WHO Essek & Verin Thelyss WHERE Verin's apartment WHEN Afternoon of August 7 WHAT Essek has a story to tell Verin about some of his life choices in Exandria. STATUS Complete WARNINGS Spoilers through C2E97. Discussion of war and the consequences of it. Donuts go uneaten.
Essek really didn't want to have this conversation. What he wanted to do was turn and walk out of the Quills, go back to the Xhorhaus, and find a book that would somehow distract him enough that he would forget that he needed to tell his brother about his treasonous actions that were taken a world away. What he wanted was to wrap his arms around Caleb and lean into him, taking a comfort that not very long ago he wouldn't have thought he'd even begin to appreciate. What he wanted was to just be anywhere but where he was, standing with his feet firmly on the ground in front of the room in the inn that he knew was Verin's.
But what he wanted didn't matter, Essek knew. He had to do this. He would do this.
Though Essek had been so incredibly tempted to ask Caleb or even Jester to come along as some shade of moral support, he knew that wasn't the right thing to do -- and he desperately wanted to do this confession correctly. He still wasn't sure how the Mighty Nein found out about what he had done, but he knew that this time the confession couldn't come after avoidance, being paralyzed, having manacles placed on his wrists, attempting to Misty Step away, and then finally giving in after being given the Command to stop. This time he was going to do it correctly. His brother deserved that much.
But while that all might have been true, perhaps he didn't have to do this entirely alone. With a snap of his fingers, Malla appeared at his feet. She was still in the shape of the grey cat, her piercing green eyes that were entirely fey looking up at him. Essek hadn't had the heart to turn his familiar back to her normal form after watching her curl up and scamper around with Frumpkin and he had the sense that she didn't have the heart to do that either. His familiar had very much filled the whole of a companion in his heart that he hadn't known needed filling, though; having her in the room and knowing her affections wouldn't wane would do him some good.
Leaning down just a brief moment to give Malla a brief scratch at her ears, prompting her to move and rub against his legs, Essek straightened back up and knocked twice on the wooden door. Best to get this over with.
To say that arriving in Vallo had been the most absurd experience Verin had ever had would be an understatement. It was a multitude of things really. The island touched by other worlds, the people from places he’d never dreamed of. It was the technology and the food and the culture shock he’d never anticipated having to experience. But more than anything else, it was his brother who was somehow simultaneously Essek and not Essek at all. Verin hadn’t seen the gradual shifts in Essek’s temperament. He hadn’t seen the subtle ways in which the Mighty Nein had somehow changed him. All he’d known was that, one day, his older brother was some distant person whose persistent indifference was the one thing in life Verin regretted more than anything else. And the next day he was in Vallo with a brother who seemed eager to acknowledge that he existed.
It was a lot to process. He wanted Essek to be his brother. It was the one thing he’d always wanted, but it was also the one thing he’d been sure he’d never have and this new Essek shook that deeply rooted certainty. It didn’t help, of course, that Verin himself had had no hand in the ways in which Essek had changed. The constant reminder that his older brother had been fully capable of making a few dozen friends was also a cold reminder that he just hadn’t been enough to tap into that potential himself.
So Verin had taken to distracting himself, instead. He’d visited shops and bakeries and restaurants that had been suggested. He’d read the books Caleb had sent and eagerly asked for more. He’d begun to forge new friendships with people who didn’t look at him and see his brother’s brother, or his mother’s son, but him. And those distractions were wonderful enough to actually work.
For the most part. Most of the time.
The pair of knocks came just as Verin had taken the lid off of a box of donuts he’d picked up at Matthew’s suggestion. Setting the cinnamon and sugar dusted ring, he brushed his hands off on his pants and walked instead to the door. He was surprised to see Essek standing there, and the surprise wasn’t well-hidden on his face. He’d never been great at concealing his emotions. Still, he stepped to the side as he pulled the door open wider.
“Essek, hello. Did you want to come in?”
Essek knew that he didn't deserve the immediate sense of sadness that he fet at the shock on his brother's face at seeing him there. The guilt? Absolutely. But he had made this bed over a century of putting his academics above all else, solitude, and judgement of his brother for following a path that he felt was beneath him. He didn't get to feel hurt, in Essek's mind.
