Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first summons comes less than an hour after the Dynasty and Empire fleets part outside Nicodranas. Essek still paces the deck of the Ball Eater, feeling the loneliness of his empty towers already creep in despite his current proximity to his friends. Well, friends is maybe a bit generous yet, they likely want little to do with him after this.

He ignores it and lets the magic fade; he has nothing to say to Da’leth. Their deal is done with and he’d rather not speak to the archmage again.

The second arrives twenty minutes later. “Shadowhand, I’m disappointed you did not return my missive. We have much to discuss and I would prefer to do so in person.”

Essek’s brows pinch underneath his illusory disguise. Had he not been clear before? He crosses his arms across the ship’s railing, watching the steady rise and fall of the sea. His head aches for the light but he has to admit, it’s beautiful.

There is no third sending.

He feels the harsh intake of air as a gateway yawns behind him. It reeks of Da’leth’s old magic. Thousands of spectral hands unfurl as he spins toward the danger and encompasses every bit of him, grasping, pulling. There’s no time for a counterspell, and the strength of the pull is beyond even his capabilities. Hysteria churns his insides as he’s dragged through the portal. He lands in The Martinet’s personal dining hall, panting.

The man himself is seated, a decanter of red wine centered on the table before him flanked by twin crystal glasses. His smile is placid. “It was not a request.”

Essek aggressively smooths his clothes. He’d forgone mantle and robe for the heat (and since he had no political need in Nicodranas as he wasn’t supposed to be there to begin with) but he wishes for them now. “You’ve made a scene.”

Ludinus pours both glasses and gestures toward one before sipping his own. He licks his lips. “Only amongst your acquaintances, I assure you.”

Essek rebuffs both wine and offered seat at the table, reestablishing his float. He crosses his arms. “What do you want?”

The Martinet’s smile sharpens his elvish features. “Straight to the point as always.” He takes another draught of wine. Essek bristles. What a waste of time. “As for what I want, well it’s you. And here you are.”

A rather undignified bleat of uncomfortable laughter bubbles up Essek’s throat. He’s not naive to political flings, engaged in a few himself when it suited him, particularly as he pursued his current office, but what would either of them have to gain here? They concluded their arrangements, and he was not going to risk another theft. Not now. Not after the betrayal he’d already committed. He raises his eyebrows. “I’m sorry?”

“Oh, no, not that,” Da’leth chuckles. “Sometimes I forget how young, accomplished as you are.” He stands, setting his glass down with a clink on the polished wood. He’s dressed down to simple house robes. The chest gapes as he moves, revealing bare skin underneath. “See, there are Volstrucker who have already received orders to assassinate you. I signed them myself.”

Essek goes cold. Despite knowing that colluding with the Assembly meant working with spiders, he can’t help the sense of betrayal. He wishes desperately that the Nein were here.

“And,” Da’leth continues, “I arranged evidence be sent to your Queen but a few moments ago; she will be grateful for the information, and will be arranging for your arrest, I imagine. A pity, really.” Despite not having Essek’s floating, he glides across the floor to stand close. His face remains smooth, gentle, sympathetic.

All of Essek’s growing anxieties crest. His whole body trembles and he can’t find the will to stop it, to his horror. He chokes out the incantation to his towers but the weave refuses his call. Never has it rebuked him, not even as a child. He thought he’d learned fear when Caleb Widogast threatened for him not to see the sunrise. This flays him open and leaves him bared raw.

“Ah, now, don’t fret. You’re safe here. My estate is warded against scrying and teleportation.” The Martinet stands equal to Essek.. “And a shame it would be to let them kill you. You have so much potential.” Da’leth raises a hand and runs it along Essek’s jaw. “I think you’ll find it in your best interest to stay.”

Essek jerks back, pulled from his own mind by the unwanted contact. The gently bobbing magelights illuminating the room suddenly hurt his eyes. “And what exactly do you expect to get out of this?”

“A piece of artwork,” Da’leth tsks, reaching again for Essek’s face. He leans, stepping back to generate some distance but it doesn’t last. A shape behind him, translucent but firm as it presses against his back and slides him forward again. It’s reminiscent of Caleb’s cat paw sans claws.

Essek bares his fangs as his panic rapidly becomes feral, latent aggression taking over as his conscious mind concludes there’s no escaping this. “And if I refuse?”

“Oh, Essek,” Ludinus reaches under and lifts Essek’s chin with the back of his hand. He trails a stripe along where Essek’s carotid lay pulsing with a heightened heartbeat, and tugs gently at the shirt collar, revealing clavicle. Hearing his name so familiar, so intimate, sets his stomach roiling. “You don’t get to refuse.”

Essek lunges, calling out for the weave in desperation for something, anything. This time she answers and he feels the familiar echo of arcana returning his grasp. Da’leth sidesteps and flicks the spell out of existence with one practiced movement. They trade spells until Essek’s exhausted and dripping sweat.

Da’leth looks no worse for wear. “Good. Get that out of your system.” Nothing landed, all countered before anything could manifest beyond its incantation. He reaches out and tugs the hem of Essek’s shirt to smoothen it. “We have to get rid of this dreadful overpainting, add a little varnish,” he flicks the tip of Essek’s ear.

It’s humiliating. Essek considered himself realistic, not over-confident in his abilities but sure of his capabilities, at least. But to be tossed aside so easily by the sheer depth of magic, to be rendered so utterly helpless. So much for surrounding himself with friends to protect him. He doubts they’d be much help to stop this either.

Ludinus looks him up and down. “Clothes, please.”

“No,” Essek snaps, face contorted into something violent.

The Martinet rolls his eyes and glances up and over Essek’s shoulder. “Restrain him, if you would.”

A pair of tattooed arms hook his shoulders and force them back. Essek faces a brief moment of vertigo as the scourger lifts him to adjust her grip and then folds one of his arms behind him at an angle that aches all the way down into his toes. He thrashes once but she applies pressure until he sees stars. One-handed. She’s able to keep him immobile one-handed. All the years spent honing his magic are sure serving him well. She frees a set of shears from her belt and offers them, to which Da’leth takes with a grateful nod.

He slices shirt away with one, smooth motion like a butcher prepping paper, alters the angle to cut the sleeves so his scourger need not adjust her grip to remove the garment. A crease appears on the bridge of his nose as he looks up and down.

Essek feels his skin heat under the scrutiny. He hasn’t been so exposed since he was a babe, unable to care for himself, since before he learned to trance and to cast. “Stop.” He means to command it but the defeat is pushing its way in and his voice breaks.

Da’leth pats his newly revealed pectoral once and snips through the laces to his trousers. Nicodranian fashion considers the heat and humidity first and foremost, light fabrics and loose cuts. Without the securing cord, they drop to the floor without any assistance. Essek flails again. He will not be degraded like this. The sourger presses his arm into his back and he cries out, snapping his fangs shut and hissing air through his teeth. This time he kicks.

The scourger grunts as boot connects to her shin. She hooks both arms again and lifts Essek clear off the ground, forcing an uncomfortable arch to his back. A few vertebrae pop with the flex.

“Be gentle, Sophia,” Da’leth chides as Essek continues to squirm. “I don’t want his arm broken. The bruises will be bad enough to look at.”

She shifts one arm from under Essek’s armpit and up around his throat, compressing his trachea.

Already panting from the exertion and stress, Essek tries to wheeze in another breath and gets a lungful of nothing. He claws at the arm holding him with his left hand, leaves bloody scratches. She doesn’t even flinch. He writhes a few more moments before his vision starts to spot.

Da’leth pats his cheek. “Relax, love. I’m not going to hurt you.” He kneels and tugs off both boots. Periodically he nods, checking off another box on some internal checklist. The underclothes peel away with a few precise cuts and Essek is left bare in the Martinet’s dining hall, held aloft and on display like a fine gown on a mannequin. “There you are. Marvelous.”

The scourger loosens her grip enough that Essek can gulp air. He heaves in and out a few times before locking gaze with Ludinus, lips pulled back in a snarl. “I’ll kill you.”

Setting the shears on the table, Da’leth runs a hand down Essek’s chest starting at the collarbone, down past his navel, and onto his thigh in one smooth motion. Essek’s skin ripples involuntarily to avoid the touch. “I have no doubt you’re capable, but you’re far from the first to tell me so, and here I am, very much alive.” He’s amused, smile still cold but tugged higher on one side with a genuine glee. His hand traces the same path back up, slower, gentle and appreciative. “I anticipate a lot of jealousy when I’m finally able to present you.”

Present him? To parade him around like a pedigreed dog? Essek’s snarl fades and he drops his head, staring at his bare feet where they dangle inches off the floor. There is a way out; he’ll find it.

“Come. Let’s get you prettied up.”

Essek shudders. The scourger sets him on his feet and his knees threaten to buckle. She steadies him with a firm hand at his shoulder where it still aches from her manhandling. She’s young, he realizes. Beauregard’s age, maybe. He’s not great at identifying human variation but younger than Caleb absolutely. There’s a youthful roundness to her cheeks and despite the bulk in her arms and shoulders, and the obscene greatsword strapped to her back, she has filling out yet to do. Another nail to his pride; bested by a near-child.

He could try to run but he’s woefully drained of magic and even if he made it to the street, what would passersby do beyond call out for the authorities for a wandering Kryn. Best play the game until a better opportunity presents itself. So he relents and pads after the Martinet down a well-lit hallway with more doors than seems reasonable, utterly naked.

“Gold or silver?” Da’leth asks, head twisted and finger gently rapping against his lips.

“What?”

“I’m giving you the option. Do you want gold or silver? You’re wearing silver now,” he gestures to Essek’s earrings, “but perhaps you prefer otherwise?”

Essek reaches to his ear and runs his fingers over the mixture of studs and chains. Not completely nude, then. Is he supposed to feel grateful? Ever aware of the scourger not a full pace behind him, he plants his feet flat on the stonework.

Da’leth raises his eyebrows. “Silver then, I think. Not enough warmth in your skin to match the gold.” He resumes his leisurely pace and it seems an eternity, Sophia periodically pushing at Essek’s back when he falls too far behind or hesitates, before they stop.

A bedroom, overly ornate in patterned linens and matching curtains. Genuine silver pitcher and goblet beside the full bed, a plush carpet. Even pelts, two in creamy white nearly the size of the quilt itself, lay flat on the bed. There’s a half-elf seated, one leg hiked across the opposite knee. She looks up as they enter, eyes weary.

“Silver,” Da’leth says unceremoniously. “Fill the existing holes and add everything else from the list.”

Essek balks in the doorway. “No.”

The jeweler looks up, eyebrows raised. She has some sort of tool in her hand, similar to a smith’s tongs but smaller, flatter on the end with various size holes bored into the front plate. There’s a rectangle of well worked leather draped over one knee and a short stack of clean linen squares. He’s had enough ornamentation added to his ears to recognize the scene for what it is.

Da’leth offers him that porcelain, courtly smile. “Are you going to fight this, too?”

“Fuck you.”

The sourger catches him around the throat again which shouldn’t surprise him as much as it does but he chokes out precious air before she seals his windpipe closed. She holds him until his vision tunnels and his mouth instinctively flaps, desperate for oxygen. The Martinet takes the opportunity to fit a wide, flat piece of leather between his teeth. It sucks away any remaining moisture.

She releases him then and he wheezes, shaking his head to clear his vision and to try and dislodge the foreign object forcing his teeth apart. He’s still reeling as she loops something over each shoulder, wrenching them back, and bringing both arms together from elbow to wrist.

Da’leth catches his jaw and wipes a string of drool off his chin. “I know these lights are harsh on your eyes, poor thing. This should help.” Before he’s even able to steady himself on his feet, he’s blinded by a strip of fabric.

Essek tries to offer another “fuck you” but it’s garbled around the gag.

“Yes yes, you’re very mad. I can see that. Stay nice and still and we can take it all off.”

He does not still. In fact, he does quite the opposite. He throws his head back against Sophia’s, the satisfying crunch of cartilage his reward. To her credit, she splutters and growls, but locks her arm around his throat again without hesitation. If he’s not going to be successful, at least he’s going to be annoying.

“You’ll just have to hold him, then.”

“Clearly.”

A pair of hands, slight and cool, start to undo his earrings. They’re methodical, thumbing each piercing once emptied. It’s uncomfortably intimate and twice Essek shakes his head only to have Sophia squeeze his throat again to still him. He starts to tremble as the last stud pulls free and the jeweler squeezes both lobes between their fingers.

The first replacement is icy against his skin. He manages to use it to focus his wandering consciousness as he stumbles between just enough and too little air. There’s a metallic rattle, something fitted over his ear, and then it presses close. Metal creaks and he startles.

A different hand pets over his hair, fingers catching in a couple knots and working them out gently. Da’leth, he realizes, as the man hums quietly. “You’re alright.”

No. He’s not. But his mind is deprived and exhausted and his world is the leather between his teeth, the ache in his shoulders, and the hands manipulating him. His eyes sting behind the blindfold.

The new earrings are heavy, the earcaps especially. Cartilage bends underneath their weight, forcing his ears down. It’s uncomfortable now, it’ll be agony later.

He loses track of the voices. It’s the strangulation, he justifies, not his mind wandering. But it’s that too. Because this is beyond anything he ever prepared for. No amount of hours in court or high treason compares to the overwhelming emotion. Panic, rage. The steadily dripping sadness that’s filling him up like a vessel with each passing second.

A hand fiddles with his nose and he realizes too late that they’re adding now, not just replacing. The bite surprises him even through the fog and an arm curls around his temples to steady him. It’s warm, smells of floral soaps.

“Stay still now.” Da’leth again. “If they’re crooked, we’ll have to take them out and try again.” His voice is barely above a whisper, the sympathy uncomfortably genuine. “I’m glad we went with the silver.”

Essek stays still because he’s too tired for much else, even as they fit the hoop through his septum and clamp it closed. He even manages to stay mostly still as those cool hands brush down his chest, crush and roll his nipples between fingers, and then pierce those too. He hacks up a sob and little else because there’s still too much pressure on his throat and he can’t focus. Can’t think. There’s two pairs of warm arms holding him upright, fingers gently scraping his scalp.

It soothes his animal hindbrain that has been driving for the last couple hours. He hates it.

The jeweler’s hands prod and squeeze and twist. They drift lower, over his hips until–

That gives his consciousness the boost it needs. The arms around him tighten until they hurt. “No,” he chokes out around the gag, lips dry and jaw aching.

“Last one,” Da’leth tells him.

“No.”

But they do it anyway despite his squirming and starlight flutters across his vision despite the blindfold and he sobs into the leather between his teeth. It’s the sharpest pain he’s ever known and his mind shatters like glass under its wretched tooth. And all the while he’s held. He hates it. He hates it. He hates it. But he hurts, and he’s scared. And it’s something he’s always admired from afar but never had the luxury of possessing. Leather creaks as he bites down.

They heal him, twisting the silver studs and hoops as they do. Kind of them, to ensure skin doesn't adhere to the metal or seal too tight so as to cause discomfort. When they lift him high enough to lay him on the bed, he remains limp because he’s too tired for anything else and his head still swims with oxygen deprivation. He wants nothing else but to sleep, despite not having done so for decades. The oblivion of it offers solace to his shattered consciousness and desperately he hopes that upon waking he’ll be back in his towers, suffering the after-effects of a long night binge drinking his regrets.

A chain tinkles somewhere behind him, bell-like. Someone manipulates his bound wrists and tugs, pulling his arms flat against his back. His shoulders already ache from their earlier mistreatment and the strain of having them pulled so taut grows more unbearable by the moment. They reach between his thighs and take him in hand. He squirms, face growing red-hot under the blindfold. They’re efficient, though, whichever of the three of them it is. The chain clicks closed around the newest of his jewelry.

He doesn’t dare move. Even the minute shifts as he breathes generates pressure and his sense of self-preservation prevents him from thinking beyond the gentle tug and release as he forces his breathing into a steadier rhythm.

A blanket flaps and settles over him. One of them, Da’leth he’s sure by the warmth and broadness of the hands, tucks the fabric around his throat. “Just wait until you can see how beautiful you are like this.” A rancid kiss leaves a damp spot cooling on Essek’s brow. “Get some rest. You’ve had a long day.”

Two sets of booted feet pass beyond the threshold and the door clicks closed behind them.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t sleep, or trance for that matter. He drifts in and out of semi-consciousness, never quite losing awareness of the arched tension in his back. In the occasional moments of lucidity he takes stock, checking bindings (they’re rigid), wriggling his nose (it itches), opening and closing his jaw as much as the gag allows for (light, it aches). He feels like a dead thing, desiccated and rotting with its bones falling to rubble. A thrall raised by a lesser wizard.

Any attempt to stretch sore muscles results in tugging on his cock which is distressingly pleasant as long as he doesn’t move too far. But embarrassment can only linger so long. The mortification of being seen passes well before his mind returns to him in full force. He’s able to extend his legs if he’s careful. The pelts underneath him prickle, coarse hairs which clearly serve better as display than they do for warmth.

As soon as his mind catches up to the fact that it’s aware, it sizzles his senses into hyperawareness. He can feel every hair in his scalp, every crease on the blindfold and stitch on the gag. His own breathing roars like a typhoon in his ears. He can hear his own heartbeat and feel the pulsing response of blood in his veins.

There’s another breathing body. The pitch is wrong for Da’leth so likely his scourger, Sophia. The pace is steady but not slow; she’s not asleep. Even if he managed to unhook his bindings she’d catch him before he got three steps toward the door.

Essek doesn’t have Caleb’s understanding of the passage of time, which he’s both admired and envied since they met. Now he doesn’t even know what day it is, much less the time. His mind rebels at the constant nothing. It makes him fidget which makes him ache.

He rubs his face into the bedding until he slips the blindfold and squints into the room’s interior. The light hurts, though compared to the rest of him, it’s an inconvenience at best. Sophia watches him in return, perched on a polished, hand-lathed chair, greatsword leaned casually up against an empty shelf. She raises her eyebrows at him and he blinks in response.

“Finally,” she sighs, pulling a piece of wire out from behind her ear and angling it up and presumably down the hall. “He’s awake.”

Dread pools in Essek’s stomach, heavy and viscous. He knows if he throws up with the gag still holding his jaw open, he might choke to death on it. Whether that would be a blessing or not, he’s still not sure.

Da’leth pushes the door open not long after, smiling. He’s bathed, hair still damp and recently slicked back with a comb. A tea cart follows him, pushed along by an unseen servant. “Did you sleep well?” he asks without any preamble.

Essek peels his lips up off his teeth and growls at the back of his throat.

The Martinet rolls his eyes. “I know you’re uncomfortable. Perhaps a bit of tea might put you in a better mood.”

The tea cart itself is gilded, garish like the rest of the estate Essek’s seen. It’s stocked with kettle, cups, and decoratively carved fruits. He isn’t sure how long it’s been since he last ate and his lips are already cracking with dehydration induced by being held open for so long. He would gladly crush The Martinet and his scourger to death for a single cup.

“Now I’m sure you’ve gotten over your hesitations,” Ludinus starts, grasping a corner of the blanket and prying it loose. “You’re a competent man and I think we can discuss your concerns openly.”

It’s Essek’s turn to roll his eyes but he arches his back as much as he’s able to give space for the chain to be unclipped. The relief is so immediate he gasps around the leather, rolls his head back against the pillows and stretches toe to shoulder. He slumps to a sit, struggling a little around his bound hands, but settling and drawing his knees up to offer some measure of modesty.

“Head down.”

He balks initially, but beyond the immediate indignance, he realizes Da’leth means to remove the gag. He rests his brow on his knees, hiding his red-rimmed eyes. The strap around his head loosens and the bit falls unceremoniously out from between his teeth, trailing drool. His jaw creaks like an old door as he slowly works the muscles to close it. Pressing teeth together aches all the way up to his temples. The film of dried saliva on the backs of his teeth and gums starts to rehydrate into a thick mucus and he swallows it for lack of a better solution. It makes him gag.

The kettle clinks against the cups, ceramic on ceramic, as Da’leth fills both. “If you have questions, now is a good time.”

Essek licks his dry lips. “Why?” He winces at the sound of his own voice, hoarse to near unintelligibility. The soreness lasts all the way down into his chest.

“Because I wanted to.” And it’s that simple, isn’t it. The most powerful man in the Empire takes what he wants when he wants. Greater reach than the king, an army of scourgers at his disposal, and enough power to pull Essek straight off the deck of a ship a thousand miles away with no display of tiredness after. “Your tea is ready.”

“And how do you expect me to drink it?”

“Ask.” Da’leth punctuates it by audibly sipping from his own cup.

The humiliation of that, even after everything else, makes him grit his teeth. Would Da’leth let him die of thirst if he continued to refuse. He sits in silence, watching Da’leth alternate sipping and forking fruit between his lips. It hurts to watch. His throat burns.

But begging is beneath him.

“Do you like the smell of it? I imported it from Xhorhas for you.”

Unfortunately, he does. It’s earthy, sharp the way he likes, leaves a slight tingling in his throat from the native spices that makes him long for even just a drop. “No.”

“A pity. I do.” Da’leth finishes his cup and pours another. “Now I am not one for hard rules, it seems childish and we’re both better than that. But I do have some expectations for you and I do not wish to set you up for failure.”

Essek narrows his eyes. Finally, he’s revealing his game.

“You’ll have free reign of the house; there’s nowhere off limits. I suspect you’ll find the library particularly engaging. The servants have been instructed to listen to any of your requests that are within their power.” Da’leth gestures to the kettle and the fruit. “They will prepare any food or drink you like. If–”

“What is this?” Essek snaps. The world seems to be tipping into a level of surreality that even his mind struggles to keep up.

Da’leth snatches Essek’s chin between his index finger and thumb, squeezing until the skin aches against the bone. The skin around his eyes tightens. “Your mouth is a privilege. I recognize there will be an adjustment period but if you want to keep it, I suggest you remain polite.”

Indignation and fear play war with the temperature of Essek’s cheeks. He resolves to set his jaw.

After a beat, Da’leth releases him and the same placid smile returns. “See, you’re very clever. I have no doubt you’ll learn quickly.”

Learn. Like a dog.

“Now,” Da’leth continues, “you should already know the obvious things. You’re not to harm anyone here. You’re not to cast unless instructed. I am not fond of punishment, too brutal, but I will not stay my hand if I must. There are other methods to such things and I have quite a bit of experience acquiring what I want.”

A shudder runs down Essek’s spine and the hair on his aching arms stands on end. Da’leth seems to notice and his smile widens.

“Relax, love. You’re not here to be tortured. Soon, you’ll come to appreciate my protection, given the alternative.”

Essek opens his mouth to bare his teeth and snap back, but the earlier warning plays through his mind like an unwanted melody. Your mouth is a privilege. Remain polite. He shifts the half-formed words into a choked hiss.

Da’leth’s smile shifts sweet and horrifyingly fond. He taps Essek on the nose, huffing a quiet laugh when Essek rears back and blinks at the sensation. “Very good, love. I knew you’d understand. But, since you’re refusing your breakfast and your voice, I think we’ll go ahead and put this back.” He collects the discarded gag.

A fit of panic makes Essek lunge for the side of the bed. Away, he just needs to get away. He might not have his hands but he still has his legs. He can run.

Sophia catches him in an instant by the harness, hiking him up off the floor. He can’t help the cry that tears its way out of his throat. It hurts. It hurts. Da’leth leans across the bed and fits the leather between Essek’s teeth before he can snap them closed. Sophia pulls the buckle tight with her opposite hand until it bites into his cheeks and pushes his tongue down. His throat flexes as he gags around it.

“Not so tight,” Da’leth chides, sliding off the mattress and taking the buckle in both hands, loosening the strap by a single notch. Not enough that a shake of the head loosens it as Essek scrambles to reclaim his footing. Da’leth reaches around and gently thumbs a tear off Essek’s cheek. “Oh, don’t cry now.”

It’s the pain, Essek lies to himself.

Chapter Text

Essek spends the next few hours sulking. He doesn’t have a better word for it, though it doesn’t quite fit. With his mind still reeling from the reality of his situation, the horror of it takes second seat to indignation.

His shoulders fucking hurt, and not just from his earlier paltry escape attempt. The way the harness compresses his back muscles and pushes out his chest is a posture he’s never held and it strains to the point he can’t feel much below his biceps. But periodically Da’leth’s scourger hooks a finger between his arms and the leather before grunting positively to herself.

He fidgets, crossing and recrossing his legs as his ass grows sore from sitting in one position for so long. He flops onto his side for a while, eyes on the door at all times. Eventually, Sophia grows irritable.

“You can leave the room, you know,” she snaps after he throws himself down dangerously close to the side of the mattress. He rolls over to inspect her still leisurely propped against the wall, sword balanced beside her. She rolls her eyes. “They’re your chambers but you can like… get up.”

He chews the bit between his teeth to try and relieve some of the ache (unsuccessfully) and ponders that. What’s the point, really? What’s Da’leth’s fucking goal with all this? A piece of art he’d said but what does that even mean? This isn’t an interrogation, or if it is, it’s the worst one Essek’s had the misfortune of seeing. And why now is she insisting he get up after they locked him to the damn bed for hours? He stares at her face, searching for everything, and there–in the downturn of her lips and eyebrows both.

She’s bored out of her mind.

She wants him to get up so she can go anywhere else but here.

Well fuck her. He resigns himself to another few hours of painful silence.

Da’leth returns after an indeterminate amount of time. It feels like days. He carries the horrid silver chain balled-up in one hand and lets it dangle as he approaches the bed. His lips are twisted to one side.

“I have something to show you,” he offers, surprisingly demure after their earlier conversation. “I think it will help your mood.”

Essek peels his lips up off the gag in a voiceless snarl.

“Yes, yes. Like a feral cat, you are.” Da’leth reaches out and cups Essek’s aching jaw, stroking. Essek’s whole body burns to lean away, to throw himself back from the threat and puff himself up like a hunted prey animal. But a lot of good it did him last time, so he bears the touch with only a mild shudder. “That’s a good boy,” Da’leth murmurs, clicking the length of chain to the piercing under Essek’s nose and giving it a perfunctory tug.

It’s so little pressure, really. Anywhere else it would barely register as sensation. But here, through the delicate cartilage between his nostrils, it flares to a pull his body follows without instruction, the threat of pain so intense he can’t even stop himself. He’s pulled upright by the thin links, then to his feet. He wobbles briefly at the sudden change in altitude but Da’leth gives him the moment he needs to recover.

“It’s not good for your joints to sit so long.” A gentle tug and he pads along behind out into the hallway, bare feet slapping the marble. “I was hoping you’d take the opportunity to explore on your own. This is your home now.”

Essek drools helplessly around the gag. It’s absolutely not.

“But you’re scared, I know. It’s a big change.”

A deep-rooted petulance makes Essek halt and flares his nostrils. He’s not frightened. The chain pulls and it makes his eyes water but he holds firm, feet planted. Da’leth feels the resistance and pauses, glancing over his shoulder. He raises an eyebrow.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

He already hurts.

Da’leth takes a step forward and Essek uses the slack to take a step back. He expects to run into Sophia behind him, as he had before, but surprisingly he doesn’t back into the width of her chest. This is ludicrous. He’s being led deeper into the estate like a steer being led to slaughter. He is not a beast. He is not a pet. And he is not afraid.

He is, though. His heart pounds in his chest and he pants around the gag as if he’s run down these halls.

“Come along now,” Da’leth coos, applying the barest pressure on the leash. “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

Essek goes.

The pair of doors Da’leth leads him to is disgustingly ostentatious. Twin columns form the sides of the frame, marble to match the floor in a mockery of ancient architecture. Gold inlays in the shape of vining plants wrap around them and up and over the top of the doorway. What a waste of perfectly good components. They seemingly open of their own accord giving the two of them entrance to a grand library.

Essek hates that it’s so beautiful.

Three stories. Three. A grand spiral stair stands underneath a dome lit with pale orange arcane light. Two wings of books stretch out on either side of the staircase, shelves stretching floor to ceiling on each level. Impossible. A private residence with this enormity of a collection? It rivals the Marble Tomes. How much amassed knowledge lay in these pages?

The silver leash swings against his chest, ice cold on his skin, and he realizes that Da’leth has dropped it. It’s not particularly long or heavy, though the pressure is uncomfortable. Mostly it’s cold on his upper lip where it dangles.

“Are you going to let me unhook you?” Da’leth asks, a twisted and fond smile on his face. It rots Essek’s empty stomach knowing that the look is directed at him. He steps back and Da’leth shrugs. “Don’t get it caught on anything.”

Essek lets his gaze dart between Da’leth and the shelves. The doors shut behind them so that’s not an avenue of escape without his hands, but if he can slink away and hide long enough to scrape the restraints off, he might have a chance. He might not be able to teleport while he’s inside, but without that damned scourger chaperone he could potentially find the door out. But he’s wary of turning his back on the archmage.

Da’leth gestures in a go on motion before folding his hands behind his back.

Fuck it. Essek runs.

He tries to keep track of any hollow or nook he could tuck himself into and hide. In the center of the staircase is one, a slightly angled empty space between the floor and the first few curving stairs. He adjusts his steps to try and decrease the volume of his footfalls as he moves, but bare skin on marble makes an unmistakable slap. The shelves are too tall and too precise to leave gaps. He reaches the end of the first corridor and spins. For the moment, it seems he’s not being hunted.

He ducks down another row perpendicular to the one he just exited. Partway down, a reading nook is tucked between two shelves, set back into the wall enough for a table and twin chairs. He darts down and slithers underneath the table, pressing his nose up against his knees as he pulls them to his chest to try and muffle the sound of his own breathing.

He waits. And he listens.

It’s so quiet here he can actually hear the flutter of his own heart and the sound of his eyelashes brushing when he blinks.

He just needs to untangle himself from the restraints. He tucks his chin to his chest and tries to tongue the gag out from between his teeth. It’s already chafed both corners of his mouth and gods his jaw aches. He rubs the strap against his shoulder and when that fails he tries to hook it on the squared table leg and use that as leverage to dislodge it.

Humiliating to be rendered helpless by a few leather straps and buckles.

He switches to the arm restraints instead. He can’t fathom the mechanism holding them in place. It seemed so easy for the scourger to force it on him so it should be equally easy to remove. But no amount of stretching and rubbing so much as loosens the bindings. His chest grows slick with saliva and the ludicrous thought that he’d hate to get it on any of the books passes though his mind. What is wrong with him.

The table is doing him no favors; he needs to find a better tool. He peeks out from underneath, checking both directions before scooting out and back to his feet.

The rows are identical, not enough variation in covers or titles to serve as landmarks as he navigates on light feet. He comes upon a gallery with a massive pendulum swinging in the center. An oversized clock. Each sway brings the point of the pendulum nearly to the floor before it arcs back up again with the counterweight. It is a spectacular piece of machinery and he watches it for a few seconds as he catches his breath.

Objectively, he knows there’s no way out of this room. Da’leth would never release him if he had so much as an inkling that Essek might escape. He still gives the gallery one circuit before heading back the way he’d come. The other wing might offer something better suited to freeing him. A letter opener, even, if he can find one.

The right wing gallery is eerily identical to its sibling, its pendulum swaying in perfect time. Essek throws himself down against the railing around the arcing weight, scraping his face against it as if perhaps the gag’s rigidity has changed since he last tried it. Of course it hasn’t.

He feels disgusting, sweaty and tacky with his own spit. His head swims with hunger and dehydration. He needs water if he’s going to keep up any amount of resistance but the thought of begging for it makes his stomach churn.

He could always just lay down and die.

As if Da’leth would let him.

If he’s going to survive this long enough to find an escape, he needs to pretend to play the game.

Every step is excruciating, and not just because of the shaking in his shoulders and arms. He is Essek den Thelyss, youngest Shadowhand in dynasty history and right hand to the Bright Queen. He will not be brought so low as to beg. It’s not real. It’s just part of Da’leth’s stupid game. Temporary.

He winds his way back to the atrium. Flanking the main entrance are identical fireplaces, both roaring. On a lounge before one sits the Martinet, a book spread open with one hand in his lap. He hadn’t even bothered to pursue his captive through the stacks. Essek feels a little insulted. And twice as stupid.

Da’leth twists at the waist as Essek approaches and smiles. “There you are, love. I was beginning to worry I’d have to send Sophia in after you. Come. Sit.”

Essek bristles at the pet name and remains standing. He won’t try to talk around the gag–that’s a humiliation he refuses to stoop to.

“Or don’t.” Da’leth rakes his gaze up and down Essek’s nude body, then he sighs. “I imagine you want something.”

Essek bares his teeth as best he can.

“Well come here, then. I can’t read minds.”

It’s just the Martinet’s game. He’s not breaking. He’s not giving in. He’s playing until he can find a way out. That’s all this is. He ducks his head and lets Ludinus haul him closer by the leash. The other hand runs up and through his hair before catching the gag’s buckle and pulling it free.

“Better?”

Essek licks his lips, desperately trying to rehydrate them. His mouth feels thick and trying to close his jaw hurts more than leaving it hanging open. He forces out through teeth gritted from pain, “water.”

Da’leth snaps the book shut, tossing it further down the lounge. “Oh, I think we can do a bit better than just water.”

Chapter Text

The table is set before they arrive, an excess of empty plates and glasses, too much silverware. Da’leth sits at the head of the long table he perched at when he summoned Essek to this very room. How long ago? Days? It must be days. He gestures for Essek to sit beside him, and so a little awkwardly with his hands still bound, he does.

He feels foolish for obeying but gods he’s thirsty.

“Do you have a preference of wines?” Da’leth asks as he settles.

Essek wants to keep his jaw shut but it still aches for its time spent pried open. “Red.”

“Just red?”

He nods.

Da’leth looks a bit put out–disappointed. He lets his emotions show so readily, Essek feels a bit appalled by it. He’d never survive a week in the Bright Queen’s court. Unless they’re all fake, of course. But what a strange falsity to show.

“Fetch the Truscan Sunrise, would you?” Da’leth says aloud and for a moment Essek thinks it’s directed at him. He glances toward the open archway leading to the kitchens and there, hovering a few feet off the ground, a beautiful bottle floats, slightly bobbing, before setting itself down on the table.

Of course. Unseen servants. That’s what he’s meant this whole time. But how does he maintain them permanently, as he’s suggested? And is this the only one? Unless…

“A demi-plane,” Essek realizes aloud, surprising himself and Da’leth, who is holding up his crystal goblet for the wine to seemingly pour itself into. His eyebrows raise nearly to his hairline.

“Are you only now realizing?”

Essek bristles, a bit disgusted at himself but more irritated by Da’leth’s tone.

“I suppose you’ve been a bit busy. You’re forgiven.”

The bottle of wine floats around the table to fill the goblet in front of Essek, then whisks away again to the kitchen. He watches the liquid slosh a bit before settling, then squints at it. “Are you to hold it up so I can drink?”

“Would you like me to?”

Essek schools his face into the closest to apathy he can manage which is enough to make Da’leth chuckle. “No, it would be a bit inconvenient, wouldn’t it–not that I’d particularly mind. The servants are here for your every need. You need only ask.”

He hates it. He wiggles his fingers and strains at the restraints but they remain firm. With a breath through his nose, “wine.”

“Politely,” Da’leth reminds him.

Essek grits his teeth, the muscles echoing painfully all the way up into his temples. “I would like my wine.”

He feels his septum piercing jostle as it’s unhooked and pulled away from his face before the goblet lifts off the table and presents itself less than an inch from his lips. It hovers, perfectly still. A petulant part of him wants to lean forward and knock it down with his forehead. He knows the brand; it’s expensive. But the thought of the gag between his teeth again… Not so soon. He just has to play along until Da’leth lets down his guard. He leans the short distance and the goblet tips, allowing him a sizable sip before righting itself again.

The wine is delightful and he hates that too. It does little to slake his thirst.

He licks his lips. “It seems a bit impolite to coerce someone to the table nude.”

“Why would I go through all the trouble to bring you here only to hide you away again underneath all those robes?”

Essek feels his face grow hot at that and keeps his mouth shut until the first course floats out on invisible hands. A broth, viscous enough that it leaves a film on the bowl as it sloshes. It’s pale, allowing him to parse the gold leaf patterns on the porcelain underneath it. The smell is familiar though, if weak. A poor attempt at Xhorhasian cuisine, curated by someone who’s never had it.

“You have an appointment later you’ll want a full belly for so I suggest you eat up,” Da’leth dips a trencher into the broth as he speaks, swirling it. “I hope it’s to your liking.”

Essek wrinkles his nose. He resigns himself to participate in the meal against his better judgment. He needs sustenance if he’s going to remain of sound mind enough to plan an escape. The unseen servants alternate lifting the bowl for him to drink and offering him bites of bread soaked in the broth. Whenever the bowl tips too much or the trencher drips, a napkin immediately rises to wipe it away. It’s all painfully bland to his palate.

He grows frustrated halfway through the bowl and turns his head away. “No more.”

The servants set the porcelain down.

The second course offers seafood, likely a luxury this far from any proper coastline: crab legs, shells already ruptured open for easier access to the plump meat, some kind of fish fillet he can’t specifically identify, a bed of delicate sprouts. It smells far better than the soup and he’s still starving.

Ludinus watches expectantly over his second glass of wine and so Essek gives in. He begs for his meal, as much as it pains him.

The third course (a pasta dish he doesn’t recognize) and dessert (fruit in cream) he refuses altogether. The meal sits heavy in his stomach already.

“Not hungry?” Da’leth asks.

“No.”

“So be it.”

The luncheon lingers as Da’leth takes his time. He rakes his gaze up and down Essek’s body between bites. Had he use of them, Essek would wrap his arms around himself. Instead he looks away, pretending to take in the architecture of the demi-plane. Eventually, Da’leth wipes his mouth once more and abandons his napkin half-folded on the table. He takes the silver leash, earlier deposited beside him by the servants, and holds it up.

“Come along.”

Essek leans back ever so slightly in his chair, raising his chin. “That’s not necessary.”

Ludinus smiles. “I’ll determine that, I think.”

He could try to run again, could try to make a break for a door out. But he has no idea where it might be. And even if he does manage to burst through it, he’ll wind up where? Rexxentrum?

He’ll be lucky if he’s not slaughtered before his feet hit the ground.

The clip shuts around his piercing with a click and he stands to follow.

“You should be honored,” Da’leth says, tugging Essek along the main hall toward the bare and cold room serving as his chambers. “When Ikithon began this line of experimentation, I thought it was a waste of good money and time. He did, unfortunately, produce some incredible results. I believe this will be the most impressive thus far–even his favorite little Volstrucker didn’t cost this much.”

Essek knows the design of this conversation, intended to keep him questioning and creating hypotheticals. If he knew what he was being led to, he could resign himself to whatever torture awaits him. It’s basic espionage. It was taught to him as a child well before he ever dreamed of laying hand on a beacon. It still works.

Arcane in nature and bore by scourgers? What could they possibly utilize that would serve a purpose also forced upon him? Surely not a piece of equipment. A collar to permanently silence him? Potentially, but that would run counter to Da’leth’s behavior and are, while not common, not terribly expensive by any means. He could have commissioned a half dozen on his salary as Shadowhand.

