Work Text:
On the threshold of a home Caleb Widogast has started to believe could be his, Astrid’s bruise-blue, her lips chapped and bloody. It is 3:07am. Trent has been been behind bars for exactly four days, three hours, and twenty seven seconds.
“Where’s Wulf?” Caleb asks instead of saying hello.
“Are you alone?” She hurls the worlds like a spell, but she’s shaking, and he doesn’t think she’s slept in two days. She has that look. It’s a minute relief that he still knows this about her: the way she worries her lip with her teeth when she doesn’t sleep, the way she lets her magic build and burn inside her until she has a fever.
“No,” Caleb says, because Beauregard and Yasha are inside and he fervently hopes Essek is coming soon.
She growls, and old instinct makes him reach for her, but she flinches back.
“Astrid,” Caleb says. “What do you need?”
“I’m going to be the Archmage of Civil Influence.”
He expected as much after he turned it down. “Congratulations.”
She wraps her arms around herself like she’s cold. “Do you mean that?”
“Yes.” He does. She’s always been smarter than him. She’s known how to hold power and shape it. “Is that why you’re here?”
“I’m going to,” she lets out a shuddering breath. “Bren. I’m going to tear it apart.”
“Come inside,” he says. “I need you to tell me everything.”
Eadwulf finds them at 4:02am, grave dirt under his fingernails and cheeks flushed from travel and tea. Yasha lets him in and he crosses Caleb’s small home in three strides. In the strange early morning haze of time, the past and the present aches behind Caleb’s eyes and it makes all the sense in the world that Eadwulf goes to him first. The other wizard’s arms curl around him and pull him close. He smells like flowers and sweat and dirt.
Astrid, who is still not sleeping, says from behind them both, “Wulf, we’re going to need you.”
“Obviously,” Eadwulf says. His voice is a low rumble in Caleb’s ears, his chest. “When do we start?”
“Well,” Beauregard says. “Right fucking now.”
Caleb does not tell them about Essek. He goes to Aeor. The world trembles and shatters and breaks in a way that only he will understand as he burns a reality away and commits to the furious scream of this one.
Essek holds him in the snow. Essek nearly dies. Caleb nearly dies. They claw their way out of the ruin bloody and burning with spent spells.
Astrid takes over Trent’s Tower. Eadwulf starts to spy. Beauregard begins collecting evidence. Nothing changes. Everything changes.
In the garden of a simple house that is his, Caleb plants green beans. They flourish. The assembly’s still beating heart pulses.
“Do your students know?” Astrid asks at 11:02pm a week after he has accepted the permanent teaching position. There’s an edge to her voice that he hasn’t heard in a long time. Or, rather, a lack of one. The question is carefully and blank, dangerously quiet.
“Do my students know what?”
“About Bren?”
“Of course not.”
Across the room, Beauregard looks up from whatever report she’s been writing. “There’s no reason for them to know, Astrid.”
“They’re going to find out.”
Beau stands up, but before she can get in Astrid’s face, Caleb says, “would it be helpful if I tell them?”
“They could ruin everything,” Eadwulf says quietly from the corner. He’s been silent, for the most part during these late night meetings in the Tower, preferring to let Astrid and Beau go at each other’s throats. He’s been slipping away to garden more. Caleb’s green beans are thriving.
Beau throws up her hands. “They’re kids.”
“So were we,” Astrid snarls.
His students do not ask about the Volstrucker. They are a ghost story, a haunting, and his classes are rudimentary. They are too young, too bright.
“We’re going to have to kill them,” Eadwulf tells him, in their shared garden. “Our brothers and sisters. We’re going to have to find them and kill them.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing all this time?” He had known, but has never asked.
Eadwulf’s jaw tightens. His eyes are very bright in the dark. He does not look away from Caleb. “It is a skill I have perfected,” he says, an echo of Trent’s voice curling through the words. “Some things are necessary.”
Some part of Caleb is still Bren, buried deep and burning. He understands. He thinks of the Scourger, deep in an underground cell a country away, writhing under Essek’s hands. He says, “good.”
