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Caleb Widogast had, many times in his life, been close to death. But never, perhaps, quite this seriously, or quite this close. There was no reset, after all, no cleric standing by with a resurrection spell or god with a handy last-minute save. He and Beau had not only doomed themselves and Bells Hells, but the world.
That was a big burden to carry.
So Caleb committed himself to watching as the Malleus Key sparked and groaned into life. Beauregard was frozen. The Ashari leader was down. The mage-hunter golem had rendered speaking impossible, trapping magic and words alike beneath Caleb’s skin. The little aeormaton was trying and failing to dispel the collar, too tight around his neck.
Too late.
Caleb watched. This was to be the end of all things. All he could do was watch, and, for how long he lived, remember. One last moment of fight. He didn’t blink.
Not until the world flashed sudden, blinding white, a high-pitched whine and a sudden realization that whatever they’d all managed to do to sabotage the machine had worked, at least partially.
Everything whited out, and Caleb came to consciousness sprawled out on wet, cold ground, odd and shocking after the desert. He groaned silently and blinked his eyes open.
Jester was staring down at him.
“Caleb!” she said. “Good you’re awake, what the f—”
Caleb hugged her.
“—uck? Oh, okay, we’re hugging. That’s pretty nice, actually, Cay-leb!”
He ought to have known better than to forget about the Mighty Nein. When it mattered, they pulled through.
There were footsteps beside; Yasha, brow furrowed in worry, had Beau over her shoulder. She put her gently down next to Caleb. Beauregard was still trussed like a wild animal and stiff as a board from the spell put on her at the ruin.
Fjord waved his hand in front of her face. The whole gang was here. “Something’s wrong with her,” he said. “Caleb? What’s goin’ on?”
Caleb gestured frantically to his neck, tapping the cold metal there.
Veth was wearing her old porcelain mask, face shadowed by her hood, but she said, alarmed; “You can’t speak?!?”
He tugged at the collar and pointed at Jester.
“Oh! Dispel! Okay, I’ll try.”
Jester closed her eyes and grasped at the Traveler’s symbol on her neck, unusually focused for such a small spell. Caleb’s heart sank. They had known that should Ludinus succeed, divine magic might be affected, but Jester was one of the strongest healers they knew. If she was out of commission, things were about to get a lot harder.
But then her magic sparked, pink and green around her fingers, and the collar fell away .
Caleb heaved in a full breath, clutching the no-doubt bruised area. “Ich kann dir gar nicht genug danken, Jester, I thought we were done for. I don’t know how you knew, but that was perfect timing!”
He gave her a smacking kiss to the cheek, to which she giggled, and he turned quickly to Beau, hauling her back to her knees unceremoniously by the straps of the restraints. “Veth, start working on the chains while I dispel the mind magic,” he said, scrambling in his pockets for components.
It was an inevitably high-level spell— only a fool underestimated Beauregard Lionett— but in the end not too difficult to dispel. He Restored her mind, and she blinked back into full control and swore loudly.
“Beauregard!” he said, opening his arms for her to crash into ungracefully for a hug. He pulled back very quickly and patted at her face, looked in her eyes. “Are you all right? Scheisse, we really messed this one up, huh?”
“A little bit,” Beau said. “Are you okay? That damn thing dropped you off a cliff!” She wriggled uncomfortably in her bonds. “Veth? Dude, I wasn’t deaf, I heard him ask you to get these things off… me…”
She trailed off.
She was looking over Caleb’s shoulder, but Caleb in turn found himself distracted by something over her shoulder. He had automatically looked up to find if Veth was all right and why she wasn’t helping. He had found her, but… not her. Well, yes, it was her, but…
Nott the Brave was staring at him, frozen.
She was not just wearing her old mask. She was wearing her old face, too, goblin eyes and shabby clothes and clawed fingers. She had the capabilities to disguise herself that way, of course, but never, so far as he knew, the desire. Not to mention she looked terrified.
Beau, similarly, looked like she had seen a ghost.
She said, voice scratchy, “Molly?”
Caleb nearly scoffed. He had seen a flash of Kingsley’s purple skin and tattoos when he had awoken. She must have been more rattled by the experience than he knew. Had to be.
But he turned to look, something growing within his gut.
Long curls. Ugly coat. Flashy jewelry.
