Chapter Text
Hard-mouthed, adj. 1) Of a dog: tending to chew or hold retrieved birds too tightly, mangling them. 2) Of a horse: not sensible to the bit; not easily governed.
He can smell apple tarts.
He can smell apple tarts, and he can feel the sun on his face. He's warm. This is a good place. Yes: somehow he can see it, even though his eyes are closed. He's in the ditch along the south Sperlingfeld, the dry one lined completely in thick, dry grass, and it's summer. He got the best sleep he'd had in months when he stopped here, so much so that he lingered on and on as the sun climbed high in the sky, risking a kick, soaking in its heat. A good place.
His mother is humming. It's the counting song, but she isn't counting now, just humming. She's humming and baking, and he opens his eyes and there she is.
Her back is to him where she stoops over the oven. It's iron, the oven. Thick and squat and ugly, but his father taught him to see a friendly face in the grate when he was small, so he has always counted it a friend. A fat, warm friend with a face of black and orange who eats a lot—whole logs at a time, unk, unk, unk. See, Bren! See how hungry friend Oven is! Can you feed him? Careful, now, like feeding a tiger: you mustn't ever touch. Oh-ho, he likes you. You mustn't ever stop being careful around this friend, but he does like you. He wants you to be warm at night. Say thank you to friend Oven.
His mother hums, her skirts swaying like a bell.
He turns around. Fir trees stand on the horizon, high and black and strict. His mother tells stories where the trees are likened to teeth, but they have always reminded him more of soldiers, standing straight and marching up, up, up into the hills. Very tall soldiers, like someone held their feet and held their heads and pulled. Right, two, three, four. Soldiers have counting songs, too.
As he's watching the trees, where the black of them pokes into hot-blue sky, he sees the ripple.
It isn't the color of anything. It doesn't have any thickness, either. He cannot tell if it is near or far, or if it happens along a plane that extends in all directions, but he sees a wave of distortion against the firs and he knows that he must not turn around.
Putting apple tarts in a basket: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
The ripple ripples again. With it, this time, comes a silent concussion. The ripple isn't any larger, but something is closer.
Turn the tart on its side, angle it just so. This one has an apple in it cut like a gem, and he could swear there's supposed to be stars inside.
Ripple. One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three. A shudder without sound.
His mother hums; his mother hums; his mother hums.
Caleb breathes in, breathes out, and wakes up.
"Caleb, are you sure you can't make the tower tonight?"
It's something of a relief, to hear someone else whine the way he'd like to. "Tomorrow, Jester."
"Promise."
He wipes blood out of his face. "I promise, if we do not fight a lot of giant, man-eating babies."
"That's not a promise! Make a real promise, Caleb!"
"I promise…if we do not fight a lot of giant, man-eating babies."
A few feet away, Essek, who has been listening to the conversation around him without adding very much to it, smiles slightly.
Caduceus has started riffling through his pack. "We probably shouldn't risk a fire, but I can create us something edible." It's likely he sees the grimaces some of the others try to hide at that, but if he minds, it doesn't show. Caleb would like that: not to show things. He should watch more, try to catch how Caduceus does it.
Sitting on the drum of a fallen column, Caleb cranes his neck to look up, but the ceiling of the cavern they're in is far out of reach from the driftglobe's light. Nearer to hand, neatly spaced, house-sized piles of rubble march off into darkness. There are no bodies. An hour's search of this abandoned plaza turned up no further signs of beasts or abominations, which is the best assurance they're likely to get.
The day—their first since the Astral Sea—has consisted of hours-long chases punctuated by beating off Aeorian abominations hunting in packs. Caleb's side is a hot, throbbing wall where one caught him with claws. Beauregard is leading Fjord through a series of stretches against the rubble that leave him cross-eyed for reasons unconnected to the red spots showing through on both their bandages. Yasha is absentmindedly scraping ichor off her leg with her five-foot greatsword. Jester, having given up on Caleb, is busy trying to coax Sprinkle out of her hood. Essek is examining the ruins around their campsite with the air of someone trying to stay out of the way without seeming to try. Veth is quiet.
They have been back on their native plane of existence for fifteen hours and change. They are tired. They are bloody. They are extremely lost.
Such is victory.
