoarse and in an unflattering octave. This was a disaster.

“Should we be worried about Tonn being so insistent on your presence? Your response to the timeframe made it seem like there is some upcoming event for the Children.”

Oh.

Oh thank the gods. Finally a less stressful topic.

“She likely plans to use me as a ritual sacrifice,” Essek said with relief.

Caleb blinked.

“Her demands have us arriving on the day of Lolth’s rejuvenation ritual. Before Lolth was bound it was one of the most holy rites of the year that used blood and magical sacrifice to bolster her power for the coming year. At the risk of sounding dreadfully unoriginal, I would assume Tonn has a ritual set to magnify this power and attempt to pull Lolth through the Divine Gate. I,” he gave a sardonic gesture to himself, “am a convenient source of both blood and magic, with the added bonus of being in the Bright Queen’s inner circle. Any blow to Leylas Kryn gets the Spider Queen’s followers extra accolades.”

“Are you not concerned about her succeeding?” Caleb asked, voice oddly strained.

“Oh quite the contrary. She terrifies me and if things go, ah, what’s the term in Common? Pear-shaped? I’ll very likely die. What’s one more organization planning my inevitable demise at this point though? There should be some sort of award for being the target of three nations concurrently.”

Essek thought that was one of his better jokes, but if anything Caleb looked more distressed. How was he so bad at this? He really should try to find a book on humor.

“Do bear in mind I’ve become quite good at side-stepping fatal situations. I would say chances are better than not we’ll manage just fine for this encounter with enough care, planning, and attention to detail.” Caleb’s look went from distressed to devasted. What was he doing wrong? “What am I doing wrong?” Essek decided to ask out loud, jackknifing up to sit once more on the edge of the bed and look down at Caleb, desperate for guidance. It felt like every move he made during this mission (as well as the more metaphorical journey happening here) was a misstep. “I do not mean to upset you.”

Caleb rested a hand on one of his knees (the jolt of sensation that caused, oh gods, his head was light and his chest was heavy and-), “Is it so hard to believe that I’m worried for your safety, Thelyss?”

Essek stared down. Caleb stared back, bracketed in between Essek’s legs. Helplessly, Essek combed back some of Caleb’s vivid hair and let his fingers tug gently at the back of Caleb’s scalp. He spent two glorious breaths committing that image and its associated sensations to memory: Caleb’s pupils dilating while a bright blush bloomed across his cheeks and raced down his neck.

As was becoming an unfortunate trend, several things decided to happen concurrently with this:

The door blew open with a resounding kick from the recently departed Beauregard.

Beau tumbled through an uncharacteristic slog of apologies (“Oh shit man, I never thought I would be that person to bust in and ruin- I am so sorry dude. I will absolute make this up to you somehow, I’m so fucking sorry”) as the window exploded inwards, admitting several dark clad individuals in a cloud of shattered glass.

The window-assassins moved to attack (and Essek made a graceless tumble off of the bed to avoid the arc of a sword while Beau transitioned to swearing she hadn’t arranged for any ninjas) as the inn keeper oozed up through the floor boards, body now a malleable and gelatinous black.

A black whip of inn-keeper-tentacle nearly collided with the grounded wizards before being blocked by a shadowy facsimile of Verin, sword raised as his actual body and the remainder of the Nein spilled into the room around Beau.

In this moment an orc in a bathrobe appeared in the doorway, slipper brandished in complaint.  Noise-complaint neighbor took a brief moment to take in the scene: Caleb hiding under the bed, Essek shielding them both with a lumpy pillow, Verin’s echo shaking at its sword that was wedged wetly in inn-keeper-ooze, Beau and Yasha tag-teaming to launch a ninja out the now broken window, Fjord lighting the room as his glowing sword flashed into his hand, Veth launching a flaming arrow at another retreating ninja, and Jester and Caduceus filling the remainder of the room with a riot of micro-unicorns and insects. The orc did an about face and disappeared from the doorway.

Then the building started to melt.

“WHY,” Fjord shouted as his foot began sinking into a liquifying floorboard. The remaining ninjas, apparently also concluding this was an upsetting and unwelcomed development, launched themselves back out the window. The inn keeper was shrieking in his spectral cloud of flying assailants but no one got to enjoy that as the entire top floor gave a wet, fleshy belch and caved in.

Fly triggered on reflex. While the Nein disappeared around him in a chaotic maelstrom of beating wings that muffled Fjord’s shout of “fly!” (that wasn’t part of the verbal component to that spell??), Essek lunged for Verin’s flailing arm. It was not a graceful maneuver as they latched on to each other’s forearms and spun briefly in the air amid the drippling black of melting wood, but Essek was too relieved to care much for finesse. Verin stared up at him, wide eyed and suddenly looking so very young. For a brief moment the scene transported him back to a memory of Verin, barely more than a toddler, giggling helplessly as he clung like a limpet to Essek’s floating ankle while he was dragged across the floor as an impromptu mop. In the next breath those chubby cheeks melted back into Verin’s adult face, twisted in terror.

Essek was going to chalk this entire evening up to exhaustion-based emotional vulnerability. He had no other explanation for the sudden overbearing surge of protectiveness that shot through him as his arm screamed in agony at Verin’s weight. He pulled sideways through the air, dragging them both through the decimated room and narrowly dodging a clump of necrotic shingles as they splattered onto the common room floor below. The inn was a cacophony of shrieking unicorns and shrieking patrons and shrieking wood.

Verin gave an ungainly twist in the air and managed to loop an arm over Essek’s shoulder. Now slightly more aerodynamic, Essek took the opportunity to shoot out through the collapsing roof and aligned in a nearby vermaloc.

Space was at a premium, apparently. He veered away from the three eagles flapping awkwardly to share the top of the tree, narrowly avoided kneeing Beau in the face on one of the higher branches, and dropped down to a low bow to collapse uncomfortably into Fjord. He was, naturally, promptly ensconced in spiders. Sandwiched between Fjord and Verin’s muscles, he reflected on how his personal space had not been so firmly violated in over half a century. Beyond this, Essek was somehow more unsanitary than when they had entered the inn. Add to that the fact he was still having a mentally quarantined meltdown about a man who was currently a giant eagle and that he had picked a truly inopportune time to start caring about his brother’s wellbeing, and the entire situation felt like divine retribution.

The inn gave a final wet splatter, like an overripe fruit hitting the ground, and suddenly the only noise left in the area was that of the disoriented inn patrons floundering through the remaining muck.

“There’s something wrong with this forest,” Caduceus informed Essek placidly from where he was hanging upside down in the talons of the orange eagle.

“Yes, thank you Caduceus. I concur.”

---

Verin had always though his post controlling the sinister leakings of a temple to the Abyss made him fairly flexible and even-keeled in times of stress. If there was one thing he was learning traveling with the Mighty Nein, however, it was that they could routinely and explosively prove him wrong. He had never had to contend with such back-to-back drama. It was exhausting. At a loss on how shit had gone sideways again, he turned to his brother.

His brother, who was taking stock of the group and looking some messy combination of frustrated, fearful, and relieved.

To see anything other than his pleasantly bland default smile was still foreign. This journey was such a strange stripping away of the decades of armor Essek had built around himself. A year ago, the man next to him was barely recognizable as family. Now, he bore more resemblance to the brilliant, cocky teen Verin had idolized than any iteration of the untouchable Shadowhand. Verin was staggered by the sudden wave of gratitude he felt towards the Nein and whatever the hell they had done to his brother. He celebrated by tightening the arm he had around Essek’s neck and using his height advantage to bend him forward. Verin dug a knuckle into Essek’s somehow still immaculate hair to thoroughly muss it.

“No wonder you enjoy these people! It’s like an extreme sport to be in their presence!” he proclaimed around Essek’s squawks of protest. The moment stretched like taffy as Essek decided how to respond. A harsh word? A scoff and distancing? Or-

Verin was suddenly dangling upside down in the air, once more filled with nostalgia and whooping in glee while being shaken by an invisible hand. When the hand was done thrashing him about, Essek made upside down eye contact with him.

“Behave.”

The word was cold and his expression was severe, but severe in a mocking caricature of one of their mother’s most common expressions. Essek’s left ear flicked, betraying his mirth.

Joy and laughter warred so violently in Verin’s chest that they came out as tears. It wasn’t as if Essek had died, but he thought he had lost his brother decades ago. Some stupid bickering outside of a melted inn with a bunch of foreigners looking on gave him more hope than he had dared to wish for in his entire adult life.

The invisible hand flipped him upright and deposited him back on the branch as he tried to surreptitiously wipe at the tears.

“I didn’t mean-“ Essek started quietly.

“You’re not allowed to be funnier than me,” Verin complained over the top of him, eager to preserve the levity they had somehow stumbled into. “That’s like the one thing I do better, back off.” If his grin was a little watery, well, anyone was welcome to fight him over it.

“This is all very sweet,” Veth broke in from some hidden location, “but maybe we can have loving family times when we aren’t in the middle of a nightmare forest being circled by assassins?”

True to her words, several of the earlier assassins prowled in the underbrush near the base of their tree, nearly invisible amongst the shadows until moonlight caught on the spider motifs of their exposed blades. While Verin watched, one of the assassins gave a shuddering gasp and lurched into the underbrush. A sort of black writhing started where they had fallen, prickling the back of his mind with half forgotten familiarity.

“We need to end this.” Despite speaking quietly, Verin’s voice carried through the still night air. “We need to confront Tonn and be done with this region. It’s going to consume itself.” As if to emphasize his point, the assassin rose, twice as large and considerably more malformed. Their musculature seemed to move across their body like an ocean tide, utterly unsettling to watch.

“Fucking fuck,” Beau muttered. “Why do we always have to go into these confrontations unrested? Looks like team eagle is staying in that form for transportation. We’ll strategize as we go. Catch me, babe.” Beau swan dove out of the tree only to immediately have her spread arms snatched in the grasp of a giant black and white eagle. The bird banked sharply, sweeping back towards the tree and deftly plucking up Fjord as Beau skittered onto its back. In the midst of this, Caduceus was artfully flipped by the orange eagle onto a blue eagle where Veth had already materialized.

“Brace yourself,” was all the warning Essek gave before yanking Verin off of the branch. They hovered in the air for a moment before a blur of orange came up from underneath them and suddenly all of his senses were consumed by feathers. Struggling out of presumably-Caleb-eagle’s thick ruff with a sneeze, Verin was greeted with the sight of the three giant eagles laboring higher into the air.

In the distance, the Penumbra Range bit at the night sky. Amongst its ragged peaks, the lights of Dumaran glowed like malevolent, watchful eyes. Verin pressed his side into Essek. What had started as a farce assignment was rapidly devolving into much grander scale catastrophe, but he’d be damned if he let this spiderbitch take away the brother he was just starting to get back. Verin covertly flexed his sword arm and grinned into the cold wind buffering him. It was high time they show Tonn what meddling with Den Thelyss got her.

Chapter Text

In an absolutely shocking turn of events, it was difficult to modify a battle strategy hundreds of feet in the air scattered between three moving targets while said targets were concurrently non-verbal party members. Each time the eagles tried to land to allow conversation, the rock and foliage under their talons started to twist grotesquely. It was as if the entire region was starting to melt from the sickness that had taken the inn. If there was a silver lining to this mess, it was that no one yet seemed to be affected by whatever had plagued Caduceus earlier.

As far as Fjord understood (and he really hoped clumsy pantomiming was enough to get this across), they had concluded to let Essek try to talk them out of whatever trap they were walking into, attack when that invariably failed, and have the drow brothers and the Mighty Nein as separate but complementary fighting groups.

“Okay, so, I know this is really not how we wanted to go into this, but is it bad I’m pumped?” Beau asked from her perch beside him. With Yasha’s speed, her words were nearly lost to the wind despite their proximity. “Weirdly, cults have kind of become our thing and this lady is super punchable. I think this will be one of our more gratifying gigs. Besides, the sooner we can take her out, the sooner we get back to Rosohna.”

Fjord couldn’t say he had much investment in the religious squabbles of a foreign nation, but he really did dislike Tonn on a personal level so nodded in agreement. “It will certainly give us more favor with the Bright Queen. What were you hoping to do back in Rosohna?”

Beau stared at him blankly for a second. Fjord widened his eyes and shrugged back, not getting whatever she was implying.

“Dude. Fucking Caleb of all people has successfully and utterly seduced our evil handler, but they are both apparently delicate flowers who need like, the right environment to stop pining. How are you still oblivious to this?” That seemed a bit unfair. From what he had hinted of his past, Caleb was the most qualified of them to seduce their evil handler. And Fjord was far from oblivious. He simply spent considerable time and effort trying to mind his own damn business so was quite happy to let Caleb and Essek figure themselves out at their own pace with no meddling from him. If there was anything surprising about it, it was that Caleb had healed enough to start considering romance. Fjord was happy for him in a very abstract way that did not require him to talk or think about any ramifications of the relationship. He was already completely overinformed about the love lives of their other teammates.

Beau, it seemed, was set on dragging him into relationship talk. “I have been dying to talk to you because holy shit you guys didn’t see Hotboi Heretic earlier. Caleb has been jonesing for Essek for a while, but I kind of think Essek is like, in LOVE love with Caleb. So yeah, for most of this trip I thought they were ego tripping and getting wizard boners over it,” Fjord eyed the ground, wondering if concussive damage could remove the term “wizard boner” from his acquired word set, “but Essek is giving off ‘change the whole dogma of my world outlook so I can stay with Caleb’ vibes. It would be one thing if it meant Caleb just went off to get laid every time we went to Rosohna, but what the fuck are we going to do if we acquire a new addition that is an actual war criminal?”

Fjord was unashamed to admit to the relief he was feeling. Here was a logical group concern they could talk through without him feeling like he was going to burst into flames from contact embarrassment. “Carry on as we have been I should think. It’s not a new thing for any of us to have a past that’s just waiting to jump back out at us. We’ve always had the primary goal of loyalty to our friends and trying to make the world a better place, not weighing our past sins against what we can currently offer. I imagine no matter how much he cares for Caleb, Essek will have to be at a place to want to make amends for his actions if he is seriously considering joining us. And if that is the case, it seems like he is a perfect fit to our group, no?”

Beau stared at him for another moment before punching him in the arm. Three of Fjord’s fingers went numb. “Eloquent as always, Captain. Alright. Yeah, alright. I really think he cares about Caleb so…alright. We’ll work through his personal failings later. Fuck, I wanted to be mad at him longer but it is kind of nice having him back. Should I tell Caleb we support him having more than just a Rosohnan booty call?”

“Right. Absolutely not. I don’t see why we have to bring their relationship into it at all really.” It was normal that Fjord’s voice sounded a little frantic because he was indeed frantic to end this conversation. “Let’s just, I don’t know, gloat about having two clerics AND two wizards or something and be done with it.” Fjord really couldn’t put into words how uncomfortable it was to try to reconcile the intimidating Shadowhand with the contrite Essek of Nicodranas and the completely flustered Essek of this whole trip. The less he had to actively poke at what Caleb and Essek were getting up to, the better. Beyond wanting to respect their privacy, Fjord still had the not-completely-unfounded fear Essek would trash compact him into green goo if he stepped too far out of line.

Finally appeased, Beau gave some comment Fjord was grateful got lost to the wind and moved back into her own thoughts.

Freed from the constant examination of the party’s physical relationships, Fjord turned his focus towards the upcoming confrontation. They had lost a lot of their agency with the recent events, but one thing still in their power was their entrance. Before they made it to Dumaran, he was determined to plan the most effective way to confront Tonn and her legion if only to feel they had control over something.

It was naturally as he was having this thought that someone dispelled Yasha’s polymorph.

Fjord had a frantic, disoriented moment of trying to Counterspell the Dispel only for a second Counterspell to hit him with rapidfire arcane impotence. A second later he latched on to Beau and Yasha in freefall and attempted to Thunder Step.  A Counterspell once more ripped his magic out from under him and he had a brief, petty moment of hoping he landed directly on top of the obnoxious caster.

Yasha’s wings flared out in her human form and slowed their descent somewhat (while concurrently nearly dislocating their shoulders), but their combined weight was too much to let her soar. After a breathless, tumultuous rush, they impacted a large mesh of. Oh. Spiderweb. Yeah, that tracked.

Fjord quickly tried to evaluate where the rest of the party was as several goblins started scampering towards them. The other two eagles had been dispelled as well. Veth must have hidden herself behind the clerics who were too confused in the moment to be putting up much of a fight. Caleb was a pile of limbs that was trying to sort itself out with no help from the webbing. Fjord’s attention turned to the drow brothers who were both giving off airs of dignified sulking, allowing themselves to be shackled while their chins remained raised and their expressions were paired contempt. There was a lot to unpack about the apparent family training there, but more so it told him the ones with the most information about their opponents either knew fighting was pointless or believed it not worth the wasted magic. Fjord gave a brief squeeze to Beau and Yasha’s wrists, tilting his head towards the Thelyss brothers. After a moment, Beau crossed her arms and pouted but took no pot shots at the goblins trussing them up. Yasha just sighed.

This welcoming party seemed overkill, but then this entire mission had been a beacon of exaggerated posturing, so why stop now? There were several squadrons of visibly nervous goblins working to shackle them, making Fjord hope Veth was either too well hidden to be caught or coping with this better than he would in her shoes. He then resolved to take a blood price from this group for making him feel any sort of sympathy for that little gremlin.  