Mollymauk Tealeaf waggled his fingers. “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”
Nott had recovered herself eventually enough to help Beau out of her chains. The rest of the Mighty Nein were buzzing with questions.
“And you have grey in your hair!” Jester said, poking the streaks at Caleb’s temples. “And crow’s feet!”
“Yes, danke.”
“Are you really from the future?” asked Fjord. In the absence of adrenaline and hurry, Caleb could hear that the drawl of his voice had returned. He nearly smiled at the return of the fake accent, but hid it in his collar.
Beau stretched her shoulders and wrists, freed from the restraints. “It’s a new one, even for us.”
It was cold out, a far cry from the Hellcatch Valley and the Tishtan Ruins. Caleb had his dusty scarf wound about his head to keep the sand off his face; he pulled it off and wrapped it around his neck instead. Then he passed his coat to Beau with her bare arms, and she shrugged it on and took the sand-goggles off the top of her head and put them in her pocket.
Nott had been mostly quiet, possibly understandably so, but she spoke up now, toying with her flask. “How?”
“Well,” Caleb said, frowning. He looked up at the sky, trying to calculate.
“That is a good question. We know the Malleus Key was using a Luxon Beacon as part of its construction. That, obviously, has natural dunamantic properties. It is possible that the intersection of the approaching Apogee Solstice, the interference with the arcane power cores, and of course the rending of the Divine Gate— that they made the machine malfunction unpredictably. Possibly the Beacon slingshotted us back through the timeline of possibilities, incidentally, I’m sure, because that was not Ludinus’ goal.”
The silence stretched.
“Yeah, you’re gonna have to dumb it down a little, Professor Widogast,” Beau said. “These are the people who are still using their Beacon to win drinking contests.” She turned to the others. “The moon exploded and sent us back in time.”
“Oh,” said Fjord weakly. “Why didn’t you just say that?”
“Sounds like you’ve been having fun without us,” Molly said.
“Oh!” Jester said. “Where were we? I don’t think I would have wanted to miss the time travel.” She gasped. “Oh my gosh, were we dead?”
“Jester, you are fine,” Caleb said, sighing.
“You’re so morbid,” added Beau. “We were on a mission with a different group, so we left the Nein at home. I mean, that turned out to be a mistake, but we didn’t know things were going down so quickly.”
“Though turns out we could have used a healer in the Shadowfell too,” Caleb muttered under his breath. Beau gave him a commiserating look.
The Grim Verity members they’d brought along had been enthusiastic, committed to the cause, but they had been young and inexperienced. They’d had some very bad luck, those days working on the Key in the Shadowfell. The Mighty Nein may have turned the tide. If they’d been able to move on the ruin earlier, to get through the anti-magic wards…
“Is that where you were?” asked Yasha curiously. “And where you got captured?”
“Nein. That was the fault of a mage-hunter golem and a power-hungry spellcaster.”
“Things went really, really bad. And now we’re stuck here, while back there, everything’s going wrong.” Beau rubbed her forehead. “And we can’t help.”
“Because the moon blew up?” Fjord asked tentatively.
“Mostly.”
“Buck up!” Molly said, nudging her. “Things can always get worse!” He patted her cheerfully on top of the head, then ducked away as if to avoid a sharp punch on the arm.
But Beau, like Caleb, seemed to feel that if she poked too hard at Molly he’d disappear, and instead she shook her head. “This is so weird,” she said.
Caleb winced. He very much agreed.
He cleared his throat, changing the subject. “Nott? I thought you were… someone else. Are you all right, spatz?”
Nott looked antsy. “You were working on time travel,” she said. “You told me and Beau. If you managed to do that, did you do all your… other spells too?”
“Ja,” Caleb said, trying to communicate many things through glance alone. Of course he and Nott had always understood each other in ways that no one else did.
“Oh,” Nott said. Hope glimmered in her yellow eyes. Yellow, of course, only for now. “All right.” Her mood seemed greatly improved.
Beauregard elbowed Caleb, and that did hurt. “What about those kids, from the ruin? The Bells whatever. You still have the other half of the Sending Stone you gave them? If they came back too, maybe you can contact them on that.”
Caleb nodded and began rifling through his pockets.
“Kids?” asked Nott, alarmed and screechy. “There were children with you?”
