#destructive interference

[atlasarcana]

Chapter 4 🩸destructive interference

“I have a hypothesis.” Caleb taps his finger to his own brow, the gesture tight with vexation. “You believe your mind and existence an inherent danger. Fine. So do I. But that’s not it.” Then he makes the indelicate move to tap on Essek’s solar plexus, through his robe, through his wisp-thin layer of defense: “You won’t allow yourself to stay, because you think you are damned.”

Memory of a confession on the ship. Lips on his skin, red-hot flashpoint tingling all the way through his face. Once upon a time: Maybe we are both damned.

Rating: M Fandom: Critical Role Ship: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast Word Count:  31,261 out of 100k+ Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Happy Ending, Unreality, (...) Chapter: 4/12 !

Content warnings for the fic are described in the tags and in the Author’s Note.

Featuring artwork by @prismantis​ and @zakunni !

⋆ Read on AO3 here ⋆

[exolyrids]

interference patterns

it’s simple physics: destructive waves.

battle in my brain and the setting is verona

words are capulets and montagues my worries

equal in amplitude, opposite polarity

clash and we have ourselves a romeo and juliet situation:

heartbeats on a cardiogram, flatlined to nil. 

(graveyard in your mouth for the words that have died there.)

it doesn’t matter if your thoughts are profound

if the words you wanted to say could have mattered.

sometimes the sum of two waves is zero. 

–– on losing words

[atlasarcana]

Chapter 3 🩸destructive interference

The two of them are the only still figures in the chamber as the chaos swells back in full force, clattering, smashing — two sailors on separate ships in a storm, at their respective helms, the sky crashing and splitting apart into light and thundering clouds above them. 

He saw. He saw everything.

Rating: M Fandom: Critical Role Ship: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast Word Count:   23,417 out of 100k+ Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Happy Ending, Unreality, (...) Chapter: 3/12 !

Content warnings for the fic are described in the tags and in the Author’s Note.

Featuring artwork by @prismantis​ !

⋆ Read on AO3 here ⋆

[atlasarcana]

chapter 7 🩸 destructive interference

Essek doesn’t react. Instead he fixes Caleb with wide, wild eyes; up-and-down analysis, skepticism, betrayal. If the Nein begin to direct their eyes at Caleb as well, he doesn’t see, but nonetheless he knows. He knows very well that his impulsivity is coming back to him now as it did for him fifteen years ago. Casting on a caster was one thing. Casting on Essek, with all they knew of each other and all they rightly feared of enchantment, was an injury unthinkable. In their language, he may as well have put a dagger through his ribs and tried to apologize for it.

“Caleb?” whispers Essek. His smooth, academic voice is hardly a croak now, somewhere beyond destroyed by his screaming.

Rating: M Fandom: Critical Role Ship: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast Word Count: 61,852 out of 130k+ Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Happy Ending, Unreality, (...) Chapter: 7/12 !

Content warnings for the fic are described in the tags and in the Author’s Note.

Featuring artwork by @prismantis​ !

⋆ Read on AO3 here ⋆

[atlasarcana]

Chapter 1 🩸 destructive interference

He wonders if he has a life beyond today. He wonders if he has time to erase the chalk plans in his home before abandoning it forever. He wonders if he was the one who looked into the mirror, or the one who stepped out of it.

— Essek and the Nein succeed in defeating the Somnovem, but their return to the Material Plane is a backwards trip out of Aeor. He is haunted by his memories, his guilt, the monsters around every corner, the threat of Trent Ikithon — and a shadow in his periphery that looks remarkably like himself. For Essek Thelyss, love and annihilation go hand-in-hand, until he learns otherwise.

Rating: M  Fandom: Critical Role Ship: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast Word Count: 8707 out of 100k+ Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Happy Ending, Unreality, (...) Chapter: 1/10

Content warnings for the fic are described in the tags and in the Author’s Note.

Featuring artwork by @prismantis​!

⋆ Read on AO3 here ⋆

[atlasarcana]

Chapter 2🩸 destructive interference

“Yes,” says Caleb, the word coming out in a long breath. “Exactly that. But it was not the Academy itself. I had… extracurriculars.”

“Ah.” He means Trent Ikithon. He means the Volstrucker. Essek’s mind burns with a need to know, but he knows too what the cost is for asking. The Shadowhand is ready to pay it. Essek is not, and keeps his mouth pressed closed.

Rating: M Fandom: Critical Role Ship: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast Word Count:   8707 out of 100k+ Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Happy Ending, Unreality, (...) Chapter: 2/12 !

Content warnings for the fic are described in the tags and in the Author’s Note.

Featuring artwork by @prismantis​ !

⋆ Read on AO3 here ⋆

[atlasarcana]

chapter 8 🩸 destructive interference

He stands in some disconsolately bleak Rosohnan bedroom, surrounded by the glaring absence of paintings and portraits of mono-fanged drow children from eons and lifetimes ago. (...) The spout of a retort flask pokes out of one to his left, kissing a stack of runic circle books — the wizard’s equivalent to a grammar reference manual — and the rest of it is an easily-enough transported procession of crates, floating through the halls weightlessly like the cauldrons and potions of a storybook witch, until they pile all together by the massive door at the very front of the estate, where someone will pick it all up later after a last look about an emptied childhood bedroom.

The someone is him, three years prior.

The childhood itself had been emptied long ago.

Rating: M Fandom: Critical Role Ship: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast Word Count: 68,958 out of 130k+ Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Happy Ending, Unreality, (...) Chapter: 8/12 !

Content warnings for the fic are described in the tags and in the Author’s Note.

Featuring artwork by @prismantis​ !

⋆ Read on AO3 here ⋆

[atlasarcana]

Chapter 5 🩸 destructive interference

Few things that weren’t on the precipice of harm have taken him to the knee. He was up to his knees in silt and petrichorous slime for the years of his waifish vagrancy. He was on his knees when he received instruction under his old teacher, for the runes on the floor could not be reached without stooping over, bowing to unseen commands lashing him like a whip.

He was on his knees, too, when he lit his house on fire. The kindling of the horse cart was on the underside.

Most recently he was on his knees in front of Essek to press forgiveness into his brow and beg him to take it, to hold it, to wield it and set himself upright. He wonders, with fire popping in his mind like a grim militia under siege, how many times he must prostrate himself on the ground for Essek to realize there is something to walk on.

Rating: M Fandom: Critical Role Ship: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast Word Count:  41,276 out of 100k+ Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Happy Ending, Unreality, (...) Chapter: 5/12 !

Content warnings for the fic are described in the tags and in the Author’s Note.

Featuring artwork by @prismantis​ !

⋆ Read on AO3 here ⋆