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The streets of Rosohna feel more crowded, more lively, than Verin last remembers. There’s celebration even in the face of the sun, the pain in worship felt by the populace.
Verin feels nothing.
It’s been years since he visited Rosohna. Since he escaped to Bazzoxan, where the world at least made some semblance of sense to him. Politicking had never been his thing. In Bazzoxan, it was survival. It was kill-or-be-killed. It was a strict hierarchy that Verin fit into like a glove. Den politics put aside for the camaraderie of soldiers. Now, walking the streets he knew as a child, Verin is lost, wandering. He feels like a stranger, an outsider. He knows the streets as well as any passerby, knows the people as well as any visitor might. He, like everyone else, has let his hair free, loose, Den braids removed to simply be another person, another individual in a crowd of revelry. He wears the same clothes as any of the other soldiers on leave for the day.
The weight of the Umavi’s expectations bears him down, even now, undoubtedly removed from her line of sight. It’s been years but Verin knows her well enough still to know there is something she’s not telling him. Go, celebrate, she had said. She pushed at his shoulder like he were a sullen child again, hiding behind her skirts so that another cousin wouldn’t pinch his cheek and wonder at the second of her new soul children. And Verin had gone.
Verin is gone. Without thinking, he traces the path he once took to his tutors, weaving through the crowd and squinting when the noon sun shines full force and the pressure behind his eyes begins to develop into a lingering ache down to the base of his skull. He traces the path from the estate to the Tomes down to the stables, to the training fields. He slips away from the crowd through the more-empty Zenith Park and finds the place where, still carved into one of the fallen trees children have always used as playthings, are the neat initials.
ET&VT
Essek’s absence is noticeable, especially to Verin. It is not unlike Essek to avoid crowds and celebration. He didn’t think much of it at first. It is also not unlike Essek to weasel his way out of any family event with claims of work. Verin has always admired him for it, taking a leaf from his book to do the same countless times over the course of the last decade. Last Verin had heard, Essek had gone north for research. Last he’d heard, no one in the family believed that for a second. The timing was too close, too perfect. The gossip was split, between Essek chasing a fleeting romance or, spoken in softer tones only among their Den, that Essek himself had been the cause of the war.
Verin doesn’t believe either rumour. Not with the way they’re whispered, not with the gleeful malice that some of the older cousins speak of Essek.
He’s not so naive to believe that Essek couldn’t have done it. Hells, if Verin is honest, he believes both are likely causes for Essek’s sudden departure. But he knows Essek. He knows that Essek would not cause a war for the sake of violence or a lust for power. He knows that a fleeting romance would not catch Essek’s attention so thoroughly that he would abandon the comforts of his Rosohna home. No, Verin knows better. A lust for knowledge, maybe. Verin had joked when they were young that Essek drew more satisfaction from his books than from any of the whorehouses they would visit on occasion. Essek had thrown one of those very books at him for that, his cross expression doing little to hide the twinkling amusement in Essek’s eyes.
Verin had always been able to read him like an open book.
“Where is Essek?” Verin had asked softly that morning, as the Umavi had fixed the collar on his jacket, smoothing the lapels in that caring way she only showed in private.
“He’s- busy, away,” the Umavi had replied. Verin hadn’t missed the stutter in her movements, the brief catch in her voice.
He’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop since he got to Rosohna. Waiting for the moment it becomes clear that Essek’s presence, or lack thereof, is something malicious, something hurting, something other than simply lacking.
He returns to the estate—to call it home would be an overstatement nowadays—and finds himself in the room that was once labelled as theirs. The beds, pushed together to form one in the corner of the room, the desks pushed back-to-back so it would take but a glance for their eyes to meet over the tops of their books. Many a secret smile were exchanged, back then. Verin sinks down at his desk and leans his elbows on the unforgiving wood. He steeples his fingers and presses them to his mouth.
Why would Essek do it, he thinks; what would drive Essek to leave so suddenly?
Verin had always been able to read Essek like an open book, until the day he couldn’t. Until the day twinspeak seemed to fail him, and Essek was speaking an entirely different language to him. “You’re a soldier. And I’m a mage,” Essek had said, slowly, like Verin was stupid; “there are ways we are supposed to talk to one another.”
