Chapter Text
The Tangles were as hectic as ever; busy, far too busy. They were ancient, inefficient, ill-planned, and thus perpetually overcrowded, even more so since the beginning of the recent wars. The entire district was simply not fit for purpose. If Trent Ikithon were permitted to have his way, he would simply tear the Tangles down and expand the Shimmer Ward across the entire centre of Rexxentrum, replace this mess of sound and sight and smell with smooth, white marble. He avoided such places for the most, sending his students out on errands as needed, preferring instead to lurk on his estate at Vergesson – or, as was becoming increasingly more necessary as the fighting dragged on, to remain in the Candles’ Tower of Civil Influence. But Zivan Margolin had insisted that he come personally and view this ‘curiosity’ that the army had apparently requisitioned from the north, no matter how little time he had to spare. And so here Ikithon was, making his steady way through Rexxentrum’s Tangles marketplace with Oremid Hass at his side, knuckles white around his staff of office, nose turned up contemptuously, and a spell at his fingertips for anyone who so much as glanced disrespectfully at them.
Vendors, residents, crownsguard, soldiers of the Righteous Brand, worshippers of Pelor and Erathis, even a handful of older students in the robes of the Soltryce Academy, all stepped quickly out of the archmages’ way, cowed by the aura of power that surrounded them both. Some bowed, recognising two of the eight ruling magisters of the Assembly, in response to which Hass smiled magnanimously and Ikithon only kept walking, his cold glare a silent demand that the crowd part around him like water.
The creature, whatever it would prove to be, was being held at the Claykeep Prison. Whether that was because it was an escape risk, because it was dangerous, or just because the Righteous Brand hadn’t known where else to put it, was unclear – Margolin had Sent only that it was likely arcane in nature, possibly of use to the war effort. Take Oremid , he had tacked on to the end of the message, and as much as Ikithon rolled his eyes at the necessity of working with any of his fellow archmages, he at least found Hass to be far less irritating than all the rest of them. They had the same ruthless streak, the same unfeeling scientific manner, the same expectation that those beneath their tutelage simply endure or break. Hass put out a friendlier face to the world, certainly, but he and Ikithon were the same underneath.
The guard at the prison gates clearly expected them, directing them at once to the care of one of his fellows. This was an older man, a nervous sort, who ducked a quick bow before immediately leading them away from the main body of the jail, toward the handful of lead-lined cells below the ground where magic users were kept.
“Right this way, magisters.”
The ground was foul with slick dark run-off from the stone walls and gutters, and Ikithon occupied himself in subtly casting to keep the muck away from his fine furs. But as they travelled downwards Hass strode a few paces forward, enough to catch up with their guide.
“Any kind of trouble from the prisoner?”
Visibly flustered at being addressed so directly by such a powerful man, the guard shook his head.
“No, Archmage. A bit of strange shit, if you’ll excuse the language, sir, but he’s not a violent type.”
Hass cast a short glance back at Ikithon, who raised one eyebrow infinitesimally. Arcane shit , almost certainly – and interesting that their creature was a he, apparently, rather than an it.
“Strange? In what way?”
The guard rubbed awkwardly at his forehead beneath his helmet.
“He… talks, sir. Insists he’s not just talking to himself. And there’s the occasional magic trick, even despite the hole he’s in.”
Interest piqued, Hass tilted his chin curiously in a way that made the dry dirt of his skin fall across his collar, visible even in torchlight. His voice was the bass hum of a distant earthquake.
“Odd, indeed, then.”
Neither archmage bothered to ask the guard what manner of being the prisoner was; this man was hardly an expert, and his opinions mattered little. Such things were not without explanation, anyway – most likely this was not a wizard in the conventional manner, but some sort of creature with an innate or divine connection to arcane power. They would see for themselves soon enough.
They came quickly to a small, unremarkable stone chamber; the air around them was suffused with the weighty aura of dampened magic, all deadened and stale.
“In here, magisters,” mumbled the guard, fumbling with his heavy ring of iron keys, clearly eager to step aside and let them pass. Ikithon felt the enchantment shift as the key turned in the lock; the door was solid lead, and with it closed none of them would have had access to their powers, and so it must be left open. The chains around the ankles of the prisoner kept him well contained in any case.
