Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was three months since Etho had last seen Bdubs in his stupid, fancy sorcerer’s tower apartment in Philadelphia when he found himself all alone, trapped in the back of a sketchy dive bar in the middle of nowhere, USA.

And dammit if Beef hadn’t been right: it turned out that it was indeed a terrible idea for him to have gone off hunting alone.

It’s just that this wasn’t supposed to have been the dangerous part of this case. He’d only been tailing a suspected tiefling to see if she might possibly be connected to the unusual livestock deaths happening around town. 

It couldn’t have been more simple.

He’d followed her to a bar at the far outskirts of town. And maybe he should have been paying more attention, maybe he should have let Beef and Pause know where he was, but it was too late now—he was in the bar, and there was nothing he could do about it.

What he’d failed to account for was that the tiefling was very much aware of his (apparently) not-so-clandestine surveillance efforts, and she’d led him here on purpose.

The magnitude of his mistake became all too clear the moment he realized the bar was teeming with an unfortunate array of demons and imps.

He stood absolutely no chance whatsoever of fighting them all. Running was his only viable option. He turned to leave immediately upon noticing the precariousness of his situation.

“And just where do you think you’re going, darling?” a female voice crooned from across the bar. Before he had a chance to think about it, Etho found himself sitting at a barstool, face to face with the bartender.

She was stunningly gorgeous, a tall red haired woman looking down on him with what appeared to be a well-practiced smolder.

His thoughts grew cloudier the longer he was in her presence, and he had to lean against the bar top for support.

Not good.

Bdubs had tried to teach him about magic. Three months ago Etho had been in the sorcerer’s apartment, learning things about himself he would have rather not known. He dug up those memories now, grasping for any possible way out of this bind.

What was it Bdubs had said? Notice your thoughts. Imagine placing them one by one onto clouds floating overhead, and let them drift past you.

The meditation briefly cleared his mind, and he was able to break eye contact with the bartender.

“Hmm,” she studied him with a cutting gaze, leaning over the bar seductively. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the ghost image of horns protruding from her hair. 

Demon.

She picked up his hand in her fiery hot grasp. “What’s a pretty thing like you doing here all alone?” 

She was scantily clad in tight leather, which wasn’t the kind of thing that’d usually catch his eye, and he was surprised to find himself drawn to her.

Not a demon. Succubus. A specific kind of demon that targeted single men, bending them to their will for their own devious purposes, and well… Etho fit that bill, painfully single as ever.

He was supposed to hunt things like this. It was his job, cleansing the world of dangerous monsters, he couldn't let her win so easily.

He glanced around the bar for someone he might be able to fool her into thinking he was here on a date with—it would be his best chance at shaking her attentions. 

Looking around, he wasn’t so sure anyone in this bar was human. And from the way they were all very pointedly avoiding him, it seemed like she was the one in charge around here.

Great. Just his luck.

“Can I get you something to drink, sweetness?” she asked. “On the house.”

Her words were smooth, slipping right past his defenses and into his mind, but it couldn’t have been magic. If it was, he’d have been resistant to it—just as he was impervious to the mind-control of vex and vampires alike.

This was something darker. Something deeper. A primal force that dug its claws in at the base of his skull, into that tender spot a partner might have otherwise occupied, punching the air out from his lungs and leaving him breathless.

He wasn’t going to let her make him her thrall.

Absolutely not.

And so when she stepped away to make him a drink, he bolted, breaking free of her compulsion just long enough to scramble to the bar’s back hallway.

There was a commotion out in the bar as demons shuffled from their seats to pursue him.

“Leave him,” his succubus said nonchalantly. “He won’t escape me.”

Etho bit back a growl. She was right. He was unable to put enough distance between them to even make it all the way to the back door.

He leaned against the wall, gasping with effort. Maybe—just maybe—he’d be able to make it out to the parking lot, but what then?

On habit, he thumbed over the pocket watch hidden away in his jacket, wondering over his options. Bdubs had insisted he take the watch that night he’d told him about magic—the watch he’d used to learn how to focus his own abilities when he’d been a young sorcerer. 

Not that it’d done Etho any good.

Bdubs might have claimed that the potions Etho had learnt to make required handling magic, but Etho was doubtful. He’d yet to see a single tangible result from the crash course Bdubs offered him that night on casting spells.

He’d need a better plan to get free of this succubus.

And fast.

Fuck, Beef and Pause were gonna be so mad when they found out he’d been killed by a succubus. He hated imagining his fellow hunters’ reaction when they discovered his fate—Pause’s blind rage and Beef’s desperate despair.

Bdubs was gonna be so mad when he found out.

If he ever found out.

Etho would never get the chance to return his pocket watch like he’d promised. The thought panged through his chest, leaving him feeling hollowed out. No, not like this. 

This couldn’t be the end.

Danger lurked just around the corner, and all he could think was that he really should have stayed that last night at Bdub’s apartment. Leaving right when Bdubs had suggested he'd been open to doing something more had felt like the right thing to do at the time, but now it was impossible to recall why exactly he hadn’t stayed, why he’d fled with nothing more than an awkward handshake.

The irony wasn’t lost on him that staying that night might have been the one thing that would have allowed him to circumvent this particular predicament—maybe he wouldn't have been so vulnerable to a monster who preyed on single men.

Sorry, Bdubs, he thought to himself, pinching his eyes shut against the flood of emotion that threatened to overwhelm him.

It was late enough by now that the sorcerer would be home in his apartment high above the Philadelphia skyline, probably settling in for bedtime with a cup of tea in hand, practicing his spellcasting or reading a book. 

If only Etho could be there.

If only he hadn’t left.

And now he was going to die here to a demon, and he'd never get to know what would've happened if he'd stayed that night.

He squeezed the pocket watch, pushing down the bitter self-pity crawling up his throat.

Without warning, the sorcerer came crashing into existence right in front of him, pajamas and all, as if plucked straight from his vision.

“Whaa?!?” Bdubs shouted, and he threw a steaming mug of tea into the air as he stumbled to get his footing in the dingy back hallway of the middle-of-nowhere bar.

Maybe it wasn’t the real Bdubs. But he didn’t think. There wasn’t time.

Etho cut him off by yanking his mask down and planting an over-exaggerated kiss over his mouth. Any doubt he might have had about him being real vanished in an instant. He’d have to wait till later to process the implications of this being their first kiss.

Or maybe the demon would get them both, and it’d be their only kiss. At least then he'd never have to think about it ever again.

“Etho, what is this??” Bdubs demanded, pushing himself free. “How’d you do that??” 

His eyes were wide, darting over Etho’s maskless face. But if the sorcerer didn’t know how he’d suddenly appeared here, then Etho certainly didn’t know.

“Just— There’s a demon after me,” Etho explained. He nodded out into the bar.

Bdubs peeked around the corner, frowned. “That’s not a nice thing to call her.”

“She’s a succubus, Bdubs.”

“Oh,” Bdubs glanced back out into the bar. “You should do that again.”

Etho did as instructed, leaning in to kiss Bdubs, this time making sure to really sell it that they were together, unleashing all the doubt and confusion he’d been keeping boxed up during these months apart, making it clear: he was not available to be taken as anyone’s thrall.

Etho paused, hand curled around the back of Bdub’s neck, and he asked under his breath, “Is she gone?”

There was the hint of a smile in Bdub’s voice, “Oh, she been gone for a while.”

Etho jerked back. “Then why—?”

“Has anyone ever told you you're a good kisser?” Bdubs chuckled, striding coolly away towards the back door. “C’mon.”

Numbly, Etho wandered after Bdubs—in his pajamas and all—as he slipped out the door to the parking lot outside. He could hardly believe his luck that he was getting away this easy.

Bdubs gawked at the tall pacific northwest trees surrounding them, piercing up into the clear summer night sky, “Where—?”

His question was cut short by a demon lunging for him out of the darkness, tackling Bdubs to the ground with a hard thud. Sparks flew off him as the demon’s sharpened claws were stopped dead by some kind of invisible shield Bdubs had cast around himself.

Etho leapt towards them, pulling the silver knife from the sheath in his jacket. It wasn’t a great weapon to use against a demon, but the handgun concealed on his hip would only be worse.

Before he could make it to Bdubs, a hand latched around his arm, pulling him off balance.

Etho wheeled, spinning to sink his knife into the demon’s shoulder. It hissed loudly, eyes flashing red as its grip loosened enough for him to slip free.

Bdubs was on his feet now, casting something which rippled past him in a cool breeze, and any demons within the perimeter slowed their approach.

“Duck!” Bdubs yelled.

Etho dropped to a crouch as a wave of sunlight burst forth from Bdub’s palms. It sailed over Etho’s head to land squarely on another demon who’d nearly snuck within reach of him, sending the demon tumbling away.

But more demons were streaming out of the bar—they were about to be severely outnumbered.

Among them was the succubus in her provocative attire ordering her demons after them. Etho didn’t notice until it was too late that she’d locked eyes with him from across the parking lot.

You didn’t really think I’d let you get away? her voice echoed in his head, and Etho was once again drawn to her against his will.

A sickening tug of something other pulsed through air in a shockwave, and he turned to find Bdubs pouring an immense amount of magic into a growing ball of light. He shielded his eyes from the tiny sun blazing throughout the parking lot like daylight.

Come to me, the succubus demanded, sinking her claws painfully into his thoughts.

Demons rushed towards them now, and he ground his teeth, railing against her command with all his might. But she held sway over him that he could not shake.

“Etho, get back!” Bdubs shouted as Etho walked mindlessly into danger.

The supernova expanded in his hands, and when it looked on the brink of fracturing reality itself, Bdubs lobbed it towards the demons crowding around them.

“Come to me!!” she snarled at the last second, and Etho willingly joined her in the explosion’s path.

The light consumed him, roaring over him, leaving his vision whited out and his ears ringing. 

He dropped to his knees in the parking lot.

“Etho!” he heard Bdubs shouting distantly, and then he was there, patting over Etho’s shoulders and head. “Hey. Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay.”

Bdubs pulled him to his chest, wrapping him up in an embrace.

“They’re gone,” he said. “They're gone.”

Slowly, Etho's vision returned, and eventually he was able to make out oily smears on the cracked pavement where the demons had been. He recoiled at the thought of the power it must have taken from Bdubs to pull off such a feat.

“I thought you might be full fae,” Bdubs said. He looked down at Etho, exhausted—his dark hair askew, sweat lining his brow.

The words prickled at his sluggish mind. “What’s that mean?” he asked numbly. Of course he wasn't fully fae.

“They’ll be back,” Bdubs said, helping him to his feet. “That banishment won’t last long.”

“Banishment?”

“Sends ‘em back to their home plane.”

He had to replay the information several times over before it started to make sense.

So if everything within Bdub’s blast radius had been sent back to its home plane… and Etho had been caught in the spell… then Etho was already in his home plane. 

“Oh snap.” He hadn’t ever considered that anything else was a possibility. 

Etho was still learning what exactly it meant for him to be fae-touched. He knew now it'd happened when he'd gone to the End long ago in his youth. He knew it made him resistant to some kinds of magic, and he knew it made vampires extra, weirdly interested in him. Allegedly it even gave him access to his own magic, but there was still so much he had no idea about.

Bdubs took a moment to fix his slippers and do up the tie on his sweatpants. “So where are we anyway?”

Etho’s thoughts finally began to kick back into gear. “Oh… uh, Boise.”

“Boise!? Oregon??” Bdubs squawked. “Oh brother, you’ve gotta be kidding me!”

“Boise’s actually in Idaho,” Etho corrected.

“Oh, sorry, it’s only Idaho,” Bdubs complained loudly. “Oregon, Idaho, who freakin’ cares when I’m ten million miles away from my bed?? You better got a place for me to stay till I can get back home! Do you have any idea how far Philly is from here??”

“Bdubs…” Etho asked tentatively. “How did you do that?” 

He was incredibly glad Bdubs was here, of course. And he was even more glad that he wasn’t dead. But he was still confused how any of this was possible—Bdubs had told him that sorcerers couldn’t teleport.

“What? This?” Bdubs moved in to kiss him again with a cheeky grin.

Etho dodged, yanking his mask back up over his face to hide whatever embarrassing expression he was undoubtedly making. “No, I mean, you… teleported?”

Bdubs scoffed. “Oh, well, I could ask you the same question.”

Etho had no idea what that might mean, but now at Beef’s Jeep at the back of the parking lot, Bdubs promptly shoved his way into the driver’s seat, insisting that he was so much better of a driver than Etho, even if it was this far past his bedtime.

His head was still ringing, and it was easier to let him win, so Etho climbed into the passenger seat and proceeded to direct him back to the motel he’d been staying at with Beef and Pause. 

He wasn’t looking forward to explaining any of this to his fellow hunters, but at least he wasn’t dead, so really, they should be happy for him, if anything.

After several minutes of missed turns and doubling back on darkened country highways, the car rolled to a stop in the motel parking lot. 

He shut off the engine, and an unusual seriousness came over Bdubs as they sat there listening to the car’s engine ticking in the warm summer night.

“I, umm… My magic’s been different…” he admitted quietly, staring down at the steering wheel, “ever since I got back from the End.”

“Different?”

“This,” Bdubs ran fingers over the patch of white that’d appeared in his hair after coming back from the End and their whole misadventure several months ago. “Lizzie and I cast magic together, you know, in the End. And I dunno how, cause her fae magic ain’t at all like sorcerer magic. But we did.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t tell Cleo,” Bdubs said furtively. “Or Joe, or any of them… but I’ve been working on a few things.”

“Like teleportation?” Etho asked, finally catching on to where he was going with all this—he was practicing a different kind of magic than was approved for use in the sorcerer’s tower.

Bdubs nodded. His eyes reflected the motel’s gaudy neon lights as he studied Etho pensively from the driver’s seat.

“That’s useful,” Etho remarked, but his mind was already racing ahead to a rosy future where he’d be able to see Bdubs, where he could keep traveling around the country hunting monsters, and Bdubs would be able to teleport to him from time to time. And maybe they could even go on hunts together and—

“Yes, it is… But Etho…” Bdubs said carefully, breaking through his reverie, “That wasn’t me. I wasn’t casting any magic tonight.”

Etho’s thoughts stopped dead in their tracks, coming to a screeching halt. “You’re not saying…?”

“C’mon,” Bdubs said, gesturing to the motel room door. “I’ll help you finish your case of… whatever it is you’re doing here in Idaho. And then I got some things I need to teach you.”

“Like… what?” His hand drifted to his mask, wondering if Bdubs might try to kiss him again now that they were alone and free of danger.

“You're gonna need to know how not to get caught illegally handling magic.”

Chapter Text

Cold winter wind whipped around Bdub's head as he looked out over the city in a search of something—anything—that might bring him inner peace.

If he’d been in a better mood, he might have cast a shield around himself to keep the worst of the wind chill at bay. But then again he might also have come out onto the citadel terrace wearing more than just jeans and a t-shirt.

If nothing else, the bite of the wind was grounding, nipping at the bare flesh of his arms and neck, the one thing tethering him to this godforsaken earth he was otherwise in danger of sliding right off of.

He closed his eyes against the press of thoughts, listening to the atonal howl of the wind fill his ears as it whipped out of the cloudy afternoon sky, over the skyscraper’s hard edges, catching on its art deco ornamentation.

His noisy mind was too much to deal with trapped in the silence of his apartment. It often was these days. But out here, under the open sky, was the only place he had enough space to think.

It was so stupid.

It should have been relaxing, living here in the sorcerer’s tower. Since last spring, and all the business with the End portal and Ren and Martyn, everyone had been going easy on him, and he had little in the way of responsibilities.

He had no reason to be in such a vile mood all the time.

The past few months, he’d been developing his magical abilities, of course, continuing to hone his skills like any good sorcerer should. But he’d also recently taken to painting and studying color theory—working over his canvases for days at a time, obsessing over the details until he’d lose track of what day it even was.

It was only then that he knew peace.

For a few blissful hours, when he might lose himself in his work.

Until it all came crashing down.

Which it always did.

Unfortunately, he had to pay attention to the time today. Cleo had asked him to come meet with her at four, and the impending meeting looming over his day had thrown his entire schedule into disarray. He’d wasted most of the afternoon ruminating over what it was she could possibly want to talk to him about.

But Cleo was the High Councilor now, and he wasn’t about to demand she rearrange her schedule on account of him—and not just because he didn’t want to become the next target of her improvement planning.

Since taking over as High Councilor, she’d brought order to the Golden Citadel, showing herself to be an adept leader of this region’s sorcerers. Bdubs was glad to see his long-time friend given the chance she deserved to enact change.

But as the days passed, he was increasingly worried she might be ready to start pressuring him more adamantly into taking on his first apprentice. She’d granted him reprieve these past few months, gently raising the topic from time to time, but never pushing. 

A couple months from now it would be one year since he’d returned from saving the End, and he suspected he might not have much longer before her delicate suggestions became a more rigid imperative.

Joe’s recent bonding of his own new apprentice was sign enough of the changing tides within the citadel—that they wouldn't stand for turning down any with the ability to handle magic while there were yet those available to train fledgling casters.

There just weren’t that many sorcerers in the world, and since apprentices were only trained one-on-one by a master, and training could last for years at a time, there would never be that many sorcerers.

It was important to train new sorcerers, of course, Bdubs was fully in agreement with that, it was just that he wasn’t particularly interested in being the one to do it.

