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Being a member of Den Thelyss came with expectations.
Since his youth, Essek had always favored men. It was something he never conveyed to his parents, or they would have likely foisted him off into some arranged marriage with a woman at far too early an age and it would have made Essek’s life utterly miserable. Some parts of society viewed same-sex relationships negatively, mostly upper echelons. Lots of antiquated nonsense about political unions and carrying on lineages. It was complicated in Kryn society – where one person may have been a man in their first life, they would be a woman in another, and people and partners varied over their many reincarnations. The Bright Queen herself had a wife. However, the typical societal standard was simply to produce offspring, to uphold their already-declining population.
Aside from that, he was grateful that his golden child of a younger brother took up more of his family’s attention anyway.
All Essek really had to do was graduate from the finest schooling at the top of his class and take on a government position in the Bright Queen’s court to uphold his family’s standing after his father’s death.
After a while, he was able to filter into the background more after becoming the youngest Shadowhand in the dynasty’s history, spending his hours of researching in labs and in his towers during his downtime and sleeping with the occasional handsome man who met his gaze in the court, all hungry, dry kisses and too-rough thrusts from the men on top of him. It was often over far before Essek felt fully satisfied. Still, there were no strings attached. Though there were some that tried to linger, hungry for his position in the court and the power he might be able to offer them… Those Essek recalled with disgust, and regret that he’d given them any iota of his time. As the years went on, it truly became more fulfilling to not seek anyone out, and to not deal with anyone else and the… annoyances that came along with them. He almost wondered if he was simply incapable of love – and began to believe that. His parents certainly had not loved each other, all tied together with flimsy, gossamer spiderweb-threads.
While Essek enjoyed the occasional romance story, smuggled into Rosohna from southern Xhorhasian ports. (It was a well-known secret, it was just, again, frowned upon by certain circles.) He was quite convinced he’d never indulge in a romantic relationship himself. Companionship in general was not his strong suit.
After the multiple times his mother politely smiled thinly at the dinner table, dabbing at her lips with a cloth napkin, cutting into his discussion of lunar gravity affecting tidal shifting with a “That’s very interesting but I’m afraid I have other matters to attend to tonight.”
It was already too much for her that he and his brother had never experienced anamnesis, that Essek had refused consecution.
His younger brother, Verin, polishing a sword and going on and on about his latest assignment on duty and his great escapades, which were undeniably sometimes interesting to listen to, but Essek could never get a word in, and simply just learned to not talk about himself much. Verin at least was tolerable, though, and was at least more willing to give Essek a listening ear in turn.
Sometimes Essek would offer his nighttime partners tea for breakfast, or offered to let them peruse his library, but most refused the tea that Essek had so carefully selected at the market, and most left without setting foot in the library.
Rosohna began to feel like a small pool. Or, rather, a fishbowl. It was why Essek became so adept at teleportation initially. Being able to blink and be somewhere else entirely, to breathe freely.
He became very aware that Rosohna was a strange, lonely, and isolated place, situated between mountains and expansive deserted wastes. Very different from the towns and cities to the west, all interlinked along roads and sharing people and goods and stories and warmth. Even beyond that, there were other places that considered the Dwendalian Empire too isolated.
It wasn’t that he hated Rosohna necessarily, but it was the stifling societal pressure and pious ideology from people within the dynasty who refused to question how deeply they perpetuated that, refused to question anything, to think about things at length, to put any effort into it at all…
That was what was unbearable about it, and Essek could simply not imagine living a life like that.
Essek spent hours of his days tucked into libraries, learning everything he could about dunamancy as though his life depended upon it. In some ways, it did. In overseeing intelligence that came in from those who traveled beyond the mountains. He became quite dedicated, which earned him more praise than he sometimes wished for.
Days spent drilling dunamancy spells in his towers, wondering what could push past the bounds of possibility, incite some kind of metamorphosis to the monotony.
In his youth, one of Essek’s tutors, a kindly older orc, had pulled him aside after he had passed his exams with flying colors and was moving on to study more dunamancy at the Marble Tomes Conservatory.
“You have a constructive anger inside of you, Essek.” His professor had said. “Make sure you utilize it wisely.”
It took Essek many, many more years after that to fully understand what that meant.
It was a discussion with his mother over an invitation to dinner one night, of all things, that set everything in motion.
Deirta’s thin face and silver hair coiffed and framed beneath a delicate veil.
“You’re well into your hundreds now, Essek, I do believe it’s high time we arrange for a matchmaker to find you a wife.” She was saying.