Essek finds him in the stolen hours, often wearing a skin that is not his own. It is a scattered, frantic, strange dance they do after Aeor. A Dragonborn catches his eye in a market square and then teleports ten minutes later into his house. A tiefling meets him on the road coming home.
“Are you alright?” Essek asks him, every time. His eyes are the same, always hungry and fierce.
“Yes,” Caleb says, and it is often not a lie.
“Caleb Widogast,” Essek whispers against his lips, with all the careful pronunciation of a spell. “I am very proud of you.”
The second year, Caleb does not see Essek once.
“Do you remember when we learned Find Familiar?” Caleb asks Astrid, six months into the second year.
Beauregard is asleep with Yasha because they deserve happiness and a godsdamn break from the chaos of trying to dismantle power-hungry wizard society from the inside. Astrid and Caleb have not been alone here in a long time, and the silence is strange. There are reports to go through, strings to pull and sort, and an endless pile of papers to grade. He taught his students the spell last week. He has the components prepared, always, and his fingers itch with the want to cast. He could use Frumpkin now.
Astrid snorts. “We never cast it. It was beneath us, at the time.” She looks at him sidelong under the fringe of her hair. “You always liked it though.”
Caleb shrugs. "I've been lonely. I was lonely, without you.”
Her expression stutters into something complicated. He would have been able to parse it, once, and while he does know this version of Astrid better now, there are still many things that he does not understand. “Caleb,” she says, and he feels the way Bren had been on the edge of her tongue, the way she keeps the name caged tightly between her teeth. “I-“
The world rips apart.
They move.
Astrid flings herself to the ground. Caleb throws up Shield, narrows his eyes against the flare of light and—
It’s Eadwulf. The flare of the teleportation magic fades in two seconds, and it’s Eadwulf, bloody, writhing, and another wizard, her sharp exhale screaming with power.
Astrid has flung out Hold Person, but the Scourger counters. Caleb does not recognize her, which should not be a surprise, but all of them are a ghost of Astrid, of Wulf, of Bren: buzzed hair, scars, alive with too much magic that eating them alive and a rage that’s killing them.
Caleb is efficient. Still, in combat, he sinks into his training, loses himself to the wild pulse of power, of his heartbeat, breathes in the scent of burning spell components. Astrid spins, backing into him, nails dragging across skin.
“Do it,” she says, and he does not have to ask what she means.
He will not sculpt flame for this; the room is too tight and there are too many valuable things that they cannot afford to burn. And they cannot afford a body.
The Scourger turns to him. Bren would not have met her eyes, but Caleb does. They’re brown, fever-bright. He counts to three, doesn’t give her time to react, and drags dust up his arm.
Her half prepared counter spell fizzles out as she disintegrates into dust.
All in all, it has been twenty four seconds.
Caleb breathes and breathes and breathes. His heart is roaring so loudly in his ears he cannot hear anything else. He might be sick. He cannot be sick in front of Astrid.
“Bren,” Astrid is saying, low, in his ear. “Bren, breathe. Bren.”
Caleb closes his eyes tight enough that the black dances with stars. When he opens them again, they are still in the Tower, Astrid’s now. Beauregard’s extra throwing stars are on the wall, a staff in the corner. There’s a painting of the Blooming Grove Jester had made for Eadwulf after the first year above the desk. He is no longer seventeen. He is—
“Please don’t call me that,” he says, surprised that the words feel real in his mouth. “Is Eadwulf-“
He hasn’t gotten up.
They move together, him and Astrid, jumping over the desk and kneeling. Eadwulf is breathing, Caleb sees immediately. Quick, rasping, frantic, panicked breaths. He hasn’t seen him like this since they were children. He’s covered in blood and burns, his skin red, inflamed. But they are minor. He won’t bleed out. So—
Astrid moves him, lifts his head into her lap. “Wulf,” she says quietly, as gently as Caleb has ever heard her. “Eadwulf. Can you open your eyes? Open your eyes.”
He does, at that note of command in her voice, and stares. He looks at them, each in turn, wondering, quiet.
“Hello, Wulf,” Caleb says, brushing a thumb against the other wizard’s forehead. He’s burning. “You’re home, now.”
Eadwulf blinks, reaches out a wandering hand.