He prayed Cleo had something else in mind for him.

He went to check the time, reflexively reaching for his pocket watch, before remembering that it was no longer in his possession. A familiar cold gripped at his stomach before he had the chance to cast the feeling aside.

If it were possible, he’d have burned every memory of that blasted hunter from his mind.

The memories haunted him, plaguing not just his waking moments, but also his dreams, where their paths collided over and over again, replayed in a thousand different reprisals, and a thousand different ways slicing him to ribbons.

It'd been months since he'd last seen Etho, since Etho had told him that he didn't want to be taught magic.

Bdubs had saved him from the demons, and he'd stayed that humid summer night with the hunters in their cramped motel room. The next day, he helped them track down the cause of the livestock deaths that'd brought them to town, discovering a problematic pair of phantoms living in a nearby forest.

The four of them, with the help of Bdub’s magical abilities, were able to take care of them with little trouble.

And then later that night, Etho admitted the truth to Bdubs: he didn't care that he might have a knack for it, he wasn’t going to learn any magic.

But he hadn't even fully come to terms with the revelation that he wasn't human—that he was fae-touched. He avoided the topic entirely. Bdubs pressed and pressed, but all he would say was that he wanted to find her: the fae he was in his deal with.

He admitted then with a stumbling kind of reluctance that he didn't even know which fae it was. It was such a heinous concept that it would have been unbelievable if it were anyone else, but because it was Etho, Bdubs was inclined to believe him.

Try as he might to convince him to rethink his barely half-baked plan, Etho's mind was firmly made up. It was settled.

Bdubs had slept over with the hunters a second night before leaving in the morning, making the long trek back to Philadelphia alone through the Nether. It'd taken the better part of a day and several transfers through nether tunnel exchanges, but he'd returned without further incident—just a bruised ego and a sullen heart.

Etho didn't want to learn magic, and there was nothing Bdubs could do about it.

The intervening months had been spent trying to get over it.

And after all this time, what it was, he wasn't even sure anymore. He barely even knew the hunter. They'd spent one single week together in the spring—hardly seven full days.

They had, you know, also saved the world during that week, closing the End portal that'd brought with it a perilous danger to the overworld.

But that was beside the point. 

They didn't know each other. Bdubs had no right to care about him or his choices—or anything about him at all.

He didn’t need his pocket watch, the hunter could keep it for all he cared. He was perfectly fine checking the time on his phone, thank you very much.

Unfortunately, as his phone informed him, it was time for him to go meet with Cleo.

He dropped it back into his pocket, slinking inside to the warm calm of his apartment.

It wasn’t quite as luxurious as the apartment he’d had when he’d been Hand to Ren. He was a few floors down from the top of the tower now. But Ren had moved down to the same floor as him, and their two apartments each had their own terrace. He could smell his neighbor cooking something delicious next door, and he would have gone and barged in if it weren’t for his meeting.

It was strange to realize sometimes just how long the Golden Citadel had been his home now. He’d called several different apartments in the sorcerers’ tower home over the years, but since arriving here in his early twenties, it was by far the longest he’d ever lived in one place.

And now in his late thirties, it was hard to imagine an alternate timeline where he’d never learned about magic—where he’d never opened that first accidental nether portal behind his barracks and been hauled off to Philadelphia and deposited in the hands of the sorcerers.

What was once cold and unfamiliar was now his one and only home.

He climbed the several flights of stairs up to the high councilor’s office to find Cleo sat behind the heavy wooden desk centered in the room. Red hair curled around her neck, with a crimson cloak wrapped around her for warmth against the winter chill.

“Hail to my lordship,” Bdubs said, taking a knee in the doorway.

“Bdubs,” Cleo looked up from her paperwork, offering him a fond smile. “Yeah, thanks. Come in.”

She gestured to the chair in front of her desk as he approached. “I’ve told you, Bdubs, you don’t really have to do that. Especially not when it’s just the two of us.”

“Of course not, m’lord.” He didn’t even know why he was being so formal with her—they were long-time buddies. But he wasn’t in the mood today for friendly conversation.

She studied him with an appraising gaze. “Am I to understand that you're giving out haircuts to your fellow sorcerers now, too?”

He rolled his eyes at her, scoffing. She must have seen Ren’s long mane of hair that Bdubs had cut short the other evening. “Why? You don’t like?”

“No, I mean, it’s fine,” Cleo said, “good, even. It’s just… different.”

She didn’t sound convinced. But she also hadn’t sounded convinced when Bdubs had dismissed her concerns after he’d cut his own hair a few months ago, shaving it close on the sides and bleaching the top out a yellowish-white.

The thing was, ever since he’d cast magic with Lizzie in the End, and her fae magic had mingled with his sorcerer magic, something had been different. The only outward sign anything had changed was a white patch in his hair that refused to be dyed. 

He wasn’t fae-touched, she’d insisted, it must have been something else, but cutting it short and dying the rest of his hair was the only way he’d been able to stop fixating on the wrongness the white patch of hair represented, it’d somehow seemed to settle into his bones—the effects of touching magic not his own.

But he didn’t think Cleo had called him here to talk about his or Ren’s hair styles.

“Begging your pardon, m’lord, but is this what you wanted to meet with me about?”

Cleo gave him a long suffering smile. “I'm merely making small talk, Bdubs. You and Ren are adults, you can do whatever you please.”

Bdubs shifted in his seat, holding back the urge to comb his hands self-consciously through his short hair. Ever since he’d cut it, Cleo’s attitude towards him had shifted, like she was grasping to connect with him but unsure how.

“M’ sorry, Cleo,” he muttered. “Sorry, I wasn’t tryin’ to— I’m on your side.”

“I know you are, Bdubs,” she said, pausing to consider him. Then continued, “but you’re right, I do have something important I need to talk to you about.”

Straightening, he braced for her to bring up his lack of an apprentice, or worse—the very much unsanctioned fae magic he’d been covertly practicing of late.

“There’s been a… disturbance,” she said. “We’ve detected some unusual magic…”

He swallowed, willing himself to hold eye contact, even if all he wanted was to look away long enough to allow the guilt boiling in his stomach to settle.

“Unusual magic?” he parroted numbly.

With a solemn nod, Cleo stood from the chair behind her wooden desk. She sighed, stepping over to the window.

So this was it then… he was about to find out what punishment the High Councilor would hand down to him for using unapproved magicks in the citadel. Bdubs tensed in his seat, waiting for the blow of her disappointment.

She turned, a red outline silhouetted against the window. “Yes,” she said, “a few hours west of here, in the middle of the state... What do you know about mana wells?”

His mouth worked wordlessly. She… she hadn’t brought him here to punish him for using fae magic? She might not even know. His brain raced to catch up with her question as relief flooded through him.

“What do I…? Should I know what a— a mana well is?” It was true that his schooling had been less than what one might consider comprehensive. He’d come to the citadel in his early twenties—older than most apprentices. On top of that, he’d apprenticed under more masters than he cared to keep track of. He wouldn’t be surprised if he’d missed a lesson or two along the way.

Cleo nodded. “No, I imagine not.”

She explained to him then that a mana well was a place on earth where magic naturally collected. Most of them were old, consecrated in centuries past by ancient sorcerers who understood the flow of ley lines.

“Ley lines?” Bdubs interrupted. “That’s a bunch a pseudo-scientific phooey!”

“It isn’t, Bdubs,” Cleo assured him. “Magic isn’t exactly the same everywhere in the world. Some places it’s stronger, and when lines of intense magic come together, it can form a mana well.”

“And it’s, what? Like a magic battery or something?”

“Sure. Yeah,” Cleo agreed. “I guess it’s a bit like that: a magic battery.”

“Well, if these things are so powerful, why’s no one ever told me about them then, huh?” He recognized he was being antagonistic but was feeling too raw to do anything about his bad attitude.

“You’d have to bring that up with your masters.” She said the words gently enough, but they stung all the same. “Regardless, they’re not well-studied under modern magic, I’m not surprised you weren’t taught about them.”

“That’s ridiculous! Why wouldn’t we study them?”

“The magic in them is nearly impossible to control,” Cleo said sternly. “They’re dangerous, Bdubs.”

“But someone’s used one?”

She nodded. “A few hours west of here, yes. Joe felt it first, but I was able to detect it as well.”

Cleo’s Hand was known for his skilled use of warding and alarms. Bdubs wasn’t surprised to hear Joe knew about unauthorized magic use from so far a distance.

“I want you to go check it out,” Cleo said, “make sure it’s nothing of concern.”

She settled back into the ornate chair behind the high councilor’s desk.

“Why can’t Joe go?” He was her Hand after all, it was his job to go on these kinds of errands.

Cleo gave him a tight-lipped smile. “He’s busy with his new apprentice. I don’t want Oli going out on assignment just yet. Unless you’d like to volunteer to look after him so I can send Joe?”

“Cleo…” Bdubs warned.

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Besides, don’t you think a little fresh air would do you good?”

Oh brother, so that’s what this was about? Cleo was just trying to get him out of the house so he’d stop moping around??

“Or perhaps you’ve changed your mind about finding an apprentice of your own?” Cleo asked. “I could understand if you—”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Bdubs said, doing his best to keep annoyance from his tone. “I’ll go. I’ll go. So what do they look like, these mana wells?”

Cleo laughed to herself. Her eyes glowed green in the sunny office. She was regal, looking every bit the part of high councilor in her intricately embroidered robe and commanding aura.

Dutifully, Bdubs listened as she described how the ancient Romans built sanctuaries around the mana wells in their part of the world. But they could look like a lot of things: a waterfall, a mountain, an unusually old tree. 

The one out in the central part of the state was a spring of some kind, according to Joe’s research.

He took down the name of a nearby town and some rough coordinates, and then made for the door.

“Bdubs?” Cleo asked. Her expression was soft when he turned to meet her gaze.

“M’lord?”

“It's nice to see you up and about.”

Bdubs quickly slipped back to his apartment.

He closed the door, and only then did he exhale the ball of tension he'd been holding tight in his belly.

It sank in then: he wasn't in trouble. Cleo wasn't mad at him. She wasn't about to force him to bind an apprentice.

Sure, he had a job he had to do now. But a road trip across the state wouldn't be too bad.

And that night, he fell asleep to the sound of Joe's new apprentice, Oli, playing music in the apartment below him, more thankful than ever he wouldn't be taking on the responsibility of his own apprentice anytime soon.

***

Bdubs was up early the next morning. He hadn’t slept well, but for the first time in a long time, he had work to do today.

His first task was finding where he'd parked his car. It'd been weeks since he'd last left the city, and he couldn’t recall where he’d left the stupid thing.

He briefly considered traveling through the Nether to get out to the middle of the state (it was eight times faster, after all, to go through the Nether), but he really truly hated it in there, with its dangerous lava pits and deadly mobs.

No, driving would be better.

So once he was ready, he set out into the city to find his car.

“Bdubs!” a voice called out from across the street before he could get more than a few steps from the front door.

He wheeled, searching for its source. There shouldn’t have been anyone outside the citadel right now who knew his name.

A second voice called from the same direction, “Hey! Bdubs!”

He zeroed in on their location, spotting a pair of familiar faces across the street. They dodged a few cars as they crossed to join him on the sidewalk.

Sure enough, it was Etho’s fellow hunters Beef and Pause.

“Man, we've been looking everywhere for you,” Beef said, out of breath.

He glanced up to the towering Golden Citadel behind him, knowing that the two hunters wouldn’t be able to perceive it as he did.

“Yeah, the citadel is warded against… humans,” Bdubs explained haltingly.

They’d be able to enter just fine, especially if they were accompanied by a sorcerer, but to any passersby, the highrise would blend into the background, not registering in their mind as a place worth remembering. 

Right in the heart of downtown Philadelphia, they couldn’t risk some random building inspector inviting themselves into their magical headquarters. Or tourists looking for a bathroom.

It was actually somewhat impressive that the hunters got as close as they did to locating him.

Bdubs looked around, suddenly wondering why Etho wasn’t with them. He was used to seeing the trio attached at the hip. “What're you—?”

“We need your help,” Beef interrupted.

“It's Etho,” Pause said at the same time. 

Bdub’s stomach dropped. “What about him?” he asked urgently.

“He's missing.”

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe you seriously thought Etho would have gone to the sorcerers’,” Beef complained from behind the steering wheel of his Jeep.

The pair of hunters had been chatting about all manner of people and events and sports teams Bdubs was more or less entirely unfamiliar with for the better part of an hour now, leaving him to stare out the window onto the Pennsylvania highway with only his thoughts for company.

But he snapped to attention as the topic changed to Etho.

When the hunters had told him he'd gone missing, Bdub’s first reaction was that he couldn’t help them. He had his own assignment from Cleo to check out the mana well, and Etho didn’t seem to want Bdubs meddling in his life anyway.

That was, until they told him where they were when they’d last seen him.

His stomach sank. Desperately, Bdubs searched on his phone, checking and double checking and triple checking maps and coordinates, but they’d been far too close to the mana well for it to be a coincidence.

And well, Bdubs was headed that way anyway.

Bdubs told the hunters that he had an idea where Etho might be, and they’d insisted he ride with them on their search. It was a convenient offer given that he still wasn’t sure where his own car was, and he wasn’t exactly eager to use the Nether tunnels.

“What??” Pause shot back. “If he’s not with the sorcerers, then where else could he be?” He knocked back his second energy drink of the morning, tossing the empty can at his feet.

“No way, man,” Beef said, “you saw how he was around any of that magic stuff.” The bearded hunter glanced in the rearview mirror at Bdubs, adding offhandedly, “No offense.”

“You know that’s not what I mean, Beefers,” Pause said pointedly, crossing his arms over his chest.

Bdubs got the feeling they were keeping something to themselves, and he didn't particularly like it.

“Pause…” Beef warned in a low voice.

“No, Beef, he’s been weird. He might not want to talk about it, but something’s obviously up with him. Don’t pretend like you haven’t seen it, too.” Pause turned in his seat to face Bdubs. “If we find out you have something to do with—”

“Pause,” Beef interjected firmly. “He’s the one who’s helping us.” His eyes flicked to him in the rearview mirror. “Right?”

Bdubs nodded eagerly. “Yes. Yeah. Of course. I’m helping. I wanna find him as much as you guys do.”

Even the car’s radio went silent then, emphasizing the awkward lull as the song changed over. None of them dared break the simmering tension until the chorus of the next tune was filling the cabin with its upbeat melody.

“What happened with you guys, anyway?” Beef asked carefully.

“Me and Etho?” Bdubs asked. “Nothin’.”

The two hunters shared a glance.

Bdubs swallowed nervously. “Why?”

“So you guys aren’t—?” Pause began.

Beef cut him off with a shape glare. “Are you, like… mad at him or something?”

“Goodness sakes, no,” Bdubs said. “Why would I be mad at him?” He was confused where their line of questioning was headed.

“Well, I dunno,” Beef replied. “He just… he hasn’t said a damn thing since you helped us out with those phantoms in Idaho a couple months back. Figured you guys must’ve gotten into a fight or something.”

“No,” Bdubs said. “I mean, I don’t think so.”

“If he was a bad lay you can just say it,” Pause said dismissively.

“A—??” Bdubs squawked. He nearly choked on his words. “No, he isn’t. I mean. I don’t know— we didn’t—”

Aside from briefly kissing in that dive bar the night Bdubs had been teleported to him, they’d done nothing (and a kiss to protect someone from becoming the thrall of a succubus hardly counted as first date material). As far as Bdubs was concerned, they were barely even acquaintances.

Besides, that was the night Etho had told him that he didn’t want to learn magic. After that, Bdubs had resigned himself to letting the hunter go free.

“Jesus Christ, Pause,” Beef groaned. “Can you have just a little tact? Please?”

“What?” Pause asked, feigning innocence. “The man hasn’t gotten laid for months, Beef. And that’s being really generous and counting that vampire. Who knows when the last time he slept with someone alive. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d forgotten how it even works.”

Bdubs squirmed in his seat. He'd nearly forgotten about Etho's confounding string of vampire ex’s, and he immediately wished he could banish the information from his mind once again.

It was probably for the best that Etho had closed the door before anything more had ever been allowed to happen between them.

And plenty of time had passed since then that Bdubs was over the hunter’s rejection.

Sure, Etho was fae-touched. Sure, he could access magic. But if he didn't want to learn more about it, then that was that.

He didn't like magic. And he didn't like Bdubs. And that was just fine.

“I’m only fae-touched, you know,” Etho had said on the cracked sidewalk in front of the hunter's Boise motel.

“What?” Bdubs settled next to him, taking a seat at the edge of the curb. The concrete was still hot from spending the day baking in the summer sun.

“Yeah… you said— you thought I might be full fae,” Etho explained, making eye contact with a clump of dandelions pushing up through the pavement between his feet. “I'm not.”

“Oh.”

He traded off between fiddling with the weeds and spinning the rings on his fingers. “You're not going to ask how it happened?”

Bdubs didn't know what to say. It was obvious he didn't want to talk about it.

“I went to the End,” Etho said quietly, “when I was younger. I met a fae there. I guess I— apparently I made a deal with her, and now I'm…” he trailed off.

“Who was she?” Bdubs bit back his curiosity as best he could, but he couldn't help wondering. Everything he learned about Etho only made him that much more curious to know more.

