The Seven Stages of Empathic Mimicry (VI)

6: Retrospection

He'd been allowed to sit by Imoen's bedside only because everyone assumed he'd gone into shock. It might even have been true for anyone else, but the bleak/dark/nothing had returned to him and settled inside to what it usually was so he was back to not feeling much of anything, even after the short-lived, universally devastating moments of self-sprung ill feeling.

Gorion spent the evening next to him. And the night. And the morning. He never said anything, he just sat nearby, a mass of weary confusion, sadness and worry. And dread aimed at something, or caused by something or other.

Cyrus learned what it was after dawn, when Tethtoril showed up. Not that he hadn't already suspected.

"Gorion? He wants to see you." The First Reader said. "Both of you."

'He' being Khelben Arunsun.

Cyrus suspected he knew why they were being summoned. It was a feeling that had spiked the day prior just after the magical disaster and had yet to come down.

"Son?" Gorion called. "Are you alright to walk?" He asked uncertainly. "You haven't slept at all since yesterday night. If you're too tired I can just go alone."

"Gorion-"

The sage raised a hand to silence his nominal superior.

But Cyrus already knew that the feeling of finality hanging above his head like a guillotine would only get worse if he stalled or chose to take Gorion on his offer to essentially take the worst of whatever he was being called for. "I'll come, Father."

Gorion smiled but it was a sad thing, at once fearful and determined for his son's future, and that quality didn't change after he took him by the hand or on the way to the room that had been granted to Khelben Arunsun during his stay.

The man was in bed, though propped up with his back straight against the pillows stacked against the headboard. He looked aged but not wizened, with grey-streaked but generally dark hair save for the pale patch running down the middle of his short beard. The Blackstaff was propped next to the headboard as well, within easy reach.

The man gazed evenly at Gorion and him as they were led in, looking not at all as weak and tired as the Wish spell had left him. If not for him being still abed Cyrus wouldn't have been able to tell he was in any way weakened.

Not that his attention stayed much on that tangent, considering everything else he could see in the man.

"Thank you for bringing them, Tethtoril," Ulraunt grunted. "You may go."

"I may but I will not," his tutor said calmly, walking to stand some distance to Cyrus' right. "As far as I can see the boy could use a neutral party to stand for him here." He gave Gorion an apologetic look but did not amend, then he gave Ulraunt a long stare. "Both of you are too emotionally close to the matter."

Cyrus wondered if this was what a trial was.

"Well?" Khelben demanded, dismissing the adults completely and treating the young dwarf to a cold gaze. "Step up, boy. Let me see the one who left me and another bedridden and a third ready to lie in the last bed they'll ever get."

Cyrus glanced up at his quietly outraged Father for permission and only did as told when he got it, however reluctant. The boy closed in several steps, stopping by the small table that blocked the rest of the direct path to the bed. There was almost nothing on the table, not even a cloth. Only a pair of scrolls, a stack of paper and a paper knife. One without any history of killing, unlike the man looking at him from ahead. He was strange. He was covered in lines of death but Cyrus knew instinctively he could not succeed in tracing them if he tried to, even with the man bedridden. Not without killing the enchantments protecting him, and perhaps undoing whatever spell was on him that was the reason for that one seam wrapping around him like a spiralling veil.

Cyrus wondered if it was a disguise of some sort, given that the grey-streaked hair and imposing manner was somewhat at odds with his age. The sheer amount of deaths the man had delivered or engineered traced back nearly a thousand years. He wondered if Gorion knew.

"The Keeper of Tomes has had some very interesting things to tell me about you, boy."

Gorion glared at Ulraunt for that, though he didn't seem surprised, and positioned himself on Cyrus' left and a little ahead of him, to cut in between the boy and the Candlekeep senior librarian.

Cyrus did not reply. He was still working through the sheer magnitude of the realization that this man's experience with murder dwarfed that of everyone else the boy had ever met combined.

"Tell me, boy, what it was that you did to the Weave yesterday." The man treated him to a piercing gaze that should have been a glare, given the way the man's self-shade cast shadows from within. "Provided you have any idea at all."

