Oh god, this is Caleb's go-to term of affection, isn't it? I'd bet money it's what his parents called each other, too.
Just. Little Bren, only seventeen, with such a huge heart that's already getting buried. Brent, who in all the awfulness that's happening to him really, deeply loves Astrid and Eadwulf. Turning to Astrid in this brief window of normality, just getting to be a young man at a festival with his loved ones, calling her my dear, as if they were normal lovers.
(And she rolls her eyes, perhaps because she can't quite let herself pretend that they're normal, perhaps because she can't put that much of her heart in the open, perhaps because she doesn't quite realise - and won't, until it's too late - how much heart Bren has in him -)
How wonderful must it be, years and years later, for Caleb to be able to welcome Essek into his home, and get to call him dear. He can just... do that. Every time they see each other. And when he does, Essek smiles, and kisses him.
Some of the scenes from the Mighty Nein animatic I made a while back. The animation was done by rotoscoping frames from the Mighty Nein Reunited trailer on Procreate; I might’ve bitten off more than I can chew, but it was still really fun! Check out the full video on YouTube HERE.
Something insanity inducing about jester and veth trying to comfort caleb after the vergessen heist by telling him that the people he killed were bad people, they were evil, they obviously deserved it, we're the good guys, he had to do it, he had to do it for the greater good, the chosen few made the hard choice and do what few have the will to do—
God, we're going to get to see the Nein realizing which of their spells don't work for Solstice reasons. They are the most ANNOYING assholes when their precious magic doesn't work, and double so when a Cerberus Assembly member is the cause of it.
They're going to be SO bitchy about it (affectionate).