Chapter Text
Essek held a stone in his palm.
Visually, there was nothing special about it. It was grey basalt, about the size of a gaming die, with rough edges from being broken off from a larger whole by force. If examined closely, there was a shallow inset gap on one side where a vein of crystal might once have been, but was no longer.
It was just a stone.
But court prodigy Shadowhand Essek Thelyss was holding it, and he was a wizard, and wizardry had the power to make ordinary things become very extraordinary indeed.
In the quiet of his laboratory in Rosohna, Essek contemplated this little crumb of basalt as though it was a curious academic tome or an artifact full of secrets.
A flick of his wrist produced a second stone. It was a sibling in origin — but where the former was plain, this one was pleasantly rounded and smoothed by water, and blue-green crystal formed a thin band around one end. Essek rubbed his thumb across its surface. Lucky, he recalled fondly, shaking his head. Because it has a ring around it. Not more powerful, or more valuable. Simply lucky.
Decisively, he flipped the plain stone back into his wristpocket. Out of sight, and out of mind.
He had an appointment to keep.
Focusing instead on the lucky stone, he thought about where it had come from, and with a twist of arcane power: he was there.
“Is there anything you miss?” Essek stared up at the water droplets hanging from his fingertips. Each one held a reflection of the cavern surroundings in miniature: a collection of tiny worlds catching flashes of sunlight from above. He tipped his hand and let them slide down his palm. “From your time on land.”
The mop of red hair pillowed under Essek’s chin shifted. ‘Hm. Many things.’
Caleb’s tail flicked lazily in the water at the other end of the pool, glittering amber.
It was hot in Nicodranas proper, but hidden away here in Caleb’s sanctuary it was pleasantly cool. The sun was confined to a column of light from the gap in the roof, shining gently on a shallow pool in the shore which Caleb had so thoughtfully lined with living sea grasses. Essek and Caleb lay dozing there after a bout of swimming and a fresh-caught meal of white snapper. The concerns of the Lucid Bastion, the war, and Essek’s treason were very far away. Exactly as he liked it.
“Many things… such as?” Essek idly waved Prestidigitation over Caleb’s hair, drying it. Without the water’s darkness it was red with a coppery sheen, and the light turned errant strands to gold. Essek began to run his fingers through it, enjoying how Caleb melted further into him. There were some similarities between Caleb and his sometimes-familiar Frumpkin, Essek thought fondly; the only thing missing was the purring.
‘I miss dancing.’
“Dancing?”
Try as he might, Essek had difficulty picturing it. It was already a stretch imagining Caleb standing on feet.
‘Yes. In the dancing-caverns. The… dance halls. I was very bad at it. But it did not matter.’
Water splashed as Caleb’s tail flipped again, and he grinned up at Essek. The sharpness of his canines could have been unsettling in an otherwise human face, but the crinkles at the corners of his eyes were what drew Essek’s attention now, and he smiled back with his own sharp teeth. He would have given a kiss, too, but the angle was awkward and he was loath to disturb their embrace. Such were the dilemmas he faced these days.
“Empire dances are very… jovial, yes? I have seen some in Nicodranas before, I think. Stringed instruments. A great deal of leaping and turning.”
‘Ja, many of them have a lot of jumping about.’ Caleb sighed contentedly and cozied back up to Essek’s chest, presenting his hair for more petting. ‘It is one of the things that led me to an appreciation for chairs.’
Fondness pursed Essek’s lips. There was still a wooden chair at the edge of the water here, damp but serviceable if Essek ever wished for something other than water or rock.
“One of?”
‘I liked to explore. Walking all over. Wherever I could. My legs got very tired and sore, but how could I not go where I had not been before? There was so much to see. I am a big learner, you know, and had to put my nose everywhere I could.’
It was hard to pair Caleb’s halcyon recollections with the brief story Essek previously knew of his time there: the siren lure of Ikithon’s teachings, the theft of his voice, and the tenuous allyship of the other two pupils who helped him escape. It made sense that there would have been some mundanity in-between. Even happiness. A time where Caleb had simply been an eager student in a new land.
He wondered, not for the first time, what Caleb sounded like. Essek knew Caleb’s telepathic speech intimately, of course, and it was its own kind of voice, unique to him, Zemnian accent and all. But all of a sudden Essek found himself craving intensely to hear it with his own ears, and to see Caleb shaping the words. A vision sprang up in his mind of Caleb speaking incantations aloud — laughing — murmuring endearments both soft and wicked — and he felt his insides twist in a sharp, angry pang of loss. Ikithon had taken all those things away, in addition to Caleb’s most innate voice magic.