He shrugged. “Dunno.”

“You don't know?” Bdubs asked, more than a little confused by the answer. “Well, what did you give her??”

He was silent. Bdubs might have wondered if he'd even heard his question, except for the tensing of his jaw under his mask giving away his unease.

“Etho, you used magic,” Bdubs said gently. “Whether you like it or not, you cast the teleportation spell that brought me here.”

“I know.” All emotion had been stripped from the hunter as he stared at the ground.

“So you've been practicing…? I mean… did you mean to cast it?” Bdubs hadn't taught him anything so complicated—he didn't know anything that complicated himself. 

He couldn't imagine how Etho had pulled off such a feat.

A small shake of his head was the only reply he gave. He looked on the verge of tears.

“What?” Bdubs asked. He wanted to hug him, but he was certain that was only likely perturb the hunter further. “What's wrong?”

His eyes were distant, unfocused. “I can't— I— I don’t want it, Bdubs.”

“You…?” He studied Etho under the motel’s neon lights, his white hair, the scar down his face. Bdubs had never met anyone even remotely like him. He was one of a kind. “You don't want to be magic?”

“I'm sorry, Bdubs,” Etho said bitterly. “I know you want… But I don’t.”

A rift opened up between them after that. Bdubs helped the hunters finish their case and then left promptly afterwards.

His whole way back home, all he could do was wonder: why? Why was Etho so set on discarding what any reasonable person would consider a gift?

The backseat of the hunter's Jeep was so freaking cold, Bdubs regretted not bringing any warmer clothes with him.

With little else to go on, the hunters took Bdub's advice, making their way to the small town Cleo had told him about, the one closest to the mana well.

It was mildly concerning how practiced Beef and Pause were at picking up almost no trail at all. They left Bdubs in the car while the two of them went into the local police station to make a few inquiries—to see if there was any sign of Etho having been here.

Bdubs didn’t ask what that meant.

He stared out the window. The elevation was higher here than back in the city. Patchy snow lined the edges of parking lots and lingered in the shadows of buildings. He longed for the warmth and rain and flowers of spring, but that was still months away.

The grey winter sky muted his sense of time, and he was tired from a restless night of sleep. He closed his eyes while he waited for the hunters.

Bdubs had been dreaming more and more about the End recently.

At night he’d imagine himself back on those stoney islands, surrounded by strange and magnificent fauna towering into the radiant sky. A thick layer of fae magic clung to every surface.

All around him the void stretched out. Innumerable stars dusted the face of infinity, staring back at him from the unnatural violet-tinted darkness.

He should have been afraid. Magic in the End was so very different from his own. Bdub’s magic was that of the overworld, but the End was the realm of fae magic, wild and chaotic.

Magic had always been a thing to be understood, a skill to be sharpened. There was a predictability to it, a stability. Since being taken in by the sorcerers in his twenties that’d always been the case.

But when he'd first stepped into the End, the ambient fae magic was nothing more than a jumble of indecipherable colors streaking at the edges of his vision. He could have never imagined understanding how to handle such a mercurial form of magic. 

Until a desperate attempt to save his friends had led him to cast a spell together with Lizzie. And joining hands with the fae, the two of them twined the threads of their magic on each other's. Bdubs would have said such a feat was impossible, except that he’d seen it with his own eyes: sorcerer and fae magic working in tandem.

In that moment he’d seen the nature of Lizzie’s magic clearly. His eyes had been opened.

It was undeniable; he’d returned with a white patch in his hair, and a new secret ability.

He’d resisted at first—sorcerers weren't meant to use any other kinds of magic—but in recent months he’d given in to the temptation to learn more.

With no one to train him, it was slow going. He managed to piece together a few cantrips, but for the most part, they were little more than parlor tricks. 

The first thing he learned was how to change his appearance in small ways with a type of illusion spell. It might have been useful if he’d cared more about hiding the wrinkles on his shirts or having colored nails, but it wasn’t worth the effort, even with magic to do most of the work.

He figured out as well how to locate objects. It could only go about as far as the outer limits of his apartment (so unfortunately, of no help when he needed to remember where he’d parked his car), but it was successful on more than one occasion at finding his wallet or a lost remote. 

He caught on quickly that the more important an item was, the easier it was for him to find. 

Just about the only other spell of note he learned was an electric arc, an ability he discovered the same day as he’d finally located the wayward tv remote, and in his exuberance, he fired off a bolt of electricity into the device, frying it beyond recognition.

He didn't dare try the electric arc again after that.

His practice took place late at night or outside the citadel. He was always on guard, reticent to alert the other sorcerers to his new abilities, unsure how Cleo and Joe would react to his use of unauthorized magic.

On the days when he left the city to visit Lulu where she was boarded at Tango’s ranch, he’d work on taming the seemingly fickle flows of fae magic. But it was odd. Somehow, the longer he worked with the strange magic, the harder it seemed to be to handle.

Thankfully, Cleo had yet to ask him about the white patch marked in his hair. He was hopeful she’d forgotten about it since bleaching out the rest of his brown hair to match.

It's not like he was the only one. Lots of sorcerers were eccentric in their personal style. Even their Grand Councilor, Scott, had his hair dyed a vibrant turquoise.

And if the hunters had noticed Bdub's new look, they hadn't said a thing.

His thoughts began to skip around more and more as his mind relaxed towards sleep. But the moment he dipped into that in-between place, he could feel it: the heady thrum of magic. It roared like a great engine, miles in the distance, churning up from the depths of the earth.

The discovery shook him fully awake, and he bolted upright in the backseat of the hunter’s car, remembering that he was still waiting for them in the police parking lot.

Beef and Pause appeared moments later, dressed in their ill-fitting suits and carrying fake ID’s. Aside from a reported stolen car that might possibly be related, they hadn't found any leads.

“There's something,” Bdubs said, pointing off towards the distant ridge line of rolling hills at the edge of town, “that way. Do you guys have a map or something?”

They produced a large map book, and Bdubs scanned it, searching for what could be in that direction.

“Here,” he said, poking a finger at the map.

“Bear Rock State Park?” Beef asked, reading the text under his finger.

Cleo’s directions had gotten them as far as they would, and so with little else to go on, the hunters decided to follow Bdub’s hunch. 

They drove out of town, back country roads that wound up the wooded hillside, steadily gaining elevation. The snow was thicker here, enough to cover the ground in a thick blanket.

And when they spotted the state park’s sign, nearly hidden in the overgrown brush, they pulled off down a secluded snowy driveway.

A single set of half-melted tire tracks in the snow signaled that they weren’t the first ones to come this way in the last few days.

“You think this was him?” Pause asked tentatively.

But Bdubs was distracted by the magic growing stronger. It’d begun to feel like a noticeable pressure against his ears, and he wondered if maybe ley lines were actually real after all.

A nondescript tan sedan sat in the parking lot, seemingly abandoned. They parked next to it and hopped out into the snow.

“Hot-wired,” Beef said, glancing in through the window. Pause nodded knowingly.

A single set of melting footprints led away, into the woods.

“We all agree this has to be Etho, right?” Pause asked.

Bdubs studied the footprints, but he couldn't tell one way or another. He cast a tracking spell, and as the threads settled in over the trail, a ghostly image burst forth. His heart lurched as a figure with white hair and an olive field jacket shimmered before him.

But Bdubs forced himself to shove aside the hope surging within him before it could be allowed to cloud his judgment.

The three of them set out down the trail after the footprints, with Bdubs following along behind the hunters.

Alone and away from everything, Bdubs got the creeping sense that these mountains here were old. They rang with a kind of ancient energy, and he could feel his own energy reaching down into the earth like roots, anchoring him to his place, stabilizing him.

“Do you guys feel that?” Bdubs asked, glancing nervously over his shoulder.

“No, what?” Beef replied.

Their winding trail opened up onto a long, straight road. The signage back at the parking lot had indicated no vehicles were allowed in this part of the park, so it wasn’t a driveway.

Pause glanced up and down the open path. “What do you suppose this is, an old logging road or something?”

“No, it’s… I dunno what it is actually…” Bdubs said. Energy coursed through it. The road was older than logging, older than cars and trucks and machinery. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was certain that humans had been traversing this path for millennia.

“This way.” Beef followed the footprints up the mild grade.

The hillside fell away to their right, and an expansive view over the rolling hills reached far into the distance. It was really quite beautiful here. Bare trees stood still in the chilly midday sun. But there were no animals—no chirping of birds or squirrels hopping through the underbrush.

“I've always hated these mountains, dude,” Pause muttered the complaint.

“What do you mean?” Beef replied. “We've never even been here before.”

“No, not this mountain specifically,” Pause said with a roll of his eyes. “All of them. The Appalachians. Something about them just gives me the heebie jeebies.”

“Nonsense,” Beef objected. “Look at this view! What's not to like?”

“Do you even know how old the Appalachians are, Beef? They're old. Like old old. Like older than sharks—”

“Ah, who cares about—”

“They're older than bones, Beef,” Pause continued. “Older than trees. Fucking trees, Beef.”

“Okay, fine. Fine. I get it,” Beef said. “So do you think that's why Etho came here then? To see the old mountains or whatever.”

Pause thought for a moment before replying. “I doubt it. You know he doesn't believe in that kinda stuff.”

“Evolution?”

“No,” Pause laughed. “Superstitions.”

It's true that most hunters were indeed a superstitious lot.

Bdubs had noticed the tattoos on Beef and Pause during their drive—at least a few of which he recognized as tokens and talismen for luck or protection.

All the other hunters Bdubs had ever known were also heavily tattooed.

But not Etho.

He wasn't inked the way his companions were, leastways not that Bdubs had ever seen, and it was hard not to wonder about the incongruity of it all—why he didn’t harbor the same suspicions as those around him.

Fortunately, Etho was full of so many mysteries that one more barely registered as an anomaly.

Bdubs suspected that asking him about it would produce no satisfactory information, so he might as well hurry up and content himself with not knowing why Etho didn’t have any tattoos. 

Besides, between Cleo's assignment to find this mana well, and Etho going missing, Bdubs had more than enough unsolved mysteries to keep him busy for the time being.

Silence hung over the group as they trekked along the wide trail. Uncertainty loomed over them.

Cleo said someone had been using magic here, that they’d triggered the mana well—whatever had happened was big, releasing enough magic to alert Joe from several hundred miles away.

Bdubs struggled to shake the nagging feeling that Etho was involved. What he was unsure about was if Etho had been the one to cast the magic, or if someone had used it on him. 

He honestly couldn't decide which was worse.

And to make matters worse, Etho had told the hunters nothing of his plans before disappearing, which left them convinced something must have mind-controlled him into running away.

But Etho was half-fae, it would take something truly powerful to compel him.

“Etho!” Pause shouted from the front of the group, and he set off at a dead sprint.

Bdubs looked up to spot an Etho-shaped form in the distant clearing, lying motionless in the snow before a rocky formation.

Wary that this could be a trap of some kind, he kept his attention sharp as he followed quickly behind the hunters.

Etho lay crumpled on the ground, as if he'd fallen on the spot and never got back up. He might have been dead, except… except that he wasn't. Bdubs didn't know how, but he was certain Etho was still alive. He had to be.

“What the hell?” Beef said. He'd noticed in the same moment as Bdubs a circular pattern of lines scratched into the snow around him.

Pause charged through the perimeter of the circle without regard for what the consequences might be. “Help me get him up!” he called.

But Bdubs was frozen at the edge of the clearing. 

Magic was stronger here. He could see it thrumming in the air, like gossamer threads floating around them. This was the intersection of ley lines Cleo had told him about. It was real.

He studied the flow of it, the twisting and turning currents, eddies that swirled this way and that. The threads were volatile, and so thick in the air it was difficult to see through them.

At the center of it all was the heap of boulders forming a wall at the edge of the clearing, not more than a few feet from where Etho lay. A stream of water trickled down the side, into a small pool at the bottom.

Ancient carvings decorated the stones’ mossy surface. The mana well. He could only stare at it in wonder, entranced by the turbulent flow of magic emanating from it. 

He let his mind sink into its cool surface, and he was surprised to find something foreign dwelling within its confines.

No.

That something was trapped.

“He’s…” Bdubs said through a daze. “He’s in there.”

Chapter Text

Etho had made a terrible mistake.

Labyrinthine walls of ice rose up all around him, towering high into the featureless grey sky. For days, weeks maybe, he'd wandered these corridors, until all sense of thought and time had leached from him, draining out into the frozen earth below his feet.

His mind was mired in the sameness of this place, the endless twists and turns that looped back on themselves, leading nowhere and everywhere.

At first, he’d been on high alert. Monsters lurked around every snowy corner here—fearful beasts with horns, ghostly skeletons, and strange, explosive creatures—hostile to his presence, never seeming to tire. But as time wore on, his nerves burned down to the quick, and his senses dulled.

He'd managed to skirt the worst of the monsters’ attention so far, but he wasn’t sure how much longer his luck would hold out with his body battered and bruised and frozen to the core.

He was trapped here, in this icy world. That much was clear.

Days passed, and it grew harder to recall the means by which he'd come to this purgatory. If he’d done something to deserve it, then he no longer knew the reason.

Tired, Etho let himself drop to the snowy ground. He wondered distantly if it might be a bad sign that he'd stopped noticing the bite of the cold, that he'd become numb to more than just the passage of time.

“Etho!” he heard in the distance, as if it were a whisper carried on the wind.

It wasn’t the first time the labyrinth had played its tricks on him.

He’d reached a vague understanding that there was something magical about this place, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he had the skills to investigate himself.

He ignored the wind calling out his name, having already learned better than to concede to its wicked ways.

Whatever, or wherever, this place was, he didn't think it was the overworld.

But it also wasn't the End, where the world was full of rich colors and dazzling skies. It was long ago now when he'd last gone to the End, but the trip would forever be burned into his memory.

He remembered the fae woman he'd met there, how she glowed in an ethereal haze. He remembered how light streaked around her as if shattered apart by numerous prisms.

He remembered that she'd asked him for his name, and he'd told her—not Etho, not the name he used now—he’d told her the name he used to go by when he was younger.

What had Joel called it? His true name. Apparently it'd been a mistake to use that name with the fae, but how was he supposed to have known that? 

He suspected now that's what had sealed the deal with her. He'd given her his name, and through some exchange he still barely understood, she'd made him part-fae.

For the longest time his white hair and scar and two different colored eyes were the only sign that anything had happened to him. 

But then he found out that he could see magic. And not only that, he could touch it.

And yet Bdubs… he'd told Bdubs… 

His weary thoughts fizzled out under prolonged strain. A mournful ache took their place in his mind.

“Etho!” the voice came again, closer this time. 

It was familiar, stirring warmth in his chest.

And then he remembered. 

He'd told Bdubs no.

Etho didn't want to be magical. He didn't want to be different, standing out in a crowd everywhere he went. He was going to find the fae that did this to him and… something. He’d had a grand plan once upon a time.

No.

This was his grand plan. Or part of it anyway.

But it meant… it meant he'd come here on his own accord. He was the reason he was trapped in this terrible place. 

He'd done this to himself.

What a strange thing to come to terms with.

Just then, a figure appeared around the corner. His sluggish mind floundered in its struggle to determine what kind of creature was setting its sights on him.

His limbs were heavy, but he found he had just enough energy to brace against the incoming attack. And if he was going to be exploded or skewered by it, he only hoped it’d be quick about it.

“Etho!” The figure ran towards him. “Etho.” A warm hand grasped his shoulder, attempting to shake some life into him. “Is it really you? Please tell me it’s you.”

“...Bdubs?” Etho asked drowsily. With effort, he forced his eyes to focus on the face in front of him.

No. Surely it couldn’t be Bdubs. It’d been months since Etho had last seen the sorcerer, since he’d rebuked Bdub’s offer to teach him magic. The real Bdubs would have been mad at him.

“Hey,” he said, snapping inpatient fingers in front of Etho’s face. “Hey. How many fingers am I holding up?”

The absurdity of the question kicked his meandering thoughts into gear. “...What?” Etho asked. Days without speaking caused his voice to crack, but awareness trickled back to him as he met Bdub’s eyes.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Bdubs repeated. Concern pinched his face as dark eyes searched his.

“And that’s supposed to prove, what exactly?” Etho pushed himself to his feet with a groan. His legs were rubbery and unsteady below him, but he managed not to fall over.

“Oh, thank—! It is you!” Bdubs exclaimed.

“I… I think so…?”

“I can’t believe—! First you don’t want to learn nothin’ about magic, and now I find you here, of all places. Goodness sakes, Etho!” Bdubs made a show of brushing snow from his head and shoulders, and Etho noticed Bdub’s white hair.

“Your face, Bdubs…” Etho said. He took in the way he’d cut his hair short on the sides, with a pattern of lines shaved at his temples and yellow-white streaks of bleach concealing his naturally dark hair. He wasn’t the same person Etho had left in the summer. “...Your beautiful face.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” he growled.

Etho cringed as he realized he’d muttered the delirious thought aloud.

But before he could say anything else, Bdub’s eyes went wide as he flickered. 

First he went translucent, like a ghost, then he was gone entirely. He reappeared a second later, and the sorcerer cursed under his breath as he paced through the snow, seeming to waver between here and somewhere else.

And then he was fully back in this world, opaque and solid.

“We gotta get you outta here,” Bdubs said breathlessly. “C’mon.”

