Cal Thi Lê | 24 | Non-binary | Investigator
M: n/a
The room was encased in comforting darkness that Cal relished in through their half-opened eyes. The bed, though unfamiliar, was warm and hugged them almost as close as the shadows of the room. The far corners of the room were shrouded in disturbing darkness, but the unknown was always more pleasant than dust filled corners, cobwebs, and mouse holes. When the sun broke into their eyes, a small groan escaped their lips as they pressed closer to the stranger in their arms. Times like this made Cal wish that had minored in incantations instead of alchemy so they could just whisper ‘push’ and force the curtains to shield his eyes. Wriggling from their arms, the red-headed woman— Sadie, that’s right, Sadie— shifted away from Cal as the sun shone through the pale curtains and onto her white skin. Their bleary eyes wandered around Sadie’s room, taking in the tiny window, the empty fireplace, and small carpet on the ground of the nearly bare apartment. Sadie mentioned she was an artist the previous night, but she seemed to not take pride in or reveal any of her work if so. While Cal’s own home had more decorations and furniture, she managed to find an apartment bigger than their own. A small kitchen, a tiny table and two chairs, and a somewhat comfortable bed filled the space, but it still felt empty, allowing for the cracks and peeling walls to be all the more visible.
After a while with great hesitancy, Cal opened their eyes further to the world.
Sleepily, they sat up, taking in their surroundings once more as they ran a hand through their hair to push strands of the matted mess back out of their face. The bed telegraphed their movements with loud creaking as Cal swung their legs off the side of the bed and looked down at their clothes on the rug, wanting to grab them but too tired to do so at first. Without Sadie in their arms, a chill grazed over them as they glanced back over their shoulders both at the sleeping woman and at the frosted window that revealed the sun just peeking through the tall buildings of Blackthorn, hidden only briefly by the pillars of smoke from the factories and homes. With great effort on their behalf, Cal turned back to the clothes at their feet. Pulling on their bra and boxers and circular glasses, Cal started to slip on their pants when the bed began to creak behind them.
“Oh, sorry, did I wake—?” Cal was cut off as Sadie pressed a kiss to the base of their neck from behind, causing them to inhale a sharp breath. In the silence after that moment, Cal’s face and ears began to burn. Sadie burst into giggles, only making their redness more apparent. Cal’s only response was to huff and mutter the excuse: “I am not a morning person…”
“Aww is someone a little sleepy then?~” Sadie teased, poking at their cheek with one hand as the other snaked around Cal’s waist. “Sorry, I guess it is just so funny to me to see someone who was so in charge last night—” she practically purred the word in their ear, making them even more red— “to suddenly make a sound like that.”
“Again, not a morning person and you caught me off guard…” Cal grumbled, trying not to sink into her affection.
“Well, if you are not a morning person, why get up so early?”
“The sun was in my eyes. I also should get goin’ so I can get to class…”
“Wait, you’re a—?” Sadie pulled away from Cal instantly with wide eyes.
“Wha— No, no, I’m a professor, not a student,” Cal chuckled, causing the woman to sigh in relief as she wrapped her arms back around them and rest her head on their shoulders. “Sorryyy…” It was clear she had not remembered their conversations as Cal distinctly remembered discussing each others occupations. Did she even remember their name? It was clear nothing that they had would be real— why would it be?— but the way she pressed close made them strangely feel wanted and they seemed to slow the process of getting dressed just for her.
“So do you really have to get going then?” Sadie asked with a tiny, disappointed huff.
“Yeah, I have early classes so I don’t think I can stay for much longer,” Cal replied as they began to do their belt. Sadie suddenly grabbed their wrist, stopping Cal from continuing. As Cal looked back at her, Sadie placed her hand on the back of their head, combing it through their hair.
“Stay.” Sadie said the word less as a plea and more as an intoxicating order as she pressed against Cal. “You can stay for some breakfast, can’t you, professor?” Cal was already melting at her touch and their hair being played with, but to add her voice into that all? Cal nodded in quick submission. Deities above, they were weak to affection. “Good answer~”
Sadie pulled Cal into a kiss. Cal could not help but gently cup her face even if the action felt far too intimate and romantic to carry out. Sadie’s hand got tight on their hair as she released their wrist and smoothed her hands just under the hem. After biting their lip and causing them to groan quietly, Sadie smirked against their lips as she pulled away with slight breathlessness.
“Do you like eggs and pancakes?”
“Yeah… Yeah, sure,” Cal murmured before diving back for more.
As Cal shifted to face her, they could not help but place one hand on her waist and the other in her bright red hair. It was clear she was no demi-deity and that this bright color came from dying it, but even with it not being the right hue, it was close enough.