Essek carefully skittered past the reality that he might someday have to betray the creature himself, and to the same captors. Should the need arise to gain leverage on the Assembly with the pupil Ikithon had misplaced, or to purchase his freedom with a trove of volcanic residuum, all he would have to do is deliver a teleportation anchor to this place… and disappear. It would be distant, surgical: he wouldn’t even need to be there or watch it happen.
Perhaps it was this sense of distance that helped him compartmentalize it away. He had become very good at compartmentalizing, at living from breath to breath in the bliss of the cavern and the embrace of his friend.
Too good, perhaps. Because it was working.
Instead, he gave in to envy, which quietly threaded into his thoughts like seaweed choking the rudders and oars of boats. They had heard him. Ikithon and his students. Of all the things to covet from his Dwendalian rivals in the arcane, he never would have thought it would be the mundane memory of sound.
Essek noticed then that Caleb had begun to run the backs of his fingers down his forearm, soothing. It was easy to forget how his emotions could bleed into the water for Caleb to detect in that peculiar fashion of his, like birds that could detect incoming earthquakes, or sharks smelling blood. Essek resolved to snuff out his dark mood. He had not come to the cavern to feel upset — it was to be with Caleb, in the here and now. For all his expertise in chronurgy he had come to recognize that there was nothing more valuable than the present, evolved from the past and protected from the future.
‘While it is good for dancing, walking is inferior to swimming in most every other way,’ Caleb continued. ‘So much slower. Inefficient and limiting, stuck on just the surface beneath you, and even then it can be difficult if there are stones or mud or if it’s just wet from rain. It is a wonder you people get anywhere at all.”
Essek huffed a laugh. “Please, do not hold back your thoughts.”
‘Ah, but you agree with me.’ Caleb’s tail twitched with mischief. ‘You, who would rather swim in the air than walk on the ground.’
“That’s not— it is merely—”
‘Swimming.’
“Floating!”
‘If you say so.’
“I do.”
‘In that case, I must tell you that floating is also something you do in the water.’
Now smiling like an idiot, Essek focused on the water lapping at his skin and, instead of trying to hide his emotions, tried to radiate them instead, hoping Caleb would feel his joy. A moment later and something flickered in his periphery of mental sensation, warm and amused: Caleb, answering.
Essek held him tighter, and once more wished he could stop time in ways beyond magic. “Where did you go? When you walked everywhere you could. Tell me everything.”
‘Usually the streets of the city, Rexxentrum. I got into lots of trouble. Following cats, mostly, wherever they went. People did not always like that, you know, but I liked to pet them and that meant going where they were. And then I often got too tired to walk back to our lodging. The other pupils would have to come and fetch me. I was always dirty and I was scolded for it.’
A vision was finally forming in Essek’s mind. An ungainly Caleb, tottering awkwardly on long legs, following a cat — his mind helpfully supplied Frumpkin — down an alleyway, or into a garden, unconcerned with the invented boundaries of walls and property, face shining with that soft, bright look he had when he was doting on his familiar. Caleb, sat down exhausted on a stoop or in a doorway like a collapsed sandcastle, irritating the proprietor of whatever shop the space belonged to. Ignoring said proprietor for the victory of petting the cat.
‘I was not so good at climbing, though,’ Caleb continued. ‘And I did not like to swim at all. Legs are very bad at it. And of course there are no gills.’
Caleb trying to swim in a human shape must have been quite a sight.
“Clearly an inferior design,” Essek hummed. “So you miss dancing. And exploring, but not climbing or swimming with legs. What else?”
‘Apfelstrudel.’
“I beg your pardon?”
‘It is a kind of treat, made of sweetened bread and apples, baked in, hm…,’ Caleb twitched his fins, ‘an oven. Human foods are very strange — some good, some overwhelming, some very bad. But the first thing I ever tried was a bit of apfelstrudel. That has always tasted good to me.’
“I have never heard of it,” Essek said. “But I suppose I know little of Empire customs.”
It was true — besides what his people had learned in war. But he supposed the Empire was indeed full of people, ordinary people, as boring as they might be, with their traditions and culture. He’d never cared much before. Even now, his curiosity was mostly tied to Caleb’s experience, but he felt as though an idly blank space in his mind was being etched with new details.
He could not learn what he wanted most, though.
‘Something troubles you?’
Essek realized he had been staring into the middle distance, his mood souring again, and recentered himself. “Ah— No.”
Caleb simply waited.
Essek sighed. “Well, yes, but… it is not right for it to bother me.”
‘Well. I want to hear it.’