An orc waits in the room, surprising given Da’leth’s undeniable hatred of anyone not of the empire. They are dressed in finely woven fabrics composed of dozens of different colors, a tapestry really. A similar pattern adorns their skin, complex lines and vibrant color, some glowing faintly against their gray hide.

The damned tattoos. Arcane, expensive, and permanent.

On the narrow bedside table lies an array of perfectly parallel needles and a series of flattened dowels. He’s never seen this process; it’s much more typical of the Menagerie Coast than Xhorhas and the expense is generally prohibitive to the layfolk.

The orc sets a porcelain bowl filled with silver-green powder beside the needles.

Essek’s attempt to hold his ground results in little more than watery eyes from the tightened chain.

“Do you have an estimate on the time?” Da’leth asks, leaning in close to the tools.

The orc grunts. “Six hours, longer if he needs breaks.” Their Common is thickly accented but ambiguous to Essek’s unfamiliar ears. Likely not even from Wildemount at all.

Da’leth touches his index finger to the powder, then rubs the residue with his thumb. It sparkles in the artificial light and glows on his fingertips a sickly green. “Is there a way to lessen his pain?”

“Get him drunk. Or knock him out.”

Essek tries to step back through the doorway, still wide open, but the damned chain holds firm. He knows if he pulls hard enough he could tear the piercing out. He should do it. His animal hindbrain begs him to run. But he can’t. His eyes burn with the pressure.

“Ach, not ideal.” Da’leth smooths the quilt with his free hand. “He’ll just have to bear it then. Come, love, let’s get you comfortable.”

Run. He can’t. His his breaths quicken. He won’t go through this again. He will not be some plow beast branded so as not to get lost or stolen.

“Now, I hate to do this. You know I do,” Da’leth laments, “but I cannot risk any mistakes in this. Residuum is difficult to come by these days and platinum is well… platinum. I simply don’t want to have to carve it off you and start over.”

Essek’s whole body tenses down to his toes and calves which threaten to knot.

“So just this once, I’m going to ask you to lay down, hold very still,” the enchantment swirls in the air. The specks of powder left on Da’leths fingers flare as the spell bursts into reality between them. “And stay nice and quiet.”

It takes hold even as Essek tries to throw his head to the side to fight it. He gets out the first broken sound of please before his jaw locks itself closed. His chest heaves as his body moves out of his control and lays belly down on the bed, a firm pillow under his forehead to allow him to take breath. And then his joints settle into immobility.

“Don’t worry. I’ll stay right here to watch over you.”

The first tap of steel into the back of his neck startles him, but his muscles bound by arcana tense to compensate for the involuntary movement. It’s almost as uncomfortable as the bite of the needle. It picks up the pace after that, constant and regular, a hammer pounding nails into the base of his skull. It’s more painful than it has any right to be. He knows that it pierces no deeper than the skin but he still feels like he’s being filleted.

When his eyes start to water from the pain, Ludinus folds up a hand towel and stuffs it between his them and the quilt. For the lights of course, because that is clearly the source of his discomfort. The residuum hums under his skin, a hive of wasps rhythmically stinging him and leaving their caustic venom.

After a couple hours they grant him a break, Ludinus lifting him and offering him a few sips of water. It does nothing for his pounding head or burning skin.

It takes seven hours, ultimately, with periodic water breaks. He only knows because Ludinus tells him.

As the orc quietly packs up their tools. Ludinus releases the spell and Essek sags with the weight of his own existence. He hurts. How he hurts. He lets himself be levered upright and accepts the acrid healing potion as it’s offered. The throbbing fire dulls until his nerves feel hollow for the lack of sensation.

“Very lovely,” Ludinus coos. “Would you like to see it?”

Essek finally finds his voice, hoarse. He can still feel the spell vibrating along his spinal column, and now something else–the constant buzz of the tattoo on his nape. “You’re a monster.” He struggles to remain upright with his arms still bound muscles aching from the strain.

“You’d know, wouldn’t you. You wear the skin of one.” Ludinus wraps an arm around Essek’s back to support him, conjuring a simple illusion in the other.

The silent image shows the results of the last seven hours. The linework glows faintly silver, as pale as his hair. It pulses gently with arcane energy. The lines are crisp and complex, some portions organic and flowing while others mirror the maze-like marks on Sophia’s arms, on the scourger’s arms that he crushed deep in the Dungeon of Penance. Essek recognizes some of the runes hidden in the more complex shapes: abjuration.

“What does it do?” he snaps.

“Oh it’s very complex. Our friend here,” Ludinus gestures to the orc as they fold their apron away amidst the rest of their packed tools, “ and I have been working on it since I decided to keep you. It’s for your privacy. No one will be able to reach into your mind now.”

“My mind.”

“Yes, love. I know you’re tired but keep up.” Ludinus pats him on the head, patronizing. “No one will be able to read your thoughts or break in with telepathy or sendings. Everything up in here,” a gentle tap to the temple, “you get to keep. I don’t want to risk someone coming across you and trying to interrogate you for information, now.”

Essek gapes at him. Not only did Ludinus bind his arms and lock his jaw, but has now stolen the only other method of communication he could utilize. “And if I send?”

“You won’t be able to. An unfortunate side-effect. But you’ll not need to while you’re here. Sophia can reach me in an emergency.”

An emergency. Emergency? What could possibly constitute an emergency if this was to be his future? Branded. Restrained.

“Fuck you.”

Da’leth tsks. “Need I remind you again about being polite?”

He needed that option desperately. If he had any hope of genuine escape, he needed the ability to call out for help. But no one would come for him now, would they? He betrayed the only avenue well before he ever met them.

“Fuck. You.”

The enchantment seizes his body again. Da’leth sighs. He opens the drawer to the bedside table and procures an identical gag to the one that had held Essek’s teeth apart for the duration of the night and most of the morning. His mouth opens for it against his will.

“I don’t like this any more than you do.” The buckle pulls the straps taut. “It leaves such ugly marks on your cheeks.”

Chapter Text

“Unfortunately,” Da’leth says, clipping the leash again, “I have fallen behind on some of my duties and I cannot put them off any longer.” The sick vertigo of his enchantment slips away as he drops the spell fully. Essek immediately pulls back despite the pain. He’s already gagged, retrained, branded into isolation. He knows there are worse possibilities.

He growls around the bit anyway.

Exhaustion is beginning to play war with his higher level thinking. How long has it been since he tranced? How long will it be until he gets to again?

Da’leth reaches out as if to cradle his face and Essek takes the minute amount of slack to roll to the other side of the bed. Something in his nose crunches like the splintering of greenwood and warmth slithers down both nostrils.

“Now you’ve gone and hurt yourself.” There’s no bite, no threat. Da’leth’s brows pinch in disappointment of all things. Essek expected more–expected aggression.

The swirling weight of evocation manages to fill the room’s volume.

Da’leth only needed one hand to cast, the other still firmly clutching the silver chain. How? Complex spellwork needs deeper channels to follow. It requires more focus than the quick dance of fingers to manifest.

None of that matters as an invisible fist curls around him and squeezes. It reminds him of the complex pressure of a failed teleportation, how the opening carved into the universe collapses in on itself before he’s fully stepped through. He hasn’t failed a teleportation in decades, of course. He almost anticipates the burning smell of Dunamis but there is none.

Of course it could be that there’s no room in his lungs to take a breath.

“Hush, now,” Da’leth says, voice even and unstrained by the spell. He paces around the bed and unhooks the leash. His hands are hot with spent arcana as he grips Essek’s chin and lifts. “It doesn’t look bad.” He thumbs away the half-drop of blood that’s trickled free. “I can’t have you throwing yourself around like that. You’re liable to hurt yourself worse.”

Essek bares his teeth. His lungs already burn.

One finger of the evoked hand curls away, a pompous pinky too good to deign touching the teacup, and Essek feels the way the air shifts around his hips.

Da’leth crouches and with two fingers, lifts the head of Essek’s cock enough to clip the leash on the hoop embedded in the flesh there instead.

Essek’s mind is starting to stutter, the horror of it delayed by his need to breathe. When the spell drops him, he instinctively brings his knees together as if that might somehow prevent the anticipated pain. He stands shaking with an amalgam of rage and panic, oddly cold where the rush of Ludinus’s magic briefly caressed him.

The pull here is not something he can force resistance against.

He is the greatest dunamancer the Dynasty has ever seen, laid low by a single silver ring.

Ludinus gives him the slack he needs to refill his lungs and balance after the shift in position. They stare at each other in an absurd reenactment of years ago where they stood as equals and Essek offered up the beacons.

Too late. He knows now they were never equals.

The leash does not tug, or even pull. The merest threat of pressure is enough to force Essek in line. He keeps pace, maintains slack. He walks at Ludinus’s heel like a well-trained pet.

What Da’leth refers to as his drawing room lacks all the interest the of the library. The fireplace roars with conjured flame, bright and hot as if real. Velvet lounges and chairs arranged in a semi-circle face toward the door, leaving the center open wide. Something in the back of Essek’s mind supplies that the space could be used for dancing. He suspects it’s used for little dancing at all. Ludinus centers them amongst the seating and gestures to a single ring bolted to the polished hardwood. “Down.”

Essek glances to the leash, shorter than would allow him to kneel if kept in hand, then back. He wants to snarl and snap, to lunge and take advantage of the scourger’s absence. But Ludinus has made his capability plenty obvious. So, biting down hard on the bit, Essek drops slowly to his knees.

The best he can do is hold Ludinus’s gaze and try to ignore the shifting and gentle click as the silver chain’s opposite clasp opens and closes around the ring bolted to the floor.

“I do need the lights to read, I’m afraid.” Ludinus fishes a handkerchief from a pocket in his robe, carefully folding it into perfect lengthwise quarters to make a strip of silk. “I know they’re harsh on you.”

Essek jerks his head to the side to avoid the blindfold but where is he to go, really. Chained down as he is, and even if he managed to shake free of that, there’s magic far stronger than his own that he has to contend with. The fabric is cool against his face.

Ludinus runs his hand through Essek’s hair. “Now let me promise you something, while I have your attention. I never intend to hurt you. You might be uncomfortable. You might be afraid. But you will never come to any real harm here.” The rustle of his robes suggests he stands, confirmed by the quiet swish of his house slippers across the floor.

And so Essek sits. And sits. When his knees start to ache he shifts positions and sits. The boredom dulls his mind while the blindness enhances his other senses. The constant flap of pages turning like nails being driven into his skull. He’s an expert of time but it betrays him–minutes, hours, days. He thrashes, throws himself to the polished wood, rubs his face on the floor to throw the blindfold without success. He chews the gag to try and lessen the constant dripping of his own saliva.

He gives in to the fury unbecoming of him and screams. A field of silence puts an end to that.

Always the ever present turning of pages.

He’s going mad. He recites basic dunamantic formulas in his mind. He sobs.

“Are you bored?” Ludinus asks from across the room.

Essek screams again into the silence. Anything. Literally anything would be better.

Above him there’s the smooth rush of conjuration and the chill of the plane of water. Drips, ice cold, spatter him face to toe.

“I suppose you’ve been patient enough.”

The water that caresses his leg is bloodwarm as it slithers up between his thighs. He bucks against the sensation, tugging on the everpresent piercing. It sends an uncomfortable jolt through him to his spine, curls up and lays down as something warm underneath his skin.

It’s too much, the icy droplets seasoning him for the monster coiling and constricting his cock, undulating base to tip. He thrashes, arches his back to escape it as his nerves shudder with the pressure. But it’s water, malleable and easily manipulated by skilled hands. He goans, throws his head back against the floor.

His face burns. This isn't real. It can’t be.

Pages turn.

It’s wrong. What’s left of his remaining consciousness begs him to resist harder. But he can barely move. The serpent passes a watery tongue over his slit, hot and warm, choking any remaining higher thinking. It squeezes.

His frustration peaks and he screams, thrashes, begs silently into the gag. With what goal, exactly? Gagged and silenced like this he can’t even answer questions, can’t reveal secrets. I never intend to hurt you Da’leth said and yet here he lies, shoulders and jaw in agony. All so Da’leth can watch. Or not even watch, as another page turns. A piece of artwork, prettied and left as decoration to be observed only when its owner desires. The scent of transmutation overpowers his own sweat and leaves him panting. His throat aches.

A second serpent slides up along his chest leaving a cool trail behind it despite its warmth. It engulfs his chin and pauses ever so briefly as if scenting his fear, and then pushes past his teeth and down his throat. He bites down, desperately trying to close his lips against the intrusion. But it’s fluid magically manipulated into motion, capable of filling whatever vessel it finds itself in.

The vessel being his lungs.

He cracks his skull against the floor with his convulsing. White hot sparks dance across his vision, starlight on a moonless night. He’s drowning.

Cough, his body demands. And it tries, sternum spasming to force the liquid from his lungs. It does nothing.

There’s no sense to be made of any of it. A piece of artwork, insensate except to its own suffering. What was the point of it all, if just to kill him now? His animalistic thrashing slows as the panic lessens and the pain fades. A sense of bliss swaddles his mind. He doesn’t want this. He wants to see his friends again. He wants to weave ancient magic with Caleb Widogast as they had atop his tower.

He’s so tired, though.

The water snaps out of him, whip-quick, through the gaps in his parted mouth and flared nostrils. There’s a steady thrum as his nerves remember what it’s like to feel and begin transmitting all his aches to his devastated consciousness. He’s so cold, inside and out. His lungs stutter into painful motion and he wishes they wouldn’t.

I never intend to hurt you. Ludinus lies.

A scalding hand brushes back hair from his face. “If only you could have seen yourself,” someone whispers, warm against his skin. Lips press a kiss to his temple. “Absolutely stunning.”

Now he coughs even though there’s nothing left to hack up other than the paltry air he managed to suck in on instinct. An arm reaches under his neck and levers him up and it hurts. Everything hurts. Inside his ribs, his lungs burn like skin left bare to winter wind. The gag tries to pull away but his jaw is locked so tight around it, a hand has to pinch the joint on either side to pry his teeth apart a little wider before it slips free.

All the while he’s shushed, the voice gentle and soothing. Something cool is pressed against his lips and tipped. There’s a brief splash of liquid and Essek flails as best he can away from it. No, he tries to say, no more. But all he manages is a gurgling wheeze.

“Hush now,” Ludinus coos, shifting to better support Essek’s head with the inside of his elbow. “It will help with the pain.”

Essek uses all the strength that’s returned to him to turn his head away. He can’t do it again.

Ludinus sighs above him. “Alright. I’m not going to make you.”

That same whoosh of evocation from before bursts into life and slides arcane fingers first under Essek’s back, then his knees. It lifts him fully off the floor and he knows he’s moving but he’s far too exhausted to do anything about it. Ludinus keeps a hand on his brow, too hot, petting through hair, caressing jaw and throat.

Essek shivers.

“A hot bath, I think. Warm you up.”

So tired. He’s so tired.

He hears the steady drip of water and despite his exhaustion, the terrified animal in him thrashes. He tries to reach for a handhold and pull himself away but his arms aren’t his. He succeeds in little more than a flop to his side and lays panting, muscles too weak to try again. The summoned hand jostles him and descends.

This water burns. It rushes in over the arcane palm, consuming his feet and hips. It swallows his waist and with it, his hands. His nerves light upf with static from the heat of it and head thunks back against the porcelain as the spell slips away and he’s left mostly upright.

His pulse thrums in his ears but like a prey animal in a snare, there’s no fight left in his ravaged mind. He can wait for his heart to stop or for the hunter to find him.

He still desperately doesn’t want to die but he can almost hear the creak of the bow being drawn.

Hands–real this time, not arcane–stroke his hair back from his forehead. They slosh water up along his hairline, cupping it so that it stays out of his face. Fingers scrub soaps into his scalp as his body adjusts to the water.

He just wants to rest.

“I’m proud of you,” Ludinus murmurs, close enough to his ear that Essek can feel the brush of breath on his skin. “You lasted longer than I thought you would.”

They’re words, he knows they’re words, and they should have meaning. They don’t. The blindfold itches over his eyes and sticks to the sweat developing across him.

The hands scrub his body next with more heavily fragranced soap in long smooth motions. He tries to draw his knees up but a gentle press is more than enough to keep them straight. The water doesn’t drain, it evaporates into nothing, spelled away into the ether. The shock makes him shudder and Ludinus shushes him again.

If he shuts his mind to it, lets his conscious slip into a semi-trance, the warmth becomes comfortable. The scrubbing along his back and sides soothes the frightened animal in him. Oils are rubbed into his skin and those smell nice too.

He’s just so tired.

Chapter Text

Essek does not wake, he simply realizes he’s conscious. There’s no lingering mud-like slog to signify he slept, nor the partial elation post trance. He is not and then he is.

He doesn’t remember being delivered to his room, nor being laid on his side and covered with the quilt. Yet here he is, tucked in up to his neck on the over-soft mattress. He’s warm, at least, but the inside of his skin aches.

Sophia sits in her regular place, boredly inspecting her cuticles for what must be the hundredth time based on her irritated scowl. The plum bruises around the inner corners of both eyes from where he’d smashed into her nose have begun to fade. He hopes it still hurts. On the side table, a mug of something–he’s not familiar with the smell–steams, enspelled to stay warm. The cloche beside it suggests breakfast. He’ll pass.

He’s sans gag, thankfully, so while his jaw aches from the frequency of it, the pain in his temples has receded to a dull, distant roar. He could get up, as Sophia has so clearly suggested before, but that’s what Da’leth wants from him. He needs to formulate a plan to get out of here. He can’t bear another night of that. He can’t. Even the memory kicks his heart into a faster rhythm and his lungs spasm for more air. That hurts. He winces from the pain, knees involuntarily pulling closer to his chest as if he might somehow cradle his aching insides.

Sophia leans back on her stool then, chin lifted and looking down at him. Her expressions seem so unnaturally old for her round face. They remind him somewhat of his mother and the other ancient souls he’s grown accustomed to–how the grim set of lifetimes contorts their muscles into sharp stone-like reliefs. She squints at him and he returns the favor.

There’s something strange about her and he needs to solve it.

“Awake?” she snaps. The aggression in her tone is enough to make him scowl and say nothing. He’s a child again, petulantly refusing an early rise on a holy day. She squeezes the bridge of her nose and winces.

Good. It does hurt.

“For fuck’s sake. Are you going to eat today?”

He blinks at her, mind still moving at half speed. What does it matter to her whether he eats? He’s never heard her speak so much. Her accent suggests Zemnian though it’s not as thick as Caleb’s nor the scourger he held in the Dungeon of Penance. High pitched and pretty, her voice. Perhaps if she’d not been damned to this life, she could have dazzled audiences with it.

“Okay,” she slaps both knees with her hands and stands. “I’m not putting up with your bullshit.”

She fists the corner of the quilt and rips it off him. It resists where it’s tucked underneath the foot of the mattress and threads snap with her strength. Essek curls tighter in on himself concerned she might strike him. He wouldn’t put it past her to take the opportunity without Da’leth looming. Instead she wraps her hand in the harness binding his arms and yanks him to his feet with a single jerk.

He shouts as the pain blinds him, then grits his teeth against giving her the pleasure of more sound. She holds him upright until he gets his feet under him and then marches him through the threshold.

Goose pimples stand proud on his arms–he can feel them despite the harsh position. At least he hasn’t lost sensation there yet. He’ll adjust to the cooler air but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to burrow back under the quilt for warmth.

She pushes him back to the library and it’s no less impressive the second time. Light, he wishes he could have visited it under different circumstances to properly appreciate its depth.

He shakes his head to try and get her attention. “I can walk.”

“So he speaks.”

“I can walk!”

She lets go, crossing both arms over her chest. The twin fireplaces roar behind her, giving a rimlight to her silhouette. She nods to the lounge Da’leth laid on before and the stack of books left on the table beside it.

“Go sit.”

He scowls at her and she rolls her eyes.

“Or don’t. I don’t give a fuck.”

She places both hands flat against the camelback lounge and pushes. The gilded legs scream across the floor until it hits the matching tea table, and then that, too, slides until all three pieces of furniture clump together. She hip checks the crushed velvet, sliding it an extra inch.

Essek winces at the horrendous noise, hair on his nape and arms standing on end. Da’leth would never allow that were he present, surely. Would she put it all back when she’s done with… whatever in the hells it is she’s doing? She steps up to him, uncomfortably close and looming.

He refuses to be cowed. Show no fear, and all that. But just as she has no patience for sitting around in his assigned room, she also seems unwilling to deal with his defiance. With one hand, she effortlessly grips his shoulder and slides him out of her way toward the lounge.

Back to him–an insult in and of itself, she clearly doesn’t see him as any sort of threat–she bends at the knee and stretches each leg out in front of her in turn. Of course, she means to keep herself fit. The newly widened atrium gives her the space she’ll need to move. She wasn’t threatening him, or even trying to make a point, she just wanted to move. His warden and chaperone, she’s just as stuck in her role as he is.

Perhaps this is an alliance he can explore. Even a brief respite from Da’leth’s sick game might help him retain his sanity.

“You can fuck off, you know,” she says without turning her head.

Fuck off he does.

There’s no point in running this time and he doesn’t feel the need to exhaust himself again doing such. Instead he takes the luxury–without giving Da’leth the pleasure–to properly explore the library. Without the constant buzz of panic, he even manages to appreciate some of the architecture and clever use of alternating aisles to make it seem larger than it is. Still impressive, still an incredible feat of spellcraft, but not quite as massive as he initially thought.

He sits against the guardrail in the right wing gallery, back to the constant whoosh of the pendulum. Da’leth will be back. He’s not sure when, he probably should have asked. Would the scourger tell him if he had? Would it be worth his time to ask?

She continues to confuse him. Why relegate a scourger–one prized enough to be awarded her own set of arcane tattoos–to such a miserable post? She clearly favors her blade to spellwork, though surely she’s capable or she wouldn’t be here to mind him. Even Da’leth isn’t stupid enough to leave him alone with a talentless mage. She takes orders like a well-trained hunting dog but the moment Da’leth leaves, she sours.

Be polite, he was told, and she is anything but. Relief, in a way, compared to the calm sweetness of Da’leth’s disgusting mouth.

And so young. She’s so young. How can she possibly wield that blade properly at her age?

He lets out a frustrated sigh and stands, pacing in mirror to the pendulum.

He wants to read. The knowledge stacked around him, ripe for the picking, and of course he doesn’t have his hands to reach any of it. Torture, truly, comperable to what–no. Nothing is comparable to what Da’leth put him through in that room. He alters his route to bring him closer to the shelves, browsing titles with his head tipped to better read them.

A series of bestiaries, draconic history, forbidden game animals. He crosses the gallery. Interplanar travel, applications of brumestone–much better. If only he could–

The servants. Of course.

He takes a breath through his nose and asks. “I would like that copy of Pre-Divergence Hypotheses on the Uses of Brumestone.”

The book slides off the shelf, floating above his head before slowly descending to eye level, displaying the pristine cover.

“Open it.”

The book flaps open, pages fluttering as unseen hands flip through them before settling on the title page.

“Turn the page.”

It turns.

Essek bites his lip. “Unhook my restraints.”

The book bobs in place as if in contemplation, swaying slightly in an unseen breeze. It remains suspended and nothing touches the harness.

He knew better. The Martinet is not so idiotic as to allow for such a simple solution to his careful planning. And yet Essek had allowed a tiny rivulet of hope to seep into the cracks of his resolve. Now frozen with disappointment, he feels himself more fragile.

He’s drowning.

The book follows him, hovering a foot or so behind his head as he pads back through the winding shelves to the nook underneath the spiral stairs. If he angles himself just right, he can fit between the slats and enter the cavity. The gaps between the stairs serve as arrow slits for him to observe the library but still give him some modicum of privacy.

He doesn’t sob–he’s able to rein himself in that much, thankfully. How stupid to so dangerously approach the breaking point Ludinus wants when the man isn’t even here. He’s stupid. So fucking stupid. He can’t even wipe away the tears.

This is the punishment he’s wrought, it seems. Certainly he deserves it.

He cannot send but he manifests the runes in his mind anyway. The recipient forms, piecemeal alongside them, a mockery of what he actually looks like when the arcane lights of Rosohna reflect off his copper hair.

“I’m sorry,” Essek breathes to the hollow under the stairs. “I’m sorry. Please.”

No answer comes.

Chapter Text

Essek does try to eat some of the saffron risotto that slides itself between two of the stairs on a disgustingly ornate plate. On the third spoonful, his stomach roils and he snaps at the unseen servant to take it away. He’s familiar with the particular brand of lightheadedness plaguing him–he’s starving. The nausea curls up comfortably in his stomach anyway and he hunches around it as if that might keep the beast from waking.

In the late evening, a half-glass of wine hovers toward the nook like a hound on scent, Da’leth following behind. The servant, of course, locates the hiding place with ease, giving it away.

Ludinus crouches to peer between the gaps, expression mild. There’s tension around his eyes, crows feet almost pulled taut. “There you are. Sophia wasn’t sure where you’d run off to.”

Essek draws his knees impossibly tighter against his chest.

A pitying smile slides onto Ludinus’s lips. “Why don’t you come on out and we’ll get some food in you.”

Essek wants to refuse. He wants to defy for the sake of it, to bare his teeth like a wild animal and snap at the air between them. But he’s so tired. So very tired. His hands shake in their bindings as he unwinds himself and slithers back out through the gap–an obedient pet. His knees ache from the duration of his time under the stairs and he winces as he stands.

The silver chain clinks against itself as Ludinus rolls it in his palm and opens the clip between thumb and index finger. He approaches slowly as if Essek might strike out or twist away. “There’s a good boy,” he murmurs as it snaps closed around the septum piercing.

He follows with the barest pressure to the dining hall. He sits at Ludinus’s left hand, just around the corner of the table. He eats light and drinks most of a bottle of Kamordahn wine.

“Did you read anything interesting?” Ludinus asks, unfolding a napkin and laying it across Essek’s bare thighs.

If he keeps his mouth shut he’s bound to earn himself more hours in the gag so he swallows the film of foreign grapes. “No.”

“I set some things out for you. Did you not find them?”

Essek shakes his head and then remembers himself. “I did not.”

Ludinus sighs. “I noticed Sophia pushed the furniture around again. The servants probably put them away so she wouldn’t damage them. I do dislike when she does that.”

Wine-fog smothers some of Essek’s aches and the constant underlying hum of panic. It also reinforces his exhaustion. He shuts his eyes, aware of his own rocking side to side but not feeling the drive to fight it. Light, he wants to trance.

Were it not for the nearly imperceptible clink of fork on porcelain, he wouldn’t be sure Ludinus was still eating. What punishment might he earn by drinking himself into oblivion? After a while, Ludinus sets down his silverware and chuckles.

“You can barely stay upright; why don’t we go relax in the sitting room?”

He’s drowning.

“Oh, no, love. Nothing like that.”

It cuts through the muted wave of panic. Essek locks gazes with Ludinus’s softened expression. It makes him sick, how genuine the concern seems. Ludinus did this to him. Ludinus broke him.

No, not broken. He’s just going along with the game. Just biding his time until he earns enough trust to break free. He has to bear it a little longer.

He stands when beckoned to. Ludinus carries the silver leash slack in his hand, making no move to clip it as he nods toward the main hall. Essek swallows and follows along behind, hallway tilting side to side like a ship. Once he leans a bit too far and shoulders the wall before righting himself.

They turn opposite the drawing room, hanging an immediate left into a cozier sitting room. Two plush armchairs opposite a long couch sizeable enough to sleep comfortably, separated by a low vermaloc tea table. An illusory fire burns low in the hearth, bathing the whole room in an unearthly orange. Essek can’t parse the colors of the patterned fabric for the hue, but the close-knit blocks squirm before his eyes, leaving him blinking in the threshold to try and clear it.

“Do you read Sylvan at all?” Ludinus asks, petting along the back of the couch until he rounds it enough to sit.

Essek bristles. “Do you take me for a child?” Him, not know the old tongue? The mother language to Elvish and Undercommon alike? The hallmark of ancient magic like that which whets Ludinus’s own lips when he casts? What an embarrassment to his Den he’d be if–

“Well, you’re but a decade removed from childhood, but no, I do not.” Ludinus smiles, twisting to place his back against the arm of the couch and stretching both legs out in front of him. He pats the hideous upholstery between his knees. “But forgive me, I know you’re highborn, but I am unfamiliar with education in Ghor Dranas.”

Essek grits his teeth. The wine is making him foolish. Be polite. “Rosohna.”

Ludinus hums an interrogative.

“It’s Rosohna now.”

“Oh?” He pats the couch with more intent. “My mistake. Rosohna.”

The word sounds rancid in his mouth. Essek squeezes his eyes shut as his stomach rolls, but he goes. He flexes his fingers to remind himself they’re still there and steps around the couch until his knees press against the single cushion.

“I can read to you if you like, so you can rest your eyes. Did you have access to much classic poetry during your upbringing?”

Essek grunts. His mind wars with his body, desperate to move away from the venomous snake on the path before him. But he must press on. He steps up over Ludinus’s leg, having to lean far forward to maintain his balance with his arms bound. He folds his knees underneath himself, tight together as if that’ll help him avoid any of Ludinus’s flowing robe.

It doesn’t, of course, and it sure as the hells doesn’t stop the hand placed flat on his chest that pushes him back until his aching shoulders rest against Ludinus’s chest.

A full-body shiver runs through Essek’s spine.

While Ludinus’s voice is always tonally pleasant, even when pushed to anger, the proximity reveals the quiet rumble as he speaks. “Are you cold, love?” He presses a dry kiss to the top of Essek’s head. The wine in his belly roils. “Fetch a throw, would you?”

A violet-dyed blanket floats across the room, unfolds, and lays flat across Essek’s whole body. It scratches his bare skin but the cover it provides, despite his horrific seating arrangement, settles something in his brain. He’s so tired. And it’s so warm.

“Are you much familiar with Alderwreath?”

He is, though not deeply. He has little love for poetry but her writings frequently reference the Calamity and provided references he daren’t ask for from the Umavi. His last dregs of petulance makes him want to lie rather than suffer though a long-winded description of nuance. And he’s just so tired.

“Yes,” he forces out, squirming a little to try and reduce as much contact between Ludinus and himself. The hand on his chest simply pushes him back down.

“Is that so? I’m surprised. Bring me an untranslated Alderwreath.”

Again, Essek feels the command is meant for him, despite now knowing better. He wouldn’t be surprised, and in a way had grown to expect it. But no, he’s not here for tasks–he’s here for leisure. The tome takes longer than the blanket, eventually pushing the door open and moving through before alighting in Ludinus’s outstretched hand.

He gives the servant more complex instructions than Essek would have believed it could follow. Open to the first page. When I finish reading it, turn to the next. Be gentle with the pages; they’re fragile.

And they are fragile. He’d be hesitant to touch them with his own hands, much less trust unseen servants to do so. Patterned with the veins of ancient, multicolored leaves of which the pages were made, crumbling in the corners, rounding its form. Hand-scribed rather than pressed, the script is narrow and circular, indicative of genuine ancient Sylvan and not the bastardized modern translations he’s used for reference in his research. Even the iron in the ink has rusted and flaked away, leaving the words mere stains on each page.

It’s an original, not a copy.

“How did you get this,” Essek blurts before he can stop himself, given sudden energy by the revelation.

Ludinus chuckles behind him. “How I acquire most things, love. I simply took it.”

Of course. That’s all Ludinus does–he takes. He took the priceless volume. He took power over the Empire by creating the Assembly. He took Essek’s body.

Essek would not let Ludinus take his mind any more than he already had.

First, he needs rest to maintain his resolve.

And so, as Ludinus reads, Sylvan accent-free and beautiful, Essek shuts his eyes. He hates this, hates the warm chest against his shoulders and the legs around his own. Hates the scratch of the woolen blanket over him. Hates the ache in his shoulders and the lingering weakness in his jaw.

Hates the rumble of Ludinus’s chest and the way it reminds him of his father and how, some nights when he and Verin were young, their father would read old scripture to them in flowing Sylvan equally comfortable in his mouth.

Essek finds the familiar cord of focus and latches onto it like a lifeline. It is one, really; he’s not sure how much longer he can go without rest.

He hates it. But he’s so fucking tired.

The trance seeps into his legs and leadens them until he sinks deeper into Ludinus’s hold and he finally, finally, gets an inch of rest in the miles’ long journey he anticipates ahead.

Chapter Text

They rapidly develop a routine. Knowing what to expect is two-fold, relieving as much weight as it adds to Essek’s aching shoulders.

Da’leth trances the exact same hours daily, eleven to three–as punctual as the pendulums in his grand library. He does so alone in his own quarters, thankfully leaving Essek to spend that time with Sopha. Not that he necessarily enjoys her company, but her motives are relatively easier to understand. She’s also quick to remind him that he doesn’t have to make them both fucking miserable by pacing his room.

Da’leth brings breakfast for them both, already dressed in his midnight assembly robes and with his face painted up in powders and shimmer. He makes idle conversation, laments assembly politics–genuinely pleased, he says, to discuss it with a like-minded individual. He sips his spiced Xhorhasian tea. He departs only after laying a desert-dry kiss to Essek’s hairline.

Essek spends fewer hours sulking and more wandering the halls as days pass.

He reads the books on ancient gods, apogee solstices and ley lines, and Ruidis-born children that are left out for him with mild interest. Curious but mostly outside his expertise.

He orders various extravagant meals from the servants that he doesn’t eat just to see them give their best attempt at Xhorhasian meals.

He hunts for narrow corners to try and scrape his restraints off, to no avail.

He watches Sophia exercise, skilled beyond her years, and wonders exactly what lines of experimentation led to her extended youth.

He trances in fits and starts, never more than an hour at a time. Most often he finds himself tucked under tables or the stairs, seeking any modicum of darkness and privacy he can find. The rest, he hatefully lays in Da’leth’s lap in the sitting room, listening to the rounded Old Sylvan he struggles to understand.

He drinks the wine that Da’leth brings when the day ends and suffers through evenings of bitching about Ikithon and the king.

He slithers into the space under the stairs and tries to suppress the sound of his sobbing.

He begs the Nein to find him.

They don’t.

“You haven’t touched your dinner,” Da’leth says one particularly frustrating evening. He already spent a half hour discussing how disappointed he was in the end of the war–he’d hoped for a continued excuse to decimate the Kryn–and it left Essek in a particularly foul mood.

“Surprisingly,” Essek snaps, voice hoarse from disuse outside of occasional monosyllabic answers, “being held prisoner doesn’t make for a good appetite.”

Da’leth looks down to his own plate, lobster tail half eaten. He discards his silverware and steeples his hands, resting elbows on the table in a terrible breach of etiquette. “You are not a prisoner here.”

“Slave, then.”

“Do you think so little of yourself?”

Essek scoffs. “It is what you have relegated me to, is it not?”

A sigh. “You are my companion, love. Nothing less.”

“Lay down and die.”

“Alright, enough of that. If you’re not going to eat, you won’t be needing that ugly tongue.” Da’leth stands.

The days of freedom from the gag allowed Essek to forget the pain of it, somehow. Be polite. He sure as shit hadn’t. Well, if he was going to be punished, he might as well lean into it. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Essek’s chair slams to the ground as he shoots up, already spinning on the ball of his foot to run. Where, exactly, he doesn’t know. There’s nowhere to escape in this gods-damned demi-plane, and it’s sure to land him chained up again. For the moment, he doesn’t care. If the best he can do is be irritating, then irritating he will be.

He runs face first into Sophia. Where the fuck had she even come from? He rebounds off her, stumbling over his own feet as she catches him by the throat in one hand.

“Don’t hurt him, please,” Da’leth calls, perfectly calm.

Sophia huffs. She fishes something out of her satchel with her free hand–the gag, lucky him–and raises her eyebrows. Essek locks his jaw and thrashes until she lifts him fully off the ground.

“Open,” she says.

He bares his teeth and snarls, kicking at her shin with his bare toes. She looks beyond his shoulder–to Da’leth surely–and whatever passes between them Essek isn’t privy to. She shifts her grasp on the gag, grips him either side of his jaw, and squeezes. It hurts but the pain he can withstand. Unfortunately, the mechanical action of his jaw cannot, and despite his best efforts, his teeth part.

How simply she manipulates him with only two hands. Once she has the bit seated, she pulls the buckle until it pinches his cheeks. Da’leth doesn’t ask her to loosen it this time.

Essek screams. There’s no point to it, really. He knows it won’t cause Da’leth to free him from the restraints, and he knows no one can hear him in the magic confines of the house. He bites down into the leather, fully intending to shout himself hoarse.

Sophia shifts her grip from his throat to the harness, holding him out at arm’s length as if the added distance might relieve her of his volume. When Da’leth approaches, Essek lunges as if to bite, pulling against the restraints despite the way electricity roars through his joints. He snarls, drooling helplessly around the gag.

Ludinus runs his thumb over Essek’s cheek and sighs. He wears disappointment, but it’s fake. It must be fake. He should be angry. He has to be. “I thought we’d gotten past all this.” Too calm. Too quiet.

Essek snarls again.

“Take him to bed.”

He thrashes, writhing under Sophia’s hands as she carries him inches off the ground away from the dining hall and toward his room. Having had success in the past, he throws his head back to try and break her nose. It doesn’t work a second time.

“For fuck’s sake, calm down,” she hisses, giving him a single, violent shake that rattles his brain around in his skull.

Instead he screams.

She hefts him up over her shoulder without any sign of strain. “I’m so fucking sick of you.”

When they arrive, she throws him down sideways across the mattress and sits on him while she fishes out two short lengths of chain from the bedside table. Next time he’s able, he’s going to have the unseen servants hide those. She fists his hair and holds him still as she loops the chain around one of the slats in the headboard and clips both ends to his septum ring, forcing him so close to the headboard, his breath echoes back over his face.

For the first time, he starts to doubt the worthwhileness of his fit.

The second leash goes exactly where he expects. She shoves him against the headboard, making it crack into the wall behind it. With his body flush against the wood, it takes little effort to repeat the process of securing him, only this time from the piercing in his cock.

The fight in him dies. He scooches as close as he can, skin pressed up against the gilded vermaloc from forehead to hip. The goosefeather pillows hollow under his weight, cradling and preventing him from unintentionally rolling away.

This is what he’s wrought. Decades of taming himself, of carefully constructing the perfect persona that would give him access to what he wanted. What he needed. Years of precise conversation, planning each word in advance to ensure he achieved his goals, regardless of the cost. Exacerbate rising tensions? Fine. Start a war? Fine.

Betray his friends?

His eyes burn.

If only he’d kept his mouth shut.

Chapter Text

Despite his best attempts, Essek cannot prevent the constant pull on his piercings. Any shift applies pressure, making his eyes water and encouraging drops of slick to build up on the head of his cock.

He hates himself for it.

He can’t trance. Twice he reaches for the focus to let his mind rest and twice his body moves on its own, drawing his attention to his face and groin. He can’t let his mind wander.

The headboard provides little visual interest, and since the chain prevents him from moving his head at all, he shuts his eyes.

This. This is torture.

He could have avoided it. If he kept his mouth shut, if he stayed polite, if he behaved. That’s all he has to do.

He sinks below the surface of hysteria and falls out the other side before the door swings open and Ludinus’s clicks his tongue in disappointment.

“Sophia.”