~~~~~
“Well, seems like you had fun with her~”
“Shut up,” Cal grumbled, fixing their glasses as a scarlet blush came to their face as they glared at their friend. Ægir threw his head back and laughed openly in front of the crowd like a goddamn madman, making Cal’s embarrassment only worse. “I hate you…”
“Awww, come on! Don’t be like that, Callie.”
It was a Wednesday morning so Blackthorn was busier than usual. Picking at their tight turtleneck, Cal made sure their bruised neck was covered while pushing through the crowd, holding his breath as to not breathe in the smell of frozen feces and factory chemicals. Cal received some glares as cold as the frost on the ground as they occasionally muttered a soft apology for stepping on someone’s toes or nearly collapsing into the person ahead of them because the person behind him was shoved forward. On days like these, it was most important to keep your head down and your hands weighted down in your pockets. Not Ægir though. Ægir would talk louder than the megaphone speakers on their wooden boxes.
“They don’t respect us!” The woman shouted into the cylindrical device with her tattered clothes and fierce eyes, a gatsby hat on her head that suppressed her dark locs.
There was a shout of agreement from the crowd.
“Do you think the two of you will meet up again?”
“Probably not… She was cute though.”
“But we deserve to be here just as much as they do!” The woman had coffee skin that anyone could see was scarred and rough as she supported herself on a wooden leg.
The crowd was erupting.
“Whaaaat? Really? You two had great chemistry, I thought!”
“Yeah, but she was just looking for a one night kinda thing.”
“Just because we could not pay our way for a fancy academy to get magic does not mean we should be treated like this! Like fucking animals!” The woman was getting very exaggerated with her hand movements now, briefly revealing a strip of bright red cloth tied to her wrist that had previously been hidden under her coat jacket and fingerless gloves.
There was an uproar.
“Maybe she would be open to things like— I don’t know— friends with benefits?”
“Absolutely not doing that. Why are we even talking about my love life when you have not gotten laid, in what, centuries?”
“Ha fucking ha. You’re really funny, Cal,” Ægir mused with heavy sarcasm.
“Well, I try to be,” Cal replied with a shrug and smug smirk before breathing hot air on their frigid hands.
“We work day in and day out for those magic fucks for ‘the betterment of Braisia.’ Well, I call bullshit!”
“Yeah!”
“This is a crime against the people!”
“Yeah!!”
“This is a vicious system that will always keep those without magic on the bottom!”
“Yeah!!!”
“We need to band together so we can put a stop to this—”
Bang!
A sole explosion of gunpowder rang out and everyone froze for a moment of silence.
There was no sound for seconds until two more shots rang out.
Within seconds, the woman had disappeared into the crowd.
The crowd began to scream.
People shoved one another to get away in a moment of pure panic, people covering their wrists for their life while everyone ran in terror from the sound. Was it the knights or factory owners? Was it the royal guard themselves? Or worse, was it the Fidelish coming to take over Braisia? With all the mania of the past month, no one except Cal knew for certain.
During the chaos, Cal was the only one to see it. In an alley stood two knights dressed all in black with pale masks. These white raven masks had cylinders on the side with air sigils in them to help them breathe and were now painted in blood as three crumpled bodies lay at their feet. Looking at the faces of the victims, it was clear from their black lips that they had been infected with the Kiss of Death. The plague had gotten so bad that these plague doctors were resorting to killing them in the day now instead of just at night.
A shiver ran down Cal’s spine.
Everything was going to shit.
“We should—”
“Get out of here?”
“Agreed.”
~~~~~
“N-Now, again, I am sorry… for being so late to class today…, but while I get my notes together…, please open your notes.”
Cal’s forehead was slick with sweat as they struggled to catch their breath after running the rest of the way to the college much less giving instructions to their students. Ægir sat on the table beside the papers with a worried expression as Cal quickly struggled through the packets to find the correct one. Once Cal found the correct packet, he chuckled in exhausted relief while adjusting their glasses. Tying back their hair into a half-up, half-down style and taking off their blazer and draping it over their chair, Cal gazed back up to the classroom.
Jeremy sat in the very far right corner of the small lecture room, his head placed on the desk with either disinterest or sleep. Savannah sat directly in the middle of everything, more focused on doodling than listening and only ever speaking in class when it came to asking for the bathroom at the worst times. Becky, sitting front left, closest to where Cal usually stood, was most likely in this class to gawk at Cal which was a disturbing fact they learned after she wrote him a poem. Travis, the student who had the best grades, paid the most attention, and the only one genuinely interested in the class, was only able to come to lectures on Friday or after class on Monday as he worked a day job to support his family like almost every kid in Blackthorn College.
College, even with Blackthorn being so cheap, was hard for most to afford, but Cal had the smallest class of any professor because of his subject: psychology. It was deemed to be taboo at the Grand Academy, the greatest and most brilliant scientific center in all of the continent of Ployavas, for looking at the soulless bodies of Ling, the goddess of life and death. If it was deemed taboo there, Cal was honestly surprised to get any students at Blackthorn.