As the Nein were secured, Fjord watched the squadrons get direction from a smaller cohort of hobgoblins, who were in turn being overseen by a pair of dark elf priestesses mounted on spiders that had each grown to the size of a modest hut. That was a big old NOPE. Fjord’s brain decided to just not process that reality and shifted its attention to the priestesses. They were doing little more than leering at the Thelyss brothers with a predatory intensity. Two weeks ago, Fjord really couldn’t have anticipated what an inconvenience Essek universal appeal would become for him.  

With no proper guidance from their distracted overseers, the goblins finished chaining the Nein and yanked them into a line for a swift marching order. It was irritating that they were taking the same path the Nein had already been flying, but now in a slower and more uncomfortable pace. Still, Fjord honestly felt a bit bad for the goblin foot soldiers being forced to coordinate it. Something had them so jittery that it was obvious they, too, wished this wasn’t happening.

“You’re doing a great job,” Fjord informed the goblin yanking at his manacles, trying to channel Jester by befriending a mutually suffering party. The goblin hissed at him and kicked him in the shin. Right, he just remembered: fuck this.

Kept from taking any real action by unspoken agreement, Fjord resigned himself to a disappointingly cliché march as one of the hobgoblins launched into an apparent evil monologue that Fjord completely ignored by virtue of not speaking Undercommon. This was ranking pretty low on the list of times the group had been held captive. While objectively he knew they were on the precipice of a fraught confrontation, all he could really focus on was that he was cold and tired and developing an impressive blister because Tonn was too insecure to just let them come to her. By the time the black iron gates of the mountain fortress came into view, Fjord was in such a pettily annoyed state that he was honestly excited to just get to the carnage.  

Aside from the river of goblinkin serving as their escort, the fortress was forebodingly silent. The darkness of the hallways seemed more from neglect than any pointed jab towards those without darkvision. A rank stench caught between old blood and mildew filled the stagnant air. It almost made him miss the grotesque opulence of the original banquet the Children had thrown. As a carved relief of screaming damned swung open with a fluttering of spiderwebs, the inner receiving chamber flared, torches lighting sequentially with magical green fire. Dramatic.

Vivurk Tonn lounged in the elaborately serrated throne at the other end of the chamber, chin propped on her hand. She was still unnervingly beautiful with her cruel features and sharp bone structure, but her level of disheveled seemed one part sleep deprivation and seven parts mental breakdown. Her eyes were almost entirely red with the bloodshot whites blending into her irises. The skin around her eyes was pulled tight in a controlled grimace, and her voluminous white hair was a tangled web around her face. Her diadem seemed to have been accidentally trapped in the mass more than placed purposefully on her head. Lush black robes with a faint green sheen from the torchlight looked staggeringly expensive while simultaneously rumpled beyond repair and slipping sloppily off one delicate shoulder. She appeared a queen recovering from a bender.

“Oh look,” Tonn greeted languidly. A heady, twisted magic eddied around her, aimlessly pulsing with power that made Fjord vaguely nauseated, “it’s the Shadowhand and beefy knockoff Shadowhand-”

“This is why I hate being around him during political functions,” Verin muttered.

“-as well as the titular Mighty Nein. I’m so pleased to formally meet you all. Won’t you please introduce yourselves? I would so like to put voices to faces.”

Fjord felt his heartrate skyrocket. Conceptually knowing of her power and aggression was nothing to standing in front of her, feeling her feral magic tug at his skin while she attempted to sniff out Jester.

Their rescue came in the unlikely form of their evil-monologuing hobgoblin, who chose that moment to spew his boisterous chatter directly at Tonn. She tolerated the onslaught for all of two seconds before leisurely flicking out two fingers. As the hobgoblin continued posturing, a quiet snik snik snik came from somewhere above and behind the group. Mid-word, two metal legs lanced through the hobgoblin’s chest before separating to cleanly bisect him. In between the halves that fell wetly to the floor was a large metal construct, spider-themed (naturally) and scanning the remaining life forms (concerning).

“I am spending considerable effort being cordial to this group and really don’t have the tolerance to deal with this nonsense,” Tonn said while swaying to her feet. Her voice had turned from smokey-sensual to grating. “Commanders, stay here. Priestesses, go make yourselves useful elsewhere. Do with the foot soldiers what you will.” She gave a sigh when she was met with stunned silence. With a flick of her hand, two more constructs clacked out of the gloom of the domed ceiling and joined the third to start tearing into the assembled goblins.

After a panicked scramble and a few cut off screams from the unfortunates stuck at the back of the retreating mass, the chamber was silent. The six remaining hobgoblins ringed the Mighty Nein with rigidly perfect posture as the three constructs clicked about, tracking goblin blood over the tiles and scanning those who were left in the chamber in an idly threatening manner.

“Let’s try a different approach,” Tonn said in the silence. Fjord desperately, desperately hoped Essek was going to give them a sign of when to attack. It was giving him hives to be shackled and pincered by so many openly hostile parties. The current odds were not comforting. “Come forward, Shadowhand.”

Essek, by all appearances relaxed and politely interested, floated over to hover a bit beneath where Tonn stood on the dais. Her forced smile turned rapacious. 

“This is all I ask. Prompt compliance. However much I would enjoy tearing you limb from limb for your previous audacity, I think I would enjoy the original offers you were making at my quaint soiree more. You see, there are these fascinating rumors about how the Shadowhand may not be so pious to Kryn’s shiny trinket. How he is more lenient of unorthodox thinking, and more cunning than what their sanitized culture is comfortable with. I find myself wondering if such a mindset wouldn’t be better suited to this court. A proposition for you: become high consort. Serve my every need and be freed of the idealistic restrictions of the Luxon. Are you hungry enough for knowledge and power to forsake your god-blinded nation, little Thelyss?”

For perhaps the first time this entire trip, Fjord was thankful for how much he had to witness Essek and Caleb’s deepening relationship. As of their last meeting, he would have been legitimately concerned about Essek turning on them and taking the offer. Now, there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that even if Essek accepted, it would be part of a larger scheme to keep them safe. Fjord stifled a snort. It was a good thing Beau and Veth were coming to terms with Essek’s presence. It certainly appeared he was already a member in all but name.

"You cannot possibly believe I would travel all this way into the jaws of a blatant trap to then decline such an offer?” Essek asked, smoothly avoiding an outright lie. “Come, I thought you were just complaining about tedious posturing. What is the price? I would imagine there is some test of loyalty as an admission fee.”

Tonn ran a guilded nail down the side of his face, her expression almost tender if not for the edge of madness. “How your pretty words make me hunger, clever little boy. I hope you do not disappoint me. The price is just a game really. Idle curiosity about more rumors.”

More snik snik’ing. In Fjord’s periphery, two of the constructs poised their lance like legs against Verin and Caleb. In the next breath, Fjord felt the bite of a sword against his throat as he was suddenly bracketed by one of the hobgoblins.

“Give the command to kill one of them,” Tonn purred. “The other will be tortured for the next few days as a morale boost to the troops. Every 5 seconds you hesitate on your choice, one of the remaining Mighty Nein will be killed. Simple enough, isn’t it?” Tonn asked.

“Ah,” Essek replied weakly.

---

Unbelievable.

This scenario fit nearly perfectly into one of Essek’s contingencies, and Verin had no doubt he was going to be insufferable about that once this was all over. Verin couldn’t help the thrill he felt regardless. The stress leading up to this confrontation was now at the breaking point and he got to make the first move into actual action. Even more gratifying, it was his own skill that was needed to salvage this situation. Knockoff Shadowhand indeed, he thought dryly. At Essek’s short verbal cue for which action to take, he released his echo.

The Nein’s response was impeccable and made him fall for them all just a bit. As soon as his echo was out, Fjord vanished out from under his captor, bowling over the hobgoblins on either side of him with the thunderous explosion he left in his wake that allowed Beau and Yasha to sprawl to freedom. As Verin’s echo reached Caleb, Veth was already behind a pillar, sending an impressively accurate crossbow bolt into the throat of the hobgoblin holding Caduceus considering her manacles kept her from stabilizing the weapon. In a blurring jolt, Verin switched places with his echo and smashed into the Retriever on Caleb’s back before flipping his sword into a backhanded grip to cut through the chain of Caleb’s manacles with his momentum. Hands free, it was now on Caleb and Essek to neutralize the largest threat in the room. Verin pivoted and sunk his sword into the downed Retriever as the one that had originally trapped him ripped apart his echo. The skewered metal beneath his sword flickered and phased away to some other plane, the little rat.

A flurry of violent magic surrounded the three main casters as Tonn’s features twisted with true, unfettered madness. The light dimmed and the walls seemed to ripple as she shrieked out verbal components, her sloppy casting blocked or dodged as Caleb and Essek circled. A sickly green light bloomed around her, causing her to stagger and gasp. In that brief lull of her frenzy, Caleb yanked a gem out from under his shirt and promptly collapsed, unresponsive on the floor.

Fjord collided with Jester’s captor as Verin decked the nearest hobgoblin with his mailed fist and held his breath. If this worked… Tonn stumbled before shaking her head and snarling. As she readied another spell, spectral clockwork appeared around her in a glimmering cloud, rewinding her movements and pulling her back to the moment before. Another breath and her features went smooth, eyes clearing into calm intellect. Fuck. YES.

“Don’t attack Tonn!” He called to the Nein as Essek tucked himself, Tonn, and Caleb’s levitated body behind the relative safety of a pillar. With that leg of the plan complete and the wizards safely out of harm’s way, Verin let out a soft, dark laugh and decided to have some fun.

The hobgoblin commanders were fast and talented, but not enough of either to weather the combined forces of a raging barbarian, a high level monk, and Verin with his echo regenerated. With a jovial little bounce, Verin severed the head off a commander Beau has left paralyzed in a flurry of manacled jabs, only to flicker backwards and join Yasha’s blade to bisect another as his echo cut into a third fleeing form. Verin tapped bloody knuckles with Beau as they took down the fourth with a combination of sword and strangling manacle chains. The fifth fell as a pincushion of radiant magic and crossbow bolts, and the sixth was carved to pieces in a flurry of Yasha’s slashes. Verin pivoted, ready for the proper battle to start, only to see the two remaining Retrievers Plane Shift away from the chamber. He huffed out a breath, letting his sword drop to his side. He could have used about ten more minutes of that sort of release, but he supposed they still had the rest of the fortress to traverse.

“Is Caleb okay?” Jester asked, rushing towards where the wizards were sequestered.

“Ja, no harm done, I just don’t understand how this thing stays up,” came a response in a heavy Zemnian accent. The voice had come from Tonn’s mouth as she tugged frantically at her robe that kept slipping precariously close to indecency.

“Um,” Yasha stated, her unvoiced question apparently speaking for the group. Tonn looked up in excitement before clutching desperately for the fabric that fell half down her arm again.

“I’m pretty surprised it actually worked,” she said, Zemnian accent still strong, “but it was the cleanest and most efficient way we could think of to achieve everything we would like: avoid a drawn-out battle with her, use her face for passage through the fortress relatively unhindered, and sabotage the Dumaran hierarchy without explosions.”

“And the actual cult leader is…?” Veth prompted. Essek tapped lightly at the jewel resting on levitating-comatose-Caleb’s throat. Verin did a double take, only now recognizing the Soul Ruby from their initial disastrous encounter.

“Holy shit,” Beau breathed. “You Halas’d her? That’s fucking hilarious. All this drama and wind up, and we just had to suck her into a gem?”

“’Just had to suck her into a gem’ she says. We just bested one of the strongest casters in Xhorhas,” Caleb-Tonn groused.  “That took pushing her to three levels of exhaustion, the aid of the Soul Ruby in the actual possession stage of Magic Jar, and Essek briefly rewinding time to pull off.” He gave a frustrated sigh as his garments once more tried to slither towards the floor. “Thelyss, a little help?” With an amused huff, Essek wove his hands artfully in the air and secured the misbehaving robe with a localized manipulation of gravity.

“And even with our success, we’ve only made our progress easier. We’re not done yet,” Essek said. He tore apart the remainder of his manacles with a casual arrogance, never one to suffer the restraints of others for long. He then made rounds to each group member, stretching the iron with pinpoint gravitational vortices to give the illusion they were still shackled while allowing them all to easily break free when needed. It was done with a sort of effortless control that was cool as hell to watch and Verin was never, ever going to tell him that. “If we simply keep Tonn contained, one of the priestesses will take her place. They may not be as powerful, but they are still formidable and will likely gain immense power if they are able to complete whatever modified ritual they are doing that is affecting the area. I suspect we’ll still have to sabotage the entire ritual to be done with this.”

“Additionally,” Caleb-Tonn said from where he was slumped against a pillar, clearly feeling the exhaustion of Tonn’s body, “I’m only piloting this body. It doesn’t give me any additional skills or information. If we want to keep up this ruse, we will probably need your friends to guide us through the fortress, Verin.”

Verin fought down a grin. It was childish to wish for the comfort of his friends at his side just because the fortress was creepy as fuck, but if someone else requested it, well, “I don’t see a problem with that.” He flipped open the top of the communication mirror and waited a moment to see the squish of familiar faces looking back at him. “Help now, ask questions later. I promise I’ll fully fill you in when we’re back together. We’re in the receiving chamber of Dumaran. Caleb is currently controlling Tonn,” he pivoted the mirror to show Tonn giving and exhausted wave and a quiet “hallo” before pivoting back to take in their shocked expressions. “Do you still have the blueprints to this place, Noni?”

Aulanonia blinked several times. It was incredibly gratifying to catch her so wrong-footed. Verin was coming to adore this mission.

“I- yes. Assuming there haven’t been renovations I can probably guide you where you need to go. Um???”

“Questions later. We need to get to the inner sanctum, and possibly hit treasuries or libraries along the way if we want to get more information about what they are hoarding here.” Aulanonia shook her head and disappeared from view to a rustling of parchment. The remainder of the group were craning their necks fruitlessly so Verin took pity on them. Spinning, he showed the Mighty Nein and the modest collection of bodies they were searching as Caleb and Essek murmured over how to make Caleb’s body the least conspicuous.

“That is so damn unnerving to watch,” An’rak stated, gesturing to the causal touches Essek and Caleb-Tonn were sharing as they brainstormed. They were debating the merits of various illusions but apparently opted to just cart the body along as a sort of trophy. Essek gently tucked the ruby back into Caleb’s shirt.

“Yeah, they’ve gotten exponentially more embarrassing since you’ve left. Viedrar, I am hereby going to dish everything to you because they are getting to the point that it is activating my duty as a little brother to humiliate them.”

“Oh, that’s chill. I should probably protest you bullying someone so politically connected and so obviously able to put a hit on us, but… nah. You have the others for discretion. I am here to make the rumor mill catch fire,” Viedrar promised solemnly because they were the best. Aulanonia popped back into view, eyed them both, and snapped open a map in a highly judgmental fashion.  

“This is going to be a bit cumbersome, but ready when you guys are. It will take away from our entertainment factor, but do you want to hide us in a cloak or something? It may be conspicuous to have a captive wandering around with a communication mirror.” Surprisingly, it was Calzen who gave her an irritated shove for that very logical point. “What?” she squawked back.

“Good call, sorry for the view, all,” Verin said, slipping the open mirror carefully into an inner pocket of his cloak with a muffled chorus of complaints.

“Guys, we have to be pretty careful moving forward,” Jester was saying. “I’m almost tapped for spells as it is.”

“Oh no,” Veth said with a straight face, “who won’t heal us if you run out of magic?” She was rewarded by Fjord smearing a piece of hobgoblin across her face. The dynamic of this group was so damn comforting.

“I’m still doing pretty well,” Caduceus said serenely, “but watching over eight people may get a bit tricky so some caution is a good idea.”

“Right,” Caleb-Tonn said, straightening and twisting his face into a thunderous scowl. “We may as well finish this. How do I look?”

“Entirely too sane,” Essek said, lips quirked. He situated himself at Caleb-Tonn’s right while Caleb’s actual body hovered obediently behind them. Essek opened a pocket dimension and donned his metonymic mantle, slipping effortlessly into the frigid persona of the Shadowhand. They did appear quite the power couple if one was unbothered by the air of murderous tyranny. Essek briefly ruined the icy veneer by tapping a pearl against Caleb-Tonn’s forehead with a gentle murmur of a spell and tucking a chaotic clump of hair back behind his ear. Verin gave the most exaggerate eyeroll in his repertoire because someone had to start saving Essek from himself. Essek ungratefully signed back the rough equivalent of go suck a scimitar. It was completely unfair no one in the area would believe Verin if he translated that.

“Lead the way, Dark Eminence,” Essek pointedly said as he skimmed a finger along the inside of Caleb-Tonn’s wrist. Verin had to clear his throat at that completely shameless display. No one could weaponize one-upmanship quite like Essek.

“Okay, the first hallway is this weird kind of fish shape that you’ll want to take the left branch off of,” Aulanonia said suddenly from his cloak pocket, causing Verin to jump. It was so completely on-brand for her to stampede through subtle innuendo with her pragmatic focus, which was sadly a needed reminder that he should concentrate on something other than his brother’s hilarious mooning. Essek looking like a damn idiot was just so much more enjoyable than seeking out the portal to a betrayer god. Verin sighed.