Curled up in the far corner, his bony limbs folded uncomfortably against mildewed straw and cold, bare stone, was a boy. He was covered head to toe in downy silver fur, with a shock of pink hair tangling and matting around his head, grown in pale brown at the roots. If he stood, he probably would have stood taller than Ikithon – but he was all out of proportion, gangly in a way that said he still had some growing left to do. He had a broad flat nose adjoined to his lips like the muzzle of a cow, round doe-like eyes squinting as he cringed from sudden noise and torchlight, and long soft ears that twitched and pinned back as they entered.
“Hello?” he blurted, voice creaking with disuse. They ignored him.
“A firbolg,” said Hass at once, understanding and pitying in his way. “Ah, a firbolg child. Poor thing.”
The boy’s huge eyes fixed plaintively at Hass, hopeful at the kindness in his voice – Trent’s fellow archmage had always had a soft spot for small, fuzzy creatures. But it was a softness, not a weakness, and he carried on with a cool, clinical analysis, no different from the way he would have spoken of an animal or an object.
“One with highly unusual colouration and markings, though. Not a member of any of the major tribes, to my knowledge. Some unknown sub-species, perhaps. I wonder…”
Hope stifled, the boy shrunk into himself again. That kind of disappointment was of no use: Ikithon knew well enough that he needed the subject of an interrogation awake, alert. Disorientation and dismay had their uses, of course, but not here. He rapped his staff against the door for the boy’s attention, a loud enough bang that the child physically jumped, ears flattening protectively against his skull.
“What is your name?”
The boy blinked long cow’s lashes at him, guileless.
“My… real name? Or not?”
There were not many things in this world that could dumbfound an archmage of such power; little that shocked him, even less that he allowed to make him show his shock. But such casual bluntness from a creature so trapped caught him off-guard.
“Your — what?”
“Mom says not to ever tell bad people my real name,” explained the boy in his thoughtful, gravelly voice – scared, certainly, but dazed and distracted even more so. “But I didn’t — I didn’t have a fake name made up ready. Um,”
“We are ‘bad people’, young one?” asked Hass, half-teasing, with a small smile. Whatever chance there had been for him to comfort the boy with his gentleness had passed, though; there was a natural wisdom below the child’s bewilderment, and it was evident that he had seen through Oremid’s superficial warmth the moment that his facade had slipped.
“Well,” he mused, shifting his bony knees up closer to his furred chest, hiding them with the fraying, homespun robes he wore. “You have me in a cage, so.”
“Enough of this,” snapped Ikithon, frustrated that they were allowing themselves to be distracted, and moved his left hand in the quick, well-practised somatic for Zone of Truth. The magic washed easily through the cell, and he felt no successful resistance. “What is your name?”
“Caduceus Clay,” answered the boy promptly, and then frowned at himself in confusion.
“And where are you from, Herr Clay?”
“The Blooming Grove.” It wasn’t a name that meant anything to Ikithon, nor to Hass, by the look on his face. The boy, Caduceus, glanced between them, and stumbled over his explanation. “Some people call it the Bone Garden? It’s, it’s weeks away from here, northwards, I think. Past the border. In the Savalirwood.”
The spell wouldn’t have pulled such elaboration from him. Caduceus was simply a naturally helpful person, Ikithon supposed, open and generous with what he knew; in other words, a fool. If he was from the Savalirwood, perhaps this was an explanation for the his strangeness – though Ikithon could sense none of the usual twisted, distasteful magics of Molaesmyr emanating from him.
“You live with your family there, Caduceus?” pressed Hass. “Your mother, your clan?”
“Oh, yes.” The boy reached up to rub his own soft ear distractedly, a childish self-soothing motion. “We keep the garden. We’ve always kept the garden.”
The garden, not a garden. The Bone Garden. It smacked of history, mythology. There was a rip through the sash at his belt, where a holy symbol might have been torn away. Ikithon’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Keep for whom?” he demanded, just as Hass asked, “What kind of garden?”
Caduceus hesitated, glancing uncertainly back and forth, and finally landing upon Hass’s question.
“…A graveyard. A sacred place for those who lived well.”
“A sacred place for whom?” repeated Ikithon, allowing a little more open threat to creep into his icy voice.
“The Wildmother,” admitted Caduceus hesitantly, bewildered, intimidated by the sharpness of the words but not understanding the reason for it. “Melora.”
“Ah,” intoned Hass, disappointed. The boy hunched his shoulders, daunted, tugged nervously on his long ear again. Ikithon raised his brows in disapproval.
“A heretic, too.”
“What’s a heretic?” blurted Caduceus, having apparently sensed that this was a very dangerous thing to be.
“One who worships wrongly,” said Ikithon, utterly cold. “Who worships anything other than the six permitted gods of the Dwendalian Empire.”
