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The knock at the front door of the Krook House is soft and polite, which is how Milo knows that it must be coming from the incoming guests that Ashton had given them a heads up about this morning. No Fownsee Hollow resident would knock like an anxious first-year academy student in the open doorway of their professor’s office.
“Ash!” Milo shouts from their workbench. They are currently elbows-deep in a repair job for some merchant’s portable cart with far too many tiny drawers. “Your friends are here!”
There is a single muffled thud from the direction of Ashton’s bedroom. A few footsteps later, Ashton appears at the edge of Milo’s peripheral vision. “‘Friends’ is a bit of fuckin’ overstatement, even if they did bring me back from the dead.”
“Oh, right,” Milo says, vaguely recalling the actual details of their conversation with Ashton this morning. “It’s those wizards who want to study the shit in your head, yeah?”
“Yeah. Maybe you should have a fucking chat with them. I’m sure they’d like to pick your brain on how all this shit got put there in the first place. It’ll be a real fuckin’ nerd fest in here.” With his usual crooked grin, Ashton clambers away to the front door of the Krook House.
The ensuing conversation between Ashton and presumably these wizard not-friends is too muffled for Milo to properly eavesdrop on, so they refocus on the portable cart in front of them. They’ve just finished reattaching one of the tiny drawers along the sides of the cart when three figures enter their workspace. Milo immediately notices that one of the figures is floating.
“Milo, these are the fucking wizards,” Ashton introduces. “Wizards, this is Milo, my landlord and the reason I’m still fucking standing here.” They gesture to the slag glass in their head.
Milo wipes their greasy hands on a spare rag nearby and takes in the nice—if muted—clothing on their two new houseguests. “Welcome to the Krook House. It’s not much, but we make do with what we can down here. Ashton can tell you what shit not to touch and what shit not to take, but other than that, make yourselves comfortable.”
“Danke,” the red-haired human wizard says in an unfamiliar accent. “Your friend has assured us that discretion is something of a norm in this area.”
Milo nods at the unspoken question. “Yeah, folks here in the Hollow tend to keep shit to themselves. Unless there’s coin involved, but nobody with the type of power and influence that’d be threatening the likes of you two would wanna come down here in the first place. And nobody in this house would fuck over each other’s friends.”
“Wunderbar.” The red-haired man smiles, the corner of his eyes crinkling. “Then, I am the wizard Caleb Widogast, and this is my wizard partner, Essek Thelyss. It is a pleasure to meet you, Ingenieur Krook.”
Milo blinks. They’re not unused to the peculiarities and politeness of the rich and powerful, having received plenty of commissions from nobles and businesses needing an engineering job done with the Fownsee Hollow’s infamous level of discretion. But they’ve never had to deal with it in their own house, and something about these two wizards is throwing them off. Milo can see why Ashton would get along with these guys—they seem like quite an odd couple. There’s a sort of aged warmth and kindness but also an undeniable, underlying danger that Milo would not want to get on the wrong side of.
“Uh, thanks?” is the only thing Milo can think to say. “Not sure what that last thing means, but if it’s an insult, I just hope that it was a good one.”
Caleb’s smile widens. “Ah, it was a compliment based on your trade of choice.” He gestures at Milo’s workbench.
“Cool,” Milo says, their fingers itching with the desire to turn away from this strange conversation and back to their work.
Essek speaks up, “So, you are the one who originally implanted the dunamancy into Ashton’s brain.”
Even though part of Milo had been expecting this due to Ashton’s earlier suggestion, they still feel some wariness—and maybe some misplaced protectiveness—at the change of topic here. “Yeah. Still have no fucking clue what I did, but it apparently worked ‘cause this fucker is still here to leave their shit all over the damn floor.”
“Fuck you,” Ashton says reflexively.
“Pick up your fucking shit,” Milo shoots back with only fondness.
Without blinking an eye at the casual banter, Essek asks Milo, “Would you like to watch over the proceedings today as we run some experiments?”
Milo is equal parts surprised and relieved at the offer. Relieved because they had been expecting to be grilled immediately about their part in Ashton’s batshit insane powers. Surprised because, while Ashton had given them updates every time he went over to the wizards’ place on the progress the wizards were making in studying the magic in his head, Milo never would have expected an invitation extended towards themself in these studies. Their own magic is quite limited, and for a moment, they doubt whether or not they’d have anything to actually contribute to arcane studies being done by seemingly two of the most powerful mages on this planet. But first, there’s a more pressing issue at hand.
At the questioning look that Milo shoots them, Ashton shrugs. “Why the fuck not. I mean, you’ve seen more of me than probably anybody else who’s still fucking alive. Besides, I know you’re fucking dying to talk nerdy with these nerdy-ass wizards.”