The hallways still had the faint perfume of blood and were just as eerily silent as when they had entered the fortress. Their echoing footsteps filled the dreary passages as a bass beat to Aulanonia’s directions while Verin’s concern grew. Dumaran was known to have a sizeable martial force. Where were all the inhabitants?

The first person they came across was a drow in heavy armor. There was something quietly unsettling about her, like her colors were slightly outside the outline of her body. Her expression was also disconcerting in an indefinable way, like she had read in a book how to emote but had never done so personally. “Dark Eminence. All of the preparations have been made and are awaiting your presence.” Her gaze caught briefly on Essek before flicking behind Caleb-Tonn to the rest of the group. “Where would you like me to take the captives?”

An uncomfortable silence followed. She cocked her head and seemed to move without moving, form briefly going into double vision before focusing into a single body once more. She shuddered with a small gasp before leering up at them through her hair. Perfect. Yes. This was not alarming in any fashion.

“They are to remain with us,” Essek replied smoothly, as if not addressing some nightmare creature that had issues holding together its physical form. “We have some ideas about using them to amplify the ritual.”

The guard sneered and for a moment Verin swore her teeth were covered with blood. In the next moment, it was an ordinary mocking expression. Verin would very much enjoy it if the fortress would go back to being hauntingly empty. “I’m sorry, was I addressing you, boy toy? Learn your place or your tenure here with be very short.” She turned with an unnatural movement and settled an expectant gaze back to Caleb-Tonn as Essek’s expression went stony, his version of sputtering indignation.

“They will be coming with me,” Caleb-Tonn said after another pregnant pause. The cause for his hesitation was obvious: the command had come out in a horrifying falsetto’d garble that was still distinctly Zemnian, just slower.

The soldier wasted no time verbalizing her thoughts. One moment she was several paces away. The next, she was lunging at Caleb-Tonn with a guttural shriek. Her body was lit up as the entirely of the Mighty Nein tore into her, but it didn’t prevent the flurry of her attacks or the quiet thunk of Caleb-Tonn hitting the floor, beheaded.

Well fuck.

---

Caleb plunged through a tumultuous flood of his own magic, tumbling metaphysically ass-over-teakettle in the arcane off-gassing of the unraveling spell. Clutching for the harbor of the Soul Ruby was like trying to cling to moss covered rocks on a riverbank- he slipped and scrabbled, heart in his throat as he failed to gain purchase. In a final desperate bid, he activated Fortune’s Favor and rode that final magical push back into the gem. He was treated to the echoing curses of Tonn being swept off into the deathly flood as he took several shuddering breaths and then entered his own skin.

It was disorienting to suddenly be horizontal. It was doubly so to register hands gripping gently at his face. His hearing focused in on a quiet, disparaging litany.

“-so cripplingly shortsighted for someone so brilliant. You didn’t think to mention your ability to do accents is an atrocity against all spoken language? That it may have been relevant to an impersonation scheme? If you would kindly return yourself to your own charming skin, I fear I must punch you and then complain at you for bruising my hand-”

Caleb couldn’t help the sound that came out of him, more wheeze than laugh but still overly amused. Essek was likely the only one in the group who understood how high stakes it was to die in a body possessed by Magic Jar. He really shouldn’t be laughing. He was sure Essek was traumatized seeing him fall for the second time in two days, but it was hard to focus while magic still pulsed through his limbs and he savored the press of Essek’s fingers.

Caleb cracked his eyes open. The rest of the Nein were watching them in confusion, obviously uncertain why Essek was in relative hysterics. He ignored them entirely and continued to cradle Caleb’s face in trembling hands, fingers dragging lightly along the stubble there. At the sensation, Caleb could appreciate why cats always looked so pleased while being pet.

“You,” Essek stated gravely, “are a menace to yourself and should never be left unsupervised.”

“Do you hear the words coming out of your mouth?” Caleb shot back, so punch drunk with relief that he tugged teasingly at Essek’s ear without thinking about his actions. He really enjoyed Essek’s blushes, but it was Essek’s shy smile and surprisingly playful tweak of Caleb’s nose in response that made him feel like he was melting.

“Hey,” Veth called, “can you guys save being gross for later and tell us if we need to reanimate DecapiTonn?” She held up Tonn’s severed head in unneeded emphasis.

“Also, guard’s melted,” Yasha put in. She indicated to where the armored drow had fallen after the flurry of attacks from the Mighty Nein. Only a pool of black liquid remained. This… Caleb sat up and ran a quick thumb over Essek’s cheekbone in affectionate apology before focusing on the person-liquid. He was not aware of any spell or simulacra that would end in spontaneous but stagnant liquefaction. That lack of knowledge was a hollow worry in the base of his stomach. He knew what had to be the cause of this- surely they all did by this point- but his mind kept shying away from the possibility.

“What’s happening?” Verin’s Cloak asked.

“Questions. Later,” Verin hissed in reply.

Right. Stay on target with what they had control over. An upsetting amount of their plan had hinged on being able to puppet Tonn. She wasn’t absolutely necessary if everything turned to conflict anyway, but if they could offset fighting an entire fortified nation that would be ideal. It was alarming to realize that of equal weight was the fear of Dierta Thelyss’s judgment should they resort to violence. A lot of Essek’s…everything… was explained by meeting that woman.

There was one option still at their disposal which Caleb could recognize he was eager to try due to extreme bias. Well. Innovation never found its wings without a little risk, right?

Caleb met Essek’s eyes, seeing the same blend of curiosity and rashness he was feeling. A thick, warm sensation lodged in his throat at the effortless camaraderie and understanding in that gaze. How did you so effortlessly become my touchstone? He didn’t ask. Caleb promptly stamped down that line of thinking. Whatever else Essek was willing to give him, it was not likely to be that. The decaying halls of Dumaran were certainly not the place to be suddenly maudlin about that. He scratched absently at his arm.

“What aspect do you think?” Caleb asked, refocusing on the magic itself instead of his sudden blitzed emotional state.

“Hatred of Lolth?” Essek offered, oblivious to Caleb’s internal crisis as he stared thoughtfully at Tonn’s head that Veth was still brandishing like a ghastly lantern. She was bleeding all over the hallway, but if one thing could be said for the décor, it was very good at hiding blood.

“I can’t believe they’ve already progressed to nonsensical half sentences,” Verin muttered somewhere on Caleb’s periphery. “This really is a sappy romance speedrun.”

“I believe positive emotions will be more reliable than negative ones though,” Caleb stated, ignoring Verin’s contribution. Caleb had never had a little brother, but he imagined if he had, this desire for fond, casual violence would be common. For now, he would have to leave the irritated scowling to Essek who was currently doing it admirably. “Perhaps sympathy with Dynasty ideals?”

Essek’s agreeing hum felt like sunlight and fresh parchment. Caleb continued ignoring Verin and his histrionic gagging because Caleb was an adult.

“Yes, you are of course correct,” Essek responded. Without looking he waved a hand to artfully pull Verin’s entire cloak over his head and truss him up with it. “I wonder what will come through with those parameters? Yasha, can you pull down that mirror? And Veth, do you mind bringing some of Tonn’s hair over? I’ve enough platinum and garnet for the remainder of the components.” Essek unhooked the cuffs from the tips of his ears, ruefully tracing a finger over them where they rested in his palm. “I quite liked these. In any case, perhaps you should all shelter around the bend. This spell is entirely theoretical at this point.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Beau muttered, freeing Verin and ushering the rest of the group back once Yasha settled the ornate mirror on the floor and Veth presented Caleb with a clump of white hair like a toddler offering a bundle of picked flowers. “You just recovered from one magical mishap and respond by doing untested magic? Wizards.”

Just because she was right didn’t mean they had to dignify that with a response.

With the others a safe distance away and the materials arranged, Caleb met Essek’s eyes and took a centering, calming breath. This was an intimacy they had never hesitated with. Their magic flowed forward at the same time, effortlessly intertwining and amplifying among the components. Caleb felt the spell catch as the mirror went black. The clump of Tonn’s hair ignited and the resulting smoke lifted the platinum ear cuffs into the air where they liquified. Gray droplets of platinum tinged dunamis fell like rain on the mirror’s surface, flaring brilliant white where they struck until the reflection was a vast starscape of questing magic threads. Mirror’s Grasp activated as one of the bright points responded.

Out of the mirror’s surface rose a Vivurk Tonn garbed in shimmering white robes and wearing a serene expression that gave her an uncanny resemblance to the Bright Queen. In the next moment, the beheaded corpse of this reality’s Tonn went tumbling into the mirror with an ethereal splash. Huh. That was… not anticipated and may cause complications for the other reality. Oops.

“I felt the call of the Luxon’s Light and came in your time of need,” NewTonn stated magnanimously. The excited awe in Essek’s face was immediately extinguished. “Come children, how may I Enlighten you?”

Caleb cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows at Essek. Essek, in turn, shot him a pinched look before rising gracefully into the air and addressing Tonn. “Welcome. We’re grateful you accepted our invitation. Your counterpart in this reality, the High Priestess of Lolth, is in the process of a ritual that is a risk to the entire Dynasty. We would appreciate your help in dismantling her schemes.”

“Luxon bless you for bringing me to an area so choked by shadow,” Tonn replied with a disorienting amount of earnestness.

As Tonn took a moment to glance around her surroundings, Caleb once more looked to Essek to see he had a minute muscle twitch in his cheek as if desperately fighting to hide an expression. This was confirmed in the next moment with his mouthed, “Can we send her back? How did we downgrade on sadistic cultists?”

“Come forward, children,” Tonn was calling to the rest of the Nein. “My aura is bright enough to bathe you all.”

“This is creepy as hell,” Beau said, peeking out. “Hey Caleb, not to insult your spell baby, but it kind of sucks.”

“It absolutely sucks,” Essek muttered, nearly inaudibly, before Caleb elbowed him.

“Did they cast “Summon Zealot” or something?” Verin’s Cloak asked.

“I don’t know how many times Boss has to say ‘questions later’,” Verin’s Cloak reprimanded.

“Oh wow you guys, she is so beautiful!” Jester enthused, bounding up to get a closer look at Tonn’s shimmering robes.

“I see how desperately this reality needs my radiance,” Tonn responded stiffly.

“Right,” Fjord said in the following awkward silence as Jester circled the priestess excitedly and Tonn attempted to look unruffled while being decidedly ruffled. “It may help to tone down the reverence for the Luxon seeing as we need you to impersonate the Lolth-worship of this reality’s Tonn.”

“Well,” Tonn stated with a beatific smile, “this will certainly be a strange exercise but I will endeavor to Lighten your burden in any way I can.”

“Oh good, she makes forced puns as well,” came another mutter at Caleb’s side. Essek spent just enough time being cordial that his bitchiness was a delightful surprise every time it reared up. Caleb was so fond of him.

“Are we just not addressing the melting?” Fjord pressed on. He indicated to goo-guard.

“I did not pay it much mind, given how twisted this reality appears,” Tonn replied. “Why is the ooze concerning when hallways painted in blood are not?” She gestured down to where her pristine robes were taking on a rusty hue.

Oh, well that was embarrassing. Caleb lit a globule to better examine the floor as a quiet panic ensued in the group. That explained the fortress’s eau de blood at least. The black of the tile admirably hid blood to the point they had entirely missed that every inch of the walkway was coated in a dry flaking layer.

“Aulanonia, is there any design to the layout of the passageways?” Essek asked, touching a finger to the ground as he looked deep in thought. It was unbearably attractive and Caleb really needed to get his thirst under control considering that the context clues of the last half hour were pointing no place even remotely sexy.

“Not in the-”,“No, see-?”,“Well fuck,” Verin’s Cloak replied in a conglomeration of voices. “I’m not certain if you have time to verify this, but if it is only select hallways around the throne room then, uh, yes,” said at the same time as, “If you cock your head and squint you can make a summoning array out of this. Who builds in summoning circles to the Abyss? This entire society is cracked.”

“Magnificent,” Tonn enthused. “Does the cloak answer any query you give it?” She poked at Verin’s shoulder, which he batted away childishly.

“…Yes,” Verin’s Cloak responded.

“Okay, talk to us Thelyss boys,” Beau commanded, taking control of the conversation. “Does this track with what you know of the Lolth ritual?”

Essek shot a look to Verin. Verin looked back with a shrug.  

“Knowledge of Lolth is so anathema that we don’t even have a broad-strokes understanding of their ritual mechanics,” Essek replied at last, looking physically pained to admit a deficit in his knowledge, even if that knowledge was sacrilegious. Possibly because that knowledge was sacrilegious.

Beau crossed her arms and frowned down at the floor. This gave her the perfect vantage to notice when the blood started giving off a dull glow while the rest of the hall sank into dour haze. “Oh, hey, the blood is doing a thing-”

“We should get out of this hallway,” Caleb stated, very reasonably he though. The group appeared too distracted to acknowledge him, however, as the blood started to aerosolize and form little cavorting creatures. All but Tonn that was, whose head snapped up like a hound scenting prey.

“Empire scum?” she hissed in a remarkable rendition of the vitriol this reality’s Tonn was so renown for. Caleb opened his mouth to try to diffuse the situation, only for the hallways to fill with a shrieking wind carrying countless wailing voices.

As the party seemed equally distracted by the voices, blood critters, and now the ripples running through the stone walls, Caleb watched Tonn’s face contort with a fanatical rage. He braced to Counterspell, but she bypassed casting entirely to tackle him, hands squeezing around his throat as his back painfully collided with the stone walkway.

Caleb scrabbled at her grip, trying to suck in a breath while he distractedly noted that the obscured figures of Essek and Jester had corralled a small swarm of the blood critters to study more closely. Fjord and Verin’s indistinct forms were poking at a bulbous pustule that had boiled up on the wall as Veth, Beau, and Yasha’s outlines conversed over a rune lit up in the middle of the floor. Caduceus had picked this moment to commune. None of which were particularly helpful for noting that Caleb was being choked out by their celebrity guest.

On some sort of cosmic level he surely deserved this (past violences? Excessive hubris? There were many reasons for the universe to strangle him), but he protested the problematic timing. Caleb would rather meet his graphic, poetic end when it would be less of an inconvenience to his friends.

Reluctantly, as his vision grayed, he attempted to dismiss Mirror’s Grasp. The academic part of his brain (divorced from the rest of his body that was pretty preoccupied with being actively asphyxiated) was interested to note that it apparently required both parties in a dual casting to dismiss a spell. Something to put in the notes.

It was Verin who finally saw his predicament with a shout of “holy shit!”. Decaying corpses had started to crawl out of the walls from ruptured pustules, which Verin capitalized on by wrenching free an upper torso and clobbering Tonn with it. Caleb rescinded two of his recent spiteful thoughts about Verin as he rasped in gulping breaths of air.

Tonn screamed, clawing along the ground where she had fallen in an attempt to get back to strangling Caleb. The corpse screamed, having partially broken apart on impact so that the head and neck only had a piece of collarbone and one decaying arm that was windmilling ineffectually. Verin screamed, because that was a very logical response to the nightmare scene that had engulfed the hallway. The summation of their screaming successfully pierced through the baseline screaming in the wind to catch the attention of the rest of the Nein.

Essek, looking attractively irate (this was becoming a problem, Caleb’s oxygen starved brain noted), immediately seemed to take in the situation and severed his support of the spell. Tonn spit out one final racist slur before dissipating in a smear of smoke. It shouldn’t have been surprising that she was a terrible person regardless of the religion she preached. A moment later, her decapitated body splattered back into the hallway on top of a pile of similarly mangled corpses. Good riddance to that. She could stay in that ignoble heap permanently for all he cared.

Caleb didn’t waste further thought on her as Essek and Jester rushed over. A little parade of spectral dicks fountained from Jester’s hand to surround Caleb’s neck before the burning in his throat cleared and Artagan’s healing restored his voice. Essek looked at Jester, opened his mouth, closed it, and just shook his head.

“Okay, let’s just table trying to use Tonn in any productive fashion,” Beau was shouting over the shrieking wind. “No more Tonn. We go in and we fix this with violence.”

“Motion passed,” Fjord shouted back as he shook his leg, trying to dislodge the one-armed corpse fragment that had wormed its way over to chew on his boot.

“It wouldn’t have worked anyway,” Caduceus said, voice thunderous as the wind abruptly vanished, leaving the hallway to echo with the moans of the corpses, the uncomfortable wet sloshing of the undulating walls, and the increasingly distressed queries coming from Verin’s cloak. Caduceus rose out of his lotus pose with a grim set to his mouth. His next words were the confirmation none of them needed. “This place suffers from the sickness of the Living City- both have been corrupted by the Chained Oblivion. Dumaran is the heart of this disease, but it has sent roots all throughout the surrounding area and Underdark. Most of the creatures down there are suffering its effects.”

“This… they are summoning Tharizdun?” Verin whispered, face gone ashen. The Mighty Nein should honestly script a disclaimer- they seemed to routinely traumatize any individual who paired up with them. Verin rallied through sheer degree of denial, resolutely not looking down at the portion of wall that had started to lick his knee. “No. Uh-uh. Absolutely not. The amount of bullshit you all seem to attract is staggering, but I refuse to believe catfishing Vivurk Tonn has somehow led to summoning one of the most feared deities in the dark pantheon.”

“Questions now,” Verin’s Cloak demanded. He took out the communication mirror in a huff.