“Bdubs…” Etho asked tentatively. “Am I in trouble?”

“Trouble??” Bdubs barked out a sardonic laugh. “You trapped yourself in a pocket dimension, and you want to know if you’re in trouble??”

Etho stumbled. “A what?”

“Oh brother!” Bdubs complained, before striding off down one of the fortress’s snowy hallways. “How much trouble you’re in is gonna depend a whole lot on whether or not I can get us outta here without Cleo and all them coming to rescue us.”

Their feet crunched in the icy snow crusting over the ground.

“So how do we get out?” Etho asked. Now that Bdubs was here, the fog clouding his mind had eased up. He wasn’t alone anymore, waiting in despair for death to find him.

“Oh yeah, lemme just get out my guidebook on pocket dimensions…” Bdubs said dryly.

“Guidebook?”

“It's a joke, Etho,” Bdubs said. “I ain’t got any idea about this fricked up place. You think they taught me this at sorcerer school??”

“Well, I don't know, did—?”

“No! Goodness— There is no sorcerer school, Etho,” Bdubs said. “All I learned is whatever my masters taught me.”

Bdubs paused just then, falling silent to run his hands along the icy wall that rose to their right. He was uncharacteristically still, as if in meditation.

“What're you doing?” Etho asked after too long in the uncomfortable silence.

“There's a boundary here,” he explained. His eyes fluttered open. “Can you feel—? Um, where all have you been in here? Which way is out?”

“Out? No, it's just this maze. I haven't seen anything else.”

Bdubs told him there was more. He could feel the boundary around the world. They just needed to find a place where that boundary would be weak enough for them to slip out and back to the overworld.

Bdubs made him describe the maze. Everywhere he'd been. Every hallway. Every room.

Etho told him about the endless corridors. How it was all like this: snow and ice and grey skies. They'd have to stay vigilant for monsters lurking in the narrow passages, the worst of which was a flying creature in a courtyard at the far end of the maze.

Bdubs perked up. “Yes, that. We need to go to that courtyard.”

“No way, man,” Etho protested. “You haven’t seen this thing. It shoots these—”

He was cut off as Bdubs abruptly disappeared once again without warning.

Etho waited one breath. Then two. Hoping he’d flicker back like he had earlier. But he didn’t, and searching the area, Etho found no sign of the sorcerer. As quick as he’d appeared, Bdubs was gone.

The smallest flame of hope was attempting to kindle itself in his chest. Etho couldn’t let it go out. Not now. Now that he knew there was a chance, he was determined not to die here.

And so he made for the courtyard. Alone.

But, gods, he’d always hated mazes. Even though he’d been here for days, his navigation was embarrassingly terrible, and it took several wrong turns before he found the place.

Etho held his breath as he crouched at the edge of the courtyard. 

Stairs led down to the open space surrounded by snowy-white walls. Craters pockmarked the ground under where the creature floated through the air, lurking on eternal patrol for its next prey.

Etho had no idea where he was supposed to go from here or what he was supposed to do about the creature.

Just then, Bdubs reappeared behind him with a sneezing-cough to punctuate his return. Etho wheeled on him.

“You're…?” Etho tried to ask. “Are you really here?”

“No. Not fully, I don't think.”

“What does that mean?”

“We need to hurry,” Bdubs said, charging for the courtyard. “I dunno how much time I have.”

Etho was on edge, but Bdubs was so confident, it was hard not to believe in him. Maybe they did still stand a chance.

“Judas Priest!” Bdubs yelped. “A freaking wither??” He immediately ducked right back to their hiding place, pulling Etho with him.

“What're we doing?” Etho asked, crouched behind the corner at Bdub’s shoulder.

Bdubs peeked out to the courtyard, taking in their surroundings. “We have to get through there.”

“Does that mean we're fighting this thing?” Adrenaline pumped through his veins, hemming in the edges of his vision.

A light ignited in Bdub’s palms as if testing what magic he might be able to do here. He tossed it in the air, manipulating the flame to do his bidding.

“We can take ‘em,” Bdubs said with a feral growl, once he seemed satisfied he knew what he was doing. And he charged out to face the wither.

At the far end of the courtyard, all three of its monstrous heads locked onto him, white eyes empty. The creature rose into the air, hovering above them as if it were some war machine preparing to rain violence down upon them. 

The wither flashed with a halo of dazzling light, and a hissing sound filled the air as it charged up to fire a blast at Bdubs.

But he was ready. He pulled on his magic. The air around him seemed to tremble with it, and his face wrinkled. Etho watched him cast a flaming bolt at the monster.

It landed squarely, interrupting its attack.

“Etho, there!” Bdubs called out, and Etho followed his gaze to where a bow and quiver of arrows lay at the edge of the courtyard. He ignored the question that floated across his mind about where they’d come from as he ran to pick them up.

But he’d overstepped.

By the time he had an arrow nocked, the wither’s attention had shifted onto him.

“Hey!” Bdubs yelled at it. He shot off another bolt of fire at it. “Take that!”

But it was no use. It was focused on Etho.

He loosed the arrow at the wither.

It sailed through the air, going wide.

“Etho, run!” Bdubs insisted. But Etho stood firm.

He pulled back a second arrow, rushing this time, releasing it on instinct alone.

It hit.

But at the same time the wither fired a blast in his direction.

Etho lept to the side, only barely managing to get clear of the area before the earth was cratered out below him.

Bits of dirt and rock rained down around him, and all along he heard Bdubs in the background, hurling spell after spell at the creature.

He was relentless. The pained look on the sorcerer’s face made it seem like whatever he was doing wasn’t particularly easy. But he tugged on a thick thread of magic, bending it to his will, and when he released it, a shockwave rippled out in all directions, shattering everything around him.

Cracks ran down the snowy walls when the wither turned back to Bdubs. It was moving more slowly now, flying a bit lower. Quickly Etho got back to his feet, readying himself to continue shooting.

They could do this. They were halfway across the courtyard now, the mouth of a tunnel loomed in view at the far end, and Etho could tell now that that was where Bdubs was leading them.

Just as he was preparing for their impending victory, a blast from the wither exploded at Bdub’s feet. He’d seen it coming and stepped back, but not quite far enough.

“Bdubs!” Etho shouted, watching him disappear in a cloud of dust and debris.

When the dust settled, there was no sign of him. The sorcerer was gone. Etho’s heart fell, and all the despair he’d been holding at bay sought to sweep his feet out from under him.

“Bdubs…” Etho muttered to himself in shock. “Bdubs.”

But the wither would be back on him any moment, so Etho did the only logical thing and fled.

He ran for all he was worth.

His feet ached and his lungs burned, but he kept running until he reached the tunnel at the opposite end of the courtyard, and then he ran some more, breathing heavily in the darkness.

And even when the sounds of the wither had long since faded into the distance, he kept going, afraid to find out what would happen if he stopped, to allow himself to think about any of this for more than a second.

The air grew damp, and he had the sense that he was deep underground. It was warmer here compared to where he’d spent his last several days. After all the endless sameness of the ice maze, any change at all was a welcome one.

A faint light became visible in the distance, but his spent muscles demanded he slow to a jog.

He reached the light, and the world changed around him.

The tunnel opened up into a forest. Needles blanked the ground under his feet, deadening the air to a quiet stillness.

Etho glanced around, taking in his new surroundings. Trees were dense here, blocking his view, and he wasn’t sure if he felt protected or trapped by them.

“Etho!” came Bdub's disembodied voice, distant but audible. “This way!”

There was no sign of the sorcerer, no indication of where he might be or what direction he might mean. But somehow Etho still understood him.

He picked his way through the forest. Sunlight glowed beyond the trees, illuminating their needles and branches in an eerie light.

Etho set off in that direction. He didn’t know how much longer Bdubs had. Or if he was even still here. But he knew Bdubs was his one and only chance at getting out of here alive.

Minutes later, the forest ended, and he found himself standing at the edge of a field.

Diffuse light from the sky made it impossible to judge the time of day. Taking in the surreal view, he couldn’t help but to feel like he was in a dream.

Golden stalks of tall grass swayed serenely, despite no breeze touching him. Somehow aware of where he should go next, Etho waded out into the waist-high grass.

Suddenly Bdubs was there with him, standing before him in the endless field, golden light illuminating his skin.

“We gotta go,” he said.

“Yeah, okay,” Etho agreed. “How?”

“This way,” Bdubs said, and Etho followed him over a gentle rise and down the other side. A spring trickled out from the earth. The grass was shorter here, bright green and springy under his feet.

Bdubs turned to face him. “Can you feel it?” he asked. “It’s thinner here.”

Etho looked around, but he saw nothing aside from the wide, expansive field under the gauzy sky. “What’s thinner?”

“The… the world,” Bdubs said. “The boundary between here and our world.”

He was a ghostly figure now, and even when he flickered back into view, Etho could still see through the edges of Bdub’s semi-transparent outline.

“C’mon,” Bdubs encouraged.

“Wait, Bdubs, no.” Panic welled up inside him so fast he thought he might choke on it. “Don’t go.”

“I’m not gonna leave you here.” Bdubs took his hand, but his touch was feather light. He was fading from this world. “Come with me, stupid.”

But Etho didn’t know what he was feeling for. He’d never used magic before. Not intentionally. He didn’t know how to meditate or sense things the way Bdubs did. His mind raced to solve the puzzle, to crack the code.

If he couldn’t do it, would he be trapped here? 

“Just… close your eyes,” Bdubs instructed. “Our world is right there. Our home, Etho. Let go of this place. You can do it.”

His voice was growing more and more distant by the second. Soon, Etho feared, he’d be gone entirely.

“I— Bdubs, I can’t,” Etho said, pleading with him. Try as he might, he couldn’t wrest his focus from the looming horror of being left behind.

“Yes you can,” Bdubs insisted stubbornly.

“Bdubs… please.”

The moment hung between them. Bdub’s desperate eyes darted over him.

“Okay,” Bdubs reassured himself.

His jaw clenched and unclenched with some private war inside his head.

And then Bdubs was gone again in the blink of an eye.

It all seemed so fragile then. So brittle. But some primal sense deep in his gut knew that this was it. This was his last chance to get out of here or die trying. He wasn’t going to get another chance; he was just going to have to make this one work.

Cornered, but more than ready to fight for his freedom, Etho did as he was told. Feel for the thin spot, Bdubs had said. Etho huffed out a frustrated breath, closing his eyes.

He didn't know magic.

But no, that wasn't true. He could make potions, and Bdubs told him that was magic, he'd just never known it. And he’d cast the spell that’d brought Bdubs to him that night in the bar with the demons.

He tried to focus his mind again now the same way he had that night. 

And for a single fleeting moment he could see it, the thin spot. It flashed into view like the mirrored surface of a perfectly still lake and then was gone, evading his sight.

“Etho!” Bdubs reappeared.

“Bdubs, I can't…” Etho admitted, a miasma of anger and frustration and defeat welling up inside him.

“Do you want me to—?”

“Yes,” Etho said quickly, biting back the emotions before they could spill over. “Whatever. Anything.”

“Okay,” Bdubs said, furrowing his brow in focus. “Okay.”

A nod was the only warning Etho got before his stomach swooped. 

At first he resisted the sudden instability, holding it off before it could drop him to his knees. But it was persistent, doggedly capturing him in its hold.

It was Bdubs.

He was there. As if his very essence were mingling with him, wrapping him up, folding him under its protection. He felt a tug in his chest as the connection pulled tight.

“What’re you…?” Etho tried to ask, but words were awkward in his mouth.

“I’m not leaving you,” Bdubs said through gritted teeth.

And then he was falling.

Down, down, down, Etho fell into an endless void. He wanted to scream, to yell, but his lungs made no sound.

The thread that led to Bdubs was still there, tethering him to safety like a climber's rope in the dark.

It was all he could do to pinch his eyes shut and focus on that point of light in the back of his mind. He surrendered to it. Let it wrap around him and pull him to safety.

Please, Bdubs.

And when he finally managed to crack his eyes open, Etho saw a world vibrant with color—his world. 

He was back in the overworld, on the rocky hillside in Pennsylvania, surrounded by the rattling of winter-bare trees and the crisp scent of the woods. Any relief he felt was quickly drowned out by Beef and Pause’s exuberant shouts, welcoming his return.

But something was still wrong.

Chapter Text

Something wasn’t right.

Beef and Pause limped a barely-conscious Etho through the woods and back towards the parking lot, while Bdubs trailed along behind the trio.

It was lucky that Etho's friends were just as freakishly tall as he was because Bdubs wasn't sure he had the strength left to carry him, even if he were to use magic.

They trudged through slushy snow, carefully maneuvering down narrow forest trails. 

But the longer Bdubs was out of the dream world, the more he began to worry. He'd hoped it was an illusion, a trick of the mind, but the truth was growing increasingly clear: the thread he tied to Etho to pull him free wasn’t dissolving.

A quiet panic bubbled away in the back corner of his mind.

It shouldn’t have been possible. Somehow he could still feel Etho in his head, a distant mote of blurry emotions. He could only figure that something must have happened when he'd yanked him from the alternate dimension. 

As they walked, he realized with a sudden stab of clarity that Etho might be able to feel him, just the same as he felt Etho. Bdubs stilled his thoughts, like he did when handling magic, letting them settle out into a calm pool.

The next thing he needed to do was not so easy. As gently as he could manage, he closed off the connection. He hated himself for hiding it from him, but he couldn’t let him find out. Not yet. Not while he was still in such rough shape.

Before they’d left the clearing, Bdubs had laid a few healing spells over the hunter. It wouldn’t be enough. Etho had sustained far greater injuries inside the pocket dimension than Bdubs had the skill or strength to heal. 

Getting him to the citadel was his only chance at being properly put back together.

Out in the parking lot, Bdubs considered their options.

He wished he had the ability to teleport them back. It was a fae spell—one that he'd been attempting these past few months, but not something he'd yet managed to pull off with any degree of success.

Using the Nether tunnels would have cut the distance by a factor of eight, but like all fae, Etho couldn't enter the Nether.

That left the only remaining option for them to drive back.

He didn't particularly want to drive the abandoned-looking old car Etho had (most likely) stolen to get himself here, but Beef and Pause had left behind an unfinished case and a motel room when they'd rushed off to search for Etho.

The hunters insisted that they wouldn't be long, they'd meet Bdubs and Etho back at the citadel. Because of course he was going to be fine, right?

After a reluctant parting, Bdubs rolled the rickety car down snowy back roads towards the highway. The brakes were soft and the engine had a noticeable miss, but it honestly wasn't all that much worse than Bdub's own shitty car.

Etho stirred in the passenger seat of the hot-wired car, his head lolling against the window.

“You did something to me,” he slurred.

“Heya, hi,” Bdubs said. “Hey there. You just rest, okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

Etho mumbled to himself and curled up. He looked cold. “Where we going?”

Bdubs turned up the heat.

“Somewhere safe.”

Etho dozed the entire drive, leaving Bdubs with hours of time on his hands to contemplate what he was going to tell him when he finally awoke. He kept praying that the mysterious link to Etho would fade on its own, but every time he prodded that corner of his mind, Etho was still there.

He ran and re-ran possible conversations. What was he going to tell Etho? Hell, what was he going to tell Cleo?

Goddammit, she was going to be so mad.

The constant drone of the highway eventually gave way to the stop and go of city roads, jostling Etho back to wakefulness.

“Bdubs?” he asked. His tone made it sound like he was still mostly out of it.

“Yes, Etho?”

He stretched awkwardly in the cramped passenger seat. “I’m glad you came to get me.”

His chest ached, and Bdubs did his best to bite back the heat spreading across his face as tendrils of affection crept in through the cracks of their newly formed bond.

Bdubs was perched on the very edge of the couch while he waited for word from Cleo. Something. Anything.

She’d helped him get Etho up to the citadel’s guest quarters, but once the hunter was situated and she’d had a chance to assess his injuries, she'd wasted no time in ushering Bdubs from the bedroom, insisting that healing him was going to require a level of focus she wouldn’t be able to maintain with Bdubs darting about under foot.

“I’ll be quiet, I promise!” He protested.

“I know you, Bdubs.” And with a gentle yet firm hand, Cleo sent him away.

Cleo said Etho’s mental injuries would take some time for her to heal. He didn’t know what all that entailed, but he knew he didn’t want to leave Etho alone. Not for a second longer than necessary.

And not just because he was worried about Cleo finding out about whatever it was he’d done to pull Etho from the pocket dimension.

Etho hadn’t been more than half-conscious since their escape. Bdubs dreaded most what his reaction would be when he found out. And he hated even more the idea that Cleo might learn about it before Etho himself had a chance to.

It was all so unfair.

Bdubs tapped his leg anxiously. He glanced repeatedly between the clock on the guest room wall and the bedroom door, not more than a few feet away, hoping desperately that Cleo would be finished soon.

It'd already been such a long day since he'd first left town in the back of Beef's Jeep; without thinking, he settled back onto the couch. 

He shot bolt upright a second later, fearing that he'd fall asleep if he let himself relax.

But if there was anyone he trusted with his secrets, it was Cleo. Etho was in good hands, he reassured himself, looping the words in his mind until they were true.

“Cleo?” He snapped around as the door to the hallway opened behind him.

