Chapter Text
“The notorious Cats. Witchers—but failures. Unsuccessful mutations. Madmen, psychopaths and sadists. They nicknamed themselves ‘Cats,’ because they really are like cats: aggressive, cruel, unpredictable and impulsive.”
(A. Sapkowski, Season of Storms, translated by D. French)
The witcher school of the cat is believed to have been formed by a group of students rebelling against their teachers; they were led by ruthless mages looking for a way to develop completely emotionless, brutal witchers and became the most violent and feared witcher school in the Continent, turning from monster hunters to spies and assassins. This school seeked individuals with a particular violent disposition, including women and non-humans. Sources report of a splinter group who rebelled in turn against the mages leading these experiments, seeking to reform the institution from within, but no reliable accounts exist of this.
—Effenberg and Talbot, Encyclopaedia Maxima Mundi, vol. XV
Among the elven races, the Aen Dhuibe (People of the Darkness, or dark elves) are the most mysterious and secretive. They inhabited the small kingdom of Dol Aine (the Valley of Light) in the long disputed region of Angren, until they were driven away by the Redanian army. The Court of Light, led by Queen Leylas Kryn, was forced into exile after the Nilfgaardian Empire failed to uphold its end of the concordat that ensured Dol Aine’s neutrality in exchange for protection.
—Annals of the Second Northern War
Caleb found the man he was looking for in a hut not far from the village.
He was standing on the doorway of the hut, to be precise, with his hands on his hips and—judging from his expression—a migraine, facing a group of villagers. From what Caleb knew of him, and from what he knew of villagers everywhere, the fact there wasn’t a torch or a pitchfork in sight was surprisingly good news.
“It’s the sheep,” one of the men said. “They are disappearing one by one.”
“And the chickens,” a woman added.
The man on the doorway raised his hands—to silence the bystanders or to conjure a firestorm from the sky, Caleb wasn’t sure. Since no fire rained down from the heavens, it was probably the former.
He was short, barefoot and with a lithe frame, and yet he had a presence around him that made you think you’d better do as he said. The clothes on him were not elaborate or rich by any definition, and yet their cut and the way they were layered and worn—the asymmetrical hem of his blue surcoat, the bright green sash gleaming in the sunlight, the strings closing the cuffs of his chemise around his wrists, the knitted half-gloves—had purpose and intentionality that went beyond the utilitarian.
He would also appear human at first glance. The illusion spell was convincing, but it shimmered a little around the edges if you looked at it just right.
Confident he’d found the man he wanted, Caleb looked for a spot of shade and leaned against the wooden wall of an outhouse, crossing his arms on his chest as he waited. The weather was getting warmer, but he was comfortable in his light armour.
“I will give you herbs that you may burn in your sheep pens and hen houses to keep the foxes and the wolves away,” said the elf, just as Caleb felt his eyes on him.
It was a quick, neutral gaze. There was no reason for the elf to recognise Caleb, after all, since their previous meeting had been short and not particularly pleasant. Many years ago, Caleb had been summoned to Dol Aine to be received by the Queen herself, who seemed to distrust humans and witchers alike, but didn’t turn her nose up at a spot of good old political assassination. Whatever she had heard about the school of the cat, though, it had been old news by then, and when it turned out that Caleb did, in fact, turn his nose up at games of powers leading to senseless deaths, he had been politely but firmly invited to leave.
The Queen’s advisor had said nothing. Caleb had noticed the dark elf staring at him only once, his eyes looking right through him as if he wasn’t even there. They had been remarkable eyes: Caleb remembered them well, but then he remembered everything well.
As he was considering this memory, the figure went back inside, all but slamming a rickety front door that looked like it could barely take it.
The handful of villagers started streaming back to the muddy Midcopse. “He’s in a foul mood today,” someone said. “Better come back tomorrow.”
Patiently, Caleb let the villagers disappear down the path, nodding when they noticed him but otherwise paying them no mind. Then he stepped out of the shadow.
The door to the hut was unlocked, and no trap sprung when he pushed it open.
“May I come in?” he said to the empty room.
The hut was simple: one main room with a stove, a table and a few cupboards. Some books scattered around, notes that revealed nothing when he glanced at them, a few jars and bundles of herbs that smelled medicinal. To his left, a doorway led to what Caleb imagined was a bedroom.
Since his request to come in wasn’t technically denied, he stepped inside, easing the door closed behind him with more gentleness than its owner did.
The bedroom had nothing but a closet, a table and a small bed (hay, burlap and cotton, from the look and the smell of it) pushed against a wall. No windows, no decorations, no personal effects. Caleb had seen the inside of a few mages’ homes, and he couldn’t see a speck of the opulence he was accustomed to here.
Maybe his man was fully committed to his disguise as a village witch. Or maybe, like any other mage Caleb had met, he had a trick up his sleeve.
But where had he gone?
Since he somehow seemed to be alone, Caleb dropped to his knees, checking under the bed for pentagrams or trap doors. Nothing there, or on the ceiling or any of the walls. He left the closet last.
It was not the lack of clothes that surprised him; more the fact that it wasn’t a closet at all.
The door opened on a huge room, with a high, wooden ceiling, columns and windows that let the orange-violet light of a clear sunset pour in like water for a warm bath. The space was filled with furniture: plush carpets, padded chairs and, most remarkable of all, rows and rows of hardwood bookshelves. A low, harmonious music played in some corner of this impossible library.
It wasn’t a closet. It was a whole demiplane.
Caleb wasn’t so surprised as to miss a shadow darting quickly from one bookcase to the next.
“Essek,” he called out. He walked over, poking his head from one aisle to the other—the carpets gave pleasantly under his weight, entirely as plush as they looked—until he saw him.
And the glyph on the floor between them, peeking from under a hastily repositioned rug.
“Country life has made you sloppy,” he said, side-stepping the rug to reach the mage. “What was that supposed to do?”
