Foil

"Tamoko!"

Death flashed through Cyrus mind the moment his half-brother cried out his lover's name – surprised, earnest, reciprocates her feelings despite his nearly total lack of empathy – and the dwarf barely threw himself face-down to the ground in time. Having avoided being split in twain, he frantically rolled to the right – Sarevok's snarling follow-up chop sunk into the ground more than width deep – then put all his strength in his left arm and shoved the ground away.

His whole frame literally left the ground entirely in a bastardized corkscrew – sloppy, Imoen's was still better and the armour certainly didn't help – that deposited him almost outside the range of Chaosrend's third rage-amplified slash. He had to lean back nearly 45 degrees to avoid having his throat cut but the resulting glancing hit cut through the front of his armour like paper – why had he even bothered getting it to begin with? – but the miss gave the dwarf a the short moment he used to assess his positioning – seven meters south-southeast away from Gorion who was casting an invocation spell at the enemy conjurer despite two ogres entering melee range – then he changed direction and leapt forward, blocking Chaosrend's return swing with Sightless and snapping a fireblast into Sarevok Anchev's face a second time.

The man howled in body-staggering shock again, though outrage seemed to paint more of the scream than startlement this time. And he recovered faster.

But that was fine, Cyrus only needed a moment.

Prestidigitation to turn the Ogres' eyes opaque!

The nearest beast went from threatening howl to a considerably more shocked howl and swung wildly at suddenly seeing nothing, hitting its fellow in the side with staggering force. Said fellow tried to regain its balance by throwing its arms wide – its huge club swung right at Gorion's head and glanced off his Stoneskin – just as Father finished his incantation.

Lightning blasted from his outstretched palms, hitting both Ogres with death-dealing intensity head-on before traveling on and striking – barely non-lethal – a third ogre, one of two that Semaj's spell had summoned earlier besides the Ogre Mage that had just cast mirror image. Ogre Mage which, like the only other enemy still in combat, was too far away for Cyrus to reach with what spells he had without suffering a critical hit to situational awareness.

"Run, child!" Gorion yelled at him, magic gathering around his hands yet again. "Get out of here!"

Right.

Blatant disobedience it was then. Another first to add to the many firsts of that day.

Telekinesis.

The second magic stone Cyrus had dropped flew to his palm as he leapt back, then flew out of it faster than an arrow right at where he knew his own opponent's right eye to be in the flames he'd blasted him with.

Only to stagger him but ultimately bounce aside without any damage after encountering the full-face visor that the teeth-like frame had melded into because of course it could do that.

He should have hit the still tentacle-grappling Eagus instead. And the tooth Sightless had carved off the other Bhaalspawn's helmet earlier wasn't even courteous enough to leave a gap of exploitable size.

Then Semaj finally got off a proper spell.

A fire arrow.

A big, angry, homing fire arrow coming right at Cyrus.

Coming in fast.

Too fast to track and impose stillness.

The dwarf forcefully ignored Gorion's flare of panic – concentration unbroken even so – jumped back from Sarevok's latest strike, traced the longsword harness death with his fingernail while mid-leap – it broke apart under Death as easily as everything else did – then reached back, grabbed it sheath and all and tossed it right in the path of the magical projectile just as it came within three feet of his face.

The longsword shattered utterly, piece of refuse that it was – he should have just bought a shield and left it at that – but the rain of shards that pelted him and forced his eyes closed didn't bother him being that the dwarf was already blind from earlier.

Unfortunately, that fact seemed to have slipped Sarevok's mind.

Unfortunately for Cyrus.

The force that slammed into his guard seemed three times greater than that of all prior assaults. The second horizontal swing that followed was even mightier, slamming into Sightless hard enough that Cyrus low guard broke entirely. His shoulder flared painfully as it dislocated and Thearabho's sword weapon gored his own leg before flying from his grasp even as he himself nearly flew off his feet. He retained enough sense to try and jump away from his livid half-brother and managed to get off with just another one of those glancing slices to his armour –

The entire splint mail shattered off him as nearly all the force behind the attack transferred into it. The resulting explosion blew out Cyrus' eardrums – Gorion's soul light flared with the stark terror of 11 years before so perhaps he'd cried out even if he couldn't hear him – and the dwarf himself literally flew backwards until he slammed back-first into a tree with breath-stealing force. His mind swam groggily and his blood churned in his veins from the aftereffects of the bone-deep cut across his torso that had ripped at his life force and made his blood churn and sear.

