Chapter Twelve:
The Opportunity Cost
…
1,000 heartbeats per minute. Nearly 17 every second. The first time he transformed into a bird he thought he was dying. Even after a decade of practice he hated the way his heart surged forward, beats blending together into a fevered hum that even the screaming wind couldn't drown out. He felt like he was about to shatter.
The squalls yanked his half-ounce frame through the night, and he didn't have the strength or presence of mind to resist.
Cold, sharp, push, pull. He lost himself in the oblivion of sensation—mind full of white noise.
Ice Haven's jumbled buildings passed beneath him in a swirl of black, the occasional red lantern slicing through the winter gloom.
He let the winds have their way with him until his wings ached with the strain. It would be so easy. Stop fighting. Fall from the air like a stone. Collide with the unforgiving ice below. Despite his magical prowess, that drop would be enough.
But he could never stop fighting. His goal was all he had now. The exclusive reason for his miserable, sniveling excuse of an existence.
A line of dark smoke blocked the stars, and he broke from the gale to follow it down to the chimney it sprang from. His momentum carried him into a clumsy landing on the chimney's edge. Lazy snow floated down, adding to the suffocating blanket already choking the landscape. Thick smoke from the chimney behind him warmed his back, beginning to thaw his frozen toothpick bones.
Images of Nott played on repeat in his brain. He watched the betrayal flood across her face over and over again. He wanted to run to her, sink to his knees, and beg for the forgiveness he didn't deserve. He wanted to sit in the cold until he died, frozen solid, finally free of this awful burden of choice. He wanted—he wanted—
His grasp on Polymorph slipped away, and he popped back to his normal size. He teetered on the edge of the chimney for a moment before gravity yanked him forward. He tumbled off the roof and his coat snagged on the gutter, nearly dislocating his arm before the sleeve ripped and he fell face first into a pile of snow.
Groaning, he pushed himself up. His nose stung from the impact, and he ran the back of his hand across it, streaking his hand wraps with blood. The underside of his sleeve was torn from the bottom of his palm nearly to the crook of his elbow, flashing a line of pale flesh and letting the ravenous cold sink into his bones. This night kept getting better and better.
The street was still and quiet, save for the slow snowfall. His wished it was noon so he could lose himself in the noise and the crowd from earlier. Anything would be better than this deafening silence, trapping him alone with his thoughts.
Dripping blood on the snow, Caleb took a step forward, then another. The snow crunched beneath his feet. Now that he was human again, every beat of his heart seemed slow and labored—like every pump might be its last.
He trudged his way through Ice Haven's maze of streets and alleys on autopilot, fingers going blue and numb. Exhaustion weighed on him like a haze as the last vestiges of Nott's poison left his system.
What was he going to do? He was a stranger to this time. No home, no family, and now no friends. The only resources he had was his magic—that he'd already burned through half of—and pockets full of money he wasn't allowed to spend. He was trapped in a foreign city in a hostile timeline, completely, utterly, alone.
This was inevitable.
He deserved it.
His doubt thundered so loudly in his brain that he didn't hear the crunch of approaching footsteps until dark hands darted out from behind him and looped a wire around his neck.
The assailant threw their weight back, wire cutting into Caleb's neck. Caleb dug in his heels and threw himself backward with the assailant where they collapsed in a pile of tangled limbs.
Familiar adrenaline reanimated his weary frame, and he elbowed the attacker behind him—bone meeting bone. There was a cry of pain and two more bodies materialized in front of him. He shoved his other hand up between his neck and the wire to keep it from choking him, but rough hands yanked him up before he could free himself from it. Just because he wanted to die didn't mean he'd let himself be killed. Not by a long shot.
"Hey—you—!" shouted a gruff voice.
Caleb spat an incantation and disappeared from the throng of assailants. He appeared in an explosion of mist thirty feet away and rounded on his attackers. There were six of them, all in dirty, dark clothing with daggers bared. At the forefront stood a human man with dark, scarred skin and a flash of blond hair pulled back into chaotic braids. The leader twirled his short sword and took a step forward.