But, he had always been good at schooling his features; patient indifference was, after all, what Shadowhand Essek Thelyss did best. "Yes. Thank you," Essek replied, walking inside. Malla followed close on his heels, peering at Verin and the contents of the room curiously. Standing there, Essek felt himself longing for the first time in a while for his long robes to act as a shield and his floating to lean on for confidence; he would never admit it, but his younger brother's audacity to pass him up in height had been, after all, a reason for him to create the spell in the first place in his youth. Now he was standing before him in some of his more simple clothing, looking less like nobility and more like someone simply strolling the streets of Rosohna.
"I am sorry to just come by unannounced," Essek started, then paused, considered, and switched from Common, which had become his default in the past months, to Undercommon. Outside of lessons with Caleb, he hardly got to use his native language and it was nice to have at least that with Verin. "I just wanted to see how you were doing and -- ah. There's something I needed to tell you."
Verin, too, had at least mostly resorted to Common, if only because there was only one other person here in Vallo who spoke his native language. He hadn’t had as long to get used to speaking it full time, though, so it was a relief to him, as well, when Essek switched. Closing the door behind his brother, Verin walked back into the apartment that had been provided to him and reached again for the donut, pushing the box forward on the table to indicate that his brother was welcome to one as well.
He may have been surprised by the unexpected drop-in, but he was a good host.
Though Verin tried to guess at what Essek might be there to tell him, there was really no way he could. He wasn’t used to having his brother’s confidences, and his eyes had been open to a whole slew of possibilities he’d never been able to consider before. So instead of continuing to try to guess, Verin said, “I was just about to sample more of the donuts your friend Matthew recommended, but I can eat and talk at the same time. It’s a talent of mine. What did you need to talk about?”
"If Matthew recommended them, then they are most likely delicious." Though Essek's general aversion to sweets had adjusted somewhat since being in Vallo, he knew that it was entirely thanks to Matthew -- well, and Jester, of course. They might not have all been winners to Essek's taste, but he hadn't the heart to let either of them know that every time. He had a feeling that both of them knew, regardless of his intentions.
But for as much as he'd far rather talk about donuts, Essek knew that he couldn't allow himself to fall to distractions. He had already put off this conversation longer than he should have. A better man would have told Verin immediately. Essek might have been better than he was, but he surely wasn't that much better.
Though he didn't take any of the offered baked goods, Essek did walk over to the table to at least stand next to it. "It's something about home," he started, crossing his arms and looking down to his familiar. Seeing her grounded him slightly. "Something that I did."
Verin had just taken a bite of the donut and, unsurprisingly, loved it. Chewing it, though, gave him a moment to consider how to respond. This, at least, was something likely familiar. Though they had never really talked about what had transpired back home and between them, Verin couldn’t help but feel strangely relieved and anxious to do so. Would Essek finally actually acknowledge the reasons for the chasm between them? There were so many things he’d always wanted to hear his brother say, but would he say any one of them?
Swallowing the bite he’d taken, Verin sat the donut back down and nodded once in encouragement. “All right. What did you do?”
Essek only just saw the nod of encouragement out of the corner of his eye, his own gaze still on Malla. He hesitated for a few seconds, trying to decide if he still couldn't just teleport away and pretend this didn't happen. It would certainly be easier.
Instead, Essek closed his eyes for a second longer, took in a breath, and turned his face to look at his brother. "I was the one that stole the beacons and gave them to the Empire." They were going to be words that he'd only spoken aloud one time before, but that hadn't been nearly enough preparation. The practiced, stoic expression that he wore before turned pained, but he knew that wouldn't do much to erase every terrible truth the words held.
Whatever Verin had been expecting, it hadn’t been that. It would never have been that. He took a tentative step back, brow furrowing as he shook his head. He had to have heard Essek wrong. There was no way those words had just come from his mouth. Those words were treason, a death sentence. He sucked in his breath and took another step back.
“If that’s your idea of your newfound sense of humor, Essek, it’s not funny,” Verin replied, trying desperately to understand what exactly Essek’s angle was here. “And there is no way the smartest person I have ever known would be so stupid as to ever entertain the idea of doing something like that, so why are you really here?”
"Smart, yes." Because he was intelligent and even in this moment of humility, Essek couldn't help but remind himself of that much. "But I have never claimed to be wise."