"I assume…" he started slowly, "that you have Gorion's permission to ask these questions." Because given historical evidence his Father would have probably wanted to seek insight into his son's mind first. And possibly without others finding out what he learned.

"You are all here, are you not?" Arunsun said sternly. "If he had misgivings, he would have voiced them."

"You can go ahead and answer his questions, son," Gorion spoke from beside him, then the glow behind his voice shifted focus to the Archmage with an echo of that scarlet-colored conviction of years before, after the balcony. "You have nothing to worry about." Scarlet and the shine of challenge.

Yet the guillotine loomed above him still, changing in likelihood and closeness not a whit. "I was surprised by the mage hand and reacted by willing the spell dead and off me." He related everything factually, and the people around him reacted not at all (or nearly) on the outside but very much on the inside. "This enabled me to see the spell matrix and further allowed me to pull it apart at the seams." This time the reactions were much more pronounced. Tethtoril actually gasped. Slightly, but he did, and Khelben's eyes sharpened. Ulraunt was, as always, disdainful of him and every time he said anything. As for Gorion, he was just wearily resigned. "Being the first time I did this, or even seen the Weave itself, I did not anticipate this to pull on more of the Weave than was invested in the spell itself. This, I assume, caused the wild surge."

"That was no mere wild surge, or even a single one!" Ulraunt snapped from behind and the side. "The whole world went mad because you did not want to be caught and disciplined for your brazen theft!"

Tethtoril intervened before Gorion could explode, though he only barely made it. "I do believe we are all well aware of how events yesterday unfolded. After all, we all were there." His enforced calm remained, but the rays revolving around his same-self seemed to radiate remonstration. "And I think we all are old, intelligent and wise enough to tell the difference between a theft and an innocent prank, however tragic the outcome. Aren't we."

Khelben interceded before that tangent could continue further. "You claim to be able to see the weave patterns making up spells." He did not sound anything but level-voiced, but there was incredulity there, behind his eyes, however faint. "I suppose next you will tell me that you next saw into the whole Weave and did something to it that left the area around you dead to all magical energy."

"Yes." Cyrus nodded, wondering why the grey/dark/clotted the man was inside jerked with startled surprise at his answer, even as he remained outwardly unimpressed.

The Archmage gazed at him without blinking for a long moment. "How? How did you do that?"

Cyrus blinked in surprise. If he didn't already deduce it meant Ulraunt probably hadn't told him about the lines, which meant that Father hadn't shared the details of his death-seeing eyes even though Cyrus had told him about them just weeks after Winthrop caught Imoen trying to pickpocket him in Beregost and brought her home with him. "The same way I imagine everything else can die." He shrugged. "I traced the death lines on them." He paused. "There didn't seem to be a difference in their case."

"Oh, will you cease your stalling! Explain!" Ulraunt nearly shouted.

Cyrus frowned at him over his shoulder but turned back to the Blackstaff. "I don't know what you expect me to say."

"He perceives the death of things as lines interposed over objects." Gorion said with a sigh. "He explained to me that he believes he could… break objects by tracing those lines with a sufficiently sharp or edged implement. I cannot speculate on how that concept was adapted for destroying the Weave, but I imagine the principle is the same, whatever it is." There was a strange subcontext of steel-colored defiance as Father spoke to the outwardly unchanged Blackstaff. "But this is all still supposition, since he has never done it."

"Until yesterday," Khelben stated, not asked. Stated at Cyrus, not his father.

"Yes," Cyrus confirmed.

Khelben stared. Gorion stared at Khelben while Ulraunt and Tethtoril stared at him, though that was the only thing common between the two.

"Show me." The Archmage told him, gesturing to the knife.

The boy picked up the knife, bent forward to reach for the far end of the table (he had to stand on the tips of his toes to reach far enough) and steadily traced the circuitous route that death travelled along the surface. Whatever-he-was fairly gushed through and around the item in his grip, cutting through everything that mattered even as the knife didn't leave behind even the faintest scratch.

It was a sturdy thing, that table, made of walnut treated with lacquer.