"Now, let's not make things harder than they have to be," he said in a deep baritone that cut the winter's silence.
"Sharkfin Syndicate?" Caleb asked while inching a hand towards his component pouch.
"Gentleman's Troupe?" the man asked back with a raised eyebrow.
Caleb didn't answer—mind cycling through his spells for something useful. So much of his magical repertoire was designed to support the abilities of others or cause massive, indiscriminate damage that would surely endanger the sleeping civilians around them.
"I'll take that as a yes," the man said with a casual shrug. "Now, you seem like a reasonable man," he said, using his sword to emphasize his gestures. "So what I need from you is to scurry on back to Zadash with your little friends, and deliver a message for me. You tell The Gentleman he's not welcome in Ice Haven, understand?"
Caleb squared his jaw, eyes narrowing. "I don't like bullies." His fingers inched into his component pouch.
The man chuckled. "You're in the wrong city then." He pulled out another short sword from his cloak. The blades flashed red in the lantern light. "Now, be a good boy and relay my message or you will become my message."
"Yeah? And who is speaking?" Caleb asked.
The man grinned, revealing a set of bleached teeth filed into wicked points. "Alexi Vetrov of the Sharkfin Syndicate."
Caleb's fingers wrapped around a bit of honeycomb. "Well, Mr. Vetrov, I suggest," magic bubbled up, lacing his words with thick compulsion, "that we part ways here, and that you and your friends avoid us for the next ten days."
The magic washed over them, giving all six people pause for a moment.
Alexi blinked then looked to Caleb with his head cocked so his blond braids tumbled over his shoulder. A razor grin spread across his face. "Well, that just won't do, will it?" In a blur, he hurled a dagger end-over-end at Caleb.
Caleb shielded his face with his arm, projecting a crackling dome of energy before him. The dagger bounced off his shield with a reverberating 'thwung'.
"Slap 'em out of it!" Alexi shouted back to his crew—several of which were still enthralled. One cursed and elbowed his charmed companion in the ribs while another scrambled to load her crossbow.
Caleb dropped his arm to launch a set of fire bolts at the attackers with his Glove of Blasting. They sailed through the air with a hiss. The first missed Alexi but the other two barreled into their targets and sent them reeling as the women with the crossbow returned fire.
Caleb reached for his shielding magic again, but the bolt ripped past him before he could summon it, tearing the top of his bicep and embedding itself in the wall behind him. He stumbled back with a hiss of pain.
Alexi sprinted towards him and tossed another dagger that spun past his head, an inch away from taking off his ear. Two more attackers crept around the side to flank him while the crossbow-wielding woman kept him pinned from the front.
Steadying himself, he faced down Alexi with a snarl. It seemed this was going to be a bad day for both of them.
He grabbed a handful of dust from his pouch, throwing it in the air and spitting out the familiar incantation. A jet of green lighting sparked from his pointed finger at Alexi's head. Alexi slid out of the way, lighting jetting past his temple and striking the wall behind him with a loud crackle. The fevered electricity sunk deep into the wall, filling the air with black smoke and a keening hiss.
Shit.
Alexi dove out of the way, and as Caleb took a step back the wall disintegrated into ash and spilled down on them. Caleb threw his hands in the air and released an explosion of force as the flood of ash tried to knock him off his feet. The caving roof paused, frozen mid-destruction.
He held his arms aloft, hands white with tension as he strained to keep the roof suspended. People screamed. Lanterns in windows sprung to life. A child wailed from inside the collapsing building.
The bandits scrambled together around Alexi, who looked between Caleb and the nearest alleyway. With a glint in his eye, Alexi squared his jaw and stalked towards Caleb, short swords raised.
For a fraction of a moment Caleb looked around wide-eyed for Beauregard or Yasha or Nott or anyone. His concentration slipped as he realized his mistake, and the roof lurched forward before he caught it again. Sweat streamed down his back. Alexi reached him, arm reared back for a swing. Shit shit shit shit shit.