She doesn’t seem terribly affected by the scolding. “He was going to hurt himself thrashing around like that.”

“And he’s not going to hurt himself like this?”

The bed at Essek’s back dips and for a horrified moment, he thinks he’s going to roll into it. But instead, Ludinus leans up against his back, supporting him. Ludinus tuts again, gently scrubbing at Essek’s hairline with a thumb.

Sophia’s shrug is audible in her reply. “Hasn’t moved an inch.”

Hands cup his face, smooth and warm. They hold him steady as the chain clicks open and the pressure recedes. Essek rubs his face into the pillow, shifting sore skin and muscle to calm the ache. Just to calm the ache. Nothing else.

The mattress shifts as Ludinus leans, scalding hand smoothing down Essek’s ribs and over his hip, around to his inner thigh and down his length.

“You’ve made a mess of yourself, haven’t you?” Ludinus hums, thumbing the head twice before clicking the chain open and freeing Essek from the headboard. Essek’s face radiates heat as he angles it deeper into the pillow.

Humiliating, even compared to everything else.

“It’s alright,” prestidigitation tickles Essek’s skin as the fluid evaporates into the ether, “you’re not going to be scolded for that.”

He sits up when prompted, too eagerly, his head swimming and back screaming with the same intensity he had earlier.

“Head down,” Ludinus says.

He obeys.

He’d do anything to be free of the gag again. The saliva that dribbled across his cheek while he lay itches and the corners of his mouth burn with the constant chafing from the firm leather. He sags with anticipated relief as Ludinus takes hold of the strap and separates the pin from its hole. But he does not pull it away, he simply resets it one size looser and tilts Essek’s head back up with a gentle hand at his chin.

A whine develops in Essek’s throat, entirely unbidden. He shakes his head and tries to tuck his chin back to his chest, giving access to the buckle. He can’t bear it any longer. He can’t. He regrets his outburst. He’ll not do it again. He gurgles around the bit to say as much, tongue fighting to tap the back of his teeth for proper enunciation.

Ludinus rubs his hand back and forth over the crown of Essek’s head, expression soft. “I know. But I told you, it’s a privilege. You remember.”

Essek hiccups a single, ugly sob.

“Here. I brought you something to help you feel better.”

He does not want whatever gifts have been brought for him. But is he really going to refuse again? Start another conflict when all he has to do is behave? He shivers as Ludinus cups his cheek and then slips his thumb between lips and gag.

“I know you’ve been having trouble feeling hungry, and it’s likely making you irritable.”

True, though Essek’s irritation has very little to do with hunger.

“I know you’re still adjusting and need more time, but I worry about you getting sick.” Ludinus pinches a grape-sized orange bead between his fingers. He holds Essek’s jaw firm as he slides the bead between the gag and his thumb, popping it behind the leather and into Essek’s mouth.

The bead dissolves, jelly-like and overwhelmingly starchy. He pushes it against his hard palate with his tongue, trying to force it back out, but it liquifies into the ghost of a texture in seconds. Like a horse and a sugar cube, that’s what he is.

“A bead of nourishment, love.” Ludinus pats Essek’s thigh. “Give it a few moments and you should feel it.”

Ah, a full day’s energy in a single, convenient sphere. Expensive, but Essek’s partaken before simply to avoid going through the effort of requesting meals be brought to his towers. His mind sharpens from the additional calories and one facet of his perpetual headache lays down to nap. He does feel better, which he hates. But with his head more focused he realizes–

With regular beads of nourishment pushed between his cheek and the gag, helpless to reject them before they melt into his body, Ludinus would never need to remove the bit again. His mouth is a privilege and it can be taken from him. Permanently.

His throat spasms as if to expel the bead. He chokes on his own saliva, throwing his head side to side. He drops his chin to his chest and pushes at the gag with his tongue, once again desperate to dislodge it, but it holds firm.

Ludinus shushes him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him in until Essek’s earrings dangle against the midnight blue assembly robes. It’s warm.

“You’ve had a long day,” he says, scraping his nails over Essek’s scalp. “Why don’t we go rest in the sitting room for the rest of the evening.”

He’s helpless to refuse so, despite his panic, he wheezes out another sob and nods.

This begins their new routine.

Ludinus brings some of his work home, spending morning hours in his office while he trudges through exhausting research reports and proposals. He reads them aloud, narrating his decision making, and endlessly bitches about political drama.

And Essek has to sit through all of it because, rather than leaving him to his own devices, Ludinus chains him to the desk.

He has a little cushion, at least, and the desk’s waterfall edge gives him something to lean against. With the leash clipped to an eye hook rather than looped around a leg, there’s enough slack for him to fidget.

When he gets too restless, Ludinus drags Essek’s head up against his thigh, running his fingers over scalp and neck.

Before he departs each morning, Ludinus tucks a fresh bead of nourishment behind the bit, kisses Essek’s brow, and reminds him to be good.

On the thirtieth day, his wristpocket fails. He knows it’s the thirtieth only because that’s how long the spell lasts and he’d attempted to distract himself with research when he couldn’t trance the night before the peace talks, thus renewing its effects. Time is failing him.

Ludinus feels it too. He sits up straighter at his desk, quill stilling on the letter he’s been composing.

The contents fizzle out of their extradimensional space: components, a spare cloak, purse of coin. And his spellbook.

Essek hunches over it, pulling against the silver leash until his eyes water, as if that might somehow prevent Ludinus from seeing it. It’s stupid. He knows there’s no keeping it safe from prying eyes. All his research, arcane secrets known nowhere else but the dynasty, his own personal spells. Decades of his life–his identity–lay between the pages.

“Clever,” Ludinus scoots his chair back casually as if the object in question is little more than a trinket. “I had wondered. It seemed odd that you’d go anywhere without it.” He takes hold of the chain connecting Essek to the desk and pulls gently, so gently, but it’s enough. It hurts and Essek’s body automatically follows the pressure to preserve itself.

“I expected more, I’ll be honest.” Ludinus caresses the cover before claiming the book by the spine.

Essek growls, chewing the leather between his teeth.

“Nonsense, I’m not going to hurt it.” The cover parts and pages tumble open, bird wings in flight. “Your handwriting is atrocious.”

Rage is getting him nowhere and the horror sinking root in his chest saps his energy. He begs instead, dropping his head to relieve pressure from the leash. “Please,” he whines, word mutilated by the gag.

Ludinus ruffles his hair and sets the spellbook open on the desk.

Essek can’t bear to watch but the smooth slide of skin on page as Ludinus fingers his most private thoughts makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The sound of curling pages as they turn makes his insides twist. It’s worse than Ludinus’s hands on him.

“I knew you were proficient but some of these are almost magnificent.”

“Your abjuration needs work. I can help you with that.”

“Fascinating. You executed the wrong formula here but managed to arrive at a functional outcome. Your lack of standard runes has significantly impacted your progress–this foreign magic has definitely hurt you. But you’re smart; I’m sure you’ll pick it up quickly.”

He scours every page with agonizing focus. Essek knows the exact order of his spells, which page elicits which response, and so when Ludinus pauses and hums an upward inflection of curiosity, he knows what draws it.

“This is familiar. I believe Trent has been trying to reverse engineer it for some time. Your notation is a mess; did you create this yourself?”

He did. He whittled it from mixed disciplines, smoothed it into perfection so that it could be used by caster and blademaster alike. He gave it to the Queen, then to every soldier in the Dynasty. The Martinet laying eyes on it rips his very soul from his body.

“No wonder you rose to your station so quickly. A pity.”

A pity, indeed.

Chapter Text

On an otherwise typical evening, Ludinus leads Essek to the drawing room instead of the sitting room. Essek stops in the doorway, threshold a physical force. All the leash’s slack slips away, link by link, until it hurts.

Ludinus sighs without turning around, shoulders drooping in his pale blue robe. “I thought we were beyond all this posturing.”

He’s not posturing. Light, he’s not. He’s desperate to obey but his body refuses to take a step further. His shoulders shudder as a watery specter slithers into his chest, constricting his heart and lungs, fully intending to consume him from the inside out. Piece by piece, deconstructing him. A cadaver for medical study, ribs sawed open and flesh cold. He can’t breathe.

He’s drowning.

The leash slackens.

“Oh, love. You’re scared, aren’t you.” A hand across the nape of his neck, scalding.

He can’t quantify what’s happening to his body. His consciousness narrows, hovers at a distance behind him in the hallway. What is this? What is wrong with him? His pulse throbs in the arches of his bare feet, his own blood ice in his veins.

He can’t move.

“You did so well before.” The voice echos from each direction at once, bouncing off itself as it travels through the air–

Air.

He needs air.

Evocation. That flavor he recognizes. It seeps past the gag, heavy on his tongue, and sticks in the built-up film of his own saliva. He’s moving, body cradled by the familiar semi-corporeal tingle of summoned arcana. Moving in, beyond the doorway, over the tiled floor.

No.

No. No. No.

He scrabbles for footing, gaze locked on the silver ring in the floor. Nothing else exists, not the fishbone hardwood, not the vaulted ceilings, not Ludinus. The gnarled, arcane fingers do not relent until he’s centered over the stage. When it poofs away, Essek’s knees unlock and he falls, hip slamming the floor.

Fingers in his hair, soothing and warm. When they pull away, he tries to follow, calling out around the gag in a garbled plea for safety.

Find him. Oh please, find him. He can’t bear it again.

The only thing that sniffs him out are the serpents, warm and wet on his bare legs as they spiral up along his thighs. They constrict where they please.

He howls and thrashes–the stench of transmutation coating his throat. And then they plunge into him, a flooded river following the fractals of canyons. Rapids swirl along his insides. His chest spasms, desperate to expel the weight in his chest.

And it is heavy, more than anything else. Heavier than any gravity he’s known–heavier than the weight of his crimes. His own lungs anchor him to the floor.

His awareness of the orientation of his limbs fades first. The panic recedes, chased out of his mind by calming apathy. He doesn’t want to die, but would it really be so bad to slink into the shadows of sleep until he’s strong enough to think again?

He’s so tired.

The water snaps out of existence, evaporating to the chaos from whence it originated. His body jackknifes as if struck by lightning. A storm abating. His lungs heave around nothing. It hurts. How it hurts. His focus expands enough to want the weight back. Without it, his panic returns.

Warmth encapsulates him from behind–a body. It encircles his shoulders and hefts him into a sitting position while one hand strokes back his hair and the other rests on his shuddering chest.

“Beautiful,” Ludinus’s voice croons into his ear. “You lasted six full seconds longer today. I’m proud of you.”

Proud. Proud of the way his body convulsed as it struggled to breathe. Proud of the way he gave up and let the calm of dying overtake him.

Essek leans into the embrace, chasing whatever warmth he can find. His shivers turn violent, forcing more heaving coughs. Ludinus shushes him.

“Let’s get you a hot bath and relax on the lounge, hm? You deserve a break.”

When Essek returns to the nook under the stairs, he finds a cushion. It covers the entirety of the floor space, custom fitted around where the bottom step sits too low for any use. Gray, plush goose down, and soft under his hand.

He folds it in half and shoves it out between the steps.

Where his mind goes during the hours alone he’s not entirely sure. He tries to read sometimes but finds himself staring at pages he doesn’t remember, time slipping between his bound hands. The aches of bondage start to fade, first in his shoulders, then his jaw. He should count the days but he can’t seem to maintain the numbers. Was the day before 58 or 59? How much did he lose between?

The game grows far longer than he ever could have anticipated.

“Trent is sending someone to gather intelligence to Ghor Dr– Rosohna. I put in a request for some books for you.”

Essek sits at the table. He doesn’t remember arriving. He doesn’t remember being fed a bead but the gelatinous flavor of it lingers on his tongue. He leans forward and rests his forehead on the table rather than acknowledge the words.

Ludinus sighs. His hand is warm on Essek’s nape, fingers stroking the growing hair, down and up. “This isn’t how I imagined it going either, love. I want to hear your voice, discuss theory with you. I hate this as much as you do.”

Fucking liar.

“Maybe soon you’ll show me we don’t need this anymore, hm?” He thumbs the gag’s strap.

Essek snaps upright. It’s the first mention of any sort of freedom since the increased restraints. Anything, he’ll do anything just to gasp fresh air. They want dunamancy so bad? He’ll recite every formula he knows, sketch every rune. Light, he’ll teach to an audience if it means he owns his jaw again. He bites down and the joint screams all the way up into his temples. He winces.

Ludinus cups his chin and wipes away a string of saliva with his thumb. “There you are.”

When the hand pulls away, Essek chases it. Please. Anything. He’ll earn it. He desperately presses his cheek into the warm softness of Ludinus’s palm. He’s rewarded with a chuckle and gentle squeeze.

“The Assembly meets tomorrow afternoon. We reconvene here at night to discuss the more… unofficial aspects of our work. For security reasons. You understand.”

He does. Even with the safety of isolation and wards, Essek was exceptionally thorough with precaution while communicating Ludinus and Ikithon during their collusion. But what that has to do with him now, he doesn’t understand.

“Some of them are awfully anxious to meet you.” Ludinus sips his wine. “I think it’s about time you join us.”

Anything. He’ll do anything. He’ll bare himself before the entirety of the Assembly if it means he gets his mouth returned to him. He’ll–

No. What is wrong with him? How could he ever assent to degrading himself, to stooping low for the likes of Ikithon? The disgust must show on his face. Ludinus strokes his cheek again. “You’re beautiful. They just want to see you.”

He shakes his head. He won’t.

Ludinus sighs, disappointed. “This is how you earn your privileges back, love. If you’d rather spend your time like this,” he touches the damp leather between Essek’s teeth, “then so be it. But I don’t want this for you.”

Anything.

He tilts his head into Ludinus’s hand, pushing his cheek and then forehead into smooth skin. A feral cat, finally tamed.

“Is that a yes, you’ll join us?”

He nods, shutting his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the satisfied pleasure on Ludinus’s face.

He’s losing this game.

Chapter Text

As per usual, Essek can’t trance when night comes; his body vibrates with nervous energy. He agreed to join the Assembly–all of them, for Light’s sake–in an unsanctioned meeting where he’ll what? Pose nude for them ogle? Try to sit still while they touch him with their ugly hands?

The gag tastes particularly foul and he knows it’s just the anticipation of having it off, but he can think of little else. He paces a while and when he grows bored of his room he wanders through the halls, takes two laps around the library, then shoves himself in the nook.

Sophia follows him, as always, muttering under her breath in a language Essek doesn’t recognize all the while. She peers at him between the stairs.

“You finally fuckin settled?”

He crosses his legs and settles down into the cushion which had, at some point, been put back. He nods.

“Good.” She returns to the atrium and Essek can hear her pushing the couches around, their lathed legs screeching on the ornate flooring.

He can’t plan for what he can barely anticipate. He sat in on many an unsanctioned meeting between dens and court members–it’s part of the job. But they certainly didn’t bring house slaves. Will they find him disgusting? That would be a blessing, if they thought him too monstrous to touch. But the opposite seems more likely.

Far more likely.

He takes a shuddering breath, the vibrato loud in his ears. He just needs to survive. Ludinus says he won’t be harmed here. His body is nothing but a vessel for his mind.

Inconsequential. Whatever happens to it is inconsequential.

If Ikithon touches him, he might vomit. And gagged as he is, he might drown in it.

Drowning.

He shakes his head and the sensation of serpents fades. Ludinus certainly wouldn’t let him die.

Everything shy of death is inconsequential.

Da’leth comes with breakfast, always on schedule, though he moves with more hesitance. The cart stutters behind him to keep up with the shortened pace. He peers between the stairs, eyes crinkled with puzzlement.

Of course the cart is laden with the kettle and single cup, a plate dressed for one, and an orange bead on a saucer. Essek scowls at it. Gods he’s ready to be done with those. There’s something else, too, white and folded. Smoother than the napkins. He doesn’t recognize it.

“Why are you here? Worried about this evening?”

Essek grunts and Da’leth can take that however he wants.

“Can you come out so I can see you?”

Theorizing about the meeting and resigning himself to the misery that will come with it has, somehow, ripened Essek’s resolve for petulance. The urge to refuse settles across him like a blanket. But he wants his mouth back. Being good is the only way to earn it. So he squeezes between the slats and stands firm as Da’leth looks him up and down.

“Come. Let’s sit.”

To prevent the leash, Essek goes. He sits on one of the couches as directed, even as Da’leth scowls at it and sighs. Essek takes a quiet joy at his frustration and wonders if Sophia enjoys it too.

Da’leth pinches the bead between his fingers as he sits, holding it up to fit it between teeth and cheek.

Essek shakes his head, surprised by his own boldness. He hasn’t attempted any sort of refusal since the first few days gagged like this.

“You’re going to get hungry later.”

He shakes his head again.

Da’leth returns it to the saucer. The bead tosses orange firelight on the porcelain as it rolls. “Alright. If that’s what you want. Here, head down.”

Essek snaps his chin to his chest without thinking. See? He’s behaving. He doesn’t need the gag anymore. Please.

The strap tightens briefly allowing the pin to pull itself free and then both sides drop away, hanging loose on either side of his cheeks. Horrifically the leather stays rooted to the backs of his teeth, muscles too weak to open his jaw wide enough to drop it. He shakes his head, feeling panic creeping up his throat.

If he vomits, he’ll drown.

Ludinus cups his chin and pulls his jaw open enough for the gag to slip out. He catches it before it falls, prestidigitating away any mess with a single finger.

“There. Doesn’t that feel better?”

It hurts. Why does it hurt so? Essek tries to close his teeth but his jaw crackles. He can’t even bring his lips together for the pain.

“Ah, yes, I imagine you’re quite sore.”

Essek wails, an animalistic noise built of his panic. He hunches over his own lap. Begging, that’s what it is. Fix it. Ludinus can take his mouth from him permanently. He can’t do it. He can’t bear it now that he’s been teased with the possibility of freedom. To take his hands. To take his mouth. The ultimate punishment for his hubris.

“Hush now.” Ludinus pulls Essek to his chest, fingers combing his hair back. “It won’t last very long. Let me see.” His hands are soft on Essek’s chin as he lifts so they’re eye to eye. It forces the jaw closed with an audible snap on both sides. The pain crescendos before slackening.

His teeth fit together, puzzle pieces finally joined. Essek sighs through his nose, shutting his eyes to keep in the euphoria of relief. His jaw still aches, yes, but now mostly he feels the weakness in his muscles. He tongues the distantly familiar shape of his own palate.

Ludinus chuckles, stroking a tear off Essek’s cheek. “See? I can pour you some tea, if you like.”

He doesn’t have the wherewithal to refuse and instead waits, watching Ludinus’s hands as he pours and lifts the teacup, half full, and brings it to Essek’s lips. With the other hand, he cups Essek’s chin, supporting the exhausted jaw.

The tea burns as he sips but Light, it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. Over-brewed, bitter, and over-sweetened with honey, but the flavor washes out the disgusting saliva film off the back of his teeth and fills his mouth with intensity. A child offered a sweet for the first time. Essek shuts his eyes, and tilts his head back. His whole body slackens with the bliss of it.

Fuck Ludinus’s hand helping him keep his lips closed. Fuck not being able to hold the cup himself.

His stomach twists painfully as it adjusts to having something in it, but he needs more. And when the cup is empty, he asks for it.

“Please,” he breathes, voice full of gravel from disuse, even if somewhat soothed by the tea.

Ludinus smiles at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling with fondness. “You want some more?”

Essek nods, swallowing hard as his salivary glands start to pump moisture into his mouth.

He’s given half the kettle before Ludinus pats his cheek and declares that the rest is for himself. Essek spends the rest of breakfast gentling the tension in his jaw and up toward his temples, refamiliarizing himself with the inside of his mouth and lips, with the backs and tops of his teeth. Disgusting to be so pleased with the little autonomy awarded to him but gods, he cannot escape the bliss.

Once Ludinus finishes his meal of decoratively carved coastal fruit, he reaches for the folded white leather that Essek had forgotten in his joy. With it opened up, it’s intention becomes more obvious and he rears back, horror tensing every muscle in his body.

A muzzle. Like an unruly dog.

Two straps instead of one this time, designed to go both under and over his ears and force his jaw closed, not open. He can’t do it again, he can’t.

“Please,” he wheezes, leaning against the far arm of the lounge to put as much distance between the cursed thing and himself. “I don’t need it. I’ll–,” his voice is so fucking weak, barely above a whisper. “I’ll be polite. I’ll be quiet.”

Ludinus sighs, the pleased expression fading and sadness replacing it. “I know you will.” He reaches across the distance and again, strokes a panicked tear off Essek’s cheekbone. “But it will help strengthen your muscles and ease the ache. Once we’re through this evening, we’ll see how you’re feeling and perhaps take it off?”

Oh. It’s not about strengthening his jaw at all. It’s to prevent him speaking to any of the Assembly members during their afterparty. Clever for Ludinus to frame it otherwise but Essek isn’t so stupid as to believe it. And of course, if he fights it too much, if he refuses here, he’ll be trapped again, maybe permanently this time.

His panic recedes. It’s a game. He has to keep playing.

Ludinus raises the muzzle as if offering it. “It’s temporary. I promise.” He sounds so genuine, so fucking genuine.

Essek takes a last deep breath through his mouth and nods. He just has to behave. For the evening, maybe overnight. Just a little longer. He can do that.

“There’s a good boy.” Ludinus brushes Essek’s hair back as he fits the leather over. It indeed forces Essek’s jaw closed, but aside from the lingering ache, not painfully so. In fact, he has a little wiggle room to adjust underneath it, even able to squeeze his tongue between his lips to wet them. It rubs against the base of his nose, which will chafe given enough time, but the corners of his mouth are plenty grateful to be free from being stretched open around the leather of the last gag. The straps pinch less, too.

Ludinus checks that all the piercings are free and shakes Essek’s hair out from underneath the straps before leaning back.

“You look good in white,” he smiles. He never shows his teeth when he smiles, never threatening. “I will see you again this evening. Be good for Sophia while I’m gone.”

Essek nods. He will. He needs to.

Chapter Text

As soon as Da’leth leaves, Essek rocks to his feet and pads out of the library. Sophia stands sentinel outside, arms crossed over her chest. She huffs a sigh and leans off the wall, following him on heavy, irritable feet.

He couldn’t care less.

He needs to settle his nerves. He needs to prepare. The best way to do both of those things is to acquaint himself with the location. Gods he doesn’t want to, and his resolve weakens with each step. Which is why he has to do it now before the dam of panic bursts entirely. Always survey the battlefield before an ambush. Always kick away the stones before a duel. He might have stuck to academics but he still knows the fundamentals of war.

And that’s what this is–a war against his mind.

The door swings open of its own accord when he nears it, a new task negotiated with the unseen servants to let him explore while unable to direct them. The only door that hasn’t opened for him is the exit, though he did try repeatedly.

Still, he stops as if the door remains shut, gazing into the drawing room.

Drowning.

No. He’s alone–except for Sophia but she typically leaves him to his own devices when Da’leth isn’t around and he’s done nothing to warrant her wrath yet. The room is pristine, as always. Insects hum in his chest. Panic. He recognizes it now. Da’leth forced him through it before. He can do it himself. He can. He won’t be harmed here.

The first step inside shoots lightning up his leg and into his chest. The hornets, enraged, pelt the inside of his ribcage. His knees quake underneath him. He can do it. His body is a vessel. It can suffer on his behalf.

“The fuck are you up to?” Sophia snaps behind him. Her harshness seems diminished, perhaps genuinely curious. He’s not moved through these halls with such intent since his sprint for the library at the beginning of his confinement. “Your book’s locked up tight. You won’t be able to get it out.”

His book? His spellbook, here?

He takes another step forward. He hasn’t seen it since Da’leth took it from him. Why the drawing room? He doesn’t remember seeing it here before, though he’s been a bit preoccupied. But now that he knows where it is, his resolve hardens. The hornets settle again. He needs to make sure it’s okay.

He refuses to look at the ring in the floor as he forces his legs forward. The front half of the room he’s familiar with and the couches and loungers remain unchanged. But behind them, now he sees a fresh pedestal. No, a lectern. Fluted marble supports an open book and even at this distance he knows it’s his.

On display. Like he’s about to be.

Open to Resonant Echo.

But intact. In fact, it’s laid on velvet with the supporting sections of the lectern also dressed to protect the pages. And it sits underneath a glass cloche. He doesn’t need to touch the surface to see the preservation runes, abjuration swimming across the glass like it’s still liquid. Protected as intensely as the timeless bodies of Umavi, stored in stasis so strong they’ll outlast the Dynasty itself. A trophy. A beacon. But safe.

“Happy now?” Sophia asks behind him, again softer than usual. Surely she has her own book. He’s not seen her cast more than paltry spells but the scourger tattoos suggest she’s plenty versed in magic. She must understand.

He is, actually, knowing that it’s not just he who won’t be harmed.

Despite that good news, he still desperately wants to leave. He feels the desire as a physical force, pulling him as harshly as the silver leash toward the door. But it’s a battle now, one he must win. He forces himself to inspect the seating. Tacky. Everything is so tacky, patterns and styles centuries outdated.

Run, his body says.

He stands firm.

It’s exhilarating, in a way, refusing the whims of his instincts. Powerful. A modicum of control when he otherwise has none. He can bear it, whatever they throw at him in here. He can. He will.

He’s loath to leave his book behind but knowing that it’s safe helps move his feet as he allows himself to leave. Sophia hip checks a sofa on her way after him, scooting it slightly askew from the others.

So she does enjoy irritating Da’leth in her own little ways.

He means to trance to try and bolster himself but it evades him. He paces a while. He sits by the pendulums. He watches Sophia stretch in the library atrium. He also watches her scarf down a hand pie delivered via servant and his mouth waters so much he can hardly swallow it all down. A few sips of tea and suddenly food seems more appetizing than ever before. He’ll take advantage of Da’leth’s hospitality once he’s out of the gag. Best behavior, he reminds himself. Be polite.

When Da’leth comes to collect him from the Library–irritatedly eyeing the shifted couches–Essek is exhausted and ravenous. He goes when beckoned to, shoulders squared. He can do this.

Da’leth’s eyes widen in surprise. “Well look at you,” he murmurs, reaching out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind Essek’s ear. “You seem excited.”

Not exactly the word Essek would choose, but he is anxious to be done with it.

When they reach the door to the drawing room, he hesitates only the barest of moments, exhaling through his nose as he forces himself through. He’s dizzy with the buzzing in his chest but he obeys.

Da’leth notices. “There we go. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

It was plenty bad, but Da’leth doesn’t need to know that.

Essek sits on the floor in front of Da’leth’s preferred seat, as directed, knees folded underneath himself. His lungs shudder, body already betraying him with fear. He shifts his legs to give him something to focus on, fidgeting until Ludinus runs a hand through his hair to calm him. Disgustingly, it works.

As long as he’s here, Essek won’t be harmed.

The front doors make no noise, but the whip-cracks of an uneven gait in the hallway definitely do. Essek snaps his gaze to the open doorway, chest heaving. He can’t suck enough air in through his nose and the instinct to gasp has him shaking his head to fight the muzzle.

Ludinus shushes him with more force.

It’s Ikithon that rounds the threshold, ugly gold robes trailing after him.

Essek chokes, hunching over his lap to try and fight the bile simmering in his belly.

“Trent,” Ludinus calls, swiping his hand back and forth across Essek’s crown. “I didn’t think you’d deign to join us.”

Ikithon chuckles, an sickening glug of a noise. “I had to see what you’d done with our little worm in person.”

Essek can’t. He’s drowning in his own spit. He shivers ears to toe so violently his knees audibly shift on the floor. He doesn’t want this. Anything but this–

Ikithon stops directly in front of him and stoops enough to fist Essek’s hair, hauling his head back on his neck so sharply it cracks. The tingle runs through his nerves and down into his fingers. He’d almost forgotten those were still there. The scent of dunamis wafts out of Ikithon’s robe as he grins, teeth half as yellow as his robe. Surely not. A hallucination. Essek hasn’t sensed it in so long, his mind is grasping at any comfort it can, anything familiar in this torture.

“Gentle,” Ludinus chastises quietly.

Ikithon doesn’t even acknowledge him. “Right where you belong, isn’t it?”

Essek’s head drops like a stone when the fingers release him. Ludinus combs the newfound tangles out and smooths the locks back into place. Essek continues to wheeze, a horse run to lather, as Ikithon takes his own seat.

The worst of it. That man will be the worst of it. If Essek can just hold himself together until they distract themselves with politics and subterfuge, he’ll get through this yet.

The next guest he doesn’t immediately recognize. She’s dressed in patterned fabrics four layers deep, hands and throat decorated with gold and gemstones. Short, for a human, hair distractingly blonde. She’s decades younger than he expects for a member of the assembly. Perhaps a prodigy, like him.

“A crick, Ludinus? I thought you had better taste than this.”

Ludinus chuckles. “At least I have taste, Jenna. Please. Sit.”

She joins him in the armchair on his opposite side, hands folded in her lap. Essek knows he should focus. Anything they discuss is information he can use. If he’s going to suffer this he might as well learn what he can about what’s happening outside.

Ludinus maintains a possessive hand on the back of Essek’s neck as another four guests arrive, each in equally extravagant dress.

A man crouches near the sofa, reaching out as if to stroke exposed skin before pulling back. “Is he quite tame?”

“He has his moments yet, but we’re working on it,” Ludinus purrs.

“Who was he?”

“An advisor to their heretic queen. Turned traitor the moment it suited him.”

Essek sours at that, even through the panic. Demeaning, which given his circumstance is a ludicrous thought. But to risk him this way, announce his treason to a half dozen members of the assembly as if word might not get out about his captivity. Then again, who in the Empire would care, truely, about one wild animal made suffer at the hands of the Martinet.

“Such unfortunate creatures. What I wouldn’t give to bring you home with me.”

“There are plenty, Zivran. Ask Trent for one.”

The man shrugs, a wry smile tugging at his lips. He stands and takes a seat near the end of the semi-circle, still watching with a sharpness to his gaze.

Essek can’t think clearly as his mind stutters on too little oxygen. His eyes dart between assembly members–carefully avoiding Ikithon–only to find he’s mostly being ignored. Is that what they intend to do then? Collapse the Dynasty to enslave his people? They claim to be fighting the forced conversion of the Luxon but really they’re looking to justify their need for house slaves?

He’s not the first, is he, to sit at Ludinus’s feet?

“You should be kinder to him, Ludinus. He’s exhausted,” says the woman from before. Jenna, Ludinus called her, which would make her Jenna Iresor. Essek knows her name but little else. Her interests didn’t seem to overlap with his much. She leans forward, hair waterfalling over her shoulder and blocking his view of those seated beyond her. “Let me take him for a bit so he can rest.”

There’s a pinch as Ludinus squeezes but then he lets go and sighs. “Very well. Go on then, love.”

She all but drags him off the floor and into her lap. She’s stronger than he expects, or maybe it’s his own weakness showing, but she doesn’t grip him with ill intent. She settles him with his head pillowed by her plush skirts and strokes his hair. It’s soothing and he’s so very tired, exhausted from multiple days without rest and his panic. She leans a bit towards the conversation beside her, head cocked as she listens, but her gaze remains on his face.

It reminds him, unfortunately, of his mother. When he’d submitted his report and findings on Resonant Echo for the first time to the Queen, knowing the possibilities it meant for he and his den, he sought out his mother and let her encourage him into her lap. She rarely offered physical affection, and he never wished for it, but he showed her the spell and she smiled at him, stroked his forehead and hair, and reminded him how he was destined for wonderful things.

“My beautiful son,” she’d said then, with fondness in her ancient expression.

Iresor watches him the way a child marvels over a puppy.

“You are a pretty thing up close, aren’t you?” she muses, stroking his cheek where it’s exposed above the muzzle. “How awful to keep that face hidden.” She teases her hand over the buckles forcing his jaw shut.

“I wouldn’t,” Ludinus says with more volume than the previous conversation deserves. “He might bite.”

Jenna pulls the buckle loose. “Then I will be bitten.” She slips the muzzle over his head and the texture of her skirts against his cheek almost hurts with its contrast to the leather. She worries his bottom lip with her thumb–she’s testing him.

“Take a nap, sweet thing,” she murmurs.

He certainly won’t. But he does shut his eyes and try to focus on the gentle scrape of her long nails on his scalp and chest. It satiates some of his lingering fear. The terrified animal in him desperately wants to mangle her hand between its teeth.

Behave. Be polite. His body is a vessel for his mind. Anything that happens to it is inconsequential.

They discuss the king’s lack of heir and whether or not it’d be feasible to replace him in the next year. They discuss fabricating reasons to reignite the war. They discuss the Cobalt Soul’s investigation creeping closer to information they can use, and who the Assembly needs to silence to keep the evidence hidden. Evidence of what, he’s not quite sure. A voice he doesn’t know chastises Ikithon for delayed results in his research due to killing his research subjects, and Ikithon snaps back that the collection of assets has slowed with the peace talks.

By assets, surely he means captive drow.

Zivran Margolin, that’s who knelt close before, placates them both with a plan to capture a Kryn patrol and frame it as a dragon attack or some such.

All the while Iresor watches him and traces the lines on his face. She touches his lips and pulls them apart to peek at his fangs, smiling at him in a way that unsettles him. She adds nothing to the conversation.

Essek almost hopes to hear mention of the Might Nein if only to know they’re all still alive. But as the wine glasses get exchanged for coffee and tea, he knows the important discussions have ended.

“Well,” Margolin again, over the din of dispersing chatter. “Are you going to show us what he’s good for?”

Ludinus exhales a bit dramatically, even for him. “If I must.”

Essek tenses, skin prickling with adrenaline. What he’s… good for?

Drowning. For real, this time. In front of an audience, no less. His body shakes around him.

“Oh, Ludinus, he’s tired,” Iresor hums above him. “Let him rest.”

“That’s his own fault. Come, love, get up.”

Behave.

Behave.

Behave.

He levers himself upright, rolling awkwardly off Iresor’s lap until he’s sitting, eyes straight ahead and not at the ring on the floor. He can bear it. He’s done it before. He’ll do it again. He doesn’t fight when Ludinus recovers the muzzle from between the seating and straps it back over his head, nor does he hesitate as he’s nudged forward, centered for all to see.

Just a vessel. Anything shy of death is inconsequential. Ludinus won’t hurt him.

He’s pushed down to his knees and a warm hand runs through his hair. “Stay.”

He stays.

“You’re struggling, I know. Let me help you.” Hands cup both his cheeks.

No. He won’t. He shakes his head, drawing back, but the hands hold, looping the straps on the muzzle to hold him still. His vision blurs with tears that squeeze themselves free. He won’t lose himself this way. He won’t.

Ludinus clucks his tongue. “I’ve been too hard on you. This will be easy. They just want to see how beautiful you are, love. Show them.” He thumbs a tear off of Essek’s cheekbone. “Show me how good you can be.”

He can’t. He’s an Umavi’s son, a prodigy, Shadowhand. But he’s here, in straps and chains. Is it so different from what awaits him in the Dungeon of Penance? Gagged by spell instead of leather, tortured awake to break him.

Essek drops his head into Ludinus’s hand and nods.

Enchantment slithers around his spine, up through his neck and into his beleaguered mind. He’s so tired that any resistance to it would fail anyway, so he lets it surround his consciousness and squeeze until all he hears is that single voice.

“All I want you to do,” Ludinus says, “is enjoy yourself.”

He returns to his seat, crosses his legs, and gestures boredly to where Essek sits.

Zivran Margolin, now that he can place a face to the name, conjures a mage hand and drifts it over. The spectral fingers alight on Essek’s clavicle, tracing up along trachea to the base of the muzzle. The sensation warms his core with an unnatural joy. He should hate it but–

Enjoy yourself.

He has no choice.

His stomach churns even as heat boils along his spine as the hand drifts lower again, pawing at his chest. It tugs on one of the rings set into his nipples and sparks dance in his vision. He arches his back until his center of gravity shifts and he winds up flat on the floor, wheezing through his nose.

The words repeat over and over, a warm blanket across his skin.

Enjoy yourself.

He shuts his eyes so he won’t have to see the faces of the Assembly as they make him writhe. The hand trails lower, tingling with arcana as it plunges and drags a stripe down the length of his cock. His body responds without question, just as traitorous as his mind. He flexes his abdominal muscles as if that might help the growing pressure, but this is the whole point of his presence, isn’t it? To entertain?

They still chatter amongst themselves, voices distant and distorted as he struggles to focus on anything but the growing ache. The hand squeezes, slides skin back and rubs spectral thumb over his slit. His hips buck; his back arches. He’s drunk on the sensation already.

Enjoy yourself.

Please.

A second arcane hand joins the first. It has a different feel to it, sends shockwaves through his skin and makes his teeth taste like metal. It wastes less time than the first, sliding down each spur along his spine to the cleft of his ass. He expects it to hurt but the enchantment-forced bliss prevents him from clenching to prevent access. A single digit dips inside him and crooks.

Pinpoints of starlight dance beneath his eyelids, flashing with each shift in pressure and angle. It’s Avernus; it’s Celestia. He gave in to this. He accepted this. He wanted this. And it’s good, so fucking good–every inch of him flayed open to bliss, a cleric, arms spread beneath the light of the Luxon. The enchantment takes flint and steel to nerves long abandoned, his insides burning. Like fire.

Like Caleb’s fire.

A wail breezes up his throat, muffled by the muzzle. The hand around his cock polishes the head with its thumb. His body craves, dragging his stumbling mind along behind as it stutters forward. The hands, though, disembodied as they are, move with him. They drive him slowly, holding him at a walk when he wants to canter. The pressure builds until his skin feels like it might split. He rolls to his belly and ruts against the floor for any additional friction it might offer.

With his last draught of consciousness he thinks that this is not who he wants to be. He grits his teeth and growls through the waves that crest, one after another after another, whole body seizing. The vastness of ecstasy breaks through his skin and crawls out of it, cups his very soul and whispers the secrets of existence.

He lays prostrate as his body remembers how to breathe.

Enjoy yourself. He is.

They start again, pumping him like a dry well. Oversensitive muscles try to recoil but the sensations chase him and push him into motion while he wheezes through his nose. He could fight the spell. He allowed it to take root but there’s still time to pluck at strands until he frees himself. But he could never stop the hands that push him over the edge until he sobs mercy through the muzzle. At least, under the drunken weight of Ludinus’s enchantment, he’ll find pleasure in the ministrations.

Again.

And again.

Each climb takes longer than the last until he’s completely limp, unable to flinch away from excruciating pressure inside and outside. Only then, after rubbing his skin raw, do the hands abandon him and leave him on the edge of the ethereal.

Nothing matters after that as he lays on the hardwood slick with his own mess. And even that, his beleaguered hindbrain manages to take magically-assisted joy in. He remains until his skin goes cold and the conjured lights dim.

Ludinus kneels beside him and runs manicured nails through his hair. “Beautifully done, love. Let’s get you clean and to bed.”

Arms scoop and lift him, cradling him up against Ludinus’s chest. Never has he deigned to manhandle Essek before, instead relying on Sophia’s greater mass and conjured hands. Ludinus whispers gentle praises as he takes them to the bath, the needlessly large tub already filled and dribbling over the edge. He sits Essek down on the step, reaches behind his head and unbuckles the muzzle, tugging it off.

