Chapter Text
The marble is cold, smooth, grey like the ice that freezes in Rexxentrum’s gutters in winter. The corpse that lies across the slab of stone, not quite so grey. But close. Unnervingly close.
The cold crystallizes in his lungs. Bren inhales, exhales, feels the warmth leech out of him with every breath. Even the firelight from the flickering wall sconces lining the crypt seems pale and cool, like the grey marble sheen that covered every surface of the small mausoleum. Like the corpse, nameless, naked, faceless, grey.
It’s a clean coolness though. Clinical. Corpse is the right word for it. Nothing about the flesh resting on the stone before him spoke of life having ever occupied it, having ever brought warmth to its skin. It isn’t a body. Wasn’t a man.
It should be unsettling, shouldn’t it? He should feel, fear, maybe. Or sorrow. But there was nothing.
“You have seen a corpse before, Bren,” Master Ikithon’s voice intones behind him, over his shoulder from where he can’t quite place, resonating in the back of his skull. He doesn’t turn though, doesn’t look away from the cool display of death before him. He doesn’t feel the need to. Bren only feels the cold, slowly saturating his bones.
“Yes, Master,” Bren replies evenly, expression carefully blank in the way he’d learned, as void as the man lifeless before him. It wasn’t a question, but it called for an answer anyway. He knows the answer. Ikithon knows it. Ikithon ordered it.
Bren pulls his eyes from the dead thing, forces them down to the stone floor, ice crawling up his throat, numbing his mind. The black glimmer of onyx catches his eye, the sphere clutched tightly in his hand. Right. There was a purpose, being here.
Always a purpose for their deaths.
“Cast it again.”
Bren steps forward dutifully, right to the edge of the marble platform. He lifts the onyx sphere cradled in both hands, pale as the corpse and just as still. They don’t shake anymore. Ever. He was pleased with that.
The words are already pouring from his mouth unbidden. He knows them, but he can’t hear them. The incantation echoes around the marble room, muddled like through water. The ice stabs at his lungs, its freezing fingers digging at his heart, condensing and growing and burning until he’s sure he can’t breath but the words don’t stop, and… something is wrong.
He’s looking again at the corpse, eyes flashing over the face. Its face. Something- he knew this face. He knew th- He couldn’t place it. Something about it pulls at his gut, and he’d be retching if the magic channeling through him hadn’t locked him frozen where he stood. The onyx sphere thrums in his hands, a black shroud falling off of it like so much rolling smoke. His heart slammed against his rib cage. He wanted out.
Bren wanted out. He wanted to stop the ritual, something was wrong, but the incantation kept falling into place. He struggled against the icy bindings that tore into him, constricting, eyes locked on the dead familiar face before him. He wanted out. Bren wanted it to stop. He felt a presence, Ikithon, smiling over his shoulder, that tight-lipped grin, paper thin, razor sharp. Bren wanted out. There was the fear. There was the sickness clawing at his insides. The panic. This wasn’t right. He wanted… he didn’t know where he was. He- Caleb wanted-
Caleb . Not Bren.
“Yes,” Ikithon hissed behind him. “Learn . ” But his voice was shifting, his words crashing together with the dull hum of the incantation Caleb wasn’t even speaking anymore, like waves inside his skull. It was darker, deeper, and the fear it sparked in his chest was different from the mortal panic Ikithon had ever produced.
Potential .
The cold in the mausoleum solidified, the pale grey bleeding together and flooding in around him, and Caleb was drowning, the weight of the water crushing.
The corpse’s eyes snapped open before him. Piercing yellow through the dark haze, split by a black gash that was fixed on him, and Caleb couldn’t look away.
You will do.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Caleb jolted awake, disoriented and swearing in Zemnian as he pushed himself almost upright, elbows braced on the desk where he had been passed out across an open book a moment ago.
He pressed his palms flat against the dark oak to steady himself. His heart still racing, each pulse pushed outward against uncomfortably sweat-slicked skin. Caleb’s whole body ached with the whiplash of being wrenched from too deep a sleep too quickly, and for it, exhausted all the more. Inhaling sharply, cool air filled his lungs, nothing like the freezing malstrom of the rapidly fading dream.
Interesting. Caleb didn’t think he did that anymore.