The moment he finished and lifted the knife the table top crumbled to thumb-sized pieces, splinters and a fair bit of dust.

Cyrus stared. Everyone stared at Cyrus.

The four table legs fell on top of the scrap pile.

"Huh," the boy said when no one seemed inclined to say anything themselves. "I didn't expect it to outright crumble. At most I thought it would just… break in half."

The blade of the guillotine fell down on the non-existent shade of his hope for the future and Cyrus understood what it meant for one to know exactly when they would die.

Intellectually at least.

Khelben levelled an outright glare at Gorion, but the latter returned it just as fiercely. "Do not presume to try and intimidate me. I am not one of your impressionable apprentices so either speak your mind or look elsewhere."

"You did not feel this was a matter worth mentioning?" The Archmage was outright livid, even though it barely came through in his tone.

"How I choose to handle my personal and family matters is no concern of yours or anyone else's."

"This is not a mere personal or family matter!" Khelben Arunsun outright snapped from where he'd straightened even further.

"There is nothing mere about personal and family matters," Father oozed outright disdain. "I would have expected Laeral, at least, to know that."

Khelben slammed the Blackstaff against the stone floor. Cyrus looked away from the knife he was holding in order to avoid missing when people did meaningful things, like reaching for weapons. "Enough! You and I both know well how this issue should have been handled! To keep such a matter secret, what in the Abyss were you thinking!?"

"That is droll, coming from you!" Gorion bit out. "You, mind. You who never share anything with any, even when it would help, because 'a secret is not a secret if you tell anyone.' Who are you to lecture me when your whole existence is entirely built on that double standard!?"

Cyrus stared between his knife and the Blackstaff. There was no way to end the mighty artefact the same way he'd ended the table, not with the enhancement and other magics on it, but maybe if he sketched out the death of each enchantment one by one first?

"We are nearing the cusp of one of Alaundo's most critical foretellings and you hide something of this magnitude under the veil of family matters!?"

"He is my son and in my keeping! I have taken the necessary steps to let the relevant parties know of all salient facts in case of the worst. Beyond that, my business is just that. My business!"

"Necessary steps! Relevant parties! I suppose there is no need to worry then!" Khelben outright shouted in derision. "One day you will just drop dead, we do not even need to look beyond this room for the most likely cause, and the relevant parties will take over! I suppose Elminster will step in at that point, pat the boy on the head and pass on some vague portents, after which he will merrily go back to his Dale and damn the consequences on everyone and everything else!"

He called him 'boy' even though he thought Cyrus was just some abomination posing as one. An abomination that had somehow deceived his way into the graces and protection of the ones in that room, bar Ulraunt. Cyrus could tell because the man had already come up with over five ways to kill him and dispose of the remains, distinction between the two steps not necessarily required.

"So proclaims the mighty Masked Lord of Waterdeep," Gorion hissed. "Do not pretend you are any different from what you disdain in others! Your pursuits are no less single-minded or harmful to people and causes you have not claimed as your own, if they measure up at all! Nor are your plots and schemes always wanted or needed!"

Khelben Arunsun levelled a searing glare on the old sage then. "It seems age and the strain of raising so troublesome a ward have blurred the line between reasoning and rationalisation."

But Father only glared back just as heatedly. "And it seems power and reputation have blurred the line between criticism and insult."

"Oh, I have no doubt you have many insults that you would like to hurl at me yourself, and I am sure you will be transmitting them to the relevant parties after my departure, among many other misgivings."

The two sages glared at each other much like Gorion and Ulraunt had done years prior on the balcony.

But there was no verse on which to base an end to that heated discussion so the two old men stood and respectively sat, glaring, for quite some time while Ulraunt and Tethtoril watched on, one with vindication and the other with distress. Distress and a fair measure of outrage on the behalf of Gorion and even Cyrus himself, surprisingly.

But this was all such a waste of time. Inevitable things had already been decided so there really wasn't any need for further wrangling.

He reached up and tugged on Gorion's sleeve.

Gorion started so badly that he almost jumped in place, and the look he levelled at him was raw with such stunned surprise that Cyrus almost changed what he wanted to say. Almost. "I would like to go spend what time I still have near Imoen, Father."

