Chapter Text
The whisper of a cloak cuts through the uncanny shadow of the icy peaks. The snow clinging to the dark fabric hides it in the pale landscape. The wearer comes to the open mouth of an icy cave and the cloak floats inside. Out of the wind, heat from under the layers of fabric melt and evaporate the snowflakes. The deep crimson cloak sticks out like a poppy pushing through a late frost. It follows the path downward, stepping into an open ice filled cavern. Standing at an icy table, an old man, human with a few drops of frost dryad blood floating in his veins, leans over a table of spells. He is absorbed into the work in front of him.
The cloak wearer looks up at him.
“Master Permafrost.”
The archmage spins around, straightening his spine and mimicking the regal stature he held in Yharim’s court for decades. His eyes widen, then soften.
“Calamitas, what are you doing here?!”
Calamitas, the Brimstone Witch, destroyer of the pious, and scorcher of Ilmeris looks up at her mentor. She tips her head back, letting the hood slip off her horned head. “I am here for you.”
A slow exhale leaves his lips. He closes his eyes and lets his stature soften. Authority ceases to gentility. “I see… I can only assume the King sent you to retrieve me.”
“He did,” she answers, “But I do not intend to obey.”
Surprise spreads its wings across his face. His head turns to the side and a hint of betrayal lines his tone, “Disobeying the King has consequences Calamitas. You cannot simply ignore Yharim’s decrees.”
Ironic, seeing as he too runs from Yharim.
“Yharim has broken his promise to me,” she says, taking a step towards him. “He vowed to help me preserve the remains of my family. And yet, he sends me after you. I will not follow an oathbreaker.”
“Yharim is many things, good and terrible. An oathbreaker is not one of them!” Permafrost corrects, adopting the same stern yet still gentle tone he had with her in the early days of her lessons. The scolding is as if she was still a twelve year old girl, still trotting at his heels.
But a decade has passed, and she does not buckle to the tone as she once would have.
“Then tell me what he is, sending me here to doom you.”
“He likely does not realize you consider me family–”
“–then he is blind.”
Permafrost sighs, his jaw clenching. Fractals of ice materialize around his mouth, air droplets crystalizing instantly. He shakes his head and turns back to the icy table. Now that he cannot see her, she lets her emotional wince from his scolding ripple onto her face.
“Blind, I will concede.” Permafrost says, the regality quickly returning to his voice. “But that is no excuse for turning against him.”
“Then why did you defect, Master Permafrost?”
Calamitas tries to keep the same verbal firmness as him, but the slight waver in her voice betrays her. She hates the thought of disappointment holding its sway in her teacher’s mind. The pressure to apologize and leave, returning to Yharim at his request, is immense.
Don’t, you want to be here.
Don’t let him shoo you away!
Calamitas mentally dismisses the two of them, instead focusing harder on Permafrost.
“I could see the wedge forming between us, and for your safety I chose to leave.”
“And throw me away with it?!”
“Absolutely not!” Permafrost retorts, spinning back around. There’s a fire in his ice blue eyes. One born of a wasp-like sting. “Your work deserves to be exalted, you are a magical prodigy. You do not have opportunities at my side. Yharim can provide you with chances to succeed in ways that I never could or can.”
At that moment, Calamitas did not care that her words could bite. She’s done countless bites with both words and flame. She deserves an answer at least. “I don’t want any damnable ‘opportunity’ given to me by that bastard. His cause brings nothing but carnage.”
“You forget, Calamitas, this is my cause as well.”
Calamitas stares into the pale eyes of her teacher. The tone in his voice, brotherhood , sits firm against her chest. If he was anyone else, she would laugh, call him an idiot for believing that Yharim was willing to place anyone above or even equal to his cause for the gods’ deaths. But, Permafrost’s voice carries that gentle authority that she would call fatherly if the term did not scare her. It makes her think.
Permafrost has known Yharim since the beginning of the conquest. For as long as she’s known them both, they were nigh inseparable. The stories of their work trickled to her through the halls of the Quilted Palace every moment she was under Permafrost’s stewardship. Mind and motive, blade and scabbard, sun and sky, river and spring. The allegories were endless, but all landed resoundingly. Yharim was the king, the hand which all followed, the hope which all looked to, and the action which all trembled at. Permafrost was the advisor, the hand which guided the sword, the knowledge which all seeked, and the plans on which all action rested. They were inseparable, incomplete without the other. Both men have seen horror and triumph, bore the images of terror and pain together that would drive most mad.
“Brotherhood” would sell their bond short.
What if it was us?
What if Catastrophe or Cataclysm sat on the Auric throne? It doesn’t even need to be that throne in particular. What if Cataclysm was able to brawl and break his way to the Archonship, sitting on Azafure’s ruling council? What if Catastrophe with his swordsmanship cut and carved through the Merchants and petty nobles who often cheated him out of pay and seized their assets, ruling a district of Azafure with the power that wealth brings? What if her brothers were corrupted by the same whispers of power that now claim Yharim? Would she still be hellbent on leaving their side if Yharim was one of them?
She closes her eyes, not liking her answer.
