Chapter Text
“Will you do it?” Essek had asked him. “I will help you.”
Help him. Essek would help him. To make things right, to make a small change that would mean the world. All the others that had come before them had failed, because their hubris and their paranoia had led them to work alone. But they could do it together; they had gotten this far already working together. It would work. Of course it would work.
Very slowly, Caleb nodded, grateful, and something broke and something hardened in his companion’s eyes as he nodded back.
It took them no less than three weeks—twenty-two days, seven hours, thirty minutes and twelve seconds, if Caleb was being precise—to painstakingly pour over the pages and pages of logs and ledgers and to get the T-Dock back in working order. During that time, they rarely talked about anything else, their minds too busy with the enormous task they were undertaking for that. Twenty-two days, seven hours, thirty minutes and twelve seconds of working incessantly, barely taking enough time to rest when exhaustion threatened to make them fall unconscious over the fragile, precious pieces of ancient parchment.
When all was ready, it was Essek who all but forced them to rest properly, claiming he would not risk failing due to something so mundane as fatigue. The broken thing in his eyes was present as he said that, and if Caleb’s insight hadn’t been muddled by hunger and lack of sleep, he would have wondered what it was he wasn’t saying. Naturally, Essek was right, Caleb could see that. But it didn’t mean he had to like the idea of wasting time. His mind latched with excruciating precision onto every second spent lying in bed before his mind was overcome by a blanket of heavy darkness.
But finally, exactly after twenty-two days, sixteen hours, eleven minutes and forty-nine seconds, there they were—Caleb in the middle of the circle of runes on the floor, Essek right outside of it, an open spellbook in one palm, the second precursor Beacon in the other.
“Ready?”
“ Ja . More than ever. Do it.” Gone was any trace of doubt that had ever grazed Caleb Widogast’s face. He was determined. It would work.
With a final deep breath, Essek started the incantation. It was a long, winding chant that would take ten minutes to recite, but he had spent enough time going through the words that they were etched in his mind without need for Caleb’s perfect memory. This was a good thing, because the spell took so much out of him once it commenced that his sight came and went, fuzzy light creeping at the corners of his vision and blinding him for short intervals. But even then, he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop, for fear of never being able to gather the courage to start again if he did.
After a beat, he was able to see once more. He froze.
“Caleb.”
The white light that had blinded him a few times already receded completely as his energy stopped flowing into the circle.
“What? What happened, why did you stop—”
“ Caleb. Look.”
Over the pages of his spellbook that contained recently discovered runes and equations there was a piece of parchment he’d never seen in his life, next to a very familiar amber necklace.
The writing on the parchment was painfully familiar as well—Caleb’s personal shorthand, the message clearly scrawled in a hurry.
Do not do it.
You don’t know what you’ll cause if you do. Trust us, we have tried, and our efforts did nothing but make timelines collapse in on themselves one after another.
In my amber there is a book, we have documented every one of our steps, we know you are curious. Please, take whatever solace these pages can give you, but promise to destroy this place and everything in it before reading. We made the same mistake you are thinking of right now—don’t think you can do it differently, it always ends the same way,
It is too late for us now, we are already fading. But there is still hope for you, for your reality. I just hope that you are strong enough to make the choice we could not.
Under that there was another message, in Undercommon, far shorter and in Essek’s neat handwriting, made slightly messier due to the evident haste.
You know it is true. We both knew this was not what we had to do the very moment we renounced using the T-Dock for ourselves, and yet we decided to help them. Believe me when we say it will not work. It never did. We tried. I am sorry.
P.S. Yasha was right. Do not take too long.