Keeping one hand suspendered above him he jerked the other down, palm facing Alexi's chest. The roof slid forward, Alexi's sword arced downward, and four crackling beams of energy shot out of Caleb's open hand—nailing Alexi in the chest and sending him flying backward into a snowbank as the roof groaned.
He threw his other hand up and caught the roof again as two gnomes burst out the door, one carrying a two-year-old close to his chest. Neighboring doors began to open, and angry shouts filled the air.
Alexi's cronies helped him out of the snow, and he shot Caleb a withering glare before the band retreated into the shadows of the alley.
Shit, they were escaping. He needed to stop them. What if they went for the Mighty Nein next? He needed to try Mass Suggestion again and—
"There's a mage attacking the house!"
Goddammit.
"I'm holding it!" he shouted through gritted teeth as two more people exited the collapsing house.
The first of the gnomes, the one holding the screaming child, came up to him, screaming angrily in some language he didn't recognize. The roof slipped another foot.
Rough hands grabbed at him and someone elbowed him in the stomach. He doubled over, spell slipping out of his grasp. With a deafening crash, the house imploded on itself.
The gathering crowd of concerned neighbors screamed, and Caleb's captors loosened their grip in the shock. With a murmured incantation, he vanished from the chaos and reappeared in the distance down the street.
He couldn't afford to deal with the law right now.
With a clumsy Disguise Self, he stumbled away from the scene of the accident. His hands shook. The shock and the cold leeched the sensation from him. Numb, numb, always numb. His mouth tasted like blood.
How was it that every opportunity he had rotted under his touch? Every plan he made turned to ash and scattered to the winds?
If he couldn't even hold off some third-class bandits without bringing a house down—there were probably still people in there—he should've done something more—anything—!
But he couldn't go back and find out. Couldn't try and explain to the law master he was the victim here. Couldn't stand trial for murder all while the clock ticked on.
The mission. The mission. He had to focus on the mission. Everything else was just too much.
Like a sleepwalker he shambled through Ice Haven, mindlessly following the directions his brain provided.
He still needed diamonds. He needed diamonds before the month was up or he'd have to redo his calculations—a process that, without his old study, without his old tomes to reference, could take years with no promise of accuracy.
Across the city at the edge of the crater, looming over it in a blackened silhouette like a gargoyle, waited the Countess's palace. Without the threat of anti-magic wards, he could slip in unseen and take the diamonds himself or bewitch a servant to do it for him. But the wards could be linked to some dispelling enchantment, or worse, an alarm.
He needed help.
He needed them.
His encounter with the Syndicate proved that.
They wouldn't accept him back. Why would they? This wasn't the Mighty Nein he'd left—family forged in fire and a decade's worth of shared trauma. These people were practically strangers. They'd known each other for what—two months? They had hundreds of reasons to spurn him after all he'd done and all he would do.
But he needed them.
And he didn't have anything else to return to.
The falling snow petered out, leaving the night thick and still. Silent, save for the crunching of his boots as he waded through the snow and the sound of his labored breathing.
His encounter with the Syndicate had proved one other thing: his friends weren't safe in Ice Haven. He'd escaped the encounter—not as easily as he would've liked—but he did. If they managed to catch a different member of the Mighty Nein, alone and off guard, he doubted they'd stand much of a chance. From the conversation with Alexi, it was likely the Sharkfin Syndicate would wait and watch for another opportunity to send their "message".
He glanced at the maw of the nearest alley, trying to pierce the murky shadows and watch for movement. They could still be following him, especially if they'd seen him cast Disguise Self.
The Mighty Nein needed to know. He had to warn them, so no one else would make the dumbass decision of walking through Ice Haven alone in the middle of the night. Historically they had a bad habit of splitting up. It never ended well.
His vow from hours earlier echoed through his head: no harm would befall the Mighty Nein while he still lingered with them.
Caleb clenched his numb fists. The events of this evening hadn't changed anything. He still needed diamonds, and he would still try to protect his friends while he pursued that goal. Hypocrisy be damned.