Caleb takes a long swallow from his waterskin, closing his eyes and tipping his head back to feel the coolness of stone behind. A headache has been dogging him since he woke today, right where Jester's plane shift shunted them out. In between all the running and near-evisceration, all they've learned about where that was is that they're in the Ars Ward and they've not yet run out of puns. When it reached a point that even Veth sounded tired of making them, though, they figured it was time to stop.
Yasha's soft voice comes from beside him. "The dome is very comfortable, Caleb, thank you for making it."
Light streaks down his optic nerve like a crossbow bolt when he opens his eyes. "You're very welcome." Over at the stone slab Caduceus has repurposed as a table, there is the gloop of forty-five pounds of porridge hitting bowls out of thin air. Caleb catches Yasha's eye. "Kill a lot of things for me, my highly lethal friend, and tomorrow we can eat like kings."
The very corner of Yasha's mouth curves up. "Dinner's ready," Caduceus calls.
Despite being the kind of hungry only a full schedule of getting kicked to shit can induce, they work through their bowls slowly. Very slowly, an eternity of spoon-scrapes and silent chewing, and it's dull in a way that feels necessary. Maybe this, the stifling, boring necessity of feeding a body, is what they all need to process their return to the material plane. Caleb lets his mind drift into a blank expanse the flavor and consistency of the porridge.
Jester breaks the silence. "Hey, we saved the world."
Beau's got one arm looped around a knee drawn up to her chest, the foot of the same leg braced against the edge of the table. She eats like that. "We kinda fuckin' did," she says. "Hasn't really sunk in yet."
Caleb hums agreement, scratching his left palm. The skin is unmarked, other than the usual collection of scars and blood in the creases. On a whim, he glances at Beauregard and catches her flexing the bare knuckles of her left hand. She meets his gaze for a second before looking away.
He'd like to ask her what she's thinking, just between the two of them, but that conversational avenue is closed.
"We can do so many things now!" Jester is warming to her theme. "We can go and find Devexian. We can go and find more people like Devexian; maybe one of them will want to be our friend. Oh!" Jester seizes Essek's arm, and he nearly drops porridge down his front. "Essek, we can go back to the room with the dunamis and find more of the little beacons and you can take some and then you can give them to the Bright Queen and she'll think you're a hero and give you a really big promotion, probably."
Caleb watches Essek stare into the middle distance for several seconds, processing Jester's words and formulating a reply. "That is a possible course of action," he settles on.
"I was thinking," says Fjord. "Devexian said they'd been experimenting with god-smashers. Maybe there's something in here than can deal with ye olde"—He summons an image of the cloven crystal in his hand.—"since we've already ruled out volcanoes."
"It would be nice to know that was taken care of." Caduceus pushes his bowl back to make room for his kettle and starts making tea.
Veth sets down her spoon on the stone slab: tink. Her eyes flick from one face to another, waiting for an opening. She can be disconcertingly patient when she wants to be.
Fjord drops the image. "Perhaps we could get to the bottom of what happened to the Savalirwood while we're at it."
"Sure."
Veth finds her opening. She says, "So we saved the world, and stuff."
To her credit, Jester seems to register a shift in tone immediately. "Yeah."
"And now we're back in Aeor, this place that wants to kill us."
"Dragging us Arseward toward death." Fjord is less perceptive than Jester.
Caleb says nothing. He wishes he could hear none of this, either, but he's known it was coming.
"And what are we doing here? Exactly?"
Jester bites her lip, toying with her spoon.
"Because I'm sorry, I love you all, but I didn't come here to wander around."
Beauregard puts her knee down. Her expression and voice are carefully neutral. "You're ready to get back to your family."
"Well, yes." Veth looks around the table. Her eyes skip over Caleb. "I meant it: I love you all. I hope you know that by now. But I can't stay in this life anymore. My son died a week ago, and I've barely seen him since. My husband watched that happen, and I haven't been there for him for any of it." Caleb hates that she won't look at him, but counts it a small mercy at the same time. "I know you all still have things you want to accomplish. I know they're important, and I wish I could help you with them. I do. But I can't. I need to go."
Silently, Caduceus begins to pass around tea.
"We can do that," Jester says earnestly. "We can get you back to your family. Right, Caleb? Right, Essek?"
Essek looks to him. Caleb opens his mouth with his pulse not fast but sickeningly present, palpable in his stomach, behind his lungs, across his skin.
"Just one problem with that," Beauregard says before he can get anything out. "The families are never gonna be safe until we deal with Trent."
