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The crick had just left the lab once again, frustrated and desperate (they had all been like that once, he is soft, but he will learn, master Ikithon will teach him too), when the note appeared on the desk.
One word, written in blood, on a scrap piece of paper.
BREN
Eadwulf looked, like they always did, to master Ikithon. To see his response. His response, his mood, might very well determine how the rest of their night goes.
Master Ikithon’s face seemed to shift, between anger and disappointment and the kind of perverse joy he only showed when he was thinking up another sadistic way to torture someone. Eadwulf instinctively recoiled from that expression, if only in his heart of hearts. He could not afford to show anything, knew better than showing weakness, but he was also fairly certain their master would know either way.
“Ah, it seems Owelia did not go out empty handed.” The smile he wore, the tone of his voice, felt like something dripping down the back of Eadwulf’s neck as he contemplated the true meaning of what happened.
Owelia, out on a mission, tracking a target. All they knew of the mission, tangentially, was that she was using her quarry to try and root out a traitor in their midst.
A note, hastily written in blood, sent back to their master by way of fire.
Bren, who was always a firebug.
Bren, who was in the wind, diminished but alive.
Just as capable of ruthlessness as ever, if the melted off face of the guard he killed to escape was any indication.
Faintly, he felt a pang of sorrow for Owelia. Another lost comrade, another unmarked grave.
Mostly, his heart sank. If Bren had resurfaced, master Ikithon would want to find him. And if Eadwulf knew their master… Astrid and him would be sent to look. Two birds with one stone. Retrieve Bren, and punish them for letting him slip.
After they’d been dismissed, Eadwulf and Astrid went silently to their quarters, to the little cottage on master Ikithon’s estate where the two of them lived, having earned the privilege of their own lodgings. They were the oldest surviving ones. The prototypes. The ones who remembered when master Ikithon hadn’t perfected his methods, when he experimented with three dimensional arrays and different shard thicknesses.
They will be the last ones standing. The last survivors. Astrid had big ambitions, and Eadwulf…
Eadwulf wouldn’t abandon her. They were already down one, down their stable base, their centre. Even all these years later, the absence still felt like a gaping wound.
“... I think she deserves a toast. I don’t think there’s much left of her to bury, but… a toast we can do.” He said quietly, breaking the silence between them as he got up to grab something strong and bitter that tasted like regrets, pouring a cup for each of them. Owelia wouldn’t receive a grave, or a tombstone, or any acknowledgement beyond her name being struck off some list master Ikithon might’ve kept. Another sacrifice, for the good of the Empire.
Eadwulf tried to do something for their dead. It wasn’t right, to leave no mark on the world.
So. A toast. Eadwulf raised his cup, thinking back to their school days. To the small, nimble girl who bit at their ankles, just one step behind. To the young woman who was brought into the fold when Bren shattered, taken in alone where most of them were paired up.
He couldn’t toast to a painless death. He knew the pain of being burnt.
He couldn’t toast to rest. Of all of them, Owelia was the least restful person he knew.
“To Owelia. May there be someone on the other side to welcome you kindly.” He settled on that, on the one thing she could hope for. A kind face on the other side. If not her family, at least the Matron. He drank it all in one gulp.
“She put up a fight, I know that much.” Astrid downed her own cup. “Never liked her much, but I know she wouldn’t go down easily.” They both sat in silence, Eadwulf against the desk and Astrid in an armchair.
They let the silence linger between them, fire crackling in the fireplace, each in their own thoughts. He knew Astrid, knew her as deeply as he knew himself, and he knew they were most likely ruminating on the same thoughts. Bren, in their arms, a flame keeping them warm at night, theirs as much as they were his. Bren, hands laced in theirs, falling to his knees and bursting in flames, a wildfire burning them up, consuming everything in sight.
Bren, once again in their arms, limp and non-responsive, his breaths shallow and eyes unseeing. He remained like that for over a decade, until one day they received a missive: Bren was gone. Disappeared into the night with a cloaking amulet, leaving only a dead guard behind.
“...he’s really out there, isn’t he.” Astrid said quietly, and Eadwulf nodded. Their Bren, even after all those years. They’d seen him fade away in the sanatorium, unable to even speak, a feeble shell of his old self, growing from a boy to a man in the confines of a cell, in the confines of his mind.
Something of him must’ve been left, at least. He had his magic. His fire. His ruthlessness. They could hope, at least.
“He will send us to find him.” Eadwulf said quietly. They both knew it to be true. “... what do we do?” Eadwulf was not often plagued by this kind of doubt. He was obedient, following the rules because… what else was there for him? He’s gone too far. But when doubts did creep in, he turned to Astrid.
“We find him. We bring him home.” She was resolute. Had to be, because what other choice did she have?
“For some reason I doubt he’d come quietly.” Eadwulf sighed, closing his eyes.
“It doesn’t matter. He will come.” Her grim conviction left no room for doubt. Bren will come home. Whether or not he will come home willingly, or alive, was not the question. All Eadwulf could do was pour them both another glass of regret and bad choices.
Late at night, praying quietly in the garden, Eadwulf Grieve had cast a spell.
“It was good to get a sign of life, Bren. We missed you.” He Sent, almost letting the spell fizzle out, before catching it at the last moment. “I hope you didn’t forget us, because we never forgot you, love.” He used up the rest of his words, listening for a reply that never came.
He could almost imagine, maybe, the sound of Bren’s breath catch.
Far south, on the road north from Trostenwald, the man now known as Caleb Widogast laid very still, hands covering his mouth, his heart torn between terror and longing as he listened to a voice he hadn’t heard since he was sixteen.