Carried by this burst of resolution, in twenty minutes time he found himself alone on an empty street, nearly hypothermic, covered in his own blood, and standing before The Tipsy Seal.
The inn towered above him, big and black and so much larger than it had been hours ago. He felt his resolve start to whither as he thought about seeing his friends face-to-face again. What was he going to say to them? Maybe he'd smooth things over with a thick paste of lies like he always had.
He had no idea what he was going to say to them. Maybe he'd smooth things over with a thick paste of lies like he always had.
With a steadying breath, he pulled open the door. The earlier merriment had withered and left only small groups of patrons pushed against the walls in hushed conversation. Valentine looked up from the bar and gave him an acknowledging nod that he was too nervous to mirror.
As he stepped inside he noticed a familiar purple tiefling slumped over his flagon at the end of the bar, multicolor coat hanging limp over the back of his chair.
Caleb's chest tightened. He wasn't ready for this conversation.
He never would be, but he didn't have the luxury of choice anymore.
The enchantment tremored then unpeeled from him, stripping the illusion from his body in swathes.
Valentine whistled. "That's a pretty nifty—oh, you're bleeding," he said with a frown, cocking his head.
Molly looked up at that, tired eyes going wide at the sight of him. "Shit Caleb, your neck," he said, jumping out of his chair. "I'll go get Jester, she'll—"
"No!" said Caleb, "no..." he repeated more quietly, "it's shallow," he said and touched his neck absently. His fingers came away red.
"God and your arm, what the hell happened?" Molly asked, approaching him and pausing several feet away. A safe distance. The kind you'd use with a limping, half-feral street dog.
Caleb swallowed hard, looking at the scattered patrons than to Valentine. He nodded to the stock room. "May we?"
Valentine blinked. "Oh, yeah sure go ahead. Try not to bleed on the food, though."
Molly looked to Caleb, pointing an accusatory finger at his chest with narrowed eyes. "I am going to get bandages. If you bolt again, Caleb, I swear to god—"
"I—Yeah."
"Alright," Molly turned to Valentine. "Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid for two minutes."
"I don't know what that means," Valentine said with a frown, but Molly already turned, and in a few curt strides, vanished up the stairs. Valentine looked to Caleb with an arched eyebrow. "Water's on. Want tea?"
Caleb managed a nod, and Valentine set about preparing two mugs.
"I liked your disguise trick," he said over his shoulder. "I didn't know you were magic'y. Maybe you can help me get the stain out of the counter?"
Caleb gave a noncommittal hum as Valentine rattled on with his small talk. A log in the hearth cracked before collapsing into the dying fire. He watched the fire consume it. Trying to focus on something, anything, so that his livewire nerves didn't send him running again.
In five minutes time he was seated at the narrow table in the stockroom with a mug of murky tea clenched between his shaking hands. A crooked candle with a wobbling flame rested on the table and illuminated the small room.
Molly set the bandage rolls on the table, crossing his arms and giving Caleb a once over. "What happened?" He asked, breaking the silence.
"Sharkfin Syndicate."
"Shit."
"Yeah."
Molly groaned, rubbing his face and pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. "See this is why we don't—ugh," he broke off, shaking his head with a clenched jaw. "Let's just—just show me the damage," he said, tone tight.
Caleb shrugged off his coat—letting the heavy weight pool around him. His fingers were still clumsy from the cold as he worked at his tunic, and he winced as he peeled it free from his shoulder.
Free from his protective layers, the cold's teeth dug into his exposed flesh, and he crossed his arms to trap the last scraps of his fleeing body heat. He felt small in the silent stockroom. All ribs and scars and gaping wounds.
Molly frowned at his bleeding shoulder but didn't step any closer. "Sword?" he asked.
"Crossbow bolt," Caleb admitted.
"And the neck?"
"Garotte."
"Nose?"
"Fell off a roof."
Molly arched a brow, but his lip stayed pressed into a hard line. "In that order?"
"No."
Valentine poked his head in and offered Molly some wet rags. Molly took them, thanked him, and watched the man leave before returning his attention back to Caleb. He gave him a cool once over before shaking his head.