Joe appeared, stern-faced, with his young apprentice bustling along in tow. Cleo’s Hand strode across the room and knocked at the bedroom door. A hushed conversation passed between him and Cleo, and she let him in, directing his apprentice to wait outside.

The guest quarters at the citadel were really just a small apartment, one floor down from where Bdub’s own apartment was these days.

Joe’s apprentice, Oli, meandered about the cramped space—likely doing whatever he could to avoid sitting down in proximity to what must have been a very unwelcoming scowl on Bdub's face.

He fiddled with a row of small stone animals lined up along a shelf. A cat slipped from his fingers, falling to the floor.

Bdubs caught it with a mage hand spell just before it smashed against the wood planks.

“Ooo!” Oli shouted. He jumped back in anticipation of the statue shattering at his feet.

Bdubs swooped it up in his fist, setting the small onyx cat back on its shelf with a definitive clack.

“Thanks,” Oli said. His gaze dropped to his feet. “Joseph is always saying I gotta be more careful…”

“Well he's right,” Bdubs bit out.

Oli sat down with a dramatic sigh, and Bdubs returned to his post at the end of the couch nearest to the bedroom door. He wasn't about to start babysitting someone else's apprentice. There was a good reason he hadn't taken one of his own.

Oli pushed dyed blond hair from his eyes. And when Bdubs glanced back at him, a ukulele had appeared in his hands. Somehow, he always seemed to have one instrument or another on him.

When Bdubs didn't immediately object, he began to pluck out a simple melody. He was admittedly quite talented.

The tune floated through the room, seeping into Bdubs with a kind of calm, and he wondered if he had somehow learned to weave magic into his music.

“What— what song is that?” Bdubs asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

He said an artist that Bdubs hadn't heard of before.

“Are they popular?”

Oli just laughed, and he began to sing along as he played. Bdubs recognized the song from the radio—some top forty nonsense he was too old to keep up with anymore now that he was nearing forty.

But the lyrics stirred something in him. Bdubs crossed his arms, pointedly ignoring the rise and fall of the apprentice's gently lilting voice so he didn't have to think about the love and loss and longing the melody carried with it.

“Who’s the new guy?” Oli asked suddenly between verses. “Is he going to be joining us?”

“What, n—”

“Ooo, is he gonna be your apprentice??”

Bdubs grit his teeth. His jaw ached from all the gnashing and grinding he'd been doing today. “No, he’s just… just some guy I know.”

“Ah, that doesn’t mean anything,” Oli shrugged. “Me ‘n Joe didn’t know each other till just a few months ago and now we’re thick as thieves.” He distracted himself with plucking out a few pensive chords on his ukulele.

It was funny, the things music could communicate that words were not always able to capture.

And Bdubs couldn’t help but to wonder what kind of music Etho liked. Maybe he listened to Bob Dylan. Or Michael Jackson. Everyone liked Michael Jackson, right? As long as he wasn't into that boring rock everyone was so crazy about in recent years.

Oli muted his instrument with a palm over the strings, leaving the room feeling abruptly empty. The only sound was the tapping of Bdub's leg. He clamped a hand over his knee to stop it.

“Can he do magic?” Oli asked, and he ran a hand through his hair again, as if it were an unconscious tick of his.

Bdubs didn’t answer.

Thankfully, Oli didn’t press him further. He returned his attention to his music, picking up a new tune.

He was only part way through the song when Joe appeared at the door. Bdubs was on his feet in an instant.

“C’mon, Oli,” Joe said. His face gave nothing away as he passed Bdubs. “Cleo will come get you when she’s finished. She asked that you don’t interrupt her.”

“But—” Bdubs tried to protest.

Joe was already gone. Oli flashed him a sympathetic smile as he followed his master out of the guest suite.

And then Bdubs was alone again.

Resigned to his wait, he slumped back onto the couch, but this time, it wasn't long before sleep caught up with him.

Over and over again, he'd lost Etho in the snow maze.

Try as he might, staying in the mana well’s unstable pocket dimension was just too hard. It was volatile, repeatedly ejecting his presence, forcing him out.

Like water flowing over his fingers, Etho slipped through his grasp, every nightmare he’d had in the intervening months since Etho’s rejection concentrated into this one moment, specifically for his own torment.

He couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t save him.

But Bdubs had already lost Etho once—reluctantly, but by choice—back in the spring; he wasn't going to lose him again. Not now.

There was no other he’d follow into war. Not like this. He’d free them both or die trying.

He flickered back into being, and Etho was once again before him.

His tangle of snowy white locks were wreathed in ice. Out of the corner of his eye, it looked almost like a crown atop his head. He cast a regal visage, like the fae of old, his otherness was so much more noticeable here in this strange world.

Bdubs could only stare at him dumbly. He searched Etho’s face—the mismatched eyes, the scar that cut a slit through his eyebrow.

The ice around him was melting. Fractal patterns, sharp and crystalline at his brow, were ebbing away into an indistinct blur. They had been doing so for a long time.

Bdubs wasn’t sure how he hadn’t seen it till now, but Etho’s power was fading. 

Etho was fading.

It wouldn’t be long now before he was an empty vessel.

But there was no time. They had to move.

They had to move now.

Bdubs urged them down the endless corridor, but his legs were sluggish, refusing his command, and when he turned around Etho was standing perfectly still, staring at nothing.

He called out to him, demanding he do something.

But the ground opened up below him. Snow and ice and rock crumbled under Etho’s feet, giving way to a black void, swallowing him up in its gaping maw.

Etho disappeared into the darkness.

Scrambling, Bdubs reached for the tether between them, he grabbed hold of it with all his strength, feeling it come tight with the force of Etho’s weight.

“Etho—!”

The sound of the door creaking open startled him awake, and he jolted upright to find Cleo emerging from the bedroom, exhaustion plain on her face.

“Were you going to tell me?”

His stomach fell to the floor. She’d found out about the bond.

“Cleo…” Bdubs winced, waiting for the blow, anticipating the punishment that would inevitably ensue.

“Don't tell me you didn't know,” Cleo admonished. “You're lucky I sent Joe out before he noticed.”

“Cleo, I'm sorry. It was— I didn't mean—”

“Listen, I'm not mad,” Cleo explained. 

She sat down next to him with a weary sigh, leaning back into the cushions for support. Her hand brushed over her hair, pushing stray curls from her face.

“You’re… not?” Bdubs asked.

“Well, it would have been nice to know before I tried to heal him that he was fae-touched.”

“Oh.” Bdubs felt his eyes going impossibly wide.

She wasn’t talking about the bond between them at all. Was it even possible she might not have noticed it?

But Etho’s fae-touch made him resistant to their sorcerer magic, and there’d have been no hiding that from someone casting healing magic on him.

Relief flooded him, and Bdubs relaxed, nearly going limp with dizziness as he sunk into the couch. He could only manage to nod numbly at her as he fought to hold back the wash of emotions.

“He’ll need some rest,” Cleo said, eyeing him suspiciously. “But he’ll be okay.”

Thankfully, if she suspected anything, she didn’t press him.

“So I guess you figured out who was messing with the mana well?” Cleo asked. “Was it just him then?”

Bdubs told her what he knew: that Etho had accidentally activated it, how he'd been trapped in some kind of alternate dimension, and Bdub's efforts to free him.

“Interesting. Like a pocket dimension?” she asked.

“I think so, yeah.”

“So what was your hunter doing poking around at a mana well?” Cleo asked pointedly.

“My—??” Bdubs squawked. “He is not my hunter!”

Cleo smiled knowingly.

“He’s not!” Bdubs protested. “Cleo! We ain't done nothin’! I haven’t even seen him for months!”

“If you say so.”

“I have no idea what he was doing there, but you can bet that’s going to be my first question when he wakes up!” Bdubs said. “Cause a great big ‘ol hassle with his stupidity!”

“Bdubs,” Cleo said gently. “There’s no easy way to ask this… But I have to know: which fae is he pledged to?”

He chewed his lip. Bdubs was reluctant to give up Etho's secrets without his consent.

“Bdubs?”

“Cleo, I can’t…”

“I don’t care how much you like him, Bdubs. It’s a matter of security,” Cleo explained. “I need to know if he could be acting on behalf of some other authority. Someone trying to learn our secrets.”

“He’s not.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“I am.”

Cleo leveled a cutting glare at him. Bdubs had always been weak to peer pressure, but he was particularly susceptible to Cleo's peer pressure.

“Bdubs,” Cleo said. “Please. For me.”

He folded quickly, admitting, “He doesn't know.”

“Right,” Cleo said sarcastically. She barked out a laugh. “I’d rather you don't tell me anything than lie to me.”

“No, I’m serious, Cleo,” Bdubs insisted. “He really doesn’t know which fae he made his deal with.”

Cleo’s eyebrows rose. “You’re… you’re not joking?”

“I swear it. He doesn’t know.”

“Oh. That’s…”

“It’s sickening, is what it is,” Bdubs said. “Do that kinda thing to a person without them knowing.”

Cleo got up to pace the room, agitation furrowing her brow.

Any reservations Etho had about magic Bdubs knew he had for good reason. To be bound to some supernatural creature in a moment of vulnerability would affect anyone like that.

“Does he want to know?” Cleo asked carefully.

“Cleo…” Bdubs worried what she might be considering.

“I could try to read who marked him.”

“No,” Bdubs replied forcefully. “Cleo, you can't. If you— he'll never trust any of us again. He never woulda even agreed to come back here if he hadn’t been half-dead.”

Deals and allegiances left a mark—some more obvious than others. Etho's hair, for example, hadn't been white before he'd been fae-touched. But more than that, a deal with a fae would have been powerful enough to have marked his soul.

Knowing it was one thing, but reading that mark was something else entirely.

There was no way around it, having someone reach into your being and comb through the essence of your soul was impossibly intimate, and rumor had it, it was also incredibly painful. 

Thankfully, Bdubs had never had occasion to experience it for himself.

“I’m not sure that it’s your decision to make, Bdubs.”

With that, she checked on Etho, confirming he was resting easily now, and then left Bdubs to visit with him.

Bdubs was at Etho's side the moment she was gone. 

He stirred in the guest bed where he was folded among blankets. Next to him, among the hunter’s various jewelry and knives and handgun scattered across the bedside table, Bdubs recognized the golden disk of his pocket watch.

Bdubs was surprised. He'd given Etho the pocket watch to help him learn magic—the object Bdubs had first used to learn how to focus his mind.

He was confused why Etho would have kept it after deciding that he wanted nothing to do with magic.

Bdubs studied him. He looked almost peaceful, half propped up on a stack of pillows, hair messy and tangled. His ruddy cheeks were just visible over the top of his mask.

Etho’s eyes cracked open, and mismatched irises drifted over his surroundings before they managed to settle wearily on Bdubs.

“Bdubs…” His voice was rough. 

“Hey.” He resisted the urge to rush to him, to stroke his head and hold his hand and tell him everything was going to be okay.

“I had a dream that you— that we…” Etho struggled for words. 

Bdubs could feel his jumbled thoughts working to assemble themselves. He wished he could reach into his mind and smooth them out for him. If only he could—

A sharp spike of panic from Etho lanced straight out of his mind, piercing through the core of Bdub’s worried thoughts. 

His eyes snapped open, and Etho asked in shock, “What— what did you do to me?”

Chapter Text

Sleep had never come so easy to him.

Etho was accustomed to sleeping odd hours—and usually not nearly enough to count as what most would consider “healthy.” He was a night owl by nature, but his life as a hunter necessitated a more opportunistic sleeping pattern.

But for (as best he could tell) two days Etho slept an unnaturally dreamless sleep in the sorcerer’s tower, waking only occasionally to stretch stiffened muscles or drink a bit of water.

While he drifted in and out of sleep, he had, in the back of his mind, some nascent awareness that a new thing was beginning. Doors were closing which had long stood open to him, as others opened seemingly out of nothingness.

It felt as though he’d reached an inflection point, where a decision nexus loomed ahead, lurking just out of view, an eldritch horror stirring back to life, reality shifting around it.

Perhaps it'd already begun. 

He’d been the one, after all, who’d decided to strike out on his own private mission. No one had made him leave behind the company of his friends for the Appalachian wilderness.

And now everything was changing. 

Things he'd once assumed as indelible truths seemed as though they were falling apart, his stable footing no longer as reliable as it once was.

Half asleep, he’d wonder about his reality, consternating over his choice to disappear without telling Beef and Pause. The certainty he'd felt as he'd stood before the spring trickling down the rocky hillside, the force of raw magic welling up from the earth, and the icy fear that'd gripped him as it’d all gone sideways.

But then he’d slip back to sleep, and it all no longer seemed quite so dire.

Cleo would visit him a few times a day. Often, she’d be sitting there quietly when he woke, and he'd answer her questions about how he was feeling or if he needed anything. They reached a quick understanding: she never probed more than necessary and he answered her succinctly but truthfully.

“How’re you doing?” Cleo asked. “You’re doing okay?”

Etho cleared his throat, nodding drowsily, “I’m good.”

“You’re good?”

“I’m doing really good, yeah,” he affirmed, shifting to sit upright with only a minor amount of groaning.

She never pushed him to acknowledge it out loud, but at some point, he'd figured out she was aware he was part fae—she knew he had access to his own magic.

And so when she began handling magic before him, he felt no obligation to hide his ability to perceive it.

“Do you have to do that?” he whined, realizing it was a spell to delve his half-healed mind.

Etho was coming to hate magic—it made no sense, followed no logic, and now it’d nearly killed him. Cleo was the embodiment of everything the sorcerers stood for, he knew he ought to be more wary of her.

“That’s a bit rude, isn't it, Etho?” Cleo admonished. “I was the one who healed you, you know.”

But her tone was playful. She stopped her casting, dismissing the glittering threads with a snap of her fingers.

“A little rude…” he agreed, pushing back against her, just to see what she'd do. “But you enjoy that kinda thing, don't you?”

“Yeah, I mean… you know…” she trailed off, weighing his words as if silently deliberating over his meaning. Her eyes landed on him as she seemed to come to the sudden conclusion he was teasing her, “I enjoy rudeness?”

“Don’t you?” He smiled under his mask.

“Don’t you?”

Etho was taken aback by her directness. “...A little bit. Yeah.”

Somehow, against all odds, despite her being the High Councilor, the very head of this group of sorcerers, there was an aura of safety about her. He couldn’t say why, but he trusted her.

“I mean, yeah. Okay, you don't like magic. That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll do my best to accommodate you.”

Despite the vaguely sarcastic tone, after that, she was always careful to ask him before she cast any spells, especially if they were intended to be directed at him.

But he was still under her care, which meant she was responsible for ensuring he was properly healing, so there was no getting away from her magic. Not entirely.

It was a compromise he could handle.

He saw reflected in her his own hesitancies, his own careful treading of the razor sharp line between honesty and deception. 

Within a few days, she moved on from questions about how he was feeling to quizzing his mental acuity. And, seemingly pleased with his progress, gave him instructions to start getting up and walking around more. He was on track to be back to full health in no time.

Thankfully, she never asked him about the one thing he most certainly did not want to talk about. Before long, he wondered if she even knew, but he wasn't going to be the one to bring it up.

Bdubs visited him, too, during those days of endless rest; although, he found himself feigning sleep in the sorcerer’s presence, preferring his muttered testimonials over risking an exchange of conversation.

It was just that… Etho wasn't sure what to say to him. He still didn't understand a fraction of whatever Bdubs had done to pull him from the dream world.

At first, he thought it might have been his own delusional mind playing tricks on him, but it was clearer now that he was getting better: he could feel him.

Unless he expended an immense amount of effort to keep the connection closed off, Bdubs was there, a ball of emotion in the back of his mind, a blurry ember, distinctly other. Etho kept waiting for it to fade, but with each passing day, it seemed more and more unlikely that it would be going away anytime soon.

Proximity was the only thing that seemed to make any difference. From across the citadel, it was tolerable enough that he could almost forget he was there. But in the same room, it was overwhelming. It was horrifyingly… intimate… to have Bdubs so close to his thoughts.

He’d experienced a similar sort of bond with Joel the night they’d gone into Bastion together, but that had been nothing more than a temporary requirement to enter the supernatural nightclub. Their connection had been surface-level at most. This was… different.

It was something he needed to be rid of as soon as possible.

“Your friends were really worried about you, you know?” Bdubs said quietly from Etho's bedside. 

He was keeping Etho company while he “slept,” as he'd often done these past few days.

“Not me, though, of course,” Bdubs continued, “I know you're too stubborn to die or anything like that.”

His words were cutting, like he was teasing. Etho might have been convinced but for the feelings pouring through their bond.

It was largely closed off, but Etho’s breathing caught at the weight of the untempered grief filling the space between them, at Bdub’s muted thoughts mingling with his own. I thought I'd lost you.

“I'm surprised you still have this. What with the… well, you know.” There was a click of metal on wood as Bdubs picked up the pocket watch from the side table. “I'm glad. It's nice.”

He paused, curiosity rippling around him, and Etho wondered what it was that’d caught the sorcerer’s attention. “You’ll have to tell me what these rings mean someday.”

Etho briefly considered ‘waking up’ to tell him. But there wasn’t much to tell. One had come from his mother years ago, and the other he’d found on a hunt. He liked them, and plus, the silver rings had proven useful the few times he’d needed to hold his own against vampires, so he kept on wearing them.