Sighing, Cal quickly forced themself to smile for their students.
“Now, as you read last night, we will be starting our unit on trauma and how trauma affects the brain, particularly in youth,” Cal dictated as they took off their glasses and leaned on their wooden desk. “This will not be an easy topic to handle so if you are not ready to talk about it, we can talk about your options for studying and covering this unit.” Cal waited briefly for any objections or someone to speak up before nodding. Cal turned their back on their audience of three to grab a piece of white chalk. Scrawling on the blackboard, Cal continued as they put their glasses back on. “To start us off, we are going to review ‘trauma.’ What it means and how we get it.” Writing several words on the blackboard to add to the diagram of a human brain that made Savannah quietly gag. It was not particularly gruesome yet the taboo of seeing the insides of a body was still ever present it seemed. “Trauma affects your ‘neural networks,’ which, as we discussed previously, act like our trolley systems we have in Blackthorn, carrying information from one spot to another. What researchers believe is that trauma basically overworks these trolleys which are running so much due to a high stress environment or repeated high stress environments. Can anyone tell me—”
“Cal,” Ægir mumbled, shock present on his face and in his tone, “someone just entered the classroom.”
“Travis!” Cal said with a big smile on their face, not checking over their shoulder to see the boy. “I was not expecting to see you today! You can have a seat wherever.”
“Cal, that’s not—”
“No thank you, I never liked the ramblings of the mad Grand Academy graduates off the streets of Blackthorn who probably pray to deity of forbidden knowledge and insanity.”
Screeeech.
The chalk scraped against the blackboard, and everyone tensed their jaw at his comment. Of the three that were awake and present, Savannah gripped her pencil with a great ferocity but ducked her head into the paper on her desk, Becky made her chair scream with how fast she pushed back in it, causing it to grate against the floor as she looked ready to stand, and Cal forced themself to not bite their tongue off. Cal turned around to see a figure in the doorway. The man looked to be twice Cal’s age with a large scar from his lower lip up to his eye. With a brown, scratchy beard, a bulbous nose, and, strangely enough, decked out in iron armor with gold shoulder plates inscribed with a sword facing downwards with a set of raised wings behind it. This man was a royal guard of Brise.
Holy shit.
“Apologizes… I guess you looked so young I mistook you for a student?”
“Smooth Cal,” Ægir snickered.
“Oh spare me.” the man huffed, walking down the steps of the entrance down to the stage where Cal taught. The man did not look in Cal’s direction, only staring up at the black board. His face twinged in disgust as he stared at the diagram on the brain. “Damn, heretics of Ling.”
“Well, considering Ling is a kind goddess, I am sure she’d understand in the name of science,” Cal hissed under their breath. After a moment of tense silence, Cal spoke up a bit louder this time. “Can I at least have the pleasure of knowing why you are here today, sir?”
The man turned his head sharply to look at the professor, causing them to tense as they felt the man’s gray eyes on them. “Are you really Cal Thi Lê?”
Cal felt as though they should be offended with the way the man said their name but only nodded slowly.
“Yes…, I am Prof. Lê, but you can just call me Cal or Callie,” Cal replied with a bit-of-a forced warm smile as they extended a hand. The man looked them over but remained still, causing Cal to slowly retract their hand with a scowl.
“Prof. Lê, I am Quinn Harbinger of the Queen’s Royal Transporters, Division 12,” the man barked, loud enough to wake Jeremy. “By order of the Queen, I have been asked to extend an invitation to you in a request for your expertise on the Realm of Dreams and your close connection with the god, Ægir.”
“Excuse me, what??” With Jeremy clearly awake now, as evident from his outburst as he began to take in the situation, looking around for the context of the situation and finding just about as much context as everyone else but Quinn. Becky was the only one who paid Jeremy any mind and it was only to look over and share her own confused expression. It was clear to say absolutely fucking no one knew what was happening.
Cal felt dizzy just listening to the other’s monologue, slowly glancing to Ægir’s spectral form who was just as in shock as Cal was. Ægir’s tentacles shifted in skepticism and amusement while twirling around each other as his glowing, godly eyes squinted at the man before them.
“Well this was a surprising turn of events…”
“Yeah, no shit…,” Cal whispered back, placing a hand on their forehead as they leaned back into their desk. Glancing back at the students of their classroom, only Becky could speak up.
“I… what does this all mean?”
“It means… I guess chapter 7 is due whenever I get back…,” Cal murmured, still stunned as they looked over the man.
“Do you accept the Queen's request?”
“Do I even have a choice?”
Quinn’s sickening smirk was cruel enough that Cal was able to discern the answer. Nodding slowly, Quinn began to chant some long incantation for the exact coordinates of teleportation in a bizarre language. Taking one last look around the classroom, Cal had the same expression as the three students at the moment.