The mirror let out several iterations of “what the ever loving shit” at catching sight of their surroundings. It was vindicating to have outside perspective verify the things the Nein had to deal with were absurd. “You need backup. We are getting backup,” Calzen proclaimed, followed by the sound of frantic scrambling. 

“Living City?” Essek questioned, wide eyes fixed on Caleb. He had apparently reached the threshold of terrifying developments he was able to just roll with. A fine tremor was running through him, though it was unclear if this was in response to yet another brush with death on Caleb’s part, the increasingly visceral appearance of the hallway, or casually naming Tharizdun as their direct adversary. Caleb placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and gently pivoted him so he wouldn’t see the thick veins sprouting along the walls as they spoke.

“It’s something we were gearing up to face- a vision from when we were at Rumblecusp,” Caleb explained. “It’s a complicated explanation, but it seems another influence of Tharizdun beyond the Abyssal Rifts and the Angel of Irons. This isn’t just cult activity- this is a sentient city consuming its way through the astral sea. We made our stop in Xhorhas hoping to earn enough favor from the Bright Queen to get higher clearance for the Marble Tomes and research it further.”

Essek’s face was doing something complicated as he picked at his mantle and avoided Caleb’s eyes. While Caleb would have loved to talk through that response, the floor was starting to take on a more flesh-like appearance. Fjord was marking it as well if his shared frown with Caleb was any indication. “We should perhaps start walking,” Fjord said, herding the group around the blood creatures and corpses as their steps became spongy on the no-longer-stone floor. “Quick steps, come on, no being ingested by the fortress, let’s go.”

“No, this just…” Verin appeared to be having a very contained existential meltdown in proper Thelyss fashion as he was hustled along. “The Children are horrible people, but they follow Lolth. It is well known the only thing Lolth is terrified of is the Chained Oblivion. There is no way her followers would worship it.”

“Most of those who help the Chained Oblivion do not do so knowingly,” Yasha stated quietly. The amount of suffering in those few words felt like a physical blow. As Beau slotted their fingers together and murmured something fierce sounding to her, Caleb desperately hoped they could find some sort of loophole out of this mess to spare Yasha further exposure to this hateful god.

“Presuming these are all interrelated events- the resurgence of the Angel of Irons, the rifts, this phagocytizing city… Are you saying any group it can manipulate into one of its domains- hunger, madness, trickery, as if those aren’t ubiquitous- is posing an opportunity for Tharizdun to manifest and weaken its divine shackles?” Essek's mind organized the facts so quickly, Caleb once more found himself violently suppressing the font of want that sparked in him. In the next moment Essek’s calculating look seemed to shutter. It may have been related to the organic liquid dripping on his head. “This is all quite overwhelming."

Essek started casting round after round of frantic prestidigitation on his hair as Fjord dragged the group down a stairwell that shared an unpleasant number of characteristics with a mouth. “We can bring you up to speed on all we know later. Right now, it seems the Lolth ritual has been converted to a Tharizdun ritual. If we don’t get on top of that NOW, it is not hyperbole to say reality could be ripped apart.”

“We- there’s- there’s no WAY we have any ability to face this thing right now,” Verin protested. From the mirror, his friends were shouting mutedly for help from the operatives in Deepriver Mine. “We don’t have the sleep, the resources, the manpower-”

“Or the choice,” Veth said lightly, indicating the tongue-like texture the floor was taking. “This is going down now. Obviously if you want to dip you can. We’ll only talk shit about you behind your back a little bit.”

“It is my literal job to prevent abyssal horrors from coming into our plane,” Verin shot back, affronted.

“Then you better petition for a pay raise after this is over,” Veth responded. This was punctuated by the stairwell swallowing and dumping them unceremoniously in an overly moist subterranean chamber. As they struggled to their feet and peeked around the flesh mound they had been dumped by, they were greeted with the scene of a massacre.

Dumaran was empty because the population was all here. Piles and piles of bodies lined the walls, lined the pillars, lined the alters. Three writhing mounds of tentacles caged a centralized rune as one final priestess stood at the fourth corner, laughing and crying hysterically.

There was something painfully tragic about watching the final priestess’s mind shatter amid the fields of her dead nation. Here was a society that had fractured under the weight of its own greed, sundered by the sick manipulation they had allowed into their home. However twisted and terrible Dumaran had been, it was a somber scene to take in and served as a cautionary tale that didn’t guarantee salvation for the rest of them.

“We need to stop-” Beau started to whisper harshly before the priestess cracked like an egg, spilling forth tentacles and a horrendous, amorphous mass of teeth and eyes. Tharizdun definitely held the bottom rung for aesthetics.

“What the fucking FUCK,” someone hissed from Verin’s mirror. Verin mechanically hushed them. In the background, the others seemed to be getting access to a Rosohnan transportation circle.

“You may want to put that down so we can focus on fighting,” Fjord told Verin gently. “If nothing else, it could help document things that work- or don’t- if we are killed in this fight.”

Verin swallowed audibly before situating the mirror just beyond the lip of the flesh mound and hollowly touching a finger to the surface where his friends were whisper-shrieking in hysterics. He took a deep breath and turned.

The others were already attacking. As the tentacle piles flurped about almost aimlessly, Veth opened up the assault with a sparking bolt from her crossbow that exploded into the first priestess with a thick spray of flesh. Caduceus’s Sacred Flame ignited the lashing tentacles of the second as Jester’s Guiding Bolt struck the third. Caleb closed it out, Gravity Sinkhole shaking the entire foundation of the writhing fortress and rending the untethered flesh of the priestesses in a fountain of unidentifiable fluids.

When the fine mist of their combined attacks settled, nothing remained of the priestesses but the quiet drip of black fluid. It was probably optimistic to assume that was the extent of it.

Caleb’s fear was confirmed in the next instant as the drips of fluid filled in the lines of intricate runes carved into the floor. The runes flared with a thunderous roar and erupted in an explosive column of black light that rotated into the form of a spectral gateway. Fucking shit.

Beyond the gateway swirled the chaotic maelstrom of the abyss. In the wailing red void, there was the brief skittering of spider legs and a glimpse of gleaming black scratching at the margin of the gate.

“Well, we fucked that right up,” Yasha muttered, unsheathing her massive sword. She took one step towards the gate only to immediately freeze. Across the portal’s opening inky tendrils spooled, leaving strings of ichor leaking down the arcane edges. The skittering froze as well, and in the next moment the entire chamber was filled with shrieking and thrashing.

“Is…um…” Jester chewed at her lip. “Are the betrayer gods fighting?”

“This is not a safe space. This is not a safe space,” Verin was chanting as a cord of black lightning burst from the portal and tore through the chamber in an open bleeding gash that vaporized the far corner of the fortress. “This sort of conflict razed the majority of Xhorhas.”

“New plan!” Veth shouted. “How about we destroy the gate before one of them makes it through?” In theory that was a fantastic thought, but in practicality was immediately challenging for the fact that around the flailing legs and clanking tendrils, an endless stream of abyssal devils had started to pour out. The Might Nein and Thelyss brothers stood in horrified shock for one breath over the wave of winged forms before scrambling for any sort of cover.

“Wizards! Do something brainy!” Beau shouted as they found a defensible corpse pile. “We’ll try to keep you from being skewered if you can somehow manage to snipe the fucking hell portal.”

“Do something-” Essek started to protest back before squeaking as their defensible corpse pile started to animate. In a flailing of limbs, he managed to stab the ghoul reaching for him through the eye with one of the pauldrons on his mantle. In the next moment, Jester gave a shout and an emerald green cloak settled over the group. When the cloak lifted, an absolute ocean of spectral, pink, winged puppies were biting at the heels of the dead, herding them in an expanding diameter away from the Nein. There was an uncomfortable blend of aesthetics happening in this chamber.

While no longer the target of Dumaran 2.0, Jester’s Turn Undead also repelled their literal meat shield against the devils filling the chamber. On every side, the close quarter fighters were immediately pulled into conflict by the shrieking winged fiends.

Right. Yes. Make up a spell on the spot to overcome two fight gods. Preferably do it in under a minute. Caleb was probably going to pass out from stress which was not helpful to anyone.

At the gate entrance, a giant severed black spider leg came flying through so things weren’t going great for Lolth either. Caleb reflected somewhat hysterically that they’d have to destroy the appendage as well or else it was practically guaranteed some future lunatic would make a cursed Lolth Leg Scepter or similar nonsense out of it.

He was snapped from his manic musings as Caduceus yanked him backwards into a forming huddle before a shimmering barrier went up around them all. With Jester’s Turn Undead and Caduceus’s Antilife Shell, they were a tiny oasis amid the flood of utter chaos filling the chamber.  

“Nice one Caddy,” Veth stated as she watched the frenzied devils ram up against the barrier with frothing jaws. “A plan. We need something to take out the gate, destroy the god pieces, and wipe out everything that’s come through. Any genius thoughts anyone?”

Caleb’s mind was already miles away. The sheer level of destruction needed was beyond virtually anything in documented lore. So they needed a catalyst. They needed a spark to make something much stronger do the work while they fled this otherwise hopeless battle. His gaze settled on Veth’s expectant look, and his mind cleared. Of course, Caleb thought breathlessly as he smiled down at her. Of course.

“Dunamis is the power of the stars, is it not?” he asked, turning to Essek and touching the constellations scattered across the bridge of Essek’s nose. Fear was making Essek’s eyes luminous to the point that they reflected the devils beyond the shell. “So craft me a dying star. What better way to defeat gods of darkness than through a nova?”

Caleb saw the exact moment Essek’s whirling thoughts stilled and clicked into place, aligning on Caleb’s meaning with a sharp brilliance. With visible effort, he appeared to be blocking out the nightmarish blend of anxiety and fear, the need for precision and need for haste, the endless attacks of undead and devil and personified fear. It a crystalline moment amid the chaos, it was only his knowledge base up against a posed problem. “I- is that all you ask of me, Caleb Widogast? Of course I will give you the stars.”

(“What a line!” Jester cooed on the periphery.)

Essek’s expression turned troubled. “The difficulty is the level of power we would need for any sort of cosmic-inspired reaction. It would need to be virtually…” he tapered off gazing at where Caduceus stood in the center of the mass, blinking back serenely. “…divine.”

It went against everything they both stood for, surrendering a plan to faith, but what other option did they have?

“Low odds are better than no odds,” Caleb offered, a grim smiling tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Can you guys share with the class here please?” Yasha asked from where she was squished between Verin and Fjord. The shell did not allow for much room. Right beyond her shoulder, a devil was lunging and slathering against the barrier.

“We suspect gravitational exertion on the core of a star-”

“SUCCINCT, Essek,” Beau interrupted.

He wrinkled his nose at her but amended “We’re going to try to recreate a star explosion on a much smaller scale with a whole bunch of gravity. We are hoping you can entreat the Wildmother to power it, Caduceus, because it's going to require a staggering amount of energy. We will have to flee before it goes off or I don’t think any of us will survive it, but I have means of guaranteeing it will hit if we can manage the setup.”

“And that’s…going to work?” Beau asked cautiously.

Stress had apparently broken Essek as he simply shrugged. Ignoring Beau’s responding note of concern, Essek proceeded to pull a string of iron out of the manacle still hanging from Caleb’s wrist with a strand of dunamis and smoothed the floating iron into a small bead. It was such an unassuming little thing, to hold all of their lives in balance. Caleb opened his pouch and transmuted a few gold coins to dusk so he could press a shimmering finger to the little orb. Immovable Object locked around it.

“Your mother is going to hate this,” Caleb pointed out. The soundtrack of Lolth and Tharizdun’s conflict was still playing out beyond their little oasis and a good fifty feet around the gate appeared to be in the process of being unmade into shapeless black dust, but it felt important that they all take a moment to focus before this concluding step in the journey.

“My mother is not contending with two betrayer gods attempting to enter our plane,” Essek shot back, much more candid than he would no doubt be if they survived to report back to Deirta Thelyss. Caleb couldn’t help but be proud of him regardless. “If we should make it back- we will make it back...Let me stay with you?” Essek asked, a whisper in the quiet between Caleb’s thoughts. Caleb froze, not entirely convinced he hadn’t manifested the words out of his own desires. “I know I am not much of an adventurer, and I paint a target on all of your backs by joining you but- if we survive this, I can’t fathom parting from you. You have already humbled me and grounded me- I will carry that forward and sleep in the dirt for the rest of my days if it will let me be by your side while you face these sorts of terrors. Don’t ask me to let you face this madness without me in the future.”

One of the devil’s managed to Dispel the protective shell and in the next moment the Mighty Nein surged into action to fight off the wave of attacks from every angle. It didn’t matter. Caleb lunged forward and crushed his mouth against Essek’s in a blind plea. The kiss was a promise- there was no time to languish in the emotions raging through him or to savor the feeling of finally pressing into Essek. There was no time to explore his taste or discover the subtleties of his mouth. It was a promise to stop running and stop making excuses. If they lived, they would start to live. He was pulling back almost as quickly as he had surged into it, gripping at Essek’s neck and staring into his eyes to proclaim everything the situation wasn’t giving them the opportunity to voice. Stay with me. I’ll fight the impossible to keep you with me.

“By ‘do something brainy’ I didn’t mean make out!” Beau shouted as she punched away a devil in a crackle of lightning. Jester sent snaking tendrils of necrosis through a separate devil with a gentle touch before shrieking “Fucking Tharizdun? Everything we all attempted and fucking Tharizdun was the one to finally get you two together? Fuck!”

There was no time to call back a jab. A devil broke through the ranks and slashed greedily at them, carving into Caleb’s arm and Essek’s chest before Fjord was running it through with Star Razor and flinging it aside. Verin’s echo was suddenly on their other side, slashing away another devil who nearly made it to them. The wounds were superficial, but were a warning that they needed to move.

“Let’s finish this,” Essek stated, covering the gash with a hand and briefly pressing his forehead to Caleb’s before holding the bead of iron in the air and leaving it there to rotate. While Caleb kept the Nein as close together as possible, Essek dragged an elaborate onyx ring through the fresh blood of his wound. It was so precise and minute that Caleb couldn’t see when Dark Star exploded, but magically he could sense the sudden ravenous hunger of crushing arcane energy in a pinpoint above them, perfectly nested in the iron bead.

“It is for all of Nature that we ask you help,” Caduceus said into the empty air at Essek’s nod. “I don’t really understand what we’re doing here, but if you can help us out, we could use the boost. I know our end goal is what you would want.”

The horrifying chamber, that until that moment held nothing but death and devils and screaming, suddenly stilled as dappled light filled the area. As if feeling an incoming god, the screeching from the portal intensified, waves of fear coming off it and shivering through the chamber’s occupants. Spurned by that energy, the devils made one final push, sinking teeth and claws and sword and spear into the Mighty Nein and Thelysses with renewed frenzied terror. It was not enough.

A warm breeze filled the chamber, clearing the miasma of blood and sweat as the small bead of iron flared into brilliant, blinding light. Caleb was working to swallow down his own panic as Essek closed his eyes against the glare and set aside any acknowledgement of the devil who currently had a blade in between his ribs. Spreading his hands, Essek froze the motif of the chamber. As if flipping through a book, he sifted through sequential realities, discarding each until the frame of their reality shifted slightly and settled. The emerging betrayer gods and melting fortress and mortal wounds most of them were sporting didn’t look like a victory, but the blind smile on Essek’s face was. Trusting that cue implicitly, Caleb teleported them all from the chamber.

---

The crash landing into the throne room was as sloppy as it was dramatic. The Bright Queen’s council, already looking terrified as their gazes were torn away from the raised mirror the Aurora Watch were proffering, rose half out of their seats in alarm. Quiet exclamations filled the chamber as the guards lining the room jolted forward while the Mighty Nein+ collapsed in a pile of limbs and muttered curses.

“There will be an explosion shortly,” Essek blurted out, shakily getting to his feet with the help of Caleb and Verin before Verin’s friends were around them in a clingy maelstrom of limbs and tears. Essek had absolutely nothing left in him to protest such an overt show of emotion in the middle of the High Council. He was so tired that it was nearly eclipsing the pain stabbing through his chest where the devil’s sword had just been. The simple process of standing sent a wave of dizziness and nausea through him.

The council’s responding silence was cavernous, though whether that was due to his proclamation or his appearance was unclear. Certainly the council had never seen Essek in such a state: feet not-so-firmly on the ground, blood matting his hair and clothing, posture slouched in exhaustion, and accepting aid from those around him. Before anyone could form a proper response, the promised explosion came, wildly thrashing the throne room and causing the pristine marble tiles to buckle and snap as several of the large glass windows shattered and a blinding light bloomed through the chamber. In the resultant clouds of dust, the silence was broken only by some ominous creaking overhead. The room’s occupants blinked in disorientation from where they had been thrown to the floor.

“Holy shit,” Veth said reverentially through the residual shock waves. Behind her, several pet chronurgists with questionable priorities started repairing the windows.

“Fluffernutter Nova,” Caleb proclaimed in an exhausted tone, giving a weak jazz hand with the limb that wasn’t helping Essek to his feet once more. Jester and Veth made cacophonous squawks of glee.

