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Part 5 of Caleb's Copendium of Kisses
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2019-09-05
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ALTER SELF

Summary:

Essek Thelyss has taken an interest in the visiting Empire wizard and is doing his best to court him, but Caleb doesn't even seem to realize he's being courted.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Trying to court a human, Essek decides, is an exercise in frustration. Not because such romances are forbidden, cursed, or star-crossed -- even though one conducted between the hand of the Bright Queen and a child of their mortal enemy the Dwendalian Empire should be by any means   star-crossed. 

But Caleb Widogast is not just any Empire human. He is a former tool struck down, remade, who crossed an overwhelming divide to return hope back into the hands of the Dynasty. He is brilliant, mysterious, clever, quick, and strange. He is, Essek has decided firmly, worth the effort.

He is also completely oblivious.

When Essek decided to pursue this ill-advised courtship he had not anticipated that the first and biggest barrier would be in getting Widogast to acknowledge that he is even being courted.   But so far, all of his subtle signs and signals have gone, not rejected, but completely ignored. He thought he was making real progress with Caleb when the human accepted his invitation to attend research and study lessons in his private study. He'd spent an hour in preparation beforehand, setting the appropriate cues: the lights tinted a subtle rose, the bedroom door cracked pointedly open. He'd even gone so far as to set a pomegranate blatantly   out and visible at the center of the table, and Caleb hadn't even commented on it!

Essek spent several weeks trying to determine if this utter lack of reciprocation was a passive-aggressive form of refusal on Caleb's part, and eventually concluded that Caleb is simply incognizant. Which makes sense, of a sort; he is an outsider to the Dynasty and does not know their ways. But it has been a discouraging time for Essek all the same.

Despite all the setbacks, Essek is determined to stay the course. Widogast is an intelligent man, a well-suited match for himself. He is sure that he can get through to him if he keeps trying.

He's been trying to think of flirting gestures that are a little more universal, a little less rooted in Kryn culture. Tonight they are once again ensconced in Essek's study; he bid his house servant to bring them a light meal and then withdraw discreetly for the night. Since then he has been making steadily more overt gestures; his cuffs undone and rolled back to expose his wrists, his starry cloak draped artfully over the back of the chair. Nothing yet, sadly. 

"I've been meaning to ask you, Shadowhand Essek," Caleb says.

"Please, simply Essek to you," he says smoothly, and if Caleb were anyone else in the Dynasty   he would recognize the intimate significance of that invitation, but of course he does not.

"Essek," he says. One knee jitters nervously under the table, but his hands stay steady and poised above the page. "I have been meaning to ask -- if you would be willing to say -- are there ways, in dunamancy, are there spells that will allow one to permanently change a person's body?"

Essek stills, momentarily distracted from his fruitless seduction attempts and arrested by the change in topic. "Why do you ask?" he says at last, committing nothing.

Caleb shrugs, the motion lifting a few strands of that fascinating copper-red hair off his collar before they fall back into place. "I am just curious, that is all," he says, unconvincingly. "It seems like -- it should be possible. If this school of magic makes it possible to come back as a completely different person. Should it not be possible to be a completely different person while still alive? Without having to, to pass through death first?"

Essek sits back a little, fingertips drumming gently against the table. What Caleb is asking, all unknowing, verges on some of the deeper parts of Kryn spirituality. Or -- is   it unknowing? Essek does not believe that the question is as casual as Caleb claims, 

There can be no harm in his asking, Essek decides, whatever his motivation. Their faith, while solemn and cherished, are hardly any weakness.  "Mm, that is really not the same thing," he answers at last. "Only the soul is pulled through time and space to its next destined shell. The former body simply dies -- it does not change. Dunamancy deals in fate, in destiny, and in the delicate manipulation of the soul. What you speak of is more a matter of transmutation, or perhaps illusion. Dunamancy's effects are anything but illusory."

Caleb tilts his head, a curious light lingering in his eyes. He sets the book Essek lent him on the table, pages spread to a specific page. "But what of this other spell, the one that calls an echo of the self to aid you in battle?" he asks. "I know of others who can do something like it, an illusion that is more than illusion, that acts at your command and channels magic through insubstantial touch."

Essek shakes his head. "That is no illusion; time space merely distort to allow your own self to exist in the same moment twice. If you were to touch it, it would be as solid and real as your body is now."

"So there is no way to use dunamancy to effect a permanent change in... someone's appearance?" Caleb says. The corners of his mouth pull down slightly; a subtle tic, but one that Essek has been trained to look for. 

"Not as such. Why do you ask?" Essek turns the tide back against the other wizard. "Do you seek to effect a change your own appearance?"

"Oh, ah, no." Caleb shakes his head and his startlement at the question seems genuine, as far as Essek can tell. "It's not for, no."

If not for himself, then for who? One of his companions? The half-orc, perhaps, who is already approaching middle-age for his kind? Essek knows that many of the younger races are tempted by the prospect of returning to their youth. "Just as well," he says, and then dares to play out a line. "It's hard to imagine any change to your appearance you could make that would improve it."