Gorion stepped forward and reached out to him, but didn't dare lay hands on him for some reason.

Cyrus blinked at the chaos of shock, amazement, hope and naked alarm for a few moments, then shook his head and met Gorion's eyes properly. "May I?"

"Son…" Gorion breathed. Hoarsely, almost. "That… this… this is the first time in your whole life that you ever asked for anything."

Blackstaff's grey/dark/clotted churned with something old and tepid but it passed almost instantly.

"Cyrus…" Father hunched forward but still seemed afraid he'd shatter if touched. A myriad questions formed and died before they were spoken, then the man fell back on one that had become a defining element of their bond. "Son. What are you feeling right now?"

The boy blinked and looked up from the wood scraps that had once been a table. "I suppose I am a bit curious if the Wall of the Faithless still exists."

The world seemed to tilt on its axis upon being faced with a topic that had come so completely out of nowhere. At least that was what their emotions implied.

Cyrus didn't really understand it, but then he didn't understand many things. "The texts following the Godswar say that Myrkul was destroyed by Midnight, the new Mystra. I was wondering if the wall broke with his death or if Cyric decided to keep using it." He personally didn't estimate very good odds of it not being there. Not under Cyric the Mad.

"Child what makes you ask that? And so suddenly?" Tethtoril questioned when Gorion seemed unable to.

"I figured it might be useful to know where I'll end up once I die three or four days from now." Gorion's heart seemed to outright stop and Cyrus caught Khelben Arunsun jerk in place from the corner of his eye. Barely, given that his grey/dark/clotted practically shuddered in shock inside, though he didn't show much of it on the outside. Cyrus turned to look at the Archmage, though it was still Tethtoril he was talking to. "The exact time of my death hasn't been strictly decided, even though the certainty of it is no longer in question." He turned his head to look at his frozen tutor again. "I figured I may as well bask in the light of Imoen's spirit for as long as I can manage between now and then."

The next moment he'd been shoved back and Gorion had interposed himself between him and the Archmage of Waterdeep, though Cyrus stumbled sideways enough that he still had a line of sight to the much older man. "He'll have you over my dead body!"

But the odds of Cyrus' death did not waver in the least, and neither did Gorion's own death get any closer or probable.

And Khelben didn't even pay the man any mind, speaking at the young dwarf as if there wasn't a full grown man between he and him. "And so the lie is revealed at last." That didn't really make much sense, but people tended to speak more than was strictly needed and it seemed the Archmage was no different in that regard, at least this time. "Tell me boy, if that term even applies to you, what do you really see, if indeed it is seeing at all? You claim to see lines and then profess foresight. Which is it?"

But the boy was already shaking his head. "The lines are just death that hasn't happened yet. As for everything else…" He frowned, thinking. "It's not foresight. It's… extrapolation I suppose. I can see the odds of a planned attempt on someone's or something's life based on the competence and experience of the one setting them up versus those of the one being set up for murder." He shrugged and met the Archmage's eyes square on, even as the time window between him and death shortened by leaps the more he spoke. "You've decided I need to die and you only need to wait until you are strong enough to leave your bed to do it."

Gorion snarled and pulled him back but didn't dare turn his back on other man. "I won't let you have him!" He switched to Cyrus for just the one moment he needed, since he dared no longer leave the Archmage out of his line of sight. "I won't let even him have you. Over my dead body." He repeated, tone so frigid that Cyrus thought he would have felt a chill on his spine if he were anyone else, but he hadn't become all that much better at sensing anything at all, so he didn't. "Son, get back."

The boy obeyed, largely because he was manhandled into it, but this was still such a waste of time and effort. "He doesn't plan to do it now. And even if he did, it makes no difference that you disagree." Gorion clenched his fists hard enough that they shook. "He's simply much, much better at premeditated murder than you are."

Blackstaff's soul-shadow outright sputtered with enraged indignation. "And so your poisonous voice continues to sow discord. How very not surprising, boy, if that really is what you are! Watch your words lest this death you are so certain of decide not to delay in coming for you!"

