PROJEKT Funball epilogue fic is now posted on AO3! This one-shot had a lot of emotional ramifications that the live show didn't have time to touch on, so my brain pushed this out at light speed :)
Uh hey incredibly fucked that Essek would rather hang out in the ARCHMAGE'S BANE than the real world because he's so worried about/actively being pursued by the Dynasty
It's delightful how Essek is both unbothered by showing up in Beau and Yasha's bedroom, them being fully naked, and then being asked to make them coffee. It's extremely clear he knows his way around this house.
Spoilers for [Projekt] Funball!
I came out of the Berlin liveshow with the urgent need to paint basically everything that happened, so now that the VOD is out on beacon, I'm posting some of that!
Fun fact, there's 21 hands in this illustration...
Since shadowgast is resurging in my fangirl brain have the 3k+ start to the Caleb/Essek soul bond fic that is occupying my time currently in between rewatching shadowgast Supercuts and googling synonyms for threads and string. (Super rough draft read through a few times but rewrote the chapter end like three times so I'm sure there's misspellings galore.)
"When two souls become entangled by possibility, neither shall ever again walk the Pattern alone." - The Luminescent Cycle: Mechanics of the Soul-Anchor by Keeper Zaltheris of Den Kryn.
“And you said you found it in the dirt?”
“Weeeell, “ Jester answered leaning onto the table with an innocent smile, ”not so much dirt as a giant pile of–”
Fjord put a hand over Jester’s mouth with an awkward grin. “Jester, I don’t think he needs to hear the specifics of the dirt we found it in.”
Jester’s eyes lit up and without hesitation she quickly licked Fjord’s palm causing him to drop his hand with a grimace. “But Fjord, it could be really important! What if the dirt had some-some giant magicological significance?”
Essek hid the hint of affection behind a quiet cough and leaned down to inspect the obsidian sphere; it was no larger than a child's fist, a deep velvety black that seemed to hold a living galaxy of gold and silver that swirled across its curved surface – almost like the core had been hollowed out and liquid starlight poured beneath its volcanic glass.
As he tilted his head and the sheen appeared to shift, almost hypnotically with his movement, the threads of gold catching the light like flowing time around the silver flecks that reminded him of pure dunamis.
“Curious.” He murmured and reached out a hand to brush against the smooth stone; as the pad of his fingers met the cool surface, the gold threads seemed to react to him. The gold brightened into a mercurial swirl that seemed to shift from calm to chaotic with the beat of his heart.
“It did the same thing to Caleb, by the way.” Beau said, jerking her thumb towards the man lingering near the back of the room. “Couldn’t get the stupid ball to do the glowy thing for any of us though.”
“Well,” Essek started with a glance towards Caleb and a small nod towards the table. “Then perhaps let us see what happens when you…”
Caleb stepped forward and the silver darted across the sphere breaking away from the gold seemingly pulled towards the man. Within seconds the entire core of the ball was alive with motion. Hundreds of silver and gold lights spiraled beneath the surface intertwining in the center as the two colors stretched and pulled to opposite ends until it resembled a fragment of the night sky cradled in the safety of Essek’s hand.
A soft trill rang through the study. The crystalline melody rippled in a rapid, gossamer cascade from the sphere that settled somewhere in the depths of Caleb’s chest, slowing his heart into a soft lubdub that seemed to conjure a phantom echo right beside it, a steady and cool presence that felt like starlight.
Caleb tried to step back, but the air had suddenly grown thick, pressing against his shoulders with all the gravity of a black hole and making the simple act of retreating feel too tiresome a task to try. Panic flared, sharp and hot against the cool shadow of a pulse. Caleb forced his gaze toward Essek.
The drow had gone unnaturally still. His normally effortless drift that kept him inches above the ground had vanished leaving him to settle heavily against the floorboards of the study. His shoulders had stiffened beneath the pressure bearing down on the room, one hand cradled the sphere while the other gripped the edge of the table hard enough his knuckles bled grey beneath the sheen of his lavender skin.
For the first time since Caleb had met him, Essek looked caught off guard. His normally calculated gaze had been replaced by a wide, unblinking shock that made him look painfully young. His lips were parted slightly, a soft involuntary breath escaping him the same time Caleb’s heartbeat caught in his chest.
“No.” The word was more breath than sound and had Caleb’s stomach dropping in worry.
“Essek?”
His call went unanswered.
The sphere pulsed and the lights beneath the obsidian began to unravel. The silver peeled away from the center mass in impossibly fine strands that drifted past the confines of the sphere. Soft twinkling threads that floated on an unseen current towards Caleb, who tried to jerk backward on instinct but the threads ignored the movement and brushed against his fingertips before winding around his wrist with barely more weight than a cobweb. It was cold, not painfully so, but enough to make every hair along his arm stand on end.