The Bright Queen straightened her crown with a hard set to her mouth. “Knowledge that that level of destruction was arcane does not leave this chamber,” she stated in an iron tone, bending each council and Aurora Watch member to her will with a heavy stare. “Shadowhand,” her face was severe among the shock and fear of the rest of the council. Ah, he really didn’t have the energy for this. “Explain.”

Essek tried to draw in a deep breath to compose himself but wow that hurt. There were countless layers of answers to the question the Bright Queen was asking, but Essek was seeing double and was having a good deal of trouble breathing appropriately, so she was going to have to be happy with blunt shorthand. There was something liberating about not dithering over his wording. In an undignified wheeze, he said, “That was part of the Penumbra Range collapsing. The ritual the Children were casting truly was to open a portal to Lolth, but there was an internal coup that instead converted the process to dragging up an Abyssal horror. The cause and effect here is unclear- I’m not certain if the Children’s hunger and greed drew the attention of this entity or if its influence drove their actions. My companions inform me it was an aspect of Tharizdun. Regardless, it and Lolth were fighting over entrance to the plane and even if the area of the portal hadn’t been choked by terror and unraveling reality, the flood of demons it brought with it wouldn’t let us near enough to attack. Dropping a mountain on it was the only action we could conceive of in the moment. It seemed the lesser of poor outcomes.” He honestly meant to say more, but the stabbing pain in his chest intensified to the point that he tapered off into a stifled cough. Blood dribbled down his chin. This was so embarrassing.

“With all due respect, Your Majesty,” Fjord said, limping forward and taking some of the focus off of Essek, bless him, “we are all quite injured from this endeavor. The Dumaran stronghold of the Children is gone, and for now we believe the threat from Tharizdun nullified. We will of course go into more detail at a future date- we have already voiced our concerns over this god’s growing influence; the ongoing threat is relevant to this entire plane, but by your leave I would like to stabilize my friends before a more comprehensive debriefing.”

The Bright Queen pierced the group with her stare for several more seconds. A bit more blood dribbled out of Essek’s mouth as his vision became grayer. He would no doubt hear about this social faux pas whenever he next regained consciousness.

“Skysybil?” The Bright Queen asked without looking away from the group in front of her.

Abrianna Mirimm straightened from where she was trying to free her robe from her gnarled legs. “Pah! I don’t know what more evidence you want. We saw through these whelps’ mirror what sort of nightmare was unfolding in that chamber,” she gestured carelessly to the Aurora Watch huddled amongst the Mighty Nein. “And it explains why the creatures that have been rearing up in the Ghostlands are twisted by a madness this land hasn’t seen since the great scarring.”

This was possibly the first time in council history Essek and the Skysybil had been in complete agreement. He would have luxuriated in it more if he wasn’t preoccupied with being suffocated by what was likely a punctured lung.

“Deirta?” The Bright Queen continued to question.

“It would account for what we have unearthed in Deeprive Mine thus far,” Essek’s mother spoke smoothly, as composed as ever despite her necklace being caught in her hair after falling. “The damage done there is more than we’ve seen the Children of Malice capable of. Fear and madness were driving out the creatures of the Underdark. The attack was one of desperation, not coordination, and fits well into this narrative.”

The Bright Queen’s weighty silences were really becoming annoying, Essek reflected, as passing out in the throne room was transitioning from possibility to inevitability. In the next moment, Verin gently shifted Essek’s weight entirely onto Caleb and gave a snapping military bow.

“As Fjord said, the current threat has been neutralized. Further discussion right now is causing active harm to those who valiantly protected this city. By your leave, we will care for our wounded and reconvene at another time.” It was so uncharacteristically confrontational of him to talk to superiors in this manner that Essek felt a stab of pride. No. That was probably still his ribs actually.

“Go then, but mind your tone, Taskhand. None of you are to leave the city until this matter and that explosion are discussed further.” This was the last thing Essek registered the Bright Queen saying.

The following events were a blur. It seemed as if someone had been recruited to make a portal to the Xhorhaus (a bit wasteful, but who was he to complain?), as when Essek was finally able to breathe again it was in the Nein’s common room, his head on Caleb’s lap and Caduceus’s magic swirling like a cool breeze around the group. Everything- everything- hurt. There was the bitter tang of a healing potion and the murmured apologies of the exhausted clerics, followed by the rich flavor of a broth and Verin’s supporting strength. There was his muzzy acquiescence to a bath where the majority of the time he simply pressed his face into Caleb’s neck and contemplated how much of a waste it was he could not properly appreciate all of the pale glistening skin on display. There was a cool press of lips to his forehead, more soothing than all the previous magic combined. And then there was sleep.

Chapter Text

When Essek next woke, he had no notion of how much time had passed. What he did know was there was a pleasant weightiness to his limbs and no pain associated with the gigantic yawn that tremored through every muscle in his body. He was in a bed, which was a significant improvement from the past several days. Best of all, his reserves of magic once more buzzed just under his skin. He inhaled deeply, pleased to be greeted by the warm scent of Caleb’s skin.

Caleb gave a sleepy mumble at Essek’s shifting and rolled over to splay on top of him, nose pressing into the crook of Essek’s neck with a warm exhale that sent tingles racing all the way down to Essek’s fingertips. After a moment’s hesitation, Essek wormed his arms out from Caleb’s deadweight to encircle his shoulders and pull him closer. Caleb’s mumbling continued, low enough and slurred enough it wasn’t even clear what language he was speaking. Essek was so charmed he didn’t fight the grin that split across his face. He waited for the panic bred from this sort of intimacy to set in, but found it was only a quiet contentment that was gripping him.

Oh.

Essek wriggled around to give a reciprocal nuzzle into Caleb’s neck, overwhelmed by how relieved he was that Caleb was safe, warm, and in his grasp. A judgmental voice at the back of his mind was chiding him for how foolish and selfish it was to allow himself this pleasure. He promptly snuffed that voice out with the image of Caleb, desperate and beautiful amid a field of demons and the clouds of their own improbable magic. Their survival seemed like a fluke in retrospect, and while that should have filled him with crippling terror, it was instead oddly inspiring. There would always be some personal hurdle he felt he had yet to clear, or some benchmark he had yet to reach before he deserved this. In the meantime, Caleb had amply proven his ability to perish in literally any conflict. If there was anything that could add to Essek’s already substantial regret, it would be missing the opportunity of a partnership with Caleb due to cowardice and self-flagellation. Here, in the safety of the Xhorhaus, in the relative acceptance of the Nein, he could set aside the tally of what he owed and what he deserved to simply embrace the monumental swell of emotion he was feeling. Essek couldn’t help but press further into Caleb and kiss shakily along his jaw at the revelation.

Caleb’s mumbling took a warmer, interested timbre before his eyes blinked open to a muted blue still unfocused with sleep. They regarded each other for a quiet, indeterminate moment before Caleb leaned forward, once more pressing a kiss to Essek forehead in a gesture that was becoming familiar enough to settle him in a fundamental way. Caleb exhaled softly, as if acknowledging he was about to take a step outside of their regular bounds, before drifted down to kiss at Essek’s cheek. Essek could feel the curve of Caleb’s smile as it skimmed across his skin before the man gave a playful peck on the tip of his nose. Then carefully, purposefully, Caleb shifted to hover over Essek’s lips, leaving the final breath of distance to Essek’s consent. Leaning in to close it was unconscious and gravitational.  

It was the antithesis of their first kiss. The press of Caleb’s mouth was so soft and lingering that something unspooled in Essek. He thought perhaps this was what home was meant to feel like. It was effortless to sink deeper into each other, chasing the tingling pleasure of each other’s lips and tongues as they woke up together, savoring the silence but for the slick sounds of their mouths. Caleb’s latent magic caressed Essek’s in a gentle give and take that mirrored their lips with a sparking arcane thrum. Essek was too drunk on affection and incipient desire to bother naming the tide of emotion coursing through him.

It was sheer instinct to arch into Caleb as, after a muzzy “guten morgen”, his mouth tracked down Essek’s neck. Caleb’s soft lips and scratching stubble paired with the sensation of their bodies dragging against each other to shake something loose inside Essek. Small sounds kept escaping him; where once they would have been calculated, they were now involuntary and mildly embarrassing if he had any inclination to think about it. He did not.

A soft nip of Caleb’s teeth coincided with a grinding of his hips and Essek gave a surprised gasp at the pulse of longing that trembled down to his toes, as foreign as it was exhilarating. He shifted his hips, restlessly chasing after the firm line of Caleb’s cock. Caleb huffed a warm breath of laughter into the tender skin at the base of his neck. Essek’s reprimanding swat to Caleb’s backside was all bluff and favorably received as Caleb twitched against him, separated only by the thin material of their sleeping pants.

“Is this okay?” Caleb asked, drawing back just enough to look earnestly into Essek’s eyes. His huge pupils and swollen lips were a thing of dreams. “It- I need you to be honest with me on this.”

Centered from his earlier silent epiphany, Essek needed none of his previous mental conditioning to respond truthfully, “More than okay, if it is what you want as well.” His fingers could not stop moving, tracing the smooth curve of Caleb’s ear, the arc of his eyebrow, the proud sweep of his nose.

“Ja, yes, yep, absolutely,” Caleb replied with an enthusiasm that startled a laugh out of Essek. Fighting off a grin, Essek recaptured Caleb’s mouth and sucked lightly on his tongue while unlacing the front of his undershirt. Caleb’s hair was a halo of red as the shirt was tugged over his head and lobbed blindly into the middle of the room. Struck dumb by that expanse of pale skin, Essek moved helplessly to lick and bite a broad swathe across Caleb’s collarbone while blindly toying with the edge of his pants. Caleb’s approval came in small, breathless bursts, his meaning still trapped within Zemnian.  Fingers trembling with anticipation, Essek inched the pants down Caleb’s thighs, hands tracing the soft dips and swells of Caleb’s legs as he went. Caleb restlessly kicked off the material once they made it beyond his knees as Essek’s fingers resettled in the grooves of his hips. Quietly overwhelmed, they took a moment to simply pant a shared breath. It was a heady sensation to feel Caleb’s muscles tremor and twitch, to know that Essek was the cause of that cut off whine. In the next moment, Caleb’s shaking fingers tugged gently at Essek’s garments. A pause, then more insistent tugging. The quiet of the room then filled with heartfelt cursing as one of the most brilliant men Essek knew was thwarted by Dynasty sartorial trends. Failing to hide his laughter, Essek barely managed to undo the offending knots before the pants and tunic were shucked into the corner of the room and Caleb pinned Essek to the bed in an electric drag of skin.

Essek had shamefully extensive plans for how to slowly unravel Caleb’s control. How to have Caleb begging for release and confessing Essek was the best he’d ever had. Essek had the training and skill to make it a reality. He had the focus and patience. He had a mental flowchart. Much like his goals for suave courtship, these plans went immediately out the window. Both of Essek’s hands found their way to Caleb’s bare ass and dragged him forward into a toe-curling slide of cocks that had them both swearing. It was not with Essek’s envisioned sly poise that he thrusted up to meet Caleb; while their kissing turned wet and filthy, half open-mouthed sucking and half ragged panting, his body surged on its own accord into a desperate, mindless grinding.

“Exemplary. A natural talent,” Caleb praised between kisses, a teasing echo of Essek’s own encouragement during some of their earliest dunamancy sessions. Essek was going to take this man apart and lick into the crevasses of every single one of his idiosyncrasies.

“I’m a big learner. I’m very interested in tutelage in this field,” Essek parroted back with muffled laughter while hooking a leg around the back of Caleb’s knee and shivering through the pleasure that angle brough. The muscles of Caleb’s legs flexed in Essek’s grasp. In the next moment, Essek was exhaling a soft curse into Caleb’s neck at feeling the warm dribble of Caleb’s precum joining his own to slick their movements.

“Show me. Show me something impressive,” Caleb groaned into his ear, still stealing Essek’s previous words from him while snaking a hand between them to encircle them both. Essek threw his head back, choking down a cry and staring blindly at the ceiling as he felt his body come alive. It was getting harder to keep the plot of this conversation.

“That is for after the warm-up,” Essek gasped, breaking the script and sliding his hands upwards to sink into the sweat-darkened strands of Caleb’s red hair. “Here, now, I just want to feel you. We’ll need to relocate if you want me to make you scream.”

Caleb smothered a burst of Zemnian into Essek’s shoulder before biting gently at the skin there. Essek’s fingers tightened, clenching into Caleb’s hair. Seeming to light up with the rough handling, Caleb’s lips tracked greedily across Essek’s chest, tracing a wandering trail of fire from Essek’s clavicle down to his navel. With a look up through his lashes, Caleb dipped his head and managed to press the flat of his tongue against the straining head of Essek’s dick before Essek was frantically crooking his finger, dragging Caleb back up his body with a thread of gravity.

“Fuck,” Caleb whined, eloquent.

“I cannot stress enough how very onboard I am with that plan, slyan'ssun,” Essek murmured into the warm heat of Caleb’s waiting mouth, “but I am embarrassingly close already and will not survive that right now.”

“Same. Same. Gods, I can’t- ” Caleb turned his head to lick a stripe up his own palm before his hand was back around them both in a sudden punch of pleasure. In their next shared breath, his tongue plunged back into Essek’s mouth. The wet sound of their kiss was drowned out by the slick noise of Caleb’s frantic, accelerated pace on them.

Their previous banter evaporated into sharp gasps and muted cursing. Essek lost himself in the thrusting of tongues and hips until he had to break away to pull in a lungful of air. His blood felt molten as his hands scraped desperately across Caleb’s skin, grasping for some sort of tether as pleasure coiled tightly in his groin and he thrusted with syncopated desperation into Caleb’s fist.

Essek’s previous plans had been pretentious and stupid. This was perfect. Oh, this was perfect. Essek never wanted to be anywhere other than here with this man and his hands and his glorious body-

“Essek, I-” Caleb’s strained voice snapped the very last threads of control Essek held.

“Do it, come on then, let me see-” Essek babbled, yanking Caleb in for a final sloppy kiss before pulling back to watch Caleb’s eyes squeeze shut. Caleb’s choked groan was all Essek needed- he was lost, shaking apart in tandem with Caleb as a breathless, clenching rush shuddered through his body. Essek bit at his fist to stifle a cry while they spilled their releases in broad pulsing stripes across his bare stomach and chest, wave after wave blocking out all sensation but the ecstasy of Caleb, Caleb.

Essek was lightheaded and nearly liquid by Caleb’s final thrust, incapable of anything more than clinging desperately to Caleb’s sweat slicked back and drowning in an experience he had never enjoyed previously. For a moment, all that existed was the singing euphoria in his veins and the chorus of their ragged breathing. In the next, Caleb collapsed on top of him, driving the air from his newly healed chest with a soft “oof.”

“Gods,” Caleb said at length.

Essek let out a quiet, giddy noise.

Caleb shakily pushed himself up on his forearms and studied Essek’s face, looking flushed and pleased as his vibrant hair draped over one shoulder. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you giggle.”

“This is not giggling,” Essek murmured, dragging Caleb back down so he could bury his face into his neck. Essek felt liable to combust with fondness. “This is…microlaughter.”

“Mhm,” Caleb agreed, patronizingly, into his hair. Essek bit him in retaliation.

Caleb’s soft laughter was the music he had waited a century for. Rolling them, Essek sat up to perch on Caleb’s lap and appreciate the complete mess he had made of the man in that brief and frenzied timeframe. Prestidigitation cleaned up the worst of it, but Caleb’s pale skin was still a patchwork of red bites, scratches, and a flush spanning from cheeks to groin. Essek was finally able to brazenly take in the sight he presented: beautiful constellations of freckles across his body, lean lines of his limbs, scars that stood as testament to all he had weathered and conquered. Essek wanted to taste every inch of that glowing skin, wanted to bury his nose in the auburn hair spanning Caleb’s chest, wanted to suck Caleb down his throat until he felt him grow hard once more. As if the rushed hand job had expelled all his insecurities leading up to this, Essek openly looked and wanted. Caleb’s eyes were bright as they traced the movement of Essek’s tongue where it flicked over his fangs.

“Gods,” Caleb repeated, momentarily covering his eyes with a hand. “You are going to ruin me with that look. Do you even know what a vision you are right now?” He removed the hand to trace his thumb across one of Essek’s flushed cheeks before combing back Essek’s sweaty hair. “You are the most beautiful, breathtaking-” Caleb cut himself off with a groan, sitting up to bring them chest to chest before kissing frantically across Essek’s nose, cheeks, ear- oh. Being pressed together, Caleb surely felt the effect of sucking Essek’s ear tip into his mouth. Essek once more hid his face in Caleb’s neck, astounded he could still be embarrassed at this point. Caleb let out a desperate stream of Zemnian before leaning back and cupping Essek’s face. “I want to- the things- if you knew-” he stopped, swallowed, took a breath.

“There is so much I wish yet to do,” Caleb restarted, more resolute. Slowly, a true smile dawned across his face and Essek tumbled through the vertigo he felt at being the cause of that expression. Said smile turned lopsided and brash as Essek shifted hopefully in his lap. “That, certainly. That, for a solid day or two if I’m being honest. I need to redeem myself for how quickly that ended. But I think it is perhaps time we be explicitly clear about what we hope to be for one another, because I want…” he tapered off for a moment. Strangely enough, Essek felt no reservations over a discussion. He was luxuriating in the budding hope that he and Caleb, for all the associated complexities, may want the same thing. Within that period of jittery introspection, Caleb’s expression had gone oddly serious. “And you deserve to know something of my past before you sully yourself too thoroughly with me.”