He'd thought himself quite plain, but Caleb flinches minutely as the words land. Unwelcome, then? But then Caleb speaks and Essek realizes that he has, once again, been misunderstood. "Ja, well, I cannot blame you for thinking that! But believe it or not, there was a time when I would have been considered very handsome." He gives a self-deprecating little laugh. "Many years ago. Mm, perhaps not so many, compared to the lifespan of -- of your people, of elves. But yes, I was very handsome, once."

"Oh?" Essek says, infusing that one word with all the heavy implication he can.

Caleb quirks a tilted little smile, still more deprecating than sincere. "Perhaps you would believe me if I showed you," he says. 

He brings his hands up before his face, fingers laced together just at the tips, and a low murmured incantation falls from his lips as he sweeps each hand back over his cheeks and temples and up over his hair. Magic follows the muttered words, magic follows those clever fingertips, and with a ripple and blur the man sitting across the table from Essek is changed.

Not out of reckoning. Essek can still clearly see the man that Caleb Widogast will become in him. But his build has changed; he has become fitter, more muscled, his shoulders broad and taut under his coat. His face has smoothed of its lines, more clear and more pale, with a fascinating spray of freckles over his nose and cheeks. His hair is shorter, clipped into a severe cut that sticks up just at the edge of his hairline when not weighed down by its own weight.

His eyes -- his eyes are the same, though. The same clear blue, the same clever mind behind them, carefully watching for Essek's reaction. Essek obliges, setting his hands on the table as he leans in close, taking it all in.

Essek takes his time to study this new, boy-Caleb before him. In truth the changes, while interesting, don't make Caleb any more or less desirable to him. Caleb is already so far outside of the traditional beauty standards of the Kryn that being younger, smoother and paler doesn't particularly move him one way or the other. It is fascinating, though, to get this glimpse further into Caleb's timeline, to chart the change from then   until now.

"Handsome enough," Essek pronounces at last. He doesn't bother to move back out of Caleb's personal space. "But I must say that I prefer your current self."

Caleb flinches. "I -- why?" he demands, and a hint of hurt creeps into his expression. "Is this some kind of joke?"

"Not at all," Essek says. He hesitates.

Judging by the tension in the air, Essek has come to a crossroads; Caleb seems prepared to withdraw from him entirely in the face of this seeming-mockery. He must find a way to explain what he means, to make his position clear, and he is quiet for a few moments as he marshalls his words.

"I feel that, like so many outsiders, you do not understand the true purpose of consecution," he says at last. "Youth and its beauty, age and its frailty, are ephemeral concepts when your consciousness spans generations. 

"We live, we die, we live again, but we are not unchanged; indeed each subsequent rebirth changes us further, but those changes are not ours to choose.   The whole point is that we are imperfect at the start, so how can we in our flaws understand what we should be? It is the will of the Luxon that guides us towards our true self, our exemplary  self, not our own vanity. We change, and we do not pine for our past lives or our younger bodies any more than a moth would desire to crawl back into a caterpillar's skin."

Essek pauses for a moment as he thinks back to his own transformation, to the moment when he awoke in his current body and realized, for the first time in his life, the giddy joy of being in a body that was right   for him, right in the way the one he'd been born to never was. "Who I am now is closer to who I am meant to be than I ever was in the past. And the same with you. I prefer who you are now better than anyone that you ever were, and I am even more beguiled by the idea of who you may yet become."

When he finished he feels momentarily embarrassed, having revealed more of himself than he intended. Caleb, however, is staring at him with wide blue eyes, all of his considerable attention riveted on Essek. The air around him shimmers as the illusion shifts away and Essek is once again face to face with the Caleb Widogast that he knows. 

The Caleb Widogast who, he now realizes, is blushing.

"Essek Thelyss," Caleb says, his voice sounding almost choked. "Is this how the Kryn flirt?"

He can't help it; an ungraceful snort of laughter escapes him. After all the heavy glances, the sly innuendo, the subtle signals and this   is what gets through to Caleb, a monologue on personal theology? "No, Caleb Widogast," he says, laughter infecting his voice. " This   is how the Kryn flirt."

He twists the golden loop around his finger as he raises his arm, making a come-hither   gesture with his fingers and Caleb yelps with surprise, then laughs as he levitates out of his chair and floats across the space between them. He can counter the spell if he wishes, can push away if he wishes -- but he doesn't. Doesn't resist as the spell lands him in Essek's arms, the two of them floating eye-to-eye a few inches above the floor of Essek's study.

His eyes are so very, very blue; Essek has lived for over a hundred years and never seen anything like them. His hair glints in the reddish light like a bed of twisting coals and finally, Essek can give into the temptation to thread his fingers through those fiery waves. His stubble brushes against the heels of Essek's hands, a fascinating variation of texture against smooth skin.

"Research, eh?" Caleb mutters, and his eyes flutter closed as his lips find Essek's in a kiss.

 

 

 

~end.

Notes:

The title is a bit of a misnomer; I realized when I went looking that Caleb doesn't actually have Alter Self. I just assumed that he did because he uses magic to disguise/change himself so often, but I suppose Alter Self is redundant if you have both Disguise Self and Polymorph. Still, I'm sticking with it as a title because it carries so many double meanings for these two.

Alter Self
Range: Self
Components: V, S
You transform your appearance. You decide what you look like, including your height, weight, facial features, sound of your voice, hair length, coloration, and distinguishing characteristics, if any.

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