Within seconds, Cal was temporarily blinded by a flash of light before reappearing on a glowing blue crystal floor, carved with a sigil that was bigger than him. The room was empty except for a hanging lantern above the wooden door, but before Cal could take in any more details, they were shoved forward.
“Walk.”
Cal turned and glared back at the burly man, walking towards the door all while huffing: “Alright, alright, you don’t have to shove me…” Ægir, bold as always in his spectral form (that was only visible to Cal at the moment, mind you), blew a raspberry at the man as he hovered close to Cal, keeping a ghost-like hand on their shoulder protectively.
Upon exiting the room, Cal was greeted by about fifteen soldiers in a tight room, causing Cal to tense as they observed the empty brick walls. The only decorations in the room being a ball of light magic in the center of the circular room in which there were seven chairs distributed about. The soldiers gave no mind to Cal, distant, cold armor separating them from any human contact as, unlike Quinn who seemed to have forgotten his, they wore helmets with a space for the eyes and scattered holes by the mouth. Upon walking closer to the guards that stood stiffly behind the seats, it could be seen that they were equipped with numerous weapons engraved with sigils never seen before and their breath stank of turmeric, a key ingredient of strength potions. Cal slowly looked back at Quinn.
“What the hell is this all for?”
“No more questions,” Quinn huffed.
“I think I have a right to know about what I am getting myself into,” Cal whispered, wondering what could make someone go to all these lengths just for Cal and presumably six others. “Why did you really ask me here?”
“Are you deaf?” Quinn asked, his temper and volume rising.
“No, I just want to know what is going on!”
Before Cal could get a reply, Quinn shoved Cal down into one of the elegant but wooden seats with a rough hand and pinned him down with the strength to crush Cal’s shoulder if he wanted to. Ægir was just as tense as Cal, especially when Quinn leaned down towards Cal’s ears.
“I’m going to break it down real nice and simple for you.” His breath was hot on Cal’s ear and Cal could not help but send a fiery glare at him which was replicated by Ægir. “You keep yapping and yapping like a damn dog so I am going to teach you some manners. If I say sit, you sit. If I say roll over, you roll over. If I say speak, then, and only then do you open your goddamn mouth, do got that?” Cal’s rage was boiling, but Ægir… to say he was restraining himself from murder would be an understatement as Cal could feel the pressure built in their chest from Ægir’s wrath. “I said, do you got that? Do you got that?! Nod!” This man tried to use incantation magic over Cal, but, with a mixture of Cal putting every ounce of concentration they had into resisting as well as Quinn possibly being tired from using a teleportation incantation, Cal made an effort not to nod. In a fit of frustration, Quinn grabbed Cal’s hair harshly, yanking their head up before forcing it back all while causing whiplash as he repeated this motion on Cal to get them to nod their head. “There! Was that so difficult??”
“Cal, let me at him.” Ægir’s powers were seeping into Cal’s body. With their nails and fingertips turning back, Cal felt colder and Cal knew the soldiers and Quinn also felt only the surface of the deep pressure akin to being miles below sea level that even the bravest of explorers would not dare to touch. As Cal glanced at Ægir's spectral form, his tentacles leaking a substance like black ink and lashing out like a kraken. The god’s eyes were locked on Quinn and glaring with the intent of divine punishment. “Cal, let me at him.” Cal clenched their jaw and simply looked away from the god and at the teleporter instead.
“Sorry, Quinn, I really don’t think I will catch on very quickly to your training,” Cal spoke with a cocky tone, ignoring Ægir. “But if you really want to be trainin’ a bitch, why don’t you go do something with your wife then, eh?~” Quinn’s face went bright red with anger but Cal was not done just yet. “Maybe you can get her to stop sleeping around with mutts or—”
Smack!
Cal received a harsh hit to their cheek, leaving a red mark. “That’s enough outta you,” Quinn growled like some feral animal and shoved Cal’s head away. It was instantly clear this man did not have any words to come back with. There was something about angering him that instantly made Cal so much happier. Was it a healthy way of dealing with aggressors to agitate them more? No, but it was much more funny in Cal’s opinion. Adjusting their glasses and fixing their hair, Cal could hear the man whisper to one of the guards as he left the room through a second door and causing the guard to snicker. “Damn Blackthorn scum… one of you better put a muzzle on them or something.”
“He deserved worse than some light scolding,” Ægir huffed bitterly. After a moment, he took a deep breath and Cal finally felt free to breathe again with the weight from the seas leaving him and the inkinesss of the depths retracting from his fingertips. “I don’t know how you can still stand that shit from another mortal.”
“Ehhh, I guess I have just gotten kinda used to it. Plus, I don’t think it would be great to do anything more than talk back while at the Queen’s palace, Ægir.”
Fall 
Day Weather: 