That was patently ridiculous, especially given that Caleb had full knowledge of Essek’s own dirty laundry. In a rare moment of emotional intuition, however, Essek remained silent. Despite the immediate offended protest he felt on Caleb’s behalf, this was clearly a deep-seated insecurity. For the time being he would have to be content with Caleb wishing to share it. He could voice his unwavering devotion once Caleb had said his piece so it wouldn’t feel like a dismissal. His fingers traced Caleb’s sharp jawline as he gave a single, encouraging nod.

“In any case,” Caleb continued in a forced lighter tone as he caught Essek’s hand and pressed a kiss to his fingertips, “let’s have a conversation, which I fully intend to supplement with sexual favors to get my way. The Xhorhaus is certainly not the place for it though. What would you prefer? My construct, or-”

“My towers,” Essek said decisively, heart fluttering from all the promise in Caleb’s statement. “I have a lot of fantasies I need to get out of my system, Caleb Widogast.” Caleb’s laughter was louder and richer than any Essek had heard from him before. Something in Essek’s chest fractured in the best possible way.

“Come on then, let’s find our friends before they find us. A brief check in and then we can make our escape, hm?”

“I have absolutely no concept of how long we slept. Will they be awake?”

Caleb’s eyes turned to amused little crescents. “We slept a little under thirty hours. It is currently 10:47am.”

Essek should have probably had some sort of crisis over the fact he had slept through more than a solid day. He instead decided to be disproportionately aroused by the fact Caleb’s incredible mind kept time down to the minute and elected to make out about it. Laughing as he was tumbled back into the pillows, Caleb indulged Essek until they were both groaning in frustration and pulling away to stave off another round of desperate grinding. The concept of dressing had never seemed so arduous.

They were so close to managing restraint. They almost achieved pants before Essek’s awkward, aroused shimmying apparently did something for Caleb and he found himself on his back, legs over Caleb’s shoulders and once more biting at his fist in an effort to stay quiet as Caleb swallowed him down. The image of Caleb bobbing between his legs coupled with the talented dexterity of Caleb’s mouth concluded that round with barely better endurance than their first go, but it was difficult to feel self-conscious when Caleb followed immediately after, pressing a cry into Essek’s stomach with cum-covered lips as he spilled, untouched, onto the already wrecked bedsheets. Essek clutched Caleb to him for a moment, voicing a dazed stream-of-consciousness to the ceiling about what a magnificent individual Caleb was in every regard. He only tapered off to drag Caleb up his body so he could press sucking kisses along Caleb’s jaw and stroke the remainder of his orgasm from him.

Eventually giving in to Caleb’s hypersensitive whines, Essek laid back and admired his mess of a hand before doing another round of Prestidigitation to make up for lost ground. It had considerably more groping than was necessary for the somatic component, which Caleb had the audacity to chide him for before pinching his nipple. The hypocrisy.  

Even Prestidigitation had its limits, however, and likely nothing short of Seeming would hide what they had been up to. Caleb waved away the offer when Essek made it while shrugging on his tunic.

“They’ll know,” Caleb explained, finally tucking himself into a pair of pants. Essek immediately felt bereft. “They have a sixth sense for this sort of thing. We may as well weather the teasing now so we can get on with our, ah, research.”

Essek stood and pulled him in for another kiss, enjoying the blank stupidity Caleb’s mouth instilled in him so he didn’t panic over the upcoming judgment of the rest of the Nein. “Must we? Yes, yes, I know you’re right. I suppose I’ll put up with group harassment if it gets me inside of you sooner.” Caleb let out a hoarse noise that wasn’t an actual word but had an obvious sentiment. “Or you inside me? I’m flexible, really.” Caleb shifted back into hopeless, mumbled Zemnian as he pressed into the skin of Essek’s neck where the tunic had slipped. The warmth of Caleb’s breath was a pleasant tingle against the raw ache there.

“I worry we’ll never make it out of this room if you aren’t gagged,” Caleb finally managed to rasp in a shared tongue.

“Promises,” Essek quipped, and was promptly toppled into the nightstand with the force of Caleb’s kiss.

“I am up for a lot,” Caleb panted in between the bruising press of his lips, “but maybe not exhibitionism for our friends. At some point they will come to investigate.” He rolled his hips, completely counter to the argument he was trying to make. “So if you please, Herr Thelyss, can you stop trying to ring my soul out through my dick so we can go get some damn breakfast?”

Essek gave a long lick from collarbone to the hinge of Caleb’s jaw before purring directly into Caleb’s ear, “I’m not above getting you riled up to get my way, and I know exactly how to do so. I have so much high quality parchment waiting in my towers that you can have access to if we get out of here right now.”

“Is that so?” Caleb asked, tone interested and eyes bright as he leaned back before he caught Essek’s wicked expression. “Cruel and low-handed,” Caleb lamented, spinning him around and swatting at his ass. Essek diplomatically swallowed down his pleased groan. “Stop dirty-talking me and go…comb your hair or something. Put on pants. I’m going to go dunk my head in water before I discover how many orgasms I can have in a row at this stage in my life.”

“A whole library of personally curated books,” Essek called over his shoulder, easily dodging Caleb’s thrown pillow with a bubble of laughter before catching Caleb’s focused, heated look. That was Caleb going on the offensive. Oh dear.

“Give me a few hours with your collection- if I read them but once, I can memorize them for my tower library. They will be in my mind and at your fingertips wherever we go.”

Fuck.

A low ache of desire reverberated through him as Essek made a strangled noise and a strategic retreat for pants. He was fairly certain Caleb was laughing at him but was too desperate to hide just how cripplingly attractive he found Caleb’s mind to care. It was unsurprising that Caleb had already inferred this weakness.

Cowed, Essek went about secured his clothing. In the room’s mirror, he admired the blooms of color across his exposed skin, hues of waning sunset that were far above the paygrade of artful makeup application. There was no salvaging that situation, so he instead divided his time between arranging his hair and touching at the marks with more microlaughter.

Once they were both fully clothed (scarved in Caleb’s case, the lucky bastard), more presentable, and able to manage minimal additional fondling, they made their way to the common room where the rest of the group was setting up for brunch. Fjord and Jester looked up from where they were putting out place settings. The relief on Jester’s face was surprisingly sweet. “Oh! You two are finally up! We were starting to worr- ohmygod.” Jester did a quick double take before stage-whispering, “Caleb, you are smiling. Like, a whole lot actually. Are you okay?” Her attention swung to Essek and a distinctly feline grin spread across her face. Essek could not be held responsible for the state of his face or what she was deducing from it. She abruptly raised a finger and poked him in the neck.

“Ow!”

“Is that a drow hickey?” Jester asked, delighted.

“Weneednapkins,” Fjord proclaimed, fleeing.

Verin came out of the kitchen then, nimbly avoiding Fjord in his mad dash while balancing a combination of chopsticks, cutlery, and a container of syrup. Having caught the end of Jester’s question, he squinted at the skin Essek hastily slapped a hand over. “Hm. That portion is drow beard burn I think. The hickey is below it.”

“Can we not?” Essek growled to the general delight of the room which now included a nosily interested Veth and Beau. Despite knowing it was coming, the ramping humiliation made Essek’s fingers itch to cast Teleport.

“Shit, do you guys need us to grab Cad?” Beau asked, clearly delighted. “It looks like you got into quite the tussle there. Hey babe!” she called over her shoulder into the kitchen, “Caleb and Essek may be having kinkier sex than us and I won’t stand for that! Let’s get freaky after some grub!”

“Okay!” Yasha called back. It was naturally during this exchange that Essek had the unwelcomed discovery the Aurora Watch was in the Xhorhaus. Verin’s group popped out of the kitchen, laden with baked goods, only to freeze in shocked silence. Well, four of them froze as stoic, flat-faced Calzen simply gave a thumbs up and declared evenly, “nice.”

“Alright, let’s stop harassing them and let them eat,” Veth said mildly. “They need to replenish their already minimal strength.”

“Very thoughtful of you,” Caleb stated dryly. “Is there anything we can help with?”

“No, food’s up. Sit, sit,” Caduceus commanded, bringing out the final platter. “Let’s enjoy a meal and celebrate all of us being here and in one piece.”

Yasha joined them, still sporting a tiny pink apron over her regular leathers. “Yes, to family, friends, and continuing to survive that dickbag of a god.”

“Here here!” Jester cheered, raising a breakfast milkshake.

After the toast, the table devolved into a warm bedlam of multiple conversations shared over good food. Out of eyeline, Caleb threaded his fingers with Essek’s and Essek felt his face heat as he stared down into his omelet. Despite this, he gave a gentle squeeze back and was consumed by such a catastrophic happiness that he felt as if he would vibrate out of his chair. Looking up, Veth was rolling her eyes and Verin was sending pained looks to Igug. Well, fuck them very much. Essek brazenly kissed Caleb on the cheek and offered him a bite of omelet, which Caleb accepted with only moderate fellating of the proffered chopsticks. The discordant ribbing that erupted from the table was worth it for getting to watch Caleb’s face glow with a large, tight-lipped smile while he chewed.

It was a strange sensation to settle into the teasing and feel the affection behind it. Instead of humiliation, it was starting to feel like acceptance. Like family. He glanced sideways at Caleb, finally understanding his faith in the response from the rest of the Nein. Caleb caught his look and rubbed a thumb over his wrist before turning to Beau to childishly mirror back the grotesque expressions she was making. She had no leg to stand on considering she had migrated into Yasha’s lap. The affection Essek felt for this entire group was unbearable.

All too soon, they were groaning from full stomachs and the knowledge they would have to start going about their obligations for the day.

“The Bright Queen dismissed our group back Bazzoxan after our debrief,” Igug said with uncharacteristic moroseness as they all stood from the table. “Who would have thought the concept of returning to Bazzoxan would seem boring? We’ll probably head out after finishing up a project this morning though. I was told to pass along that the Queen has granted another two days of rest to you all but has issued an audience the day after tomorrow for your debriefing.” That was unusually accommodating of her. Essek wondered who the guiding influence behind that was and what their motives were. He was then struck by how little he had missed the court machinations.

The air became more somber as the Nein walked the Aurora Watch to the door. Essek cleared his throat, taking in the awkward shuffling and hopeful looks the Aurora Watch were giving instead of leaving. He hated goodbyes and the anticipation of grand gestures. He always felt inadequate in what he said, but these people were important to Verin so he at least owed them the effort. “I wanted to thank you all, for everything you did for us during this trip. I haven’t forgotten I still owe you all a conversation on cross-disciplinary dunamacy in the future. I would like to think us…friends after this ordeal.” Essek focused on keeping his voice level and not lifting into a question. He still didn’t fully understand how this usually worked. Proposing friendship felt like laying himself emotionally bare- before the Nein he had barely had colleagues. The silence was resounding. This was so stupid. Why had he even-

Viedrar gave an exuberant shout and launched themselves into Essek’s personal space, briefly squeezing the breath out of him before jolting back to drag Essek through complicated series of handshakes and fist bumps while proclaiming “we just won at adventuring!”

Aulanonia, looking mortified, hissed “be cool!” at their side before she haltingly reached out to pat Essek on the shoulder, immediately snatched her hand back with a squeak, and turned to run into the doorframe before fleeing into the Rosohnan streets.

Calzen, looking generally underwhelmed, just sighed and pulled a book out of his satchel that he passed to Essek before following Aulanonia’s flight path with a “have fun, be seeing you.” Essek glanced down to read “Bezzrima’s Brilliant Bondage Techniques” before dropping the book on the floor in alarm.

“As you can see, we curate awkward drow, so you’ll fit right in,” Igug stated. Where once Essek would have been incensed by the audacity of that statement, he found now he was just relieved at the light teasing. “We’re stoked to have your friendship. Come by our house next to the cursed temple sometime and unwind. We’ve enjoyed this.” Grabbing a still-manic Viedrar by the back of the neck, he followed the others out into the street.

An’rak was too busy being gently and kindly turned down by Caduceus to contribute to the theatrics of her group. She extended an invitation to a recurring networking gathering between Lens operatives and outpost soldiers should he change his mind, which Caduceus simply blinked in confusion at and responded “networking?”. Essek had never seen a bugbear look so smitten.

An’rak’s parting farewell to Essek was an afterthought as she followed her group, glancing over her shoulder longingly. It was refreshing to see Verin very clearly laughing at someone other than him.

“Your friends are… a lot,” Essek stated in the resulting silence.

“Are you serious right now?” Verin responded with a pointed look around the collected Nein.

Caduceus smiled warmly at the brothers. “Such happiness is always a gift. I wonder, though, if you would allow us to keep you for a bit longer, Verin? The roof top garden needs some weeding. Would you mind helping with that?”  

“…What?” Verin asked, clearly caught off guard by the request. With a building giddiness, Essek realized he understood Caduceus’s motivation. It was a morning of firsts.

“I can’t promise we’ll do a good job, but we are of course happy to help,” Essek replied. Caduceus smiled brightly, pleased by a student’s progress, and ushered them up to the roof while the rest of the Nein started to clean up.

“Feel free to use any of the tools in the chest,” Caduceus invited before abandoning them to the task.

“What?” Verin asked again, flummoxed, as Essek rooted around in the supplies and pulled out two trowels. He had no idea what one used to weed. He passed a trowel to Verin.

“What?” Verin asked once more, a tinge of desperation sneaking into his voice as he clutched at the trowel like a lifeline.

“Caduceus once told me you have to accept family for the root system it is. Nourishment comes from the rhizomes.”

Verin stared at him blankly. “What does that even mean? Did you quite literally fuck your brains out? Start making sense!”

Essek turned to the closest flower bed to hide his smile. It was surprisingly entertaining to be on the other side of the cryptic comments. There was a non-zero chance Caduceus was constantly and cordially punking everyone around him for his own amusement.

Seeming to give up on general understanding, Verin plunked himself in front of the flower bed and started awkwardly scraping at the dirt. His silence lasted for all of a minute and a half.

“So,” Verin said conversationally, “I never thought your type would be ‘human’.”

“Excuse me?” Essek’s trowel went clattering down onto the small stone walkway in a spray of dirt before he got ahold of himself. He focused on levitating the trowel back up into his hand instead of devolving into further verbal flailing. This was not the topic he had been anticipating. “No. We are not having this conversation.”

“Big, burly humans-”

“Caleb has never been referred to a burley in his life-”

“To sweep you up in rippling, muscular arms-”

“I will reduce everything you love to dust-”

“And all that hair-”

Essek sent a curtain of dirt crashing over Verin. The only thing that accomplished was heartfelt laughter and garnishing Verin’s hair with a limp purple weed. Essek wished the embarrassment he was feeling was enough to drown out the pleasure of hearing that sound from Verin.

“It’s not,” Essek said as last of Verin’s snickers tapered out. He couldn’t say what masochistic urge moved him to continue the conversation. He stared resolutely at the task before him, forgoing his magic to gently untangle a mass of roots that were choking out some of the nightblooms. Dirt smeared his hands. It was refreshing.

“Hm?”

“My type isn’t human. It is quite specifically Caleb.”

Verin regarded him for a moment before letting out a huff of breath. “Oh.” He took another moment to process that before ramping back up into the forced bluster that was as much a mask as Essek’s icy reserve. “You hopeless bastard! With how you’re talking I’m going to have to give him The Talk, and then his crazy family is going to bully me. You are the worst.”

“I really do not require-”

“No, I’m gonna do it,” Verin said over the top of him, slinging an arm over Essek’s shoulders and squishing mud into his clothing in the process. The muscles in Essek’s neck reflexively tightened, but after a moment of contemplation, he didn’t shrug him off. “How do you want me to run interference on Mom?” Verin asked in a quiet, more sincere tone. Essek glanced up, surprised. “I don’t want to wing it and fuck this up for you. You probably already have a plan in place, so lay it on me.”

Essek swallowed thickly and rubbed at the aching point on his chest. It was exhausting, just how much he was being made to feel today. Managing to get himself under control, he replied, “I will need to face her myself, but I appreciate the offer. You needn’t worry about controlling Viedrar though. The city having knowledge of this may make things easier.”

“Eh? You… know what that’s gonna do to your reputation, right? Like, no one is gonna cower in your presence after hearing you’re a hopeless romantic.”

It was too complicated (and also too mortifying) to try to explain the romanticism was incidental. It wasn’t Essek’s fault that his society fetishized the trust and partnership that was imperative to him and Caleb having any sort of functional relationship. Their shared history demanded it. Moving past that. “Trust me,” he said simply, inadequate.

Verin stared at him another moment before snorting and turning back to the flower bed. “You know what is ridiculous? I do. Consider it done, you weirdo. I’m… um, glad that’s what you want, by the way. It feels a bit safer to tell you now: your battlefield human smooch was aired to the entire high council via communication mirror. Soooooo… that wildfire has already been set.”

This will hopefully only help in my entreaty to mother, Essek tried to remind himself while he felt as if he were mentally shriveling. Maybe now was the time to become a fugitive of the nation. Everyone would drop the beacon suspicions with the correct assumption that his defection was secondary to the embarrassment of broadcasting his relationship to the Bright Queen’s council. He shepherded some small, bioluminescent grubs to the base of the nightblooms just to feel in control of something.

