Chapter Text
There is something to be said about the hubris of men who have already achieved what they previously thought impossible. There is quite a lot to be said, actually, but Caleb has learnt that words are cheap, when it comes down to it. What is the point of philosophising on your misfortune, rather than actually doing something about it?
There is something else to be said about misfortune, and how it always seems to strike when one is at their most relaxed, unguarded, unexpectant. If there is a god of misfortune, it is one with a sick sense of humour.
Caleb lets his guard down. Last night, he was drinking cider with his fellow professors in the transmutation department, celebrating the end of a school year. Eight weeks of no paper-grading, no meetings, and most importantly no pupils. He is not hungover, but he is a little tired. His body cannot party like it used to, or for quite as long as the likes of Jester and Beauregard sometimes goad him to.
This afternoon, he is teleporting to a small homestead outside of Deastok. Most of the year it is uninhabited, but the Cobalt Soul has used it as a safehouse in the past. Currently, it is occupied by Caleb’s…
He pauses as he counts components into his satchel: loose beads of amber, pearls, chalk, liquorice roots, bundles of cotton and wool. What word to use today?
Essek has been a friend, a teacher, a teammate, a guardian, a stranger, an enemy. He has shapeshifted in so many ways. If he were to talk of Essek to his coworkers next term, if such a thing was possible, what would he call him by?
“I spent the summer with Essek, my—”
They have already completed an expedition into the ruins of Aeor by themselves. They have saved each other's lives countless times, pressing the lifeblood back into each other’s wounds with healing potions and time-reversal spells. Caleb has watched the dazzling light of unadulterated joy dance in Essek’s eyes at the sight of an undamaged spellscroll containing magic that none have witnessed for most of a century.
“—my colleague.”
Caleb chuckles to himself as he tightens the strap of his component pouch and adjusts his spellbook holster. Words are cheap.
He checks his pockets one final time before walking a lap around his Rexxentrum apartment and bidding goodbye to the cats. His neighbours will feed them and visit every day, but the cats are sure to hold a grudge anyway.
“I will be back before you know it,” he tells Kekse.
“Only a few days,” he promises Minka.
“Maybe I will bring back Essek,” he tells Fussel, who has always been Essek's favourite. Fussel turns his sour, grey-furred face away. “Maybe, this time.”
“Do not break anything,” he begs Kaiser.
At last, Caleb places a ward on his front and back doors, and prepares to teleport. He pictures the safehouse, where he had parted from Essek a number of months earlier, pressing a finger to the chunk of bark in his pocket, and draws a line through the air. Strumming the threads of the weave to find a common strand binding the two places together is no task at all. He traces the runes for translocation, displacement, stability, replacement, into the space between his open arms. The weave responds as it always does — save for Aeor, where Caleb is quite glad he is not planning on returning for a little while longer — and reality warps around him.
Caleb pulls in a breathful of clean countryside air. It almost smells like the Zemni fields here, but pale blueish mountains rise dramatically in the south-west, spoiling the illusion. He stands at the edge of a copse of blooming blackthorn trees. Their delicate and pale petals tremble in the wind and threaten to be torn away over his head. A narrow dirt road curves down a gentle hill ahead of him, on the other side of a small fenced meadow. A modest cottage with a thatched roof squats at the opposite edge of the meadow, facing the road.
Caleb pulls himself upright and meanders toward the cottage. Along the way he admires the flowers that grow up to his knees. They’re uncultivated, most of them not even useful as herbs. He picks a few as he goes.
At the cottage door, he clears his throat. He knocks, twice then three times after a pause, and enunciates clearly, “The sapphire is worth her weight in gold.”
After a second or two, a voice from inside answers, “She is worth far more, by my count.”
Caleb smiles. Essek sounds well.
The door opens, though not by any hand. The doorway is empty. The shutters of all the cottage’s windows are pulled, and a few have rags shoved into the gaps around the frames. Caleb enters, finding most of the room drenched in shadow.
He stands, blinking sightlessly into the relative darkness around him, blinded by his time in the daylight outdoors. A few more seconds pass.
“Ah!” Pale blue light erupts from a candle set on a table that Caleb can now see is pushed against the far wall. Essek stands nearby, looking a little sheepish. “I apologise for the darkness. I have grown used to it.”