"Catch," he said, throwing the rags at Caleb's face.
Before Caleb could blink, the rags collided with his face with a wet 'thwack', then dropped to his lap.
Molly snorted as he plopped down in the chair across from him. "Alright, start talking," he said, throwing his feet up on another chair. "I'm expecting a pretty good story after that bullshit stunt you pulled." A brief flash of humor colored his tone before it returned to thinly veiled frustration.
Caleb pried his hands off his mug to pick the towel off his lap. It was cold and coarse and made his neck smart when he dabbed at the shallow wound. "Uh, I was walking in the east side—a little ways from the docks," he said then continued to tell him about his encounter with Alexi. Methodically, he worked at his own wounds with the towel that went from beige to pink, then finally darkened to a too-familiar maroon as he tackled the slash on his bicep.
Molly listened in silence from across the table, shooting the occasional dissatisfied look at the floorboard. "So you're telling me this has been a shitty night for everyone, then," he said once Caleb had finished.
"Yes," Caleb murmured, voice barely above a whisper as he held the towel against his arm, tracing the woodgrain between the toes of his boots with his gaze.
"You know this plan of yours is bullshit, right? I know you're smart enough to have realized that," Molly said, tone sharp.
Caleb couldn't respond.
"Beau didn't think you were coming back. Fjord thinks you're going to try and fight all of us for money," Molly went on. "Yasha doesn't know what to think, Jester's sure you have a good reason, and Nott hasn't spoken a word in hours."
Caleb let his hand fall away. No amount of compression was stopping the bleeding. His body felt heavy and his limbs were full of lead. He dragged his gaze off the floor to meet Molly's.
"And what do you think, Mollymauk Tealeaf?"
Molly chewed on the question for a moment until it soured in his mouth. He chuckled mirthlessly. "Mr. Caleb, I really don't think you want to know what I think, quite honestly," he said with a smile that was cold and full of sharp edges.
"It doesn't matter what I want," he mumbled. He ran a thumb over his knuckles—they were already starting to crack and bleed from the cold.
Molly gave him a calculating stare before squaring his jaw with a little, mirthless smile to himself before setting his gaze back on Caleb. "You're right, and I think you're a dumbass. And delusional. And, like I said, that plan of yours is bullshit." His tail scraped across the floorboards in agitation.
Caleb nodded slowly, gaze sinking.
"And," Molly continued, "I also think you're also a pig-headed, stubborn ass. And, quite frankly, I don't think any of us can stop you from going through with it. You're too stubborn, and you're too smart for that."
Caleb looked up.
"Am I wrong?" Molly asked with a raised eyebrow.
Caleb didn't answer.
Molly sunk back in his chair, looking away. "Figured."
Another thick silence fell between them. A rivulet of blood dripped down Caleb's arm, following a jagged path over his goosebumps. He watched it go, trailing down, across the crook of his elbow, then following the curve of his arm until it collided with where it rested on the top of his leg. It soaked into his pants.
Molly mumbled something Caleb didn't catch, then with a sigh and a frown, scooted his chair around the side of the table, nearer to Caleb.
Wordlessly, Molly pried the towel from Caleb's hands, never touching him directly. He pressed it to Caleb's shoulder—and Caleb flinched at the pressure, but Molly didn't stop. After several moments and once he'd staunched the bleeding, he swapped the bloody rag out for the role of half-used bandages.
Caleb stared at the floor, counting and recounting the nails in the floorboards all while watching Molly begin to wrap his upper arm in his periphery. Molly's scarred fingers orbited around him, always at a measured distance, never touching. The flickering candle between them cast their shadows in opposite directions.
How funny to think they'd danced only hours ago.
This was the price for building friendships on a razor's edge.
"Are you planning on going off alone again?" Molly murmured, not looking up from his task.
"I…there is nowhere else," Caleb said, voice low and rough from exhaustion.
"Lift your arm," Molly commanded. He stood and moved behind Caleb's chair.