First he catalogued the desk of his private study before him, strewn with the loose maps, ledgers, and pieces of correspondence he’d been pouring over late into the night. It was a far cry from the usual meticulous order in which he kept his space, but then it was also unusual that he fall asleep at work in his study, and his study within the Assembly Hall no less.
Second, he noted that he was not alone.
The blue spun thread of abjuration magic danced like lightning across his fingers, instinct summoning his defenses before he fully took stock of his circumstances. It caused his unannounced visitor to lean back visibly. She shifted her weight to her back foot cautiously, lifting her open hands to show she was unarmed.
“I don’t know why you are showing me your empty hands to say you are no threat, Beauregard,” Caleb rasped, clearing his throat and sitting upright. Squaring his shoulders, he tried to summon a little dignity as well. “I know you’re fully capable of killing a man with those.”
Shrugging, the monk leaned back against the doorframe, kicking the door closed behind her. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to catch you... unawares,” she said, reaching for the last word.
Caleb breathed out slowly, collecting himself. Letting go of the taut pull of magic at his fingertips, he sighed, the dispersed flare of the arcane ward seeming to put Beauregard a little more at ease. Caleb lifted a hand to comb his fingers through his hair instead, pulling it back into some semblance of order.
“Did the Cobalt Soul not teach their pupils to knock?” he asked, eyeing her sharply.
“They do,” she answered, crossing her arms. “And I did.”
Caleb’s mouth twisted into a displeased flat line, only momentary before he replaced it with a comfortable neutral facade. “Ah, I see.” With a wave of his hand that Beauregard followed intently like a snake that might bite her, he whisked away the perspiration that clung to his skin with the faint chill of prestidigitation, tugging at the uncomfortably high collar of his dress robes from the night before. He cleared his throat, standing and beginning to straighten the documents before him. “I apologize then.”
The blue robed monk was silent, though a thought was clearly working behind her eyes.
“Was there something you needed, Beauregard?” he asked, a little sharper this time but not enough force or intent behind the words to betray anything but exhaustion. There was no concealing that at this point anyway. The woman was bullheaded, but she was not a fool by any means.
Her response did not come immediately, but when it did her tone was formal and her words on task-- odd for her, particularly when a question so obviously hovered on her tongue. “We’ve received confirmation that the envoy from Nicodranas arrives soon. We’ve got three, pushing three and a half hours to leave for Zadash.”
His back turned to her, Caleb hissed under his breath, brow furrowing and jaw going tight at the fowl taste of the previously willfully forgotten task. It was so much easier to focus on organizing the warfront, perhaps rooting out a Xhorhasian spy or two. His fingers tightened around the leather edges of the book he replaced in its rightful stack against the window. Pausing at the glass, he spared a moment to reorient himself. Glancing at the sun slowly creeping up over the mountains, barely having had a chance to begin melting last night’s snowfall, Caleb cursed himself internally.
It was only 7:35 in the morning. Last he was aware, it had been nearly 3 in the morning, and he still had hours of work on the Bladegarden project ahead of him before it would be to his liking.
“And Nott?” he asked, back still to Beau. “She has not sent word to me.”
“Arrived in Zadash late last night after breaking off ahead.”
“And you are still intent on joining us, ja ?” He turned away from the window, fingers twisting around the intricately carved wood of his chair’s backrest as he watched for her expression to shift. She certainly didn’t need to, and Caleb might have prefered she stay in Rexxentrum to continue pursuing their leads. However, she insisted. And, due to the Assembly’s already difficult relationship with the Cobalt Soul and Caleb’s wish to retain his unfettered access to their archives, she was also the one person who was not afraid of his threats of irreparable bodily harm.
She leveled a scowl at him. “You have your job, and you’re my job, so yes, I’m still coming. Sorry for the extra baggage, but something tells me you’ll still manage to teleport us just fine.”
He raised a curious brow. “Bitte , when exactly did I become ‘your job’? Last I checked-” he pulled open a desk drawer with a muttered arcane word to release the lock- “and I do check often, to determine why you are still here-” he pulled the necessary files to continue his work and shuffled them into his satchel- “you were assigned as…” He fumbled for the word in Common, collecting his notes from the desktop and shoving those into his bag too. “Scheisse, liaison between the Expositors and my office. Is that no longer the case?”