Essek finally sucks in a deep breath for the first time in hours. The humid air soothes his dry throat.

“You were brilliant,” Ludinus says, cupping both of Essek’s cheeks between his hands, fingers lacing with hair behind his neck. “I’m proud of you.”

Essek dips his head, shaking with a sob too thin to properly congeal into anything substantial. No one has ever been proud of him. It’s a lie. Don’t believe it. But the enchantment flexes and whatever part of his mind that controls his emotions preens under the praise. He was brilliant.

The water scalds his muscles into compliance and the ache begins to fade. Ludinus tips him back until his shoulders sink under and the barest touch of panic reaches his brain. Drowning. But the spell sweeps it away–the burn of starving lungs would feel pleasant under its effects.

Ludinus folds a wash rag and gently lays it across Essek’s eyes. For the lights, of course, he doesn’t have to say anymore, and it soothes the sting. The soaps and perfumes fill the air with the same floral brand that the Martinet wears everywhere. There’s a richness to the scent that comes from expensive ingredients. The hands that support his head and scrubs suds into his hair fondle him gently, slow and thorough.

Essek builds courage, enveloped in an afterglow that isn’t his own. “Please,” he begs, unable to articulate his thoughts more clearly as fingernails scrape his scalp clean and Ludinus hums gently above him.

“Please what, love?”

“The spell…”

Hands slow. “If I release you now, it’s going to hurt.” There’s a sympathy there, not a threat. “I don’t want you to hurt more than you already are. Can you hold out a little longer?”

He can. He sniffles and nods as Ludinus rinses the lotions from his hair.

“Good. I’ll try to hurry.”

Whether he tries to hurry or not doesn’t matter because time runs thick and Essek loses track of it. Ludinus scrapes sweat off skin with a rag and then with his hand over the worst of the friction burns. Essek sobs into the man’s throat as he thumbs away the evening’s remnants.

The water’s gone tepid by the time they’re done. Ludinus dries him with a towel instead of magic and helps him wobble back to his bed. He falls into it, unable to move for the all-encompassing exhaustion. Ludinus sits beside him and pulls the quilt up to his neck.

“Rest. In the morning, I’ll take you outside.”

Chapter Text

Outside. Outside?

His awareness whips back into place like a spring-wound toy. How is he supposed to trance after that?

He tries, he really does. When the enchantment wears off, he slumps into the mattress to wait out the soreness. He’s chafed raw in some places, bruised where he rubbed up against the hardwood, and his thighs ache down to his bones.

He tries desperately not to think of the sensation of emptiness in his guts.

Disgusting, that’s what he is.

He flops around a while, chasing the cool side of the over-soft pillow. The pain flares with each movement but he can’t lay still; phantom hands won’t stop caressing him.

“Are you going to do this all night?” Sophia snaps partway through the night. Her chair creaks as she leans back in it, arms crossed. He blinks at her in the dark. How much can she see in the pitch black? Does she enjoy it?

He rolls away from her so they don’t have to look at each other.

Outside he could teleport. All he needs is the incantation to somewhere distant. Anywhere away from here. Where would he go? The Dynasty is hunting him, surely, now that they know. The Mighty Nein… even if he knew where they were and he could reach them, would they even want to help him?

They would. Even if they didn’t want to, they would. Because that’s who they are. They wouldn’t leave him like this.

They have, though.

That’s because they must not know.

What’s the point of trying to make an escape? Even if he finishes the spell–which he won’t because Ludinus would counter it–that gate will open wide and swallow him back here. He can’t go anywhere Ludinus won’t yank him back from in an instant. He might see the sun again but he’ll never be free.

Essek’s mind won’t stop racing. He resorts to reciting dunamamtic formula to try and focus. When that doesn’t work, he switches to the rhymes and songs taught to children when first learning to trance.

Outside.

He’ll never be free.

Years seem to pass. He’s exhausted every method he knows to try and rest and has still obtained none by the time Ludinus sweeps back in, either having tranced elsewhere or simply unfazed by any incurred exhaustion from the night’s activities. Behind him bumbles along a cart, kettle and twin cloches neatly perched on top. “Good morning.”

Essek licks his lips. Best to maintain the favor he’s earned. “Good morning,” he echos to Ludinus’s joyful surprise.

“I see we’re in a good mood. Are you excited?”

He swallows and hesitantly nods.

“Good. Let’s get breakfast into you and then we’ll go.” Ludinus lifts a cloche exposing a bowl just as ornate as all the other tableware. Some sort of oat porridge, ripe with the scent of honey and sugar. He lifts the bowl and offers a spoon of the meal, still gently steaming, for Essek to take–like feeding a child.

But gods does Essek want it. What is one more humiliation? He leans forward and takes the spoon into his mouth, awkwardly scraping the oats off with the backs of his top teeth. He works his jaw to chew but simply doesn’t have enough strength to make much of a difference, instead mashing it up against the roof of his mouth, and swallows. Bliss. Faintly sweet and chalky, but Light he’s desperate for more. A bowl won’t be enough–bring him a stewpot.

His gaze darts between the spoon, the bowl, and Ludinus, who chuckles and scoops another bite. “I’m glad to see your appetite has returned.”

Essek eats until his stomach cramps, managing his full bowl and three spoons from Ludinus’s. He sips tea when offered and had just swallowed a delightful mouthful when Ludinus says, without preamble, “Vess DeRogna, it seems, has been killed.”

Essek’s head snaps up with enough force his neck muscles twinge.

“Yes, she was working on her own projects up north and hadn’t checked in. We had some assets nearby and they confirmed her absence. Isn’t that odd?” Ludinus says it with no emotion, focused on refilling both teacups. When he looks up, he wears his passive smile. “I am hoping we can make something useful out of it but,” he sighs, “replacing her will be a hassle.”

Who could have possibly struck down an archmage, and done so quietly enough that the Assembly didn’t receive word immediately? Beyond odd. Terrifying.

In a fit of boldness, Essek asks, “what– what killed her?”

Ludinus hums, holding his tea just under his nose. “Unsure, as of yet. I hear it was quite bloody.” He sips, unfazed.

Essek’s mind reels. As Shadowhand, this information would be monumental. As traitor, even more so. One fewer soul that knows of his betrayal, of his heresy.

But none of that… none of it matters now.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Vergesson Sanatorium. There is a garden where you can get some air and some… other things I think you’ll find interesting.”

The name doesn’t spark any recollection. A walk through a garden ignites a dark humor in him–how quaint. But he also craves the scent of flora and the burn of sunlight.

Ludinus grazes on his own breakfast, nattering on between bites about inane Marquesian news and moon phases. It’s ludicrous how casual he is, sitting beside someone he’s held prisoner for weeks and discussing the weather.

But gods Essek wants to go outside, so he bites his tongue.

Finished with their meal, Ludinus flaps open the cloak, shaking the wrinkles and gesturing for Essek to stand. It’s long, nearly floor length as he holds it up and wraps it around Essek’s shoulders. Soft, too, against his bare skin. It overlaps itself in the front, completely obscuring his body underneath. As soon as the clasp clicks shut Essek feels the constant tingle of his arcane ability fade. Antimagic. The Martinet isn’t stupid.

He’ll never be free.

Next, Ludinus flips the hood over Essek’s ears. He adjusts the folds and smooths it, positioning it carefully to block light without blinding. When he seems satisfied, he pins it in place, using Essek’s hair underneath as an anchor.

“There we are. That should keep you comfortable.”

Comfortable.

Essek pads along behind as they travel down the hallway, past the library and the parlor and the sitting room and the kitchen, beyond the grand hall where he’d first been captured, and into the vestibule. They pause there, Ludinus gripping Essek’s bicep tight as he says, “you’ve earned this, but give me one reason and you’ll never step out this door again. Do you understand?”

Essek’s heart clenches but he nods. The hand around his arm loosens.

“Good. Now shut your eyes, love. It’s bright out.”

Far too bright after the relative dimness to even consider opening his eyes immediately, but the Rexxentrum air is cool in his lungs and smells faintly of industry. There’s grit under his feet that scrapes with each step instead of conjured marble. Ludinus drags him along until the harshness fades a little.

Essek blinks his eyes open, still squinting against the morning sun, but the sky… if he doesn’t look east he can catch brief glimpses of gray-blue clouds between buildings. The hair on the back of his neck prickles as his skin objects to the colder air. They’re underneath a pergola, vines grown thick enough to block out the worst of the sun. On the ground is a circle carved directly into the masonry, edges smoothed from years of rain.

The circle ignites immediately as they step across it, Ludinus’s casting so efficient that Essek doesn’t even see the somatics before the conjuration shocks him as it yanks them from the courtyard to an identical circle in a different garden. Nearby mountains cast shade, gentling the light.

Nearby, a human girl kneels in exposed dirt. She doesn’t acknowledge them, focusing instead on her gardening. Essek hadn’t expected to be walking the grounds with others, especially not undisguised. Is this a trap? Had he done something wrong? He twists to better face Ludinus, slipping from the man’s grasp.

Ludinus’s eyebrows pitch up in surprise but he smiles. “No one will bother you here. Come; I’ll show you the orchard.”

Concerns allayed for the moment, Essek tilts his head back and lets the morning sun ignite his skin. The light threatens his eyes even through his eyelids but in its infancy, it doesn’t burn him. He never cared for the sun before, grateful that he rarely needed to leave Rosohna for his work. Now he relishes it, wishing he could reach out and cup it in his hands. Is this what believers feel under morning light, giving themselves to the Luxon on holy days? He suffered through them himself, head bowed against the painful rays, but now the ecstasy of it makes him shiver with delight.

He never wants to leave.

Ludinus laments the lack of frost cherries, yet to ripen at this latitude. “When they’re ready, I’ll be sure to bring you some. I think you’ll enjoy them.” He doesn’t usher Essek along, instead waiting patiently while Essek leans in close to manicured shrubs and foreign flowers to inhale the earthy scent. Some of the inner leaves still bear dew and the smell of petrichor has never exhilarated him quite so much.

When he reaches the end of the garden, he backtracks for another pass, occasionally stopping just to feel the sun on his face. Ludinus paces after, hands tucked in his opposite sleeves.

“When you’re ready, I have something to show you.”

Essek’s heart stutters briefly with concern. Whatever shows on his face makes Ludinus smile.

“You’ll like it. I promise.”

He swallows and nods. With a last deep breath of fresh air–part of him worrying it will be his last–he obediently follows along behind. As they close in on a tower tall enough for any respectable wizard, Essek starts to recognize the repeating patterns of staff uniforms. He ducks his head away as if to conceal his identity but none of them, not one, even acknowledges him with a glance.

“Master Da’leth,” they murmur, bowing their head in greeting as they’re passed by.

Ludinus doesn’t bother to stop in the tower’s atrium–clearly designed for receiving guests–and instead directs Essek to an open arch adjacent to a long hallway. Tucked away, unobtrusive, entirely ordinary. Beyond it, a spiral stairwell.

At the bottom, Ludinus waves his hand in front of a plain door and a wash of transmutation strikes Essek, like stepping out through the threshold on a frigid winter day after huddling around the hearth. Dozens of separate wards. He feels each of them part in turn until the last rune slides into place and Ludinus pulls the door outward, gesturing inside.

“Is this your way of telling me I’m not working fast enough, Ludinus?” Ikithon asks in his reedy, pompous voice from within, body obscuring a central tripod and object carefully balanced on top.

Essek doesn’t need to see it to know exactly what it is. He can feel the cold dunamis, the way the air squirms with incredible potential. This is a beacon that’s never seen Dynasty land before, untouched by Kryn hands. Its existence alone proves some of his theories and discredits centuries of Leylas’s claims.

And here it stands, mere feet from him.

Chapter Text

Ikithon–because of course it’s Ikithon, who else would it be–steps aside the beacon, revealing it in full. Essek can’t tear his eyes away from it but it still takes a nudge at his back to step forward so that Ludinus can enter behind him.

It’s secured atop the tripod with a half-dome over the back of it as if to refract– Are they trying to redirect the inherent dunamancy forward rather than radiating out evenly? A beam, of sorts, perhaps? It seems a backtrack from their alchemical processes before that he’d only learned about well after the fact because he’s an idiot that fell into this trap.

But no, there on the floor beneath the tripod, a second half of a dome. Translocation runes dance across its steel surface, glinting like sunlight when there is none. Essek squints to better see the glyphs but they’re moving too fast to make out at a distance and then fucking Ikithon steps in front of it again and–

Essek freezes. His muscles ratchet tight underneath the cloak.

Ikithon bares his teeth and Essek isn’t sure if it’s supposed to be a smile or snarl. The man stinks of old magic and the musk of a dying body. Putrid, the acrid taste of sick on the back of your teeth after you vomit. He can’t bear those hands on him again.

He retreats a step, back colliding with Ludinus’s chest. A hand steadies him by the shoulder, squeezing through the cloak, reigniting the lingering ache like forcing air over dying coals.

“It’s alright,” Ludinus murmurs, striding around Essek and instead approaching the beacon. He touches the steel housing with a finger, running it along the smooth edge to the bottom where it connects to the tripod. “Have there been any recent developments?”

Ikithon turns his back. He approaches a desk of sorts, flipping through loose slips of parchment. “Nothing unexpected.”

“Disappointing.”

“Perhaps if your pet hadn’t arrested our primary alchemist, we’d be further along, hm?”

They’re both so calm and yet it’s not dunamis that makes Essek’s skin feel too tight. These two men hate each other, truly, playing respectfully as long as they have mutual interests.

Ludinus clears his throat. “Well we have someone far more equipped to… encourage discovery now. Come, love, tell me what you see.”

Essek vacillates between wanting to stay as far from Ikithon’s disgusting hands and obeying. Eventually obedience wins. He pads closer, head tucked as he approaches to better see the flickering runes on the inside of the casing. Lead, not steel. At least on the inside, and far more than just translocation. Ghosts of abjuration claw at a jagged crack through the dome.

Shielding. Reflection. Amplification. Teleportation.

Of course the constant leak of dunamis could be harnessed–that’s how they’d extracted the liquid form in the first place. Condensing it with dunamancy, much like supercooling air to extract necessary components. But why reflect and amplify the beacon’s exhale? The energy could grow beyond containment until the housing became unstable and–

And crack.

They were using the latent dunamantic energy to create an amplifying power source. Teleportation to funnel the arcane potential without off-gassing any of the build-up. With this much energy, even mages still in their infancy could rival the greatest wizards of the Age of Arcanum.

But without regular and constant usage–

“You could destroy cities,” Essek breathes in his dawning horror. Beyond cities. With proper housing and proper runes, they could destroy continents. Realms. Could rupture the divine gate and kill gods.

He wants to touch it. He wants to gaze into the infinity of it and breathe in the possibilities. He wants–

Ludinus rests a hand on his shoulder, chuckling. “I’m not one to judge you for your work,” he lies in answer to Ikithon, “but it is his specific area of research.”

Essek swallows. “Can I–?”

“Yes, of course. This is why I brought you.”

How many times had he begged? How many decades had he spent pouring himself into his research and covering any tracks left behind by his heresy. Even as Shadowhand he had to petition for an hour spent in tandem with another researcher. “How long?”

“However long you like.”

So this is the deal he’s brokered–his punishment and reward for fraternizing with the Assembly.

Ikithon harumps but offers no further comment.

Essek struggles to keep his gaze out of the infinity of the beacon, but it draws him much more aggressively than the housing. Despite every moment he’s spent with it before, unfamiliar runes slither in rivulets off the surface like beads of sweat, sparkling into the air before fizzling out. That is the energy they’re trying to capture before entropy claims it.

“You’re making a bomb.”

Ludinus chuckles. “Only through the gross negligence of its usage. It has far more potential than destruction.”

“And what is the goal, exactly?”

“Progress.” He says it with such smug satisfaction, it makes Essek’s skin crawl. “Supply raw arcana to healers, manufacture our own residuum so we can stop fighting with those de Rolos, raise cities into the sky like during the Age of Arcanum.”

Ludinus lies.

Peasants with the ability to summon water for their crops during drought, a new generation of arcane practitioners with unlimited access to the rawest form of magics–it would only serve to weaken the Assembly’s power. None of them would allow it. Destruction is what the Assembly wants–the ability to threaten warring nations into subservience or to annihilate the opposition with a single blast.

They’d only have one weapon, at least. Unless…

Essek squints at the translocation ruins. He initially thought them means of transference for the contained arcana but he restructures the order in his mind–an additional ring wrapped neatly along the seam to teleport a physical object. With the right timing, they could send the beacon wherever they wanted, intentionally rupture the casing, and have the raw material to construct another.

A slow process, of course, to build the potential back up to dangerous levels, but it could be done as often as deemed necessary.

They’d be unstoppable, the assembly.

Essek takes a breath. “You want me to help you.”

“We welcome any input you might have,” Ludinus pets down both Essek’s shoulders, fingers long enough to almost engulf the atrophied limbs. “I would give you regular access, of course, and anything else you nee–”

The door crashes open, vibrating in the hinges with the force of it. A scourger, tall and with a sword strapped to his back much like Sophia’s, pushes his way into the room. He has that same look that she does, stern and irritated.

“What is it, Eadwulf?” Ikithon asks without looking up, terse.

The scourger rolls his shoulders. When he speaks, his accent reminds Essek of Calebs so much it makes his stomach clench. “It’s them.”

Ludinus raises both eyebrows, dropping his hands from Essek’s shoulders. “Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

“No, I’ll deal with it,” Ikithon snaps, slapping one hand on the table before sweeping out the open door, his robes swishing with his irritation. “I suspected we’d see them soon enough. Eadwulf, take the artifact back to the academy.” He pauses just outside the open doorway, folding his hands together in his sleeves. “Ludinus, you may wish to return your pet to his cage.”

Essek rips his gaze away from the beacon, desperation driving him. “No! Not yet.”

Ludinus sighs, scraping his hand down his face. “For your safety–”

The scourger grips the beacon’s handle with scarred and callused hands, ripping it unceremoniously from the tripod and housing. The singing of metal on metal resonates with the same frequency as Essek’s skull.

“Please.” Whatever it takes, he’ll get on his knees and beg if he has to. He won’t give up this opportunity so soon. “If I’m going to–”

“Essek,” Ludinus starts, catching his chin in a warm hand. Essek goes rigid. When was the last time he’d even heard his own name? “These are very dangerous people and they will not allow you to escape.”

The organs in his chest glaciate, breath stuttering as he resolves the information. “Assassins?”

“They will not rest until they find you.”

That is more truth than Ludinus even knows. The Queen holds grudges across lifetimes and she will never let this rest.

“I am not going to simply toss away your unique capabilities. I will give you more time, but right now I am prioritizing your safety. Do you understand?”

He… he does. Dynasty assassins could find him anywhere outside the demi-plane. Anywhere he goes poses risk. He looks back to the beacon one last time before the scourger wraps it in a rectangle of fabric and tucks it under his arm. “Will it be safe?”

“Of course it will. Eadwulf will keep it very safe, won’t you, Eadwulf? His life depends on it after all.”

The scourger grunts, unfurls a scroll and speaks the phrase written on it, snapping him out of the room with a rush of conjuration.

Essek fills his lungs with the fading taste of dunamis. “You’ll let me see it again?”

Ludinus smiles. “Of course, love. I expect great things from you.”

Great things? How can he accomplish great things bound and gagged at this man’s feet? But what choice does he have, really?

Ludinus’s magic is much less pleasant as he grips Essek’s shoulder and follows suit, parting the void without so much as a word and carrying them back to the demiplane’s entrance. It’s effortless, the way he casts. When the door swings open, Essek steps through without hesitation.

He’ll never be free.

Chapter Text

Essek only met two members of the assembly before arriving here, but that did not stop him from forming opinions on them based on their reputations.

Doolan Tversky is so much more than her reputation.

She flits about on a fly spell, her requests becoming more and more obscene throughout her inspection of every inch of him. She stands him on a raised pedestal and measures him like an ornamental gown fitting, unbothered by placing her small hands anywhere on his body she feels the need.

“He’s awfully thin,” she comments idly as she measures his bicep with a piece of string and knots it.

Ludinus, sitting boredly in a plush armchair nearby, hums. “We’re working on it.”

“Have you been exercising him properly?”

“He has been resistant to such things.”

Tversky tsks, measuring his hips and scribbling notes directly on her exposed wrist with a floating quill. “They are hunters by nature, Ludinus, they need enrichment.”

Essek bristles. Them talking around him is irritating enough but treating him like some caged menagerie animal strangles something inside him. Were he not so desperately in want of seeing the beacon again, he’d throw himself at her simply to knock her off balance.

“He is highborn, not a common soldier.”

She hums, rubbing her hands together to warm them before lifting his exposed cock and measuring that too. Essek instinctively hunches forward, jerking his hips back from her, but she follows fluidly with her fly spell and shushes him like a spooked horse. “Be that as it may,” she knots the piece of string to his exact length and releases him, “I would encourage you to increase his activity.” She taps Essek’s flank with the palm of her hand as she rises to eye level with him. “Stand up straight.”

Essek straightens, back over-arched from the harness. She doesn’t eye him the way Margolin did that night in the drawing room–her assessment is not searching for a way to make him squirm. She cups his chin to tilt his head and peer into his ears and then lifts the point of one against gravity. It aches from the change in altitude.

“You’re going to damage the cartilage with these.” She taps the earcap and Essek feels it resonate into his skull.

Ludinus glances up from his reading. “I like the look of it.”

“He’s going to get cauliflower ear.”

“And I will call you to repair it when he does.”

When. Essek shudders involuntarily; Tversky steadies him with a hand flat on his chest. Her lips quirk to the side somewhere between frustration and resignation. “At least you keep better care of him than Trent.” She sighs. “What a waste.”

It makes sense that someone with a fondness for wild animals would find their torture and death a waste, but part of Essek can’t help but envy them. Their ends may have been painful, but at least they ended. There’s no telling how long he’ll remain here.

She hovers immediately in front of him, gray locks tumbling about her forehead out of their tie atop her head. He’s not even sure how long she’s been inspecting him but after the portraits she sketched and measurements, it must be verging on hour two. For the first time, she hesitates, laying her small hand tentatively on his cheek, all the while watching him like a snake in striking pose.

“Open,” she says, voice as firm as her expression.

When he doesn’t immediately move to obey, she huffs a frustrated little noise and repeats herself, this time in broken undercommon that barely approaches comprehensibility. In any other circumstance, he might find it endearing. But here, in Da’leth’s demiplane, it makes his stomach turn.

The moment he parts his teeth wide enough, she slips a flat piece of metal between them. He expects it to be much like when he was a child ill with a sore throat, the den cleric using a tool to depress his tongue to better see his tonsils. Instead, the moment the device is seated against his molars, it ratchets open, extending his jaw until the joint cracks.

Essek yelps, reeling away from her hand as if it might dislodge the instrument and from the shock of pain that radiates up into his temples. Without use of his hands to adjust his balance, he’s forced to step back or topple, but of course he’s still stood on the pedestal and there is nothing to step back onto beyond air.

He’s falling.

He can’t catch himself physically or through magic. He’s going to crack his skull on Da’leth’s disgusting floor.

Conjuration makes his skin tingle before he ever sinks into the flesh-like arcane hand that catches him. The fingers cradle him and lever him back upright, letting him find his feet again.

“Careful,” Ludinus chastises, own hand still raised from the casting.

Tversky cups Essek’s jaw and tilts his head back so she can check his teeth. “Goodness he’s mouth-shy, isn’t he?”

Essek tries to lean away from her fingers as they probe between his lips but Ludinus’s magic made tangible continues to hold him. Ensuring he doesn’t fall again, of course, as the archmage would say. Tversky runs her thumbnail along each of his teeth, the sensation not unlike silverware screeching across a dinner plate. She coos at him when he shivers away from her, murmuring nothings to try and assuage his fear.

He’s not afraid of her. It has nothing to do with fear. He’s disgusted by the soapy flavor of her fingers and the sharp texture of keratin on enamel. He’s disgusted with himself for bearing it.

“You’ve chipped the backs of his fangs,” Tversky huffs over Essek’s shoulder to Da’leth, voice gruff with irritation. “And cracked one of his incisors.”

The last one happened in Essek’s youth, not here in the demi-plane. He lost concentration when still learning the fly spell and fell a full storey off the bannister. Since it didn’t pain him, the clerics didn’t deem it necessary to fix.

“Can you repair it?” Ludinus asks boredly.

“Of course I can but it’s better for him overall if I don’t have to.” Whatever she casts is so foreign to Essek’s ears he can’t decipher anything beyond the framework of transmutation. It rattles his skull and warms the insides of the bone. “Just a couple minutes,” she pats him on the cheek. “You’ll feel much better.” She turns away from him then, descending to the floor with a skip. Whatever she says to Ludinus doesn’t matter as the warmth in Essek’s head crescendos. He aches to shut his jaw, limited to tonguing the most severe points of heat. The backs of his teeth shift slightly, only discernible with his tongue flat against them. The sensation fades; the magic abates. He’s left sweaty and panting on the pedestal, still cupped by the arcane hand.

As soon as it fades, she returns. “Hop down.”

He obeys, even kneeling when she gestures. He needs the gag out. Tversky cups his jaw as she gentles the mechanism closed, letting his teeth finally snap together. He clenches them, tucking his chin when she releases him–it hurts. She smiles at him, fluffing his hair.

“I’ll see you again soon.”

He’d rather not.

When she’s gone, Ludinus helps Essek back to his feet by the shoulders. “I’m surprised.”

Essek hums an interrogative, shaking off the cold hands.

“You were good for her.”

“Did you expect me to bite?”

“Perhaps.”

Essek snorts, padding along behind Ludinus as he sweeps out of the sitting room. Oh, had it crossed his mind. If he didn’t have more to risk, he would have.

“I set up a desk for you in the office.”

“What?”

A… a desk? After weeks of immobilization and chaining, suddenly he’s being offered furniture.

“Well if you’re to assist with research, you’ll need a space to work. I thought you might appreciate it, but if you’d rather sit on the floor–”

Essek stops, eyebrows pinched. “And how exactly do you expect me to use it?”

Ludinus pauses mid-stride and turns. “You sit at it, love.”

“No,” Essek huffs, exasperated. He paces two steps to either side. “To write, to research. How am I supposed to do any work without my hands?”

“How have you been getting along thus far?”

The servants. They fed him, turned the pages on his books, held wine glasses and refilled them until Essek could hardly think. They manipulated the impossibly delicate pages of the ancient books in the library with precision living things lack. It serves that they can write as long as he dictates to them what to say.

Which means he’d remain ungagged throughout the duration of any research. Another benefit.

“They won’t know the runes I need.”

Ludinus resumes his path toward the office and after a moment’s hesitation, Essek follows along behind. “We will discuss that when we come to it. In the meantime, you have lots of data to catch up on.”

And, just as he said, a new desk sits up against the far wall in the office beside the original, identical in its lathed vermaloc legs and polished surface. Unlike its sister, however, it’s piled high with sheafs of expensive paper, rare inks and a variety of pens: glass, feather, porcupine, brass, gold. Hundreds and hundreds of gold worth of materials.

More importantly, his spellbook lays in the center, soft cover neatly closed.

Essek starts toward it, gasping through his nose in his excitement. Before he can pass through the threshold, Ludinus blocks his path.

“One moment.”

“Please.”

“I will give it back to you, but I need something from you in return.”

What more could he possibly want after everything else he’s taken? There’s nothing left that he hasn’t fondled underneath Essek’s skin and pried loose.

“You will have supervised access,” he continues, “as long as you share any new discoveries you make. You will share that spell of yours with me, the one Ikithon is so interested in, and we will collaborate on resolving our little issue with the artifact. What do you think?”

To trade his very soul for an ounce of freedom.

Ludinus continues, gesturing wide with both arms. “You do not have to be miserable here. You can finally proceed with your theories without the threat of heresy hanging over you. With you beside me, I suspect we could accomplish far more than even the gods think possible. Imagine it, love.”

Oh, Essek imagines. He can visualize the Rosohnan skyline burning with violet, dunamantic flames, the screams of Kryn children, the rounding up of all the beacons. Finally in one place, assembled, just how he always dreamed.

A cold hand cups his chin, tilting his head up to meet those harsh eyes. “You have no idea what you’re capable of, given the chance to find it.”

He’s terrified of what he’ll earn if he refuses. This isn’t a choice so much as it is a threat–achieving what Ludinus has been after all this time. Not a pet, not a collaborator, but a reservoir of knowledge he doesn’t yet possess.

What would Verin think of him after this betrayal?

What would the Nein think?

What would Caleb think?

Essek swallows hard.

“I’ll do it.”

Chapter Text

“Have you made much progress?” Ludinus asks one evening, leaning back comfortably at his desk. He’s spent more time in the demi-plane than before, scribbling at his desk various correspondences and plans. Some he chatters openly about, others he hunches over to keep Essek from prying.

Curious how much he still hides, despite insisting that Essek will never be free.

Now he sits in his house robe, otherwise bare-chested and slippered instead of shod. The casualness of his dress alone indicates the importance of their deal. The dynamic has shifted.

“Little you have not already tried,” Essek mutters. He sits with his spellbook in his lap. It feels safer there and the proximity helps settle his nerves.

“But you do have something.”

Essek sighs. “Xhorhasian steel.”

Ludinus raises both eyebrows and leans. “Steel would never bear the pressure.”

“Not of steel itself. You need the gold close but it is the weak point. It degrades and the runes do not survive the pressure, right?”

“Indeed.”

“You need more layers. Xhorhasian steel adds layers exponentially with carbon and iron. I am not a metallurgist, I cannot vouch for its strength strictly, but you would theoretically keep the same amount of gold without sacrificing integrity. It is what the swordsmiths use to strengthen poor material.”

“With the strength of the titanium backing the gold, it would allow for additional layers of runework.” Ludinus leans forward, threading hands together as he always does while he thinks.

“Precisely.”

“How clever.”

Disgustingly, the praise settles like a blanket over Essek’s bare shoulders. As long as he’s useful, Ludinus won’t hurt him. As long as he’s good, he’ll get to keep his spellbook. He swallows. “You will need a master metallurgist.”

Ludinus stands, settling his robe about his waist. It shimmers in the faux fire-light. “Easily done. What else will you need?”

“Access to the beacon for measurements. Raw materials. Rice-paper for schematics.” Essek hesitates. “My hands.”

“The servants can write whatever–”

“No.” He breathes through his nose to force his voice calm. He needs to play this carefully. “For enchanting the metal.”

Ludinus eyes him, unimpressed with being interrupted. After a horrible moment of consideration, he says, “when we arrive at that step, I will reevaluate your restraints.”

Hope.

Essek ducks his head, tucking his chin to his chest. Emboldened by the spellbook still resting against his bare legs, he says “thank you.”

“Of course, love, anything for you.”

He gets his schematics, perfectly annotated with quill and iron-free ink so as not to damage the delicate paper. He gets flat sheets of gold for test glyphs, hundreds of platinum’s worth as though it’s nothing. He tests the servants and discovers they’re capable of learning. They don’t make any sort of attempt with dunamantic runes, not even basic ones, but they know every arcane symbol Essek manages to dredge out of his memory and are able to string them together into basic forms, then remembering those forms when he asks for them to be repeated.

Never has he considered the possibility of unseen servants being so capable. It terrifies him.

They work in quiet tandem, he and Ludinus, side by side in the office. It’s… not peaceful, given the circumstances, but after the days of everything else, Essek feels like he’s able to think. The equations come easier and he manages to write his way around where dunamancy would serve a much better solution. He can fill that in later, once he’s earned his hands back.

Ludinus leans into his periphery. “You’ve made a lot of progress today.”

Essek hadn’t even heard him stand up but now that he’s made his presence known, the heavy looming makes the hair on the back of Essek’s hackles rise.

“Without direct access to the beacon, I won’t be able to make much more.” And his hands, of course, but that’s already been established. Better not press the issue and risk delaying it.

“Soon enough.” Ludinus slides the chair back, exposing Essek’s lap and the spellbook cradled upon it. “You have a visitor.”

The instinct to hunch over his book to protect it burns at the underside of his skin, but he resists, even as Ludinus cups the spine and lifts it, tucking it under his arm. “Who?” Essek stands, shuffling out and around the chair.

“It seems Iresor has taken a shine to you.”

When Ludinus turns with a wide arc that suggests he expects to be followed, Essek hesitates. She was… kind to him before, in comparison, but it doesn’t stop the deep seated fear. “Alone?”

Ludinus promised that he wouldn’t come to harm here. But how can he assure that if–

“Yes, of course. Did you expect me to watch?”

A reasonable assumption to make, but no. Essek swallows and pads after into the hallway toward his own room.

Ludinus talks as they move. “You are not to speak to her under any circumstances, do you understand?”

Essek nods, chewing his cheek.

“Look at me.”

He turns, his body stuttering around him. She was gentle with him before. Ludinus wouldn’t let her hurt him. He does, however, hold up the white leather muzzle.

Light, Essek would rather crawl out of his own skin, but he has to behave. Just a little longer. Once he has his hands, he’ll find a way to escape. He steps into it, resting his jaw in Ludinus’s hand to let him set the buckles. The leather scrapes the underside of Essek’s nose, threatening to make him sneeze.

When they reach the open doorway, Jenna Iresor sits cross-legged on the bed, as promised. Her dress is formal, if conservative, and the conjured lights slide off glistening fabric like a series of waterfalls. Her smile widens as she sees him. “There you are, sweet thing.”

Ludinus nudges him forward, offering a familiar, if stiff, nod to the other archmage. “I have been told he needs enrichment.” It’s said plain-faced but the smugness in it thickens each word into syrup, fermented and sour.

“Oh?” she muses, standing and reaching for him, hooking a single finger around the strap behind his ear and tugging him forward like a horse on halter. “I’m sure he’ll be enriched.”

It’s so preformative but that doesn’t decrease the dread rising through capillary action into Essek’s skull. On edge, his chin snaps toward the sound of the door shutting, earrings jangling like windchimes with the sudden motion. She pulls him back square.

“First thing.” She unbuckles the muzzle and yanks it off his face like it might suddenly burn him. “Doesn’t that feel better?”

He blinks at her.

Her lips twist like she’s tasted something unpleasant. “You can stop with the act. I’m not an idiot.” Her tone, above all else, surprises him. He’d only heard her purr soft affections to him. Even her discussions with the other members of the Assembly remained collected.

She circles him, unexpectedly predatory. “Just look at what he’s done to you. Awful. Come, lay. Let’s talk business.” She need take only one step to lower herself down onto the mattress. When he doesn’t immediately join her, she eyes him sharply for his hesitation and pats the duvet beside her. Be good. He sits.

Iresor reaches around behind him and with a single finger urges him down until he’s in her lap. She taps her bottom lip with the same hand and then runs it though Essek’s hair. “What did he tell you this time? To take orders? To open your mouth and let me use it?”

His face heats. She observes him with an academic, curious gaze. Some of the softness has returned.

“You could use a friend, I think. Don’t you agree?”

This he understands. This is what he’s used to. Court disagreements were regularly solved through alternative means. Negotiations done in private rooms. He’s been here before. He swallows and she strokes down his throat after it.

“I could be that friend for you.”

The offer is too open ended to make any form of agreement. She knows that, too, he can tell by her sly half-smile as she continues to pet his hair. And what exactly would he have to gain?

More one-on-ones like this, with her taking advantage of him out of Ludinus’s protection. He’d rather not be alone with any of them.

She taps his nose with her index finger. “I can see you thinking.” She hikes him up until he’s sitting crossways on her lap and then pulls him to her breast, resting her chin on his shoulder. The fabric of her dress makes him feel as though he’s about to slip to the floor. “Keep thinking,” she breathes against his ear, “I like the way you look.”

Her hand is cold against his abdomen, then chest, then throat as it roams upwards until she’s thumbing the corner of his mouth and parting his lips, pressing the pad of her thumb against his teeth. He jerks back, eyeing her.

“Hush now,” she coos, again gentle and encouraging as if she hadn’t just addressed him discussing conspiracy. “Let me see.”

He can’t risk disobeying so he allows her to peel his lip up off his teeth and test the sharpness of his canine. She cocks her head to the side, biting her own lip as she slides her thumb back to his molars.

“Ludinus implied you bit someone. Is that true?”

Even if she didn’t have her hand in his mouth and he could answer, he wouldn’t. That seems damning enough for her.

“It wasn’t him, obviously. His little bodyguard maybe?” She slips her nail between his teeth and pries.

Essek rears back from the uncomfortable sensation. What game is she playing, exactly? What is she even trying to gain? She wants information on Ludinus, obviously, but what is she trying to negotiate by poking around in his mouth? She grabs his chin, thumb damp with his own saliva.

“What exactly do you need those fangs for anyway? Other elves don’t have them. A gift from the betrayer gods on top of your curse, hm? Did she scream when you bit her, the Volstrucker? Show me.”

What does she want? Panic starts to swirl in his guts. He thought he knew what this was, thought he’d finally begun to understand the fucking Assembly. And by Iresor, of all people, who had until this encounter treated him so kind–no that’s not right; being gentle with him is not the same thing as kindness. He can’t show her he’s concerned–never show a predator you’re afraid.

It’s too late–she can smell it on him. She strokes his jawline. “It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.”

His muscles seize and start to tremble all the way down into his fingers.

“Oh, no no.” Gentle again. “Does he tell you that? Ludinus is a liar, first and foremost. Surely you know that by now.” She grasps both his shoulders, holding firm. “When I tell you something, I mean it truthfully. I have nothing to gain by lying to you.”

She’s lying right now.

But her expression is soft. He’s gotten used to lies, to reading them in the faces of others at court. It’s like she’s two women at once and he’s struggling to identify which is the facade. Who is the Archmage of Industry, really?

She swirls her hand and the sweet scent of something rotting alights on her fingers. “Would you like me to calm you down? I can–”

“No,” he snaps.

She drops the spell like he’d actually bitten her, eyes widened. She smiles. “Alright.”

She stopped. She stopped?

He snivels back some of the panic. “What do you want?” He doesn’t sound like himself, voice hoarse and desperate.

“Information,” she says primly. “And a little bit of your time.”

“And what do I receive?”

Iresor inclines her head the way she might to a starving kitten. And what else is he really to her? “I can prioritize your time. When the others are here, I mean.”

His chest clenches. Now they’re really negotiating. Offering him respite, even just brief windows of it, from the other members of the assembly is like dangling a preserver to a drowning man, and he’s dipped well below the surface already.

Drowning.

He shuts his eyes. This is beneath him. He’s never had to stoop so low for low little, and yet–

“If you need to think on it,” she says flatly, “I can come back another time.”

“No, no, I–” he takes a shuddering breath. “Where do you want me?”

She opens her arms wide and he relents, resituating himself in her lap. He’s slighter than she is by a smidge and it’s difficult to say how much of it is heritage and how much is Essek’s change in diet. She presses her nose up against the skin underneath his jaw.

“What information do you want?” he asks, voice quivering.

“Later. Right now I want to feel what your gifts were given to you for.”

Gifts. A curious way to define his people’s curse. “Where.”