Even with his eyes on his bowl, Caleb can see in his peripheral vision that everyone's looking at him now save Essek and Veth. Essek is merely listening; Veth is watching the others' faces. "So can we deal with him, then?"
Caleb pulls his shit together and answers. "Yes, I believe we can."
His voice comes out more fragile than he'd like; he clears his throat and tries again. "Ikithon is dangerous. No amount of preparation will make him not dangerous, but Lucien was also dangerous, the Somnovem were dangerous, and we have handled them. We are not total fuck-ups, yeah?" He chances a look around the table. "We are capable, and we are in a strategic position to put this to bed. Here, in Eiselcross."
Fjord leans back, lacing his fingers together over his stomach. "And what is it going to take? To put it to bed?"
Beauregard answers. "Exposure." Essek's eyes don't move, but his ears do slightly. "Astrid basically told us that, right?"
"Can't we just kill him?" Yasha asks.
"Probably we can. Whether the unexplained death of another member of the Cerberus Assembly will make it any more possible for your mother, Jester, to return to Nicodranas, or for Luc to grow up safely—that is more doubtful." Caleb kneads the edge of the stone slab to quell the urge to scratch his arms. "You say expose him. You say fight him. I think we need to do both. Specifically, that we need to do the latter in order to do the former."
"What are you thinking?" says Caduceus.
"If I accuse Ikithon, it means nothing. There is nothing I can say that cannot be explained away, not with Da'leth and the rest of the Assembly behind him—if it would even require the effort of an explanation from them for me to be dismissed. I am not…I am not what anyone would call a credible witness." Saying it feels like an out-of-body experience. He hears Veth's angry outburst, registers it, but he seems to be floating far above himself. He makes himself breathe. "It's true, Veth. More of my story undermines my credibility than doesn't. Even if I could prove everything, half of what I proved would only lead a reasonable person to discount the rest."
He's being vague. It's very stupid. Six out of seven people at this table know exactly what he's talking about, and the seventh has been at pains, since their arrival in Aeor, to clarify for Caleb how remarkable he does not find him to begin with. All the same, Caleb can't bring himself to admit outright in front of him that he's spent the majority of his adult life in an insane asylum.
At some point his fingers worked their way back under his sleeves; he digs them into the meat of his forearms to keep from scratching. He needs to be persuasive right now.
"But if we can take down Ikithon here, now, then there is a chance that other Volstrucker may come forward. Some of them are too far gone; we know that, we've seen that." Essek's left eyebrow flickers, the closest thing he's had to an expression in minutes. "But Astrid and Eadwulf I do not believe are programmed quite as rigidly, and not only would they be difficult to ignore, they may have peers who would follow them. It doesn't matter if they testify out of self-interest, so long as we can create the conditions under which they'll see self-interest in doing it."
"And the conditions are Trent Ikithon dead?" Veth asks.
"Silenced." Caleb catches Beauregard's eye, and finds a measure of encouragement from it. "Ikithon is Archmage of Civil Influence because he is very good at telling stories. He is not charming, he is not well liked; he holds his position because he has always maintained control over the narrative of events. That is what the Assembly and the king alike employ him to do. All else being equal, he's almost certainly capable of doing it from beyond the grave. We have to wrest the narrative from his control. Flipping his chosen is how we do it."
Caduceus sips tea out of one of his little copper cups.
"But we do want to kill him?" Jester says. "Like, just to be clear."
Caleb exhales. "'Captured' is probably better than 'dead' for our purposes. Harder to accomplish, though. Much harder to maintain. But we do have an advantage that we did not in Vergesson, that we did not in Nicodranas. If any part of Astrid's Sending was true, and I do not suggest taking it at face value, then he is pursuing us. He has no choice. That means we can force him to come to us, to fight on ground of our choosing away from the protections of the Empire, arcane and political. We have an opportunity here. I'm not sure we'll get another like it."
Fjord leans back in. "You say we can choose our ground. If we can, great, but what's stopping Trent from laying an ambush for us in here?"
Caleb lifts the chain of his amulet on one finger. "He knows we are in Eiselcross; that is all. It is not impossible that he has traced us as far as the entrance we used, but even if he has, there will be chances to ascertain as much, and ways to work around it. We know this place better than he does." He looks at his friends. "I really believe that we can do this."
There's a moment's quiet.