Abruptly, amidst his embarrassment, the absurdity of wasting this time on insects and relationship talk struct Essek. He knew he would need to be less of a coward if he wanted to survive staying with the Mighty Nein, yet here he was squandering the opportunity Caduceus had given them because he didn’t want to break the tenuous truce he and Verin seemed to have formed. Well, Verin deserved better than that and it was time Essek acknowledged that. He set down his trowel deliberately and turned to Verin, who in that short timeframe had managed to somehow get covered in more dirt and plant detritus. Essek took a breath and pushed forward.

“I will deal with the results of my actions, don’t worry yourself. I always have. And to that point, my isolation from the Den…It was never about you, you know.” He needed to come to terms with the fact this may be his last chance to clear the air with Verin, and he wasn’t going to waste it on building-top aesthetics. Verin deserved better than the family he had been dealt, but Essek could at least start making amends for his own role in that trauma. “There is nothing wrong with your job or your interests or your strengths. I am… glad you have found your niche and people who properly appreciate you. My distancing from you was complicated and self-centered, but it was never anything you had done. Someday, if it is ever safe to do so, I will give you a full explanation, but I want you to at least know that much. I am sorry for what I put you through, these past decades. I was glad to have you with me on this journey.”

Verin was staring at him, mouth slightly agape, trowel slipping from his limp fingers. Essek really was a despicable person to elicit such a response with a simple apology. In the next moment, he was being tackled into the dirt. His first thought was it was a well-deserved if belated pummeling. Instead, it turned out to be just an overly aggressive hug.

“Why does it sound like you are saying goodbye, asshole?” Verin asked wetly, giving another squeeze before he pushed back and sat up, wiping at his nose. “Ugh, I’m blinded by the massive hickey under your ear. It is really ruining the moment.”

Ignoring that. “I’m not certain when or if we will see each other again. You’ve seen the sort of mayhem the Mighty Nein get up to. If it is at all within my power, I hope to travel with them and aid them moving forward.”

“Of course you do,” Verin replied with a crooked smile. “However much you like to call yourself a coward, you have always been drawn to reckless and dangerous magic. Now there are two of you and I can only be grateful you are also inheriting a group of babysitters with Caleb.”

Babysitters. As if the rest of the Nein weren’t even worse than he and Caleb were. That wasn’t the point though. “I hardly think you have room to cast judgment about seeking out danger. Considering where we are both heading after this, I just felt it necessary to ensure you know that… that you are important to me. Ah, I really hate this. Let’s not speak of it further.”

Verin of course spoke the same language, having grown up in the same household, and understood what Essek was struggling to say. “No no, I’m going to get a mirror enchanted for you before I leave to sync up with my main contact. I am going to call you nightly to check in on you and let you know I care about you.”

“You will not. I will throw it in a river.”

“You will not, and you’ll suffer through my brotherly affections because you owe me.”

Essek gave a frustrated huff. “Whoever said you weren’t conniving enough for this family?”

Verin’s grin was brilliant. “Some idiot. You, if memory serves. Now, I think we’ve done a suitably horrendous job weeding so let’s get you back to your future in-laws. I am not joking about the mirror. I’ll need to leave here pretty soon if I want to get that commissioned before heading back to Bazzoxan.” He dusted off his hands on his pants before standing and hoisting Essek to his feet effortlessly. “And for the record, I forgive you. Of course I forgive you. Oh gods. Don’t-” he yanked Essek forward into an clumsy final hug as Essek’s vision blurred. “Don’t cry, you disaster. What sort of big brother are you? This past week has obliterated your coolness factor in my eyes.”

Essek couldn’t help the choked laughter as he patted awkwardly at Verin’s back.

“I am going to be really pissed off if you leave me alone with our stifling family. Our older siblings suck, so don’t die, okay?” Verin asked.

“Same to you,” Essek responded. He pulled back, taking a moment to take in his brother’s face. “I’m glad we both tried to honeypot a possessed cult leader. Worth it.”

Verin bellowed with laughter. “Yeah. Yeah, it sure was. Fuck. I need to go punch something to decompress. Give my regards to your found family and your… Caleb, I can’t deal with any more emotion this morning.”

Before Essek could protest any of that, Verin manifested an echo, sent it scuttling down to street level, and teleported to its location. The echo, now on the roof, gave a brief salute and dispersed into the wind. And people called Essek dramatic.

Essek stared down at his clothes under the glow of the massive tree, now completely covered in dirt. He raised a hand to once more do some morning prestidigitation only to abort the gesture. The Nein would no doubt enjoy this image of him, and it was an excellent excuse to introduce Caleb to the shower system back at his towers.

As he slopped back down the stairs, Essek was greeted by terribly offkey music playing. Caleb’s voice was barely distinguishable over the top of it.

“-going to show me his library,” Caleb was saying cheerfully from where he and Beau stood at the sink, both sopping wet and red faced like squabbling toddlers. Caduceus was managing all the siblings this morning apparently.

“It is disturbing how turned on you are by that and yet I can’t tell if you are speaking in innuendo or not,” Beau griped back. Caleb simply raised his eyebrows with a smug expression while Beau groaned loudly. “Playful, post-coital you is breaking my brain. Stop. Caduceus, make him stop.”

Caduceus, for whatever reason not partaking in the cacophony with his awful flute, looked up and caught sight of Essek. “Ah, perhaps Mr. Caleb can continue exploring his brighter feelings in some other location?”

That got the rest of the Nein’s attention, who took in Essek’s appearance with the anticipated mirth.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Veth asked. “Do drow have a different meaning of weeding?”

“We were very thorough,” Essek replied, non-committal. “I am going to head back home to clean up, however. Caleb, you are welcome to join me if you would like.”

Caleb gave a pleased hum and flung a sodden dishtowel into Beau’s face before heading over to Essek’s side.

“Don’t forget your book!” Jester called, lobbing over Bezzrima’s unsolicited sexual advice. “We’ll anticipate meeting up before we see the Bright Queen, but have fuuuuun until then!” Fjord was doing his best to get swallowed by the couch cushions right next to her. Essek felt a moment of solidarity, seeing someone else who was suffering as much as Essek was with this level of candor. 

“We will be mindful of the upcoming meeting,” Essek settled on, side-stepping the rest of Jester’s comment. “I would also like to speak with you all at some point in the next few days. You have… been unerringly gracious towards me, for all you know and all we’ve been through. I don’t know if it will be possible, but… would you accept my aid, if I’m able to continue to travel with you after this? It is not something that needs an immediate response if you would like to think on it. It is simply that… I would like to stay with you if I can. What you are trying to accomplish far outshines any other endeavor. I hate to think of you facing it without backup.”

The clerics grinned broadly at him. Fjord waded through his own awkwardness to give a firm, accepting nod. Yasha crossed her arms but ruined the image with her small, sincere smile. Beau and Veth, the ones he was most anxious to look at, stared back thoughtfully.

“What fortuitous timing, that this altruism comes along with fucking Caleb,” Veth stated mildly. It was shockingly crass, even for her.

“My care for Caleb is certainly a part of it,” Essek replied, not daring to make eye contact with the man at his side, “but it is care for you all as well. And selfishness, if I’m being honest. I am happiest around you, even if that means routine and mortal danger, apparently.”

Beau made eye contact with Fjord before glancing about the room. Fjord’s sword suddenly materialized as his eyes went white.

“Clear for scrying,” he stated quietly. A handy trick, though one that had failed Essek spectacularly with this very group. Before he could voice that reservation, Beau was talking.

“What if we demanded you confess to your sins before joining us?”

Caleb went rigid at Essek’s side.

“I would…prefer not to,” Essek answered honestly, fighting down the rampant terror building at the concept. “I can almost guarantee that would lead to my imprisonment and death. But. If refusing means losing this friendship…” It was too terrible to contemplate. Essek had never in his life been self-sacrificing, yet the concept of the Nein moving on from him a second time was somehow more terrible that the ramifications of the Bright Queen’s judgment. It was humbling- he hadn’t directly weighed those fears against each other before.

“Punishment is meant as a tool for learning and growth,” Caduceus stated in the silence. “Punishment for the sake of suffering is nothing but needless cruelty guised as righteousness. You already feel remorse and already desire to fix what you can. State sanctioned punishment would only hinder that, so what point is there in seeking it?” Caduceus’s soft smile was directed at Essek, but the words seemed directed at the group in general. Essek did not deserve this goodness, but he was exhaustingly grateful for it all the same.

“Yeah, what Cad said,” Beau said gruffly. “This isn’t some sort of absolution for your actions, but we kind of already talked about it. So like. Figure out how to hand in your resignation or whatever. We’ll probably leave Rosohna shortly after the Bright Queen meeting and we don’t want you dragging your feet.” She scowled at him. “Stop looking so misty. We’ve all fucked up, okay? You did it on like, a national level but I probably would have too if I’d had the power and resources to fuck up that badly before finding this group. So stop worrying about acceptance and go work through your wizard issues. We’ll see you guys soon.”

Caleb, mercifully, teleported them straight out of the common room on that note. One of many reasons he was Essek’s favorite.

---

The first day of their allotted rest was wonderful and indulgent for the remaining residents of the Xhorhaus. The second was… well.

“Fuck this,” Beau proclaimed for about the tenth time from where she was huddled on the couch with a weird alcoholic concoction she had rage-mixed. “I am never forgiving them for this. We didn’t have this sort of bullshit fanfare when we got together.”

“Which we should be thankful for,” Yasha said. Beau was right of course, but most people probably didn’t have a public frenzy ignite over their relationship. Yasha would have assumed the residents of Rosohna would be more preoccupied with reconstruction after the recent blast, but it seemed juicy gossip about one of their high officials outweighed concern over collapsing infrastructure. The city was in a tizzy with the sudden ubiquitous knowledge that Caleb and Essek were an item. It was unclear if the city found it so compelling due to Caleb’s “exotic” blood, their recent showcase of power together, or the breaking of the public conception that Essek was above relationships. Whatever the reason, it had consumed the focus of the populace and as an unanticipated side effect shot the Nein to a level of notoriety they had never experienced before.

Said notoriety, beyond making them identifiable on sight, had lead to receiving an uncomfortable number of gifts from the population when they had attempted to go shopping earlier in the day. Yasha flipped the page on one such gift- an artbook with an innocuous black cover. However strange the current situation was, she was suitably impressed by how quickly content creators worked. Some of it was quite good, actually. Some of it… “This anatomy seems really improbable,” she noted.

Beau glanced over before shouting in disdain. “We suffered through enough dick iconography on Rumblecusp. This is inhumane. Where is Jester? Tell her to message those bastards that we are leaving this city immediately. They can have their little fuckfest on the road. This is ridiculous.”

“Last I heard she was down in the Coronas mingling with the fiction writers as a ‘character source’,” Yasha replied absently, flicking to another painting. The technique was impeccable, but Caleb did not have biceps like that and while he was scruffy, that level of body hair was excessive. The picture made him appear half werewolf. Yasha squinted. On second thought, that may have been what the artist was going for. The swooning Essek looked pretty vampiric.

“Whyyy are you still looking at that?” Beau whined, draping over a couch arm in an overly dramatic fashion. She was not handling community-wide porn about her surrogate brother very well.

“Blackmail,” Yasha answered simply.

“Have I ever mentioned how hot it is when you’re being an asshole?”

“A time or two,” Yasha said with a quirk of her lips. She was willing to get sidetracked by that, but in the next moment the front door clanged open to admit Jester, Fjord, and Veth. Yasha did a double take at Fjord’s giant black eye. “What happened to you?”

“Avantika,” he replied darkly. Yasha and Beau shared a look, non-verbal concern flashing between them. If Uk’otoa’s minions were now able to make it inland-

“The Aurora Watch were doing guided rides of the “hero mounts” in the bougie upper districts!” Jester said brightly. “It seems like they are fundraising to help construction in the Coronas before they head out.” Yasha was taken aback by the non sequitur until she realized Fjord’s attacker was the cassoracious, not the cultist.

“She must have remembered all of his prodding,” Veth continued, visibly delighted. “She leapt over like four people to kick him in the face.”

“For being a follower of the Wildmother, nature really hates you,” Yasha said.

“At least he’s branching out from turtles,” Caduceus said, leaning over the railing of the stairwell where he must have migrated after hearing their commotion.

“My unprovoked attack is not the point,” Fjord stated, harried. “We have a new mission.”

“A blood vengeance?” Yasha asked. “I don’t know how I feel about fighting an innocent bird.”

“Innocent- no! This has nothing- Vess DeRogna contacted Jester. She’s taking a trip north shortly and was inquiring if we were still interested in work.”

“Hell yes!” Beau punched a fist into the air. “Time to put a close to Operation: Pining and bounce from this city until they stop being fucking voyeurs.”

As Caduceus came fully down stairs to heal Fjord’s eye and Veth and Jester started excitedly planning winter outfits, Yasha gave a broad stretch, surveying her family. These people were so ridiculous and so precious. She could still feel the manipulative tendrils of the Chained Oblivion just out of sight and waiting for their next move, but she had never been more confident in their ability to face it. She couldn't wait to collect their wizards, get on the road, and scream her defiance into their next conflict.

---

Caleb stared in a dazed fugue at the ceiling, feeling his pulse bounding in a dull thrum through all of his limbs. The sluggish, euphoric tingling through his body was mirrored in the fine tremble he felt shake through Essek as Caleb grasped him tightly to his heaving mess of a chest. Time had taken a hazy, dreamlike state where his mind tracked the numbers but his body was in a bewildered liminal space. Sex augmented through graviturgy and chronurgy was a revelation. Caleb felt like he had been run over by a wagon. A wagon laden with pleasure. It was possible his mind was not in its best form. “I think I did structural damage to my heart,” he commented numbly.

Essek murmured a beautiful stream of Undercommon into the skin of Caleb’s chest before clearing his throat. “Hah. Sorry.” His usually elegant voice was hoarse and slurred. Caleb’s stored that away to be properly appreciated later. “I feel the need to say something clever here but my wit, among other things, has been completely wrung out of me. If it’s all the same to you I’m just going to pass out for a moment.”

“HEYYYYY,” Jester’s voice suddenly thundered through Caleb’s skull, derailing the gentle teasing he had been gearing up for. “Congratulations on the looooooove making- you’re a sensation in town. Vess wants us to go north with her- think you can get out of bed?”

Caleb continued to stare blankly at the ceiling (charmed to look like the night sky- he expected nothing less of Essek). His mind was unhelpful static. Essek must have sensed something, as he let out a sleepy, inquiring hum. Caleb truly loved him a profound amount, which meant he would not relay that message.

“…okay. Ah… we’ll deal with that later. We’ll be over in a few hours- Essek has a meeting prior to that with- AHHH! Gods! Fuck!” Essek retracted his questing fingers, which he had been massaging over very tender tissue. “You bastard,” Caleb whispered harshly to Essek’s muffled laughter. Even half asleep Essek’s talented mouth and gently stroking fingers were enough to get Caleb to forgive him in a matter of minutes. Caleb combed back his hair and sunk deeper into the pillows, tempted to slip into the blissful dozing already creeping over him. Something about what Jester had said though- Ah. The Empire.

“We are planning on picking up a mission from DeRogna after this-”

“She sucks,” Essek grumbled into Caleb’s chest. “We should instate a rule that we can’t name any member of the Assembly while having or recovering from relations.”

Caleb felt like he had laughed more in the last two days than in the last ten years combined. “Relations? Are you too scandalized to say sex, Thelyss? Fucking? Screwing?-”

“Tch, never mind,” Essek groaned, slapping weakly at Caleb’s chest. “Please talk about stupid fucking DeRogna so I don’t have to put up with this infantile behavior. You have never been more clearly a member of the Nein.”

Using some of his lingering energy, Caleb rolled Essek onto his back and leaned in until the tips of their noses were touching. “Hmm, I love it when you swear. Remind me to encourage that behavior in the future. In any case, I was trying to figure how we would alter plans now that you will hopefully be joining us, but... What would you say to coming to the meeting with DeRogna with us? No illusion. Just. Surprise! You’ve also hired the Shadowhand.”

Essek blinked up at him for several moments, so dazed and beautiful it made something powerfully possessive stir in Caleb’s chest.

“Are you purposefully asking this when I’m too muddled to panic about it?”

“Not purposefully no, but now that you mention it, it’s a pretty decent coping mechanism we should implement liberally. You are welcome and encouraged to use it on me in the future.”

“Yes, okay,” Essek said, skimming his nose along Caleb’s before kissing at the corner of Caleb’s mouth. “I would enjoy watching her have a very proper and contained meltdown. Perhaps she will appreciate that I am starting to pick up some Zemnian. Should I greet her in your native language? Ich möchte Dich betteln hören. Du willst mehr, nicht wahr? Tiefer! How is my pronunciation?” Caleb was laughing so hard he could barely manage to slap his hand over Essek’s mouth to stop the onslaught. Before he could decide if he was more disturbed by the mental image of those words directed at DeRogna or more aroused by the sound of his language on Essek’s tongue, Essek was kissing against his palm and licking at his fingers. Aroused it was. Extracting his hand, Caleb ducked his head to suck on that troublesome tongue, all thoughts of DeRogna forgotten.

Essek pulled back after four and a half minutes of progressively more languid kissing. “Also, I want to write a spellbook with you.”