“Oh, no,” Beau said. “Just young adventurers. I don’t know. Early twenties?”
Caleb found the corresponding stone— he tended to amass more than he knew what to do with— and raised it to his mouth.
“Beau, I’m in my early twenties,” said Jester.
There was a horrified silence from Caleb and Beauregard for a very, very long moment.
“My gods, we’re old,” Beau said.
There was no response on Bells Hells’ Sending Stone, or on any of the others. Caleb also unfolded the Scroll of Telescription that he and Essek used to pass messages back and forth when their duties took them far apart.
There was no response to his coded message— in fact, the words did not even disappear from the page as they were supposed to. The magic was simply never sparked.
“Ooh, who ya talking to?” Molly asked, butting in over his shoulder like a cat.
“Leave me alone, Mollymauk,” Caleb grumbled good-naturedly, elbowing him off and putting the scroll back in his pocket. “Any form of communication magic seems to be compromised,” he said. “The runes are not even activating.”
“Makes sense if the other half ain’t even in the same timeline, I suppose,” Fjord said.
But none of the girls were paying attention to Caleb; Jester was very busy, apparently, teasing Beau.
“Don’t be sad, Beau! You’re not old!” She practically skipped a circle around her. “I think you and Caleb look really good, actually. Total PILF’s.”
“What?” Caleb, with his attention caught, asked, squinting over at her.
“Parents I’d Like To—”
“Ew ew ew!” Beau said. “Stop.”
But then Caleb could see the rest of the Mighty Nein also giving them considering glances.
“If anyone even thinks about PILF’s right now I will turn them into a toad,” Caleb said. “I am not kidding. Can we please get down to business?”
“Yeah, we kinda have a job to do too,” Fjord said. “Not that your thing isn’t important. But the Gentleman isn’t exactly someone to mess with.”
“The… Gentleman,” Beau said. They both looked at Jester.
Jester, taking this as a request for more information, said, brightly, “The moist guy!”
“We know who the Gentleman is,” Beau said.
“Where are we?” asked Caleb.
“It is called Shadycreek Run,” Yasha said.
Caleb felt himself go distant in that way that rarely happened, these days, and beside him, Beau stiffened, suddenly deadly serious and focused.
“Oh,” she said.
“Bad?” asked Molly.
“Bad,” said Beau. She put a comforting hand on Caleb’s shoulder, and he shook himself, pulling himself back up to the surface. “We need to regroup, see what’s up. If it turns out we’re stuck here for a while, we can help you get— safely — to Mardun. But we’re not staying in this hellhole.”
The Mighty Nein, eventually, agreed with no small amount of reluctance. After all, they, as a group, were not ones particularly inclined to blind trust; in the grand scheme of things at this time they barely knew each other, and every one of them was keeping a secret or two.
And Caleb and Beau were not forthcoming with information about what exactly had happened, their first time around at Shadycreek Run. No sense in staring a bad future in the eye, not when they didn’t need to now.
They gathered the horses and a rickety cart. “Are these the ones we named after toilets?” Beau asked, grinning, petting one’s nose.
“It would be better if we could leave them behind,” Caleb said. “I cannot fit them in my teleportation circle, and we will have to go along the road.”
“We can’t leave them here!” said Jester. “If we abandon the horses they’re, like, totally going to die.”
“I’m sure they’d be fine, Jes,” said Fjord. There was something quite jarring about him, in particular, as a young man. His tusks were bare nubs in his mouth, and he carried himself with an awkward, uncertain air which Caleb had certainly not picked up on at the time.
“They didn’t even remember them! What do you think happened to them originally?”
“Um…” Beau said.
“We’re taking them,” Jester said.
“Yeah, okay.”
Caleb helped Nott take a step up into the wagon with the ease of long practice. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“We have a friend nearby in the Savalierwood.” He paused. “Or, I suppose, we will have a friend there. Regardless, if we must go by road, his home is the closest place of refuge. Perhaps his goddess will even have some insight into what happened to myself and Beauregard.”
“Oh yeah?” asked Fjord. “How come?”
“We got tangled in some really divine crap,” Beau said, sighing. “I’m pretty sure we saw the Raven Queen’s Champion get orb-ified.”
“And the man we have been chasing for ten years attempted to, or possibly succeeded at, releasing a god-eater onto the world,” Caleb said tiredly.