She grinned at that, a smug look that spoke of something he would no doubt find annoying coming from her mouth. “Yep. And really all that job description entails is following you around, running your errands, and making sure nobody tries to kill you.”
Caleb blinked slowly at her. “Errands is not the right word for it. You are providing an valuable service to the Empire.” It was not a complement, but a neutral fact.
She shrugged. “Probably.”
He hooked the satchel over the back of his chair, returning his attention to the monk leaning carelessly, arms crossed against his door frame like he were the intruder in her study. “Is there something you wanted to say, Beauregard? Or do you simply enjoy standing there.”
There were cracks appearing in his neutral mask and Caleb couldn’t bring himself to care enough to patch them. As the adrenaline from the dream-- the nightmare, the whatever it was, he could hardly remember it-- and Beauregard’s entry faded away, the bone-weariness bled through into frustration and an impatience that was most unlike him. The monk’s intense gaze and her inordinate silence only worked away at his composure all the more.
“Caduceus returned four nights ago.” That wasn’t what she wanted to say, not really, but given her read of him in that moment it’s what she said. “For-”
“General Mastock’s funeral. I am aware.”
There was a pause as Beauregard shifted under his black gaze. She persisted though. “You didn’t attend.” It wasn’t a question.
“Neither did you,” he replied, a steel edge biting with his words now.
She tilted her head. “I’m not the Archmage of Domestic Inquiry,” she stated. “There was no expectation.”
The braziers in the study, ever lit, flickered low as displeasure rippled through Caleb’s chest. “I am the Archmage of Domestic Inquiry. And if I attended every funeral throughout this gottsverdammt war, my office would accomplish nothing.”
His last words came out dangerously cold. He felt under too close an inspection. Between the monk’s looking and the crawling under his skin that was becoming too difficult to ignore, he wanted this conversation to have ended five minutes ago.
Beauregard must have sensed the danger she would be in if she continued pursuing this angle. There was a longer pause this time as she shifted her gaze and stared stoically ahead at the wall. “Cad’s taken up at the Temple of Ioun for the time being. He asked after you.”
Ah, there it was. Caleb blinked at her silently from across the study. If he didn’t know Beauregard, he doubted even he would have caught her shifting uncomfortably under the blank look with which he appraised her.
“You might consider following up with him,” she said, half shrugging. Then more quietly, “I’ve found it helps.”
“I will see you at the Lyceum at 10:30, Beauregard. If you are a minute late I will leave you.”
She relented, nodding at her clear dismissal. As she pushed away from the wall and reached for the door, Caleb couldn’t quite place the look on her face.
“Archmage.”
“Expositor.”
The heavy door closed gently behind her.
Caleb sank back into his chair, grimacing and arching his back against the ache that had set in there. Pressing the meat of his palms into his eyes, he sighed, taking a moment to recollect himself.
Casting his thoughts back to the sleep he hadn’t intended to fall into, and the dream that pulled him from it, Caleb found himself grasping at wisps of smoke. For his old teacher to appear in nightmarish dreams wasn’t necessarily new, but it had been a number of years since the dead man had last returned to torment him. And then there was something else, a ritual perhaps, though what exactly escaped him. Worse was the dark shroud Caleb very nearly still felt over his shoulders, clinging to him, a crushing weight sending a cold shiver down his back.
Were it not for the anti-magic field and layers of wards encompassing the Assembly Hall, shielding everything within, it would cause him more concern.
Caleb found his fingers wrapping around the pendant that hung from his neck without permission.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Barely three hours later and Caleb was gliding across the marble-gilded floors of Zadash’s Hall of Erudition, the city’s extension of the Soltryce Academy hundreds of miles away, with soft footfalls. His black tunic and cloak, embroidered simply in silver with the mark of his station, drifted silently about him as he moved. Where Archmage Caleb Widogast went, if his passing was public at all, he went without great pomp and circumstance.
It was not him, but his entourage that made his arrival impossible to ignore.