Caleb catches it, twines their fingers together. Eadwulf is holding him hard enough to break.
“Astrid,” Caleb whispers with dawning horror. “He’s-“
Eadwulf is trembling like he’s about to come apart. Caleb pulls him closer, instinctively presses kisses to those bloody knuckles, smears blood on his teeth. Wulf tastes like dirt and death and magic.
“Feeblemind,” Astrid snarls. “Which means she brought them here. Which means—“
“We need to go.”
“We need a fucking cleric.”
Caleb pulls out his sending stone. “Beauregard,” he says. “Wake up. Now.”
The sea-salt spray of Nicodranas still feels a little like home, even after all these years. They arrive in the dark for better cover on a random street that is familiar to Astrid. It’s a nondescript alley, but Caleb knows they’ve all made a habit of memorizing details for this exact reason. Volstrucker cannot afford a misfired teleport.
“Jester knows,” Caleb says, and Astrid grimaces.
“She’s been messaging me for the last thirty seconds,” she says, and she’ll never admit it, but he thinks he hears the hint of something close to affection in her tone. “Let’s go. He’s fucking heavy.”
Between them, Eadwulf sways, rests his head against Caleb’s shoulder. He whimpers.
“I know, Schatz,” Caleb whispers to him. “Just a little longer.”
Jester and Fjord are waiting outside their house with Kingsley.
“Hi,” Jester says when they walk up, and flings her arms around all three of them.
Caleb has not realized how terrified he’s been until she’s holding him, and the relief makes him dizzy. He buries his face in her neck, feels her rub soothing circles along his spine, the bright warm, rush of her. “I’m going to fix this,” she says, soft, a whisper, just for him. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he whispers.
She pulls away, smiles tremulously. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go inside. King’s been experimenting with baking.”
“We don’t need-“ Astrid starts.
“You can’t do magic on empty stomach,” Kingsley says, grinning at the wizards. It’s more snarl than smile, all teeth.
Fjord meets Caleb’s eyes over Jester’s head. “We’ll take care of you,” he says. “Please, come in.”
Astrid looks at him, and Caleb realizes that even after all this time she doesn’t quite trust them, doesn’t know what to make of this new family he’s built for himself. Stranger, even, that she’s looking to him for reassurance.
They step inside, get Eadwulf seated in a chair.
Fjord hands Caleb a steaming mug of something hot and warm. Probably chocolate. “Are you alright?” He asks. “I realize that’s a stupid question.”
Caleb laughs. “No.”
Fjord pats his shoulder, and when Caleb leans into it, moves to cup the back of his neck, tangle his fingers in his hair. “We worry about you,” he says.
Caleb’s throat tightens, and he can’t say anything at all. It doesn’t matter though. Fjord understands.
Jester kneels in front of Eadwulf. “Hi,” she says gently. “I’m going to crush up this diamond and then we’re going to bring you back, okay?”
He blinks.
“Okay.” She furrows her brow, tail lashing back and forth just a little like it always does when she concentrates. She’s strong enough that the diamond splinters in her hands. She smears the dust along her fingers, licks her lips, and presses her thumbs against Eadwulf’s temples.
Caleb counts to six. Jester and Wulf shimmer with faint green light. And then Eadwulf doubles over like he’s been hit, and Jester staggers back, and Caleb is moving.
He pulls from Fjord’s grip and half falls, half runs across the room, dropping to his knees in front of Eadwulf. He doesn’t dare touch him, wants to give him the space to reaclimate. Astrid arrives a half step behind him, and is far more bold. She reaches out with steady hands and very gently presses a palm to Wulf’s bowed head, tilts his chin up with her other hand, a careful, familiar cradle.
“Hello,” she says in Zemnian. “Hello, hello, hello.”
Eadwulf blinks at them, clear, bright, burning. “We’re fucked,” he says in Common, and then he starts to cry.
“It was Trent’s tower,” Beauregard points out the next morning. She’s arrived via the Cobalt Soul teleportation circle and is wearing her uniform. There’s a faint bruise along her jaw from morning sparring, and she’s fidgeting with a restless, furious energy that Caleb recognizes. Beauregard has not handled the last few years of paperwork well, and she’s itching for combat. For change. Anything. They all are, he knows, but she wears it more clearly. Or perhaps he just knows her better. “Is it possible that’s why she was able to teleport there? You haven’t redecorated that much.”