“Oh,” Jester said.
“… on purpose?” said Fjord.
“Oh yes,” Beau said.
“You can lead the way.”
Beau moved to swing herself up onto the front jumpseat of the wagon, but she paused with one foot in the air. “Uh, hold on,” she said. “Did anyone happen to see a statue around here?”
They found Planerider Ryn a few feet away, having fallen over either in the transportation or the excitement. The others had been distracted by Beau and Caleb— apparently there had been a flash of light and when it was over, they’d been replaced by their older timeline selves— and understandably hadn’t even thought to search for anyone else.
Ryn seemed fine. Well, not in worse shape.
“She’s pretty!” Jester said brightly, as they all stared at the hunk of stone Fjord and Yasha were hauling into the back of the cart.
“She could kill all of us twice over,” Caleb said.
“I don’t know,” said Molly, “To me she looks kind of—”
“Do not say ‘armless’,” Caleb said.
Molly grinned unrepentantly. He helped Jester hop into the cart beside Ryn, and Jester immediately started fishing for charcoal in her pockets. She gave a speculative gaze, as if mentally measuring space for doodles. Poor Ryn.
“Is she… okay?” said Nott.
“She stumbled into a Ruby Vanguard mage-trap,” Beau said. “But I’m pretty sure it can be reversed.”
The others followed into the cart— they strapped Ryn down, lest she come out of this with even less limbs— and Fjord climbed into the front to take control of the horses.
Caleb sat at the edge of the cart, to keep watch behind, and Beauregard took her position in the front to do the same with the road ahead. This was not a place to become cocky.
The horses were prodded into movement, and the cart took off.
Jester went up on her knees to pester Beau in the front seat, wanting to know a million questions, most of them about the future and if the fashions were very different and how Beau had managed to get Caleb to take a bath.
Meanwhile, Nott seemed wary but stuck close to Caleb. He felt bad for inadvertently risking her secret before she was ready for the others to know about it. Yasha was staring into the distance, but clearly she was listening to Beau’s answers with interest.
Caleb flipped out his journal and began to take notes on the events in the Hellcatch.
He caught Molly’s hand an instant before it began to play with his scarf. “Can I help you?”
Molly grinned, achingly familiar yet very different than the other personalities this body had carried. “This isn’t your usual style.”
Caleb felt himself flush up to his ears.
“I think it looks handsome,” protested Nott.
“Why purple?” Molly asked. “Your usual style is, you know, brown or just kinda dirty. And not attention-grabbing.”
“It’s my favorite color,” Caleb muttered, face burning. It had been a gift from Essek. The fabric was soft and lightly enchanted to never snag or tear.
“I don’t believe you,” Molly informed him. “Hey, Beau!”
Beau turned around. “What do you want?”
“Caleb was just telling me all about his wondrous friend who gave him this scarf which he totally wouldn’t buy for himself.”
Beau snorted. “No he wasn’t. That guy won’t talk about his love life under anything less than mortal torture.”
“Love life?” repeated Molly and Jester in delight.
“Love life!?” screeched Nott in a much different tone of voice.
Beau grinned.
“Do you want me to tell them about Port Zoon, Beauregard?” Caleb asked casually, flipping through his journal.
She paled. “You wouldn’t.”
Beauregard had inflicted her bachelor party on Port Zoon, or at least that was where most of it had taken place before drunken teleportation had come into play. They had all sworn never to speak of it again (beyond what was publicly available in the ensuing shop bans and minor arrest warrants).
Caleb gave her an innocent look.
“Teasing rescinded,” Beau said stuffily. “I have nothing further to say on the subject.”
Naturally, that was not the end of it, but at least they were poking fun at Beau now, not Caleb. He smiled smugly at her. She scowled back.
Caleb had incinerated the mage collar in a fit of pique, but for some reason they had hauled the restraints off Beau into the cart with the rest of their things.
Jester was playing with it, stretching out the leather and admiring it against the blue of her skin. “Oooh, I bet we could use these for bondage,” she said gleefully, tail whipping in a way that meant she knew exactly what she was doing. “Fjooord, what do you think?”
Fjord blushed dark green and squinted stoically out at the road, pretending to concentrate.