Essek released a sigh, then pulled one of the chairs out at the table without asking his brother if he could sit, a breach of etiquette that would have their mother tutting. "A little over three years ago," he started, "I was given an offer that I should have refused. If I was able to provide key figures within the Empire access to our beacons to look at and experiment on, I would in return be given their findings. I was frustrated, angry that I hadn't been given the access that I had wanted, even after climbing the ranks in court and being made Shadowhand. My curiosity was looked at as youthful folly at best and at worst borderline sacrilege, given what -- given the ties they have to the Luxon." Apparently treason was something that Essek could confess, but he still couldn't bring himself to admit to his brother the utter lack of devotion he, himself, had for the god their people worshipped.
"And so, I did it. I stole two of the beacons and I turned them over. I couldn't have known for sure what the repercussions would be, but I knew that we were already on the way toward war with the Empire. I knew that it could make the tensions worse and -- it did, eventually. We both know that." Essek lifted one of his hands, his fingers pressing to his temple as his gaze dropped away from Verin. It was especially hard thinking about how he had aided in starting a war, a war that his soldier of a younger brother could have had to fight on the frontlines in, had the timeline gone differently. It was regret of a whole different kind. He still felt that what he had done was important, but it was hard to ignore the piling number of those he cared for that had been impacted by his deeds.
The granite countertop was unyielding beneath Verin’s fingers, no matter how hard he gripped it to steady himself against Essek’s confession. He was flooded with emotions--shock, confusion, worry, anger. But most of all, he felt the unrelenting, pounding sense of complete and total betrayal. Of him, of their faith, of their people. And the absolute worst part of it was that, as the dust from that bomb of truth settled around them, the only emotion Verin didn’t feel was surprise. It wasn’t surprising that Essek’s ambition had led to this. It wasn’t a shock that his brother cared so little for anything but himself and his own pursuits of knowledge.
“There’s the Essek I know, at last,” Verin said, eyes cast downward at his knuckles quickly losing color, voice barely above a whisper as he tried to reach and grasp for what he should say, how he should react. But the only words that he could reach were, “Your hubris is astonishing, brother. Did it matter even once, for however fleeting a moment, that your hubris had the potential to fuck us all? Did you for a second consider the souls you handed over to the Empire, condemning them to be reborn amongst our enemies had the beacons not been returned? Did you wonder, even vaguely, whose souls you leveraged for your own Luxon-damned ambition? Yours? Mine? Our father’s?”
And then, like the truth had been searching for a place to crash land, Verin slammed his palm down on the counter and looked at Essek, something hot and angry burning behind his eyes. “Fuck, Essek. You will lose your life for this. Maybe every life to come. Was your pride worth it? What’s the point of knowing everything if you’re going to be so fucking stupid?”
Verin had asked a lot of questions, all of which were both valid and ones that wouldn't have mattered, even if Essek had pondered them himself when he'd decided to work with the Cerberus Assembly. No, the consequences of his actions and how they might have, as his brother put it, fuck them all had not mattered to him. What mattered to him was proving that he could do what had been expected of him for decades -- to push the boundaries of dunamancy, to learn what it was truly capable of. But how was he to do that when they were revered as they were? When he couldn't even get near them long enough to do a proper study?
The souls had crossed his mind, but it hadn't been unheard of for people of the Dynasty to be reborn on enemy soil. Those reborn always seemed to find their way to Rosohna, one way or another. Nogvurot was the most recent example of that. Perhaps it would be inconvenient, he had thought back then, but it didn't truly matter. He was striving toward the greater good.
As for the souls that could potentially not be true strangers... Essek couldn't say that he'd thought of most of theirs all too much, either. His own? That hardly mattered. He was careful and methodical, but he would sacrifice himself if it meant achieving his ends or leaving research behind that another as intelligent and gifted as he may one day interpret, much like had happened with Caleb and his finishing of Halas Lutagran's spell for Veth. It was only one life, after all; he wasn't consecuted, like most assumed. As for his father's soul, well. Essek had little respect for him in life and it hadn't extended beyond. He would likely see his father again one day, but he hadn't been concerned. Verin, however. He had thought of Verin, then quickly pushed those thoughts aside. He couldn't afford to be sentimental, not when he had such purpose.