Caleb chased after his lips for a moment before Essek’s words caught up with him. “I would like to hear sometime what your mind does in the silence between topics, but ja, I would like that very much as well, if we ever get the opportunity to do so instead of perishing prematurely.”

“Hm.” Caleb was uncertain how elves were able to choose between trance and sleep, but Essek seemed breaths away from the latter. “It will be worth it. Facing some of the worst people in Wynandir, confronting my own role in their power grab, taking on some sort of fleshy, madness-incarnate betrayer god- it will all be worth it if we can study and perhaps teach after this. I think I would like to teach with you- make sure new minds aren’t twisted and neglected in the way ours were. I would like that very much.”

It wasn’t an “I love you” in words. For all that they had started to explore Caleb’s traumas, they had yet to delve into many of Essek’s. It was no matter. Caleb was surprised to note that he understood Essek’s feelings regardless. Just a few more steps, and they would have an endless amount of time to help each other through the hangups from their youths.

“I would like that very much,” Caleb echoed, pressing his cheek to Essek’s chest and drifting to sleep with the caress of Essek’s hand in his hair.

---

With protesting muscles, foggy minds, and considerable trepidation, they woke and dressed several hours later so Essek could drop Caleb off at the Xhorhaus.

Essek had dreaded confronting the Nein, but Beau had simply clapped a hand on his shoulder, causing him to take two staggered steps forward. “Don’t look so flustered, man. It was a post-mission celebration for everyone, not just you two. We’re not going to pry into your business if you don’t pry into ours.”

Essek honestly had no response for that.

“So! How do we convince the Bright Queen to let you go?” Jester asked eagerly, for once guiding the conversation away from the illicit. “What is our angle here?”

A sincere smile tugged at Essek’s lips. “The Bright Queen is a lesser concern I think. A concern, certainly; there is no precedent for someone abdicating a council seat, and I’m not certain she would be receptive to someone with State intelligence ‘retiring’ to travel. That should not be our primary concern, however. I suspect she can be swayed by the right parties.”

Beau frowned. “Since we’ve met you, all we have heard is praise for your “acumen and magical prowess”. She will really let that go so easily?”

For all they had accomplished, the Mighty Nein were still so young. The irony of Essek being the one to think it was not lost on him. “Beauregard. In my culture, I am barely out of adolescence. To an even greater detriment, I am in my first life. There are individuals with centuries of experience in this exact job. I suspect they are actually doing this exact job in some ghost capacity as a silent safeguard.” At her confused look, he sighed. “It’s called nepotism. While I am amazing,” he said with an arrogant grin, “you would never find a prodigious commoner with my position. It is as a prodigious Umavi’s son that I hold the rank. Very few of my duties even fit my talents- it is simply a mark of status. The constant praise is as much propaganda to secure the position for me as any true awe over my abilities.” The grin turned self-deprecating. “I told you once before- research and understanding of the arcane aren’t nearly so prized in our culture as piety to the Luxon. I am much more impressive to other nations than I am to my own country.”

Caleb had naturally already figured it out. “It is the Umavi we need to convince.”

“It is,” Essek confirmed, watching select faces in the group blanch. “To lose a position on the Bright Queen’s inner council… I’ve set into motion what I can, but I’m not certain any maneuver I am capable of will be enough to convince my mother to let me resign. Thelyss is powerful, but Den standings are in constant flux and I will have to be… delicate… in my application to convince her I can be of more use to the Den abroad than on the council. I have a meeting with her shortly.”

Jester was ringing her hands, looking distraught. “But that’s terrible! You are stuck in a job you’re a figurehead for, you don’t care about, and you can’t even leave? What sort of parent wishes that on their child?”

“Your relationship with your mother seems much more individualistic. In the dynasty, everything is done for the good of the Den. Positions of power mean greater safety for the Den. She is protecting all of her children, not just the biological ones, by peppering Den members throughout the government. By attempting to undermine her wishes I am being remarkably selfish, but then we all know that is one of my many failings.”

“UGH,” Jester said succinctly, looping her arms around his neck and pulling him into a tight hug. He patted her back awkwardly. Was there always so much hugging with having friends? In the next moment, he felt her magic flooding through him, smoothing over the visible blemishes on his skin and soothing his deeper aches with an echo of laughter. That was a thoughtful mercy prior to facing his mother. “What is the point of being safe if none of you are HAPPY?”

“And that sentiment, Jester, puts you in league with some of our greatest philosophers,” Essek replied warmly. Glancing up, he caught Caleb small smile. At Caleb’s raised eyebrows, Essek gave a sigh of defeat and returned the hug to Jester’s delighted giggle. It felt…pretty amazing, he thought, pressing his face to her hair and feeling something settle inside him. These people, his friends… they were worth every ounce of terror he was feeling at the upcoming confrontation. He savored the embrace until something in her hair bit him. Right. That was his cue to leave.

---

“Essek,” Deirta’s smooth voice drifted from the open doorway. “Come in.”

With a final shuddering breath, Essek cast the Thaumaturgy modification he and Caleb had tweaked in between their more carnal activities. It was a silly little addition, allowing one innocent sensation to leak through from an alternate timeline. It was meant as a soothing option for displaced children, but then, Essek felt very much a child in the current situation. Invisible, Caleb’s hand slipped into his and gave an encouraging squeeze.

The Umavi was seated at an elaborate vermaloc desk inlaid with silver and opal. It somehow still appeared shabby in comparison to her person. She glanced up from a pile of paperwork to fix him with shrewd purple eyes that held so much more weight and power than the ones he saw in the mirror each morning. Essek was suddenly struck with the desire to be in his battle-torn cloths covered in gore. He would have felt on stronger footing with sharp contrast instead of rudimentary imitation.

“You have been quite busy,” Deirta invited, a trap in its simplest form.

“Of course, Mother, by your command. The Children have been crippled per your wishes, though I apologize it wasn’t as nuanced as we were both hoping for.”

She gave a slight moue of distaste. “Don’t be tedious, I have no time for it.” She set the papers aside and folded her hands. “Let’s recap, shall we? You seeded rumor of your defection to your network of spies, highlighting several members of the Children in our midst we were unaware of. You acted like a love-blighted fool in front of some of the biggest gossips in the empire and then did absolutely nothing to temper them prior to their return to Rosohna. You concluded this charade by returning to the audience of the Bright Queen herself with some excessively dramatic hemoptysis for all the council to see while ensuring both emotional and martial aspects of this little odyssey were witnessed by multiple parties. What conclusions am I to draw from this, dearest?”

She gave him credit for a great deal more planning than what he had actually done (most of what she was implying fell under “frantic, in the moment damage control”), but there was no benefit in correcting her. “Forgive me, Mother. My actions were… unrefined… and I selfishly did not think through the effects it would have on the Den.”

She regarded him silently for a moment. “Bullshit.”

Well. True, but she was supposed to be more circumspect about calling him out on it.

“You will not use your immaturity as a leverage point. I told you I do not have the patience, Essek. The easiest way to fix this spectacle you have made would be to spread further praise of the Mighty Nein, run with this romance-of-the-ages tale that is enchanting the commonfolk, and reveal you are joining this elite international task-force of betrayer god-slayers as a testament of our Shadowhand’s staggering magical prowess and Den Thelyss’s ability to represent the wishes of the Dynasty. Did I miss anything?”

“You craft a compelling take on the situation, Mother,” Essek responded, knotting his anxiety into a tight ball in the pit of his stomach, away from her shrewd graze.

“Oh, certainly. This is all my genius interpretation, so I should be glad to implement it, is that it? You are such a little shit, Essek. It is staggering you made it to adulthood without me or one of your siblings strangling you.” A delicate, perfectly manicured hand raised to massage at her forehead. “I am not inclined to pander to these childish plots simply because you want to go play in the sandbox.” It had been far too optimistic to think he had the ability to manipulate her. She had decapitated his entire plan and thrown it back at his feet in a matter of minutes. “Nothing to say to sway me?”

A smooth non-answer was on the tip of his tongue, primed through decades of her tutelage and his own exposure to court intrigue. As he opened his mouth, however, he was suddenly flooded with memories of the last several days. Of Jester’s all-encompassing warmth, of Veth’s well-intentioned grilling, of Caduceus’s quiet guidance, of Yasha’s soft-spoken friendship, of Fjord’s inspiring leadership, of Beau’s crass protectiveness. Of Caleb. Staggeringly intelligent, frustratingly gorgeous. Irresistible. Insatiable. Intense. Cunning, bastardly, brilliant. His bright eyes. His warm lips. Caleb.

Essek swallowed, eschewed all his training and good sense, and answered in a way she wouldn’t be prepared for. He answered as a member of the Mighty Nein. “This group has such a goodness to them that they push those around them to be better people. But more than heroes and liaisons and inspirations, they are my friends. I will not let them go into further danger without my help.”

“Hm, so selfless,” Deirta hummed, the slightest line between her brows as she tapped a finger at the corner of her mouth. “Widogast has no sway in this?”

“Well. There is that too,” Essek conceded. There was no point in denying it.

Deirta regarded him seriously as the silence hung heavy in the room, all marks of her previous irritation gone. “A dalliance I could understand, dearest,” she stated, so effortlessly cutting to the heart of the matter. “Your actions betray you as far more foolish. He is human, a brief brilliant burst like a once-fade moon lily. He will be gone before you are even considered in your prime. With no consecution this is an illogical and masochistic union.”

Essek stood straighter. Now that the topic was on the table, he would face it head on. “Do you think so little of me to assume I will just accept that as inevitability? It is simple: a satisfactory option does not exist, so I shall make one. I will not let him go so easily.” It was uncomfortable discussing such things with her. This was not their relationship- they had never been confidantes. What he was saying, however, needed to be said. “And if I fail, I would rather have lived a breath with him than a lifetime of what I am without him.”

She was silent for a moment, studying him carefully. “How idealist. How rash and immature. I’m proud of you.” Bizarrely, for all he had accomplished and all the accolades he had collected, he couldn’t recall ever hearing those words from her before. After another breath, she stood from the desk and took three decisive steps forward to straighten his tunic brusquely. Very odd, to see her fidgeting. “It is peculiar to consider relinquishing you to this group. I am troubled by the thought of not having you here. But what other choice do I have when the most insidious of my children dare face me with humble sincerity? They are changing you, dearest, and I admit I am curious to see the end product of this chaotic crucible you’ve launched yourself into.”

She reached up to grab his chin in her hand, studying him intently. He didn’t even dare to breath. He didn’t dare to hope-

“I had the most invested in you, I hope you know. A few more centuries and you could have been one of our most prominent members.” She gave a soft laugh, as delicate and refined as the rest of her. “But I have always been over-indulgent in your whims. Of your shirking the norm and your dangerous curiosity.”

Essek’s blood went cold. His mother had never verbalized a knowledge of his treason-heresy, let alone with such overt wording. It was a gentle chastisement.

He was missing something.

He was missing many things.

Stop being so obtuse child, I trained you better than this.

Realization unfolded before him in a mental domino effect that left him breathless.

There was no political or martial benefit to the Bright Queen acquiring the Soul Ruby. Even if there had been, its worth was certainly overshadowed by the risk of acquiring it. Furthermore, even someone with middling knowledge of the Nein would know they should be a last resort for a political heist. They were only a logical choice if the heist was inconsequential and the purpose of the mission was to spark a conflict with the Children of Malice.

“I am glad to see that intellect has found a noble cause with this group.”

His thoughts raced. Because of Vivirk Tonn’s predictable ego, such a dispute gave the dynasty a foothold to strike at the archaic terrorists where straight conflict had never been a viable option before. It was suddenly blatant that the result of this mission aligned with his mother’s most vocal and overarching goal for their Den and their people. Let us be recognized as a society above the barbaric stigma. He looked back into her violet eyes. His eyes, but refined with centuries of cunning.

“I don’t enjoy the thought of you leaving the safety of the Den, but the notoriety you’re building with this romance should be some degree of armor against those who would wish you harm. Internationally, you have linked yourself admirably with a neutral third party, which should stay the hand of the Empire. Overt visibility is the exact opposite strategy your enemies would expect from you, so I anticipate it will be quite effective. From the domestic side of things, I do not wish your traveling for the greater good of the nation to be hindered by misunderstandings. I will clear up all the ways you so thoroughly framed yourself in an effort to get into Vivurk’s trust. Rest assured, Rosohna will remain a safe haven for your group.”

A valid alibi right as interest was starting to stir in who did the inside job with the beacons. Such an embarrassment for her, should that come to light. If Essek hadn’t been so numb, he would have been hyperventilating.

“I will also update Leylas on the misinformation the Children were feeding the Lens. We couldn’t have anticipated the corruption in Deepriver Mine, or all the falsified records we would recover while cleaning up from the invasion. Vivurk had her claws in deeper than any of us knew. We owe the Mighty Nein a great debt in many ways.”

Having exclusive rights to the events of Deepriver Mine allowed Deirta the toolkit to control the narrative of virtually any of their actions. He didn’t doubt she would be able to fully cover his sins. Nor did he doubt she would have used it to have him terminated out of the public eye had events played out differently. It was a cold comfort to know he had passed an audition he didn’t know he was partaking in. He was so thoroughly outclassed he hadn’t even felt her manipulation. He wanted to be afraid. He wanted to be angry. Irritatingly, he was just impressed.

“You and your group shall be celebrated, my son, even as you leave us all for your worldly adventures.”

Essek’s stomach churned with something he was concerned was conscience. It was not right to completely erase his culpability and the scars he had left on the realm. It was…unfair to come out of his selfish scheming unscathed. That was not a debate he wanted to have -nor one he could win- against his mother, however. It would fall to him to try to even those scales. For his mother, he could do nothing but keep his face studiously blank, bowing his head so he didn’t have to formulate some sort of response out of his screaming thoughts.

“I will not bore us both with grand gestures and well wishes,” Deirta said, once more establishing uncomfortable eye contact. “Your life is your own with this decision. May this new chapter allow you to pursue your thirst for knowledge unencumbered. Do not forget while you are not with the Den that you are still of the Den. Thelyss is in your blood, and no matter how far you go you are a representative of our family. I shall give you a mirror, so that you can report your discoveries abroad and still be of aid.”

There, nestled amongst her double-edged words, was a revelation. It took considerably more effort for her to orchestrate this entire conflict than it would have to simply erase him. It the world of the Umavi, there was no clearer gesture of affection than an investment of time and effort. With his much healthier relationships budding among the Mighty Nein, he could acknowledge just how twisted such affection was, but after centuries of scheming he doubted the Umavi knew any other way to show it. He was surprised to find he was touched by that, even as relief washed over him that he was escaping this hideous cycle before he too became so jaded. “As you wish, Mother.”

Deirta spent another moment contemplating him before once more straightening his collar. It was more an artist adjusting a painting than a gesture of affection, but her restlessness was still surreal. He was barely keeping up with the conversation as it was, so Deirta’s next statements demolished any footing he had found. “Until you do strike out on these adventures, your staff needs to be vetted. I am facing an endless stream of updates on your sexual endeavors with Widogast. In sordid detail. More so, it is getting to the commonfolk. Ballads are being written, Essek. They are florid and terrible. Servants should be first and foremost loyal to their head of house, even above a Den’s matron and certainly above common gossip. And since we are on the topic, please keep the novelties of dunamis I am hearing about to your bedroom. Some of your more creative applications for your magic do not need to be shared with the dynasty at large.” As if those nonchalant statements weren’t mortifying enough, she turned and plucked a finely crafted glass vial out of her desk drawer to hand to him. “Your father was always very fond of this lubricant when giving and receiving so frequently. Be judicious: a Thelyss does not chafe. And of course, hydrate frequently.”

Essek felt as if his face was completely bloodless by the time she patted him on the cheek, a gentle killing blow for an exit move to cover her earlier weaknesses. She swept from the room in clear victory as he stood frozen, clutching his vial of designer lube reflexively. His mind remained stuck in a glitching whiplash of freedom? and affection?? and IjusthadANOTHERlectureaboutsexwithmother???

It was a blessing when Jester’s voice came crashing through his head.

“Esssssek! Caleb said you’d be done by now! Tell us the news! Good to go? Everything shit?  Consolation hot tub is waiting. Need booze? Fuck-“

It was pointless trying to contain it. The stress of his recent confrontation, the juxtaposition of tone between Jester’s message and his mother’s conversation, the knowledge that, if they still allowed it, there was an open expanse of time with the Mighty Nein ahead of him… it all came together at once to punch breathless, hysterical laughter out of him.

“I’ve just finished. Need to cheerfully murder my support staff but will then meet up for the Bright Queen’s debrief. And after?” He grinned broadly into the empty room with growing excitement. There was so much yet to do, so many hurdles yet to clear, but he was one step closer to freedom with the rare few he cared so deeply for. He couldn’t imagine what sort of the disaster the Mighty Nein were about to wreak on his life, and he couldn’t wait to find out. He dedicated his final words to showing it.

“Let’s get turnt.”

---

Lubricant of Conflicting Emotion

Wondrous item, very rare

A proprietary artisanal blend that amplifies sensation and stamina to allow for the most pleasurable of intimate encounters. Role a d6. On a 1-2, you have the most staggering, toe curling orgasms of your life. On a 3-6, you cannot get past the knowledge that your parents fucked using this substance and the mood is immediately ruined.