Another strand followed, then another, and another. They wrapped lazily around his fingers and wrist before climbing the sleeve of his coat only to vanish through the fabric without any resistance.
“Was.” Caleb cleared his throat and blinked from the threads back to Essek to see strands of molten gold reacting the same way. “What is this?”
Essek finally looked at him. The color had drained from his normally vibrant skin leaving him a dusky violet color. His eyes darted from the silver winding around Caleb to the gold coiling high along his own arm, disappearing beneath layers of dark fabric.
He knew. Caleb saw it the moment their eyes met. Maybe not what the sphere was but most assuredly what it was doing.
For a breath, Essek looked ready to reach across the table but instead his hand stopped halfway. His fingers curled into a fist.
“Don’t…” He whispered.
Whether it was a warning or plea, Caleb was unsure.
The sphere reacted either way. The silver tightened around Caleb’s wrist and a pinprick of pain shot from his heart. Caleb gasped and watched as a single silver filament reached from his chest towards the center of the sphere. He looked back to Essek to see a strand of gold mirrored from Essek’s own chest.
The twinkling strands touched and the world around Caleb disappeared.
It felt like he was falling but there was no wind, no ground below him nor sky above him. Silver stretched endlessly around him glittering specs like distant stars on a canvas of impossible black only broken by rivers of molten gold that twisted through the impossible constellations. The silver and golden threads mixing and undulating, weaving into patterns he thought he could recognize before they once more unravelled.
“Hallo?” The greeting ricocheted and the threads reacted to his voice swirling forward into the blackened expanse. Across the endless space before him another figure stood. Their shape glittering in the shadows cast from the brilliant silver and gold filaments.
“Essek?”
Essek was looking around with the same disbelief Caleb felt, one hand lifted towards the countless threads drifting between them.
“This is not possible. This shouldn’t be possible." Essek whispered.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Caleb frowned and looked around again. “Where are we?”
“I dont…” Essek stopped and the answer he settled on seemed to frighten him more than anything else. “...know.”
He watched as Essek slowly turned in place, the drow’s eyes tracing the endless lattice of silver and gold stretching into the impossible distance around them. There was no beginning, seemingly no end. Every thread split into two, then four, ten and twenty, and then countless more before weaving back together again and again in patterns too vast for Caleb’s mind to follow.
“This…”
Caleb turned to Essek, his voice sounded wrong, there was a shakiness to his breath.
“This place should not exist.” Essek whispered as he stepped toward one of the silver threads drifting lazily past his shoulder. His movements had become unusually deliberate. Every few moments he hesitated, as though what he was seeing refused to fit comfortably into preconceived notion he understood.
Caleb watched on, curious. “What place?”
Essek reached out to the silver but the thread curved around his hand in a slow spiral before returning to its place among the countless others. Essek’s hand remained suspended, eyes glossy in the threads glow. Caleb could feel something squeeze in his chest the same time he saw Essek clench his extended hand closed and let it fall to his side.
His chest felt heavy.
“I have never seen you frightened before, my friend.”
Essek looked towards Caleb with an annoyed look. “I am not frightened.”
Caleb almost pointed out the obvious lie before something brushed the back of his hand. He looked down to see one of the silver threads had curled around his wrist like a cat seeking warmth. He furrowed his brow when he felt a slight pull, the silver flowing away from him and into the small distance between him and Essek, like it was searching for something.
A strand of molten gold answered from somewhere beyond Essek’s shoulder, it mirrored the silver, as it wound itself down Essek’s arm and wrist before following the same invisible path between them.
The two shimmering strands met and began twisting around one another; gold mixing with silver in an endless spiral.
Something bloomed beneath Caleb’s ribs and his next gasp of air was frigid; as though he could breathe easily for the first time since fire had erased everything he’d known about himself.
Across from him Essek inhaled sharply, his eyes focused on the joined thread. “No…no.” The small word cracked and his composure along with it. Essek took a step back, yanking his threaded wrist in his retreat.
“Essek?”
Essek closed his eyes at the questioning call of his name. For several long seconds he said nothing and something heavy settled in Caleb’s gut until Essek opened his eyes once more, the careful mask Caleb had come to associate with the Shadowhand was gone and in its place was something infinitely rarer - uncertainty.
“How…” Essek’s breath was quick and erratic. “How old was the ruin?”
Caleb blinked. “What?”
Essek grimaced. “The ruin you found the relic in, how old?”
“The temple was nothing but dust and rubble, there were no markings to calculate an age but I would assume old-old.”
Essek stared at their joined threads, he took a deep breath to calm his rapidly beating heart, and straightened his shoulders. Caleb watched the uncertainty vanish, Essek’s features schooling into the ever familiar courtly indifference.
He narrowed his eyes, whatever this place was, whatever was happening around them, Essek knew and had chosen silence. “Essek, do you know what’s happening?”