Telling Bdubs those things wasn’t going to change anything, and when Bdubs began to hum a song to himself as he sat there, Etho didn’t feel the need to interrupt him.

The tune was familiar, something Etho had been hearing on the radio recently during the long cross-country drives with Beef and Pause. He had blurry memories of Bdubs singing it during the car ride here.

Etho would never tell him this, but Bdubs actually had a pretty nice singing voice.

He lay there listening, and soon, sleep began to creep back up on him. Real sleep.

Cleo had said that rest was the best thing for him, and so who was he to argue? It was comfortable and quiet here, unlike the motels he was used to sharing with his friends.

He was just barely awake enough to register Bdubs speaking softly from the doorway. “You gotta get better. No, I know you'll get better. I feel like, no matter what happens, it'll still be you and me.”

It was followed by a hushed, “Just… please don’t be mad…” and then Etho was asleep.

Beef and Pause caught up with him after those first few days recovering in the citadel. The sorcerers escorted his friends up to visit with him in the guest suite, allowing the hunters some privacy to reunite with each other.

“Fancy digs you've got here,” Pause said. He snooped through the small kitchen, cabinets and drawers pulling open and closed in quick succession in his curious hands. “You’d better not be thinking about running off without us.”

“Jesus, Pause, cut him a break,” Beef said, finding a seat on the couch.

His friends looked exhausted. They’d just finished relaying to him the climactic conclusion to their hunt for the rogue guardian besieging one of the lakes up north. He was grateful for them not bringing up how he’d abandoned their hunt for his own side quest which had turned out to be less than useless.

“I’m not staying any longer than I need to,” Etho explained. He dropped onto the couch next to Beef. Whatever Cleo had done to heal his mind had worked exceptionally well, he was feeling a lot better, but it’d left his body feeling drained and weakened.

“No?” Pause asked. He’d finished his poking around in the kitchen, and had moved on to fiddling with objects decorating the shelves around the living area. Etho ignored the frustration simmering under his tone.

“No way,” Etho said. “All this magic? Gives me the creeps.”

Beef laughed sarcastically to himself. “Oh, does it?”

Etho was confused. He glanced between Beef and Pause for clarification. Getting none, he asked, “Yeah… should it… not?”

They were hunters. Magic was antithetical to every facet of their job. Of course he was uncomfortable with the very idea of it.

Silence expanded to fill the room, and he did not like the knowing eye contact shared between the other two.

“We thought you—” Pause began aggressively.

Beef cut in over him, “No, no, of course. Of course, man. The magic stuff is super weird.”

“And Bdubs?” Pause asked pointedly.

“What about him?”

“Is he weird?”

Etho found himself at a loss for words. He snapped his mouth shut under his mask.

“Of course he's weird, Pause,” Beef said. He rolled his eyes. “You saw him, the way he did whatever he did to sniff out where Etho had run off to.”

“He… did?” Etho still didn’t have the whole story about how Bdubs had come to find him. And now that they mentioned it, he was curious how the sorcerer had managed to track him down.

“Yeah, it was like he knew right where you'd be,” Beef said. “Wasn't until we saw the car and the footprints that I really believed him.”

“What the fuck were you doing there anyway?” Pause asked. He was boiling now, anger and frustration sharpening his words.

“Pause, we agreed—”

“No, Beef,” he bit out. “He owes us answers.”

“I— guys, I’m—” Etho stuttered. He knew he’d made a mistake by going off without them, but he’d hoped they’d at least give him a little bit longer before bringing it up. Or preferably, they could never bring it up.

“Do you know how worried Beef was?” Pause paced the length of the room. “How worried I was??”

“I think what Pause is trying to say—” Beef made an attempt to smooth things over.

“You disappeared without a word, Etho. We thought you were dead. Or worse.”

“Guys, I'm sorry, I—” He wished they were in a motel or somewhere where he could flee outside to get some air. He wasn't used to being trapped indoors for this long, high up in a tower this many floors above the ground.

“What is it that you're sorry about?” Pause continued to dig. “What exactly was so important that you couldn't at least have told us where you were going?”

“Pause, leave him be. He's not going to do it again,” Beef said. “Right, Etho?”

He held his tongue. Etho wasn’t sure what waited for him in the future, and the uncertainty in his heart seemed to spill out, reverberating throughout the room.

“So…??” Pause prodded when Etho didn’t answer. “Are you?”

But it wasn’t possible for him to make such a promise. Etho had always had a hard time lying. Lying by omission was one thing. Or through implication and doublespeak. But he refused to speak any outright lies, it just wasn't in his nature.

Pause’s eyebrows were drawn down, accusation creasing his face. “At least tell us if it's the fairy thing, or the magic thing.”

“Goddammit, Pause.” Beef hid his eyes in the palms of his hands.

“What?? Oh, right, we're not supposed to talk about it,” Pause ranted. “We're never allowed to talk about anything. Especially not if it has to do with Etho and his precious feelings. He's not made of glass, Beef. Stop worrying you're going to break him.” 

Etho appreciated the sentiment, but he wasn't so sure Pause was right. He felt more fragile than ever, here in this strange place, confronted by the people who mattered most to him in the world.

“So which is it?”

He had half a mind to tell them the whole of it, that he'd been working for months now on a master plan to find his fae, to summon her. But telling them that much would only lead to a great many other questions he wasn't ready to answer.

They hadn't even spoken about it since that night back in the spring when Etho'd figured out he was fae-touched. Part of him hoped that maybe they'd simply forgotten.

But Pause was asking about magic now, too, and there was no way they should have known about any of that. Aside from Bdubs, Etho hadn't told a soul.

Pieces clicked into place suddenly.

“Did… did Bdubs tell you?” He forced the words out evenly. Betrayal stung at the back of his throat.

“Oh, do not tell me you're mad at him,” Pause said. “Bdubs saved your damn life, dude.”

“Pause is right. There was no chance of us getting you out of there on our own,” Beef agreed.

“But, did he—”

“No, he didn't tell us anything.”

“It’s what he didn’t tell us,” Pause added. “We know, Etho. We know you’ve been using magic.”

Etho forced himself to look up from his feet, meeting their gaze.

“So which is it,” Pause asked, “magic or fairy stuff?”

He swallowed and answered them. “Both.”

Chapter Text

Etho wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or annoyed when Cleo arrived, interrupting his conversation with Beef and Pause before they could interrogate him any further about his “magic fairy problems,” as Pause put it.

“Your friends are welcome to stay,” Cleo offered after an awkward exchange of pleasantries managed to bring down the temperature in the room by a few degrees. 

She was all too aware she’d intruded on a heated moment, but as the leader of the sorcerers, this was her domain, she could do as she pleased.

“Oh, hell no,” Pause blurted out.

“Pause,” Beef chastised the rude behavior, elbowing him in the side. “Thanks for the offer. But we've already got a room nearby.”

Cleo asked if she might borrow Etho, a firmness in her words implying very heavily it was not a question.

Pause grumbled under his breath as Beef excused them, and the hunters disappeared from the room, Pause mouthing, we’re not done with you, before they slipped out the door.

“Come,” Cleo said briskly. “Now that you’re doing better, we need to talk.”

Etho wasn’t sure he liked how that sounded, but he pushed aside his doubt and followed Cleo dutifully up to her office. 

Winding marble stairs, worn from decades of use, twisted their way up several floors. Carved stone window sills looked out over the city, and brackets with candles sat unlit in the daylight.

Her office was lined with dark wood paneling. Shelves on nearly every wall held countless items—books and carvings and trinkets, some of them moving on their own accord, all of them glowing with a faint halo of innate magic.

It was a lot to take in. His eyes darted around the room as if bracing for an ambush.

“Oh, sorry,” Cleo said, taking notice of Etho’s discomfort, and with a wave of her hand, the intensity in the room eased as she did something to dim the magic thrumming in his ears. 

Etho released a tense breath. He felt like he could think again.

Cleo’s emerald eyes were studying him quietly, taking in his reaction without judgement.

Suddenly, Etho was overcome by the feeling of having been caught. It’d been a test to tell if he really could sense magic, and flight or flight kicked in, dumping adrenaline into his system and setting his heart racing.

“There’s no cause for alarm,” she said gently. “I already know you’re fae-touched.”

But that didn’t stop the trapped feeling creeping in. Etho still wasn't exactly sure where they stood and what she wanted from him. And now, here, in her office, her domain, it was more apparent than ever that he was at her mercy.

“How long have you been handling magic?”

“I—” he struggled to speak past the lump in his throat. “I… haven’t been.”

She sighed, and rising from the seat behind her desk, stepped away, giving him space.

“It can be a hard thing: not knowing who you are. What you are,” Cleo said pensively. “Every sorcerer in the citadel knows the feeling—some more so than others, I dare say.”

Etho watched her, swallowing down nervousness.

“It’s only natural to seek answers,” she continued. “So you’re not in trouble, Etho, not as long as you answer me.”

How many cops had fed him that same line? He knew better. He knew not to speak, not to give up information, except as a last resort.

And yet… he trusted Cleo. He believed her.

“I want to help you,” she said, returning to her seat.

He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t think I can do magic.”

As best he could figure, he was growing out of it. He’d made potions, once upon a time, but even that skill had faded in recent years.

He’d cast a few minor spells after Bdubs had shown him how to do it. But ever since he’d, allegedly, teleported Bdubs to the bar that night with the demons, he’d been unable to do much more than occasionally sense when there was magic around.

And not for lack of trying. For months, he’d carried Bdub’s pocket watch—the focus the sorcerer had used when he was learning many years ago—but his efforts at learning to clear his mind were fruitless.

“Hmm… is that so?” The High Councilor considered him for a long moment. Etho forced himself not to squirm under her scrutiny. 

She leaned back in her seat, explaining, “Planar magic, like that of the fae, is not like our magic here in the overworld. Its rules are different, some might even call them nonsensical.” 

She paused. Her eyes flicked over him as he absorbed the information. 

“For many centuries its practice was outlawed, and those found handling planar magic would be forcibly stilled—their magic burned out of them—a barbaric custom from a more regressive time.”

“And… now?” His pulse quickened. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the prospect of these sorcerers taking away what little remained of his magic.

“Those days are long past,” Cleo assured him. “As long as you’re not hurting any humans, you do not need to worry about my sorcerers apprehending you.”

He nodded, but her gaze was so intense that he kept his eyes averted.

“Allow me to help you.”

He looked up from his lap.

“What do you know of your fae-touch?”

“It’s a deal. A bargain.”

“A pact, yes,” she said. “And do you know how it came to be?”

“Mine?” Etho asked. He was thankful for the mask hiding his expression from her. Although something told him she didn't need to see his face to know how he was feeling. “I, uh— I gave her my true name.”

Cleo frowned. It was hard not to feel like he was being scolded by a teacher.

“I didn’t know,” he added quickly. “I was… I was young. I didn’t know any better.”

“You gave her your true name, and you didn’t get anything in return?” To his surprise, she sounded almost… mad, and he struggled to understand why.

“That’s why I was at your… the magic stone… I'm going to find her.”

Cleo’s expression was set. “And who is she, your fae?”

Embarrassment burned his cheeks, and he found himself once again gazing down at the floor. “I don’t know.”

She was quiet for a long time before asking carefully, “Do you want to know?”

“What?” His eyes snapped back up to hers, bright green and serene. She had a casual kind of regal ferocity that gave her an aura of unremitting control. “You can… you can figure out which fae I’m— I’m bound to?” His heart beat in his throat now. Maybe he was closer than ever to finding her.

“Yes,” Cleo said. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

Yes, yes, yes, he wanted to scream. It was all he wanted. For months he’d been searching for the truth. The mystery had hounded him ever since he’d found out he was fae-touched—just who was this fae he was bound to?

“How?” he asked, doing his best to keep his eagerness in check.

“One cannot be touched by such powerful magic without consequence,” she said. “A pact like yours leaves behind a mark.”

His hand drifted up to his face, to the scar that divided his eyebrow and ran down to the top of his lip. It’d appeared the day after his trip to the End in his youth, the same day his hair had turned white and his one eye bright blue.

“No, not that. Though, any physical changes you experienced are probably related,” Cleo said. “But I’m talking about a different kind of mark—a mark on your soul.”

“Oh.”

“It would be unique, a sigil identifying your fae.”

“How do you know all this?” he asked skeptically as it all suddenly began to sound too good to be true. “About fae deals and such?” He’d learnt some things about magic from Bdubs, but he’d never mentioned anything about marks and souls and the like.

A knowing smile appeared on her face. “You didn’t really think you were the only one?”

He was taken aback. Shock rolled through him as he studied her. She didn’t look fae. Except that her red hair and green eyes were rather striking now that he thought about it…

“You??” Etho asked.

“Ha! No,” Cleo laughed freely. “No, not me. A… friend of mine. Many years ago.”

“So you…?”

“I helped him find the fae he’d made his pact with,” Cleo explained. “And we had it nullified.”

Etho schooled his expression. 

Was it possible she knew? That she’d seen into some secret part of him while healing his mind and had seen his unspoken intent? But she made it all sound so easy. So simple. And something like hope flared hot in his chest for the first time in a long time.

“Etho, do you know what it means to have someone to read your soul?”

Bdubs was in the hallway, suspiciously close by, when Etho exited Cleo’s office.

He felt him as much as he saw him, shooting to attention the moment Etho stepped around the corner.

“Hello, hi,” Bdubs said, carefully modulating his cheerful tone down to match Etho’s buzzing mental state. “Etho, hey. How did—?”

Etho cut him off. “Not now, Bdubs. I can’t…”

“Okay,” Bdubs said, nodding to himself. “I just wanted to make sure—”

“Bdubs,” Etho pleaded with him. 

It was just that… he was so… near. Even several paces away, he burned like a bonfire in the back of Etho’s mind, threatening to melt right through his tenuous hold on cogent thought, already straining after all that Cleo had given him to think about.

Bdub’s face twitched with some barely suppressed emotion. 

Etho could feel the turmoil churning within him, but the sorcerer did something to tamp it down, wordlessly shielding Etho from the worst of his own internal disarray.

Etho unclenched teeth he hadn’t noticed grinding, and an unnoticed pressure that’d built up in his temple eased.

“Yeah, okay,” Bdubs said. Uncertainty still clung to him, hanging in the air between them. “I just— I thought— you wanna come over tonight? We haven’t really— Maybe I can make you dinner?”

“You know how to cook?” Etho cringed the moment the rude retort left his tongue.

“Well… no, not really,” Bdubs admitted sheepishly. “I’ll grab some take out. What do you like?”

The early winter night had drawn over the city by the time Etho stood at the door to Bdub’s apartment.

He hesitated. Etho had stayed with him for neigh on a week back in the spring—after they’d shut the End portal outside of town. During that time, they’d become something of roommates with Etho coming and going as he pleased.

But now… he wasn’t sure where they stood. Should he knock? Or just go in? But what if it was locked?

Just then, as he was debating how best to announce his arrival, the heat in the back of his mind grew bright, and the door pulled open in front of him.

“Hi,” Bdubs said. A broad smile glowed on his face. “Come in, come in.” And sensing Etho’s unease in his presence, he darted deeper into the apartment, making space for him.

City lights twinkled on the skyline outside the tall windows. Bdubs was no longer the Hand to the High Councilor—not since Ren had abdicated his seat—he’d moved down a few floors since then, but the view was just as impressive. Etho stepped up to the windows to take in the sight.

They had yet to talk about it—this thing between them. Etho wasn’t sure how he should even attempt to start a conversation like that.

But even more, he was worried about how he was supposed to make it through an evening with Bdubs this close by, their bond all but incinerating every molecule of air in the room. 

He didn’t want to be away. A part of him really had missed Bdub’s joyful presence in the months they’d been apart, but that same presence was distracting now, constantly burning in the back of his mind.

Etho made an excuse to step across the apartment, putting space between them as he occupied himself with a pair of easels propped up at the far side of the apartment. Next to them, a pile of canvases leaned haphazardly against the wall.

Bdubs had apparently been painting. A lot.

And he was good at it, at least as far as Etho could tell. There were paintings of trees and magic. Of his horse Lulu. Of colored lights in the sky above End islands. He studied them, drawn in by the emotion conveyed through composition and color.

Bdubs joined him at the easels. “I guess I'm painting through my trauma or whatever,” he joked.

Etho could feel the undercurrent of self derision in his words. He believed them to be true.

“C’mon, you want some dinner?”

Bdubs clapped him on the shoulder as he turned to go, the smallest of touches, but it felt like an electric shock zapping through him.

Etho flinched. He knew Bdubs could tell, despite the mask that was supposed to keep such reactions hidden.

“Sorry,” Bdubs said awkwardly. “Sorry. I don’t— Do you want— So these paintings…” he failed spectacularly in his attempt to change the subject.

“Bdubs,” Etho said, halting Bdub’s attempted retreat. “Is… is there anything you can do to… to turn it down or something? It’s just…” he felt like his brain was inside a furnace “...it’s, uh, it’s a lot.”

Bdubs turned to meet Etho’s gaze, studying him with wide eyes. It was the first time either of them had acknowledged the connection tethering their thoughts.

“Ah, yeah, that,” Etho winced. He pinched his eyes shut. “Don’t do that.”

“Shoot!” Bdubs clapped his hands over his face. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was that bad for you. Let me, umm…”

Whatever he did next turned down the volume on their connection, and Etho released the tension from his shoulders.