"I'm in," says Beau.
Yasha rests her chin in her palm. "I would be very happy to take part in this."
"I told you to say the word," Fjord says. "If this the word, let's do this."
Caduceus finishes his tea and sets his cup on the stone with a neat little click. "It's a plan with a goal," he says. "I like goals."
"Essek, will you come with us to maybe kill Trent?" Jester asks brightly.
Caleb stills.
Essek clears his throat, glancing around the table. Caleb avoids it. "Well, on a purely self-interested level, my chances of survival if Ikithon remains free are quite low, so." He gives them a strained smile. "If I can be of assistance, I will. For the sake of the peace so recently achieved, though, I must be discreet. If Ikithon can be brought here, then fine. But I cannot be party to direct action against a member of the Assembly within the borders of the Empire without precipitating an international incident."
"Another," Caduceus says placidly.
"Excuse me?"
"Another international incident."
Essek pauses. "Thank you, Caduceus."
"You're welcome."
Caleb's ears are on fire.
Fjord coughs. "We are going to have to sit down and have an in-depth, brass tacks conversation at some point. Strategize, share information, put everything on the table and get everyone on the same page—but not tonight. I don't know about anybody else, but I am beat." Murmurs of agreement. "Going by what we've seen so far, just finding our way out of here could need a few days. We'll take our time, be as safe as we can. Then we talk, rest, choose our moment. Do it properly." Fjord looks to Veth. "Will that work for you?"
"Yes, of course." She twists the end of one braid over and over in her hand; Caleb doesn't think she even knows she's doing it. "It's not that I'm in a hurry to ditch you guys."
"No, we know."
Abruptly Yasha stands and begins collecting bowls. Everybody else helps, grateful for the broken tension. Caleb makes scraping porridge his whole world and waits for the lightheadedness to fade. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Various rituals have to conclude before they bed down—at least, now that there's finally time. They wash, to the extent that they can. Caduceus stores the food and tends his lichen. Caleb shaves. It's been days since he had half a chance; to be clean-shaven again, that small measure more respectable, is a sharp relief. It calms him some. It helps.
After, he catches Veth, holds up his spool of silver wire, and tips his head toward the entry to their campsite. "Could I borrow you?"
Laying the wire only takes one, of course. She looks up at him with an expression he can't read. That happens more and more; he's not sure whether it's because he knew her better as a goblin or because he used to misinterpret a lot of things and it's taken him this long to stop. "Sure."
When they are far enough from the group, Caleb speaks quietly. "I can return you to your family once we reach the surface. I cannot go with you, but I could send you to the circle at the Archive in Zadash. You have the amulet, and your invisibility; you could find the Gentleman from there." He glances at her, then continues stringing the wire across the gap. "Ikithon has to be dealt with, but we can take care of him. You could go back to them. If you want."
Veth is silent a while. "Thank you," she says eventually. "I do want to be with them. I want to be there to protect them. But if Trent finds them where they are, I won't be able to, will I?"
Caleb pauses, holding a loose thread of invisible energy around the fingers of one hand. "No." He pinches the energy into a node around the wire and keeps going.
"Then if here is where I can actually protect them, here is where I want to be." She looks unhappy saying it.
Well, he cannot blame her. "I'm sorry," he says.
"It's not your fault."
The first time she said that to him, they were in the Pillow Trove and she was vehement. She sounds less convinced now. He finishes laying the alarm in silence and they return to the group.
A collection of bedrolls marks the intended radius of the dome. Caleb wades in to the middle, sits, and pulls out his spellbook. He pushes Beauregard's head out of the way where she's spreadeagled on top of the space he needs. "You smell like cat sick," he tells her.
She rubs her head all over the side of his leg. "That's eau d'ababeination, and now you do, too."
"But I am used to cat sick."
A familiar mantle approaches from the direction of the piss spot, the last to join. Essek still picks his way gingerly through the tangle of bodies that is the Mighty Nein at rest. Watching him try to fit himself in while also trying to be polite about it is a mixture of painful and endearing. When Caleb fell in with this lot, he only had sleeping in a pile of people to get used to, the practice of sleeping on rocks and things already being familiar; Essek has had to acclimate to both simultaneously. It's a steep learning curve for a man who's lived decades in solitude among the uppermost classes of a major city, and he clings to manners as tenaciously as a child to the string of a balloon.