They were ugly answers, Essek thought. His hands came together in his lap, his gaze dropping to watch as his long fingers that were born for casting intricate, impressive spells moved together. He couldn't defend himself -- not to Verin. He wouldn't understand. What more, Essek wasn't certain that he wanted him to. This was the ire that he had been expecting. It was the ire that he had only recently understood that he deserved. He had escaped the consequences of his actions by being brought to Vallo. Some days it was fine and he could go on with his life, enjoying time spent with his friends and his partner, teaching at the school, and using his money and time to better others. But most days, and even sometimes at times on those better days, the guilt would set in when he considered the good people he had hurt. Essek let his eyes rise toward his brother, not quite able to settle on him. He may not have immediately included Verin as one of those, but as time had gone on, he had joined the Mighty Nein in that number.
"I have been careful," Essek said, as though that mattered at all. He did not mention that part of that had included framing another for his actions, but he hadn't come far enough to feel guilty for that. No one innocent had been harmed. Other than the thousands dead, a voice that sounded very much like Beauregard's echoed in his mind. "But, yes. I knew what I was doing at the time. I understood what the repercussions could be and yet I made my choices. I have much to regret."
Verin just shook his head, pushing himself away from the counter as he brought a hand up to rub his face. How could he feel so exhausted when only minutes ago he was the furthest thing from it? “Do you actually know what regret is, Essek? And why are you telling me now? You’ve apparently had three years to pretend like you weren’t a traitor when you were forced to tolerate me at Mother’s behest. Why now?”
"Regret is -- " The words stuck in Essek's throat for a moment, transporting him to the last time he had this conversation. He drew in a breath. "Regret is a very new sensation for me, I will admit. I have been very absorbed in myself, in my work." He paused and finally forced himself to look at his brother. "You took the brunt of that for too long."
But Verin had asked another question and this one, at least, he could answer. Though it had been Caleb that had suggested the shortened timeline and not waiting too long before confessing, Essek had known from the moment he had considered that Verin was in Vallo at all that he would need to come clean. He was, in many ways, the consequences that he had felt he deserved most. He did not want to die as a traitor in the Dynasty, but he could, at the very least, let his brother know exactly who he was.
"I have been given an opportunity in Vallo," Essek said. "There is no Bright Queen here to execute me for treason, nor are there members of the Assembly that may want to tie up loose ends. This is a second chance and I want to take advantage of it. I want to walk a different path. I want to be your brother. But, I couldn't do either of those things and also lie to you."
“How very convenient for you,” Verin replied, willing himself not to be the first to look away. “You grow a conscience the moment no one is here to hold you accountable for your treason. Did you forget that I am a soldier of the Dynasty? That my only real purpose in life, the only thing I am apparently good at, is defending our people the very thing you’ve done? So here I am getting the one thing I have always wanted, but the cost is living with your ‘regrets’ and doing nothing about it. Congratulations, you’ve found a way to make me less than I thought I was, again.”
Verin took in a deep, shaky breath, his fists clenching and unclenching at his side. Was this how it always would be, for centuries to come should his brother live long enough to see such time pass? Verin always paling in comparison to Essek’s deed both good and bad? He didn’t know if he was angrier at Essek or himself for caring so damn much.
He was silent for a few long moments before he said, “I think it might be best for you to leave.”
Essek would have stayed as long as Verin wanted him to, taking every earned bit of anger from him. He deserved much more than that. But if he was being given permission to leave, he would accept the out. What that said about him, he wasn't sure.
Getting to his feet, he snapped his fingers, dismissing the observing Malla to whatever equivalent fey plane existed here in Vallo that she called home. "Of course," Essek said, as polite as ever as he finally broke his gaze from Verin's. He began to murmur under his breath, and then stopped, forcing himself to look back to his brother. "I know it isn't worth anything," he started, a true hint of regret etched in his features, but I am sorry." And with that, he turned away and spoke the familiar words to teleport home.
The room felt simultaneously too big and too small all at once the moment Essek disappeared and Verin didn’t know whether he should feel relieved or disappointed by the sudden silence. His brother was a traitor to the Dynasty--maybe sadness was the emotion closest in reach. He wanted a relationship with his brother. He always had. It just figured that one chance he had to have it came with the necessity of abandoning his own convictions, as well.