Affecting the look of someone whose plans to get rid of an unwanted guest hadn't just been uncovered, Essek placed a book back into its shelf with a weary sigh. “Teleport you very far away from here.” His tone was too acid for it to be a lie.
Without his disguise, the dark elf looked exactly as Caleb remembered him. The court fineries were gone, true, along with most—but not all—of the jewels. But seventeen years hadn’t brought a single wrinkle on his high, smooth dusky-violet brow, and his figure was as lean and svelte as it had been back then. He was wearing the same clothes as before, which meant they were either real or he liked them enough not to change them. His feet weren’t bare anymore, but encased in a pair of fine slippers. They also hovered a few inches above the floor.
“Essek Thelyss of the Aen Dhuibe, former advisor to Queen Leylas of Dol Aine and current village witch.” Caleb waited for a response and got none. He huffed in amusement. “You’re a tough man to find.”
The look Essek levelled at him could have melted ice. “That’s the purpose,” he said, “of being in hiding.” His tone was haughty, which somewhat soured the effect of his otherwise pleasantly accented voice.
Raising an eyebrow, Caleb gestured at the room around them. “You’re not exactly keeping a low profile.”
“I don’t let just anyone into my inner sanctum.” Essek turned towards him fully and tucked his hands in his sleeves with fluid, graceful movements. “Usually I place my traps much sooner than that, and with more accuracy, but I was curious to see how far you’d go. I remember you, vatt’ghern.”
Caleb didn’t flinch: he was used to being off-handedly addressed as ‘witcher’—or less tasteful equivalents—by people who didn’t bother learning his name. “I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. It’s not a fond memory.” The elf’s lips curled in a barely-there smile. “But, as much as the consequences were painful, I have to admit it was amusing to watch someone say no to Leylas for a change. You clearly went through some effort to find me, Caleb Widogast. What do you want?”
So the Queen’s former advisor did recall his name. Caleb smothered his surprise and crossed his arms, making the leather of his armour creak. “Shall we go straight to business?”
Essek cocked his head, batting his lashes with faux courtesy for good measure. “Are you here for tea and gossip? I’m afraid I’ve run out of the former, and there’s nothing I could tell you about the state of the world that you don’t already know.”
“I find it hard to believe such ignorance, Shadowhand.”
“Don’t,” Essek said, his expression souring. “I don’t bear that title anymore. If I wanted salt rubbed into the wound while everyone around me complains about how tragically we’ve fallen from grace, I would have fled with the rest of the court.”
“How’s Skellige treating your Queen?”
“Ask her.”
“You truly do not know?”
“It seems my imperial messengers are a bit slow to reach Middle-of-Nowhere in War-Ravaged County.” Essek’s manners were evaporating along with his patience. “What do you want, vatt’ghern?”
“Information,” Caleb said hastily, before Essek found another way of teleporting him to the bottom of a lake. “About something called a beacon.”
As soon as those words left Caleb’s lips, Essek became as still as a statue. That alone was an interesting reaction. Caleb waited to see what would follow.
“Let’s talk,” Essek said.
They sat down on two chairs in front of a window. The landscape outside was blurred by the warped glass, and Caleb wondered what he would find beyond it. Neither this room nor what was outside of it were on the same plane of existence as the universe he knew.
It was a good reminder, if he ever needed one, to tread carefully. Despite his diminished status, Essek was one of the most powerful mages alive, as well as a former spymaster.
Caleb made a note to ask Essek about his demiplane later, if he proved receptive to that kind of conversation. The mage was as prickly as Caleb remembered, but he didn’t seem to have lost his appetite for complex magic even in exile.
As soon as they sat down, Essek spoke. “What do you know about the beacon?”
“Barely anything,” Caleb answered truthfully. “I was hoping you would enlighten me. I have heard rumours about a device from long ago, of Aen Dhuibe origin, referred to with that name.”
“Heard how?”
“Ah, read, mostly. An account from Geoffrey Monck.” Essek scoffed at that, but he gestured for him to continue. “Merely a footnote in one of his treatises about djinns, but intriguing. I thought if anyone could know something about an ancient Aen Dhuibe artefact it could be you, so I followed your trail.”
“My trail.” Essek was running the thumb of his left hand on his nails in a repetitive gesture. “How interesting. And why do you think I can help you?”
Caleb shrugged. “I was hoping you could tell me more about this beacon, and maybe point me in its direction.”
Essek stopped his repetitive motion. “Do you know about the elven ruins nearby?”
“I have heard someone mention them in the village, yes.” Caleb wondered what was his point.
“They are full of treasures, of many different kinds. Someone says they hold something… unique.”
Caleb couldn’t help it: he laughed. “It can’t be that simple.” But what if it was? he thought. What if, for once, things could go in the direction he needed them to? “Is this why you chose Midcopse as your hiding place?”
The elf’s face was as unreadable as a porcelain mask. “Perhaps.” He narrowed his eyes. “Did your human scholar talk about the endless tapestry of fate and chance, and promise you the ability to pluck a thread from it?”
A bit light-headed, Caleb nodded. That was a pretty close summary. “More or less.”
“And if such a thing existed, you think people wouldn’t have tried to go inside the ruins and retrieve it?”
Caleb remembered the tales he heard in the village as he passed through. “It seems some did, only they never came back.”
At those words, Essek smiled without baring his teeth. “Where did the rumours come from, then?” He rested his chin on his hand. “There is something in those ruins that interests me, beyond the mystical relic that’s rumoured to be there.”
Caleb waited for him to elaborate.
“Knowledge. Concrete, hopefully well-preserved documentation of an ancient civilisation. Danger, for sure. To be honest, I’ve been wanting to go there myself for quite some time, but I was deterred from going very far by my stubborn sense of self-preservation. With a witcher as an escort, though…”
Caleb kept his expression neutral. “I would certainly appreciate the assistance of an accomplished mage such as you. I’m worried about what it would cost me, though.”
Essek’s smile turned wry. “A favour. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“This is going to get me in trouble, isn’t it? I might try my luck by myself.”