“So do I,” Essek replied. When Caleb looked up at him quizzically, he continued. “I am learning all about your time on land, and it is fascinating, and yet I find myself wishing most I could have heard you speak with your original voice.” He winced. “It isn’t fair of me, I know.”
‘No,’ Caleb agreed, though not unkindly. ‘But neither was it fair what was done to me.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I wish too that you could have heard me. I wish I could speak to you here and now. I would sing for you, and show you what the ocean can do. You could leave this place without fear. And the world would fully open for me again.’
“You will get it back.”
‘I will.’ Caleb’s tail swished once in agitation. And then he settled, assertively re-squishing himself to Essek’s chest. ‘But come, we are not here to talk of that today. We are talking of more vital, trivial matters. What food among your people is your favorite?’
It was as graceful an exit as Essek could have hoped for. But when he opened his mouth to answer, he found himself unexpectedly stymied by the question. The gears of his mind ground to a halt. He paused so long, even stalling out in his petting of Caleb’s hair, that Caleb shifted his head again to give him a curious glance.
What was his favorite food? He had always been more focused on pursuits of the mind than the body. But surely, he had data he could pull from. If not a “favorite” — which felt childish — at least a preference.
“I don't think anyone has ever asked me that,” Essek replied finally, still thinking.
He trawled his memories for an answer. He recalled long hours spent pouring over research notes in his lab, of returning home after a long day of meetings at the Lucid Bastion, or of curling up in his study during the cold rains that battered Rosohna for part of the year, when he craved comfort and sustenance. Most often his food choices were what was most convenient, his pursuits being the more important thing… but now that he thought about it, “most convenient” usually happened to be the many restaurants that served a certain kind of dish.
“I… am a fan of all manner of soups, and stews, deceptively simple in their composition but rich in flavor.” It wasn't a fashionably interesting answer, or even very specific — Essek found he enjoyed the rustic mushroom soup of lower-class workmen just as much as the imported tomato bisque that could only be found in the Firmaments — so he wondered if he should be embarrassed when he felt a puff of air against his collarbone and, in his mind, a bubble of Caleb’s laughter brush against his consciousness. “My choice amuses you?”
‘You swim in the air, you drink salted water. No wonder you are so at home here.’
Ridiculous. “So to like soup is to like the sea? Or the sea is a soup? Is that your meaning?”
‘That could be a way to see it. But perhaps safer for me if it is not a soup. Otherwise, I think you might eat me, ja? A tasty morsel in the broth.’ Caleb smirked up at him.
Essek flushed, but he smirked back and tweaked Caleb’s ear. “Only if you are very lucky.”
‘Hmm.’
“And only a little.” Drawing Caleb’s palm up from the water, he intended to playfully bite it, but found himself kissing it instead. Not displeased with his error, he placed a second kiss, and a third, drifting absently down from palm to wrist. There he remembered his joke again and applied the points of his teeth lightly within a fourth kiss, gaze flicking down to catch Caleb’s eye and reaching to his mental voice to add, ‘Delicious.’
Caleb looked rather hungry himself. His eyelids drooped and the end of his tail swished, fins fanned out in that opulent way of his. ‘Careful, mein Freund, or you will not be able to leave in time for your politicking as you intended.’
Of all the times for Caleb’s perfect memory to remind him of his schedule. With a sigh, Essek gentled one final kiss to Caleb’s wrist before pressing the wet palm to his cheek instead, like a balm on a bruise.
“The politicking is tiresome,” he complained. “I’m very good at it. I always have been. I even thought for a long time it was what I wanted — to climb the ranks and position myself to achieve the most power for myself and my den. That is still the goal, I suppose, but it is more a means to an end than an end in itself. To furnish my studies and push for new arcane pursuits. I have come to realize there is a limit to what the faithful are willing to study, or willing to permit, power or no. I must create space for myself in other ways.”
‘There will always be space for you here.’
Essek turned against Caleb’s palm, fierce warmth filling his chest, and he finally disrupted their embrace to sit up and take hold of Caleb’s face and kiss him, again and again. Caleb, very pleased, let him.
“I am counting on it.” Essek smiled. He drank in the sight of Caleb looking up at him, pale cheeks rosy, corners of his mouth upturned. His day at the Lucid Bastion would be much more bearable after this. “And I will see you again soon.”
Still, he lingered.
‘Leave now or I will keep you,’ Caleb warned, a gleam in his eye.
Tempting… but it was important to balance his increasing number of absences with actually attending his duties at court. Quana in particular was always marking his attendance.
Finally sloshing out of the pool with a sigh, Essek laughed as he dodged a playful grab at his ankle and plucked the arcane threads of the spell to take him home.