“Thanks for not telling Cleo,” Bdubs said.

“How do you…?”

“She woulda come straight here to rake me over the coals if you’d told her.”

“Oh. So this…?” Etho prodded tentatively at the spot in the back of his thoughts.

“I don’t know,” Bdubs said. “I don't know what it is, but I’m gonna figure out how to fix it. Promise.”

Etho nodded.

“Etho…?” Curiosity blossomed through the bond. He could feel Bdubs reaching out to him, extending his grasp along that thread of awareness that hung between them.

“Don't,” Etho warned, closing his eyes again. “It's like— I don't— don't spy on me.”

The line went slack. “Spying on you?”

“Can we eat?”

Bdubs took the hint, promptly shuttering their bond. Etho followed him across the dimly lit apartment to the dining table, where they ate quietly, sitting opposite each other at the long table.

The physical space between them did actually seem to help, the few extra feet of distance enough to attenuate the most extreme of the bond’s effects.

That didn’t mean Etho wanted to talk about it.

His mind was stuck on his conversation with Cleo, and her offer to help him find his fae. He hadn’t yet decided what he wanted to do, but he knew he couldn’t allow anyone else to impose on his decision.

“You always wear those rings,” Bdubs commented, breaking the silence when they were nearly done eating the take-out Chinese food he’d picked up earlier. “Is that ‘cause you think they make you look cool?”

“They’re silver,” Etho replied dryly. “Fends off vampires.”

He couldn’t recall what Bdubs did or didn’t know about his past entanglements with vampires, but the scowl on his face told him all he needed to know.

They carried on like that—alternating between chatting and bickering—in many ways, picking right back up where they’d left off, as if they’d never been apart at all.

And Bdubs opened up, telling him more about the fae magic he’d been casting: spells to disguise himself and locate objects and shoot an electric arc.

“Watch this!” he declared. The thread he tugged on was one Etho could fully see for once, and he watched in awe as Bdubs tossed a thin sheet of it over himself. When the magic settled on him, his pullover shifted from mossy green to pink.

“Pink?” Etho laughed. “Good one.”

Bdubs looked down at himself frantically. “No…! Uh— well— I was going for red. Actually.” A blush rose to his face, and the fabric shifted between pink and green before finally returning to its original mossy color.

They’d been chatting for a while now, and Etho suddenly realized they’d been shifting closer around the dining table as the night wore on. He sprung to his feet.

“You said you can locate objects, too?” he asked, hoping to cover for his discomfort. It wasn't like he wanted Bdubs to feel bad about it.

“Yes. Yes, I can,” Bdubs said confidently. “Try me!”

“Umm…” Etho looked around, patting his pockets. “How about this?” He held up Bdub’s pocket watch.

“Perfect! Go hide it somewhere. I’ll count to twenty.” The sorcerer closed his eyes where he sat at the dining table.

Etho wandered the apartment, careful to step lightly over the wooden floors, lest he give away his location to the sorcerer.

He wasn’t sure where he should hide the watch. The door was open to Bdub’s bedroom, but he felt weird about going in there uninvited. A large bed filled the space, its white duvet crisp and freshly made.

He forced himself not to think about it.

An idea came to him. He walked loudly throughout the apartment then, making sure to complete a full lap, doubling back at the entry and living area, and finally returning to Bdubs as he finished his countdown, watch still in his pocket.

“I hope you hid it good,” Bdubs said. A mischievous grin split his face. Etho thought maybe he liked showing off a little too much.

But this spell was more subtle, Etho nearly missed the wave of golden dust that radiated out from him, washing over the walls and floors and furniture in the apartment.

It accumulated on Etho, and soon, the hand in his pocket was growing hot as the watch reacted to the locating spell.

Bdub’s eyes locked onto him, darting down to the pocket at the front of his field jacket. “Ah, you didn’t hide it at all!” He complained. “You’re the worst at following instructions, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told,” Etho chuckled. He produced the pocket watch for Bdubs to see, holding out the warm golden disk in the palm of his hand.

“That was too easy,” Bdubs said dismissively. “Try it again.”

And so it became a game.

Etho didn’t mind because it afforded him the opportunity for authorized snooping through Bdub’s belongings, while Bdubs had fun showing off for him.

The longer he was there in the glowing presence of Bdub’s magic, the more he found it was able to tolerate the prickling static of the strange bond tying them together.

He barely noticed his tolerance growing, until one difficult round where Etho had hidden the watch in a particularly devious fold of a throw blanket had left them both on the couch arguing over the rules of the supposed “game” they were playing, when Bdubs shoved his thigh in protest.

The resulting jolt halted all arguments. They froze on the spot as reality came crashing painfully back into view. They were bound, and neither of them knew why or what to do about it.

Bdubs slammed the connection between them shut. But that didn’t stop Etho from feeling the heat radiating off him, pouring from his mind like a cleansing steam. Like a warm bath, beckoning him—

Etho cut himself off, praying Bdubs wasn’t able to read each and every thought that crossed his mind. He sat in bewildered silence, waiting for Bdubs to say something. Anything.

“I’m glad I found you,” Bdubs said finally. With less than a person’s width between them on the couch, Etho was careful to avoid making eye contact.

“Though,” Bdubs continued, “would have been nice if you coulda just asked me out like a regular person. Instead ‘a going and getting lost in the woods to get my attention.”

He tried to contain his shock. Wait. Was this a date?

His surprise escaped him as a cough, and he looked around, noticing all at once the candles and flowers and just how uncharacteristically clean the apartment was.

Oh.

“What were you doing at the mana well, anyway?” Bdubs asked, blessedly allowing him reprieve from his own embarrassing ignorance.

Unfortunately, he’d changed the subject to the only other line of questioning he really didn’t want to go down. He considered asking more about the nature of this date they were apparently on, but chickened out.

“Etho…?” Bdubs prodded gently.

“I’m going to find her.”

“Her?” Bdubs asked. “Your fae?”

He nodded. Bdubs might as well know. He was going to find out eventually anyway.

“Why…?” 

Etho felt himself growing distant, unfocused. “I can't—” he muttered. “I told you I don’t want to learn magic.”

“Yeah, okay? And?” Bdub pressed.

Etho hesitated. He hadn’t exactly intended to tell Bdubs. Honestly, he’d sort of been hoping he wouldn’t need to tell anyone. But Bdubs was here, he was in his head, and so it was probably only a matter of time before he pieced it together.

“I'm going to undo it, Bdubs.”

“Undo it?” Bdubs repeated dumbly.

Etho couldn’t bring himself to say anything else. His tongue was thick in his mouth, stymied by the dizzying uncertainty of it all.

Bdub’s eyes grew wide with realization. “You— you're going to undo your fae-touch? Etho??”

“Stay out of my head,” Etho warned.

“Etho,” Bdubs chided. “You don't wanna be fae-touched?”

“No, it's annoying.”

“That doesn't make it bad.”

“I didn't say that.”

“You were thinkin’ it.”

“Oh my goodness! This guy!” Etho was on his feet now, pacing as he argued. “You are so nosy.”

“Is that why you were drawing summoning circles at the mana well?” Bdubs pushed through his protestations.

“You—”

“I saw it. I saw it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Etho was well and truly on his back foot now, more uncertain than ever now that he’d admitted the one thing he’d been keeping to himself for so many months.

“Who in the blazes taught you that anyway? Damn sloppy work.”

“No one… uh, me… I learnt it by myself.”

“Etho??” Bdubs reeled. “You learned a summoning ritual yourself?? And were attempting it?? It’s a wonder you didn’t blow yourself up on the spot.”

“And you know how to do better?”

Bdubs scoffed, ignoring his question. “Do you really think you're just gonna call up your fae and get them to let you off the hook scott-free?”

“You're not going to stop me.”

“You’ll lose your magic.”

“Yes,” Etho said simply.

Bdubs was taken aback then, his face reeling with disbelief and hurt. “What's so bad about it, huh? What's so bad about being different?”

“I told you: it's annoying.”

“But all this time wasted tryin’ to undo something? Why can't you just let what's done be done? Let it be. Move on.”

“Because I never chose this!” Etho finally said, and it was only after he spoke the words that he realized what an admission it truly was.

“You…” A look of shock silenced Bdubs as he gawked wordlessly.

“I'm going to bed,” Etho said abruptly. “Goodnight, Bdubs.” And with that he left.

Chapter Text

“Ten P.M. is a little late for a run, don't you think, BdoubleO?” Ren asked. He stood in the doorway of his apartment, oversized sweatpants hanging from his hips, old t-shirt askew.

It was dark outside, long past when Bdubs preferred to be in bed, but after the way his night with Etho had ended, he was far too agitated to sleep. All he knew was that he had to get away from the bond rankling around in the back of his mind.

“Ah, c’mahnn, Ren,” Bdubs gestured impatiently. “How many late-night runs have I let you drag me on? Well, this is your lucky day, now you get to return the favor! How wonderful for you.”

Ren had been in an abysmal state for the past many months. Bdubs had spent plenty of nights over the summer up late with him, going for runs, walks, or just sitting out on one of their balconies. It'd been the least he could do to help him cope with Martyn being gone.

“Yeah, but… The Nether, Bdubs?” Ren asked skeptically.

“It’ll be fantastic. I promise.”

Ren had never been any good at resisting Bdub's pleas. He folded with a shake of his head, agreeing to meet him downstairs at the nether portal in a few minutes.

Bdubs waited for him in the citadel's grand art deco lobby. He paced across the marble floor in front of the portal, waves of purple light undulating within its obsidian frame.

He was anxious to get going. The poorly constructed barrier he'd put up between him and Etho wouldn't hold forever. And since Etho had stormed out in the middle of their conversation, he did not want it coming down anytime soon.

“I’ve never known you to be so excited to go into the Nether,” Ren said, stepping out of the lift. He rubbed sleep from his eyes.

“I guess there’s a first for everything.”

The truth was, he really did hate the Nether—the lack of sky, the perpetual haze, the way magic grew distant and muted away from the overworld—it was the worst.

But there was one very specific benefit he was in need of: bonds couldn’t span across dimensions. It’d just been years since his apprenticeship when he’d last had reason to think about such things.

Normally, he hated the clinging, charred air, but stepping through the portal, he was met with immediate silence. Relief flooded him as his connection to Etho went dark.

He relaxed for the first time in hours, letting the wall he'd been desperately propping up fall to pieces.

He was free, blissfully unencumbered as he set off down the nether tunnel at a fast clip—he’d asked Ren here for a jog, after all. They exited the tunnel network, making their way across the open Nether, netherrack crunching and squeaking under their sneakers.

And Ren, sweet, wonderful Ren, didn't ask him any further questions. He ran along beside Bdubs, humoring his strange request, just as Bdubs had done for him many a night.

They made their way out to an overlook jutting above a lava lake, and Bdubs paused to rest. The view stretched out into the hazy distance. It was finally empty enough in his head to put a complete thought together.

Ren came to a stop next to him, breathing hard in the hot atmosphere. “So you gonna tell me what this is about? What's up with you tonight, ‘Dubs?”

Bdubs was pensive, staring out into the distance. It was the same question he'd been mulling over himself for at least the last ten minutes of their run.

“Did you ever get to choose?” he asked finally.

“Choose? Choose what?” Ren asked, confused.

“This. The sorcerers. The citadel. Magic. All of it,” Bdubs explained. “Did someone ever sit you down and give you a chance to decide if you wanted it or not?”

“No,” Ren frowned. “Of course not.”

“Yeah, me either,” Bdubs said. “I don’t know… It just— It never bothered me. There’s a whole lotta things in life you don't get to choose, ya know?”

He could feel the weight of Ren studying him. “Would you have liked to?”

“No. Well—” Bdubs paused. “I don't know. It’s not like it matters.”

“It was always important to me that Martyn knew he had a choice,” Ren confessed. 

Bdubs tried to contain his shock. It was the first time he'd heard Ren speak directly about his former apprentice in months—since the night they'd been separated and Martyn had been sent off to finish his training without Ren.

“I gave him so many chances to leave. So many openings to choose for himself, and well…” Ren fell silent. They both knew how it’d ended for them: Ren, removed from his seat as High Councilor, and Martyn an ocean away, bound to another master.

“It’s not your fault, Ren.”

“I don't know about—”

“Don’t,” Bdubs interjected. “You did your best.”

Ren nodded to himself, but it was clear, even now, months later, the wound was still raw for him. He changed the subject, “Is Cleo still trying to convince you to take an apprentice?”

Bdubs felt an unsteadiness creeping in. He worried he was treading dangerously close to tipping Ren off to the terrible mistake he'd made. “She’s— she’s, uh, backed off… for now.”

“When the day comes, I know you’ll be good at it,” Ren said.

“What was it like…?” Bdubs asked carefully. “...With you and Martyn?”

“How do you mean?”

“Being, you know, like, bonded to someone?” He regretted the question as soon as it passed his lips.

“Oh… that,” Ren said. “Yes.”

“No, I’m sorry, I didn't mean— You don’t have to talk about it if you don't want.”

“It’s fine,” Ren sighed. “I suppose it’s not really that different whether you’re a master or apprentice. I guess I didn’t appreciate that until I’d seen both sides of it. But the master doesn’t ‘own’ the bond, it goes both ways—an equal partnership.”

“Equal partnership?” Bdubs repeated—it was not a description he would have used for his own apprenticeship.

“I must say, it is a bit… odd having someone so clumsy with magic in your head all the time,” Ren chuckled.

The sound of Ren's laugh was precious, a rare gift these days, and Bdubs savored it.

With a clap on the shoulder, Ren urged them to continue their run.

A looping circle around the nether wastes eventually led them back to their familiar segment of nether tunnel. Bdubs wasn’t looking forward to returning to the same plane as Etho, but he couldn't stay in the Nether forever.

There was so much he wanted to tell Ren: his bond with Etho, going into the mana well, how he'd been using fae magic more and more recently. But Bdubs held off, wishing Ren a good night and letting him return to the pajamas and bed he'd been ousted from.

Back in the silence of his own apartment, Bdubs noticed a familiar sight on his kitchen island. His pocket watch sat there, gleaming gold in the dim light.

His heart sank as he picked it up. Etho had left it behind—and likely not accidentally.

So that was it then? Etho was sending him a clear message: he really was done with magic.

The door was closed. It was final.

Over the course of the following days, Bdubs grew increasingly certain Etho was avoiding him. He didn't see a single hint of the hunter's existence. If it weren't for their bond alerting him to his proximity, Bdubs would have questioned if he was still in the tower at all.

For the most part, he worked to keep the bond closed off. But it wasn’t like the bond Bdubs had had with his own masters. This one was awkward and ungainly; it took a great deal of effort on his part to hold it shut.

Part of him wondered if it even was a master-apprentice bond or it was possible it was something else entirely.

His only hope was putting enough physical distance between them to attenuate the effect of Etho’s thoughts seeping in amongst his own.

The result was Bdubs spending the better part of his days down in the library, researching possible solutions to their predicament. He’d promised Etho he would find a way to undo it, and so that’s what he had to do.

Many floors below the apartments at the top of the tower, he could let his guard down. It was a necessary reprieve from the effort of every day spent holding them apart.

It was the least he owed Etho. Bdubs had been the one to bind their minds, even if he’d done so unintentionally, even if it’d been the only way he’d known to pull him free from the mana well. He was the one who was trespassing on Etho’s personal space.

And so when he felt the hunter’s thoughts spreading over his like frost as he approached, Bdubs jumped to slam their bond closed just as Etho passed like a shadow just outside the library’s large arched doorway.

Bdubs didn’t know what he was doing down here, but he figured Etho didn’t want to be around him, so he relocated his research to a back aisle, giving him space.

He was sat at a long bench table when Etho walked through the library itself. Bdubs refocused on the books in front of him, doing his best to ignore him.

But Etho continued to pace up and down the library, appearing at the end of the stacks, then disappearing.

Eventually Bdubs couldn’t take it any longer. “Goodness sakes! Do you gotta do that right here?”

Etho poked his masked face around the corner of the stacks. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” Bdubs growled. “What do you think you’re doing anyway??” He was annoyed at being interrupted from work he didn’t even really want to be doing in the first place.

“Oh, I didn’t realize I had to stay in my room,” Etho quipped.

“You’re—! No—! I mean, Etho… I’m busy. Please just take your pacing somewhere else.”

“Busy with what?” Etho stepped over to inspect the books scattered around the table in front of Bdubs. “Maybe I can help.”

There was something tentative in their bond that gave him pause, a wavering curiosity, and Bdubs held onto the sharp retort he wanted to spit back.

Etho grabbed a book, mismatched eyes flicked over the title embossed along the spine: Metaphysical Anatomy. He studied the others on the table scattered in front of Bdubs: Mind and Spirit, The Light Within, Your First Apprentice, all books relating to souls and soul bonds.

“I’m researching… this.” Bdubs gestured between them, at the invisible thread tethering their thoughts.

“Oh.” Etho slipped into the bench seat at the long table opposite Bdubs. He didn’t speak for a long time, idly thumbing through the texts. Bdubs did his best to ignore him, hoping he’d go away on his own.

Unfortunately, ignoring him turned out to be more or less impossible. His mind was weary and Etho was a cool balm against his walled off thoughts.

He wanted something, that much was clear, Bdubs just wasn’t sure what. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to know after the way their last conversation had ended the other night. He probably wanted something vague and stupid.