Essek clicked his tongue. “Such little faith in me, witcher. I promise I won’t ask you anything you’re not willing to give me.” As Caleb regarded him, the elf assumed the most innocent, honest expression he could.
Caleb appreciated the effort, but he didn’t trust him. Still, he hadn’t lied when he said he could use Essek’s assistance. He knew both how dangerous elven ruins could be and how useful magic was.
“Fine,” he said.
Essek’s smile now looked genuinely pleased. “Excellent. When would you be ready to go?”
Caleb shrugged eloquently.
To his surprise, Essek stood up—or floated up, more accurately. “I will teleport us both to the ruins, then.” He scoffed at Caleb’s surprised expression. “I carry all I need with me. It’s not much, these days,” he added with some irritation. “And, as you can imagine, I don’t have many commitments.”
“I don’t know. Finding disappearing ovines and poultry sounds like a full time occupation to me.”
Essek didn’t dignify that observation with a reply.
🟍
“This isn’t how I left it,” Essek stated.
His voice was dry and a little affronted, which made Caleb inclined to believe him. He had his arms crossed under the short fur cape he had conjured, adding yet another layer to his attire.
Walking a little closer to the edge, Caleb examined the gap opening at the end of a large set of stairs leading down, not long past the archway opening on the side of a foothill that allowed access to the ruins. The stone floor had crumbled and the drop was so wide he couldn’t see the end of it, not even with the aid of the Cat potion he had drunk earlier.
“You’ve been here before,” Caleb observed. “What’s on the other side?”
“I can’t even tell if there is another side,” Essek retorted, but he joined Caleb at the edge. Even without any alchemical aid, his eyesight was better than Caleb’s by far. “I can see it now. There is a ledge that looks undamaged, and a passage to the ruins. I could try and open a portal there.”
“You should go first.” Caleb gestured to the elf’s floating feet. “Even if you miscalculate…”
“It’s rude to point,” Essek said in the same dry tone as before, and when he turned his back to cast his spell, Caleb smiled to himself.
The otherworldly glow of the portal flared so quickly that it hurt Caleb’s eyes until he shielded them. When he lowered his hand, Essek was gone.
He waited. And waited.
“Essek?” he called, and was answered only by echoes.
The portal’s edges started to flicker. There was no time to think. Wherever the portal led, he would find Essek on the other side.
The only reason Caleb didn’t curse as he stepped through was because he had no time to think of a suitable invective.
🟍
When he rematerialised, it was pitch darkness. The potion allowed him to see clearly, albeit in muted greys, but there was just nothing to see beyond two parallel stone walls at his sides. Even the glow of the portal had faded when it closed behind him.
He listened. He was alone.
“Essek?” he called again, and got the answer he was expecting. The silence was broken only by his own long sigh.
Combat was so much easier.
He did what he was taught to do in front of an impasse: rest, reassess, revise. He stilled as if in meditation, although he was still standing. He took stock of the situation: narrow walls, a low stone ceiling, a flat stone floor. A corridor. The passage behind him was obstructed by rubble, but it extended forward in front of him, disappearing into a darkness his eyes couldn’t pierce. He sniffed, and the smell was—for lack of a better term—cold. It was not the kind of musty dampness you would find in a cellar: the air had the stillness of a tomb.
He did the only thing he could do: he walked forward.
Soon the walls opened in a wider hall. Something hit Caleb’s senses all at once, and he realised it was air. An air current meant a passage, an opening.
“Essek?” he called again, with no result. “Damn portals,” he added under his breath. He didn’t know why they ended up being separated, but he could guess it wasn’t the intended effect. Well, that settled it: he would find his mage and get out of there.
The first lamp post lit up as he took his next step.
Blinded by the sudden light, Caleb froze, his hand flying to his back before his mind could formulate a conscious thought, ready to grip the hilt of one of his blades. It was just that, though: a lamp post, lithe and curved, made of metal and glass, and a mage light trapped inside the lantern, bobbing and swirling like a firefly. It cast a bright blue light around it and on Caleb, who was a few feet from it.
Slowly, he brought his hand down. He could almost feel his pupils contracting as they adjusted to the light, and as he looked around, he let out a long exhale.
As the presence of a lamp post suggested, he was in a street. The impression of open air around him wasn’t inaccurate: he could see the shapes of buildings around him, tall and broad, with archways, stairs, windows. There were terraces and columns, and even decrepit lawns, though Caleb could only guess at what kind of grass or plant could grow underground. In any case, the point was moot, since there hadn’t been anyone around to tend to them for centuries.
As he was slowly turning on the spot, his senses still painfully alert, he heard shouting.
He was too far to understand the words, but he recognised the voice.
Shit, Caleb cursed in his mind, then out loud, just to drive the point home.
He started running towards Essek, never stopping, not even when his presence made more lamp posts light up at regular intervals along the street he was sprinting down. Light made his sprint easier, and his keen senses were quick to locate the source of the noise: a crack in a wall of one of the buildings.
“Va vort a me, gram’a creutairean.”
It was indeed Essek. Partially reassured by the fact he sounded more angry than in agony, Caleb ran up to the building.
The elven mage was in the middle of the small, dilapidated room, which was relatively clear from rubble and detritus, and he was surrounded by a shimmering magic shield while screaming the whole thesaurus of Elven curses. Caleb wasn’t very fluent in Elder Speech, but he could recognise swearing in almost any language.
“Essek!” he shouted. “What’s going on?”
The string of very irritated elven curses that was curdling the air stopped as Essek noticed him. “You took your time!” he said in lieu of a welcome. “Get in here and help me!” The elf’s tone was impatient and angry, but there was something else under it, something Caleb could recognise earlier too, no matter the language.
Fear.
Caleb didn’t stop to consider which kind of horrible monster Essek might be facing. Without a second thought, he squeezed sideways through the crack while unsheathing his silver sword, the runes carved on it flaring as if hit by sunlight, spelling out an incantation and an intention:
Fate doesn’t bind me, for I make my own.