“Because that’s ever mattered before,” Verin scowled. “You never cared before ”
The argument was childish, as all of their arguments had been. As the argument about distinguishing themselves had been, as though they were identical (they were not, and never had been, even before Verin’s growth spurt and Essek’s haircut), as the petty squabbles over personal space had been (“Essek needs his ‘bubble,’” Verin complained, as a nanny had fondly pushed him back to his chair to finish doing his hair).
“Verin,” a voice says from the doorway. The Umavi, with the softness that demotes her to simply Mother, eyes warm and expression devastated. Verin braces himself as he turns and looks up at her. It does little to keep his bottom lip from trembling when she just smiles sadly and shakes her head at him. She doesn’t need to speak for the reality to hit him.
He’s gone.
“How?” Verin chokes out, finally, when his face is buried against her chest, and she strokes his hair, comforts him like he is a child again, fallen from a height and left with a shattered bone. Now it is his heart shattered on the floor, pieces scattered, missing.
“We don’t know,” Mother says. She tilts his chin up and presses a kiss to his forehead, lingering and warm and he basks, even for a moment, in the comfort and love it provides. He wants to clutch at her dress and beg. He wants to scream that it isn’t fair.
“He’s not coming back,” Verin says instead. Numb. Lost. Drifting. Mother’s hand in his hair, tightening even for a second, is answer enough. Essek had never wished for consecution, even when it was offered. Verin could remember the pride in Essek’s expression when Verin, too, had refused consecution, mere minutes after Essek had. Even then, Verin had not been able to imagine living a life without him.
Mother presses another kiss to his forehead and lets him cry. She doesn’t frown when he curses out the Luxon in every language he can string a sentence together in. She stands silent, watching, when he rises and kicks Essek’s chair across the room, a tsunami of anger rushing through him. “How dare he?” Verin demands, snarls. It fades quickly, and he collapses onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. There is a slight indentation from where Essek, experimenting with some of his gravity spells, had cracked his head into the ceiling from a miscalculation. The memory pulls simultaneous tears and a smile to Verin’s face.
“I always said you weren’t a new soul, neither of you,” Mother says quietly when Verin finally sinks into the darkness that spreads across the city again like a calming blanket, when he realises that the experience, that he, is empty. “That you were one soul, split into two.”
She had said that, countless times. Only in the privacy of the estate, where no one would hear the slight blasphemy from her. It was expected of Father, and eventually of Essek, but to hear the Umavi Deirta Thelyss herself speak those words…
“We thought so, Essek and I,” Verin says, hoarse. Mother hums. The bed sinks next to him, where she sits. Her hand is warm on his wrist, her fingers gentle as they lace with his.
“You must not give up so soon,” she says. “Do not go rushing to join him, darling Verin. He would not want you to do something so foolish.”
“He would scold me for considering it.” Verin’s eyes fix on the ceiling again, even as Mother’s hand brushes a tear from his cheek, as he feels the smile radiating through her touch.
“He would call you quite a few things worse than foolish that I shan’t repeat.” He barks a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“What do I do now?”
She doesn’t answer. He doesn’t ask her to. Mother leaves him in the room, dimming the lights with a wave of her hand. Verin stares up at the ceiling until the flickering of the lights is repetitive, soothing, meditative enough for him to sink into a trance.
He returns to Bazzoxan three days later and throws himself into his work. Because what else is there for him to do but work? What else is there for him to be but another soldier, another cog in the machinations of the Dynasty? Verin rises with the sun and attends to his chores. He attends to the paperwork required of his station. He sits in the mess hall and he laughs and jokes with the other soldiers and he knows none of them know that he would rather see himself dead on the battlefield than return as a hero of the Dynasty.
Mother writes him letters again. She had done so, when he first left for Bazzoxan, but as time had passed, as years had gone by and he had gotten older, she had stopped. But now she starts again. It is just another reminder that they are the only two left of their name. That soon it will just be Mother again, alone. On the nights that Verin reads the letters, his trances are filled with the taste of bittersweet guilt.