That thought hadn’t even really crossed Milo’s mind, and now, it’s been completely flushed out by their sudden need to suppress any blushing at all the implications behind Ashton’s casual statements. In all their years of living with Ashton fucking Greymoore, they’ve found that faking exasperation offers the best cover for embarrassment. “Fucking. Fine. But you’d better not get on my ass again when I have to stay up the next few nights to get Kyresh’s cart back to operational before the annual craft fair.”
“Wouldn’t fucking dream of it,” Ashton says with a grin that means he’s lying through his teeth—and that he knows Milo won’t call his bluff. Yet. “Let’s fucking go then.”
As Ashton leads the four of them to his room, Caleb sidles up next to Milo. “I’m very curious,” the wizard begins quietly, “what your friend has told you about us and our interest in their rather unique set of powers.”
Milo shrugs. “Not much. I know that you two are kinda experts on this ‘dunamancy’ that was in the potion I poured into their head and that you two apparently live together in a fairytale cottage over in the Empire somewhere. I think they also mentioned you can make some magical tower with cat butlers?”
“Ah, ja,” Caleb says with a chuckle. “All true things. My partner’s expertise in dunamancy is unmatched. He is the one who taught me all I know on the subject. I was once his most eager student on the manipulations of time and reality. Now, I am more his assistant and sounding board, if anything. Your friend, though, their powers are something entirely new, and I think they have reignited a spark of curiosity in both my partner and myself.”
“They sure are something,” Milo mutters as they enter Ashton’s room to see Ashton already sprawled out on his cot.
“Now,” Essek is saying to Ashton, “is it still alright for us to peer into your thoughts while you attempt to recall the details of the night you gained your powers?”
“Sure,” Ashton replies. “I’ve told all of you what happened the last fucking time someone tried this shit, and if you wanna take that risk, I’m not going to fucking stop you.”
Essek appears unphased. “We have ways to handle if I get trapped in the mental prisons you described. I am hopeful that being in the same environment as the memories might allow for more of them to return to your mind, but even if my theory is incorrect, I will at least be able to see the administration of the Potion of Possibility with my own eyes. From what I recall, your friends who cast this ritual on you previously were not knowledgeable on dunamancy.”
“Fuck no” is all Ashton says, though Milo spots the brief flash of pain in their good eye. The wound left behind by FCG’s death still feels fresh to all the Krook House residents, even months after that fateful first trip up to Ruidus.
Caleb takes a step towards his partner. “Liebling, I’ve just had a thought. What if I cast the same spell on Ingenieur Krook here simultaneously, and we can compare notes on their respective memories of that night afterwards?”
Essek’s sharp eyes light up with what looks like a mixture of curiosity and delight. “That would provide invaluable data, as we have the only two individuals with first-hand memories of that moment.”
All eyes turn to Milo, who takes an anxious step back. “Uh, what the fuck are we talking about here?”
Ashton is the one who answers. “They wanna take a look into your fucking brain. See if your memories of the night of my fucking fall are the same as mine or if you might’ve seen something about that fucking potion that I missed while I was fucking dying.”
Milo takes a deep breath in an effort to calm themself down from the sudden spike of panic they felt at the idea of some strange wizard rifling around in their head. It only half works. “Okay. Okay, sure, if Ash trusts you two, I guess I can show you what I saw that night.”
“You do not have to,” Caleb is quick to reassure. “We are here for your friend, who has already agreed to be subjected to our studies and has expressed an eagerness to learn about themself alongside us.”
Milo sighs, the last of their fear fading in the face of Caleb’s kind words. “No, no, now I’m curious too, godsdamnit. Just don’t go fucking with my memories while you’re in there. Things already feel weirdly blurry from that night, and I don’t wanna lose even more of my mind to weird-ass magic.”
“I would never,” Caleb promises. The depth of the sincerity in both his voice and his cool blue eyes is terrifying in an entirely different way.
Caleb and Essek arrange the four of them so that Ashton and Milo are sitting back to back on Ashton’s cot with Caleb sitting in front of Milo and Essek in front of Ashton. “Are the two of you ready?” Essek asks Milo and Ashton once everyone is settled on the cot.
Milo feels a squeeze from their hand that’s intertwined with Ashton’s, and after returning the squeeze, they nod at Caleb and can feel Ashton doing the same with Essek behind them. With that, the two wizards speak the same arcane words simultaneously, and Milo soon begins to feel a probing sensation in their mind. It’s not an entirely unfamiliar sensation, as they’ve previously been subjected to this kind of thought detection spell by some of their more paranoid clients, but it’s still not exactly a pleasant feeling.