"There will be no murdering of anyone within these walls!" Tethoril roared over the near-boiling tension. "And there will be no threats either! Have I been clear enough!?"

Cyrus shook his head. "It makes no difference what you say or how clearly, tutor. The certainties haven't changed. Just like different opinions made no difference for any of the other the deaths he delivered over the past nine hundred years."

The whole world seemed to stall.

"What's this!?" Tethtoril shouted.

"Nine hundred years…?" Ulraunt breathed even as Khelben's soul-shade seemed to freeze for long moments, as if he hadn't intended or expected that particular piece of trivia to be thrown out, especially not so carelessly.

Gorion blinked slowly at the older man. "And so the lie is revealed at last," he literally tossed the Archmage's words back in his face. "Khelben the Younger indeed." His voice turned low and accusatory. "Is there anything real about you in what you show the world?" He paused. "Is there anything real about you at all?" His eyes roamed over the man on the bed. "Is that even what you really look like?"

No answer.

"Cyrus," Gorion said coldly, never averting his unblinking glare from Khelben Arunsun even then. "Please describe this death that is hanging over you right now."

Ancient black eyes bore into his but Cyrus didn't feel intimidated or afraid because he never felt much of anything. "I'm not sure what details I can share, since they seem to keep changing every other second. I just know it will happen when it happens." He looked helplessly at Gorion. "One way or another. The only constant seems to be that it has to be soon because he can't afford to delay his trip to Tethyr." And it became so very clear that moment that no one had had any idea where the man was headed before that moment.

There was a drawn-out silence.

Gorion, as expected, broke it. "Tethyr is a long way from Waterdeep…" He said ponderingly. "One wonders why you would need to go there, especially with any measure of haste, given the utter chaos that has ruled that country since the fall of the Lions' Dynasty. And the Harpers already have people looking into those matters …" A realization seemed to come over him then. "Has your habit to designate rulers for Shadowdale kindled a taste in you for setting up your own kings in lands even further removed?"

The Archmage's eyes snapped from Cyrus to his Father. "His hold on you is truly mighty if you so easily believe everything he says."

"I believe everything he says because he has never said a lie in his life, to me or anyone else!" The man was visibly shaking, he was so mad from insult and betrayal. "I am tempted to ask my son why you would be going there but there is only one way he would be able to even tell. Dare I ask whose murder you are going there to premeditate?" His lips curled into something ugly. "Will you even stop at one? What next, shall I learn that at some point you have also become a thief!?"

Cyrus' head snapped from looking at his father to stare at Arunsun when his self-shade flared with a colour that could not be anything but guilt. Guilt for something he was planning to do, not already done, but something planned as part of a greater plot to engineer the deaths of a number of different other people so Cyrus perceived the concept regardless. And the emotional colour. It had been very, very faint, but months of trying to puzzle out the nearly indistinguishable but very real and numerous variations in Imoen's brilliance meant he had a lot of practice to draw upon.

It became clear a moment later that his reaction had not been missed by anyone there.

"I see…" And Father's voice could not be described as anything but bitter.

Seemingly having enough, Khelben Arunsun rallied together – his self-shadow tightened around itself though it did not drip with the blood of others any less – and glared, truly and unrestrainedly at Cyrus for the first time. "You, boy, see too much."

"Do I?" What even was the meaning of too much? "What does that even mean?"

"How can you even sit there and say that?" Gorion wondered aloud still looking at the ancient wizard. "Sit there on your millennium-old trove of dead bodies, vanished nations and extinct societies and act as the offended party while plotting my son's murder in your mind?" The old sage shook his head in disbelief. "What could possibly be just in that?"

Blackstaff did not see fit to justify himself.

Cyrus did have a question about that, however. "Is it supposed to be?"

Gorion started and looked down at him. "What?"

"Is it supposed to be? Just, I mean."

"Is it supposed to be just…?" Tethtoril echoed. "Child, why would you even ask that? Why would you doubt…?"