Sarevok Anchev stalked forward, soul-simmer boiling with some sort of unholy glee that wasn't altogether his. Cyrus wondered if he was laughing since he couldn't hear him. He couldn't hear anything.

Then he had no time to wonder about anything because the man was thrusting at his chest.

Death flashed before his eyes.

It was hardly something new.

The dwarf waited until the last moment before dropping. Chaosrend went almost half-way through the beech tree's trunk.

Cyrus kicked Sarevok's feet from under him, rolled away and staggered behind the beech, taking advantage of a daze-induced near-faceplant to instead bodily smash into the trunk and force his dislocated shoulder back into place. Now if he could stagger back in his father's direction so that that staff of healing could fulfil its intended role, perhaps they-

Chaosrend ripped forward and then sideways out of the tree leaving a gouge in it going nearly all the way to the middle. Incidentally, it also happened to slice Cyrus horizontally over the chest a second time.

Stale-coloured frustration gave way to euphoric satisfaction. A father's soul turned from merely terrified to utterly horrified before the black pits of despair Cyrus hadn't seen for years started to suck everything in, rendering meaningless the success of leaving an ogre legless after a rockburst spell caught the stone beneath its foot.

Cyrus felt… surprised as he toppled backwards. The man was supposed to be unable to chain two Deathbringer assaults that way, but he had and he was a nearly opaque, full-body mass of sickly green speckled with black/red/green/poison. Either he had miscalculated or the rules had changed mid-way through the engagement.

He got his answer the moment his back met the ground and his moment of death lit his thoughts for the last time that night.

Aching arm pushed a supine body to the left just as Sarevok Anchev thrust down at him.

Chaosrend pierced him right below the right collarbone and sunk nearly three inches before Cyrus caught the blade in a stone-hard grip with both hands.

Bhaal's taint rose up inside him, a mind-suffocating vision of a soul drowned at birth in the depths of an ocean of blood that seemed to envelop the world. Blood that practically plunged into the greatsword that had sunk into his flesh, traveling up through the magic embedded in the metal until it poured right into the guzzling pond on the far end of the sword sticking out of his chest. It was meant to be a draining enchantment only perverse enough to eat the life of an enemy while healing the wielder. Only, if the term even applied. But the magic twisted and perverted further, as it always tended to when Cyrus was involved, ripping weave patterns, bullrushing through power channels and disregarding conceptual bounds as Bhaal's taint rose up to take them.

It was practically… eager. Wilful. Deliberate, almost, if not for the unquenchable thirst to take that defined the transfer.

Sarevok Anchev's frame started to quake with what was no doubt euphoric laughter, but Cyrus couldn't hear. He could see the blood running through him though, the taint simmering, the heart racing with ecstasy.

How foolish.

He didn't understand, didn't hear, didn't see. He didn't feel the Vestige of Bhaal latching onto the opportunity, the surprised glee at having its plans accelerated. It wouldn't matter which of his two spawn here survived the night. Either the older would drain the younger dry and succumbed to him immediately, or the younger walked away and continued to live his false life until he'd sunk enough of his vestigial essence into him right from the Astral Plane and took him over entirely. Either way, one of them would walk into Candlekeep and use the vast amounts of essence stored in the many "failed" enchantments to precipitate his ascension regardless of the others-

Cyrus Anwar let go with one hand, used prestidigitation pull Jondalar's dagger out of his boot – needs to skip killing the enchantments, Greater Magic Weapon – pressed the tip against the part of Chaosrend right above his skin, then traced the death line.

The weapon exploded.

Metal and wild energy erupted everywhere, magic and whatever-magic-wasn't. It blew the human into the same tree he'd blasted Cyrus into earlier. Flying shards cut up the dwarf's face, but his eyes had been closed for a fair while already and his chest wound was more important anyway. Ignoring the pain due to sheer distraction and dismay over the realisation that the Vestige of Bhaal had actively contributed to the entire enchantment plan – and why – the young dwarf struggled to stand and dug his fingers into his injury to pull the sword tip out.

It came loose with a blood spurt, but from what he could tell that issue would be resolved in a very short while.

With fire.

Sarevok swayed to his feet before him some paces away, but Cyrus Anwar didn't consider him a priority anymore, not with the empty pit of viscous misery eating at his apathy from over two dozen meters away. A human mage that had not been mind-addled by a dead god so had missed none of the last few minutes of that disaster of a night. Had witnessed Cyrus being cut down, then watched, listened and cast futilely as the human warrior stabbed his son and laughed. Laughed and laughed until the old sage could see nothing but the flames of spells that rained down on him. A wall of fire from Semaj and a flamestrike from the priestess that a freed Eagus had revived with her own Rod of Resurrection.