Essek, who had only been half-listening and nodding along, nearly dropped his spoon into his broth from halfway up to his mouth. “Ah… What makes you say that?” he asked, frantically pretending that he’d been invested in the conversation.
Apparently, his mother hadn’t noticed and continued. “It is your duty to Den Thelyss, after all, and to the Luxon.” The way they talked about the beacons as though those things had any sentience whatsoever, or had some grand design for their lives… But Essek bit his tongue and remained silent.
“Look at your brother.” Deirta proclaimed. “Already married and blessed with a child on the way. Don’t you want the same happiness and exaltation?”
The thought of raising a child made Essek recoil a bit. He was happy for his brother. Truly. Children were fine, and he looked forward to his future as an uncle, but he most certainly did not want any offspring of his own. “Oh, so that’s what prompted this.” Essek began, though he noticed the frown forming on his mother’s face and continued, choosing his words carefully. “I do appreciate your concern with my wellbeing and future… I’ll give it some consideration. At the moment, my schedule appears to be very full with work – things have been tumultuous with the west of late.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. “We can arrange something at a later date.”
This seemed to sate his mother for the time being, but Essek left the place feeling sick to his stomach, uncomfortably hollow.
It was true that some couples married only for show and continued relations with their preferred partners behind closed doors. However… Essek had the feeling he’d be unhappy with any such arrangement. That he’d only make someone else just as equally unhappy, fraudulent spouse or not. That he would also make any child from that union additionally deeply unhappy. As he had, perhaps, felt with his own father. He also feared he’d lose everything, his position, his research, if he defied his mother’s wishes.
If Essek could, he would spend the rest of his days quietly studying magic, maybe bettering society. If he had a chance to study the beacons, which he’d had some small opportunity to inspect, rather than leaving them sitting to collect dust… Maybe fewer people in Rosohna would have to live the way he was.
Or, maybe they enjoyed it, and he was just the odd one out. That would be just his luck, really. Regardless, an anger broiled in the pit of Essek’s gut. His ideal life, and ideal for the people of the dynasty… He knew change was not impossible for them, as much as they talked and liked to pretend otherwise.
It rankled at him for a few more years after that. He attended his mother’s arranged meetings and sent any prospective spouses on their way, always with a cold and disinterested façade. She was growing impatient with him, he knew.
Even more than that, Essek threw himself into his work and into his studies. He didn’t particularly have any social life to speak of. In Rosohna, everything was careful and meticulous, reading behind the meanings of words, subtlety, and unspoken gossip. Above all, praise was given to the Luxon, whether you were genuinely religious or not. Most people had masks upon masks. You were always pleasant, polite, even while knowing your very next-door neighbor would hate you if they were truly aware of who you were. Essek was, of course, nothing if not a model citizen in court as Shadowhand, conducting intelligence-gathering missions, the maintenance magic of the prisons, ordering interrogations.
However, alone, all Essek had were his books and his notes and his comforting, quiet study. His bare feet upon the soft carpets, walking rather than floating about his home where no eyes were on him.
Dark, soothing colors and simple upholstery and flickering firelight in the deep and eternal night of Rosohna, the cold canyon winds blowing in from the surrounding craggy Penumbra mountains. He could look out his tall window, past the faint glow of the city, across the ghostlands, and into the horizon of the fading wastes upon wastes beyond, where sunlight touched the ground. Sometimes, the eerie desolation felt overwhelming. Knowing there was emptiness beyond, and he, nothing more than a tiny star borne upon a bottomless ocean of space and time.
Almost the same thing he felt when allowed to inspect the Luxon beacons, like he was pulled through some strange and far-flung part of the cosmos.
Some part of him desired to sink into it, maybe forever, to forget entirely about expectations. Away from the misguidance and the simmering sophistry that echoed, round and around him, from people he had known his whole life.
He wondered if he could shake it all up, perhaps dislodge something in the process that had been festering for far too long. The great lie that sustained Rosohna, that even he was half-unsure as to the origins of. Was half-unsure he should call a lie, for fear of the reception of that statement. That others would consider it too harsh and dangerous a word.
That they held the powers of dunamis within their hands and yet let it languish in obscurity. That, even if it were a god, which Essek firmly believed it wasn’t, considering its history, considering its absence in the pantheon, that god would be disappointed. In the accepted hoarding of knowledge and wealth and the halted reverence and reasonless restraint.