The dwarf blinked. "Shouldn't I? The moral arc of the universe doesn't bend towards justice." Gorion's light seemed to dim as a familiar misery bubbled upwards, and the soul-shades of the others either recoiled or thrummed in surprise at his bluntness. "It can't. Evil is actively encouraged and enforced by Ao." The boy gestured towards the door and the library beyond. "There is a godly domain for every vice and ill thought. Every single text of lore agrees on that even when they disagree on everything else. And now with the Godswar…" He trailed off. "There is nothing just about the most powerful god of present times being the mad god of death, murder, strife, lies, intrigue, deception and illusion."

Everyone stared at him like they couldn't believe what they were hearing. Even the age-old Archmage.

Cyrus honestly couldn't understand why but it happened so very often that he was sure his inability to feel the same as others meant he must be missing on a whole lot of context.

"Is that why?" Khelben asked him, arresting the attention of everyone else again. "If you truly see your death approaching as you claim, is that why you do not try to fight against it, assuming your apparent indifference is not an act itself." The old man had a strange look in his eyes and disbelief formed a bizarre mixture behind his voice, blending with uncertainty and the ghost of warm lips and skin on his and memories of times long disappeared. "Because you believe the universe to be an unjust place so you believe there is no justice in people either?"

"No," Cyrus answered easily. "It's really not that complicated at all. There have always been people outside Candlekeep who wanted me dead. It's not surprising that one would find his way here eventually." Tethtoril's glow dimmed with wrong/wrong/wrong/unfair, but Cyrus hadn't finished. "As for everything else…" He shrugged. "You're simply the only one whose decision has any stake on whether I live or die next." Gorion's soul-self lurched beside him, but Cyrus ploughed on "So despite how clearly Father's or anyone else's moral compass does point towards justice, it doesn't matter because yours doesn't." He wondered if he would feel resigned or liberated if he could feel anything at all.

"Unbelievable," Ulraunt muttered from where he stood, watching everything. "He does not even realize or care about the pain he causes his professed father with every word he speaks."

That was an odd thing to say considering that he was only speaking the truth. Should he start lying, then? Gorion hadn't told him to, so he wouldn't and didn't.

"How can you be so certain of what you say, boy?" Arunsun asked slowly, though Cyrus couldn't tell if he was truly curious what with the turmoil that his self-shadow had been thrown in after the dwarf said that last thing. "How claim you to understand what others feel and how they live their lives? Or is there yet another thing besides death that you see." He narrowed his cold eyes even further. "How claim you to know anything of what I believe or feel?"

Cyrus ignored the scepticism because it didn't have any bearing on the situation either. The certainties hadn't shifted even then. "It's all there." He gestured to all of him. "Everything you've killed is grafted into your spirit. I know I'm likely missing a lot of the context since I don't generally feel anything of what other people feel, even though I can see feeling shining inside them." He tilted his head. "Or not shining. But I do know what I do see, and in you it's blood." Khelben's eyes flashed but his self-shade said a lot more than that. Too much. "Blood clotted over soul-cutting gashes deep enough that even the ones of centuries ago are bleeding still, even now." He wondered if he would feel anything due to the rapt attention he was treated with by everyone there, or the chaotic swirls of how/what/why/should-I-do-anything that overcame each of the adults. "And perhaps it's also down to similarity. Maybe I can distinguish you more clearly than others." Others like Imoen. He looked away from the soul then, to meet the man's black eyes instead. "You're almost as dead on the inside as I am."

For one, heavy moment, Cyrus felt like he had no waiting to do for death at all.

And as if to prove him wrong about the comparison between them, Khelben Blackstaff's grey/dark/clotted burst into hot/tar/fire. The grip on Blackstaff looked like it could have warped the wood if the powerful item could be harmed at all. "Listen carefully boy, because I will not repeat myself." The man's voice was iced over but Cyrus expected it would have still burned if he could feel anything at all. "There is nothing alike between your nature and mine."

Nine-year-old eyes looked into those of a man a hundred times older as the world seemed to shy away.

Then the hot/tar/fire simmered down and sunk back beneath grey/dark/clotted and Cyrus realized he really had missed enough of the context that he had been wrong about this one thing. "I suppose not…" He broke eye contact and stared down at his palms, at the blood flowing beneath his flesh and the total lack of soul-light that set him apart from everyone else. "Perhaps some souls are simply born into death. They never knew how to live."