But there wasn’t any monster in the room, nor any beast or anything else.
Except…
There was something on the floor. Many things, writhing. As Caleb stepped closer, something landed on his face and he swatted at it instinctively, but it didn’t react. He looked at his gloved hand and he saw fine, clear filaments.
Cobwebs. It was just spiders.
“Kill them! Burn them!”
To Essek’s credit, the spiders were many, and although they weren’t as big as an arachnomorph—a swarm of those would have been a challenge for a lone witcher—some of them came close to that.
Tightening the grip on his sword and ready to cast the Sign Igni with his other hand, Caleb let out a sigh and he stepped closer.
🟍
“I hate spiders,” Essek said later, once the danger was gone. The floor between them was covered in the remains of charred and slashed arachnids, and the air was heavy with the smell of death. “Useless, ugly, disgusting creatures.”
It sounded like he was half complaining and half explaining. Caleb kept wordlessly cleaning his sword with a cloth. As the adrenaline dissipated from his blood, he took deep, controlled breaths, wiping the death he just imparted from his mind just like he was doing with the thick black ichor which had seeped into the fuller and the runes carved into the metal.
It was something, Caleb mused, to see Essek’s composure so ruffled for a change. Then again, maybe it was a more natural reaction than being able to kill without flinching or thinking about it twice. He didn’t know.
Eventually, Essek took a deep breath and seemed to steel himself for his next words. “Thank you,” he said, “for helping me.” He sounded a little incredulous. Perhaps it was just the lack of practice.
With his eyes still on the dull silver, Caleb found himself smiling. “Of course, Essek. All in a day’s work.” Satisfied, he tucked the cloth in one of his pouches and picked up Fate’s scabbard, letting the blade slip back into its leather-and-silver sheath with a whisper. “Now, if you don’t have any kittens I need to rescue from the top of a tree…”
“Don’t push it.”
As Essek finished cleaning his clothes with one last, quick spell, Caleb’s eyes were caught by something on the wall. He moved closer, sidestepping charred corpses and piles of rubble.
“Can I have some light?” he asked unthinkingly.
He expected a snarky retort, or a lecture on the use of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, but neither came. Maybe there was something in his voice, or maybe Essek was still shaken from his spider misadventure.
Or maybe, as Caleb realised when he found the mage already at his side, his attention had been caught by the wall, too. “An feainn,” Essek murmured, off-handedly tracing an arc in front of them. A luminous aura shone upon them, and upon the wall.
It wasn’t a fresco, as Caleb had thought at the beginning; shadows pooled in the stony divots and valleys of the bas-relief. Pieces of it were missing—likely the dust they were stepping on—but some sections were still in good condition.
“It’s a procession,” Caleb said, pointing at the lower margin. “There is only one whole figure left, but look: more feet.”
“Caleb.” Essek wasn’t looking at him: his eyes were captured by a detail in the upper part of the carving, and they were wide. “It’s one of my kind.”
Caleb shifted his gaze from Essek to the figure on the wall. Now that he was focusing on it, he noticed the long ears and the sharp cheekbones. “These ruins are a former elven dwelling, I don’t—”
“It’s a dark elf,” Essek interrupted him. He reluctantly tore his eyes from the wall to stare at Caleb with barely contained excitement. “I can tell. Caleb, these are Aen Dhuibe ruins.”
Caleb blinked. “You said you’ve been here before. You didn’t know that?”
Essek shook his head. If his feet had been on the ground, Caleb suspected he would be bouncing. “Never this far, not on my own. Do you know how rare Aen Dhuibe ruins are?”
Caleb did not. “Very?”
“Everything was believed to have been destroyed.” There was true emotion in Essek’s voice. “Everything. These are unique.”
“That would explain why an ancient Aen Dhuibe relic would be here,” Caleb mused as Essek floated closer to the wall.
“What? Oh, yes.” Essek didn’t even turn. “It’s hard to tell, but this could have been a religious site, or an official building. We should explore, look for more carvings. Or writings,” he added in a reverent whisper.
He sounded so genuinely excited that Caleb would have had a hard time saying no, even if he hadn’t been interested in the ruins himself. “You do remember why we’re here, right?”
Essek’s shoulders sagged a little. “The beacon, yes.” When he finally turned towards Caleb, his expression was unreadable. “I believe this is what in Common Speech you would call a ‘two birds, one stone’ situation, is it not?”
Caleb shook his head, but he was smiling. “Just be careful. And let me walk into any room first. This place has been abandoned for a long time, but the magic in it is still active. While I was looking for you, a row of lamp posts lit up.”
The interest in Essek’s eyes made them light up, just like the lamp posts. “That’s incredible. The magic is still active after all this time! I wonder…” Then he deflated a little. “Whatever’s here, it is interfering with my magic. We should do well to remember that. We’re going to have to find a way out that doesn’t require a portal.”
🟍
Of course, things went wrong as soon as they stepped into the next chamber. Caleb entered first, cautious and alert. His medallion didn’t start humming until Essek followed him inside, the cat’s head thumping on the black leather that covered his chest with each vibration, and by then it was too late.
He wasn’t keeping an eye on Essek when it happened, because the elf was walking behind him—well, not ‘walking’. He was doing his weird, show-off-y floaty thing, until he wasn’t doing it anymore.
Caleb turned around immediately when he heard Essek cry out, but his alarm simmered down to concern when it was followed by a string of muttered curses, as well as some mysterious clattering noises. His knowledge of Elder Speech was enough to appreciate the creative swearing as he quickly reached the elf, who was on the floor.
There was something different about him, and it wasn’t just because he looked in pain as he ran his hands over his left ankle.
When Caleb crouched beside him, something on the floor caught his attention. It wasn’t the rubble he was getting used to. Looking around, he saw things scattered around Essek: several books, a satchel of some kind, crystals, small bottles and jars, a few of which were cracked or broken. Thinking about the noise he heard after Essek screamed, it sounded remarkably like someone had carelessly cleared the top of a desk and sent everything on the floor.