Mother confirms in a letter that Essek had left the Vurmas outpost with the Mighty Nein. Verin knows little of the band of mercenaries of the Empire that had brokered peace, knows only vaguely that Essek had some sort of hand in their position in Rosohna. Mother tells him Essek gifted them a Thelyss estate to buy favour, that Essek had grown to care for them. That people had heard them call Essek their friend. And, her letters say with the same disbelief Verin feels reading them, it seemed that Essek returned those feelings. That he willingly spent time in their company. That he was seen laughing with the blue tiefling, that Essek would carry a conversation with the fiery-haired human and seem genuinely interested, engaged, in the conversation.
He holds out for six months. After another battle where he doesn’t even come close to being injured, let alone falling, Verin snaps. He can’t stand it, the itching under his skin, the growing realisation that in the years they had been apart, their relationship had grown to be nothing but strangers. They are—were—two halves of a single soul. Knowing there are things he does not know, that he could not know, that Essek never shared, eats Verin from the inside. He is skin walking around with nothing inside but the hole, the void where Essek once sat, once rested comfortably against him. Like two halves.
Verin packs his bags and stashes them outside of the outpost. He waits until one of his overnight watches and slips away from the walls. He sheds his uniform and hitches a ride off a mage with a handy teleport back to Rosohna. He leaves a note for Mother, stuck to the outside of the room that once was his and Essek’s.
And Verin leaves.
It’s near impossible to track down individual names of the Mighty Nein. He passes off far more coin than he cares to admit before he finally gets a name from Cousin Rena, even if it is a questioning, “Cay… luv? Leb? Widow-something. Gas? Something like that.” It’s something, which is more than he had before.
He pays an exorbitant amount of money for a ring that allows him to travel through the Empire without risk to himself. It catches him off guard, the first time he passes by a shop window and sees himself in the reflection. Dark skin a shade of brown, his hair a deep raven-blue, tied back but not braided. Verin stares long enough that the shopkeep squints at him; it keeps him moving, not staying in one place too long.
He joins a group travelling and finds himself warming up to them. A half-elven woman with white hair introduces herself as Elaina and invites him to join them, so long as he’s willing to take a watch overnight and fight should it come to it. He agrees. For two weeks he travels with this group, a mismatched bunch. In them he sees the ways Essek might have warmed up to the Mighty Nein. The red-skinned tiefling and the woman with seemingly the same amount of scars and tattoos up her arms on every visible inch of skin bicker constantly. Elaina is quiet, and her elven friend clad in blue robes even quieter, but Verin’s heart aches when Elaina laughs at the antics of the group, when they pull off some ridiculous stunt that leaves bandits attempting to rob them fleeing instead. His chest tightens when Elaina watches him deftly braid his own hair, when she sits down next to him with wet hair at the next inn they stop at, when she requests he do her hair too. He braids Den Thelyss into her hair, weaving in warmth and love and family.
He parts with them when they reach Rexxentrum, and he pretends that his eyes aren’t wet when Elaina presses something into his hands, closing his fingers over the sending stone, and tells him, “Stay in touch, please. We’ll miss you.” She bears scars of loss and hides herself under laughter and smiles, and when their eyes meet, Verin knows she knows he knows. Whether it was because she saw his disguise slip once, whether it was because she recognised in him what he saw in her… A piece of his heart slots back into place and he pulls her into a hug. She gasps and hugs him back, tight, and in that moment, Verin knows he’ll see her again. He waits only ten minutes before he sends her his first message, just to hear her laughter echo through his head. A smile plays at his lips and he ducks his head and walks through the city.
No one glances at him twice as he walks through the halls of the Soltryce Academy. He looks like just another student, just another person seeking knowledge in the halls that bear the weight of a country old and bloodied. And there, on the fourth floor of one of the buildings, tucked into a corner office, Verin finds him. The fiery-haired mage of the Mighty Nein. Caleb Widogast, the plaque on the door cracked open reads. Verin peeks in and then knocks, his knuckles painful against the heavy wood. “Come,” a voice, accented and warm, calls, and Verin pushes the door open.
His breath catches. Lining the walls are shelves upon shelves of books. He’s sure if he spent the time looking, they would be organised by subject. The room is lit not by a window—Verin doesn’t see a window, he realises once he properly takes in the room—but by arcane candlelight that glows a warm amber.