The guillotine lifted from just above the spine of Cyrus' mortality and he knew he once again had a few more days to live through, but he didn't pay it any mind. It wasn't worth dwelling on, no more than everything else he didn't feel anything over. He just stared at the blood running through the veins inside him, wondering how something that kept him moving, speaking and generally carrying out as if he lived could seem so very not alive at all.

"Tell me, boy," Khelben said quietly. He sounded spellbound, inexplicably. "What would you call justice?"

"Justice…" Cyrus echoed the word as he just stared at the bleak/dark/nothing. "Justice… would be if my soul and Imoen's had been swapped at birth." Gorion uttered that pained, familiar 'no' he never seemed to contain or even realize he said whenever Cyrus said he felt nothing, but it had been a long time since the old man had still had it in him to feel enough to be emotionally overcome in any manner. The boy let his hands drop and looked up to gaze at him. "She's everything you hoped I'd be when you gave me the name you did." Cyrus mouth twisted on its own for the first time ever then, and he wondered if he really felt sadness or if it was just an echo of something else. Or someone else. "She would have made you happy."

The old man sagged so totally that the boy almost felt fear at the idea that he may fall from the weariness overcoming him so completely. "Son…" his voice trembled. "Why do you speak as if you don't believe you deserve to live?" He made to reach for him, but he seemed to lack the energy for even that. "You deserve to live as much as anyone else."

"Do I?" He seemed to be asking that a lot, regarding increasingly many different things. "I've brought you nothing but enough misery to smother everything you ever were." Gorion's fists clenched tight enough to go white, as white as the skin on his face. "The only time you were anywhere near happy was long ago, when mother still lived." Grief literally engulfed all the defiance and anger that Gorion had been clinging to like a lifeline. "Your soul was so beautiful then…" Grief boiled and subsumed everything, then thickened until there was only the misery that the man had only barely been keeping down for so long. "There's barely anything of that glow in you now. There hasn't been since the balcony." Misery that fell inwards as finally as it did the first time, leaving only the black pit of anguish.

Tethtoril moved and uttered something or other in a low voice but Cyrus didn't have it in him to pay attention, let alone recognize the Spell of Sending for what it was, and for once no one else seemed any more inclined to care about anything than he was.

He looked down at his hands again, seeking and failing to find anything resembling something that wouldn't be bleak/dark/nothing.

Perhaps having his place swapped with Imoen's wouldn't have been justice after all, being that it seemed more and more likely that he had no soul of his own at all.

For long minutes no one said anything more.

Then there was a knock on the door.

Tethtoril moved quickly to open it, revealing Hull.

"You sent for me, First Reader?" The young man tried and failed not to look around at the sombre scene. He also looked tired and the bags under his eyes spoke of something more than a sleepless night.

That's right. Davros had been his friend.

Cyrus wondered if he would feel guilt at that realization if he were able to feel anything at all.

"Yes. I have a task for you." The robed man came over to Cyrus and physically herded him to the door where he handed him over in Hull's keeping. "Keep an eye on him. And if you need to leave him for any reason, make sure there is someone else with him at all times." His stern gaze was not at all at odds with the fierce determination gleaming from inside. "At all times, am I understood?" Once Hull nodded, Tethtoril gazed over the other adults, pointedly looked right at Arunsun for a moment, then meaningfully looked to Hull again. "It appears there are certain threats levelled against him from sources we had previously overlooked."

Hull's grip suddenly tightened on his hand. How odd. "Understood, sir," Hull said, voice hard. "You can count on me."

"Good. Off you go then. In the meantime…" Tethtoril turned to address the other three adults and very deliberately said what he said next before Hull and Cyrus were out of hearing range. Before the door had even been closed shut. "In the meantime, we three are going to have a long, long discussion to figure out when it became right and proper to measure morality in terms of willingness to murder children!"

Hull's grip on his hand became even firmer and the Watcher pushed him in front of him and herded him away as quickly as he could.