Caleb complied, letting Molly loop the thin bandages around his torso, working them further and further up his arm. There was a security in the compression of the bandages. A rhythm in the looping sensation. Order. Something to hold his jagged pieces together.
"Why are you helping me?" Caleb whispered at last.
"Don't remind me," Molly said, pulling the bandages a little tighter than necessary.
Caleb winced.
Molly finished the final loop and tucked the end back inside the bandages more gently. "Because, Caleb, despite your absolutely best efforts to fuck all of this up, I, and all of those people upstairs," he nodded to the ceiling, "still care about you."
Caleb swallowed hard. A bead of wax dripped from the candle.
Molly's voice dropped lower in pitch and volume in exhaustion. "So think long and hard about what this venture of yours is going to cost you. And the rest of us," he said and took a step back.
Hearing that grotesque truth finally verbalized ripped the air from Caleb's lungs. His mind had danced around it for years. But Molly was right and he couldn't deny it any longer.
He was a monster. He was a monster for killing his parents, for blindly following Trent, for using his friends for years, and he was a monster for asking them to pay the price for all of that.
Molly sunk back in his chair.
"It does explain some things, you know," he said quietly, staring deep into the candle flame.
Caleb closed his eyes, trying to center himself around the mug of tea in his hands that had already gone cold. He waited for the next acute truth to drop. For his menagerie of flaws to be displayed before him like a collection of taxidermized beetles.
"Why you've been acting so weird," Molly went on. He gave a pained chuckled that sounded more like a labored huff of air. "Honestly I thought you were just sick and not telling us," he admitted before looking up to Caleb with a sadness in his eyes that stung like an iron brand.
Caleb looked away.
"But it's never something so easy with you, is it?" Molly asked.
Caleb couldn't answer, and another heavy silence weighed down on them even more solid and impermeable than the first. It stretched on further into the night and wasn't broken until Valentine pushed open the door.
"Oh, shoot I forgot you guys were in here, my bad," he said, spinning right back around with a crate of potatoes wedged under his arm.
"That's alright," Molly said, rising from his chair. "I think we're done here. For now," he said, casting Caleb another solemn look.
Caleb shrugged on his clothes while Molly collected the spare bandages and rags.
"Thank you, Molly," he murmured as they were about to leave—too much of a coward to meet his gaze.
Molly paused, inhaling as if he had something to say, but several beats later released a breathy, "Yeah."
He broke off to survey the situation upstairs while Caleb went to discreetly inquire about purchasing a room for himself from Valentine. He doubted Nott wanted to room with him anymore, and he didn't blame her. Valentine informed him the inn was still fully booked—yesterday was Civilization's Dawn, after all—but some rooms would open up in the next few days as people left the city.
As Valentine had delivered that disappointing news, Molly padded back downstairs to continue dispensing that night's bad fortune. Nott, Jester, and Yasha were curled up in her and Caleb's old room, Beau had locked herself in the girls' room, and Fjord was wearing a hole in the floor in his room with all his angry pacing.
By the time they'd worked out Caleb had nowhere to sleep for the night, the other patrons had retreated to bed—leaving the three of them alone in the belly of the inn with the dying hearth beside them.
This was how Caleb ended up back in the stockroom with a couple of moth-eaten blankets Valentine drummed up from who knows where.
"You'll be okay here?" Molly asked, pausing in the doorway as Caleb maneuvered some flour sacks into a simulacrum of a bed.
"I've slept in worse places," Caleb said, still having trouble meeting his gaze.
"You'll be here in the morning?" Molly asked, quieter.
Caleb paused. "Yeah," he said, nodding slowly more to himself than Molly. "Yeah, I think so."
"Alright. I'll hold you to that, Caleb Widogast," he said and was gone into the dark.
And once again, Caleb was left alone.
…
Caleb, unable to deal with the consequences of his actions: *yeets himself out the window*
Molly: Guess ur sleeping on the couch tonight, babe :/
Commenters are the lo-fi to my hip-hop, my cozy winter nights after a long day's work, my dm accidentally giving my barbarian enough magic items to boost their strength to 29.