She lifts her chin and gives him full access to her throat. Is this a test? Is she waiting for him to tear it wide like he’s some kind of feral animal? She hums an inpatient interrogative. A transaction. It’s merely a transaction. He parts his lips and holds his breath as he gingerly scrapes his fangs along her neck.

There are monsters that do this. He’s read accounts documenting the way they feed. Her perfume leaves a nasty film in his mouth.

She wraps her hand around his cock and squeezes hard. He didn’t even notice her it creeping lower through his discomfort and the involuntary jump makes him bite down. He feels the exact moment his teeth break through the skin, how it bends and stretches until he punctures through, a needle through leather.

Jenna releases her grip on him. She takes in a heavy breath through her nose and exhales a contented little sound. “There you are. That’s a good boy.”

His balance of panic and frustration shifts, betrayal worming its way in between. They hadn’t formally agreed to anything, no, and for risk of having to lie later, it’s better that way, but he had hoped–foolishly of course–that he’d be able to claim some sense of agency after agreeing to her terms.

If this is what she wants, fine.

He clamps down again and she whines with it, leaning back and pulling him down on top of her. She’s overconfident or an idiot. Even flat, human teeth can make relatively quick work of delicate throat skin. The venomous part of his mind suggests to rip it out, to watch her bleed to death in front of him. But what does he have to gain from that, exactly? No, one death won’t offer him salvation. He’ll need her assistance if he’s to maintain his sanity for the long haul.

She fists the hair at the nape of his neck and presses him tighter to the dip between shoulder and neck. Her blood in his mouth, it makes him gag. She wraps her legs around his waist, twisting her ankles together over his lower back. One hand slinks down over his hip and–

“No,” he hisses into her skin.

She turns her nose to the base of his ear and, playfully affronted, whispers “fine.”

Her hand serves as a rein as she directs him along the cradle of her throat, teeth leaving pairs of pox-like punctures until her skin is red and swollen. She’s gasping by the end of it, chest trembling. She’s very intentional with her hands, working them up over her breasts and along her own thighs. On the tail end of a quiet moan, she pants into his ear, “you really get nothing from this, do you?”

He doesn’t answer. She pulls him back enough to look at him, cheeks flushed and pupils wide. She licks her lips. She rolls her eyes. “Ugh, fine. Move.” She pushes him to the side and hikes up her dress for better access to herself. Some hysterical sense of discomfort forces him to look away but it doesn’t prevent him from feeling her whole body tense up along her inhale and then relax again as her breath trickles out of her, heavy as woodsmoke.

“Well,” she sighs, taking the hem of her dress and smoothing it. “That was fun for me at least. Up you get.”

Essek rolls to his knees, tucking them in tight as if to shield himself. “What now?” he grouses as she recollects herself.

“Now you get a good rest.” She prestidigitates herself clean with a quick word in Sylvan and gestures to the bed beside her. “We’re not to be bothered so you might as well take the opportunity. And when you have something worthwhile to tell me, we’ll talk again, hm?”

There’s so much now that he knows: the artifact, the weapon, how he intends to sabotage it to the best of his ability without being caught. But information is all the power he has and he’s so, so tired. Take the rest offered and barter for another one later, when the circumstances are unpredictable.

She reaches for him again, arms wide and smile fond. Two respites she’s offered him now–he’d be stupid not to make her into an ally. She cradles both sides of his head as he rests it on her knees and then places a delicate kiss upside-down on his cheek. “Rest easy, sweet thing. You’re not alone.”

He very much is.

But for a fleeting moment, it’s nice to think he might not be.

Chapter Text

Ludinus takes him back to the garden. While Essek puts up a front of being interested in the flora, the only thing on his mind is the Beacon. With this proximity, he should be able to feel it. Either he missed some warding in the room where they’re keeping it or they’ve locked it away somewhere.

The frost cherries are ripening, filling the air with a sweetness that this place doesn’t deserve. Ludinus conjures a mage hand and plucks the reddest fruit, punching the pits and stems and offering them to Essek as they walk, not ever eating one himself. They’re too sour to be pleasant but Essek eats a dozen of them before Ludinus leans in close.

“You’re distracted,” he says.

Essek sucks a piece of cherry skin from out between his teeth. “Eager to begin work.”

“And here I thought you’d enjoy some sunlight.”

“My mother was born in the Underdark.” For all that the daylight hurts his eyes, the warmth on his cheek from natural sources is half enough to make him weep. He’s never wanted it more in his life. But there’s a beacon so, so close. “I prefer the shade.”

It’s remarkable that Ludinus follows when Essek stalks across the courtyard to the holding chamber, and more so that he casually opens the door when they arrive as if the insubordination doesn’t faze him. No, in fact he wears that satisfied, placid smile that he so often does when he finds Essek in the evenings before dinner. In another reality, perhaps it might be called pride.

There’s no beacon on the tripod, nor is Ikithon loitering around and appearing to look busy like an overpaid secretary–just one halfling scourger.

Ludinus makes an irritated noise in his throat. “Where’s the big one?”

The halfling shrugs, hopping off her chair and unlacing a pouch from her belt. A haversack, clearly–Essek can feel the enchantment from here. It explains why he hasn’t been able to sense the beacon. “Master Ikithon and Eadwulf are on field work.”

“What could they possibly be–” Ludinus sighs, placing his fingertips on the bridge of his nose as he does it. “Regardless. The artifact, if you would.”

She does, indeed, remove it from the bag, along with the heavy scent of dunamis that neither of them seem to react to. Essek breathes it in, coats the inside of his lungs with it, and basks in the way it tickles his skin. Such a familiar sensation, more pleasant than the sun. She uses her bare hands to carry it, and that itself is a bit appalling, but when she sets it on the tripod and twists the bracket to tighten the device holding it in place, Essek has to avert his eyes.

They’re not fragile by any means but she doesn’t understand what she holds. He wants so desperately to just take it from her, but the damn restraints.

He flexes his fingers anyway.

“We have found a manufacturer for your designs,” Ludinus says, “though they have suggested it will take weeks before it’s complete.”

Essek circles the beacon, taking it in from every angle. “Unsurprising. You will need an enchanter for the runes as well.”

“We have one on retainer that will suit, I’m sure.”

Not that he didn’t expect that, but the thought of Ludinus outsourcing much of anything arcane is a bit of a surprise. Which is a solid enough reminder that causes Essek pause as he continues to orbit the beacon. “How am I to take my readings without the servants?”

Without hesitation, Ludinus looks to the halfling.

To her credit, she schools the appalled expression on her face quickly and nods her assent. She’s less intimidating than Sophia for her stature but similar in the magnitude of her disdain for him. She hops up from her seat and locks a hip.

“Owelia will be your assistant today. She’s been briefed on your notes already.”

Essek eyes her a moment before returning his gaze to Ludinus. “Would this not be easier if you simply let me–”

“We will discuss that at a later date, as I’ve said.”

“It would significantly speed up–”

“If you do not behave, we will not discuss it at all.”

Poor Owelia’s gaze darts between the two of them, eyebrows raised and arms crossed over her chest uncomfortably. She’s certainly more expressive than Sophia, and the other one too, Eadwulf. Younger, perhaps. But the tattoos on her forearms and her temporary guardianship over the beacon are plenty of evidence to her skill, ideally as an arcanist before an assassin but he’ll take whatever assistance he can get.

Essek exhales through his nose. “Of course.”

The scourger is adequate. She takes instructions well enough, and knows enough arcane theory to keep up for the most part, but she struggles to manually notate some of his equations and is piss poor at laying the gold leaf center where he needs it.

She’s also exceptionally careful not to touch him in any way. At first Essek thinks perhaps it’s just her trying to be… polite? But as they progress, the way she moves away from him whenever he leans in to check the burning edges of the gold for his readings disrupts the careful balance of the delicate leaf.

It sets his work back by dozens of minutes at a time and before long he feels fit to scream in frustration. He could do so much better if he just had his fucking hands.

Behave.

He manages to steel himself through another four hours until he’s taken every measurement twice and trialed every rune Owelia’s capable of thrice. He doesn’t want to leave the beacon but he’s well beyond being able to justify how long he’s taking. It pulses the air around him, the thrum of a heartbeat. Under his skin and into the follicles of his too-long hair.

When did the pull become so intense? He doesn’t remember it feeling this way before.

He cannot stop himself from moving, his center of gravity not enough to counterbalance the absolute density of the beacon itself. Why? Why now, after his decades of patience and research, does it sing to him? Exactly what the clerics always described: a pulling, a euphoria. How fucking long did he scream inside his own mind if you are divine, prove it.

He always held them in gloved hands as he was instructed and so the sharp intensity of it bare against his skin startles him when his forehead rests upon one facet of twelve. Cold, arching static that stands all his hair on end and also a warm thrumming in his core, deeper than music but just as rhythmic.

Light, he wishes Caleb were here to feel it. Did he, when he raised this beacon’s twin in the Bright Queen’s court? He gave no reaction if it felt the same then.

Perhaps this is a private melody, then, a mother’s lullaby to a restless, wailing child.

Sensation, incorporeal but still clear in its shape–a flat plane. Something perfectly flat like the surface of a lake on a windless midday where not fish nor insect dare disturb it. But no, that’s not right either. It’s… fuzzy, in a way vibrating with soundless potential. Strings. Threads. The lengthwise grain of Marquesian silk.

Like the weave herself.

But no, the weave is made of five axes, each a bidirectional place in reality: length, height, depth, time, realm. A mage, a proper one anyway, must select the exact point where every thread they need crosses over. It’s instinctual in sentience.

Essek’s own body–no, he can’t feel his body; this goes beyond the physical–his very existence, thrums along with the perfect time, synched to the same metronome. This is one facet of the weave, one axis among five. But which one?

He cannot conceive of visualizing it, like a tailless animal being unable to even imagine being tailed–not the three axes of location.

It is here in the material, he’s sure of that as well. He wouldn’t be able to sense it otherwise.

Axis four. Time.

His consciousness has separated time from the fabric of reality.

No, the Luxon showed him. Is showing him. Damn it all.

He reaches out with extensions of his soul, finger-like, tentative roots of a newborn spruce, and caresses the cord of time. Infinity. That’s what this is. More vast than any sea, broader than space itself. And when he makes contact, one timeline shudders with possibility under his grasp.

An echo reaches out and snatches the cord, too. It is not him and yet it is. An Essek from another time. And its hands– those are free to strum the weave.

“Who are you,” Essk asks, struck dumb, and as if staring into a mirror, it says the exact same.

But echoes can’t speak. They don’t have their own thoughts. Unless…

He releases the one timeline in exchange for another and the first echo snaps away for a second. This one bears a furred mantle rather than a silvered one, hands gloved and ears covered against an unfelt chill.

“Who are you?” it asks.

“You,” he answers.

It seems to look him up and down, a panicked sort of curiosity making the motion jerky. “I don’t believe you.”

So be it. Essek releases the timeline. But there are so, so many more. Light he wants to touch them all, to gaze into more possible futures where he has access to his damn hands. If he’s free in parallel times, surely there’s a chance for rescue, right? He brushes another and no echo appears at all.

Oh. Perhaps that’s a kinder present. A warning of possibility.

The weight of the beacon pulls away from his consciousness. Deciding he’s seen enough, he supposes. And yet, even as it does, the sensation of time remains. Strands of possibility thrum under his skin. He straightens, the spot on his forehead where he rested it on the beacon’s surface frigid. He shivers.

Ludinus clears his throat. “And where did you go?”

Where, indeed. “I’m not sure,” Essek rasps, throat dry.

“Quite some time you were in there.” It hadn’t felt long at all. Ludinus uncrosses his legs and stands lazily, adjusting his robes around himself. “Is that something inherent to your kind alone?”

Doubtful, given the way consecuted souls sometimes return in non-drow bodies. “I don’t know.”

“Is that so?” Ludinus crosses the distance and lifts a hand to cradle Essek’s cheek. Disgust settles in Essek’s gut so thickly that he can practically feel it solidify, weight heavy enough to make his knees give out.

But time is now wound through the tuning pegs of his consciousness. He strums through possibilities until, there, a timeline where the bastard doesn’t lay a hand on him, instead rapping his fingers against the beacon itself. Essek’s heart beats in reverse, terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

Ludinus’s brows pinch, eyes narrowing. He snatches his hand back from the beacon as if it burns. “Did you feel that?”

Lie.

Essek nods. “An aftershock?”

“For an expert, I’m beginning to find your knowledge lacking, love.”

Despite his own half-truth, Essek bristles. “I’ve never experienced this before first hand. It’s all theory.”

Ludinus’s tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip. “And the theory?”

Better to give him something than risk more brutish ways of forcing it out.

“I have an idea for a modification to my spell. The one Ikithon wants.”

Chapter Text

It’s obscene, the way Ludinus cups Essek’s spellbook in one hand, fingers curled around the spine to prevent it opening flat and damaging the binding. He stands straight-backed as ever but a certain, feral hunger drags his passive smile into something more like a smirk.

He clears his throat and says, without looking away from the page for resonant echo,“You will have to notate this in standard form.”

“I can’t.” Essek swallows back the tang of bile as his stomach churns in response to Ludinus’s raised eyebrow.

“Can’t?”

“Dunamantic runes are necessary for the equations. There is no way to simply write around them.”

“Inconvenient.” Ludinus finally peels his focus from the book.

“But,” Essek stutters, taking a step forward. This is the deal he’s made for an ounce of freedom. “I can teach you.”

Oh and that gets the response Essek wants. Ludinus’s desire turns wicked as he sets the book onto a waist-high fluted column making up the only furniture in this particular room. Of course it still manages to be just as gaudy as the rest of the plane. Loosely octagonal in a way that reminds Essek of child’s drawing of a flower, bulbous and colorful. And painted, each tiny component drawer in the alcoves painted to conceal their edges in an overly busy pattern of flying swallows on a mottled gray-blue backdrop.

Even Leylas’s throne room isn’t as vile.

Essek chews his cheek. Because he is about to lie. Because he is about to diminish his life’s work. Because, horrifyingly, maybe it isn’t a lie. “It is—relatively,” he adds to save some modicum of his pride, “simple.”

Caleb took to it quick enough. Certainly an archmage will as well.

Ugly fingers trail down the naked pages of his book. Ludinus taps a single nail on the first rune. “I’m all ears.”

“You’ll need a piece of obsid—“

“Focus on the equations, love. I won’t need the components.”

“Even with a focus, the stone acts as a catalyst—“

Ludinus peers up from the book. “Surely you’ve learned better than to underestimate me by now.”

Essek swallows hard and then clears his throat. “The first three runes bind the incantation to the component, so you won’t need them. Start with the fourth.”

And so he explains, being reminded twice to abbreviate because long-form notation is unnecessary. Ludinus is not a novice, after all. And certainly he’s not. Because he needs no components at all. Not material: he summons the door to an alternate timeline without—not somatic: he reaches through the weave, not with his hands but with his mind—and not verbal: he binds the echo of himself to the prime timeline with a stare.

What the fuck even is Ludinus Da’leth?

He admires the spectral version of himself a moment, circling it. It’s fuzzy in places, the sharp lines of the face and hands blurred into a softness unbecoming of the mage that summoned it. An imperfect casting—at least there’s that.

“Fascinating,” Ludinus says, reaching out to touch it. His hand passes straight through, of course—echoes are incorporeal. “And I can command it to cast a single spell of comparable strength. I can see why Ikithon would want this.”

Unfortunately, Essek can too. There’s no denying its usefulness in and out of combat. It must show on his face because Ludinus follows up immediately with, “he won’t have it, of course. This is just between us.”

Oh. Essek didn’t expect that. Why not use this knowledge to benefit the Empire, and if not that, at least the assembly?

Not that Essek can fault him for being selfish. In that, at least, they’re the same.

The thought churns his stomach.

“Now—“ the echo melts into the familiar shape of an arcane hand. It fans its fingers in a wave and drips away. “You said you had an idea. Beyond sharing this with me, I imagine.”

Too late to go back now. But it might be enough to distract from whatever horrors the Assembly is attempting with the beacon. It might even be enough to earn him his hands back. Light he’d give nearly anything.

He needs to choose his words carefully.

“It is still hypothetical. A modification to,” Essek inclines his chin toward his spellbook, “Resonant Echo—“

“Is that what you call it?

He lets that quip, and its patronizing tone, go. “I need more time even to theorize and notate. If you could—

“We’ve discussed this.”

Essek resists the urge to heave a frustrated sigh. He wasn’t even going to ask about that this time. “—take the time to teach the servants what you’ve learned about dunamantic runes, it would speed up the process.”

“Ah,” Ludinus says, sounding unconvinced of the intent. “That’s feasible, yes. What else?”

His fucking hands. “Your assistance.”

Ludinus smiles. He thinks he’s won. Thinks he’s broken Essek down into his component parts. No, not so easily. Not yet. Just play along, distract from the beacon and use what it’s gifted him. Hold on to that new insight like a lifeline.

Ludinus claims the spellbook, cradling it under his arm as he folds his hands together in front of him.“Let’s get started then. We have a lot of material to cover.”

Essek has never considered himself a particularly good teacher. In fact he can count the number of his pupils on one finger. And of course he is instructing no ordinary student either. They develop a grid, lining up runes and their variations, assigning each a specific designation that’s easier to repeat shorthand rather than describing their full names and purposes to the unseen servants. Regular equations, too, like Zolond’s second form that finds use in most translocation spells, and each primary chunk of resonant echo so that he can break it down and insert new notation, new particulars to heighten the effectiveness of the spell.

Most of it is still rudimentary, but it’s enough to begin notation, at least. Enough to theorycraft his way to some semblance of freedom. He’s so invested in earning favor that when Ludinus rolls up the scroll for the evening, Essek can’t help but be irritated.

“You need to eat, love.” Ludinus ties the parchment off neatly with a ribbon and sets it aside. “This is quite enough of a base for you to start work in the morning.”

He wants to start on it now.

Patience, Thelyss.

So he lets the servant–with their newfound understanding of his people’s heritage–feed him salty consomme and delicately braised lamb. And when Ludinus retires to the sitting room, Essek trots along behind. He sits opposite on the lounge, head tilted back over the arm, and lets the servants hold a treatise on historical conjurative disruptions directly above him without fear of it falling on his face. He keeps his feet drawn as tightly against himself as he can so as not to accidentally touch the man across from him, despite the growing ache in his knees.

It’s–pleasant would be too generous, though that’s the first word that pops into his head–calm. Already his efforts are showing positive results.

Ludinus turns the pages of his tome by hand, not looking up from the volume as he says, “when I return from Assembly duties tomorrow, I would like to go over your progress. I look forward to your results.”

“Of course.”

“That’s a good boy.”

He returns midmorning, far earlier than scheduled, and rather than peer over Essek’s shoulder at the crisp lines scrawled by many floating quills, he fists the harness immediately between Essek’s elbows and yanks.

“With me,” he says, any of the previous night’s fondness exchanged for… anger? No, not quite, but something close to it.

Pain shoots up Essek’s arms into his neck. He inhales sharp enough to make himself cough and stumbles as he jerks himself out of the chair. But he didn’t do anything. He’s been good. He’s behaved.

He’s doing what Ludinus wants.

Ludinus drags him down the hall to the parlor anyway.

At the doorway, Essek manages a choked wheeze before his throat closes up in anticipation. “Please.”

The archmage slows three steps in the doorway until the harsh steps of his slippered feet come to a stop. His long fingers peel away from the harness with a creak of leather and he turns, gaze turning something akin to fond as it rests on Essek’s face.

“Oh, love,” he croons, resting his palm against Essek’s cheek. It’s surprisingly warm. “You’re not in trouble.”

It’s something enough to quell the panic, which does not go unnoticed.

“It’s all assembly business,” he waves dismissively, “not you. But an emergency meeting has been scheduled and you know how they can be.”

Essek swallows. “Please.”

Despicable, what he’s about to ask for.

Ludinus’s brows pinch ever so slightly before smoothing again. “This is not a negotiation.”

“Your spell. The one from before. Please.”

The pause between them lasts so long, Essek starts to wonder if he’s slipped between timelines. But eventually Ludinus smiles. “Of course, love. Anything for you.”

It’s easy to follow instructions after that, body warm and tingling from the satisfaction of praise. Sit there and look pretty. A good boy doesn’t tuck his knees. Head down and take the muzzle. That’s it, be good.

Essek hates it, but he can’t help but love it too–love his own hatred of it.

The assembly arrives together–four in addition to Ludinus–voices already humming with a strange concoction of irritation and apprehension. Jenna smiles at Essek as she takes her seat, but her lips thin immediately once she looks away.

Margolin sits immediately to Essek’s right, more casual than the rest. He gestures to his own lap with splayed fingers. “Come, crick.”

Even that vile word makes Essek’s insides twist in delight. But despite the enchantment, the way it feeds pleasure directly into his brain, he hesitates. Margolin doesn’t like that. His expression sours immediately, dark brows creeping up his forehead in irritation before he wraps his hand around Essek’s upper arm and drags him.

The spell dances in Essek’s head, delighted.

Margolin’s fingers encircle his throat, thumb and forefinger digging up underneath the muzzle as if to pry it off. Panic makes Essek’s senses narrow to the warm skin on his, the heat of Margolin’s body behind him, the phantom pains of things no longer there. He knows he should be terrified. He knows he should fight back as Margolin situates his knee between Essek’s thighs. It’s a fascinating dichotomy, really, the parallel lines of panic and elation brushing so close it’s difficult to recognize where one stops and the other starts.

But Ludinus’s magic is stronger than instinct, and so while his thighs quiver when Margolin squeezes fingers into the flesh there, he similarly tilts his head back as prompted, better exposing the vulnerable skin of this throat.

Enjoy yourself.

He asked for this.

Enjoy yourself.

He begged for this.

Enjoy yourself.

He’s just as complicit as they are.

“Zivran,” Jenna calls across the parlor, leaning forward in her seat. “Can you think with your cock later?”

Margolin sighs, of all things. His grip slackens. “We have Trent’s annex in the wings for this exact scenario. She’s far more than capable, certainly more than he was, to fill the position.”

They start to argue. It’s fascinating to listen to them all actually argue beyond petty remarks and asides.

Ludinus refrains, instead passively looking between the lot of them. He seems bored–a parent watching his children squabble over a toy. It’s Margolin’s voice, deep and rumbling so close to Essek’s ear that warm breath caresses his cheek, that slows the disagreement.

“And what does The Martinet have to offer?”

“Allowing Ikithon to be captured by the likes of the Cobalt Soul is a level of buffoonery I expect of school children.” The very air in the parlor stagnates. “They will put him on trial which means Becke will be guilty by association. Followed by you, Margolin, and then the rest of us. She’ll need to be… quieted before she becomes a problem.”

Uludan clears his throat. “What about the other one?”

The chest against Essek’s back shudders with a laugh. “Grieve? Civil influence? That boy couldn’t talk his way through a dinner order. He’s only good as a sword.”

“No, the other one. The upstart.”

Margolin shifts a little, letting Essek slide off his knee. The lack of contact irritates the enchantment in Essek’s head. “Ermendrud.”

Not a name Essek knows, for once.

Ludinus hums. “He’ll likely testify. That would put him in the public’s graces.”

The pieces snap into place. The spell left Essek stupid but his mind finally manages to align everything. Ikithon’s been arrested. He’s going to be put on trial. They’re replacing him. First DeRogna, now Ikithon. He won’t have to worry about those vile hands on him again, or the foul breath from that mouth.

Another small freedom in this cage.

Tversky, usually so quiet, adds, “we should have had him killed him a long time ago.”

Ludinus folds his hands into his opposite sleeves. “Yes, well we’re beyond that now. If we’re in agreement, I’ll speak with this Ermendrud. He and his cohort are easy enough to track down.”

Soon enough, Essek supposes, he’ll have a face to that name as well.

Chapter Text

“Who is he?” Essek asks moments after the muzzle falls away from his face. The Assembly left with the same intensity with which they arrived and the suddenness of it, in addition to the dismissed suggestion spell, leaves him anxious to fill the void.

hums an interrogative as he tucks the muzzle into the folds of his robe.

“Ermendrud.” The word feels harsh in his mouth but there’s a certain familiarity to it too, like he’s heard it before. It’s possible, too–if the individual has anything to do with magical politics, his name has likely arisen at least once in the halls of the Lucid Bastion.

“One of Ikithon’s many failures, I’m afraid. But he’s turned up recently and has been making waves. And if I had to assume, he is likely the subject of Ikithon’s recent, unsanctioned departures. I anticipate we will be hearing Ermendrud’s name a lot in the coming days.”

In an odd fit of boldness, Essk asks, “can you control him?”

With one eyebrow cocked, Ludinus looks him up and down, lingering on each piercing as his eyes rake upward. “Certainly.”

It’s irritation more than anything else that fills Essek’s cheeks with warmth. “I did not mean as a,” he swallows, “pet.”

“Nor did I.”

They move then, footfalls loud in the hallway. Ludinus continues, “we are both aware of the risk of bringing on a puppet to fill an important void. But this one is fragile and easily manipulated. The populace will adore him, and that is all that matters.”

Ludinus rounds a corner back toward the study. Perhaps Essek can leverage more than just knowledge in this. He trots the few steps to walk in tandem rather than behind. “Would he be a better assistant to our project?”

“I suspect there is no one more qualified for the task, incidentally. Has the girl been such a hindrance?”

“Hindrance?” Essek gasps, incensed. “She has delayed me by days, perhaps weeks, and wasted dozens of gold worth of material. She treats me as if I am plagued and wastes both our ti–”

Ludinus looms, cupping Essek’s chin with his overlong fingers and thumbs Essek’s lips. His breath parts around the digit like water around a boulder, the heat of it eddying to warm the tip of his nose. “That is because she fears you, love.”

“Fears?” Essek breathes.

“You are the monster in their childhood nightmares, do you know that?”

Essek tilts his head away. “Like this?” He rolls his shoulders against the restraints, feeling leather and sinew strain against one another. “You expect me to believe that?”

“I expect you to know it.” Ludinus eyes him, expression uncomfortably fond. “Perhaps only I know what is in that book of yours, but they are right to fear you, love. With your capabilities, they wouldn’t survive you.” He runs a hand through Essek’s hair, taking the time to gently separate any knots before resuming their trek toward the study. “Now, show me what you’ve uncovered.”

The reveal is a disaster. Still half drunk on the earlier enchantment, Essek stumbles over his hypotheses. Whatever boldness he dredged up earlier abandons him, leaving him panting and…

Terrified.

It’s Sophia that saves him. She knocks twice before letting herself in. Her silhouette blocks some of the hall light, leaving a golden halo on the opposite wall. “His appointment is here.”

Essek tenses. Between his poor performance and Ludinus’s foul mood, he’s surely earned himself some form of punishment. Who then? Margolin?

Ludinus sighs. “Has it already been two hours? Pity. I suppose it can’t be helped.” He gestures toward himself. “Come, then. We can try this again later.”

He should run. He should bite.

He lets the muzzle secure his only weapon.

“Be good for her, now. She likes you.”

Her.

Iresor.

The relief is nearly strong enough to knock his knees out from underneath him. He pads after Sophia on light feet. This is, potentially, a best case scenario given his current circumstances and he’s eager to extract what he can from her in exchange.

Perhaps Tversky’s observation was correct. The enrichment will do him good.

Jenna does not waste any time on formalities. She is ravenous and for more than just his fangs, it seems. She summons a mage hand and undoes the buckle for his muzzle before the door even closes behind them.

“Sit on the bed,” she says, and so he sits. He expects her to crawl into his lap but instead she lowers herself between his knees.

This is not how the bargain is supposed to go. Essek jerks his knees closed. She sets one hand in her lap, fingers curled naturally at rest like a feline putting away its claws. With the other, she pinches the bony portion of his ankle between her fingers. Her lips turn upward in a patient smile. Courtly and polite. He’s bore it on his own face most of his life.

He bites the hook. “Wha–”

And she’s on him, pushing him back by his shoulders into the goose down. She silences his mouth with hers and despite the urge to roll out from under her, Essek inhales through his nose. This is a negotiation. He can handle this. He’s done it before. With less intense circumstances, sure. But she must have something more for him. A trade.

“I want to hear you,” she hisses.

“And in return?” He bares his fangs, which is exactly what she seems to want.

“The Dynasty is looking for you. By name.”

Ludinus lies. But it wasn’t. Weeks ago, months even, in that dining room when Essek still thought he would be walking away from the confrontation, Ludinus had said it. That he informed the Bright Queen. And if she’s looking, if she’s hunting him, then it wasn’t a lie.

Ludinus lies.

But he didn’t. Not about this.

Essek chokes on the back of his own tongue. His hacking gag seems concerning enough that Jenna props herself up to look down at him. That’s all they ever do–look down at him.

Gods he’d been such an idiot.

And she knows. His focus snaps back to her, even as his wheezing chases away the shock. Fair’s fair, he supposes. He knew her name as well.

She licks her bottom lip. “And now you,” she says before primly removing herself from over top of him and sitting before him. The side-slit in her skirt gapes wide up to her mid thigh. With her fingernails, she pries apart his knees. “I want to hear you.”

His thighs tense as he resists the urge to resist.

A negotiation.

All he’s doing is negotiating. A favor for a favor. He’s not yielding. Not yet. And they have an accord.

He grinds his molars together and nods.

To her credit, her tongue feels as lovely as it sounds. It takes time, a humiliatingly long time in any other circumstances, to encourage even the barest of heat in his belly, but she is nothing if not tenacious. She doesn’t gag herself on him or drip saliva on the floor, instead taking her time to periodically pause and wipe her chin. The over-tense muscles in Essek’s upper back even start to uncoil.

If he were anywhere else, with anyone else, he might even admit to it being relaxing.

But when he closes his eyes, it’s not her gray ones he sees, but brilliant blue like the sky should be.

(This whole series of conversations needed to be rewritten and was composed right as I was losing my ability to work on this fic, unfortunately. It does get better from here, I promise. Important notes was that Essek reveals that Ludinus is making a bomb out of the beacon here.

(The meeting with Margolin is the direct result of Ludinus knowing that Essek blabbed to Iresor about the bomb.)

Margolin paces, shined shoes snapping the floor with far more force than necessary, tick, tick, even as the constant motions of the pendulums in the library.

Be good, Ludinus said. Light, he’ll try his best. But Margolin always eyed him, a dog waiting for its master to leave before jumping on the counter for an unattended meal. And here he stands, trussed and ready for consumption.

“What precisely does he see in you, hm?” Margolin asks. He flicks his wrist; the chain leashed to the harness lift, forcing Essek to lean forward at the waist, disgustingly exposed. This was more along the lines of what he’d first anticipated when he was presented to the assembly as a new toy to play with, and again what he’d expected of Iresor when she had hands on him.

He accounted for this.

He prepared for this.

No amount of planning is enough.

Everything about Margolin is clinical: his pressed robes, his footsteps, his magic. It leaves no unique flavor or scent behind as most mages, but instead a sterility–absence of character. Similar to the tutors of Essek’s youth, their form must be pristine so that they can teach less coordinated hands.

Essek’s own hands quake in their bindings above his head. How long until his fingers go numb?

Margolin stops, reaching out a gloved hand and threading it through Essek’s hair. Instead of Ludinus’s gentle scratching, leather creaks as he squeezes and lifts Essek’s head enough to look over his face.

“Certainly not for your looks.”

Not so long ago, Essek would have been enraged at the audacity. But now, it’s almost a comfort, knowing this man doesn’t intend to stroke him and tell him how good he’s being. Margolin hates him. The sharpness of his eyes does not represent a predator chasing prey, no, he’s an exterminator executing vermin. It makes sense, given how much he poisons the minds of the children he oversees, that the Empire hates the Kryn so.

Well, better Essek than anyone else, he supposes.

Margolin tilts his head–a hawk. “And not for your mind, elsewise he wouldn’t lock up your most useful asset.” He pats the muzzle, leather on leather. “And I was told explicitly not to play with that. What secrets are you holding, traitor?”

Curious. Ludinus didn’t give Iresor nearly as harsh limitations. In fact, he’d given her no instruction at all, instead telling Essek what he was and was not to do (which he immediately broke, but that’s neither here nor there). Meanwhile, he received no unique instruction here, simply was passed along like the toy he’s become. Clearly Ludinus isn’t concerned about whatever information Margolin might extract from him. Because he doesn’t intend to interrogate him.

Essek’s greatest asset in this case clearly has nothing to do with what he does or does not know. He swallows around his tongue. With his jaw forced shut by the muzzle, he won’t even be able to call for help.

“I found myself curious,” Margolin continues, letting Essek’s head drop and running his gloved hand down the bump of each vertebrae, “once Ludinus unveiled you. I did some reading in the archives. They keep old records, you know. That spider bitch has some fascinating underlings.”

The hand slides down Essek’s tailbone and he instinctively draws his knees tighter together. Old records, indeed, if they suggest the Kryn have anything remaining of their time under Lolth. What a stupid reason to be executed, worshiping a betrayer god.

Not that treason is much better. And look where it got him.

Execution might have been kinder.

“Subservient, that’s what the old books said. But clever and patient,” Margolin runs his opposite hand back up along Essek’s spine as he circles, “you don’t really qualify for those things, I don’t think. You’re here, after all.” The chain shivers as Margolin grabs it and pulls, potentially checking the tension, before he ratchets it higher with whatever foul-tasting transmutation spell he cast. It forces Essek to lean forward until his chest is parallel to the floor. The ancient animal fear of falling tickles his mind.

Margolin leans in close, breath hot on the shell of Essek’s ear. “But there was one other thing. Even your worthless god enjoyed being fucked, didn’t he?”

(Margolin is half as brutal as you expect and in an attempt to survive it, Essek reveals that he is in fact Ruidus born and is able to cast without verbal, somatic, or material components (effectively the telepathy feat). This makes Margolin big mad.)

Margolin’s on him like a moorbounder, teeth bared and hands locked so tightly around Essek’s throat that bitten nails dig into the skin, drawing blood. And yet his voice is sickly calm. So fucking calm despite the trickle of blood down his temple and the film of it on his teeth.

“How.”

Essek tries to swallow but it catches above Margolin’s hand.

“How did you cast?”

Now he’s speaking to himself, looking up and down at the blossoming bruises and fluid leaking down Essek’s thighs.

Don’t think about it. The body is inconsequential. He is only his mind.

And his mind is going fuzzy from the compression and the pressure, his vision still tunneled from lack of air. If only he could open his mouth and take a breath but he’d sacrificed that privilege for a different fucking deal.

He’s such an idiot.

The bliss of proximity to death muffles his fear of it. How many times has he been here, floating on the precipice with sweet enchantment caressing him and lighting up his nerves with ecstatic brilliance. Sensation fades to that of the throbbing in his head and his cock. Nothing else matters.

There’s no magic and yet his body is so, so consequential.

The door slams open, so distant it’s but a whisper in his hindbrain. Ludinus come to put a stop to his drowning, perhaps, or the assassins finally come to end him. Maybe the matron herself here to claim his soul.

The hands around his throat release him and he falls limp to the floor.

“Master Margolin, he is not to be harmed,” a voice says, familiar but so far away.

Margolin laughs, a near hysteric noise. “Did you feel it?”

Essek wheezes to suck in a breath but it’s not enough with the gag. He merely manages to peel himself back into semi-consciousness when a hand hooks under his harness and yanks him upright. His shoulders scream and he echoes it into the leather of the gag. It hurts. Fuck, it hurts.

“I have specific instructions. He’s not to be–”

Margolin’s calmness breaks. “Don’t fucking touch me, scourger.”

Steel slides on leather, an unmistakable sound. Essek manages to loll his head to the side and yes, Sophia stands in the entryway, sword partway unsheathed. He’s never seen the blade before–it’s beautiful. Some internal blaze illuminates through runes carved into the flat of it, throwing light into the corners of the room and silhouetting Margolin between them.

“He is not to be harmed,” she repeats with the same intensity, her boots scraping the floor as she shifts stances.

Margolin lets go of the harness and Essek slumps against the wall. Whatever earlier rage pushed him into his outburst seems to retreat. Instead, he brushes his hand through his hair to straighten it, sidesteps Sophia, and exits the room.

She releases the hilt of her sword and it thunks home, the light extinguished, and kneels next to him, one hand steadying him upright and the other fishing for the buckle behind his ears before yanking the leather off his face.

Instinctively he takes a breath and when it rushes back out of him, he whines at her, “no.”

Sophia eyes him, brows pinched in an uncharacteristic confusion. “Are you asking me to let him kill you?”

Essek blinks at her, gulping air. It would be easier, wouldn’t it? For the both of them?

She loops an arm around his waist, surprisingly cautious of his hurts, and lifts him to his feet. He’s useless on them so she ends up bearing most of his weight. “If you think death is the end for people like us, you’re dumber than you look.”

Chapter Text

The groan that worms it way out of Essek’s throat forces his head back. The pain of overtaxed muscles, and Light do they hurt, is nothing to the bliss of being able to pull his shoulders forward and bend his elbows. For a moment, he sees stars.

They fall when Da’leth addresses him, eyebrows raised and that satisfied little grin on his face. “How is your mobility?”

“Maybe you should have considered that before all this.” Essek stretches his arms forward. They’re weak and even the action of holding them aloft makes them shake. He rolls his wrists, flexes his fingers. If there’s permanent damage, he can’t get a sense for how severe. He shoots Da’leth a look and conjures a mage hand. It hovers, spectral and sparkling with arcane light before he lets it fizzle.

Da’leth shrugs. “There are ways of repairing such things.”

“Even divine magic has its limits.”

“I meant removal and regeneration. It takes time, but I’m a patient man.”

Essek’s hands drop to his sides. The casualness with how it’s said concerns him more than the thought itself. Surely a waste of resources, potential permanent scarring to the mind not just the body. The underlying threat makes his skin crawl. Behave.

Da’leth sets a smoothened piece of mottled obsidian on the pedestal that, days ago, supported a beacon. It’s palm sized, larger than the necessary component need be for a typical Resonant Echo but the additional material may help with the modified spell.

Calling to the weave gives Essek a sense of euphoria so overwhelming he nearly stumbles over the incantation. The only true companion he’s known for decades while shut up in his towers. He eyes The Martinet for any sign of interruption but there’s only that placid smile and an eagerness to his features–a child anticipating a particularly sweet treat. Essek considers intentionally failing the spell simply to be obstinate, but the lingering fear that if he refuses, he’ll never have use of his hands again pushes him to call forth the echo.

Whichever timeline this one arrived from clearly did not find itself trapped in Da’leth’s demi-plane. It’s clothed, for one, the cape and mantle obvious on the semi-translucent silhouette. A typical echo, lacking any true sentience and existing for the sole need of repurposing expiring magic.

“Fascinating.” Da’leth approaches, reaching out and marveling how his hand passes through the echo with a swirling, smoke-like trail. “And you say it can cast one spell.”

“One spell.”

“Show me.”

Essek shrugs. The echo flits into motion, hands weaving sparkling runes into reality. A rush of cold wind breezes his hair back as the ice storm starts to manifest.

Da’leth counterspells it out of existence and both the spell and echo dissolve away. “You know better.” There’s amusement plastered on his lips, an ugly thing. “But I respect the attempt nonetheless. Next time I won’t be so kind.” He picks up the obsidian and realigns it on the table. “And the modified version of the spell?”