Wulf grimaces. “We cannot meet there anymore, regardless. But I’m more concerned about the remaining Volstrucker.”
“How many are left?”
“Half a dozen?” Astrid scrunches up her nose, another expression Caleb recognizes from their youth. “I didn’t have a complete list of them.”
“We aren’t ready to confront Ludinus,” Beau says. “And until the Cobalt Soul has enough evidence to actually have a case, I can’t really do shit.” She narrows her eyes at Wulf. “If you would stop killing them, we might have more testimonies.”
He shakes his head. “They won’t talk. They’re…they’re still loyal to Trent.”
“Have you fucking asked them?” She flings a hand out toward Caleb. “He changed. You’ve changed.”
“We are…the exception,” Caleb says, remembering the way Eadwulf’s blood had felt on his hands, the roar of defensive magic in his head, the dust getting caught up in his fingers.
“You sure about that?” When he doesn’t respond, she sets her jaw, cracks her knuckles. “Next time,” she says to Eadwulf. “I’m coming with you.”
It is bloody, quiet, horrifying work, what they’re doing. Caleb goes to class the next morning like everything is fine. At night, Astrid snarls hissed messages in his ear with progress reports before he goes to sleep. Eadwulf disappears into the night. Beauregard goes with him a week later. They return burned and snarling with death caught under their nails.
His students begin learning second level spells. Caleb is proud of them. He has not seen Essek in a year. The ghost of Trent never leaves his head. His green beans grow. Every month the Nein meet in the tower, and he feels the weight of all of their gazes on him. No one knows how to help. No one knows what else to do.
“I’m worried about Essek,” Caduceus tells him, the first time he’s been able to make the dinners and leave the Grove in a year. “And I’m worried about you.”
The third year, it all unravels.
“If you stopped being so melodramatic and just learned Sending,” Beauregard snaps at Caleb one morning as they walk through the market. “This would be a lot easier on both of you.”
They’ve had this argument before, and he suspects they will have it again. But he’s tired and he needs coffee, and this is both of their days off and Yasha has promised to make his favorite stew, so he doesn’t say anything.
Beau stops walking, grabs his arm. “Caleb,” she says. “This isn’t fucking sustainable.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice.” She knows better than to hold him for long, and lets him go. “I’m not saying we stop. You know I’m never going to fucking suggest that. But.” She blows out a breath. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do at this point.”
He doesn’t either, and he really hates not knowing. He lifts the basket of bread in his arms. “Well, today all we have to do is get Yasha these ingredients and stay out of her way.”
Her lips twitch a little into something that is almost a smile. “Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”
They interrogate three more Volstrucker in as many months. Beau gets nothing. Eadwulf kills them all. Astrid burns an old diary from when they were children and has two private meetings with Ludinus. She comes out of the room with red eyes and refuses to speak to any of them for two days. Caleb teaches his particularly bright students Fortune’s Favor, and thinks of Essek.
He bites his lip until it is bloody so he does not cry.
Essek shows up on the road bloody and broken and burning up with spent spells. Caleb knows the him only because of the way the glamored halfling croaks out his name like a benediction, Caleb Widogast. Caleb. Hello.
Caleb bends down and picks him up without thinking. The body Essek is wearing is small enough that he can be held, and trembling and bloody enough that it’s dying. Caleb holds him close for half a second, does not dare breathe himself. Essek’s breaths kiss his neck, rasping, quick.
“You fool,” Caleb snarls at him. “What happened to you?”
Essek’s laugh is hollow. Blood and spittle burn against Caleb’s shoulder. He does not say anything more.
Fuck.
Caleb carries him inside, watches at the glamor is stripped away by Essek’s own exhaustion, and pulls out his sending stone.
Essek catches at his wrist. “Don’t.”
“I’m not listening to you right now,” Caleb snaps. “You’re-“
“They’ll know I’m here," Essek snarls, blood on his teeth. “They’ll hurt you.”