Caleb watched him hesitate for a heartbeat, before Essek replied with a simple no.
The word travelled down their entwined threads and echoed somewhere behind Caleb’s ribs which caused a pin prick of pain to bloom in his chest. Caleb sucked in a breath and rubbed a hand against his sternum, it had felt like his heart had painfully skipped a beat; but, the ache quickly faded.
Across from him, he saw Essek flinch and press his own hand against his chest with a sigh. “A theory.” Essek amended. “But nothing absolute, forgive me.”
The silver and gold around them began to flare and the entire lattice work the filaments had built shuddered. The endless threads convulsed and the beautiful constellations fractured violently, snapping back towards the center of their entwined threads like broken harp strings. A high pitched ringing tone tore through the void, shrill and defeaning.
Caleb reached out across the expanse, “Essek!”
The pull hit them both at once. It was like being yanked backward through freezing water and molten glass at the same time. Caleb felt like his core was burning and his limbs were freezing. Every silver thread that had wrapped around him tightened with a stinging force. He heard Essek gasp, a sharp, pained sound that resonated within his own chest.
And then, the world slammed back into existence around them.
“I don’t know Beau, maybe they’re having a staring contest!” Fjord’s frustrated voice drifted into his awareness just as his knees buckled. Caleb caught himself on the edge of the table, the wood creaking under his weight.
“Caleb?”
Caleb swallowed. That was Jester’s voice.
“What happened?
Someone was speaking, he could hear words but his comprehension wasn’t allowing him to process their meaning. His heart was hammering like a war drum against his ribs so violently he thought his bones might bend beneath the percussion. He was trying to catch his breath to slow his erratic heart down but the lubdub, lubdub, lubdub pounded heavily against his awareness sending a spike of pain through his head. His face felt hot.
He could also feel a softer, more steadier beat inside him causing his own pulse to stumble around the second beat to find a rhythm.
Caleb froze, his erratic breath catching in his throat. He looked up to see Essek fall to his knees with a muffled thud, the orb that had been clutched in his hand now rolling across the floor to rest a few inches before him, innocent and beautiful. For a few seconds Essek knelt there, head bowed and his breaths shallow and uneven.
Caleb pressed a hand over his heart, he could feel something heavy situated just behind his ribs. “Essek…?”
Essek lifted his head, his usual poise somewhere lost to him at the moment, reminding Caleb just how young the drow was at even a century plus to his own age. For one impossible heart beat neither of them looked at anyone else in the room. Essek’s eyes widened the same time Caleb felt the second heartbeat falter and then gradually slip away until he could no longer tell where it had been.
“What the hell was that?” Beau questioned, her voice sharp with concern.
“Yeah you two were really into each other's faces. It was kind of romantic but also suuuper weird.”
Essek cleared his throat and glanced quickly from Jester back to Caleb. “Nothing immediately concerning.” He stated, already reaching to pick up the orb and come to a standing. “A minor sympathetic resonance between two practitioners of dunamancy and an unstable pre-Calamity relic. These things are notoriously volatile, you did well to bring it to my attention. I will take it for further study and safe disposal afterwards.”
Caleb stared at him, panic thrumming through him even as he tried to catch his breath. He wasn’t sure why Essek’s words left him feeling queasy but something felt wrong about them. He swallowed thickly to try and settle his nerves.
Essek met his eyes for a second before turning to look at the rest of the Mighty Nein. Caleb swore he saw a flash of guilt or fear in the quick look but he wasn’t sure. His head was starting to ache and he was utterly exhausted.
“Apologies but the resonance should fade with rest. I would see you home safely but I fear I must deal with this matter swiftly.” There was a crease to the corners of Essek’s eyes that Caleb was sure was most likely from the same ache pounding through his temples.
“What does that even mean?” Nott asked, voice gruff with uncertainty as she situated herself beside Caleb.
“It means,” Essek replied smoothly, “that the relic attempted to briefly harmonize with nearby magical signatures before exhausting itself.”
Beau folded her arms. “So…” She nodded towards Caleb. “He almost passed out because the rock got excited?”
A flicker of tired amusement touched Essek’s expression “Somewhat of an inelegant description but none the less accurate.”
Beau pursed her lips with a slight noise of uncertainty.
Essek didn’t answer immediately and Beau’s noncommittal noise grew in tone.
Essek winced at the continued noise before roughly replying, “I am certain of my assessment, Beauregard.”
“Huh.” Beau didn’t sound convinced and with a shared look towards Caleb, neither was he.
“Prehaps we should allow Mr. Thelyss a reprieve as well while we retire for the evening?”
“Thank you, Caduceus.” Essek acknowledged with a small nod.
“Come on, Lebby.” Nott said and grabbed Caleb’s hand to tug him towards the door.