It didn’t take long for Caleb to add that to the fact that Essek wasn’t floating anymore. “Something dispelled all the magic you had on you,” he observed. “A force field, probably, since I would have activated a one-time alarm spell when I stepped in.”
“Remarkable detective work,” Essek hissed. “Next time I’ll ask you what’s two plus two.”
Caleb thought he had no more tired sighs in him, but he was wrong. The fool was in pain, he reminded himself. He was allowed to be waspish. This time. “Are you hurt?”
Essek sniffed and seemed to bite back a scathing retort. When he tried to stretch his foot, he hissed in pain. “It seems I am,” he said, a little chastised.
Caleb studied the dejected look on his face, then let his eyes take in the rest of him. He knew mages liked to… touch up their appearance to meet the expectations of their rank, as they put it. It was second nature to all of them, he was made to understand. He had assumed that was true for Essek as well without even thinking about it.
Underneath Essek’s illusions, as far as Caleb could see, were a slightly rattier surcoat than the one he had been wearing, a not-so-fluffy fur cape, and foot wraps instead of fine slippers. To Caleb’s surprise, the jewellery was real, and so was Essek’s face, for the most part. Caleb smiled despite himself: the humidity and the exertion had made his previously pristine hair curl and puff up a little, and—before reminding himself there was no point in having an opinion about it—Caleb thought he liked it better this way.
That was when Essek caught him staring. “Help me collect my possessions, instead of gawking,” he said, starting to pick up some of his things.
“Do you really need all this?” said Caleb, even as he started to reach for the belongings out of Essek’s reach. When the mage had said he carried all he had with him, he wasn’t expecting this.
Essek scowled, then gestured at the remains of a broken vial. “Well, that contained a healing draught, so yes, it would probably have come in handy to fix my ankle.”
“It’s probably just a sprain,” Caleb muttered under his breath.
Essek shifted the books he was holding in the crook of one arm to free his other hand. He twisted his fingers elegantly, and Caleb couldn’t help but notice the accurately trimmed nails he remembered from before were actually jagged and uneven. He arched an eyebrow at the thought of Essek Thelyss biting his nails, but he didn’t say anything.
As he was expecting, no magic happened. He waited until Essek realised it for himself before saying, “When I said anti-magic force field, I meant—”
“I know, I know, I just had to try.” Essek sounded more despondent than irritated. He huffed once, collected his thoughts for a moment, then placed the books on the floor and tried to stand up.
Caleb knew better than to interfere, but it was like watching a kitten trying to climb out of a copper bathtub. “How far do you think it reaches?” he asked, mostly to distract them both.
“How should I know?” Essek retorted automatically, pausing to catch his breath. He was still on the floor.
Caleb glanced at the elf’s hands, clenched into fists in the dirt, and went back to gathering without saying anything. He had managed to collect all the vials that didn’t break in the fall.
“Probably not far,” Essek added, in a milder tone. “Enchantments like these are usually localised, like traps or glyphs.” He looked down, sweeping the floor with a hand, reaching further to do the same on a tile closer to the entrance. “Aha. A rune, activated by magic. My magic, when I floated over it. Not a force field after all.”
The smugness in his tone was undermined by the fact that he was clenching his teeth against the pain, having jostled his ankle as he moved. As insufferable as he was sometimes, Caleb would have rather had him smug than in pain. “I was wrong,” he admitted easily. “Do you need my help?”
Essek opened his mouth just as something moved behind Caleb. He reached for his swords as all the vials he was holding dropped on the floor and shattered.
At first Caleb thought it was another spider, but it only took him a moment to realise his mistake. It was shaped like a spider, but when it stretched its legs it almost dwarfed Caleb.
And it was whirring. Its limbs and core were made of polished, solid metal.
Caleb’s mind hosted a neat taxonomy of dangerous creatures, a catalogue he could pull from almost instantly, but he had never faced anything like that before. Maybe it’s not hostile, he thought, right before the construct hissed like bellows, steam shooting out from its ‘abdomen’, and thrust the point of one of his long, sharp legs at Caleb’s chest.
It was quick but awkward, and Caleb dodged it easily. Fortune, then, he thought, drawing his steel blade. Fortune’s edge knocked aside the next attack easily, with an ugly noise of metal on metal. It would be a bit of a challenge, Caleb assessed, but he could take this thing one on one.
“Caleb,” he heard Essek say.
He visualised it clearly: severing his legs to hobble it, then a hit to its core. “I got this.”
“You might want to tell the others, too, maybe.”
The others?
Caleb’s hopeful mood soured considerably as another construct rolled forward, joining the first one. “How many?” he asked, just as he heard more whirring behind him. Ah, fuck.
“I see three of them.” From what he could hear, Essek had moved on the floor to hide behind him. Wise move.
Caleb raised the hand that was not holding the sword, quickly, and the constructs caught the movement just before the translucent sphere went up around him and Essek, shielding them from the attack.
When he checked on Essek, the worry on the elf’s face had been replaced by curiosity. He reached out, his touch making the barrier ripple. “It looks like an abjuration dome, but more rudimentary,” he observed.
Caleb almost snarked back, but he stopped himself. Essek didn’t mean to be rude: he was just stating a fact. Either exile had worn out his courtly manners or he just didn’t care anymore. Either way, Caleb was too busy to deal with that.
One of the constructs took Essek’s curiosity for an invitation and tried to claw at his fingers. Essek withdrew them immediately. “How long is the barrier going to last?” he asked Caleb.
Caleb, who was counting down the seconds in his head, had just reached the single digits. “Not long. Get ready.”
“To do what?” asked Essek. A good question: a mage without magic was the definition of pointlessness, and they both knew it.
Caleb adjusted the grip on his sword. “Surprise me,” he said before casting the protective barrier again a moment before the old one vanished, and then stepping out of it.
Fortune hit the first construct true, slicing two of its legs and unbalancing it, opening its core to a strike. Caleb might not have known what it was, but it fell apart just like it should have. A thick black ichor pooled out of the mangled metal, similar to blood but with a strong alchemical smell.