“Has the potential to call the vestiges of conscious thought from a dying timeline, yes. But it is still theory. I have been rendered unable to test it.”

“Well what a perfect opportunity.” Da’leth’s smile widens. The somatics are more complicated for this version of an echo, and the residual fear of dismemberment in case of failure sets his hands in motion. They’re still sluggish but gaining speed, the intricacies falling into line more easily with each movement.

Caleb would adore this process. Manifest Echo is Essek’s crowning achievement. It’s what earned him his title, what defines the Kryn’s armies and will define them for centuries. Calling upon temporal knowledge is the stuff of imagination. He wishes desperately he were sharing it with someone who deserves to see it rather than Ludinus fucking Da’leth.

The primary modification allows him to select a soul other than his own. This he’d trialed a few times with mixed results, but he’s more confident now that he’s had more time to gaze into the Luxon. The very thing he’d wanted when he struck a deal in these halls, finally within his grasp. Infinite timelines, infinite knowledge. He means to call his own echo.

He summons Caleb instead.

The echo flickers in and out, a candle flame in the breeze. Colorless, nearly transparent, but undeniably Caleb in his Rosohnan coat. He’s the most beautiful thing Essek’s ever seen. It’s too disorganized in space to make out facial features but his mind supplies them anyway and it hurts. How it hurts. The loneliness drops him down the well of despair and his knees shatter under the impact.

The shade turns its head, the first indication that indeed it’s not only a fragment of Caleb’s power but his mind as well. His brilliant mind. “Essek,” he says, the voice an eerie, distant thing. It comes from all directions at once and leaves a strange humming in the back of Essek’s skull that sets off his fight or flight. “You’re alive.”

“Yes,” Essek wheezes from the floor, voice shuddering. A sob lodges under his vocal cords, not quite bubbling out of his throat.

Caleb reaches forward, both hands grasping. “I’m so sor–”

The timeline snuffs out.

Essek pitches forward, trying to gather the pieces of the afterimage. The spell worked, disjointed and unstable as it was, but it worked. It worked and Caleb knows. But the Caleb that knows he’s alive doesn’t exist anymore. His Caleb thinks him dead.

“Fascinating.” Da’leth moves to occupy the space where the echo stood, the still shimmering motes of fading arcana like glitter where it settles on his body. “Interesting choice of subject, I’ll admit, I–”

Essek throws himself at Ludinus’s midsection, lodging shoulder to gut and forcing a choking wheeze out of his captor’s chest. He digs overgrown nails into throat skin and blood wells underneath his fingers. What is obsidian but volcanic glass–the glass he needs to pull lightning from nothing. It crackles in his hand, deafening with the proximity to his silver-laden ears.

The fucking scourger latches to his neck. She squeezes but she’s too late, he’s uttered the incantation. He need only direct it, pierce Da’leth’s heart with the peak of his strength. How dare he underestimate Essek of Den Thelyss, youngest Shadowhand in the Dynasty’s history.

Sophia catches his wrist in her palm and breaks it with ease. The lightning goes wide, striking the Nicodranian-style columns and arcing between them, scorching and melting the stone to its most primordial form. He tucks his chin into the arm holding him and bites down, piercing flesh. She growls, hikes him up off the floor, and then drops him hard to the marble. Flesh tears but she doesn’t even seem to notice as she sits on him.

“Get him under control,” Da’leth coughs.

With his arms so weakened from captivity, Essek isn’t able to fight off the harness as she slips it up over his arms and locks it. She grunts as she hauls him upright, blood dripping and starting to puddle on the floor underneath them.

Da’leth stands, brushes himself off, and reaches forward to rest a gentle hand on Essek’s head, avoiding snapping teeth. “You need to calm down before you hurt yourself.”

“I’ll see your corpse rot first,” Essek hisses, fangs bared.

“Hobble him and put him to bed.” The hand brushes through silver-white hair, smoothing it. “I think he’s done enough for today.”

Essek plants his feet but the scourger has the height advantage in addition to her strength. She lifts him and he howls, inarticulate with rage he hasn’t felt in weeks. He flails, bites, tries to break her nose again with the back of his skull. Eventually, halfway to his assigned room, she grows frustrated and cracks his head against the wall. The stars he sees remind him of the fading twilight image of Caleb, face anguished, hands outstretched.

His consciousness doesn’t reconvene until he’s laid on his side, sheets and pelts pulled back to cradle him. She already has the chain to his cuffs pulled taut and he winces at the familiar click on the hobble chain. He squirms to get comfortable but of all the lessons instilled within him, learning that there’s nothing even resembling comfort with his cock chained to his wrists.

She folds his knees, putting his ankle cuffs in proximity, and the sob that didn’t manifest earlier finally breaks to the surface. “Please,” he begs. She doesn’t acknowledge him and latches the delicate chains before pulling the blankets over top of him. When she presses the leather bit to his lips he takes it without fuss. It’s routine. He’s exhausted. The immobility has drained the last of his fight and at least it gives his mouth something to manipulate in the hours of boredom that await him.

The chair creaks as she plants herself down and if she’s bothered by the viscosity of his crying, she says nothing for the hours it takes for his mind to wind down to the semi-consciousness that’s become his most treasured companion.

—

He summons Caleb again, this time on purpose. This one has more detail, distinct outlines of facial features and folds in clothing. It glances around the room before settling spectral eyes on Essek. The lips part out of sync of the voice, “Essek, Schatz, what’s happened to you?” It lasts longer than the previous but fizzles away anyway.

The next comes dressed in a quilted coat and long scarf. Essek can see the diamond patterns, see the stripes in the scarf. This Caleb arrives, hands outstretched as if mid casting. He spins, eyes landing on The Martinet. “What is this, Ludinus?”

“A marvel of spellcraft,” he answers.

The echo sparkles away into arcane dust.

The third, the fourth, the fifth. All Caleb. Some acknowledge him, some don’t. Sixth, seventh eighth. None of them direct their anger to Essek. Concern, sometimes rage toward Da’leth. They last longer and longer, sometimes capable of brief conversation before entropy claims them for the void.

He’s lost count.

The latest Caleb wears a collared shirt and suspenders, sleeves cuffed to the elbow. His hair is long and bound, the faintest hint of stubble on his chin. He’s beautiful. “Oh no,” he says, eyes on where Essek sits on the floor. “But we killed him. We killed him, Essek. How?”

Essek shakes his head, eyes burning. “Not here.”

Caleb looks down to his hands and chews his lip. Something dark crosses his colorless face. “I’m an echo.”

“You are.”

“How long do I have?”

“Less than a minute.”

He sighs, steps casually around the pedestal and obsidian. He’s wearing expensive shoes, this Caleb. Shined and sparkling with dunamantic stars. He drops to his knees, equal with Essek on the ground, and hugs him. There’s no sensation; echos aren’t corporeal.

There’s no audible intake of air but he speaks again. “We’ll find you.”

“You don’t even know,” Essek sobs. He tries to imagine the pressure of the hug, the warmth of Caleb’s body against his.

“We’ll find you.”

The echo shatters and dissolves into nothing.

The silence weighs, the only sound Essek’s sniveling. He draws his knees up, tucking his head between them and gasps each breath.

Ludinus approaches, squats beside him, and sets a steady hand on his head. It’s warm like Caleb should have been. “Why do you torture yourself?”

Essek hiccups and swallows the next breath. “Do you not enjoy it?”

“No. I don’t.” Fingers rub his scalp, the barest scrape of fingernails across the skin. “Grief is an ugly thing on you.”

He lets them bind his arms again after the session, and when he’s secured, he staggers to the library and tucks himself in a corner underneath the stairs. The following morning he skips his wretched breakfast and finds a cushion placed in his shelter. The next, a stack of books in Undercommon. The next, a curtain that he can draw and close himself in. And he does. Sophia continues to shadow him but the tiny privilege of the curtain gives him a brief respite, lets him imagine for just a moment he’s somewhere safe. He even manages to trance a few times, breathing in the musty smell of old books.

Da’leth gives him a week before he sits down outside the curtain. “Do you intend to starve yourself?”

Essek doesn’t answer.

“You don’t have to make yourself miserable.”

Silence.

“I’ll be reading in the sitting room. I expect you.” He gets up and leaves.

Whether it’s the exhaustion, the hunger pangs, or the loneliness, Essek peels back the curtain and shuffles out of his sanctuary. The threat feels empty. He’s already had everything that mattered taken from him. He’s so tired.

Ludinus pats the couch beside him when he arrives, so he sits. He draws his legs up like a shield and feels himself start to tremble.

“Here,” Da’leth says, offering a tiny orange orb in the palm of his hand. “Eat this. It’ll help with the pain.”

Essek eyes it. A bead of nourishment, enough to sustain him while leaving his stomach empty. Clever. He leans and takes it between his teeth like a horse stealing an apple slice, bites down, and swallows.

“Feel better?”

He does.

Da’leth hooks an arm around his shoulder and pulls Essek down across his lap. It’s humiliating, treated like a pedigreed dog, stroked and petted when it suits his master, chained when it doesn’t. He shifts to get more comfortable, earrings chiming against one another.

“You’ve been too hard on yourself. You’ve accomplished remarkable things.” Da’leth brushes white hair back, runs fingers along the length of decorated ears, rests his hand on a sunken cheek. “I’ve scheduled a demonstration of your new spell for some of the other archmages. I’d like you to be the one to cast it for them.”

Bad enough to have given the Empire what dunamancy he had, now they’ll turn his greatest accomplishment into a weapon against his own people. But he’d already turned on them, hadn’t he? Giving their precious god to the enemy? What is one more crime on his list.

“Can you do that for me?”

Essek nods against Da’leth’s thigh.

“Good, I’m glad.”

—

He doesn’t call for Caleb’s echo again.

He conjures himself once, but the horror on his own face sends him into a spiral. He wakes struggling for breath in Da’leth’s lap, gazing up into eyes wide with concern. There’s hands on both sides of his face, warm.

He starts to summon Ludinus instead. He demonstrates the proper somatics, helps the Martinet build incantations that aren’t in Undercommon. He gives the best thing he’s ever created to the worst man he’s had the displeasure of knowing. But the praise he receives for lengthening the duration, for solidifying the form, he’s never had such praise. A century of constant research into the arcane and never once had anyone pulled him to their chest and commended his work.

Well no one except for Caleb, but the memory is so far away it feels more like an echo itself, fragile and destined to shatter.

By the afternoon before the demonstration, he’s mastered it. The echos last minutes, engage in full conversations, emote and consider possibilities. Greater than any necromancy allowing discussions with the dead, Essek can pluck very souls from reality at his whim. It’s the most powerful he’s felt in a long time. It doesn’t ease the anxiety building in his gut.

“You’re tense,” Ludinus offers, rubbing a knot out of Essek’s shoulder with a thumb. “Are you afraid of disappointing me?”

He is, but he’ll never say it aloud. “Anticipating the hours I’ll spend sitting with nothing to do.”

The Martinet laughs. “Such events are awfully boring, aren’t they?”

Boring is better than the alternative which leaves him exhausted and aching. At least for this, he is the demonstration and not a piece of entertainment. He despises those nights with his face dry and itchy from tears and thighs quaking from nerves strummed to snapping.

A hand runs down the length of his arm and back up, warming the skin. “Do you want to sleep in your nook tonight?”

His nook under the stairs, filled with plush cushions and blankets of his own choosing. A safe space of his own in Avernus. But it could be worse, and so he nods and spends the night nestled among the only things he can call his.

In the early morning, Ludinus washes Essek’s hair and scrubs his skin clean. There’s a tenderness to it, a reverence almost, like Essek is made of glass. The hands rubbing circles into his pelvis and thighs make him sweat more than the hot water. He despises it. He bites his lip to keep from whining.

He’s redressed in harness, hiking his arms behind him as usual and a sash offering him some semblance of modesty, though it’s transparent where it’s only one layer. “I don’t like to share,” Ludinus says, patting the freshly tied knot. He reaches for a muzzle and Essek scrunches his nose at it.

Ludinus smiles a little sadly, looking down at the leather in his hands. “We had a complaint.”

“A complaint?”

“They’re scared of you, love. Of your teeth.”

Essek runs his tongue over a fang. The muzzle hurts his nose and underchin where it chafes, but it also forces his mouth closed, not open. His jaw won’t ache so bad after. “Cowards.”

“They should be scared.” Ludinus sets the gag and lifts Essek’s hair so the buckles don’t catch in it. “Tonight you’ll haunt their dreams with your power.”

An energizing thought, able to elicit fear even chained tamed as he is. He stretches where he can to settle the straps and holds still for the silver chain leash to be clipped to his septum. The weight makes his eyes water at first. Ludinus dabs the tears away and paints silver shimmering pigments over eyelids and cheekbones.

“Beautiful.”

He’s not. Not with his ears weighted so heavily with silver they bend under the weight or with his shoulders and arms so atrophied from disuse that they shake when so much as lifting a teacup. He’s the furthest thing from beautiful he’s ever been.

They sit him on a cushion on the floor in the salon. It’s plush but the waiting is bound to play devil with his knees. He eyes the guests as they attend, placing some faces and names he knows. Astrid Beck he recognizes, and she gives him a long look of disdain as she sits at a table across the room. The new Archmage of Civil Influence. Ludinus likes her. She’s ambitious and clever in ways Ikithon was not. Other members of the assembly as well, but they pay him no mind. They’ve all seen him before.

A couple he’s not familiar with sits midway near the back. They each take a glass of wine but don’t participate in toasts. He keeps finding their eyes on him, roving, drinking him in like the others drink their imported alcohols. They lean and whisper amongst themselves as they stare. He dislikes them immediately. Probably discussing obtaining their own. How exotic, he is. How compliant.

It lasts hours. Exhausting hours that leave his mind numb. He drifts sometimes, rocking in place. Occasionally he leans too far and applies pressure where the leash connects him to a ring set in the floor and the pain drops him into reality like falling through a frozen lake.

The woman from the couple oggling him leaves her partner at the table and offers her hand to Ludinus, who takes and kisses the back of it. Whatever conversation they make Essek can’t hear but he can tell by their expressions it’s inane, courtly bullshit. At least he doesn’t have to suffer through that anymore. She gestures toward him and they both watch him a moment. This wasn’t supposed to be that kind of event. Ludinus promised. He starts to tremble and his shifting applies pressure to his leash, making his eyes water again.

The woman squats beside him and takes the chain in her hand, but rather than tug on the piercing, she pulls it tight against the ring holding him in place, tight enough to bend a link or two, and his pain eases for the lack of tension. She bends close, scours every inch of his face. She’s intimidating, unyielding. Her mouth creases into a tight line, the muscles in her jaw bulge as she works them. She grabs the corner of his cushion and slides it so there’s less tension in the chain and stands.

He blinks after her retreating back. How strange. She didn’t lay a single finger on him.

Eventually, agonizingly slow, Ludinus settles the gathered attendees into their seats and it’s only the two of them and Sophia at the front of the room. She kneels behind him and undoes the straps to his muzzle. Finally. He’s so tired. She has her hand on the first buckle of his harness when a wave of arcana so intense rattles the very bones in his body. He recognizes evocation when he smells it, even above the metallic scent permanently lodged in his nostrils. He glances up and the couple from before has pressed forward.

Someone in the crowd heaves acrid evocation, perfectly aimed to strike the strangers, but instead it hits an invisible surface and drips harmlessly to the floor. A wall of force, separating the five of them from the rest of Rexxentrum’s most talented mages. How many have the means to destroy it? Is such a spell worth preparing for an event like this?

Sophia, for the first time, draws the greatsword from her back. It’s comparable to Yasha’s, not quite as broad but just as long. Runes glitter along the blade and her tattoos illuminate with the weapon in her hands.

The woman from before drops low and catches Ludinus under the chin with the butt of her hand before a spell can leave his lips. Incredible, to outpace his accelerated casting. He staggers from the blow. “Hurry up,” she shouts to her partner.

“Ja, ja,” he replies, hands tracing complex sigils in the air. Essek traces them. Abjuration, displacement, planeshifting. Banishment. But nothing here originates beyond the material, what purpose could a banishment have on mundane–

No. They’re in a demiplane. Banishment will throw them from the estate and deposit them somewhere outside.

And that voice, like a balm to his exhausted mind. How many times had he suffered through the castings just to hear it again, to pretend for just a moment that somewhere beyond these conjured walls he still had friends. That there was someone in the world that loved him. How dare he hear it now when he’s nothing but a tool for creating new spells, a repository of complex dunamancy for the assembly to control. For Ludinus to break.

Sophia charges the woman who manages to dart beyond the blade and trades a blow to the scourger’s head.

Ludinus recovers from his earlier assault. He’s bleeding from the nose and the anger carved into every line of his face goes contrary to everything Essek’s learned in his months here. Never had he seen that expression, that hatred. Even when he called lightning and tried to burn a hole through the archmage’s chest, he faced no anger afterward.

Grief is an ugly thing on you.

Anger is uglier.

With a stomp of his foot, Ludinus dispells the illusory disguises of Beauregard and Caleb.

It’s not real. Just echos, fading timelines that will shatter in a moment. He can pull a mind from the heart of the universe, any mind he wants, can torture himself with images of family he’ll never see again. He’s done it, willed them into reality.

But Sophia swings and cleaves a piece of flesh off Beau’s upper arm. Echos aren’t corporeal.

Caleb’s spell fizzles with the dispel so he starts over. But Ludinus is faster, his arcane mind trained for centuries longer than Caleb will ever see.

Essek feels the power word start to manifest before it has time to form.

He will not allow it.

The leash pulls as he forces his feet under him. His eyes water, his vision blurs with tears and then spots appear. His sense of self preservation that damned him to accept all this screams at him to stop pulling. He will not.

The chain, weakened by Beau’s forceful pull earlier, bends. Links pull, curled fingers clinging desperately to one another, before it snaps. He’s bleeding, he can feel the hot tackiness of it as it drips down his lips and chin. He tastes it as he bares his fangs.

Sophia is focused on Beau, holding her wound and weaving around swings. Ludinus is focused on Caleb. A wall of force separates him from anyone else that can stop him. He slams into Ludinus’s side and sinks his teeth into the exposed flesh of his throat, the noise bubbling up from his lungs inhuman. Blood, frothy and bright with fresh oxygen, coats the inside of his mouth and flows river-like down his exposed chest.

“Fuck,” he hears Beau call. “Caleb–”

The banishment takes hold and Essek feels it tug him. Caleb’s magic warms him from the core, sparks light up his nerves like embers drifting above a bonfire, lighting up the night sky on a frigid night. He could refuse it, but why would he? It’s the only ecstasy he’s truly known in his horrid place, despite Ludinus’s best attempts. He bites down harder as he’s consumed by the spell and spat out in the street, illuminated by lamplight and for the first time in months, the moons.

Ludinus crumples underneath him, gurgling vague attempts at words, and Essek follows the body to the ground. He rocks his head to the side to slice like the cursed drow huddled in the underdark. You’re a monster he’d told Ludinus that first day.

I suppose you’d know. You wear the skin of one.

A pair of arms wrap around his chest from behind and heave. Flesh tears between his teeth and he howls because he’s not done. He won’t be satisfied until there’s nothing left to resurrect.

“Shit, man, it’s okay. You got him.” Beau near shouts. She walks them back. He struggles as best he can but there’s so little strength in him left his thrashing only causes her to tighten her grip until he can’t inhale for the compression.

Caleb, beautiful Caleb, draws a constellation in the air and gravity tears reality. Ludinus’s body condenses, folding in on itself with a wet wheeze, a ball of flesh and fabric and bone. Component pouch supplies the dust necessary for disintegrate. Caleb rolls his sleeve and wipes the line along his arm. Sickly green light flashes and the corpse becomes ash, settling between the cobblestones.

Essek stops struggling. Beau’s arms loosen but she’s holding him upright now, his body too taxed to maintain its footing.

Caleb cups both his cheeks, hands stinking of volcanic ash. “Essek.”

He nods, a sob choking him.

And then Caleb hugs him, just like the echo had tried to do. But these hands are real, corporeal. “I found you.”

They did.

Chapter Text

“We have to go,” Beau says. Essek feels her fumble over his arms until she finds the release to the harness and pries it open. He sighs with the relief. She’s still mostly supporting him so when she rounds on Caleb, Essek has to turn with her. “We have to go now.”

Caleb has his fingers dug into his forearms, flaking away the ash leftover from his spell. He’s looking past them both, down the street. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean– oh for fuck’s sake.” Beau scrubs a hand down her face. “He was already dying.”

Essek shakes his head at the same time Caleb does. Not good enough. It wouldn’t be good enough to leave his corpse in the street, easily found and delivered to a high cleric. Because the Assembly would, no doubt. And that’s if Ludinus hasn’t already established contingencies upon his death. Of course he has, he’s probably already crawled out of a sarcophagus somewhere, body fresh and furious.

He staggers as if the realization were a blow and Beau, growling, heaves him up and over her shoulder. He tries to stabilize himself by grabbing at her bicep and shoulder but his arms are still numb from the restraints. “Wait.”

She takes Caleb’s hand and runs. “We don’t have time.”

“I have to go back.”

“Absolutely fucking not.” She takes a turn and he wobbles until she tightens her grip and continues on. The estate has too many open spaces, many of the buildings constructed smaller for their ability to contain complex demiplanes.

“I can teleport.”

She stops so suddenly she skids on the grass and Caleb runs into the back of them. “Now would be a good time.”

He wants to. He’s thought about it, so many nights considering how to sabotage the wards, where he could go beyond Leylas Kryn’s reach or where scourgers would have no reason to search for him. But now the thought of leaving them, of being alone again, he can’t bear it. So somewhere familiar, somewhere he’s made repeated visits, studied and memorized. Not his towers, too risky. Nowhere in Rexxentrum with every assembly mage wanting his head.

“Essek,” Beau shouts, frustrated. She squeezes his waist where she holds him. “We. Have. To. Go.”

He decides. It dangerous for him. The Aurora watch might even be waiting, and they’ll collect him on sight if they get the chance. But if he’s right, if Ludinus has a clone stashed in some dark room, then someday soon a familiar gate might open up beneath his feet and save him from the Dungeon of Penance. Damaged limbs removed and regenerated, just like he’d been threatened. One jail cell for another.

He sucks in a breath. The incantation is thick in his mouth from disuse but the familiarity of the location can afford some minor miscalculations. Exandria disappears from beneath them and the familiar sense of vertigo makes his eyes sting with its comfort.

They arrive in the Xhorhaus eight inches off the ground.

Beau, somehow, maintains her footing while Caleb does not. She steps around where he’s fallen to his knees on the floor and shifts Essek off her shoulder to the lounge. Between the change in altitude, teleport, and the blood that had been accumulating in his skull from the position, the room spins. She kneels in front of him, rubbing feeling into his upper arms. “Is any of this yours?”

His mind and eyes are still trying to catch up. “What?”

“Is any of the blood yours?” she huffs, mouth set in a firm line and impatience wrinkling her forehead. It cements further that this is Beau, actual Beau, not an echo, not an illusion. Even in his best moment, Ludinus could never imitate her mannerisms. She’s too volatile for him to make sense of.

Essek lifts a hand, touches fingers to his nose where the piercing stings. He’s shaking so bad he can’t maintain contact.

She snatches his wrist. “Well don’t touch it.” And then, over her shoulder, “Caleb, now is not the time for your shit.” She lays his hand down in his lap with the other, where blood has soaked through the sash at his waist and made it cling to his skin. She steps away, clearing his line of sight and revealing the depth of the Xhorhaus’s sitting room. It’s the same as when he’d last seen it, cleaner perhaps, with blankets folded on the backs of chairs and furniture huddled together to make room for eight occupants. The only difference is the lack of those occupants and he aches to see those chairs and sofas filled.

Caleb pushes himself back up to his feet. He shucks his coat, it’s new, less travel worn than his others, but still so very Caleb. The lining, satin in lavender to contrast the deeper leathers, embroidered with hundreds of silver stars. How like him, to emulate the magics he studies in his clothing. None of the echos had quite the same coat.

He drags it up the lounge and settles it over Essek’s shoulders, tugging it closed.

“Wait,” Essek leans away, pulling his arms across his chest. “Blood on it.”

Caleb huffs and, were it not for the heavy downturn of his mouth and pinched brows, Essek might think it a laugh. Instead, with hands still dusted in components and the arcane remnants of Ludinus’s corpse, Caleb pulls the coat closed and fastens one of the middle buttons. He reaches under and gently slides Essek’s hand into his own. “Squeeze. Hard as you can.”

Essek complies, wrapping his fingers around Caleb’s palm and tightening until his tendons bulge and arm quakes. He offers the other hand without being asked. Despite the task, Caleb seems hollow in a way, eyes not quite focused. He occupies less of the room than usual, shoulders scrunched close to his neck. He’s torn red lines down both of his arms with his fingernails, none quite deep enough to bleed.

“You’re hurt,” Caleb says, voice diminished like the rest of him. He lifts a hand to Essek’s chin and for a moment, midair, it’s Ludinus again–fingers long, nails painted, uncalloused and almost delicate. Whatever involuntary reaction it causes, a quickening of breath or a shudder, Essek doesn’t even feel it. But he sees the results in Caleb, the way his eyes widen and hand jerks back like he touched something boiling. They stare at each other, two prey animals startled at the sight of one another, and then he rocks back to his feet, striding through the dining space and out of sight.

Beau calls after him. She makes a frustrated sound deep in her throat and pounds her fist into the wall, puncturing the plaster on the first strike and puffing a plume of dust out of the hole on the second. “Okay,” she shouts, then quieter, “alright.” Her topknot comes undone as she rakes her fingers through her hair. “Fuck, okay. Let’s deal with the blood, I guess.”

It’s all over him, his bare skin, what little fabric serves as his clothing, the beautiful inside of Caleb’s coat, and his hands. His hands… He looks at them, palms raised. Pretidigitation’s somatics were too complex with his bindings but he’s free from those, and despite his shaking, two castings leaves him clean.

Beau, foot on the first stair, stops. “Or that works, too.”

During the run, he managed to smear Da’leth’s blood on her too, over her neck and shoulder, grinding it into the fabric of her top. He gestures her over. She hikes her leg up over the arm of the sofa and leans rather than sitting. It’s close enough. It’s a simple enough thing to whisk the mess away, and he dissolves the sweat off her skin as an additional courtesy.

“I would have done it sooner but I forgot I could.” He clasps his hands together in his lap. The sash, now that he’s able to touch it while it’s clean, is surprisingly soft.

Beau quirks her mouth to the side. Some of the rage is fading from her features, leaving her softer. “Shit, man. He really left you like that the whole time?”

“Most of it, yes.”

“How long?” Her voice shifts to something harder, lacking the emotional outrage from before. The way she speaks during an interrogation–how she addressed him on the Ball Eater all those months ago.

“I’m not sure. The day of the peace talks, so however long it’s been since then.”

She rotates her hips to spin, planting both feet on the cushion so she’s perched, facing inward. “Wait, wait. So you never left, he took you right off the ship?”

He really doesn’t want to discuss it at the moment. His eyelids are going heavy as his limbs, the exhilaration of casting of his own will wearing away. “Yes.”

“Aw fuck.” She drops her head into her hands, gripping her hair until her knuckles go white. “Shit shit shit. I’m so fuckin’ sorry, Essek.”

He sighs through his nose. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“No, we do, we really fuckin do.”

“Beauregard–”

“We didn’t know and I said some shit–

“Can we discuss this another time?” he snaps, and it’s the first time, he realizes, he’s ever raised his voice at her. He regrets it immediately and winces.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Later, maybe when we’re all together.” She lifts her head and eyes him through her lashes. “What do you need?”

A bit of a loaded question, really. He needs clothes, for one. Caleb’s coat is a gift but it gapes and fits oddly in the shoulders and being able to cover himself properly would do a lot for his mood. He needs to eat. He needs six bottles of wine. He needs to rest. He wants something to dull the ache in his muscles. He wants desperately to hear conversation held by more than Ludinus fucking Da’leth. He wants Caleb.

“I’m tired,” is all he says, barely above a whisper.

“Okay, let’s uh– Do you want me to help you upstairs? Or stay down here?”

He wants to stay wherever they’re going to stay but how to convey that without sounding quite as miserable as he feels. “Here is fine.”

She worries a hangnail with her teeth. “Might be best to take some extra precautions just with… y’know, Everything. We can push the couches back and have Caleb set up the dome.”

Essek shuts his eyes while he listens. “The dome?”

“Yeah it’s some magic forcefield bullshit. But a white dragon couldn’t get through it so– There’s enough space we can all lay down and I don’t mind keeping watch. Unless you’d rather us not be there, cause that’s fine too.”

He doubts it’ll keep Da’leth at bay but lesser mages, absolutely. He’s familiar with the spell, or something similar at least. “I would appreciate that, thank you.” He’s never heard her quite so wordy, a little frantic even. It’s endearing. “I don’t mind sharing; I’ve forgone my modesty for some time now.”

Beau makes a little nose in the back of her throat like she’s been struck, but he’s fading fast and can’t bring himself to look at her. She, blessedly, gets up. Probably to fetch Caleb from wherever he’s wandered, which is wise. They shouldn’t split up given the circumstances. He couldn’t bear it if anything happened to them now.

There’s a fine line between true consciousness and trance, and he rides it. He hears her voice mostly, quiet at first and then raising in volume. Lots of “don’t have time” and “least you can do,” a couple “get the fuck up”s. Something in him resents the harshness of it because it’s Caleb. Caleb with his eyes that have seen more than drow lived centuries beyond him, who views the world with a cynical eye. But whatever she says in lower tones he can’t parse and eventually the pep talk seems to work. There’s a rush of conjuration during the ritual that sets his bones on fire with delight.

Beau trots up the stairs on light feet and returns heavier, followed by the sound of fabric hitting the floor.

“Do we wake him up?” she whispers to Caleb.

“I’m awake,” he answers for himself.

“Oh, well uh, bed’s ready.”

He groans as he stands, almost leans too far forward, and catches himself by taking a step. When he opens his eyes, Beau has her hands outstretched as if to catch him, eyes wide. She stays that way a moment until, apparently satisfied he’s not going to collapse, she gestures to the conjured shelter and he steps through.

The inside of the dome is pleasantly dark, leaving Essek’s vision in shades of gray, but he’s still able to make out the shadows under Caleb’s eyes and on his cheeks like he’s been wiping his face. He sits near the edge, cross-legged and curled in on himself.

Grief is an ugly thing on you.

They’ve layered the floor with all the blankets and pillows from the sitting room and what looks like the beds upstairs as well. It’s like his little nook and it feels natural to wiggle himself down into a caldera at the center. He’s still wearing Caleb’s coat, and he should give it up, but it smells of sulfur and ash. It’s selfish. He hasn’t been allowed selfish things, but he doesn’t offer it back.

Beau enters last. She brings her staff with her and settles opposite Caleb so the three of them form a line. “Go to sleep. Both of you. Jester’s gonna send in the morning like always and we can make a game plan.”

Essek habitually draws his knees nearly to his chest. The coat nearly covers his feet like this. He doubts he’ll sleep, he never managed a full sleep in Da’leth estate and he’s not bound to find one now, less than a few hours out the door. But he’s warm. He’s comfortable. He’s as safe as possible.

Grief is an ugly thing on you.

He snaps awake.

“--even get the others?” Beau, softly from the kitchen.

Essek forces his breath even and slow, a habit to seem at rest.

“Ja, ja. I’ll take the circles. It’s fine.”

“What is even up with you; you’re acting like an ass.”

“I just–” Caleb’s sigh is loud enough to perceive, even with a whole room separating them. “We left him.”

“We did not–”

“We abandoned him, Beau.”

A chair scoots back, screeching on the tile. “How were we supposed to know–”

Caleb forcibly shushes her. They remain quiet after that. Essek is a terrible judge of time but minutes at least before Beau says “are you just gonna bottle this shit up too?”

Caleb grunts. “Did you see the way he winced when I got near him?”

“Did you see the way Da’leth had him chained to the fuckin’ floor? He’s gonna need a little time. You can’t expect–”

Essek’s cheeks warm. How silly, to feel embarrassed about it now, after all the eyes that scourged through whatever sense of pride he’d built. People who knew who he used to be even, putting a face to a name finally after years of knowing his reputation. What a reputation he has now. But with them, with Caleb, it’s different somehow. While he aches to see the rest of the Nein, he’s afraid of their pity, too. How wretched he must look, everything he was and could be peeled from the muscle leaving only an object behind.

During his sleep, he’d stretched a little. Straightened knees and released his arms from up against his chest. He reaches for the lapel of Caleb’s coat and finds a felted blanket in addition, folded neatly on top of him. He grips it hard and pulls it up and over his face.

“Jester,” Caleb starts and that explains the reason for the argument’s pause. Excellent timing, as ever. Essek’s missed the unique sweetness of her sendings so much that, even in proximity, he starts to taste it. “We need to meet at the Xhorhaus. Tell everyone. You, Fjord, Veth at Yussa’s circle. Yasha at the Soul. I’ll come get you. Urgent.”

“Fuckin finally.” Wood squeaks, perhaps Beau sitting finally after standing earlier in her fury. Essek can see it, the way she throws herself down, arms crossed, one leg tucked up on the seat–ever incapable of sitting right, that one.

“No, no one’s… in danger. Beau is with me. It’s very important, Blueberry. You’re the only one who can do this for me. Thank you.” Caleb’s tone shifts immediately upon finishing the sending. He spoke to Jester with such focused care; he sounds so tired otherwise. “I’ll leave in an hour.”

“Do you want to deal with him or… Fine, I’ll do it.” Deal with sounds a bit harsh, even Beau seems uncomfortable with it. But hard to blame here when he’s such a mess. She’s near imperceptible on her feet when she tries to be; it’s only the sounds around her presence that indicate she’s moving at all: the scrape of her chair, clink of her glass on the table.

“Essek,” she whispers at him, surprisingly close. He appreciates her restraint, pretending to sleep on until she calls a second time so as not to let on he’s been eavesdropping–a dirty habit in and of itself. He shimmies out from under the blanket, blinking at her in the lamplight. “Hey, so uh… I got some clothes for you, and heated up the hot tub. It’s probably at least a little warm by now.”

And oh does he want a bath. Prestidigitation technically cleans but it doesn’t often feel clean after, not in the way that hot water does. “Thank you,” he offers, sitting. The ache from his back and shoulders is ever present, but lessened, one night of being able to move giving him a surprising amount of relief.

“Oh, shit your–” she touches her septum, “bled a little. You really tore it up.”

He lifts his own hand. She’s not wrong, flesh torn ragged and tacky. He can feel the ring, dangling loose on his top lip. Maybe if he’d tugged just a little harder, it’d have pulled free. An easy thing, to remove it now. “Can you cut it?”

Her posture goes rigid. “I’m not sure…”

Desperation hits him full force, a runaway carriage to his chest. Get it out, get it out. Her eyes widen as she sees the change and she raises a hand as if to placate him. He doesn’t need placating, he needs the piercing out of his face. Now. “Beauregard, please.” He’s begged for a lot of things in the last few months after a century of never needing to. And like a child refused their third sweet, his eyes start to burn.

“Alright, okay. One second.” She pivots, her feet barely touching the floor as she darts up the stairs.

The ring is heavy, a sinker on fishing line, drags him to the bottom and hooks into the floorboards. A pretty silver leash. He rears back and the chain goes with him. Hands. He has hands. Essek links a finger and pulls. The flesh, already swollen and damaged, stretches in defiance for the briefest moment before giving way. Blood dribbles over his lips. He shakes his head at the sensation and silver jingles on both of his ears.

No more.

With both hands he grips the right earcap, pierced through the middle to keep it in place with permanent studs. He hooks his nails under the edge and pries. Cartilage bends under the pressure, the silver pulling, pulling, tearing. The sound it makes reminds him of crushing the scourger down in the Dungeon of Penance, of the way Ludinus’s body crackled as gravity drew it in. His ear warps around the earring until it pulls clean through, rebounding into its natural shape. Good. Next one.

He already has his fingers hooked on the other cap before he hears his name in Caleb’s voice. In the dozens of voices of the Calebs he summoned day after day. “Oh, Essek,” they’d say, face pinched and jaw set. “What happened?” and “where are you?” and “you’re alive.” But those Calebs ended as their timelines did, dust in the cosmic abyss where all things end. An army of dead men.

Ludinus’s hands seize his own and Essek jerks away. The hands go with him, let him thrash in place, fight to lace fingers together. Because it worked so well before, he lunges and bites, sinking fangs into flesh, feels them pierce each layer of skin and down into the muscle. The hand flinches but holds steady.

“Essek, look at me.”

And he does, because Caleb asks so nicely.

Blue eyes, bloodshot and pretty as the sky he hasn’t seen in so long, bore into him with untamed focus. “Where are you?” What they all ask, what all the Calebs wanted to know.

Essek unlocks his jaw to answer and the hand pulls away. “Rexxentrum.”

“No. Where are you right now?”

He peers beyond those eyes, takes in the patterned walls and paintings, dozens of colorful scenes staining the plaster, all painted by Jester. “Your house. In the Firmaments.” He takes a breath.

“Good. How many lights are on the tree?”

“I– I don’t know.”

“Bad question. How many runes are in Fortune’s Favor?”

He squeezes Caleb’s hand with all the force his atrophied forearm can muster. “Twenty-seven. It used to be thirty-one but I gave you the simplified version.”

Caleb smiles, radiant and warm. “Simplified?”

“More efficient.” Caleb squeezes his hand back. Blood drips from lip to his lap, warm against his leg. It itches on his neck where some of his hair has adhered from the moisture.

“Are you with me?”

Essek nods. The earrings chime and he winces.

“Okay.” Caleb releases both Essek’s hands. He scoots up higher on his knees, rocking up to the balls of his feet, then taps his earlobe. “I can take these out, just give me a moment. Do you want them all gone?” Blood drips down his arm from the bite.

Caleb’s blood. In Essek’s mouth. He grabs at the lapel of the coat still around his shoulders and retches into the crook of his elbow. How could he? Captivity made a monster out of him and freedom only awarded him back his teeth. Feral, like his ancestors under the ground. No wonder the Empire fears them, if they shatter so easily.

“Essek.”

He can’t bring himself to answer but meets Caleb’s gaze.

“Let me help you. Please.”

With a swallow, he nods again, with less vigor than before. Relief softens the wrinkles in Caleb’s brow and his hands, smeared with blood, compose transmutation with the same grace. The spell is simple: base alteration, the rune for silver, a root sigil for giving structure to amorphous reagents. Time-honed and steady by practiced fingers.

The silver turns liquid. There’s an odd sensation of it leaking, the tickle of skin rebounding where it’s supposed to be, and both ears, relieved of the pressure, rise to their natural positions. The lightness makes him feel like he’s floating, suspended by his personal levitation.

Caleb collects the raw material in the palm of his hand not covered in his own blood, shapes it, and offers a small silver cat. It’s polished to mirror, almost circular with subtle features–rounded ears, a tail wrapping around and under its chin.

“Frumpkin,” Essek breathes, weightless.

Caleb’s smile, drawn wide, crinkles the corners of his eyes. “If you like.”