Caleb let the small group herd him from Essek’s home and every step further from Essek’s was both a relief and a baffling terror that buzzed like static beneath his skin; it was a panic born from nothing he could plainly name, and felt entirely wrong for someone who was used to knowing his panic so viscerally.
Caleb knew fear. He’d wielded it so readily in his teenage years and had understood so completely in his adulthood; but this?
This was different. This was a certainty that something had shifted beneath his feet and yet the world had the audacity to continue on around him as though nothing had changed.
“Caleb?”
He looked towards Nott, not realizing she had grasped his hand tightly within her own. “Hmm?”
“You’ve, uh, you’ve been staring at the ground for like, five minutes.”
Caleb blinked and realized they’d already crossed the street, Fjord and Beau talking quietly ahead of them and Jester and Caduceus trailing behind. The mid-day sun had started to give way to early evening, painting Rosohna in vibrant red and pinks and glowing golds as the sun started to set. The city was moving around them with no knowledge that the universe had briefly opened its hand and shown him something impossible.
“Apologies.” He forced a smile . “I am merely tired.”
Nott narrowed her eyes at the half truth. “Right.” The word carried the exact amount of disbelief Caleb expected from someone that had known him for several years and his increasingly creative attempts at subverting from truths. Nott knew him all too well.
Caleb opened his mouth to argue that he was truly fine, but stopped because beneath the rush of his own heartbeat, under the ache in his skull and the lingering cold that seemed to cling just below his skin, he felt it again.
Not the phantom heartbeat from before but a faint awareness that tickled the back of his mind. A gentle sweep of coolness that had Caleb looking back across the street.
Essek’s home stood in the distance, quiet and dark against the evening glow of the city. For only a moment, he thought he saw movement behind one of the windows and then it was gone.
“Caleb?” Jester questioned stopping beside him and turning to look at the building before looking back at him with a frown. “Are you okay?”
“Ja.” He answered but for the first time since before he’d met Nott and the Nein, Caleb Widogast found himself afraid of something unknown and he didn’t understand why.
_________________
Essek didn’t move from his spot until he was certain he was alone in his quarters; only then did he allow himself the space to breathe with his shoulders sagging on his exhale.
The orb rested innocently on the table where he’d placed it, wrapped carefully in a protective shroud, every precautionary ward inscribed on the cloth with nothing left to chance. He’d read countless manuscripts about the possibility of such relics in his journey to understand the Luxon but he’d thought them nothing more than children’s fantasy stories.
Stories told to make consecution seem less scary in the eyes of the uneducated and something more sacred; a belief that souls could transcend rebirth and anchor to one another across multiple possibilities. Romantic nonsense disguised as magical theory he’d assumed.
But now…
His hand drifted unknowingly to his chest. The phantom echo from earlier all but gone, no pain, no strange pulse, nothing; and, yet, somehow the absence felt almost worse.
“Shit.” He closed his eyes.
His first instinct had been to deny it, his second had been to tell Caleb everything, and his third, and the one that had ended up prevailing in his silence and denial, had been fear.
Not of the relic or the intertwinning threads of seemingly fate itself.
Of Caleb. Of the man that had met his expectations of grand magic with the summoning of a cat's paw.
Essek had survived the Umavi by learning knowledge was leverage and secrets were survival. Every relationship he ever had the need to cultivate had been carefully measured, every confidence offered only after calculating exactly what it would cost him and what he could gain. There was safety in distance, in half-truths, and in allowing others to know only the version of himself he chose to present.
A soul had no such courtesy; if the old texts were to be believed a True Anchor did not simply tie lives together, it stripped away illusion - thoughts, feelings, memories. Possibility itself.
His stomach twisted at the notion. Caleb had looked upon him today with uncomplicated trust, a trust that Essek had felt he had not yet earned because Caleb did not know the extent of his crimes.
He didn’t know the man he’d been inviting himself to study with each visit had handed the beacons to the Empire, or that war consuming the continent had begun with Essek’s childish ambitions. Caleb didn’t know how many lives had perished because Essek wanted to prove theory in place of belief.
He swallowed hard and opened his eyes to stare at the swathed sphere with red rimmed eyes. If the bond deepened, if he couldn’t find a way to dissolve it, if it truly allowed his soul and Caleb’s to entwine so completely… There would come a day when Caleb would not have to ask, he would simply know and the thought hollowed him.
Not because of the possible death sentence that followed the thought; he’d long since accepted that possibility the day he’d committed treason.
No.
It was the look Caleb would wear afterwards that he could not bear to imagine. The way his smile would turn down in disgust and the ache of betrayal that would break through him. The quiet understanding that whatever friendship had begun to flourish between them had been sowed with the seeds of a lie.
He’d spent months, years, wondering what it might feel like to have an equal; to speak with someone who challenged him. To laugh without calculation. To be seen for himself as he was.
Now, for the first time in his life, Essek was terrified of exactly that.