Calamitas ignores the ghostly whisper of Catastrophe’s soul pressing into the corners of her mind. The phantom feelings of Cataclysm’s hand on her shoulder nearly flinch her. She mentally curses them both. Damn them for trying to give her sympathy for the Godseeker.
“I’m sorry, Master Permafrost. Yharim has sent me to retrieve you. He was in a rage when he gave me the order,” Calamitas says, willing her voice steady. “But, I will not allow Yharim to bring you harm, even in a fit of rage.”
Permafrost’s eyes fall. “And I will not allow you to throw away your life in my service. You are twenty-two years old, Calamitas. You have a life that you deserve to live.”
“In my ten years of service to Yharim I have scorched more than him. Ilmeris is ash, Azafure is ruins, countless villages raised. I have felled lesser gods and I am barely an adult!” she retorts, straightening her spine and looking him in the eye, as an equal, not a student. “The world sees me as a weapon to be wielded, not a person to be loved thanks to him. I have failed those I’ve loved once, I will not , do it again!”
Permafrost’s gaze hardens and it takes alot for Calamitas not to buckle. It is not the harshness that Yharim possesses, but the authority remains. I will not call it fatherly. Stop trying to make me. But, it is. No it isn’t.
“You have not failed me, Calamitas,” Permafrost says, “I wish that you return to Yharim, my absence will make Yharim need another powerful mage to guide him. You have my wisdom, on top of world-weariness that I should have gained decades ago. He will pick you and you will be safe from the violence–”
At that, Calamitas cannot help but burst out into tired laughter. “Your love blinds you, Permafrost. He leaves the seat open and tells me to drag you back. The King has no desire to fill it, he’d sooner be rid of it than have someone else other than you be in its seat.”
Permafrost goes silent.
The two of them stand in the icy cavern. The faint sound of dripping icicles sing around them. The blocks of ice under her feet begin to melt as the passive effects of her brimstone magic filter off her and sink. With the silence, her guilt has time to ferment and bubble back to the surface.
“I’m sorry, Master Permafrost… I misspoke.”
“–No, you have no need to apologize, Calamitas. You are right.” Permafrost says as thoughts begin to swirl behind his eyes. “I have come to learn blindness clings to me, it is a shame I only see it now after over a century of life.”
Calamitas closes her eyes, pressing her lips together into a fine line. She lets a heartbeat of silence pass between them. She inhales and lets purpose fill her once again. “I am here to protect you,” the inevitable tears begin to pinprick at the corners of her eyes. “I am going to buy you time that time would not normally allow.”
“Calamitas–”
“I may have never been able to figure out how to reweave life into the dead. I can preserve the living, put a pause on the inevitable. We can wait until a blade or time claims Yharim’s life. When he is gone, I will return and dispel the magic and we can continue your cause, without the Godseeker’s wrath staining it.”
Permafrost looks at his student and a smothered pride blooms across his face, “I assume that I have no say in this?”
Calamitas nods, “Forgive me, Master Permafrost.”
He sighs, a look of defeat and shame crossing his face. She knows that he sees her conviction. It tears into her. She doesn’t want to do this. But, Yharim was not that brother he once knew. She even doubted if the love Permafrost bleeds out for him is mutual.
Maybe, if Yharim changes–
No.
Permafrost blinks. He smothers the shame and meets her gaze. An emotion swirls and swooshes behind his eyes, one Calamitas cannot identity. It is warm, but a sorrow that reflects like a mirror into her nestles behind it.
“I can see that I cannot stop you,” Permafrost says. Nostalgia, the hidden emotion, trespasses in his voice, “So I will not.”
“Thank you.”
The witch wraps her arms around the archmage, burying her face in his robes. For the first time in weeks, Calamitas sobs. Permafrost pulls her closer into the embrace, resting his chin between her horns. The presence of her brothers wrap themselves around her back, encouraging her.
She pulls her magic, everything but brimstone, to her fingers and begins to weave. The tears flowing down her face pull off her and crystalize. Magic wraps and embraces her teacher's limbs. Icy magic similar to his own covers him in a tender blanket of living and static embers of mana. Like a fungus, the crystalus of frost grows from the palms of her hands. Time freezes. Once the spellwork claims his torso, Calamitas lets go of him. It begins to grow outward into a polygonal shape. Her tears get caught up into the spellwork, freezing with him.
In the moments before it covers his face, Permafrost looks out at her fondly, “Take care of yourself, Cali.”
“I will, I swear to you, I will!”
The icy latic covers Permafrost’s face and his body sits in stasis, a small smile on his face. A dodecahedron of timeless ice cocoons him in a perfect, life sustaining stasis. His body, mind, and soul will not change. When Calamitas releases him, it will be as if no moment passed. The weight of it crushes her. She sinks to the floor and puts her head in her hands. Sobs echo off the frozen walls.
She loses track of how much time passes.
Then, minutes or days later, the Witch of Calamity rises to her feet. She brushes herself off, wiping tears from her eyes. She faces the frozen face of her teacher, the melancholic smile cutting into her chest. She bows, a student giving homage to her instructor. The Brimstone Witch turns around and walks out of the cavern. As she exits, she waves her hand and a wall of pale ice covers the opening to the cavern.
Permafrost will outlive you, Yharim. That much I swear.