His hair is yet longer, hanging past his jaw in loose waves. His ears are mostly bare of decoration, no earcaps, which Caleb thinks makes them look all more delicate. He’s wearing what Caleb would call casual empire clothing: a loose white linen shirt, collared and longsleeved, high-waisted woollen trousers, and leather houseslippers. He’s not even floating.
“You look…at home,” Caleb says eventually.
Essek fidgets. “It has been comfortable. Certainly better than that hovel in the Greying Wildlands they put me in last time.”
“That was hardly a hovel,” laughs Caleb. He closes the door behind him, hearing the familiar sound of magical wards clicking back into their place as he does. “It even had plumbing.”
Essek shakes his head. “Would you like tea? The selection of herbs available in this part of your country is not entirely lamentable, I admit. There is a variety of red-leaf tea grown near Kamordah that I have been enjoying.”
“Of course.”
“Sit, and leave those boots at the door please.”
Caleb sits at the little table with the magical candle and watches Essek light a fire beneath a kettle with a flick of his little finger. He drops the picked flowers into a vase on the table. “You look good in those clothes,” he says, and enjoys the little hiccup in Essek’s movements as he spoons tealeaves into a teapot. “Once, I would have thought you would rather be found dead than in empire linens.”
Essek spares a dry look over his shoulder at Caleb. “The laces take some getting used to. But I admit the wool is comfortable, and very warm.”
Caleb’s eyes wander over the cottage’s walls, over a tapestry depicting the Cyrios mountains and a shelf of novels Essek might have borrowed from Jester. Hanging by the door he sees a long blue-grey woollen travelling cloak. “Have you explored much of the area?” he asks.
Essek shakes his head. “I travel into Deastok when I must. Maybe twice a month. Once I took a carriage to Kamordah, by Beauregard’s request — the hot springs were pleasant, to her credit. I have avoided the Cyrengreen forest.” He rests a hand on the teapot’s lid and cocks his head at Caleb. “Though, perhaps with you at my side it would not be as perilous a journey? I hear there are many curious magical anomalies hidden within.”
Caleb smiles languidly at Essek. “I have hardly been here ten minutes, friend, and you are already inviting me on a potentially deadly adventure? This is becoming a dangerous pattern of behaviour for us, I fear.”
“Do not act as if I am the one putting you at risk,” scoffs Essek. “By my count, I have saved your life at least fifteen times without the rest of the Nein present.”
“Seventeen,” Caleb quickly corrects. He watches Essek’s eyes widen. “I have saved yours exactly eighteen, however.” The light in Essek’s eyes vanishes quickly.
“That cannot be true.”
“It is.” Caleb taps his forehead. “A steel trap.”
Essek rolls his eyes and brings the teapot and two cups, all floating, to the table. “Drink the tea, young man.”
They talk about many other things, most of which have little to do with the arcane. Caleb retells a story about one of his students who accidentally transmogrified her roommate into a salamander due to a single rune misalignment. Essek describes the hot springs of Kamordah, the acrid smell and slightly gritty texture of the water, and how he very nearly fell into a trance while bathing in one. Caleb tells Essek about Beauregard’s newest responsibility at the Soul — mentorship — and just how poorly it has been going.
“I do wonder who will quit first,” Caleb muses, “Beauregard or her student. They are about equal in terms of sheer stubbornness.”
“Then I think we are in for a battle of attrition.” Essek sips his tea.
“Don’t look so smug, now. I am the one who has to talk our friend out of extreme violence every week.”
Neither Caleb nor Essek have seen much of Jester and Fjord of late; their ship has not made land for a number of months now, and regular sendings have told them that Fjord has been attempting to broker peace with Darktow once more. It seems prudent not to interfere with the process this time.
“I still do not fully understand what caused such bad blood in the first place,” says Essek. “Everytime I ask, I get a slightly different story from Jester. In fact, I am not sure any of her stories about your time at sea completely match up.”
Caleb waves his hand vaguely, as if brushing cobwebs from the air. “There was a rival warlock, and a ship, and a lot of fiery explosions. The leader of the revelry did not appreciate our particular brand of problem solving taking place on his territory.”