Maybe there was some universe, unbeknownst to him, where everyone in Rosohna could live more freely, unbound by such a god. Some very foolish part of himself longed for it and felt certain he would find it someday. If not in this life, then maybe the next, though he somewhat abhorred the idea. There was a strange fear of death in the Dynasty among the consecuted. The idea that unending life was something wonderful and not painful, that it was ‘exaltation’ and ‘glory’, rather than the glory of living a simple and fulfilled life, becoming a part of the wide and immeasurable span of the cosmos and far reaches of the universe, something no god controlled, not truly.
It wasn’t exactly a thoughtless plan. Just that Essek would glance at the beacons upon their pedestals as he made his way by them each day. Thoughts of spiriting one away consistently filling his mind. He could assist in overseeing their once-monthly cleaning schedule, but he knew that would be traced to him far too easily.
The unrest grew at the borders, as did his own unease.
Adrenaline coursing through his veins one evening, spell components well-hidden beneath his mantle, Essek bid other courtiers a usual good night to their dinners, knowing just a few remained.
In a dim and deserted hallway, Essek cornered one.
“I must commend you on your hard work lately, Taskhand Adeen.” He said calmly, giving the man a nod. He remembered courting him and dining twenty years ago, a cool and disappointing evening, as Essek stood out under the stars alone, after. A small man, not short in stature, but, perhaps, short in emotional acumen.
The man seemed to jump, startled momentarily before nodding in return. “You wish to speak with me, Shadowhand?”
“Of course.” Essek smiled. “Well, admittedly, I like to keep track of dedicated personnel who exhibit their efficiency. Others I don’t care to give as much time to.” He chuckled a bit and Adeen chuckled in return. This much wasn’t untrue. Adeen had, at least, done much to improve himself in the court’s eyes, overtly so. Everyone had noticed that, which is why Essek had chosen him.
“And,” Essek continued, hollow words dry in his mouth, a silver-ringed hand slipping from his mantle to trace briefly along the chitin-like surface of Adeen’s chest plate armor, the spikes of his shoulder pauldrons. “I’ve certainly noticed other things as well. If you don’t mind my boldness.”
“Ah…” Adeen swallowed hard. “I don’t mind the boldness at all, Shadowhand.”
Essek slightly hated that over the lust he could see in the other man’s eyes, there was more greed than anything else. Essek’s other hand appeared from underneath his mantle, the honey smeared across his thumb pressing against the other man’s jawline, leaving behind a sticky trail as they kissed.
“Will you do something for me?” Essek asked Adeen.
For the first time in Essek’s life, he felt truly under scrutiny. It vibrated in his very bones, the imagined gazes boring into the back of his skull.
It seemed that the court of the Bright Queen operated as normal, even after the initial uproar following the two beacons going missing, but Essek couldn’t help but wonder if the whispers in the corners of the room involved him. If the chill that ran down his spine was someone scrying on him.
This was more than the looks that sized him up and analyzed him and linked him to Den Thelyss, his actions always reflecting upon his den. That was something he’d grown accustomed to at a young age.
No, this was far worse.
He sat at his desk in his tower, staring into the distance for an hour, two, three.
In small room on the other side of the continent, Essek dropped his disguise spell and the two men in front of him made no move of surprise or anger at seeing a drow standing there. Perhaps as expected. Still, Essek’s heart pounded in his ears, the metal frames of the Luxon beacons rested, cold, in his freezing hands.
“As you know, we always keep our doors open to diplomacy between nations.” The older elf named Ludinus said. Much, much older than Essek himself. “It’s such a shame the Bright Queen hasn’t approached the Cerberus Assembly prior to this, I’m sure the negotiations would have gone quite well.” Every one of his words were deceptively pacifying and ingratiating. Also as expected.
“My motives are my own.” Essek admitted. “Though I do it for the Dynasty.”
“Curious.” Was all the other older man said. A human wizard with a long, gray beard – Ikithon.
There was an air about that man that made Essek long for a washbasin and soap, or at least a quick prestidigitation to clean his skin free of that man’s lingering gaze.
“I require… assistance, in the research of these beacons. To do so in my own country would be blasphemy and treason. However, I believe that further knowledge of these objects would be beneficial to both my country and yours. I am well-acquainted with your titles, being the Shadowhand of the Dynasty, and thought to come here first to plead my case.” Essek explained. Every part of his gut protesting that he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t involve these men. He was in too deep now to go back.
“I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.” Ludinus smiled.