Caleb whirled away, careful not to turn his back to the other constructs. Unlike beasts, they couldn’t sense death in the metaphorical bloodshed Caleb had just caused, and they were not more cautious now that their counterpart had served as an example with its death.
As long as they stayed focused on him as the bigger threat and ignored the helpless sorcerer, it was fine.
As Caleb feinted and scratched the side of one of the constructs with his blade, he added more items to the list of information he had about these creatures: they didn’t seem to have any sight or sense of smell, so they had to sense movement. Just like the lamp posts, he realised. It made sense. Too late to do anything about that, but it was good to know.
He got rid of one of them temporarily by casting the Aard Sign. He turned, ready to finish the third construct, and found the space empty.
He knew Essek was in trouble without having to look. He looked anyway.
The third construct was not far from Essek, who was no longer covered by the Yrden barrier. Caleb had a sudden vision of metal claws rending fine (but not the finest) clothes and soft (or at least soft-looking) indigo skin.
“Essek, don’t move,” he said. “It cannot hear or see you.”
To his credit, even if his eyes were wide and Caleb could hear his heart beating frantically, Essek obeyed. He looked at Caleb. “Behind you!” he screamed.
Caleb whirled just in time to parry instinctively and to think, four constructs, then.
Pain ricocheted up his arm to his shoulder and back, and the force behind the hit sent him on the floor, making him lose his grip on his sword. From the clanging noise of metal against stone, Fortune had fallen somewhere too far to reach.
His shoulder was throbbing. That would hurt tomorrow. If he survived, of course.
You’ve been through worse, Widogast, he chided himself.
Looking up at the looming shape of the metal spider, he could see a place where the metal plates of the construct seemed to have come loose. He unsheathed one of the daggers strapped to his chest so he could jam it into it. It was pretty clear that the thing couldn’t feel pain, but several inches of steel in its mechanical underbelly surely had to be inconvenient.
The construct raised a sharp leg, ready to skewer Caleb through his leather armour. Or at least it tried, and it tried, without success.
It was the opening Caleb needed to slide away from under it and make his way towards Essek. The mage was hurt and without his powers, he couldn’t run or defend himself. It would have been annoying and inconvenient for Caleb to find a way out of the ruins by himself, sure, but most of all it was unfair towards Essek.
When he saw Essek still frozen against the wall, the construct still hunting for him like a deaf and blind hound, he only had one thought in his mind: Get away from him.
The pattern his left hand wove through the air was new and untested, plucked from observation, intuition, his rudimentary understanding of magic, and the mix of instinct and intelligence that nourished his penchant for creation.
When he completed the Sign, the monster was tossed to the other side of the room and hit a wall with a crash. It didn’t move again.
He didn’t have time to be proud of himself: the unmistakable noise of a dagger hitting the floor had him turn around and face the last of the constructs still standing.
He raised his hand to draw Fate from its scabbard, but the construct sensed his gesture, turning its unseeing head towards him. Caleb was too busy dodging it to pull out his silver sword and to notice the slippery pool of dark, oily liquid from one of the destroyed constructs, which had pooled behind him.
This time, when he fell, something in his right wrist gave in, and it was all he could do not to scream.
The construct moved closer, once again looming above him. Caleb, who was holding his breath against the foul smell of the black oil, was starting to feel dizzy from shock and pain. He raised his left hand to cast, but no magic responded to his call: it was too soon.
He didn’t understand what that loud noise of metal hitting metal was until he heard Essek say, “Let’s see how you like this.”
He was standing, albeit not so sure on his feet, and struggling to hold Caleb’s sword upright, which he had just used to hit the construct.
Caleb had just a moment to appreciate the startling image of Essek holding his sword, before he came back to his senses. Even if Essek’s hit hadn’t been strong enough to damage it, the construct’s attention was torn between the two of them now.
Letting the pain slide to the back of his mind, Caleb fell back into his training, rolling on the floor and rising on his knees on the other side of the construct in one fluid motion, at the end of which he was wielding Fate with his left hand.
The crack in the construct’s armour was a slash, now, and when he sunk his blade into it, as he had foreseen, the damned thing stopped moving. It also gushed dense, pungent oil all over his hand when he pulled Fate out of it, but Caleb was too glad to be alive—that the both of them were alive—to care.
When the inert metal husk fell on the floor, he could see Essek on the other side of it, panting a little and using Fortune as a crutch. “Was that enough of a surprise?” he asked.
Caleb, who was catching his breath as well, started laughing. After a moment, Essek joined him.
🟍
After healing himself with a potion, Caleb took his steel sword back and helped Essek to a safe-looking corner of the room, where they could lick their wounds and rest.
Caleb didn’t feel that bad, actually. It had been a while since he’d had a fight that had truly challenged him, and while mistakes were made, he had only the bruises his Swallow potion didn’t heal to show for them. And, after so many years, the lack of pain felt stranger to him than the alternative, just like when he found he couldn’t sleep properly in a bed after spending too many nights in a bedroll on the side of the road.
After unbuckling his scabbards and placing them on the floor, he turned towards Essek just to find the mage already looking at him. The elf was sitting on the ground, what remained of his possessions neatly stacked and arranged at his side, his left leg stretched in front of him and the other bent and pulled close to his chest with both arms. He had evidently used his fingers to try and fix his hair, which was now sticking in several more directions than before. He didn’t seem to mind, or at least he didn’t mind Caleb looking.
“How’s your ankle?”
Visibly bracing himself, Essek tried bending it and winced. “It hurts,” he admitted without preambles. “Severely. But I could almost walk on it earlier.”
Caleb considered that. “It was probably the adrenaline,” he said as he moved closer. “Will you be able to fix it once your magic comes back?”
“No, but I will be able to levitate. What are you doing?”
The question was prompted by the fact that Caleb was now kneeling beside him. When he reached out, Essek recoiled instinctively.