Caleb smiled, and patted the top of Nott’s scraggly hair absently. It was much coarser than her other form, but perhaps no less unkempt; Veth did not like baths, and there was only so much a braid could hide. In a way it was comforting and familiar, reminding Caleb of when he was young and things were simpler.
Nott gave him a hesitant, sharp-toothed smile. “What are you writing now?”
Caleb showed her the parchment. Unlike his personal notes or his spellbook, this was not coded and was written totally in Common. “For you,” he said. “In case we return home unexpectedly or something else happens. We have already changed so much; there are still things in Shadycreek that, I think, you should not miss.”
Beau craned her head to look at him. “Oh, dang, I forgot about Keg and Shakaste and— what was the Firbolg’s name again?”
“Nila,” Caleb said. He handed Nott the list but it was intercepted by Beau, who was as usual mis-using her near inhuman speed to take things out of Caleb’s hands.
“I wanna add stuff too,” Beau said.
“I literally have a perfect memory,” said Caleb.
“But I’m cooler,” Beau said.
Caleb rolled his eyes, but he gave her his quill also. Beau tapped it, too enthusiastically, until the ink turned blue; the quill was enchanted, a present from Jester last Civilisation’s Dawn.
“I want to see your future,” Nott said. “It seems… nice.”
“They literally just finished telling us about the moon blowin’ up,” Fjord pointed out.
Caleb snorted in agreement and amusement. He felt somewhat like he was talking to his students, who were always curious to hear of old adventures, and sometimes too bright-eyed to really want to know what they entailed.
“No, I agree,” said Molly thoughtfully. He looked at Caleb, then at Beau, who was scribbling gleefully. “You both seem… brighter.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Beau called back.
“I agree,” Yasha said quietly. “Your burdens have not been lifted. But you live with them better.”
Beau gave him back the parchment and quill. She had, indeed, not had much to add, but on Caleb’s note— LORENZO: KILL WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE— she had added a lot of little drawings of poop, like Jester’s favorite doodle.
Caleb folded it and pressed it gently into Nott’s hand.
Molly tilted his head at him. “I just think it’s nice to believe we’ll someday get to relax and be ourselves.”
Caleb looked away, but Beau was now squinting out at the trees. Without looking, she put a hand on top of Jester’s head, stopping her from her gleeful jingling of the metal parts on the harness.
“Beauregard?” Caleb asked, reaching into his coat pockets— returned as Beau had swapped it for a blanket— for his components.
And that was when a huge creature burst from the trees. An ankheg, hulking. No, two, one just behind the other. They were charging forward, drooling acid.
Caleb had already yanked a piece of sunstone from his pocket; he outstretched it and muttered the incantation, and a huge burst of burning sunlight appeared. The front ankheg squealed in pain and anger. It dropped, smoldering, but its friend recovered quickly from the brightness and jumped towards the cart madly.
Beau was already mid-leap off the side of the cart— Caleb cast telekinesis on her and flung her, hard, at the wounded one.
She landed fist-first, and punched directly through the creature’s chest. It dropped down with a sickening squelch, and Beau deftly flipped out of the way.
“Ourselves?” Caleb told Molly. “Perhaps.”
Beau came trotting up, looking cheerful, her fists covered in goo. “But relax? Never.” She showed a dripping monster heart to Yasha. “I punched this out. You want it?”
“That’s very kind,” said Yasha.
They ran into the Syphilis Bandits. Probably, the less said about that, the better.
The Blooming Grove was verdant and carried a smell Caleb now associated with Caduceus; old earth and growing things.
Still his heart was gladdened to see the graveyard looming ahead, and Beau drew the horses to a stop as the Nein craned to look at the new place.
“Gloomy,” Molly said cheerfully, and his tail lashed excitedly around his legs. “I think it’s absolutely fabulous.”
“You would,” said Beau.
They departed the cart, except for Ryn, who stared stoically ahead, a new mustache and pair of bushy eyebrows drawn on. It suited her.
The door to the cottage creaked open.
Caduceus Clay stepped out, carrying a tray of tea. He was smiling, but then looked down, crestfallen, at the teacups.
“Don’t worry,” Beau said. “We brought extra cups.”
Caduceus beamed. “Oh, good. In that case, come on in. All of you. The Wildmother… well, she had some interesting things to say about what was coming.”
“You,” said Caleb, “Have no idea, my friend.”
They went inside.