The dull clash of heavy plate armor with every in-time step of his personal guard of eight Righteous Brand echoed through the wide halls and vaulted ceilings. He had fought Archmage Da’leth tooth and nail to handle his assignment in Zadash without them, typically reserved for ventures to the front as they were. For whatever reason, despite the low-risk nature of his task, he fought unsuccessfully. And so here he was, become a spectacle of the Cerberus Assembly, playing at the role of political dignitary for an assignment which was doomed from its very conception.
That said, given the current political climate in Rexxentrum, he might make use of the distance and time away. He had… matters to resolve.
Still, he far prefered the backdrop, rather than playing a leading role in the scenes which was his job to direct.
At least Beauregard moved silently.
For all her incessant prying and the unfortunate degree of familiarity she thought it proper with which to address him, she was effective. Useful, even. He would not begrudge her that.
Still, unfortunately teleportation circles only took them so far.
Sight fixed ahead as they followed the path set by Headmaster Occurom, who moved with a constant tap-tap-tapping of his staff and a surprisingly quick pace for a shriveled old gnome, Caleb studiously ignored the barefaced stares of the students they swept past. His eyes glazed over coldly, Caleb swallowed the distaste at being dragged through a heavily trafficked wing of the Hall. Whether it was intentional on the Headmaster’s part, parading about with an Archmage of the Cerberus Assembly and an Expositor in full Cobalt Soul colors in the late morning hours, or merely a misunderstanding of the discreet nature of Caleb’s office, he had yet to determine. Regardless, thus far the Headmaster’s only redeeming quality in Caleb’s view was that he did not drag out pleasantries for too long upon greeting them at the teleportation circle.
Passing through the great hall-- which was surely avoidable yet there they were-- Caleb felt the claustrophobia of too many eyes upon him. He heard the whitenoise of murmurs and whispers, mutterings of both fear and awe, flitting through the stilled clusters of students. From a few more curious though utterly brazen pupils, he felt the tingling aura in the back of his head of recklessly cast detect magic as his defenses rejected and dispelled them with ease. He walled up his expression against it, cold and void, safe.
He was not ignorant to his reputation, built up as a warmage, as an archmage, as a war hero to the Empire. Firebringer. The Dragon of Talonstadt. Shadowmaster. The Dark Hand of the Cerberus Assembly.
It was a relief when the massive doors opened before them and they spilled out onto the green of the campus. The gust of wind was colder than he expected given their southern descent from Rexxentrum, even with the recent onset of winter, tearing wisps of his hair free from the neat knot he’d tied it back in. Still, it was better than the oppressive stagnation of the Hall.
In the shadow of the Zauber Spire, they continued down the paved road to the campus gates. There waited a darkwood closed carriage, windows draped in crushed black velvet, surrounded by Crownsguard to escort them to the guest estate reserved by the Lawmaster where, pursuant to their arrangement, he would be staying.
Of course along with it came the obligatory dinner party or gala or some similar fashion of brushing egos with the city’s upper echelon, but that was a sacrifice Caleb was willing to force Beauregard to make in his stead, if at all possible, for the privacy it afforded.
Speaking of the monk, Beauregard quickened her pace and slid up next to him as they approached the carriage and accoutrement of Crownsguard, retrieving him from his thoughts.
“Before our party becomes any larger and attracts even more attention, I’m going to slip off and check on their arrival, if that’s alright,” she asked quietly.
He nodded his consent. “If you locate Nott, please send her to me.”
“More like if she finds me ,” she scoffed before darting nimbly sideways through the ranks of Righteous Brand that walked in columns on either side of them, striding with purpose across the green and slipping out of the gates without anyone attempting to stop her. He was jealous, honestly.
“Does she require an accompaniment, Archmage?” The question came from Lieutenant Torinn, the large copper dragonborn who led his protection unit, currently bringing up the rear. He was capable, if on occasion overly strict to the very letter of his duties.
“Hm, no,” Caleb answered after a moment, considering it only because it would inconvenience her terribly, and he rather enjoyed that sometimes. “Best not.”
This however was not the occasion. Nott wouldn’t approach her if she had an entourage. And, best case scenario, Beau would slip any guard that tried to follow her anyway.
Torinn nodded, apparently deciding it was beyond his purview to disallow it, and without another word faced front again.
Caleb glanced back at the monk’s retreating form and lost sight of the last glimpse of blue robes vanishing into the streets of Zadash.
Perhaps it was appropriate she came along afterall.