"Tomorrow Jester's finding us a path, right?" Fjord says.
"With my waypoints, yeah." Caleb takes out chalk and a glass bead. "I do not think we should chance a teleport inside this city unless absolutely necessary, but we can hoof it."
"You are the expert on that," says Beau.
Caleb doesn't look up. "You know, Beauregard, we arcanists spend a lot of time in private rumination, so it is always nice to be grazed by a little acknowledgement. Thank you."
She throws a sock at his head.
Ritual casting is slow because it takes time to tap energy from the surrounding world to enact a purpose; Caleb chalks the outer circle that does this, waits for that energy to gather, and when he feels it brim and clarify to a stable frequency, finishes the inner circle that will shape the actual spell with a few quick strokes. The resulting force rushes outward and pops into shape like a soap bubble. Caleb pockets the chalk and bead.
Around him, his friends are helping each other out of armor, wadding up packs into pillows, laying weapons within easy reach. Yasha starts peeling Beau's vestments away from half-healed reverser bites. Essek sits cross-legged in his perch of the night and reaches for the clasps of his cloak.
Caleb follows suit. The elven chain has to come off, which means his coat, holsters, and tunic do, too; at last he tugs the mail over his head and is left in linen shirtsleeves, torn and stained liberally with blood. He unbuckles the straps securing his component pouch to his thigh and sheds that as well.
He looks up to find Essek watching. As soon as he does, Essek turns away to remove the shirt of sequin-like chitinous plates he wears under his own layers. "Why don't you cast with a focus?" he asks through the material.
Caleb's brain locks up.
When he doesn't get an answer, Essek looks over again, frowning lightly. Caleb clears his throat. "Reliable foci are expensive."
Essek stows the lamellar shirt; beneath he wears much the same undertunic as Caleb used to in the Dynasty, but finer, and much better tailored. "Not so very. Nothing out of the reach of a hero of the Dynasty. Surely it must be simpler than fumbling with components when you have an abomination bearing down you."
Caleb busies himself with his bedroll. "Call it force of habit. I have been largely self-taught; it's easier to noodle around at some problems with components in your hands."
Essek lifts an eyebrow and lets it go.
"Who's real bad off?" Caduceus asks. This, too, is part of their routine. Caduceus likes to have them strip down where he can see everyone, so he can make best use of any healing that remains. It's…logical, habitual, communal. It shouldn't be as comforting as it is.
"Beau and I got chewed on quite a bit," says Yasha.
Caduceus pats them each on a shoulder, passing a warm, subtle glow from his palm to their skin.
"Caleb, you look kinda like shit." Beau lifts her chin in his direction. "Fjord, you still bleeding?"
"That was my last," Caduceus says. "Jester?"
Jester lies on her front, chewing the end of a pencil. "I do, but I was hoping to send a message to my mama."
Caleb and Fjord trade a glance before Fjord speaks for both of them. "Nothing that a night's rest won't take care of. Send your message, Jester."
"Okay. I'm going to just let her know that we stopped the city, and find out where she is and if she's okay."
"Ah, Jester—" Caleb stops to choose his words. "Better not for us to know where they are, perhaps. Before the situation is resolved."
He watches her process his implication. "Oh. Okay." She looks at the others. "Do you think I should send a message to Mama, or to the Gentleman?"
Caleb suspects the question is for Veth, but Veth doesn't turn around from where she's fussing with her bedroll behind Yasha. She doesn't generally sleep with Caleb anymore.
"Just get the scoop from Marion," Beauregard says when nobody else will.
Jester clears her throat and waits for Fjord to hold his hands up at the ready. Everyone quiets; even Essek turns to watch in a kind of bemused fascination.
"Hi, Mama!" Pause. "World saved." Pause. "We're okay. Are you, Yeza, and Luc?" Pause. "Just in case, don't say where you are." Pause. "Working hard to see you soon."
Fjord makes a 'not bad' face.
A few seconds later, Jester's eyes go bright and hugs her knees hard, listening. "She says they're okay," she reports. "They're all okay. Yeza and Luc are there, and Luc is collecting frogs."
Collecting frogs. Caleb's mind rushes to all the inferences that could be drawn from that one detail: a rural location, likely near water, and a small child moving freely outside. It's more information than he'd like in their minds ahead of meeting his old teacher, but so much tension runs out of Veth's shoulders when she hears it.