“Everyone hurts me,” Caleb says without asking who he’s talking about. “And they’re not worth you. Beauregard,” he says into the stone. “Essek is here. He needs help.”
They gather inside—Beau, Astrid, Wulf, and Yasha. Caleb alarms the door. It is not safe. It is the only thing he can think to do. He does not have enough spells for the Tower.
After two rounds of Healing Hands Essek can sit up. He curls up on the couch, somehow managing to still look beautiful and terribly bedraggled at the same time. “You’ve been busy,” he says, voice still more growl than anything.
Caleb brushes blood off his lips.
“Volstrucker found you?” Astrid asks. She’s studying him as if she still can’t decide if he’s a threat, arms crossed, tattoos pulsing lightly with arcane power.
“I got in their way, most likely.” Essek says. “But they don’t respect you as Archmage, Astrid. And they know you’ve been hunting them down.”
“We don’t have enough evidence to go after high-level assembly members,” Beau says through her fingers. She’s perched on the top of the couch like some sort of bizarre bird of prey, head in her hands. Yasha is silent behind her, hands on her shoulders, flour on her fingers. “And no one is fucking talking. We got Trent because of these three,” she gestures vaguely at the wizards in the room. “But we can’t do shit about anyone else right now.”
“You’re teaching students properly,” Essek says, and Caleb feels the weight of that gaze on him now and swallows hard. ‘That is already something.”
“When did you become an optimist?” Wulf says, standing. He crosses the distance to kneel in front of Essek, studying him. “We’ve been worried about you, Thelyss.”
Essek’s eyes are half lidded and terribly hollow. “I was not aware you cared about my life, boy.”
Eadwulf shrugs. “Bren cares for you,” he says, as if that is all the explanation that is required. Caleb’s chest hurts.
“We need to re-think this,” Astrid says as if none of them have spoken. “We need to consider our priorities. This is going to take longer than we thought.”
In the quiet dark, Essek whispers, “tell me what you’re working on.”
Caleb indulges him in the latest spell workings he and Astrid are piecing together, whispers equations into the newly healed skin of his back, traces the somatic components into his palms.
When he’s done, he says, “I’ve been thinking about the T-Dock.”
Essek rolls over so they're eye to eye, foreheads pressed close. Caleb can count the new scars on his skin. There are two on his face: one above his right eye, one on his cheek. “Do you regret it?”
“No,” Caleb admits. “I’ve just been thinking about this reality. This world we’ve found ourselves in.”
Essek’s lips twitch. “Careful, Widogast,” he says. “What are you saying?”
“I thought it would be better,” Caleb says. “And in many ways it is. But there are so many things that still don’t make sense, and I don’t see a way out.”
Essek traces Caleb’s jaw with a finger, his touch featherlight and cool. “You told me once we were both damned,” he says.
“I did.”
“Do you still believe that?”
“Yes,” Caleb whispers, just for him. He does not dare say it in front of the others.
“Well then,” Essek says, and kisses him. He tastes like salt and healing magic and blood. “The world is broken enough for both of us.”
Essek is gone before he wakes. Caleb copies down Sending in his spell book.
The fourth year, they start to knit the pieces back together.
Caleb’s students are progressing well. They love him. They love the magic. He finds them in the library enraptured by texts, learning to hold their power. Essek makes it to every single monthly dinner. Caleb’s green beans are growing out of control.
“You’re doing more good than the lot of us,” Beauregard tells him. She always stops by his house first after being out with Eadwulf, and her fists are bloody. She washes her hands in his sink, flinching back at the sting of soap and water. He pours her a drink.
“Am I?”
“Those kids,” she says, jerking her head in the direction of the academy. “Are never going to know what it’s like to have fucking crystals shoved in their arms, so yeah. You’re doing good, Professor Widogast.”
She shakes out her hands, takes the glass he offers her with steady fingers, tosses it back like a shot and grimaces as she swallows. “If you don’t see that by now I don’t know what to tell you, man.”
“I believe you,” he says quietly, and he does, then. Beauregard has always seen the unflinching truth of him. “I’m glad you’re doing this with me.”