While Essek didn’t want to dwell long in Rexxentrum, his research proved somewhat fruitful, if only more confusing. Where one mystery ended, regarding the beacons, another twelve branched off from there, and only more branching off from those.
Still, he gleaned what he could, hurriedly, in the dead of night.
The war broke out when it was found out that dunamancy was being used by the Dwendalian side, and Essek withdrew, as much as he feasibly could without drawing suspicion.
“I don’t believe this was supposed to happen.” Essek told Ludinus, in a brief discussion outside a laboratory in Rexxentrum.
“Oh, but you very much agreed to this, Shadowhand.” Ludinus insisted. “What part of ‘sharing knowledge’ is confusing to you? I could enlighten you further if you wish.”
“That is enough.” Essek said. The feelings of sorrow and anger and disgust kept attempting to claw their way out of his chest – at himself, at the empire, at the dynasty.
Essek had considered the outcome of this and had known it would happen – all for the sake of his pursuit of knowledge. He knew there would be blood on his hands. It was just that one part of him had hoped there wouldn’t be.
He wondered if he, too, would soon be dead, if not by his own people of the Kryn Dynasty, then by the Cerberus Assembly in the Dwendalian Empire.
Before his world was utterly thrown off its axis incontrovertibly. Essek dropped the weekly reports he held beneath his mantle, papers fluttering to the polished marble floor he floated above. He didn’t think it would draw attention, though, considering some others had done the same.
All he could do was stare at the mercenary party standing in the center of the court, all covered in dirt and grime, strange and stranger. The man at the front carrying one of the very beacons Essek had stolen, presenting it to the Bright Queen herself.
Afterwards, in the privacy of his towers, he broke down, for the first time since his younger years. Limbs shaking and lungs seizing, grasping for nothing at the vermaloc-wood flooring. Finally able to envision the grand scale of his life, teetering and falling over the brink of something it would never be able to return from.
Somehow, Essek had immediately picked that man out of the bunch, as if he’d simply known Caleb was the correct choice. Not that Caleb considered himself a leader by any means, just that he was the right person for Essek, specifically, to talk to. A man who clearly had no love for the empire he was from yet wanted nothing more than shared knowledge and amity for its betterment. Not unlike himself.
Essek had taken on the task, subtly suggesting to the Bright Queen that the mercenary group might need a guide around the city and Essek, already well-acquainted with Rosohna law and assisting them in their efforts to recover a prisoner, thought he might as well do so. The Mighty Nein and Caleb were playing right into his palm, perhaps none the wiser… Or perhaps not. Still, all the more reason to stay close and observe. The observations of Caleb were only a bonus in all that.
Caleb’s soft blue eyes belied something deeper. Something that had seen the underbelly of the universe and came out the other side irreparably scarred, but still living. Too knowing and far too young to know so much. His eyes haunted Essek for a long time. He hadn’t met anyone else in his life with eyes like those.
Caleb had a similarly soft, low voice, in Zemnian-accented Common. He was somewhat thin and tall for a human. He also had a beard and prominent nose, and reddish-brown hair that he kept tied back loosely, flyaway strands framing his serious face. Essek had to admit that he was really quite good-looking.
He admitted this to himself more and more as they met with more frequency.
One afternoon his thoughts were interrupted by a soft orange cat, treading across the table in front of Essek, the cat’s tail brushing over the tip of Essek’s nose.
“Ach, sorry.” Caleb smiled a bit sheepishly, handsomely. “Frumpkin, not at the table, please.” He addressed the cat. “I think he likes you, though.” Caleb told Essek, those eyes, open and vulnerable for the first time Essek had met him. Beyond their obvious and deceitful initial flirting. Essek thought, just a bit, that he liked him, too.
The way Caleb’s face lit up at seeing Essek’s spellbook, the way he slipped into discussing cosmic theory at length and with ease and with interest, in a way that no one Essek had ever met had before. Pulling math equations out of the air on the fly. When Essek could openly discuss scientific concepts that would potentially jail him for a month for treason for discussing elsewhere in Rosohna. (Though he had much more treason he could never discuss.)
Caleb took to magic like it was an extension of himself, catching on quickly like a spark raging into a dangerous wildfire. It was intriguing and addictive, to see his efforts pay off. The calmness of Caleb’s exterior belied the white-hot inferno beneath, embers dancing in his eyes, threatening to also set Essek ablaze.
There was something rare about the Mighty Nein. (There were, in fact, seven of them, and Essek wasn’t entirely sure on their naming logic, but that was beside the point.) There was a fierce kindness to them all, that they protected and upkept.