Their day has only lasted about eight hours, and they've been running flat-out for too long, so most people take at least a few minutes to themselves: sketching, writing, praying. By unspoken agreement, though, it's an early night. Fighting Aeor's guard dogs drained them, and now the previous two weeks of stress seem to be presenting their bill all at once. One by one, save Fjord on first watch, the Mighty Nein turn in.
Caleb lies down. He stares at the roof. He should close his eyes. He doesn't.
For all he remembers waking experiences in exacting detail, Caleb doesn't usually remember his dreams. Anything more than a mood or maybe a location always fades from his mind within minutes, but his dream from this morning persists.
Nothing in it was remarkable. It was all just incoherent dream-stuff, not even a nightmare. Yet that ripple, in particular, stands out with perfect distinctness. He can see it, feel it still, together with the certainty of something approaching.
Caleb sits up.
Fjord glances around at the motion, then goes back to carving a bit of leather he doesn't think everyone knows is for Jester.
Taking one of the two pieces of amber from around his neck, Caleb gauges the available space, tucks his heels in tight underneath himself, and murmurs, "Una." A great pallet of paper and books appears on his bedroll with a small thump. He reaches behind himself for a pinch of soot and salt and coaxes a measure of the arcane energy remaining in him out to meet it as he sprinkles it in front of his eyes.
Wherever he touches them, the alien scripts become comprehensible without becoming familiar. This is a spell he's cast a thousand times, but the similarity of its functioning to dream-logic strikes him so abruptly that his breath hitches.
And again he feels himself being observed. A few feet away, Essek sits cross-legged. Often the man trances like that, but currently he is present and, to put it bluntly, eyeballing Caleb.
Caleb shuffles a few inches to the side, mindful of Caduceus's back. "Would you like to browse?" He indicates the pile of Genesis Ward records, with Halas's papers at the bottom.
The way Essek's eyes flick to the spines suggests that he very much would, but he says, "Perhaps later. I have to admit I'm a bit tired."
"Well, all of this will go back in the amber, but feel free to take anything you'd like to inspect. I know that traveling with us at night, you find yourself with time on your hands. As it were."
Essek spares him the ghost of a sardonic smile. "Thank you."
Caleb is confused. It's clear his offer has not satisfied whatever has Essek staring, but he does not know why, so he returns to surveying what's here. Factorum Malleus Benchmarks and Indicators. 108th Convocation Debate Proceedings. On the Nature of Divinity. Perspectives on the Pantheon. Necromancy, Entropy, and the Direction of Time. Encoding Temporally Displaced Signals. Preliminary Findings Concerning Rejuv—
"Should you be diving into this right now?"
Now Caleb is bewildered. He examines the pile and the circumstance from every angle he can find, trying to understand what faux pas he's committing. Does Essek object to the space it takes up? That's considerable, but he was careful not to dump paper on anyone. Caduceus hasn't even stopped snoring. "I don't mean to read everything, just to find out what's here and put it in a bit of order."
Essek examines him from head to toe and back again in a way that leaves Caleb self-conscious of the filth and disarray that come with their lifestyle, and resenting it. "I would just suggest making certain to get enough rest. Your friends depend on you."
The suspicion stings. So does being chastised like a student by a dormition monitor. "I always have," he says, carefully neutral.
He reads until his mind quiets enough for his body's fatigue to do its work, though that's barely half an hour into his spell. Tucking Necromancy, Entropy, and the Direction of Time into his satchel, he calls quietly to Essek, "Last chance for a book."
Essek hesitates before he sets down the small tablet he's been jotting in and crawls over to kneel in the space between Jester and Yasha. He makes a small gesture and murmurs a phrase—no salt or soot—before reaching out to run his fingers over the spines of the books one by one.
He taps Theoretical Problems of Primal Artifact Division. "If you can spare it."
"Certainly."
"Thank you."
Caleb really is tired now. That nagging headache is still with him; it's probably just blood loss and will be gone in the morning, but reading with it has exhausted him. By the time he's gotten the vault put back together, he's halfway asleep. He drops into his bedroll, pulls his coat over top of it, and lets gravity pull him down, down, down, soothed by his component pouch under his palm and a pen scratching arcanist's shorthand nearby.
Just as he's slipping under, he thinks he can feel fingers move his hair; but that can't be right, because the only conscious figure close enough is Essek.