Caleb Widogast sits behind the desk, an ink pen in hand, and papers strewn out in organised chaos across his desk. When Verin closes the door and locks it, he catches the way Caleb Widogast pauses, glances up at him without moving the rest of his body. A cushy desk job does not beget a loss of instinct in a soldier. “I apologise,” Verin says quietly; “I would like to speak with you privately.” Widogast looks up at him properly and cocks his head.
“And what subject might bring a citizen of the Kryn Dynasty through the streets of Rexxentrum to my office in such a way?” Widogast asks, folding his hands on his desk. He looks soft but his eyes, those eyes, are familiar in ways Verin can’t quite put to words. The intelligence, the cold sharpness in the way they track each movement, planning each possibility. Verin swallows heavily and fights back the urge to cry again.
“Essek.” He barely gets the name out. It chokes him, swelling in his throat, and the feelings he has thought left behind hit him with the force of a moorbounder. Widogast’s expression doesn’t change even as Verin leans forwards, against his desk, and takes a few deep breaths. When the world doesn’t feel like it’s crushing him, when Verin can at last take another breath, he looks up. The sympathy in Widogast’s eyes is almost worse.
“Are you Verin?” Widogast asks. Verin nods, miserable. “Forgive me for asking, but- may I have some form of proof?”
Verin pulls the ring from his finger. The disguise fades from him, purple starting at his fingertips, staining dark skin as it spreads up. The strands of hair escaping his braid turn white in his periphery. Widogast stares at him for a moment and then huffs a quiet laugh. “He wasn’t joking,” Widogast mutters; “you do look quite similar.”
“He- he spoke of me?” Verin croaks. Widogast smiles, soft, warm, not unlike Mother, and holds a finger up. He picks something up from the corner of his desk and holds it to his lips, close enough to speak.
“Dear, we’ve a visitor who might wish to speak to you,” Widogast says, as Verin’s thoughts race, as he realises the purple stone, polished smooth, with amber runes carved into it, is none other than a sending stone. His eyes dart between the stone and Widogast, begging it to make sense.
“He’ll be here in a moment,” Widogast says, setting the stone down. “You understand, it is dangerous for you, either of you, to be here. Regardless of the political situation, the propaganda regarding drow is…” he trails off and sighs. He shakes his head. Verin is seconds, minutes behind, mind struggling to keep up with the facts being presented to him. He’ll be here- He? Essek? Is alive?
He only just notices the small braids in Widogast’s hair, weavings of Den Thelyss into small strands, tucked underneath waves tied back with a leather strap, when the air crackles, the weave shifts and bends, and a familiar figure stumbling and catching his balance grabs Verin’s breath again. Essek turns and their eyes meet and Verin is standing before he can stop himself. He’s alive he’s alive he’s alive he’s-
“You never did manage to figure out your balance when-” Verin cuts off his sentence as Essek slams into him. His arms come up, wrapping around Essek's waist and holding him tightly, rising higher, brushing the strands of growing hair at the base of Essek’s neck. “Essek.”
“You’re here,” Essek whispers back.
“I’m here.” Essek squeezes him and takes a shaky breath, stepping back to look at him. Verin takes a shakier breath, fingers clinging to Essek’s wrist. “You- How- Mother said-?”
“I’ll explain. I promise,” Essek says. He glances towards Widogast and a smile creeps across his face, a smile that Verin has never seen before. “Caleb, do you mind-?”
“Of course,” Widogast nods. “Would you like to use the tower?” Essek nods, that same smile still settling on his lips. Verin stares at him. He barely notices Widogast casting a spell, or the way Widogast shoots Essek a look of concern. He barely notices the slight shake of Essek’s head, too lost in the way Essek never lets go of his wrist, holding Verin just as tightly as Verin holds him.
“Come,” Essek says softly, and pulls him through an amber-coloured door in the middle of the room. Verin stumbles and looks around a warmly-lit entrance hall. Essek pulls him through doors and arches to a parlour not unlike the one he had in his home, in Rosohna. Verin stares, uncomprehending, as Essek toes off his shoes and sinks down onto a loveseat, tucking his feet up underneath him. It’s comfortable, he’s comfortable, in a way Verin hasn’t seen in years, in decades.
“Tea?” Essek offers. Verin shakes his head and then nods. He watches in disbelief as Essek clicks his tongue and calls over a spectral cat, speaking softly to it.