He expects her to roll her eyes, but she puts down the glass and pulls him into a hug instead. It must have been a terrible time, on the road. She’s shaking. He hugs her back, wraps his arms around her tight and breathes her in.
They hold each other for a long time, trembling, bloody. He doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t ask.
The last remaining Scourger talks. Beau drags him, stunned and bloodied, into Astrid’s tower at 2:05 in the morning, the day before classes resume for the spring semester.
He’s nearly their age, Caleb guesses. Perhaps a little younger. The last class, he thinks, before Trent had been locked away. His tattoos have not been finished, and are mostly still scars.
He’s kept his hair short, although not a shorn as their master would have liked. It is long enough for Eadwulf to run his fingers through, to make a fist, to pull the boy’s head back and bare his throat like a cornered animal.
“The monk says you want to talk,” Astrid says, and oh, Trent would have smiled at the purr in her voice, the checked fury. Caleb hates that he thinks that, hates that it makes him a little proud, too. But they will never be free of their training, and Bren always burns a little brighter in these situations.
Essek takes his wrist. He’s disguised as a dark-skinned human mage, wearing nondescript robes, a new glamour they’re trying this month that no one has suspected just yet. The gentle pressure along his pulse point brings Caleb back to himself. He swallows bile.
The Scourger is panting. There’s blood on his lips, his chin. “Yes, Archmage,” he says in Zemnian. “Yes, yes.”
“Why should I believe you?”
The stun is holding him in place still, but only for a few more seconds. Caleb sees Beau advance out of the corner of his eye, fist raised.
The Scourger flinches.
It’s the flinch that does it. The admittance of fear in the face of pain, in the presence of these wizards. This one never completed training. This one is breaking.
Caleb meets Astrid’s eyes from across the room, glances at Wulf. Astrid narrows her eyes. Wulf’s lips twitch into an almost snarl. He can read those expressions well enough now. They agree. They believe him.
Caleb pulls his hand gently out of Essek’s grip and kneels down in front of the boy. “Look at me,” he says in Zemnian. The ghost of Trent in his head laughs, and Caleb silences him, repeating again, “look at me.”
Eadwulf relaxes his grip on the boy’s hair, pushes his chin forward. The Volstrucker looks at him. His eyes are green, red-rimmed. Caleb thinks he’s probably killed, but not frequently. Perhaps he hasn’t passed the final test. It’s been long enough with Trent gone.
“Do you want it to stop?” Caleb asks, gently. He takes the boy’s hand, carefully unravels his clenched fist, presses lightly on one of the half-inked tattoos.
“Yes,” the boy whispers. “Yes, yes, yes.”
They welcome the fifth year at the top of Astrid’s tower.
He has finally begun to think of it as hers, after all this time, and the distant ghosts of the nights they spent here as children have only a loose grip on his throat. Essek’s hold on his hand is stronger, warmer. Far more real.
They sit—Astrid, Eadwulf, Caleb, and Essek—with their feet dangling over the edge of the south side of the tower, watching the moons rise. Catha is full to the bursting, huge and yellow. Ruidus is a bloody sliver. Beauregard perches on the ledge, knees tucked up to her chest, chin resting on top of them. She passes an open bottle of wine down the line. Caleb takes a sip and it burns, sweet on his tongue, fire in his throat.
“This could kill us,” he says.
Essek’s hold on his hand tightens. Eadwulf presses his forehead against Caleb’s right temple and closes his eyes like he is reminding himself that they’re both real. Astrid laughs, a low, wounded sound.
“Then it kills us,” she says. She snatches the wine from Beau and downs most of the bottle.
Caleb, warm from the alcohol and the wizards on either side of him and the bright light of the moons, tilts his head back to look at Beau.
She’s watching them.
“To the end, right?”
“Yeah,” she says. “You know that, Widogast. We’re not done.”
He thinks of flames, of blood, of burning. He thinks of spent spells and green beans and laughter. He thinks of the way his student’s look at him like he is shaping the whole world into something brilliant.
“Bren,” Eadwulf says softly in his ear. “What are you thinking about?”
They could be children again, huddled close at the top of this tower, whispering secrets.
“Home,” Caleb says, and is not entirely sure exactly what he means.