They finish their tea, and Essek magicks the cups and teapot away to clean themselves in the pantry. Caleb suggests they move into a demiplane for the evening to review their study plans, and Essek admits he has yet to make any significant progress developing his own demiplane on a scale similar to Caleb’s.
Apparently any blueprint of a conjured mansion or tower comes up short of his own expectations. Caleb tells him not to be so modest, to keep at it, and retrieves the components needed to summon his tower.
“One of these days,” Essek concedes. “Though, I do not know why I should create something as elaborate as yours if I am hosting more guests than just the two of us. The Nein would surely prefer your rooms.”
Caleb raises his brow at Essek from where he kneels between his trinkets and wand. “Wouldn’t you want to impress them?”
“I do not have an imagination like yours. I think I would find myself simply recreating the Xorhaus, as I remember it.”
Caleb draws the final lines of chalk on the safehouse floor. “I see nothing wrong with that. We, the Nein, miss that place quite dearly. I think Beauregard would appreciate the hottub, at least.”
He does not need to say anything more to remind Essek why they cannot return to the Xorhaus together again. The Nein have not had a good reason to spend even more than a day in Rosohna since Essek’s self-imposed exile, and so the townhouse has remained vacant.
“Here,” Caleb says, carefully getting back to his feet. He waits for Essek to gather a few items from the safehouse — a bag of holding, and some smaller pouches from a countertop — and follows him into the Nein-Sided Tower.
They float into the library, where Caleb has prepared a bank of desks and experiment tables. Two large chalkboards flank the study space that sits between the wings of bookshelves. Essek wastes no time and unloads his armful of bags onto the nearest desk.
He rakes his eyes over the chalkboards, which are partly covered by Caleb’s most recent noodling. “I have some catching up to do, I see,” he mutters, fingers fluttering where they hang at his sides.
“Nothing too drastic,” says Caleb. He peers at the pouches Essek brought into the tower; they’re all pocket dimensions, so he cannot yet guess what’s stored inside. “Just some…daydreaming I have been doing since the end of term. That rune we found, in the Praesidis Ward—”
“The unusual serif,” Essek quickly interjects. “Yes, I remember. I had wondered if anything had occurred to you about its implications.”
“I first thought it might simply be an archaic radical, which to our eyes resembles a misshapen serif. In that case, it could be lengthening the duration of an effect,” Caleb says, pointing to the upper workings on the first chalkboard. “We have only translated a number of the Aeorian radicals so far, though, so it is hard to say.”
Essek lifts himself from the ground and floats toward those uppermost scrawls. “I see. It does somewhat resemble their mark for duration – which, frustratingly, seems to hold no orthographical resemblance to their radical for time.” He scowls and bites at his thumbnail, an uncharacteristically bad habit for a nobleborn politician. “Unless we are missing something.”
Caleb cranes his neck to read his own work, with which Essek is now eye-level. “Duration could be a mistranslation.”
Essek glances down at him, teeth still bared from his chewing. “We have been operating under this presumed translation for—”
“Ja, I know. But we have presumed a lot since we first entered that city. Ancient Zemnian hardly resembles my mother tongue, and even you struggle to read Lolthian Undercommon at times.” Essek rolls his eyes. “I was having this same conversation with Beauregard last month — her grasp on languages both living and extinct far exceeds ours combined. So many words and symbols once meant the exact opposite. Did you know that the Common word ‘egregious’ once meant ‘very good’?”
Essek scoffs lightly. “Oh, I am aware. There is a word in Rosohnan Undercommon that you would use to compliment an experienced host, more traditionally a hostess. But the root comes from an ancient word meaning ‘she-whose-men-dance-prettilly'.” Caleb winces, and Essek smiles in sympathy. “So what you are saying is that we might consider that the mark refers to an adjacent meaning…such as…distance.”
“Exactly.”
They sketch out some possibilities, drawing on their memories of other, more complete, Aoerian runes they saw in the ruins. Essek has committed to his new theory, that the radical refers to the distance that its magic can travel. But for a long while, Caleb feels something else tickling at the back of his mind, like a cat hair caught in his collar.
He redraws the partial rune, this time emphasising the character directly below the mystery radical. He lingers over it for a time, while Essek continues his line of theory on the opposite blackboard.
Eventually, Essek’s stick of chalk stops moving as he notices Caleb’s distraction.