Fjord and his diplomatic reliability and sensibility, Beau – for all her roughness – was intensely intelligent and keenly observant, Yasha was both deeply formidable and profoundly warm, Caduceus strange but welcoming and genuinely caring, Nott had a passionately protective streak and her sneakiness was unparalleled, and Jester was extremely affectionate and equally as disarming.
Time and again Essek found himself at a loss as to their burgeoning care toward him and he stumbled along, like he had lost his ability to float and had additionally lost his footing, tangled in the vines of their sentiment that only threatened to grow further.
He found himself genuinely laughing and smiling around them, no false masks of polite and courtly smiles even necessary.
Suddenly recognizing the empty feeling on dark and quiet days in his study as loneliness.
It had only been months and he was (rather happily, mostly) transporting them where they wished, hanging on their every whim. As he stood on an empty plain, the lacy parasol Jester had gifted him held aloft, he wracked his mind as to why they felt so much more like home and familiarity to him than anything else in his 120 years had.
Warm breezes stirred the tree branches and leaves and glowing lanterns, as if the tree had been there for as long as Essek had been alive. Roots clinging to the stone of the so-dubbed ‘Xhorhaus’, twigs reaching toward the deep starry skies.
Caleb’s hands were warm in his own, the sounds of harp and flute leading them along in a Dwendalian waltz. The swish of Jester’s skirts as she swept by with Nott, dancing, perhaps in Menagerie Coast fashion, perhaps her own unnamed one.
For once, he didn’t at all care that their noise was possibly perturbing the neighborhood, that they were being noticed.
He allowed himself a breathless laugh, feet planted firmly on the ground as he fell into step, his heavy mantle set aside in favor of his simple high-necked and belted plum tunic and leggings – even those seeming almost too warm. Made even more so by Caleb’s hand gravitating to his waist, fingers steady at the small of his back. The man similarly in his shirtsleeves, a bit of scruff growing in on his face, which he had kept clean-shaven for the most part in Rosohna. Though Essek rather liked the scruff.
Not for the first time, Essek wondered what drove Caleb. A man who had clearly seen many things, which Essek also guiltily judged from the scars that visibly traversed up the man’s arms, and yet he had such an intense and driven kindness that it only further took Essek’s breath away.
“You are very light on your feet, Lord Thain.” Caleb said as they briefly danced again at the mansion in Nicodranas, those wise blue eyes of his calm, locking onto his own, seeing through his disguise before Essek had to turn his gaze away, anywhere. The performance by the Ruby of the Sea, the other guests. He knows, he knows, he knows, Essek despaired. Made worse by how devastatingly handsome Caleb looked. A well-trimmed and shaved beard, auburn hair half-tied back and left to tumble over his shoulders, a very fine and subdued black coat with split sleeves, trimmed in gold and tastefully lined in burgundy silk.
Essek was drunk and miserable and hopelessly enamored while loathing himself at the same time. At that moment, everything in his life felt like a series of disasters he could have easily prevented had his own selfishness and pride not gotten in the way.
That was how everything spilled out. How Essek entirely expected everything to end. There had to be a limit to Caleb’s kindness, to the kindness of the Mighty Nein as a whole. Just as there was a limit to everyone else’s that he’d ever known. That there were conditions, and this was it. He would be left in chains on the ship. Returned to the dynasty for his treason, and very likely executed or sentenced for life at the very least. He thinks of the shame he’d bring to his den, of his mother’s confirmed disappointment, his brother trying and failing to understand.
Somehow that would all be completely inconsequential next to the Mighty Nein’s disappointment with him. If they were disappointed. If they left him behind.
The fallout from this would be all the more bitter, Essek knew, like some small part of his heart, that he’d only just found out existed, would be ripped away. He wasn’t ready for that. His hands trembled. His foolish, blood-stained hands.
Still, he spoke his truth, the full story. Everything that had happened up until that moment. Shocked, he felt tears pour down his cheeks. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried.
However, Caleb and the rest did not leave him broken and alone.
Caleb’s lips were suddenly warm on his forehead, comforting, consoling. He was trusted in spite of it all… (As much as he struggled to believe that, to believe that he deserved any of it...)
Perhaps Caleb felt that, too, though. That lack of feeling deserving, the cruelty and thoughtlessness of his past actions, and, more than anything else, Essek wished he could know Caleb better, to know them all better.
Perhaps, now, there was time.