Fading ecstasy gave way to dazed outrage in the human that had nearly claimed a younger life, his own and that of everyone else in sight.

How Cyrus pitied the man.

Not just for what his life had become but for not noticing that the night was getting brighter in spite of the fireball's and flamestrike's fire dying down.

The bloodstream and Bhaaltaint shaped like Sarevok Anchev made as if to throttle him before the shock/panic/incredulity of his henchmen made him stop in place. They'd probably exchanged words or just shouted in shock and dismay. Words about the giant ball of fire floating above the upraised arms of the newly revealed, no longer Stoneskin-protected but otherwise unharmed sage of Candlekeep known as Gorion. The man who'd countered the spells sent against him with his Rod of Absorption and also acted under a spell of elemental protection the entire time. Protection good enough to leave him no worries about a fireball.

Even the empowered version of delayed blast fireball.

A ball of fire not pea-sized but three meters in diameter. A size that simply had to violate some sort of law.

Cyrus blindly faced in the direction where he knew Sarevok's eyes had to be, but he could not muster a smirk or anything else.

Not with Gorion having his back to him and convinced he'd just witnessed his son's murder. The misery and despair disappeared nearly entirely, to the point where the man was effectively dead on the inside. He'd lived through literally the only event he did not have it in him to live through, so neither would anyone else.

Gorion slowly lowered his arms.

And the gigantic ball of fire dropped in the exact spot where he was.

The explosion was absolutely absurd in its range and heat and force. It burst outward like a tidal wave that glassed the hardened earth, overtook Semaj and Tamoko before they could cast protections stronger than the long-duration ones of the battle's start, then spilled over Cyrus and Sarevok both only to keep going outwards until the flames set everything on fire up to a half a mile beyond the treeline.

Sarevok cried out and fell over from the shockwave.

Cyrus' flesh seared.

It felt like life.

But besides his only threatening wound, he stood within the fire and was unburnt.

He'd had finally had enough time to stay still and focus without distractions. Blindness and deafness helped on that front, ironically, so that he was able to look at the Weave of Magic within and around him and command it to be still. Be still everywhere except his one, major stab wound. It would not do to bleed to death after all.

The fire was all around and above him, blazing like the indiscriminate force of nature that it was. Soon it would stop being a purely magical phenomenon and death-still Weave would be no protection at all. Already the air was heating beyond the range of comfort.

The young dwarf looked at where Gorion had set off that massive spell.

Martyrs. Hopeless, the lot of them.

Five steps had him next to the tree, three more had him past – he absently cut the death line on the side still intact – then a dozen more got him to Sightless, which he picked up and strapped to the harness –enchanted gift from one of Thearabho's late friends of times long past – that was still miraculously intact on his back. Turning north-northwest, he measured distances and counted the steps before steadily walking in the direction he wanted. He could not afford to rush this. The fire crackled fairly loudly in the night, but too much speed and his footsteps would be heard sooner than he liked. He noted in passing that both Semaj and Tamoko were still alive – barely – after finally casting spells of protection from fire just a moment short of their concentration's limit, but all the ogres and the two human henchmen had gone to meet their Gods.

Behind and to the side, the much-abused tree collapsed.

Sarevok managed to get away in time.

How unfortunate.

How equally unfortunate that Cyrus hadn't the hearing to hear the reaction that must have accompanied the frenzied stupefaction that came with the sight of a beech tree coming down to smear you across the forest floor.

Telekinesis.

The Staff of Healing that Father had dropped earlier when his soul stopped shining entirely flew to the dwarf's grasp without anyone noticing.

Cure blindness. Remove deafness. Heal Wounds.

Shrink Item and stash the miniature staff in a pocket.

Reaching the spot he wanted, the young dwarf breathed deeply in spite of the now burning quality of the air, flexed his hands and feet to prepare himself, then charged.

And when he was within five feet of the spot he'd been headed for just as the flames died down to less apocalyptic brightness and height – not that they made a difference to him – he threw himself feet-first and slid the rest of the way just as his Father was finishing the incantation for Zajimarn's Field of Icy Razors.

A son swept his Father off his feet, tossed out one of the many empowered magic stones he still had two pocketsful of – Semaj dropped to the ground open-mouthed for more than one reason, dead simply because a boy had needed to make room in his pocket for something else – then Cyrus Anwar whirled around, caught his father in his arms and ran away.