Caleb held back a sigh. “May I touch you?” he asked.
Essek didn’t reply, but he relaxed visibly. He tensed up again when Caleb gently took his leg to examine his injury, but he didn’t stop him either.
The elf’s leg was bare up to his knee under his tunic and surcoat, his shin skinny and almost completely hairless. His foot wraps, while relatively clean, had picked up some dirt and detritus during his short stint as a swordsman. Caleb took care not to touch the ankle as he propped Essek’s leg up on his own knees and started to unwind the wraps, wondering distantly if the elf would start breathing again soon or if he was determined to make himself faint for lack of oxygen.
“You’re covered in filth,” Essek said eventually.
“I don’t know how it works where you come from,” Caleb said calmly, “but killing is not a clean business. Assuming those things were alive in the first place,” he added. Once the ankle was bare, he placed a hand under Essek’s delicately arched foot. “Does it hurt?”
He could hear a hiss when Essek sucked in his breath. “It’s tolerable,” he said through gritted teeth.
Caleb shot him an unimpressed look. “I am barely touching you.”
“I’ve had worse,” he said stubbornly.
Caleb struggled to believe it. “Have you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Something in Essek’s voice and posture had closed off. Caleb let it be and focused on wrapping the cloth tighter around Essek’s ankle. There were several minutes of silence between them.
In the end, Essek was the one who broke it. “That spell you cast earlier.”
His voice was gentler than it had been. Caleb scoffed softly. “Hardly a spell.”
“You tossed that thing to the other side of the room with a flick of your fingers. That’s a spell, and a nice one at that. It reminds me of my own gravitational magic.”
Caleb focused on aligning the layers of cloth properly and not at all on Essek’s words.
“Was it a witcher Sign?”
“Sorcerers are really like dogs with a bone where magic is concerned, aren’t you?” Caleb’s tone ended up being more irritated than he intended, and he sounded petulant to his own ears.
Essek, though, didn’t look offended, and he surely wasn’t deterred. “It looked very advanced, compared to the parlour tricks I’ve always seen you cast.”
“You really need to work on your compliments.”
Essek waved those words away like so many bothersome but innocuous flies. “Can I see it? I would love to study it more closely.”
Caleb finished tying the ends of the foot wrap and dared a cautious look at Essek, trying to gauge if the earnestness in his eyes was genuine or a trick. Then he shook his head. Trusting a mage was never a good idea, even when they weren’t acting untrustworthy.
“See it how?” he asked anyway.
Essek levelled an unimpressed look at him. It wasn’t very different from how he usually looked at Caleb, but with some added disbelief for good measure. “Can you replicate it?” he asked, enunciating slowly. He gingerly took his leg away from Caleb’s lap, pulling his layers down to ward off the chill. “I can’t go anywhere until my magic comes back anyway.” He reached towards a rock not very far away, roughly the size of his fists. “Tog,” he whispered, twisting his hand until his palm faced the ceiling.
The gesture was familiar enough to Caleb, since it was the one he was trying to replicate in his crude imitation of that same spell. It was obviously more elegant and refined than his version. It was also completely ineffective.
When he looked at Essek again, the elf was looking back at him expectantly. “Show me,” he insisted.
Caleb hadn’t felt this particular kind of unease since his training days. Part of him wanted to show off, and that was even worse.
“I would rather not,” he said in a tone that he hoped would bring the argument to an end.
He was sorely mistaken. “Why not?” the elf insisted. “Caleb, I think you have a gift. I don’t understand why you want to deny it.”
“This is the thing with you mages, isn’t it?” Caleb’s reply was so suddenly vehement that Essek looked taken aback. “You can’t contemplate the thought that not all kinds of power should be exploited.” He shut his mouth then, bowing his head. He looked at his hands and found them curled into fists. He relaxed them, inhaling and exhaling slowly.
He expected Essek to take it personally and act offended, but once again the elf surprised him. After a fairly long silence, he asked quietly, “Have you ever received any formal training in this?”
That part of Caleb’s memory was kept carefully under lock and key, but sometimes he felt things rattling behind those closed doors. “Of a sort,” he replied noncommittally. “Not like you have, surely.”
“Sometimes the right teacher can make all the difference.” Essek’s tone was so gentle that Caleb couldn’t help but look up at him. His expression matched his voice. The cold arrogance was gone, and instead of the belligerence Caleb expected there was a cautious earnestness. “I am interested in your magic for itself, Caleb, not because I wish to exploit it. If you’ll let me, once we go back, I would like to help you understand it better, so you can wield it as a more effective weapon. I don’t want to wield you as a weapon.”
After some resistance, something in Caleb melted and settled. It was truly remarkable, that this man—this mage—understood the distinction. There was a part of Caleb that wanted to distrust him out of habit, but he believed Essek when he said his only interest lay in magic, with no ulterior motives. That disregard for the consequences was probably also Essek’s fatal flaw, one that Caleb understood very well. Once upon a time, he would have related. Bren had been exactly as reckless.
Without warning, he flicked his hand as he had done before, in the heat of battle, and the rock Essek had tried to levitate earlier floated gently in mid-air. Then, when he rotated his wrist, it hit the wall next to Essek and fell on the floor, disappearing among the other rubble.
To his credit, Essek barely flinched, but the points of his ears trembled for a few seconds. “Slower, Caleb,” he only said. His lips were thin with displeasure or the effort to repress a smile, Caleb wasn’t sure. Maybe both.
Something unpleasant churned in his stomach. It was one thing to show off with magic he barely understood, possibly saving Essek’s life while he was at it; it was entirely different to let a specialist study his handiwork closely, warts and all.
As it was to be expected, Essek didn’t pick up on his discomfort. He looked around quickly and picked a book from the top of the stack, holding it like an offering. “Here, try it again with this.”
Caleb sighed. “Don’t get mad at me when I smack your face with it.”
“You won’t,” Essek said confidently, but he extended his arms a little further.