Essek speaks up, “I want the two of you to try to remember every detail that you can of that night when Ashton gained their powers, particularly anything you can recall about the Potion of Possibility and its administration. What did the potion look like or feel like? What were the exact effects of its magic? How did its application change Ashton’s state of being at the time?”
Milo closes their eyes, takes another deep breath, squeezes Ashton’s hand again, and remembers. They move past the memories of the job assignment, the failed heist, the fateful fall. They remember Ashton laid out on their workbench, bleeding and shattered and barely conscious. Barely breathing. They remember the look in Ashton’s sole functional eye as he drifted and faded and slipped away underneath their own trembling hands. They remember the potion nearly falling out of Ashton’s limp grasp. A mercurial silver that almost floats like bottled mist against a starry night sky. They remember the feeling of desperation, of panic, of helplessness. They remember the heat of melting gold and the sharpness at the edges of slag glass. They remember the steam that rises from Ashton’s head once they pour the potion into the gaping hole there. A mesmerizing darkness spattered with pinpricks of light, like the floating mist has transformed into the night sky filled with constellations itself. They remember Ashton’s breaths evening out, the bleeding slowing from fatal to life-threatening. They remember the faintest sparkles of light that started glowing from behind the new glass window implanted in Ashton’s skull.
Just as Milo’s memories are beginning to veer into the long period of Ashton’s recovery and the testing of his new powers, the probing sensation that has been following each one of their memories of that night disappears, and they open their eyes. Caleb meets their gaze with a reassuring smile just as a pair of gasps emerge from behind them. Milo twists around to see Essek looking slightly dazed and Ashton nearly bent over themself. Squeezing the hand still held in theirs, Milo can’t help but feel relief at the squeeze they receive in return.
Between the three of them, Milo and the wizards manage to rearrange Ashton to sit with their back against the wall that their cot is set up beside. The process is only made more difficult by the fact that Ashton’s nose is bleeding, and they have to hold one of Essek’s handkerchiefs against the offending nostril to stem the flow of nearly black blood. Once Milo has settled back on the cot in front of Ashton, they are surprised to find a rising anger within them at the sight of their friend wounded once again in their house.
“Do you need anything else from us, Ashton?” Essek asks, and even his soft, smooth voice makes Milo feel like snapping back with something disproportionately harsh.
“Nah,” Ashton says, his voice muffled behind the handkerchief. “There’s not really any fucking anger about it this time. I just need to fucking collapse for a few hours.”
Essek nods. “We will leave the two of you alone while we compare notes on our findings. Do not hesitate to come fetch us if either of you do end up needing anything. We will just be back in the main room.”
With that, the two wizards leave Ashton’s room, their voices a low murmur that fades as they move deeper into the Krook House.
After ensuring the wizards’ departure, Milo turns back to Ashton. “Well. That sucked ass.”
Ashton gives a muffled laugh. “Fuck off, Miles. You’re not even the one who’s fucking bleeding here.”
“What, you think I like seeing you bleed out all over my floor again?”
“I never fucking said that.” Something in Ashton’s expression softens. “That was intense as fuck, even for me who’s done this exact same fucking thing before.”
“Yeah.” Milo looks down at their fidgeting hands, avoiding the softness in Ashton’s good eye. “I just hope those two got something useful outta it.”
Ashton finally peels the handkerchief away from their face and scrubs away the last of the dried blood. “From the look of them as they walked out, they definitely found some fuckery or another. Either that or they’re about to start fucking on our communal couch.”
Milo groans. “Not again, godsdamnit. Do you have any idea how long it takes to clean bodily fluids from that thing?”
“Much longer without your fancy-ass magical cleaning machine,” Ashton says with a grin that could almost be called salacious.
Narrowing their eyes in suspicion, Milo is just about to launch into an interrogation when they hear the sound of the front door slamming open and shut.
The familiar voice of Anni Aughta—presumably fresh off an afternoon gig—rings throughout the entire Krook House. “Who the fuck?!”
With a glare at Ashton to communicate that their current conversation is not over by any means, Milo slips away to do some damage control. They brace themself for the barrage of questions about to come their way, but deep down, they do take some small satisfaction in the fact that they can spare Ashton from the incoming onslaught.
If anyone’s going to be interrogating Ashton, it’ll be Milo. After everything that’s happened, they think they’ve earned the right to that much. These wizards might be world-renowned experts on the magic fueling Ashton’s unique powers, but Milo will always be the original engineer, experimenter, and life-saver.