“Essek,” Verin says, chokes out, broken and unsure. The man in front of him is not the man he last saw some ten or eleven years ago. Essek had been uptight, barely willing to indulge in conversation. Busy, strict. Unhappy. And now, in front of him, Verin sees the brother he grew up with. He sees the mischievous glint in Essek’s eyes, the soft smile that never quite leaves his lips, the warmth in his eyes when he meets Verin’s gaze. He holds eye contact and his smile widens.
“You have a lot of questions, I’m sure,” Essek says. Verin nods, choking on the words he wants to say. “I have a few of my own, first.” Verin nods again. A cat brings him a teacup and he takes it and sips, grateful for the distraction, for the warm drink to clear his throat. “Did you tell anyone where you were going? What have you heard? What do you know?”
“You’re- You’re not in any danger, if that’s what you’re asking,” Verin manages to get out. He takes a moment to inhale deeply, takes another drink of his tea, and exhales slowly. “No one knows where I’ve gone. I abandoned my post in the middle of the night.”
“You’re just as fucked as I am.” Essek doesn’t sound upset. He sounds… delighted. Verin narrows his eyes.
“Yes,” Verin says slowly. Essek smiles. No, he grins. He grins a shit-eating grin and shifts on the loveseat, leaning into the arm more. It’s casual, it’s imprecise, it’s the most vulnerable Verin has seen him in a long time. Not since forty years ago, when Essek was ill enough to be confined to bed, when he was too sick to bat away Verin’s attempts to care for him, but not sick enough to call for a cleric. “They think you’re dead. Everyone thinks you’re dead. There’s- There are rumours, mostly among the Den, that you ran off because you started the war. Or for a lover.”
“Surprisingly true, given the usual state of Den gossip,” Essek comments dryly. Verin is sure he looks the part of a fool in the moment, eyes wide and jaw hanging open. “Close your mouth, you’ll catch spiders.” He snaps his mouth shut.
“You started a war?” he demands. Essek shrugs a delicate shoulder; he sees through it. He sees the pain in the way Essek doesn’t quite meet his gaze this time. The way Essek glances towards the direction of the door, the way he shifts his grip on the cup. There is guilt there; there is shame, anxiety, fear. Verin’s heart sinks in his chest. “Essek, you fool.”
“I know,” Essek says sharply; “I know. You needn’t lecture. I know.” Essek still does not look at him. Verin swallows heavily and gives it barely a moment’s thought, the briefest of internal arguments, before he has set aside the teacup to sit next to Essek. He extends one arm, then both, and the void in his chest settles as Essek leans into the hug, as his other half settles in against him.
“I’m not angry with you.” Verin closes his eyes and tucks his chin atop Essek’s head. It takes a moment, but Verin realises it’s true. He’s not angry. “You’re angry enough with yourself. You don’t need me to be angry with you too.”
Essek nods, the motion small. Verin shifts to accommodate it, leans back into the loveseat and barely tries to hide the smile when Essek moves with him. “It’s been a long time since you’ve allowed me to do this,” Verin murmurs.
“I was foolish,” Essek whispers back. Verin smiles softly, sadly, and brushes a hand over the length of Essek’s hair. It’s grown out in the time he’s been gone, starting to reach a stage where it could only be called shaggy, just long enough for the loose waves Essek always hated to start to appear.
“You gave your lover our Den braids,” Verin says. He’s not sure where it comes from, the thought, but he’s grateful for it, to see the way Essek flushes, the tips of his ears darkening, the awkward glance away from him. “I won’t tell Mother you’ve taken tradition and ripped it to shreds, don’t worry.”
“She would expect it of me,” he mutters. Verin snorts a laugh. “Of both of us, perhaps.”
“Certainly of both of us. We are halves of a whole, remember?” he says. He means it to be teasing but it comes out far more wistful, softened by the gentle grip he has on the back of Essek’s neck, softened by the smile Essek gives him, dazzling and warm. “Have you told your lover that?”
Essek hesitates then shakes his head. “Not yet. Soon.” He pauses. “I want you there.”
Soon, with Verin. The thought is reassuring, like the blanket of darkness across a sunlit city. Verin feels the last of the tension leave his body and he wraps Essek back up in a hug. “Of course,” he whispers. Essek smiles at him and leans into his side once again and Verin knows that all will be well.