“Are we uh… good now?” Beau asks. Essek finds the strength to glance at her. She has her back foot still on the first stair and an open pair of shears in her raised hand. “‘Cause that’s a lot.”

He lets his gaze bound between the two of them, considers the lingering weight still pinning him to the ground, and offers, “I think for the moment, yes.”

“You gonna be good while Caleb’s gone?”

Essek winces at the phrasing. How Ludinus had praised him for being good. But that’s not what she means. She wouldn’t say that. Not even Beau. She’s not asking him to behave. He swallows and nods. “I believe so.”

“Cool. Well I’m gonna put these back.” She snips the shears twice. “The hot tub’s warm; I checked.” She trots back up the stairs again leaving privacy in her wake.

Caleb still has his hand outstretched, the silver cat gleaming. “Do you want to keep it?”

Whatever sense of revulsion consumed him with the silver embedded in his skin has slunk away. Essek takes it, rubbing his fingers along the surface. “Your hand…”

Caleb shakes his head. “You could have bitten me much worse.” There’s a wryness to him that Essek’s missed terribly. Even the echos offered none of it to him. “And Caduceus will patch us both up soon enough.”

Essek prestidigitates the blood off them both anyway. The wound seeps still from two major punctures. “Will you go to him first?”

“Ja, sure.” Caleb stands, groaning at his knees as they crackle. “I’ll be back soon. Be kind to yourself.” The incantation is Zemnian and whisks him away with a warm whirlwind. Essek strokes the tiny cat, uses his thumb to caress its face and tail. He pulls himself together enough to stand and follow Beau.

Chapter Text

By the time he arrives, Beau’s already laid out the clothes, a towel, bottles of fancy soaps, a pair of house slippers, and a book. He raises his eyebrows at the book and she shrugs. “I dunno, I get bored in the bath sometimes.” Boredom has become one of his worst companions. She has no idea how much the gift endears her to him.

He unbuttons Caleb’s coat and shucks it by rolling his shoulders, catching it before it falls to the ground. Beau makes a sound a bit like she’s falling and spins away from him.

Esseks lays the coat on one of the outdoor lounges. “Forgive me, I thought since you had seen already…”

“You’re just–” She brings her hand to her mouth but whether she chews her lip or nails he can’t tell. “Did he starve you?”

“Ah, no. In fact The Martinet was quite gracious with meals. This is my own work.” The sash unties easily–a wonder it stayed on through the night. He steps into the water and it’s bliss, powerfully hot on aching muscles. He refuses to look down and acknowledge the remaining silver rings in his flesh. He’s not going to trouble Beau with another… whatever that was. He sinks down to his armpits and tilts his head back against the edge. The sigh that escapes him makes his lungs burn.

“Fuck man, were you trying to– Sorry you probably don’t want to talk about this.” She sinks to the floor and sits cross-legged, hugging her arms across her chest like a shield. “I’ll just shut up. Do you want me to go?”

“No, please.” He can’t keep the desperation out of his voice and shuts his eyes as if that might prevent her from hearing it too. “It’s nice to hear a familiar voice.”

“Yeah, okay. Uh, well…”

“Ask your questions, Beauregard.” Anything to keep her from foundering.

“But–”

“You’re curious and you’re angry. I appreciate your rage but Ludinus is dead for the moment and nothing can be done about that. I can only satiate the other.” He tilts his head to look at her but she’s pointedly facing away. “If I think it will upset me, I simply won’t answer.”

“What do you mean ‘for the moment?’” The stern Beau returns and Essek feels himself bend under the interrogation, even if a small part of his mind rebels.

“An archmage as powerful as the Martinet has contingencies in play to restore himself should he face fatal harm. I have no doubt he’s already recovering.”

“How exactly did he take you off the ship?”

“A very powerful spell. It only works across planes but since his estate consists mostly of demi-planes it was easy to pull me to him.” He summons a mage hand out of habit and realizes as it’s halfway to him with a bottle of soap that he could have reached for it himself. He still feels worn thin, left to desiccate in the hot sun. Something about explaining it to her, taking it like an equation to be explained, makes it a little easier to bear.

“So you’re saying he could do it again, just whenever he wants.”

“Precisely.”

“Fuck. Doesn’t that scare you?”

He closes his eyes, letting the mage hand massage floral scented soap into his scalp. “I have grown weary of fearing the inevitable.”

“You think we’re going to just let that asshole have you again?”

Essek screws his eyes tight. The soap, he tells himself, scooping water over his hair with both hands. Just the soap. He changes the subject anyway. “How did you do it? Find me, I mean.”

She shifts one leg out in front of her and leans back, supporting herself with her hand. For a long moment she says nothing at all and the silence begins to wear his mind down. Finally she says, “We didn’t. Didn’t know you were gonna be there. Didn’t even know you were alive.”

“Oh.” Caleb echos flick through his mind. “Where are you” they asked, and sometimes “you’re alive.” Of course he should expect that even in this timeline where they managed to free him, they never looked for him. Just like Ludinus had told him. They’re not coming. He winces through a wave of despair, managing to weather this one.

“Did Astrid ever…” The somberness in her tone hurts.

“Oh, no. She knows of me and where I was. She doesn’t have the taste for Ludinus’s events and rarely shows.” He remembers Astrid’s face quite clearly, the prominent scar she bears from her lengthy resume. “To her credit, she has no reason to know of my affiliation with you, if that means anything.”

“A little, but it’s still pretty fucked up.”

“Indeed.”

Beau seems to scrabble for anything to continue the conversation. “We did some pretty cool shit while you were gone. Jess’ll want to tell you but there was this floating city in space or whatever that was trying to take over the world. We stopped it.”

Essek swirls the water with his hands. “I would expect nothing less.”

“Oh, and we put Ikithon in prison.”

He pauses and sits up a little straighter. “I heard of his sentencing but never who was at fault for it. I should have anticipated it was you.”

“You hear a lot about what was going on?”

“Oh yes, Ludinus very much likes to listen to himself talk. I had the unfortunate pleasure of discussing Empire politics at length with him on more than one occasion.”

She rocks forward and shifts so she can draw her knees to her chest and hug them. “So you weren’t… like that. All the time?”

“No. I was only gagged when he found me inconvenient to listen to.”

She rockets to her feet, pressing both palms to her eyes and starts pacing. “Fuck, man. We knew he was fucked. The Soul’s been trying to build a case on him for months and can’t find shit. If we’d just pushed a little harder maybe we’d have found– I’m expositor what the fuck does it mean if I can’t track down one missing person.”

He’s left dumbstruck, mouth opening to offer something dismissive but can’t form the words.

“How am I supposed to do this–?”

“You’re not,” he finally manages during a lull.

“What?”

“Not on my behalf, anyway.”

She rounds on him then, hands fisted to either side. “And why the fuck not?”

“Because the moment he senses you’ll be a thorn in his side, he’ll have you killed. You ask if being back there again scares me. It does. But so does rotting in a dungeon cell or being executed by the Queen or any number of things. But what terrifies me is you all getting killed because of me.”

She’s stone, perfectly still, even holding her breath. Her cheeks have reddened in her fury. “You gonna tell Caleb that?”

He shuts his eyes. No, he has no intention to. The fact that he discussed any of this with Beau at all surprises him. Perhaps by letting someone know the details, he won’t be forgotten, even if just a footnote in some trial years down the line. Additional charges: kidnapping and abuse of a crick. v“That’s what I thought.” She sighs, sitting back down and resting her arm across a bent knee. “He missed you, you know.”

Essek sinks lower in the water.

“Dreamt about you a lot. Didn’t talk about it too much but I know they bothered him. I know he’s acting like a shithead right now but it’s ‘cause he feels guilty.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because if you think for one second he’s going to let you just accept your fate or whatever the fuck you think you’re doing, you’ve got another thing comin’. And that’s just Caleb. Jester sent to you every day.”

He lifts his hands out of the water, dropping his head into them. He can feel himself approaching the edge that caused him to rip the earring out.

“I’m gonna shut up about it but don’t forget.”

They spend the next twenty minutes in silence, Beau with her back to him. He rinses the soap out of his hair three times until he can’t justify it anymore and hauls himself out of the water. The towel’s a bit musty from disuse and the clothes, Jester’s he determines for the pastel blues and pinks, run a bit large. He sits on the lounge and rubs at his face.

He hears them before they arrive at the house. Jester’s giggle pierces the midmorning. It’s potentially the best sound he’s ever heard. Whatever they’re discussing doesn’t rise above the street but the lilt of her voice, accompanied by some exclamation from Fjord and a reply from Veth, it draws him back from despair’s edge and he manages to swallow down the sob. A balm to his ravaged mind.

Beau stands and stretches. “I’ll bring Cad up first. We’re going to try and break it to them slow but you know how they can be.” He watches her back as she goes.

Rosohnan architects never considered people like Caduceus when constructing the buildings here. He has to duck under the doorway and angle his staff downward to fit it through. Time has been kind to him, lengthening hair and encouraging a bit of scruff around his jaw. Someone added thin braids in certain sections of his hair. “Good morning, Mr. Essek,” he says as he stands up tall. “Welcome back.”

“Good morning,” Essek manages, his face still hot from the bath and running dangerously close to tears again. He must look a joke, hair still dripping and plastered to his head, dressed in Jester’s clothes that fit poorly, ear and nose torn ragged.

Caduceus sits beside him. “I was told you needed a little healing but not what kind, so I brought both.” He pulls a gourd from his belt, pops the cork out with a thumb, and sets it in Essek’s hands. It smells delightful, distantly floral, earthy and warm. He sips it. It’s still hot and soothes his throat, but when it reaches his stomach he’s suddenly reminded at how he’s been surviving on nothing but occasional beads of nourishment for over two weeks. His insides clench trying to remember what it’s like to actually consume before everything settles, leaving him panting.

“It does that sometimes,” Caduceus chuckles. “Can I take a look at your ear?”

Essek turns, dropping his chin to give better access. He gazes at the ground. “What did they tell you?”

Caduceus hums as if in thought. “Only that you were here and needed a little tending to.” He reaches up as if to cup the damaged ear but doesn’t quite touch with his impossibly long fingers. “Is it alright if I cast on you?” He waits for a confirmatory nod before whispering an incantation. The waft of magic reminds Essek of mushrooms and loamy earth. The sting in his ear and septum recedes and fades into nothing.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Essek wants to. It seems silly to feel such oppressive need to share. He already opened too wide with Beau, but he’s speaking before he can stop himself. “I did it to myself. The… injuries.”

“Hm. If you say so.” Caduceus leans back to take in the stars above them. “I don’t think we ever solely hurt ourselves. There’s always something outside that makes you feel like you have to.”

Essek doesn’t know how to answer that so he doesn’t. He feels scolded despite the gentleness with which it was said, and it repeats in his mind until the words mean nothing. Until Caleb appears at the stairwell and calls his name. In just his shirtsleeves, he’s dressed well–collared shirt with suspenders, sleeves cuffed, hair long and bound back. Identical to the echo Essek summoned that recognized what it was, that tried to hug him even as it faded from time.

“Are you alright, friend?”

Not at all. “Merely thinking.”

Caleb leans against the doorframe and smiles. “Dangerous business.”

Essek can’t help but offer the faintest of smiles back. It’s so natural to reciprocate even if the sensation is unfamiliar on his face–facial muscles just as atrophied as his arms.

“Jester and Veth brought breakfast. It’s a bit…” Caleb grimaces, “sweet. Take it slow.”

Caduceus stands, achingly tall. He nods to both the wizards in turn and heads back down, affording them kind privacy.

“What did you tell them,” Essek asks, lacing and unlacing his fingers where they rest in his lap.

Caleb crosses his arms, smile fading. “Only that you’re here and need a bit of space. I made them promise to be on their best behavior.”

“Do you think it will hold?”

“Unlikely.”

Of course it won’t. The Nein are so… them. There is no timeline that they won’t shout and paw at him, demanding his attention and his time. The real question is how long can he withstand it. But he wants to see them, is desperate to hear their voices in detail. He pulls Caleb’s coat into his lap, fisting the heavy leather.

“You can wear it. Jester’s clothes are a bit bright.” Caleb’s gentle tone belies his intent. If it brings you comfort, keep it.

Essek drags the coat up over both shoulders and fumbles with the middle button until he gets it seated. Whatever pitiful amount of himself that remains crawls out of the hole it’s dug and he takes a breath. Caleb missed him, he reminds himself. Jester sent to him every day even when he never answered. He stands and follows Caleb down the stairs.

—

The Nein sit in their proper places, sans Beau who remains standing and Caleb at his back. The room feels whole. They all sit a little forward as he enters, eyes focused and bright. Jester has both hands clasped over her mouth. Her eyes are a bit swollen, lashes damp. How dare he make her cry.

Caleb ushers him to the unoccupied navy armchair. Essek sits, tucking his arms up against his chest under the coat. He’s never heard them so quiet, never seen a full regiment of teacups left untouched and gone cold in their presence as sits on the center table. The silence hurts him far more than their exuberance; his breath quickens.

He swallows. “You all have questions, I imagine.”

They all immediately break their promise to Caleb. Veth’s shrill voice stands tall amongst the others, accusatory and cold. He expected that–he’s not been kind to her family. “And where did you run off to?” she asks.

“Why didn’t you answer any of my messages?” Jester, voice watery.

The others blend together, a rising tide of senseless noise. Beau tries to shout over them, Caduceus lows something underneath. He can’t see through the noise, can’t think. Someone grabs his hand and he jerks away. Something illusory swirls in the air, damp and dripping with petrichor. He can’t hear. He can’t breathe.

Arms encircle him and lift him from the chair. He thrashes, kicks once. Whoever has him bends under the onslaught, then hikes him up higher and carries him away and out of the globe of silence. He’s plopped down hard in a kitchen chair.

“Essek,” Caleb says. He can hear again. A hand reaches into his slowly; it’s warm.

“Yes,” he gasps, remembering how to breathe.

“Where are you?”

The answer comes faster this time. “In Rosohna.”

“How many lights are on the tree?” Caleb’s face solidifies. He squats next to the chair, arm stretched over the back of it. He wears his concern openly.

“That’s a bad question.”

Relief ticks his lips up the faintest amount. “And how many runes are in Fortune’s Favor.”

Twenty-seven. “I missed you.” The hand in Essek’s releases but he doesn’t let it go. He’s not thinking straight, this is not the time. “I made a spell so I could see you.”

Any pleasant expression growing on Caleb’s face vanishes. “How do you mean?”

Essek takes a breath, finally filling his lungs. “Ludinus wanted my spells and I gave them to him so I could modify them.” Any silence is too much so he continues, unbidden. “I gave him everything. Anything he asked for and more because I needed to see you.” He pitches forward off the chair and wraps both arms around Caleb, burying his face against neck.

Caleb stiffens, perhaps caught by the suddenness of it all. His chest heaves twice before he envelops Essek with both arms.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs, winding one hand up to the base of Caleb’s skull underneath his hair. “I’m so sorry.”

Caleb exhales long and loud, pulling Essek up against his chest until their hearts beat in tandem. He’s exhausted already and his face hurts from his own sniveling. He must truly look like a disaster. His body feels like it’s made of wasps burrowing in and out of piercings, occupied and otherwise.

Caleb squeezes tighter briefly and releases, holding Essek at arm’s length. “You don’t need to apologize, liebling. Just breathe. You are here.”

“For how long?”

“Perhaps a discussion suited to a different time.” Caleb bites his lip, gaze going distant as he thinks. But he’s right. Essek is so close to the edge still, well beyond what his mind is capable of handling. So he nods. It will come up again or Ludinus will take him and they won’t have to discuss it at all.

“Can Jester come see you?” Caleb brushes his fingers over the back of Essek’s hand. “Just Jester?”

Jester is the brightest of them, the sun to his already burning retinas. But he’s missed sunlight for the lengthy lack of it and nods.

“Are you sure?”

He’s not. “Yes.”

Caleb shuffles up and returns to the sitting room where gentle voices periodically waft through the doorway. Jester takes his place. She hesitates at the threshold, holding her arms tight against her middle. Her nostrils flare as she sniffles.

Grief is an ugly thing on you.

Essek reaches into every aspect of the Shadowhand he once was to smile at her. She inhales a shaky breath and smiles back. The world is right again. She pads over on bare feet, skirts swishing audibly, and settles down in a heap in front of his chair. She offers her hands, palms up, and he covers them with his own because there is no other option–he can not deny her.

“I’m sorry.” Her smile dampens.

He shakes his head. “No, you did nothing wrong. It’s just a bit… overwhelming.” Letting her in was the right decision, he’s sure now. “I’m glad you’re here. Truly.”

She squeezes his hands, surprisingly strong. “We missed you too, Essek.” Her hair’s longer than before, half tucked up in a ponytail. Now that it’s just the two of them, she smells faintly of saltwater. “Can I hug you?”

His lungs shudder. “I would love nothing more.”

She stands and wraps her arms around his shoulders and neck, slowly, like he might startle. It’s nothing at all like the hug when he gifted them this house where she crushed him and held on far too long, but more akin to her hand aboard the Ball Eater. That memory feels lifetimes ago, a conjuration instead of something that truly happened.

She sniffles into his hair. “My clothes look really good on you, y’know. You should wear pretty colors more often.”

Revulsion pinches his face. Pretty. What a pretty thing. He wants them off. But not here, not in front of her. He tamps it down; he cannot let every reminder spiral him into madness. They’re in Rosohna, he doesn’t know how many lights are on the tree, he missed them so much he aches with it. “I cannot promise I will make a habit of it.”

She pulls back and her eyes gleam. “Caleb let you wear his coat.”

Despite the months of humiliation, somehow, his cheeks warm. She could have reached for the more obvious, how Caleb alone tended him while he broke down, but she’s kinder than that. She’s always so kind. Never would she intend anything else.

“So he has.”

“Have you looked in his pockets?” She grins, the tip of a pointed fang pressing into her bottom lip.

“No, I don’t intend to start rifling through–” She reaches for the left breast pocket, fingers already pressed together for easier entry. Essek twists away. “And I will not allow you to either.”

Instead of trying again, she wipes the butt of her hand against her eyes; they glisten with more than just mischief. She crosses her arms over herself. “I missed you so much.”

She really did. He spent so much time convincing himself that no one would come for him that, now, presented with more evidence to the truth of it, Da’leth begins to feel a little further away. “I hope you can forgive me.”

“Oh, Essek, you didn’t really run away and hide. You didn’t.”

It pains him to know they thought so little of him that upon his disappearance they assumed him a coward. He is a coward, of course, and running topped his list of contingencies, but not from them. Not after Jester held his hand and Caleb kissed his forehead and told him he could be better. “No. I did not.”

“Then why didn’t you answer? I sent so many times.”

“I–” He won’t survive the interrogation twice. “Perhaps best to share with the group.”

Her lips thin and some of the light fades from her eyes. “Right now, you mean?”

“I think, yes.”

She offers her hands, which he takes, and pulls him to his feet. Whatever they think of him now, he’s walking to an execution. He won’t lie to them, not anymore, but he won’t suffer them to the full truth either. He’s caused them enough harm.

In the sitting room, everyone goes quiet as they enter. Caleb smiles at him from the navy armchair, eyebrows raised. “You sure?” he mouths. At Essek’s nod, he stands and gestures to the seat, dragged opposite the main couch where Yasha, Caduceus, Veth, and Fjord are crammed together in descending levels of comfort.

“We are going to try a different approach, ja?” Caleb sits on the floor next to the chair. “They are going to stay completely quiet,” he gestures to the occupied couch. Jester, now understanding the rules, takes a running leap and flings herself lengthwise across the others’ laps, settling her head against Fjord’s thigh once the groans and complaints settle.

Essek sits. He occupies half the chair, feeling a bit like a child sitting in his Umavi’s personal throne.

“If there are questions,” Caleb continues, eyeing the couch and its occupants, “I or Beau will ask them. Caduceus, if you wouldn’t mind.”

The firbolg nods, tapping his staff on the floor and engulfing the couch–only the couch–in a damp sphere of silence. It had exacerbated Essek’s panic before, but outside of the rippling edge, he’s able to take a breath and maintain himself.

He turns to Caleb, trying to ignore the fidgeting from the group. “Where should I begin?”

Chapter Text

And so he tells them. Tells them about being whisked off the ship into Da’leth’s permanent demi-plane stationed in his physical residence in Rexxentrum and the casting limitations within. He describes being countered repeatedly by Ludinus’s superior experience. He refuses to look at them as he speaks, afraid of what pity he might find in their expressions. Even without sharing the worst, it’s not a tale easily stomached. He tells them about giving away Dynasty spellwork, researching and adapting some spells to better suit Ludinus’s needs. He tells them that he isn’t the first, nor will he be the last, of the archmage’s pets.

He does not tell them about the restraints, even though the physical evidence is carved into his shoulders and it’s only a matter of time before they get a glance under Caleb’s coat to see it. He does not share that he stopped eating because the numbing effects of starvation on his mind made the hours of nothing easier to bear. He does not tell them of the things Ludinus forced upon him. He will not suffer them to his misery more than necessary.

He gives them nothing to explain his prior panic. He’s a heretic but part of him prays they won’t question it.

Beau and Caleb kindly don’t ask about the things they’ve seen but don’t have context for. She scribbles short notes while he talks, brow furrowed in her focus. Whatever case she’s trying to build is a waste of time but telling her so can wait until they’re alone.

Essek chews his lip during the intermission. Caleb brings him a pastry with the frosting scraped off, to which he picks at but doesn’t eat.

“The sendings,” Beau starts, voice intense for her interrogation. “Why didn’t you answer?”

His voice feels artificial in his own mouth as he answers. “I received a spellwrought tattoo preventing me from being scried upon or communicated with.” He rubs a hand over the complex patterns etched into the back of his neck, the slight buzz of complicated magic reminding him that the tattoo is, in fact, still here.

Someone shifts on the couch alarmingly quickly but he refuses to acknowledge it. He’s teetering on a precipice between canyons and they surely have more to ask him. Beau’s fancy pen snaps mid scribble. She grumbles and retrieves something else to write with from her bag.

“Was anyone else there with you?”

A complicated question to answer without revealing more than he cares to. “Mostly, no. A scourger guard who was with me most of the time. But various other nobles and officials came and went. I couldn’t tell you all their names.”

Caleb, still sitting on the floor with his back rigid, leans forward. “Would any of them recognize you?”

A hysterical bleat of laughter breaks past Essek’s teeth before he can reign it in. It seems to startle them–Caleb leaning away again and Beau shifting in her seat. “Oh yes, very much so.”

Caleb rockets upright, fingers curling into the armchair’s upholstery until it creaks under his grip. Whatever expression he’d been wearing falls so fast that Essek doesn’t get the opportunity to see it. What it leaves behind is cold and bitter.

Beau twists in her chair. “Maybe we should take a break.”

Caleb releases the chair and steps around it, feet heavy as he strides into the kitchen and out of sight. Essek follows, residual instinct pulling him. He shouldn’t have said it. How far he’s slipped to phrase something so poorly. There are ways to better dance around such things, to obfuscate. They asked, yes, but Caleb is too clever and has too much information not to work out the worst details.

He doesn’t expect any of them to bother him in the early morning. While sitting in their front room in the dark isn’t exactly his ideal–every sound from the street makes him jump–he appreciates being able to be truly alone. No scourger, no Ludinus, no parlor full of archmages.

Beau pads down the stairs an hour before dawn. She pauses behind him, probably not expecting him to be sitting cross-legged in Caleb’s armchair, but ultimately scoots around and mirrors him on the couch. She says nothing, instead shutting her eyes.

He listens to her breathe for a few moments, the even rhythm that reminds him significantly of a trancing elf, before her presence makes him restless.

“Do you often meditate in the mornings?” She cracks one eye open. “Yep. Not this early, though.”

“Can’t sleep?”

She shrugs.

“Hoping to catch me alone without making a scene?”

“Something like that.”

He sighs. He should have anticipated that she wouldn’t leave it alone. It’s commendable, what she’s trying to do, but he long ago accepted his position and his fate, even if it terrifies him. She’s a good woman, Beauregard, even if it’s hidden under her harsh exterior. He missed her a lot as well, it seems.

She stretches and plants both feet flat on the floor. “You’re trying to protect them all. I get it, man, but if we’re going to do anything about–” He starts to object but she keeps going, cutting him off by slicing her hand through the air. “Da’leth I need to know how to present this. I need everything.”

The early morning conditions his voice to low volume but it’s harsh as he snaps at her. “You don’t want everything.”

“No I fucking don’t,” she returns his intensity. “You think I’m going to enjoy listening to how The Martinet tortured my friend–”

“He didn’t torture me, it wasn’t like that.”

“Oh? And what exactly was it then?” She crosses her arms over her chest, leaning back and making herself taller. “He asked if you wanted to be chained to the floor in front of a bunch of other wizards ‘n shit and you just said yes? Don’t lie.”

He bites his lip. He’d agreed to the demonstration knowing exactly what it meant for him.

The muscles in Beau’s abdomen flex like she’s been punched. “You know that’s fucked, right?”

His anger is slipping through his fingers. He grasps for it desperately because how else is he supposed to maintain his footing but his hands tremble from the strain. “What would you have me do? He took my hands and voice from me. He led me around on a chain like a dog. He let others put their hands on me and I begged him to make me enjoy it because the alternative was–” he runs out of air before he can finish and folds over his knees as he struggles to fill his lungs again.

“Who?” she swallows, having shifted to the floor and scooted forward on her knees. She has her hands out as if to catch him. “Who put their hands on you?”

“The assembly,” he wheezes.

“Which ones?”

He peers out at her, fighting back the lightheadedness of panic. Her intensity lures him back from the edge somehow. This is not the Beauregard that scattered ball bearings at his feet; this is the woman who destroyed Ikithon’s life.

“All of them.”

“Fuck.”

“That is why I am trying to tell you,” he manages to pull himself upright and sniff back a threatening sob. “It doesn’t matter.”

She takes both his hands and he lets her. She’s watching him, not with the pity he expects, but with a ferocious fondness that’s half foreign on her. “It matters. Know how I know?”

He scoffs.

“Because you fuckin matter, Essek.”

He squints at her like she’s too bright. No one will care about the Assembly’s atrocities on one crick, regardless of his position in court, even if he still held it. At absolute best they’ll slap Da’leth on the wrist and tell him to take better care of his dog.

Beau rolls her eyes. “Don’t pull a Caleb on me.” He blinks at her not sure what she means but she doesn’t provide context. Instead she crawls up next to him in Caleb’s chair and hip checks him to make room. He should be irritated at the audacity. He finds her presence comforting instead.

“It wasn’t all awful,” he sighs, hoping to allay some of her upset. “I had full access to the estate most of the time. The library, in particular, was lovely. And the kitchens gave me anything I asked for.”

She watches him with disbelief plain on her face. “A-huh. And you starved yourself because…?”

“I just didn’t feel like eating.” He sucks his teeth, knowing that’s not going to be a satisfactory answer.

“Know what they call that?”

He hums an interrogative.

“Fucked up.”

A smile slips through. Somehow. It tugs at his lips, stretches muscles gone unused in a long time. She punches him good-naturedly in the shoulder–it still hurts. “We don’t have to do this right now.”

He nods, still too raw from his earlier outburst to continue. She scoots out of the chair and the sudden urge to reach out pushes him to catch her hand before she steps away. She looks back at him, eyebrows raised.

Now that he has her attention on a more even playing field he’s not sure what to do with it. He clears his throat to give him time to think and finally manages a reedy, “I appreciate you.”

She grins. “Yeah well, I like you too.”

She takes to meditating across from him in the mornings while he hunches awkwardly in Caleb’s chair with tepid tea. But she’s agitated–fidgety. With increasing ferocity, she picks at her cuticles or twists and untwists the sash holding her pants up. Eventually Essek sighs.

“Yes, Beauregard?”

“How bad do your shoulders hurt?”

He sips his tea–it’s barely drinkable at this point–to hide his surprise. Don’t lie. “They’re manageable.”

“Kay. But how bad do they hurt?”

His mobility hasn’t improved, of course. But why would he bother them with that? He’s gotten used to it, and any of the spells affected are locked away in his spellbook thousands of miles to the west.

“They’re not painful so much as they are stiff.”

She stands out of her cross-legged perch in one fluid motion. “Can I see?”

What an interesting question. He relents, releasing his mug long enough to twist his palm up in assent. His position shift is far less elegant than hers. The blanket around his shoulders slides off easily enough, but he’s wearing two layers underneath still. She reaches out of his sightline and he preemptively winces.

She places her hand flat between his shoulder blades instead, applying enough pressure that he can feel the sawblade of his own spine erupt between her index and middle fingers.

“Fuck man, it’s like your nerves have a cold.”

Essek blinks, staring uselessly at the empty couch across from him.

Air whooshes as she gesticulates behind him. “You shoulda said something.”

“I did not want–”

“Are all wizards like this? Fuck. You’re allowed to ask for help.”

Anything you want, love.

She tugs at his shirtsleeve. “Come on. We’re doing this the right way.”

“What?”

She leaves without clarification, stalking into the dining room on silent feet. Dishes clatter, the fruit bowl clicks onto the counter with a woody snap, chairs screech.

“Come on, get up on the table.”

He sighs, rocking to his feet and following. It’s strange to see the table so bereft of accouterments. Beau gestures, irritated in a way that he definitely missed. Who is he not to humor her this. And if it helps, well, that’s an added benefit. He levitates himself up to sit on the table.

She gestures again, more emphatically this time. “On your stomach.”

“I’m unsure this is wise.”

“Okay, who’s the expert on the body? You, hot boi noodle arms, or me?”

She’s incorrigible. He lays belly-down on the table.

She hops up over him, standing with her feet planted on either side of his waist; the table doesn’t so much as creak underneath her. She bends nearly completely in half and rests her hands on either side of his spine just below the bulge of his scapula. She holds her pose, fine tuning the position of her hands a couple times, and then presses down with her whole weight.

A whip snaps in his back, once, twice, an uncountable number of times. It shockwaves up into the back of his skull and reverberates through into his eyes; it ripples down into the tips of his toes. His nervous system glows with such intensity that he goes blind with it for the barest of seconds. He shouts, brain so frazzled it doesn’t know what else to do. Beau maintains pressure and it pushes more air out of his lungs than he expects with his exclamation, making him wheeze. “Got it,” she says plainly above him as if she hadn’t just shattered his spine.

The rest of the Nein drift down in various states of dress and alertness. Caduceus sets to work in the kitchen stoking the stove and chopping something if the steady snap against wood is any indication. Essek worries that whatever breakfast is being prepared he’ll have to refuse. His stomach clenches at the thought and he covers his abdomen with a forearm as if that might help. It hasn’t bothered him this much since he first started refusing meals.

Veth, halfway up in her own chair, scowls at him. Her pigtails are a mess, more flyaways than braids, and she wears a red smudge on her cheek from where she slept on her arm.

She settles in her chair, wiggling back and forth a few times. “Nauseous? Lightheaded?”

“I–” Don’t lie.

He has to think about it because he’s lost track of those things but yes, he is. He nods.

She lays her head on the chair’s arm, yawning. “Sounds like you’re hungry. ‘Bout fuckin time.”

Is he? The thought hadn’t even occurred to him. He’s spent so many days in a general state of feeling bad that the exact source didn’t matter so much as the foggy state it left his mind in. But after the small portion of rice she forced in him the prior afternoon, he did genuinely feel better able to think.

She lays her head on the arm of the half-sized hair, blinking at him groggily. “You’ve got more color in your face today.”

She says it so quietly he almost misses it. He’s never seen this side of her, the aggressive care and acknowledgement of his needs. No one’s been this concerned about him since he was a boy still needing minded. But she’s a mother, he reminds himself.

The unseen servants in Da’leth’s demi-plane never quite got the spice balances correct of his requested Xhorhasian meals. Clearly their master’s only experience was watered-down copies with the most important ingredients subbed for lesser varieties.

Caduceus takes to Kryn recipes well. He sets a large bowl of fried potato pancakes, royal in color and heavy with local spices and Essek almost cries. For someone so disheartened with his homeland, he never considered how much he might miss aspects of it. He slices each rounded patty into small triangles to nibble on so as not to irritate his still sensitive stomach but the hunger drives him to load up two more onto his plate the moment the bowl finishes its first circle around the table.

Caleb sets his fork down with an audible clink. “So, my friend,” he smiles and nudges Essek’s knee with his own under the table. “We have to find you a good safehouse. Do you have any requests?”

Essek finishes chewing, mouth gone suddenly dry. “Not anywhere in the Dynasty. The fact that I have stayed so long is risk enough.”

Caleb hums. “Would you not be safer here?”

“The fact that the Lens have not found and killed me already is a bit of a miracle.” The table conversation lulls just as Essek says it and he can see the way they stiffen, all of them, and try not to turn toward him. He pretends he doesn’t see it. “The Queen has already sent agents after me while I was… indisposed. They got quite close once.”

Caleb rests his elbow on the table, feigning nonchalance that doesn’t erase the hard spark in his eyes. “When was this?”

“Ah, months ago now. I don’t know the exact date. Da’leth had taken me to observe the beacon they still have in their possession. I suspect they had reached a bit of a roadblock with their research or they would not have requested my aid.” Essek waves his hand dismissively. “Regardless, they escaped, of course. If I maintain any legacy, it’s that I ensured my agents were trained well.”

The others still spare glances, their conversations shifted to inane musings instead of anything significant. Caleb ignores them entirely. “Where are they keeping the beacon?”

“A sanitarium, they called it. Near the mountains north of Rexxentrum. I only traveled there through teleportation circle so I couldn’t tell you its exact location. Though I imagine it’s been moved again by now.”

Caleb’s gaze shifts down toward the table, cogs visibly turning behind his eyes. His mind works quickly, as always. It’s incredible, the speed at which he solves complex problems. If only Essek had any idea what he was piecing together. “Did you see any of them? The assassins?”

“No. Da’leth was careful with my safety.”

Beau makes an ugly, choked noise across the table and tries to cover it with a cough. It’s hard to focus now that he knows they’re listening. Caleb looks back up at him, face hard and unreadable. “Tell me more?”

It feels more like an interrogation than he was hoping to face during dinner. Despite his hunger having fled, he stabs another portion and pops it into his mouth to hide his discomfort. “They were in a separate portion of the facility. Supposedly they took some personal items of Ikithon’s.”

“Oh my gosh!” Jester jumps in, any pretense of not listening to their conversation gone. “That was us! We stole some of his shit.”

Essek doesn’t know what to make of that. The insinuation alone is ludicrous. “I can’t believe we were there at the same time and didn’t even see–” The exuberance on her falls drops like a stone cast in the sea. She covers her mouth with both hands as if to rein in any more incriminating statements but the damage is done.

“I highly doubt–”

Caleb drops both his hands to the table. The crack of his knuckles on the wood must hurt. “No, she’s right.”

“Caleb,” Beau hisses across the table.

She says something else but Essek doesn’t hear it over the blood rushing through his head. He stands, chair screeching back on the tile.He bows his head slightly, inclining it toward Caduceus and says, “thank you for the meal.” And he leaves them to argue amongst themselves. They don’t call after him, or if they do he isn’t able to focus enough to hear it.

He trips his way up the stairs and sits underneath the wide branches of the tree. It’s reckless, exposing himself to the possible dangers lurking in Rosohna, waiting for a glimpse of him so as to slit his throat.

But Da’leth lied. Of course he fucking lied. Believing anything that came out of his mouth as truth even for a moment is akin to insanity. I will never hurt you, he’d said before summoning and controlling water with the full intent to drown. No one will touch you, he’d said the first night with the Assembly before they scoured Essek’s body and mind with summoned extensions of themselves. You’re beautiful. You’re incredible. You’re talented. I’m proud of you.

Fuck.

He drops his head between his knees and wheezes. A lie, all of it. And yet he’d let himself believe it. Wanted to believe it, even. Had it been better, thinking that one day an assassin might find him? That he mattered enough for someone to look for him even if it was just to end his life.

They were right there, the Nein. So close. If he’d shouted or fought just a little to get through that door, they might have seen him. They could have helped him.

He’s in Rosohna.

They found him only by chance.

He doesn’t know how many lights are on the tree.

They never looked for him.

There are twenty-seven runes in Fortune’s Favor.

He’ll never be free.

“Essek?” Caleb.

Essek listens to him shuffle over until he’s a couple arm lengths away.

“Can I sit here?” Caleb asks, voice subdued.

What a ridiculous question. “Of course. It’s your home.”

Caleb huffs air frustratedly through his nose. “I know you’re angry with me. There is nothing I can say to make up for leaving–

“I’m not angry with you.”

“”--you behind. I will live with that mistake. It is the penance I deserve for not even considering–”

“Caleb, I’m not angry with you.”

“--that you might still be out there. When I started dreaming about you, seeing you like that, and began to suspect there was more going on–”

“Caleb.”

“I should have done more–”

“Caleb stop,” Essek finally snaps, lifting his head up from between his knees. Caleb’s watching the lights in the tree above them. His eyes glitter with the tears he’s clearly trying to prevent from falling. The hopelessness there, he doesn’t deserve to feel that way. “I’m not angry with any of you.”

Caleb respects the request and stays quiet.

“I have– oh what is the expression in Common? Made my own bed?” “You didn’t deserve any of that.”

Essek huffs an uncomfortable laugh. Don’t lie. Instead he shifts to something else. “You mentioned your dreams?”

Caleb’s frown deepens. He recognizes the subject change for what it is but plays along anyway. “Yes. Three months after you went missing. They were different than other dreams I’ve had and I didn’t always remember them, but you were in every one.”

“Odd. Are you still having them?”

Caleb shakes his head. “They stopped two weeks ago.”

“And you think that something was trying to alert you to my presence?”

“I’m not sure.” Caleb’s shoulders, previously curled in on himself, unfurl. The shift in tone is doing them both a favor. “At first I believed them just to be nightmares. I worried that our interference in the peace talks contributed to your disappearance and that my mind was creating possibilities.” He swallows and continues, face gone impossibly paler. “But when I saw you at the demonstration, I knew. You were– in the dreams– it was the same.”

“Oh.” Essek’s heart pounds in his chest. He can hear the rushing of it, feel it in his fingertips and the bottoms of his bare feet. “Fascinating.”

Something complicated crosses Caleb’s features for the barest of an instant. “So I either developed some new affinity for time or something attempted to intervene and I ignored it. I’m sorry for that.”

A frantic, hysterical laugh bursts out of Essek’s chest. It startles him, which only makes him laugh harder. Caleb, too, seems alarmed, leaning back, eyes impressively wide. This is madness, surely. The unrestrained complicated emotions have finally driven his mind to mush. Of all the things to happen to him, the menagerie of misery that Da’leth curated exclusively for him, the implication that some divine being reached out with poor premonitions of his fate and planted them in Calebs’s brain is the most ludicrous thing he’s ever heard.

Caleb reaches out, lips poised to ask something but he doesn’t seem able to form any comprehensible language. His face is tight with concern and confusion.

Essek tries to rein in the laughter but only succeeds in sending it straight up his sinuses, snorting twice before accepting that he’ll have to ride it out regardless of his mortification.