It was an excess of caution: as Caleb tried the same gesture he did before, but slower, the volume didn’t even tremble in Essek’s hands. “I’m not like you,” Caleb said, telling himself there was no reason to be ashamed. “Witcher Signs require only a little power. This kind of magic is more complex and taxing.”
The elf was wearing a look of studious concentration, his brow slightly furrowed under his ridiculously tousled white hair. “I have a few notes,” he said.
Irritation spiked through Caleb and he tamped it down nervously. “Good for you.”
As he expected, Essek ignored him and put down the book, moving closer to him. “Speed and control don’t always go hand in hand. I think I see what you’re trying to do, which is similar to the spell I tried to use earlier but more elementary, and with that little—” He made a quick wave with his hand, gracefully imitating what Caleb did in a way that made his former attempt feel like a child’s drawing next to a masterpiece. “It seems like you’re trying to do two things at the same time, which is why your somatics aren’t clean. See?”
Suddenly Caleb’s personal space was invaded as Essek leaned in, physically lifting his arms as he kept expounding on the hygiene of his somatics or whatever he was on about. His hand was tiny against Caleb’s vambraces, his fingers thin and tapered. Now that Caleb could have a good look at them, his nails were very clearly bitten.
When Essek took his hands to correct their position, Caleb raised his head to look at him. He was so close he could see the pores on his face. Did the magic cover them before, or was it just something Caleb hadn’t paid attention to? For someone whose presence was enough to fill up a room, Essek’s frame and bone structure were exceptionally minute and delicate.
Essek stopped talking and made eye contact. “Am I talking to myself?”
Blinking, Caleb cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he made himself say, not without a small internal struggle. He deserved the reprimand, but he didn’t have to like it. “I was listening,” he lied.
With an incredulous scoff, Essek let his hands go, straightened and picked up the book he had discarded earlier, putting it back on the pile. He stubbornly avoided eye contact.
“I am sorry,” Caleb said, now genuinely contrite. “Please, Essek.”
There was a sulking silence. Then, “‘Please’ what?”
This time, Caleb kept his sigh confined to his mind only. “Please, could you teach me?”
Essek lifted his head and blinked slowly. “Magic is a serious business, Caleb.”
“I know.” He wondered how much he had to say, how much Essek needed to know. How much he wanted him to know. “What you said earlier about teachers,” he started, and then couldn’t go on.
After a moment, Essek started to speak. “I have been around many people who think they can use other people like objects and discard them just as easily.” His tone was gentler, now. “They cultivate their loyalty with flattery, with promises, with affection. The latter, sometimes, is genuine. But you should be your own person, Caleb. You belong to no one but yourself.”
Caleb noticed he was holding his breath, and he forced himself to exhale. “I know,” he said. “I know.”
“And yet you still wear that medallion and call yourself a witcher.”
Caleb didn’t say anything.
“Do other witchers use Signs as extensively as you do? Making up their own, creating variants?”
“I have tinkered,” Caleb admitted.
Essek huffed a laugh, and Caleb looked up at him. He looked pleased. “Do you come up with spells often?”
“They’re not spells,” Caleb repeated.
“Of course they’re not. Do you keep notes somewhere?”
If Caleb could have blushed, he probably would have now. “I have some notes.”
Now Essek definitely looked like he was suppressing a smile. Excitement made his youthful face look properly young, for a change. “You have a spellbook.”
“No, they’re just…” Caleb stumbled on his words. Conventional wisdom said witchers couldn’t feel emotions. He often wished it was true. “It’s just a bunch of notes I took. Of things I’ve seen.”
“Of magic you’ve seen,” Essek corrected him. “Spells. That you keep in a book.”
The teasing was going to give Caleb a headache. If performing his rudimental magic in front of Essek made him feel inadequate, showing him his—dammit—his spellbook was going to be mortifying.
He was going to regret this, he knew.
He reached inside the pouch he had strapped on his belt and thigh, where he kept potions, tools, ingredients and keepsakes, and pulled out a battered, loosely bound notebook. He knew its contents by heart, and he was perfectly aware of how his messy notes were unfit to be seen by anyone but him.
He gave it to Essek nonetheless, or at least he tried. Instead of taking it, the elf just stared at it. “What?” Caleb asked.
Essek’s eyes moved from the rough leather cover to Caleb’s face. “Nothing,” he said hastily, his expression changing quickly from surprise to solemn neutrality. He took the book from Caleb with both hands, holding it with an unexpected amount of care, as if it was a precious relic and not some hastily cobbled-together nonsense.
Feeling inferior to nobles, mages and scholars was not an unfamiliar feeling for Caleb, but it was usually something those three did on purpose to remind him he was inadequate. To put him back in his place. And Essek was all three at the same time. But the feeling didn’t come from him; it was all Caleb.
Ignoring him to the best of his abilities, Caleb picked up his silver sword. It had not survived the fight unscathed, but it would have been hard to tell for anyone who didn’t know Fate intimately. The black ichor was beginning to dry. He should wipe it away, a task that would require a great deal of focus, which had the welcome side effect of taking his mind away from the thought of Essek, his spellbook, and Essek reading his spellbook.
There was some movement at the periphery of his eyesight, and then Essek was sitting right next to him.
Incredulous, Caleb looked up. He didn’t say anything, but his stare was eloquent enough.
“I’ll need help with your shorthand,” Essek explained, pointing to the first page as he spoke.
Something alien swelled in Caleb’s chest. He had seen Essek’s delicate fingers conjure creation from thin air, tearing the fabric of reality apart and pulling at the threads of potential within. Essek was an expert in his craft as much as Caleb was in his, if not more, just by virtue of having had more time to devote to it.
But then, he had also seen those same hands trying and almost failing to lift Caleb’s sword earlier that day. “I’m giving you fencing lessons after this,” he said, resting the blade he had unsheathed on a knee while he fetched a cloth from his pouch.
It was meant as a light threat, but as he got to work he noticed Essek following his quick, practiced movements for a moment. “You know, I might take you up on that,” he said evenly.