Caduceus seemed to be beginning to panic, putting together what a dire situation he was in. “I don’t belong to the Dwendalian Empire, though,” he objected weakly.
Ikithon tipped his chin at the chains, at the prison around them.
“You do now.”
The boy tried and failed to find words of protest, body slumped and huge eyes beginning to glint with unshed tears.
“Trent,” murmured Hass, gesturing for the taller man to lean down slightly toward him, diverting his cool stare away from the corner of the cell. “I will take him. Whatever is strange about his powers in particular, he’ll need training to be useful. The Halls of Erudition are more than capable of housing —”
Ikithon raised one imperious hand, a plan having already begun to take shape in the back of his mind. Knowing him well enough not to interrupt, Hass went silent.
“Firbolgs have a number of innate magical abilities, do they not?” he intoned, a rhetorical question. “And this is a particularly unique example. It will be a… valuable test, to see how he interacts with the residuum. The creature has a great deal of what I have always searched for amongst the Soltryce Academy’s student body: potential.”
There was reluctance in Hass’s obsidian eyes, in the set of his lips, even as he acquiesced with a deep nod. He was not kind, not truly – young Caduceus would not have had a pleasant education, beneath Hass and his acolytes. But he was certainly kinder than Ikithon, and he knew enough of Ikithon’s methods to dislike the thought of young, soft things subjected to them. He still did nothing to stop it.
Ikithon turned to rake a long, assessing look across Caduceus’s huddled form; the boy’s large ears had swivelled toward them, probably eavesdropping.
“Disguise Self,” he ordered. “That should make a fine demonstration.”
The steel in his voice left no room for objection, but Caduceus only hesitated, made no attempt to reach for his magic.
“Well, Mister Clay?” prompted Hass gently. The boy shifted uncomfortably in place.
“…People here don’t seem to like it when I do that. They get mad.”
Sympathetically, Hass tutted. “I imagine they do, yes. But still, now we are asking, and so you will get no trouble for it.”
Caduceus blinked balefully, clearly past the point of trusting anything they said, but not quite prepared to defy them. And then suddenly the little firbolg boy was gone, and, shackled and curled up on the floor in his place, sat the human guard who had led them there: a perfect likeness.
“Impressive,” said Hass warmly. At the door, the guard in question flicked his eyes over to his prisoner and gasped sharply as he startled at the sight. Embarrassed, Caduceus turned back into himself.
“You can hide yourself too, I believe,” commented Ikithon, still in the tone of a command, surveying this display of natural power with naked greed. Margolin hadn’t been wrong: there was something unusual about the creature and his abilities, something more primeval or fey than the protective magic of his illegal goddess.
“Yes,” mumbled Caduceus, and vanished with ease, the only sign of his continued presence the way that the manacles clinked against each other as he shuffled.
Hass leaned closer and asked in an undertone, mild as ever, “Was that necessary? Surely we already know —”
“Worthwhile to be sure. Besides, now he cannot use these abilities again today.” Ikithon turned back to Caduceus, paying no heed to the fact that the boy was currently invisible. “You can read and write, boy? How old are you?”
Once again pulling nervously on an ear, Caduceus flickered back into existence.
“Uh-huh. My dad taught me to sound out the letters on the graves. And I’m — uh. Older than my sister Clarabelle, younger than Colton or Calliope? I’m probably, um, kind of, four-fifths grown, or maybe more, or —”
“In years?” suggested Hass, far more patiently than Ikithon could ever have managed. A slight frown appeared between the boy’s pale brows.
“How much is a year?”
“W-Well, it’s,” Hass stumbled, paused, considered his approach. “The time from summer to summer again, or winter to winter again. Four seasons.”
“…Oh.” Caduceus’s ear flicked as though to shake away the confusion, and he started seemingly trying to count seasons on his fingers.
“Enough,” snapped Ikithon. “You have never been to school, then. How should you like to go to school now?”
Caduceus just stared at him. Only a child, sheltered, not the sharpest mind – but all too aware of how trapped he was.
“It doesn’t matter what I like,” he said slowly, quietly, a statement of fact rather than an accusation. “I want to go home. But you’re going to take me somewhere else instead. ”
“Yes.” Ikithon stepped forward just enough to cast a long shadow across the boy, to loom over him. “And I suggest that you do not resist.”
Caduceus took a long shaky breath and said nothing, slow gaze steady. He made no promises.
Ikithon had broken worse before.