“You mean to tell me,” he wheezes between the spasming of his sternum, “that you, Caleb Widogast, have genuinely considered that a god gave you the gift of sight and all you gained was visions of me in a state of undress?”

The Nein’s need for sleep leaves him lonelier even than before. The first night he was too exhausted to notice it (and Beau kept watch besides), the second, he was able to breathe and center himself. But even a two-day exposure leaves him aching for want of them. How did he ever spend twelve decades alone?

The silence chases his exhausted mind throughout the Xhorhaus, nipping at his ankles whenever he stands still for too long until he finds himself shivering in Caleb’s navy armchair, knees tucked to his chest and heels dug into the upholstery. He didn’t even pace Ludinus’s halls like this. He rubs his upper arms as if the warmth from his hands might tamp down the anxious energy under his skin.

He needs to move–to run, to cast, to scream, to dig a hole in the Xhorhaus garden and bury himself in it, to wander Rosohnan streets until the Lens find him and the Queen slaughters him with her ceremonial blade, to knock on Caleb’s door.

He can’t do any of those things.

He’s in Rosohna. The lights on the tree are too damn bright. Fortune’s Favor was made by crusty old men and he made it better.

He missed them so fucking much.

He runs a hand through his hair, lungs shuddering as he struggles not to hyperventilate, and his fingers snag in dry, split strands. Knots catch and pull, needles in his scalp. Would he even recognize himself in his silver scrying mirror like this? Surely not. Surely no one would.

Caleb did.

He can fix some of it on his own, at least. There were knives at the dinner table plenty sharp for what he needs, and it gives him something else to focus on until morning. The mirror in the washroom is removed enough from the rest of the house that it’s unlikely anyone will stumble upon him before they convene for breakfast.

He finds the little knife Caduceus used to peel the potatoes; it bites into his fingernail easy enough.

He’s frantic by the time he reaches the mirror, wide-eyed and harried by his own discomfort. Of course he recognizes his features, his mother and Verin share many of them so they are easy to identify, but his expression startles him almost more than his unkempt hair and sunken cheeks. He tilts his head and runs his thumb along his jaw. No, he doesn’t see himself in the feral man that stares back at him.

The knife struggles through the first lock so he has to saw at it. The muted scraping makes his skin itch. On the second, the blade slips upward to his scalp. He needs to take smaller sections, he knows, but he doesn’t want to wait. He doesn’t want to look at himself like this any longer than he has to. As he drops another fistfull of hair to the bathroom floor, someone pulls the door open.

Yasha. She utters an uncomfortable little “uhmm” as they stare at each other, door propped open on her shoulder. She eclipses most of the doorway, blocking his only avenue of escape. Essek can feel his blood rushing through his throat and the steady pulsing of it against the knife in his hand.

She points at him. “You, uh, cut yourself.”

He scratches the back of his neck where he’s been working and pulls his fingers away splotched with blood and shards of white hair. “So I have.”

She grimaces and he understands it to his core–were he not more predisposed to neutrality, he’d be baring his teeth in discomfort, too.

“Forgive me if I woke you.”

“No,” she says plainly, as if that’s the end of the conversation. His face must express his confusion because she immediately follows it with, “I mean it’s okay. I don’t mind.” Her eyes dart from the knife to the hair on the floor to his face. She pantomimes a pair of shears. “Do you want help?”

He bristles immediately. No. He wants to do this himself. But… his hands still aren’t steady. He’s already cut himself.

“I helped Caleb shave once with my sword,” she adds. “I don’t think it’s very different.”

Essek’s grip on the blade relaxes. He doesn’t really know what to make of that. The image of Yasha holding her blade to Caleb’s cheek is so ludicrous that most of his frustrations fizzle away. He pinches the blade between his fingers and offers her the handle. “Thank you.”

The knife looks tiny in her hands, more akin to a sewing needle, but her hands are twice as steady with it as his were. She twists and pinches the strands so as not to place tension on his scalp and slices through with such tiny movements he doesn’t even feel them. The sound reminds him a bit of quill on paper. She’s so gentle.

He never had many interactions with Yasha beyond her saying something about not trusting him for floating or some such (and that was on board the Ball Eater so she had plenty good reason at the time). She has asked nothing of him, accused him of nothing more than he volunteered, and has carried her blade on her person since he arrived in his defense.

He watches her in the mirror as she slices away one of the physical remnants of his confinement, bottom lip pinched between her teeth. This quiet, only broken by their breathing and the fabric-like shearing of hair, begs to be filled with something more companionable.

“I do not like it long, it turns out,” he admits.

Her face pinches some but she doesn’t look away from her work.

“I have had it short nearly a century now. I do not feel like myself with it like this.”

She drops another lock to the floor. “You don’t look like yourself.”

In more ways than she knows, too, but even still, somehow being acknowledged for the changes forced upon him makes him a little ill. He grips the basin with both hands to steady the sense of falling and forces a chuckle from deep in his throat. “Is it really that bad?”

“Uhm, no, I just…” she falters, pursing her lips and tugging a little harder as she moves on to another section. The discomfort hangs long enough to churn Essek’s stomach before she adds, “I’ll kill him.”

“I would not ask any of you to take such a risk.”

She makes eye contact through the mirror, mismatched irises different shades of gray in the gloom. The pain from her past hasn’t aged her the way Caleb’s has to him. Instead it strengthens her intensity, flexes the muscles in her hands until tendons bulge and her knuckles pale where they grip the knife. They have asked him what he needs, and to that he’s not sure how to answer, but none of them have asked what he wants.

Because they already know. He doesn’t have to say it.

“I’ll kill him,” she repeats, returning her gaze to her hands.

Her tension relaxes as she slices away the last of the overgrowth, a little patchwork but much more suitable–she did her best to imitate his typical style. Essek runs his hand across the lower half of his face as she brushes individual strands off his shoulders.

He’s still hollow, his depressed cheeks evidence to where Da’leth ripped out his very soul.

“Thank you,” he offers to her reflection and she smiles gently–knowingly–before patting him awkwardly on the back.

((The scene afterward takes place after the Nein have decided to move Essek, for safety reasons, outside of Rosohna and to the Lavish Chateau. Caleb has developed a functional version of Private Sanctum at this point which prevents interplanar travel, stopping Ludinus from teleporting Essek away, but only while he’s within the vicinity (it’s not a terribly large area but he can wander the Chateau pretty much however much he wants.)))

Jester’s knock is so soft, Essek almost misses it despite the quiet of the hour. He lets his magic pull the door open so he doesn’t have to relinquish his comfort on the balcony and she stands there, hand still raised, eyes a little wide.

“You’re always welcome in here. It is your home, after all,” Essek calls to alert her of his location. She immediately pads over on light feet, tail lashing and nightgown flowing with the motion.

“But this is your room.”

“Borrowed.”

She sits on the bench, one leg hiked up underneath her and the other stretched out. Her lips are pulled to one side, cheek bulging as if holding something there like a chipmunk. “Well that’s stupid. You’re allowed to have it to yourself if you want.”

He finally turns from his book to observe her, taking in the darkness like bruises under her eyes. Had she been crying? He settles on, “it is very late. The sun will rise in just a couple hours.”

She raises her arms above her head, twisting at the waist to stretch. “Yeah. Sleeping is hard right now.”

What a privilege that she sought him for comfort rather than her own mother. “You are welcome to stay as long as you want.” She immediately leans, shoulder to shoulder, and lolls her head onto him.

“You know, it’s okay to not be okay about things.”

Essek flips a page in his book as if he’s still reading. Her words set him on edge. “Has something happened?”

“No,” she says too fast, then her lips do the thing again and she continues, “well nothing new, just old stuff. Sometimes I think about that time Fjord and Yasha and I got kidnapped and it’s hard to sleep for a little while after.”

He schools the surprise from his face even though she is pointedly gazing out beyond the balcony to the city beneath them, lights still illuminating cobblestones in hazy, orange light. He’s not heard this story among the multitude of others he’s sat through, often multiple times. Obviously it’s the source of her distress and he struggles to grasp for anything to say. He never considered she might have suffered that way. She bears it well, despite the pain it’s clearly causing her now.

“There was the bad stuff, and then the really bad stuff. I haven’t even told Mama. But it’s okay to not be okay about it.”

She knows.

Of course she knows, how stupid he’s been not to realize. She’s been so careful with him, asking permissions she never did before for simple gestures of affection, hugs, telegraphing her movements so he has time to lean away. She’s known since the beginning. A surge of disgusted panic rushes through him. Had Beauregard betrayed him? No. No, this started before all that. She’s known at least since that quiet moment in the Xhorhaus kitchen when he still wore Caleb’s coat and her borrowed clothing.

She knows. She understands. She trusts him enough to tell him. It makes him sick. She, of all people, does not deserve it. He aches to reciprocate that trust.

He swallows hard. “I have not told anyone, sans Beauregard for her report.” He winces at the waver in his own voice.

“You don’t have to. Is it okay if I stay the rest of the night?”

“Yes, of course. I would like that very much.”

She scoots on the bench until she can lean against him. He lifts his book so that she can sprawl more comfortably and she rests her head in his lap, her horns less painful than he expected. For a while she just watches the stars, but she is still Jester and silences are not something she enjoys suffering. “Hey, Essek?”

“Yes?”

“I’m really glad you’re here.”

His eyes burn at that and he struggles with the desire to rub them. Nothing but kindness, she’s shown him nothing but kindness. “As am I.”

Chapter Text

It’s during Caleb’s second confirmation that Essek’s comfortable with the spell that the realization hits–he’s leaving.

Essek accuses him as such.

The way Caleb’s lips thin and turn downward is all the confirmation he needs. The last couple days have been oddly tense between them and it should have been obvious that another one of them was leaving him here in this unfamiliar place in a mostly unfamiliar city, unable to stray more than one-hundred feet from the very spot Essek stands.

He huffs a frustrated breath through his nose. “When does this end?”

“It’s temporary.” Caleb doesn’t look at him. “Beauregard is making progress with the Cobalt Soul and needs my assistance.”

It’s selfish to want Caleb to stay. He has his own life outside of the chateau and who is Essek to keep him from it? But they’re all leaving one by one and he’s terrified of who he’ll become without them. He’s barely himself with them. Barely himself with Caleb beside him.

“Progress?” he asks, voice harsher than he intends but it’s satisfying to allow it. “Into what, exactly?”

Caleb has the courtesy to flush. His eyes–always so expressive, his eyes–harden. He came up here anticipating pushback it seems. “They are preparing a case against The Martinet.”

A waste of time–they’ll never find enough to imprison Da’leth. And short of that, there’s no hope of freedom. “And what are the accusations?”

“Essek–”

“No,” he snaps. “Do not patronize me. Not you.”

Caleb pulls his shoulders back. His holsters creak as they shift across his chest. “I just need a little more time.” If he will not be cowed, so be it.

“How much time? Da’leth will outlive you by centuries. I will outlive you by centuries.” Essek takes a step forward, claiming ground. “What will I do then? Sit in the ruins of the Lavish Chateau with your lead and glass?”

Caleb’s expression cracks, hairline fractures in his resolve. He covers it quickly, inhaling deep to push out his chest. The damage is done. “I want to keep you safe.”

Essek reaches in with his claws and pries the crack to pieces, a crag cat dragging a screaming hare from its den. “Safe from what, exactly? Lens agents? Scourgers?”

“You know very well what I–”

“Pluck me from one cage and put me in another. Come to gawk at me when it pleases you? Watch me pace my little chalk boundary like a menagerie animal.” The anger reminds him, in a way, like the swell of magic when he casts. It comes when he beckons, a deep well ready and waiting for his need. Channeling it, setting it free leaves him breathless and exhilarated. The words themselves mean nothing to him, simply a vehicle for his scorching rage. “What is the difference between you and him?”

Caleb’s face crumbles, pulled in with an unseen gravity. He grits his teeth, muscles standing bold against his jawline, and squeezes his eyes shut. An agonized growl works its way out of his throat and he spins. The private sanctum prevents him from teleporting away but his legs work just fine.

No. Too far. But there’s no taking back a bite to the throat and Essek finds himself standing alone with the sensation of blood on his breath.

“Wait,” he chokes out too late, when the hurried footsteps have passed beyond his hearing.

It’s midmorning and even the paltry light sneaking in between the curtains is enough to irritate his eyes. But he can’t let Caleb leave him. He can’t. He drags the cloak Jester purchased for him in Rosohna over his shoulders and the parasol she painted for him. He keeps it by the door, though he hasn’t been able to use it anywhere but the balconies and the Chateau’s small private garden.

He’s nearly out the suite door before he remembers disguise. He remembers that spell well enough that he doesn’t need to reference it. It’s risky; he doesn’t have time to formulate something more complex. Caleb is leaving him. It’s simple enough to pull illusory threads to cover his hair and skin, something more local in complexion, and throw himself out the door. He walks these halls a lot at night and could navigate blind if he has to. Twelve steps to the landing, fourteen to the main floor. Caleb is long gone by the time he gets to the entrance hall.

About ten paces outside the front door, originally measured and drawn in chalk, though the rain long since washed it away, is the maximum range of the sanctum spell. Outside of it, Da’leth could take him at any time without warning. That would be the end of it. The Nein would never find him again.

He just has to be fast.

He squeezes past one of the staff through to the outside, wincing. His eyes water even before he’s able to pop the parasol open. The Nicodranian sunlight’s lower latitude hurts far more than anywhere in the Dynasty ever did and Caleb is long gone before Essek’s able to make out much more than colorful shapes of the passersby. If only he could send.

There’s only so many paths away from the front gate. He takes his ten paces and stops, staring at the exact spot on the masonry where Caleb dragged chalk across stone. He shuffles to the side as someone approaches to make room.

A pacing menagerie animal.

He takes a deep breath and exits his cage.

Caleb isn’t in the plaza. While the sunlight hurts his eyes, there’s something to be said for the warmth that spreads across his back through the cloak. As long as he faces away from the source, his suffering simmers to a mild ache. He takes the first avenue west. If he were stalking away in anger, it’s the ideal path: only moderately busy, breaks line of sight quickly, faces away from the sun.

He walks with intent to avoid as much eye contact as possible. Being overdressed for the weather does draw a bit of attention but the curious glances slide off. It seems the upper echelon of Nicodranas has no need for truesight. Caleb still eludes him. After a quarter-hour wandering the streets, Essek slows his pace. He’s not lost–he traveled in a straight line from the Chateau–but he still feels an out-of-placeness. An infiltrator amongst the ranks of the civilian.

And he is, in a way. Not how he was last he visited the city, by any stretch, but if these people had any idea what he was they wouldn’t let him walk down the street so easily.

He should go back. He needs to go back. But… But the warm air is fresh in his lungs and the cologne of street vendors reminds him that he still hasn’t forced a breakfast down his throat. The bustle of the city–he used to hate it so much–is nothing like where he was.

He wishes he’d had the forethought to bring money with him, but he’s had no need to ask for any as he can’t leave the Chateau. He also wishes he had his spellbook but that’s still on display in Da’leth’s fucking parlor like a trophy.

He turns to browse the nearest storefront. High-end leathers, shoes and the like. They’re disgustingly brightly colored, as is the Nicodranian fashion. He moves on. The city is too loud and too bright; he’s hated being here. He doesn’t want to go back to the Chateau

What’s an hour or two in the fresh air?

He takes seven. On each hour he listens to a town crier announce the time and knows he should go back. He’s tempting a fate he’s already resigned himself to but that has yet to come. He doesn’t want the comparison to Da’leth to be the last thing he says to Caleb but he can’t seem to break himself away from the sky.

At one point in his life, he’d never degrade himself by stealing from a shopkeeper but he gave up that right years ago. He mage-hands a cream and fruit-filled pastry off a food cart while the owner is turned away and eats most of that as he takes an alley shortcut toward the beach. When nausea sets in from the richness, he tosses it to a street dog which follows him for a couple blocks before breaking away.

The sea is as breathtaking as the first time he saw it, naive to the mistake he was about to make. The afternoon reflections play hell with his eyes and there’s not much in the way of shade. He snatches an unattended book, because how else does one enjoy a brief respite between cages. The parasol provides enough shade to read if he squints and while the adventures of two inadequate detectives is not his typical fancy, he quickly finds himself deep into the volume. With the gentle rush of ocean waves just out of reach, it brings a peace he hasn’t known in months.

He’s a half chapter shy of the climax when someone approaches from the left, closer than he’s willing to risk. He lifts the parasol to get a better look but the sun has shifted and he immediately blinds himself. The book slips from his hands as he presses both palms over his eyes.

Whoever was approaching him plops down next to him in the sand, kicking up some grains that sprinkle across his arms and onto his cloak. “You’re a dick.”

He’d recognize that rasp anywhere: Veth Brenatto.

A thread of panic slithers under his skin. Had his disguise slipped? “How did you know?”

“All you wizards hunch when you read. Like crabs.”

“What?”

“Also Jester painted that parasol. I was there.”

Caleb returns well after dark. Beau spots him through the open doorway and rolls her eyes, the only indication she’s seen him. Essek twists, catching the sight of him with his hands in his pockets and head tucked. There’s a sheepish quality to the way he walks, smaller steps than his long legs typically utilize. He’s trying to sneak by without being seen.

He could always have cast a disguise, of course, but he probably thinks himself a bit more dexterous than he is.

Essek stands and smooths his robes as if his physical presentation matters.

Beau clicks her tongue. “You might want to give him until tomorrow.”

“I’m afraid he’ll follow through and leave before I get the chance to speak with him.”

“Okay,” she draws the syllables out far more than she needs to. “Well don’t blame me if you end up yelling at him again.”

He exhales through his nose, takes a last gulp of wine, and follows Caleb up the stairs to the guest room. The door is shut by the time Essek arrives so he knocks lightly. Perhaps too lightly because there is no answer from the other side. The wood is solid underneath his knuckles, more solid than he feels at the moment, and he wrings his hands together before rapping again.

It swings open of its own accord.

“Ah, Caleb?” He peers inside around the frame, taking in the strewn parchment covering most of the floor and half the disheveled bed. A disaster–no wonder Beau has been staying with Jester in her childhood room. “Can I… come in?”

Caleb doesn’t answer but strides out of the ensuite, face and hairline damp and a towel around his shoulders. His eyes are ringed with a hollowness indicative of more than physical tiredness that no amount of scrubbing or rinsing can resolve.

“I wanted to apologize,” Essek starts, tucking his hands in his sleeves to keep from fidgeting. “The things I said–”

Caleb rushes him, feet thunderous on the fancy tiles. Essek is halfway through the somatics to a useless, panicked counterspell before strong arms enclose his shoulders and cradle the back of his skull, pulling him tight against Caleb’s chest and tucking his head into the crook of a warm neck.

Essek freezes, arms still stretched to his side. He holds his breath, unsure what to expect. He’s never been held with this intensity. Not from Jester, certainly not from anyone in the Dynasty, not even the night of his rescue when Caleb cupped his cheeks and confirmed that he was alive.

It’s warm and the compression settles the twisting discomfort in his gut. He tentatively wraps his own arms across Caleb’s back. How dare he make them all worry so much. He knew better than to stay out so long and yet he took selfish enjoyment in the outside while the Nein panicked over his absence.

And Caleb most of all, it seems.

“I’m sorry–” he starts again and Caleb shakes his head. Their chins bump up against each other with the motion.

“Don’t.”

“I need to–”

“You were right.” Caleb’s voice is hushed between them and hoarse with emotion.

“I absolutely was not.”

“You were and I needed to hear it.” He releases, holding Essek out at arm’s length. His eyes have turned hard, the look he gets when he’s made up his mind and nothing will change it. “I’m staying until I figure out a way for you to go out safely.”

Essek purses his lips. The idea is too delightful to dismiss off-hand even if it feels an impossible task. “In the morning. I will help you.”

Caleb’s face brightens, eyes widening. He nods once, then again with more fervor.

Awkwardness slips in between them, itchy and uncomfortable. Essek looks away, overwhelmed by it.

“Thank you,” Caleb calls as Essek turns to go, to retreat through the open doorway like a coward to avoid the half-finished conversation. “For coming back.”

“Of course. Everyone that matters is here.” Essek lingers, brushing the solid door frame. He can’t face those earnest eyes again tonight. “Goodnight, Caleb.”

Caleb is gone in the morning, which is surprising since Essek emerges from his suite remarkably early compared to the others. He lingers around the entrance hall, disguised, for about an hour before resolving to try and entertain himself rather than wallow in anxious boredom.

Despite the upset caused by his jaunt the day before, his mood is markedly improved.

Marion joins him in the private dining hall in the mid-morning, elegant robe trailing behind her. She always wears a coy sort of vulnerability before she dresses in her regalia and Essek imagines it’s a side of her few get to see.

She takes in his half-full cup of tea as she sits down beside him. “Planning any adventures today?”

He regards her playful smile and replies, “are you?”

“Heavens no.” She covers her mouth as she laughs.

Essek pours her a cup of tea and prestidigitates it hot before sliding it toward her. She accepts it with a slight bow and blows air across the surface before sipping. “Do you play any instruments?”

The question is so unexpected that he stares at her, dumbfounded. She quirks an eyebrow at this silence. He finds himself and shakes his head. “I was educated in theory as a child but it was not prudent to continue much after that.”

She leans, supporting her head in her palm with her elbow on the table. “Well, I could use the company while I practice. Would you care to join me this afternoon?”

He’s supposed to be working with Caleb, but given that the other wizard isn’t here–and it’s not exactly like he has anywhere else to go–Essek refills his tea and nods. “I suppose I could spare the time.”

She flicks the tip of his ear playfully and his face warms. She knows better than anyone else that he has absolutely nothing to do.

Caleb, again, returns after dark. Essek startles as the door to the guest suite sails open and Caleb enters backwards, a cloth bag in each hand and some sort of steamed bun in his mouth. He pauses, likely at Essek’s wide-eyed surprise, before lifting up one of the bags and mumbling around the snack, “I got you one.”

The absurdity chases a bleat of laughter out of Essek’s throat.

Caleb plunges his hand into one of the bags and offers a paper-wrapped parcel. Essek takes it, holding it in his lap and letting the warmth give life to his fingers. “Is this what you spent all day collecting?”

“Ja,” Caleb says, finishing off the bun and disemboweling the bags into various piles of miscellany. Some are obvious: parchment and ink, ritual spell components. “I had some inspiration and needed to collect things.”

“Things,” Essek echoes, setting his book aside and trying to make sense of the mess rapidly gathering on his floor. Caleb’s spellwork is impeccably clean; his organization leaves a lot to be desired. The last thing he sets out, on the low tea table rather than the floor, is a leather-bound journal. Simple, gray leather only about a hand’s length tall, held closed with a single silver cord. “What is all this?”

Caleb dusts his hands on his trousers and stands. “Yours.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You can’t go unarmed.”

Essek brushes his fingertips along the spine of the journal, no, spellbook. It’s a tiny spellbook. He’s overwhelmed by something heavy in his chest. It tries to fold him back into the cushions where he can hide his face. Instead, it’s all he can do to keep his expression passive. “This is far too much.”

Caleb visibly takes stock of the items. He lifts a wooden box and pries the lid apart with a snap. “These first.” The Invulnerable Vagrant is stamped in blue along one side. Carefully packed in straw, like eggs in a nest, lies a pair of sending stones. Once, Essek wouldn’t have batted an eye at acquiring such a mundane magical item. Now, his hands shake as he takes one out of the box, cupping it gently in his palm like a worry stone.

“They are limited to once per day,’ Caleb continues, tucking the second stone into his component pouch. “So emergencies only, like yesterday.”

For lack of his own pouch to store it at hand, Essek cradles it to his chest. Emergencies. They considered his day out an emergency worth spending hundreds of gold to prevent. His eyes start to sting, curse them, but Caleb seems too busy with the items around where he kneels to notice.

Next he holds out a fabric-wrapped bundle. Essek takes it and adds it to his growing collection on his lap. He immediately recognizes it as the same components for the private sanctum spell keeping him anchored to the chateau, in half-scale. While the components themselves are cheap, the special preparation must have taken time to acquire. No wonder he was out all day.

He slides a piece of fractured ivory to the side, murmuring something to it the way he used to speak to Frumpkin–soft and affectionate–despite it being the remains of a beast and not a living thing. “This is not done yet.”

He unbuckles his own spellbook from his hip, hefting it one-handed up on the table. “I believe I purchased enough ink to copy over all of the spells you taught me.” He flips the cover open, flapping through pages as if he weren’t baring his very soul to Essek’s unprepared eyes.

Essek feels a bit like he’s been flashed. His cheeks warm and he jerks his hand away from the book as if it might bite him.

Caleb continues, unfazed. “A few in addition, as well, and I have a scroll for you to add. It will take quite a bit of time so if you focus on certain ones you should be safe to go elsewhere to complete the others. If we– ah, are you alright?”

Brushing his fingers underneath his eye, Essek finds he’s humiliatingly started to cry again, despite his best efforts to reign it in. He scrubs his face with a sleeve before forcing a smile. “Yes, of course. You did not need to do all this.”

“I wanted to.”

They stare at each other, the awkward beat of tension damningly loud before Caleb says, “there is something else, also. I have been wanting to show you but I was not sure if it would be welcome…”

Exhilaration runs up and down Essek’s spine, unbidden. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Ah, well,” Caleb runs a hand over the back of his neck. “It is a demi-plane.”

Essek doesn’t make the connection until he sits back a little, eyebrows pinched. He opens his mouth to ask why that matters before he realizes. It should matter. So much of his misery at Da’leth’s hands was the isolation, and the cage the demi-plane created ensured he couldn’t escape. But this is Caleb–Caleb who just spent, at minimum, hundreds of gold to ensure his safety while still ensuring his freedom. Caleb who sits wringing his hands because he’s terrified of even the potential of causing more discomfort.

Essek isn’t afraid. Somehow.

In less than a year, Caleb mastered teleportation and conjuration enough to compose his own realm. Incredible.

“Can I see it?”

Caleb’s knuckles whiten as he clasps his hands together. “If you are sure.”

“There is very little I have been quite so sure of.”

He springs up with an uncharacteristic youthfulness and sets about the spell; it’s complex but impeccably streamlined in a way that is fundamentally Caleb. Trinkets and sigils, a wand of all things–who still uses a wand for anything other than spell storing these days–form the bulk of the components, a whispered incantation here and there. There is no physical indication of the spell’s completion until Caleb reaches out and pulls open a door.

Space distorts around the frame until it glitters into a reality, arched in a distinctly Zemnian style and engraved with raw arcane runes. The markings move across the surface, unbound by such things as matter and gravity.

Beyond the threshold, warm light streaks through massive stained glass panels, the scale incredible in contrast to the Chateau’s compact construction.

Caleb turns his back to his creation. “There is a library, among other things.”

He seems almost bashful, as if somehow Essek won’t appreciate the remarkable effort that goes into such magics. The buzzing excitement taking hold of Essek’s lungs reminds him somewhat of his first visit to the Marble Tomes. He reaches and, when Caleb doesn’t pull away, gently takes a pale wrist in hand.

“Show me.” It’s not a question as he peers through the door into the ornate foyer.

Caleb leads him into the entry hall with its nine perfect windows designed after each school of magic.

“You included Dunamancy,” Essek adds idly, enraptured by the tower’s enormity.

Sliding his free hand into his pocket, Caleb shrugs.

In the center of the room, they lift off the floor. There’s no swoop in the gut like during flight or the sudden weightlessness associated with dunamantic levitation. They are standing and then they are not, rooms and doors passing them by until Caleb settles them down into among the greatest libraries Essek has had the pleasure of taking in.

“You conjured all this?” Essek asks the moment he steps out of the air.

Caleb hums. “They are all the books I have read. I will admit, there are a few duplicates to prevent holes in the shelves, and I have composed some translations which I fear don’t count toward the total.”

“Do not undersell yourself. It is– that is to say–,” Essek huffs, frustrated. “I do not have the words to express the sentiment in Common. Beyond comprehension?” He turns to regard Caleb’s expression–the gravity of his intent needs to be understood–but Caleb is so close they nearly bump into one another. Essek hadn’t moved far enough onto the floor so as to give him space.

Caleb grins, latching on to the railing and leaning back over the pit, unconcerned about the fall. “Quite the compliment.”

Their breath is hot between them. “I do not offer such lightly.”

Caleb’s smile falters. He covers it with a cough and gestures deeper into the library, but Essek sees the change plain as ink on parchment. The playful wryness replaced by something shy–a crab trying to bury itself in the sand before the surf steals it away. Essek obliges and drifts deeper into the library.

Evocation often has a harsh shockwave that precedes it, a familiar sensation as it buffets his back and ripples his loose Nicodranian clothing. The heat he feels after. Wild, aggressive warmth that creates specters of ice on the opposite side of his body. A simple spell for learners of destruction but still, when Caleb wields it, he hones it firm enough to scratch diamond.

The fireball strikes mid-shelf to the left of a rolling ladder. The books explode outward as shrapnel with the force, coating the library floor in conjured pages like the feathers of a slaughtered bird. They smolder into ash which drifts on unseen currents of abating magic.

Essek shrinks into himself first against the heat and then tighter to shield his face from the resulting shower of sparks and paper. He spins, hands up to cast… to cast something to defend himself, but there is only Caleb, still leaned back over the central iris of the tower with one hand outstretched, ring finger and pinky curled in the final somatic for his fire, grinning.

Fumbling for words, Essek instead gestures to the carnage, huffing through his nose like a winded draught horse for the adrenaline widening his veins.

Caleb draws his hand back to regard his cuticles, unfazed. “Sometimes it is nice to, ah, break some shit?”

“But you made this.”

“And I will make it again when the need arises.” He swirls his hand in a less complex–less destructive–spell and hurls a smaller bolt of flame as if tossing a pebble into a pond. And like pond water, the conjured flame splashes where it lands, shooting sparks in rippling waves that catch other books alight. Caleb’s magic is artful, finely honed, but casual. He doesn’t seem to even need to think of the somatics, his verbals languid and playful as a dancing flame. It’s impossible to not be drawn in.

Essek exhales his remaining nervous energy, reaching into his own arcane well which has been full to bursting, achingly so, for days. “Do you have a bit of glass?”

“Hmm, not glass no, but maybe–” Caleb paws at his components, inspecting a couple roughly-shaped gemstones before channeling his own magic and reshaping them. With a brief tang of transmutation he offers a short rod the length of his thumb, still crackling with energy. “Will this work?”

It will because Caleb’s innate understanding of components is unrivaled.

Essek takes the amber and rolls it between his palms, letting the abating arcana dissolve into his skin. “I will return it to you.”

“Keep it. You may need it again.”

He can’t imagine a scenario where he’ll need such a thing, but then again there’s many things that have happened that he never imagined. He nods his thanks and calls for lightning. Whip-quick it alights, arching between his fingers, up along his arm to the other hand. It sparks in his lungs as he breathes, leaping from syllable to syllable as he speaks the incantation. It’s been so long.

The air screams as he releases, any water vapor remaining suspended immediately converted to steam from the heat of his plasma. It arcs down the length of one shelf, ripping each conjured tome after the other, leaving the shelf empty and smoldering. He’s barely drawn a single bucket from his available arcana but still he’s panting from the effort of casting.

The static in the air has lifted the hair on his arms and the nape of his neck, and has similarly affected Caleb’s. He still leans back over the central iris lazily, but his eyes glitter with an attentive brightness, pupils wide in the lightning’s afterdim. He licks his lips after a moment. “How did it feel?”

Exhilarating. Refreshing. Powerful. Essek settles on, “good.”

Caleb smiles. “Well, Herr Thelyss, you have a library to destroy.”

Essek feels like he’s missed something as Caleb shuffles to realign himself over the gap and presumably descend. He does not want to take apart Caleb’s magic without him present. He doesn’t want to be alone. He reaches out, amber rod still tucked against his palm by his thumb. “Ah, are you not going to join me?”

Caleb glances back over his shoulder, a whisper of motion on his lips as though he intends to dismiss it. His smile softens and his eyes, for the barest of instants, unfocus. “I fear we will run out of things to burn.”

“Perhaps a bit more strategic and less explosive?”

He breaks, leaning over the bannister with the heft of his own laughter. Deep and warm, the rumble echoes in Essek’s own chest. Caleb conjures another fistfull of flame and tosses it with less intensity and accuracy than before. The fireglow dances on his hair as he shakes his head, still chuckling.

“Let’s strategize then.”

Caleb cannot sit still, even as he reviews and modifies notation. His knee bounces, his quill taps against the table, his fingers drum still-drying pages of notes. It’s infuriating. It’s woefully endearing. He manages perfect tempo even during periods of rest where he shifts positions or murmurs formulae to himself. Essek finds himself enchanted, too often staring when he should be transposing.

Eventually he gets caught. “Is something the matter, Herr Thelyss?” Caleb’s laid belly down on the floor, parchment splayed out before him like a hand of cards with perfectly straight lines of handwriting.

Essek sets his quill down, stretching his hand. It aches from his attempt at writing as small as the nib allows him–his typical chickenscratch would take up far too much space on each page. “Nothing wrong, no.” Caleb raises an eyebrow, lifting himself up on his elbows.

“Missing my book.”

“Ah.” He rolls himself upright, crossing his legs. “Don’t mourn its loss yet. I fully intend to recover it.”

Not an augment Essek wants to get into again. He runs his hand down the length of a creamy, blank page. “I have not had to start fresh since my Den accepted me. I haven’t even looked at the composition of some of these in a century.”

“It is not the spells you are missing.”

Essek resigns himself to being caught in that, too. “No,” he answers, remembering faint stains left behind from sticky, jam-covered hands. “Those, I can recreate.”

“I lost my childhood spellbook. I often wish I could recover what was written between the research.” Every day, it seems, Caleb proves them more alike. It seemed unfathomable during their conversation on the Ball Eater but all Essek ever needed to do was actually look for the similarities. They peer out at him now that he has the time to look.

Caleb stretches and reorients himself on the floor so that he is facing Essek directly before returning to his scribbling. They descend into a comfortable silence, only the sound of nib on paper. The runes to the specific spell purchased for him, contingency, are decidedly not Kryn in nature. Essek finds himself wanting to transpose the equations to more familiar pathways, to insert dunamancy where he feels it appropriate, but now is not the time to make modifications to important, if unfamiliar, evocation. It does raise a question. Where did the spell originate if neither Dynasty nor Empire?

“Where did you come across this spell?” he asks, continuing to inscribe a copy in miniature into the spellbook. When no answer comes, he glances up over the edge of the gray leather.

Caleb lays with his face on his half-notated parchment, quill still in hand and pressed to the page as if he’d fallen asleep mid-word. His chest rises and falls steadily with the gentle, rolling cadence of his breathing. Of course he would have grown weary–it must be well after midnight.

Essek can’t leave him there on the floor, neck craned at what must be an uncomfortable angle. But he looks so peaceful in sleep and he deserves the rest. Disturbing him would be a crime.

It would be easy to adjust the gravity underneath him. The bed in the guest suite has gone largely unused–trancing in away from the windows suits Essek better–and it is much closer than the chaotic mess Caleb’s made in the individual room he’s borrowed.

Easy but terrifying. As a boy, Essek practiced his graviturgy on less fragile–less important–things and he has not dropped anything unintentionally in a decade, but for some reason his heart still races. He modifies the gravity immediately above Caleb’s back creating a hollow for him to rise into. Copper hair drifts upward first, swaying as though underwater, before his body lifts delicately off the floor.

Rotation is more complex but Essek isn’t about to leave him with his face pressed into the pillows. Instead, with a gentle tug on one arm to orient his back flush with the mattress, Essek lowers him down, slightly askew, on the still made bed. His breath hitches out of rhythm and fingers clutch at the duvet before eyes, heavy lidded, peer out under his lashes.

Essek curses himself because of course Caleb, of all people, would be sensitive to the viscosity of dunamis as it hangs above him. But, whether aware enough of his surroundings or unconcerned by the tang of magic, Caleb simply rolls to his side and murmurs a quiet “thank you” before shutting his eyes again.

It feels wrong to leave him bereft of blanket so Essek scrambles, dragging a decorative throw off the back of the couch and laying it across him. He looks so completely relaxed, unconcerned by any of the fears and possibilities that usually plague him. Whatever anxieties that remain about Essek’s day out have also tucked themselves in for a rest. Caleb is safe here. In this moment, they both are.

The tired, uninhibited portion of Essek’s mind wants to stay and watch the man sleep. He knows better.

He also, however, makes no progress on adding more spells to the book. He takes the sending stone off the tea table and worries it between his hands until late night approaches early morning when he settles down on the palet next to the bookshelf. He made it here to keep away from the bright Nicodranian lights–the curtains only help so much–and while he tries to convince himself otherwise, it reminds him of his nook under Da’leth’s library stairs.

((Important note here that the spell combo they are working on is a Contingency spell that, when activated (being called through a gate) will immediately banish Essek. It’s still dangerous because it requires that Essek be able to counterspell Ludinus once, but as long as he saves his powerful spells and regularly recasts the contingency, it theoretically will give him one free pass to being kidnapped again.))

Say it. Say it before he’s gone.

“Ah, Caleb,” Essek clutches the linen and glass to his chest like a schoolboy with his textbooks. When he turns back to the door, Caleb is watching him, a confused tilt to his head. “In the event that I am unable to reach you again–”

“Essek.”

“Humor me, Widogast, please.”

Caleb sets his jaw. He’s clearly not done with his side of the conversation but is kind enough to let Essek speak. Given the floor, though, he’s not entirely sure how to phrase what he needs said. Not in Common, not in Undercommon, not in the complex universality of the arcane.

Say it.

He almost chokes on the suddenness of his own inhale. It burns. “In the event that I am unable to reach you,” he starts again. He doesn’t need to specify the nature of why that might be; Da’leth has been looming heavy in both their minds. “I wanted to make sure you know–”

A cord of muscle stands straight in Caleb’s neck. He wears his anxieties so openly, rigid and sharp–such contrast to his loose-limbed rest in Essek’s borrowed bed just days ago.

“--that you are perhaps the most exceptional man I have had the pleasure of meeting.” He says it so fast it leaves an aching void in his chest. Caleb leans forward as though he intends to argue but Essek holds him back with an upraised palm. “And while I believe I know you better by now, I do hope you won’t carry any guilt for this.”

For what happens after. For what happened before. For the inevitable.

Caleb shifts foot to foot, jaw working before he finally says, “you ask the impossible of me.”

If only he had any idea the amount of impossibilities he has accomplished.

“You have yet to disappoint me.”

Essek whispers the verbal for teleport before he can say anything else stupid. The gentle caress of a counterspell offers a paltry resistance before the arcane tether snaps. It disrupts the teleport just enough that he stumbles as he lands.The safehouse appears exactly as he left it years ago and the hum of his wards lets him know they’re still safely in place.

“Enough,” he snaps at himself, wiping both eyes with the back of his hand before he sets the component bundle on the desk and starts the spell.

He half expects the sending stone to alert him but Caleb knows better than to waste the single use it has. For emergencies only–it’s too dangerous to leave Essek with no way to reach out for help if he needs it.

Not that he’d have time to activate the stone if Da’leth summons him.

He’s going to hate himself if that’s the last thing he ever says to Caleb.

As he looks around the tiny space, dusty and miserable, he knows he hates himself already.