“Caleb?”
“I wonder,” Caleb begins. “Are you familiar with the ouroborus? A snake consuming its own tail. It appears in some old Zemnian scripts, usually as decoration. But there is a rune for the symbol in Zemnian magical traditions too, representing a theoretical infinity.”
At the mention of infinity, Essek perks up and drifts closer to Caleb’s scribbles. “How have you never shown me it before now?”
“We were told of it in class, but also told that it is archaic, useless. It is…how would you say: debunked. Like an old medicine that does nothing but purge your stomach, it has been proven to be of no material use.” Caleb underlines the character. “But it looks so much like it, so I wonder…”
Essek tips his head one way and the other, considering the symbol. “I think…I think I may have seen it before, too.”
Caleb waits, knowing from experience that Essek may take longer to retrieve obscure memories than himself, but he will get there in eventuality. He watches Essek slowly descend, chin pinched in his left hand, eyes distant, and float over to the table where his bags of many things wait for him.
“I could have sworn,” he mumbles, then mutters a few more things in Undercommon that Caleb doesn’t catch. “One of the artefacts we found last time — not in the Praesidis Ward, mind you — I had not examined it fully, but it had some kind of…markings and runes…” He is elbow deep in his bag of holding before seemingly giving up and digging around in one of his smaller pouches instead. “I think we presumed it was an old jewellery box of sorts, and the runes were a basic protection ward, or alarm. Though, we did not open it, since it was clearly empty, so I lost interest in the—”
Essek makes a small sound of victory and pulls a dark wooden case out of the pouch of holding. It is about the size of one of Beauregard’s notebooks, and sealed with a robust bronze clasp. And just as Essek promised, archaic runes flow across the lid in a geometric circular pattern to form a complete magic sigil.
“I remember this one,” says Caleb. “Detect magic sensed abjurative magic embedded in the lid, but nothing else inside.”
Essek waggles the little box breezily through the air. “Definitely empty. Or whatever is still inside is lighter than a walnut.”
Caleb puts his hand out and Essek unquestioningly passes the box over. He runs his fingertips over the runes. “I see what you mean. These characters definitely resemble our ouroborus, though it is not conjugated in quite the same way.”
“And it is the same rune, over and over,” Essek points out, leaning over Caleb’s shoulder and gesturing to the ring of runes. “Obviously an ouroborus of ouroboroi.”
“Say that ten times fast,” Caleb mutters distractedly. He can smell the rosemary soap in Essek’s hair and feel the heat of his hand where it rests so close to his collar. He clears his throat. “It must be related. A strengthening of a certain effect, perhaps? The same way that you might string the runes for a lightning bolt spell in a straight line to mimic the bolt itself. Form echoing function.”
Essek hums. Caleb can feel the reverberation through his ribs. “It is so hard to read the rest of these strokes. We have barely translated a tenth of Aeorian rune markings, so I can only guess…might it create some kind of vortex?”
“It is as good a guess as any.”
Essek shifts his weight, now meeting Caleb’s eye rather than staring down at the box. His eyes are bright as amethysts. “We could find out, and be certain.”
They could.
This is the Nein-Sided Tower, a demi-plane completely under Caleb’s control. Whatever damaging spells might be unleashed by the ward would easily be rebuffed by either his or Essek’s reactions. The box is empty, afterall, and protecting nothing. So how powerful would the abjurative effect be?
They definitely could.
No matter the result, they would learn a little more about the runes. They would know what that self-consumptive symbol might be in reference to, and how it modifies the characters around it. Perhaps the knowledge could later lead them back to the rune on his blackboard, and the untranslated radical.
They could certainly try.
Caleb smiles and hands the box back to Essek, who looks puzzled and briefly put-out by the gesture.
“You have always been better at unlocking wards than I,” says Caleb, already weaving his fingers through the air in the foundational somatics of a globe of invulnerability. “I invite you to show off, and I will handle our protection.”
Essek’s face clears and is illuminated by boyish excitement — Caleb cannot repress a thrill of pleasure in response, a kind of self-indulgent feedback loop. The box is placed gingerly on the edge of the nearest laboratory table and Essek backs away, joining Caleb’s side as the globe of invulnerability surrounds them like the shimmering film of a golden-yellow soap bubble.