“You—” Etho started, uncertainty clung to him as he attempted to speak, “you don’t want it either… right?” 

A gentle chill drifted across his thoughts, and Bdubs jolted to attention at Etho’s sudden presence in his head. His hold on the wall separating them slipped in surprise, and he quickly scrambled to slam it shut.

Frustration simmered in his chest. Etho was being absolutely impossible. First he wanted nothing to do with magic and whatever was between them, and now— now he was touching their bond in a way that was wholly inappropriate given the context.

Bdubs flipped the book closed in front of him. He spoke directly, doing his best not to yell. “Etho, I offered to train you.”

“Yeah, but that— but you—” Etho stuttered. “You weren’t going to…?”

The night he’d offered to train Etho, Bdubs hadn’t been thinking straight. He didn’t have a long-term plan, didn’t consider what training him would entail. All he’d known in that moment was that he couldn't allow Etho to waste his ability.

It was only in the lonely months after his rejection that Bdubs had found more than enough time to mourn the loss. All those long months spent imagining a future where Etho would have become his apprentice, where Bdubs would have been allowed to help him reach his full potential.

But that future was dead and buried now, and he wasn’t about to resurrect it on account of Etho’s obtuse probing.

Realization bloomed across Etho’s face in the prolonged silence. “You would have.”

“I know you don’t want it,” Bdubs said tersely.

Bdubs wanted to tell him off in the awkward lull that followed, wanted to tell him to go back to his room and leave him to his research. But something was still off about Etho. He was skittish and flighty, with fingers tapping against the wooden table top as his eyes strayed anxiously over the surrounding stacks.

“You can stay if you want,” Bdubs folded, “but you have to help.” He shoved a book across the table towards him.

It was hard to have him so close and keep their bond suppressed, but Bdubs was too curious about what was going on with him, why he’d come here of all places when he’d been so certain Etho wanted nothing to do with him.

Etho’s turbulent emotions were roiling away on the other side of their bond as they paged through the books on the table. Bdubs directed him to a section across the library, asking him to go retrieve a book for him, if only to give him a chance to slink off if he needed it.

But to his surprise, Etho returned in short order, this time taking a seat next to Bdubs on the bench.

“Bdubs…?” he asked with a gentle tug on their bond, tentative like a child tugging at their parent’s skirt.

Bdubs winced. “I’m doing my best to keep it turned off, okay?”

Etho sat there in silent contemplation, staring down at his lap, and part of Bdubs regretted being so harsh with him.

“I never thanked you for saving me,” Etho said finally. 

Bdubs grumbled a reply: Etho didn’t owe him thanks. He’d have done the same for anyone… although, it was hard to imagine just anyone fitting as comfortably into the same spot in the back of his mind.

The gratitude Etho pushed across the bond cooled the agitation in Bdub’s restless thoughts, and he finally gave up on researching. It would just have to wait for another time.

Turning towards Etho, he asked, “At the mana well… you were really trying to find your fae?”

“Yeah,” Etho said, dropping his head in something akin to shame. “I was.”

“And now…?” Bdubs asked.

Slowly, Etho reached up to unhook the mask from his face. And when he looked back up at Bdubs, he saw how the scar bisecting his eyebrow ran down his face, ending in a knot of tangled flesh at his upper lip.

Bdub's heart lurched.

“She changed me, Bdubs. I was just a kid. I didn’t mean to go to the End. I didn’t mean to meet a fairy. And I certainly didn’t mean to make a deal with her. None of it… I didn’t know what it all meant—giving her my true name. But I do now, and I— I don’t want it.”

Bdubs studied his face, tracing all those features which he kept hidden. He’d seen Etho without his mask on a handful of occasions, but never like this, never up close, never so deliberately.

“What?” Etho asked. He started to put his mask back on. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not—” 

“You're very pretty, Etho.”

He froze. Heat crept up his neck, flushing his cheeks an endearing shade of pink. Panic flashed through their bond.

“Hey,” Bdubs said gently, fearing he might be on the verge of bolting. “Hey, c’mere.”

He put an arm around Etho, coaxing him closer. Etho leaned his weight against his side, propped up against Bdub's shorter frame.

For all that Etho was adept in keeping his thoughts concealed, he could not hide how he trembled in Bdub's embrace.

“What's the matter?” Bdubs asked.

Etho met his eyes. Something nebulous swam behind them.

Bdubs felt the surge of emotion the moment before it coalesced.

Etho closed the distance between them as if to kiss him, and all those lost futures stirred to life. Everything Bdubs had wanted, everything he’d dreamed of, might still be within reach.

As he drew near, Etho changed course, resting his forehead on Bdub’s shoulder. His thoughts were spiky; they darted about frantically, searching for stable ground. Bdubs wanted to press him for answers, but he forced himself to slow down, to let Etho speak on his own terms.

“There's a way to find out the fae I made my deal with,” Etho eventually admitted.

Dread shot through Bdubs. So that’s what had been consuming his mind all this time?

“The deal would have left a mark of some kind,” he muttered against his arm.

“Etho…” Bdubs warned in a low voice.

“Did you know this?”

Bdubs scoffed. “The better question is: how do you know this?”

“It means I can find out, Bdubs. I can finally learn who the fae was. Don't you understand?”

Bdubs refused to answer him.

“The mark can be read—”

“Etho, no, don't. You don't know what that means,” Bdubs pleaded with him.

“No, Bdubs. I know,” he said solemnly. “I know. Cleo told—”

“What did Cleo tell you?” Bdubs growled over top of him. He couldn’t believe Cleo would go around him like this, defying his desires after he'd specifically told her not to pry into Etho's harried past.

“A lot more than you did, apparently.”

“Etho—”

“I have to know, Bdubs” Etho said. “This could be my only chance to find the fae who took my true name all those years ago.”

There was a stubborn resolution to his thoughts; he wasn’t going to budge on this. Bdubs clamped his mouth shut.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Etho asked in a small voice.

“Because, Etho…” Bdubs rubbed at his forehead. “It's— it's not… a pleasant thing.”

“You've done it then?”

“Absolutely freaking not!” Bdubs said. “Let someone root around in my soul? You gotta be kidding me!”

Rumor had it, having your soul read wasn't entirely unlike the making and breaking of apprentice bonds—which was to say: painful.

And yet, Etho sat before him, set on his decision to let Cleo into his soul.

“When are you gonna do it?” Bdubs asked past the lump in his throat.

Etho checked the watch on his wrist, wilting slightly. “I'm supposed to be going to meet Cleo now.”

Chapter Text

“Etho, you can't…” Bdubs protested, trailing him out under the ornately carved archway at the end of the library and into the hallway.

“I'm not asking you to come with me,” Etho said simply. He looked at the mask in his hand, and after briefly hesitating, pocketed it.

His mind was made up. He was going to let Cleo see him. He was going to let her see his soul.

Bdubs realized with sudden clarity that was why Etho had come to find him in the library, that was why he’d been acting so weird. All the pacing and frustration and fidgeting: he was scared.

“Etho…”

“What?” He replied sharply, pivoting to face him in the spacious hallway.

Bdubs felt the sting of his words lashing out through their bond, recoiling with it.

“What is it, Bdubs? You want to try talk me out of this?” Etho pressed. “You don't want me to do it? That's easy for you to say. But this is my best chance at finding who the fae is I'm bound to. Her mark is on me. I have to… I might finally have a chance to find her.”

“It's not going to be pleasant,” Bdubs said quietly.

“Cleo already explained it to me.” But his lip twitched as he said it. He wasn’t used to hiding the rogue expressions roaming across his uncovered face.

Bdubs wasn't sure how to feel about the revelation that Etho and Cleo were talking behind his back. He cared deeply about them both, there was no reason to feel anything but happiness at the prospect of them getting along. 

So why did it not feel that way? Why did it feel like betrayal?

Etho had been hiding from him for days, since the other night when he’d stormed out of Bdub’s apartment, and Bdubs wondered at what point he’d made up his mind to go through with this.

“Do you trust her?” Etho asked. His voice was flat now, all emotion stripped from it.

Bdubs swallowed back bitter jealousy. “With my life,” he said. “But, Etho, I—”

“Good,” Etho interrupted. “Then it’s settled.” And he turned, continuing to stride away down the hallway.

Tension between them strung tight enough to pluck a note as Bdubs trailed after him, and he wondered if it was giving Etho the same kind of blaring headache it was giving him.

Etho insisted that he didn’t need to come, that he was fine, really, to go see Cleo on his own, but Bdubs couldn’t bear the idea of letting him face such an ordeal alone.

All the while, Bdub’s thoughts darted about frantically. He wanted to tell him to stop, or to wait and at least reconsider, he didn't have to do this now.

But Etho would not be swayed.

It’d been a long time since Bdubs last had a reason to visit the infirmary in the lower floors of the tower, but he followed Etho there, finding Cleo already present, whisking about the room, tidying the rarely used space.

“Didn’t realize you guys had a whole medbay here,” Etho said to her, shifting awkwardly in the doorway, not yet daring to step beyond the threshold.

“Oh,” Cleo glanced up. “Hi, Etho.”

Bdubs pointed to the placard on the wall, mouthing the word infirmary to him a bit more passive-aggressively than was probably necessary, but it was grating just how bad he was at reading instructions sometimes.

“Wasn’t I sick…?” Etho asked hesitantly. “When you brought me in? I don’t remember being down here.”

“That’s ‘cause you weren’t,” Bdubs grumbled. He’d wanted Etho down here, where he stood the best chance at recovery should something have gone wrong with his healing. But Cleo disagreed with him.

She smiled at them knowingly from across the room, asking sweetly, “Would you have preferred to wake up down here?”

“No, I— I was just asking,” Etho’s eyes flicked nervously between Cleo and Bdubs, immediately sensing he’d stepped in the middle of something. “I— wouldn’t— I'm glad— I mean, I don’t really like doctors, is all.”

Cleo’s eyes met Bdub’s from across the room. She’d been right to keep him up in the guest quarters. Of course she’d been right.

Etho cleared his throat. “What, uh… what should I do?”

“Why don’t you just take a seat over there?” She pointed him to one of the medical tables dotting the tiled room’s perimeter.

His stoic exterior gave nothing away, but Bdubs could feel his flighty nerves jittering in the space between them as Etho planted himself on the edge of the table, back straight, jaw set.

Cleo gave him a moment to settle before joining him. She was atop a wheeled chair, looking less imposing than usual as she pushed over to him.

“You remember what I told you?” Cleo asked.

With one curt dip of his head, Etho nodded.

“Do you have any questions?”

“No.”

“Okay then,” she said gently. “You can lay back when you’re ready.”

Disbelief shook Bdubs to his core. That Etho was just going to let this happen. That he wasn’t going to object or put up a fight or try to make a break for it. Bdubs thought watching this might just rip him apart.

“Wait,” Bdubs blurted out from the entry to the infirmary. “Just— Cleo, can, uh— may I speak with you, please?” He did his best to school the panic seeping into the edges of his voice.

Cleo glanced over her shoulder at him, sighed, then returned her attention to Etho, questioning him with a single look, and Bdubs decided that he actually didn’t like it all that much that they were getting along so well.

A shrug from Etho communicated all he needed to wordlessly, and Cleo dismissed herself to see to Bdub’s objections.

“What is it, Bdubs?” she asked, striding across the room.

“I need— I need to talk to you.” He began to lead them out into the hallway.

“Right now?” She hesitated, not seeming to realize he wanted to speak to her alone.

“It’s important,” he pleaded.

He was lucky Cleo trusted him the way she did, because she followed him without further protest as he shuffled down the hallway and out of earshot.

Bdubs wheeled on her the moment they were far enough away. “Cleo, what are you doing?”

“He didn’t tell—?”

“Of course he told me the plan,” Bdubs shot back. “But you can’t— Not on him. He’s not your guinea pig.”

Cleo was calm in the face of Bdub's ire. “He knows what he signed up for.”

“Yeah, but do you?”

She scoffed. “You really think I’d test out some new and dangerous magic on a stranger?”

“Well— I…” Bdubs stuttered. It was exactly what he thought.

“I’d think you of all people would know me well enough by now, Bdubs, to know I would never do something like that.”

“So you’ve… you know how to read souls?” Bdubs asked, and when she didn’t answer, continued with increased urgency, “Cleo, how? When? Who??” 

He couldn’t imagine a single scenario which would have necessitated her learning such a skill. Surely, Bdubs himself didn’t know the first thing about pulling off such a feat.

“It’s not my story to tell,” she said simply. “Suffice to say, I’ve done this before. He’s going to be okay.”

Bdubs stewed on the new information. Cleo had read souls before. Somehow. But she knew what she was doing, which meant the basis of his objection had fallen flat.

“One day you'll have an apprentice—”

“Cleo…” he complained with a groan.

“No, no, I'm not trying to rush you into it,” she said. “But, Bdubs, you should know: being a leader is rarely about shielding people from ever experiencing any adversity, but rather helping them to face the hardships that do come their way, helping them not to feel so insurmountable.”

He tried to swallow, but his mouth was suddenly dry. An apprentice? Shoot. Cleo still didn't know about their bond. Bdubs couldn't believe he hadn't thought about it till now.

“C’mon,” Cleo said with a pat on the shoulder, and she started back to the infirmary.

Bdubs was frozen where he stood, in denial of his own foolish blindness.

She wasn't going to find out… right?

When he finally found the will to join them, Cleo was back on her stool, sitting at the head end of Etho's table. She was the calm center in a room roiling with emotion.

Etho lay stiff as a board, but Cleo spoke to him quietly. She smoothed a hand over his unnaturally white hair, and Bdubs couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Etho was nodding earnestly, his spine slowly dropping back to rest against the table below him. 

Bdubs couldn’t believe it, but he was actually relaxing.

Of all the magic he knew Cleo to be capable of, she pulled off the most unbelievable feat in that moment: drawing a tight laugh from the anxious hunter.

And Bdubs just knew they were probably making fun of him, but he was so relieved to hear anything other than panic radiating through the bond, he held back any retort that might shatter the moment.

“Take a deep breath,” Cleo said. “Good. Let it go slowly. I’m going to read your soul now, are you ready?”

Etho bobbed his head.

“I need to hear you say yes to this,” Cleo explained.

His mismatched eyes flicked to hers, wide, and he held her gaze for a long moment before finally mustering the nerve to speak: “Yes.”

With one hand still on his head, Cleo rested her other palm over his sternum.

And Bdubs watched as Cleo’s aura flickered and glowed blindingly bright. It expanded, a swarm of pinpricks of light, reaching out to envelop Etho, then Cleo’s face tensed as she gathered the swarm and pierced it directly into Etho's heart.

Bdub’s breath caught in his throat.

Etho’s eyes were screwed shut, a wordless scream on his face. Bdubs could feel his pain echoing in his own head, and he had to force himself to breathe through it. He really should have considered sooner what it would mean to do something like this while bound.

It was a mistake. It was such a gross miscalculation. But all he could do now was grit his teeth and bear it.

He couldn't imagine what it must have felt like for Etho.

The magic Cleo was handling was unimaginably powerful. And given Etho's fae-resistance to magic, Bdubs knew she must have been drawing that much more energy to work the threads.

Bdubs wondered again where she would've learned such a thing.

“You’re doing great,” Cleo said distantly, as though deep in concentration. “Just keep breathing for me.”

Etho’s chest rose and fell in staccato movements. His fists were clenched white at his sides. He was barely holding it together.

And Bdubs was, too. It was hard to inhale all the way, like all the air had been sucked out of the room, and Bdub’s heartbeat rang in his ears.

He was just glad there was no one else here to see him, or they'd surely have noticed their suspiciously unified reactions.

After several long, agonizing moments, Cleo eventually spoke again.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “There’s a mark.”

“Well, we know that,” Bdubs complained. He was shocked at how clumsy the words felt on his lips, but they needed no further proof that Etho was fae-touched. “Who’s is it??”

The movements of the cloud of magic shifting around her were slow, measured, like the rising and falling of tides, or the navigating of a large ship through a treacherous canal. She was doing her best to be gentle. 

But souls were not meant to be so exposed, not meant to be touched by another, and there was no way to do it without some amount of pain.

“I don’t recognize it,” she muttered. “The shape… It’s like… two lines, connected across the top and bottom. Almost like a roman numeral two.”

Bdubs committed the description to memory, repeating the information to himself over and over. 

The mark would be Etho’s best chance to find his fae, and he didn’t appear to be much in a state to be keeping track of such information.

“And…” Cleo hesitated.

Bdubs held his breath, and he watched in slow motion as Cleo’s eyebrows pinched together.

“There’s something else.”

The moment she said it, electricity raced through him, white hot and jolting some deep part of his psyche. Bdubs withdrew as she brushed against their bond, reflexively slamming it shut.

Dread clutched at his throat, clawing up from the darkness, sharp and acidic on his tongue. Panic shuddered out through his limbs.

“What in the…?” Her eyes snapped open, settling directly on Bdubs.

She eased the spell around Etho, dismissing it the moment he was free of its hold. He was still dazed, stirring quietly on the table with his eyes unfocused.

“Bdubs,” Cleo leveled a dissecting glare at him. The might of her authority all but crushed the remaining air from his lungs. “BdoubleO, for the love of— please tell me this isn't what I think it is.”

But it was too late. She’d seen their bond.