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![A screenshot from archive of our own:
[peripheral]
It was no more disorienting than normal, Essek told himself. Yes, they had barely had a chance to say hello to each other again, or even so much as a glad you all survived, before Caleb had taken them to Nicodranus. Yes, there was a rather abrupt labour and birth that had followed. As adventures involving the Mighty Nein went, however, it was almost standard.
They were fine. He could relax now. He could stop thinking about how grey Caleb looked—was he not smiling as he held his new namesake? Surely there was no longer cause to obsess, quietly, from the back of the exuberent group, over the amount of blood that sheeted the back of his coat. That had sheeted his front, also. The tear in the fabric that had to lie just over his heart.
They were fine. They were all of them fine, laughing and teasing Veth over her new son's chosen name, Bren Brenatto.
"Fuck! I didn't think of that!" She shrieked in irritation, exhaustion, joy.
Exhaustion, yes. That was what this feeling was. He was exhausted. And if his hands would not stop shaking, it was the natural by-product of holding in place a very powerful dunamantic spell for several hours, while also fighting against the mechanism of the Heirloom Sphere, desperate as it was to snap shut and devour the whole of them.
(There was so, so very much blood on Caleb. Was the stain extended into the shape of a hand, there? Had those fingers curled inward, punching into flesh and rending it apart?](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:li5hozltw5emt5c3neeg7luw/bafkreigcn6gijemnm65ii43tjplpzt5q7qirjrwzxe2bzrohwhputt3c2i)