“Let us hope the effect is not overly strong,” Essek says, admiring the bubble arcing over his head.
“If it is, I have stronger defences,” replies Caleb. “And you can, ah, what is it called? Bending fate, and what have you.”
Essek turns a withering look onto Caleb. “It is called the Convergent Future,” he says, dry as the sands of the barbed fields.
“Of course it is, I was only teasing.”
Essek shakes his head and focusses on the box. He summons a mage hand, which hovers semi-translucent around the latch of the box, and raises his other hand to cast dispel magic. Caleb reads the runes as they appear in the air around Essek’s fingers; he’s casting at an exceedingly high level, to be cautious. Good.
Caleb watches the dispel wash over the box. The circle of runes glows for a second, then the light fizzles out, and the characters return to their inert state.
“It is inactive,” breathes Essek. “But that was a very strong ward. I could feel it fighting me.”
“Gute Arbeit,” Caleb says, clapping Essek on the shoulder. He can see a giddy grin growing in Essek’s face. It’s equally as exhilarating as watching the box itself.
Essek flicks his wrist to command the mage hand, which unlatches the lid and lifts the box open on the table.
It takes very little time for Caleb to understand what he is looking at, maybe only a quarter of a second, but that is still not enough time for him to meaningfully react. It is only just long enough for him and Essek to each swear grimly in their respective mother tongues before the worst occurs.
There is a second ring of runes, identical to the one Essek had disabled just a moment earlier, etched into the underside of the box’s lid. This magic circle is still very much active, and triggers the instant the lid is lifted from the latch. The runes are already glowing by the time Essek and Caleb catch sight of it.
A wave of magic, wild and fierce like the winds of a Menagerie Coast typhoon washes over the globe of invulnerability, and straight through it. The barrier bursts like a popped bubble. Raw and ancient abjuration fills Caleb’s nose and mouth, as if he’d fallen face-first into a lake of the stuff, and it chokes him. The light of the runes has risen to a dazzling degree, and the shapes of the library around him are only vague suggestions. He blindly raises his hand to cast a desperate counterspell, and can hear Essek doing the same by his side, but nothing seems to come of it. His magic is whisked away by the tide.
Something creaks, then snaps, and Caleb feels himself falling. He flails outward, catches the fabric of Essek’s shirt, and clings on. He can recognise this sensation. It happened once before, when the Tombtakers were invited into the Tower. His demi-plane has been abruptly and entirely dispelled.
Caleb pulls Essek tightly to his chest and braces for impact. They land on their backs, heavily enough to hurt but not enough to wind them completely. The light is gone. They are on the floor of Essek’s safehouse.
“Lolth’s teeth,” gasps Essek, an expletive Caleb has never been unfortunate enough to hear from him until now. “That was harrowing.”
Caleb looks around them. No obvious damage seems to have been done to the cottage. Although, everything they brought into the tower, including the opened trapped box, lay about on the floorboards by their feet. Essek’s bag of holding and pouches also sit on the floor, entirely dispelled and disgorged of their contents; a veritable fortune of magical components, artefacts, and various odds and ends litter the ground.
“Are you hurt?” asks Caleb, untangling himself from Essek.
“Ah, no. Just startled.” Essek pats himself down, and seems satisfied by his assessment. “I have never seen such a powerful dispel. To affect so many objects and targets at once…it could be applied to battle magic with devastating results. And although I attempted to bend the effect around us with a Convergent Future, there seemed to be no result, or no future to grasp. Very strange.” He seems to finally notice the mess around them. “Ugh,” he grunts, making a foul expression. “Or perhaps as a very cruel prank.”
Caleb rubs the growing ache in his lower back where he’d landed. “Let’s not tell Jester this particular story, then.”
He eases himself up and prods at Essek’s emptied bag of holding. They have been in the tower for a while, almost six hours, and the sun has long since set. It is, in fact, the next day already, and Caleb can feel sleep pulling at him now that the adrenaline of the triggered ward has faded from his veins. Yawning, he holds the bag of holding in one hand and picks through the mess on the floor with the other. He’s careful to select an item he knows for certain is not hiding a second pocket dimension, such as Essek’s pouches of holding, to start with. He picks up a bundle of unburnt incense; that’ll do. He drops it into the mouth of the bag of holding.
The incense drops into the bottom of the bag.
Caleb freezes. He hefts the bag in his hand.
“Essek?”
He opens the mouth of the bag, and sees the incense laying innocently at the bottom.
“One question, Essek?”
Essek does not respond, and Caleb turns to see his friend standing idly in the middle of the room staring down at his empty hands. His face is caught somewhere between bafflement and utter horror.
“My levitation is not working,” he says, voice flat and unaffected by his apparent panic.
“This bag has lost its enchantment,” adds Caleb, weakly pointing to the bag-of-regular-containment held in his other hand.
“What?”
“The bag. It is mundane.”
Essek lifts his gaze to Caleb. “And your…question?”
“Oh, yes. In your studies, did you ever come across a theory, a thought experiment, asking what might happen if dispel magic was cast on a bag of holding?”
Essek’s eyes slide down to the bag. Slowly, as if retrieving the information from the bottom of a very deep well of knowledge, he recites, “The magic linking the pocket dimension to the material plane is temporarily dispelled, and the contents of the bag are inaccessible for the duration.”
Caleb weakly gestures to the mess about their feet. He cannot fault Essek for the mistake; he too did not notice the discrepancy until now. The bag and pouches should not have been emptied.
Essek’s eyes widen and his pupils narrow to a pair of diamond slits. “That is not possible.”
“One minute has passed,” says Caleb, placing his hand inside the bag and meeting the mundane fabric bottom. “The portal should have returned by n—”
“I still cannot levitate,” Essek hisses, ignoring the bag in favour of his own hands again, staring at the unremarkable curves and creases of his palms. “We must be standing in an anti-magic zone. So, there will be an end to the abjuration field.”
Essek hurries out of the cottage, through the front door and into the cold night air. Caleb, throwing the useless bag to the floor, follows him.
A vague terror begins to creep through Caleb’s chest. It is the same fear that throttled him while the silencing collar was on him inside the Heirloom Sphere’s labyrinth. His legs turn numb and wobbly as he stumbles after Essek and onto the road. Essek’s face is a chalky grey colour, though whether from the panic or the darkness it is hard to tell.
Essek attempts to cast prestidigitation. Nothing happens. Not even a flash of failed arcana. He tries again.
He turns to Caleb with wide and wild eyes.
Caleb raises a shaking hand and makes the somatics to summon his dancing lights. He tries, he really does.
“We…we must go farther,” says Essek, turning and marching down the dirt road away from the cottage.
“Essek!” Caleb calls after him, but Essek does not stop. The air is cold, despite the season, and every breeze cuts through their light shirts. Essek grips his own shoulders against the chill.
Caleb follows until Essek stops again. He turns, looking back at the cottage which is now a dull squat shape at the top of the hill.
“So few spells can affect a range this large,” Essek says weakly. His eyes are vague as he looks around at the gloomy trees and fields stretching out in every direction, and the looming shapes of the mountains cutting a slice out of the starry sky. “It cannot—it should not—”
Caleb moves closer into his space and holds his shivering arms tightly, and rubs some warmth into his shoulders. “Essek, you can feel it, can’t you?”
Caleb noticed it as he left the cottage, once he consciously felt for the sensation. Or rather, a lack thereof. Typically, magic rushes around him like the wind itself, or an ambient scent, or music. It appeals to a different and entirely unnamable sense though, of course. He can feel it, touch it, and manipulate it. It is so constant that it becomes subconscious and beyond notice. Until it is gone.
Now, it is like a third eye that has been open his whole life has closed. The world is one shade duller.
“You can feel it, Essek. It is gone.”
Essek’s breathing is quickening. His eyes are locked onto nothing at all. “No. No, it is temporary. There will be a duration.”
Caleb pulls Essek into his arms and squeezes, trying hopelessly to quell the shaking and to sooth the thrashing panic inside himself too. His mind is racing, of course. He must consider the variables. Duration, as Essek said. The limitations of this spell, or curse, or whatever the seal inside the box inflicted upon them. A way to lift it, break it, weaken it.
But Caleb’s mind returns to the symbols he and Essek had been studying, the rune they had spent so much time agonising over. The Ouroborus.
The rune which eats itself, magic which consumes magic. The symbol for infinity, for eternity.