The Seven Stages of Empathic Mimicry (V)

5: Imitation

Months turned into years and Cyrus got better and better at understanding the way Imoen had chosen to live. At first he only joined her on her various capers, to varying (generally low) degrees of success. Still, the mayhem in Candlekeep effectively doubled within a month of the first time he started contributing. Gorion tried to get him to reconsider his newfound goal in life by refusing to ground him along with Imoen, but the latter became insufferable after the second time, and insufferably impossible to keep a hold of as Winthrop kept saying. She'd inevitably pop up to hang around wherever Cyrus was (even areas she wasn't allowed in or even supposed to be able to get in, somehow) so the two men had to fold and let them be grounded together in order to get anything done.

And Gorion always seemed reluctant to just outright order Cyrus to stop reaching out to the only other child his age in the Keep, so Cyrus decided to keep following her around and go along with all her ideas, only pointing out the ones that would result in actual damage to people, since anything too serious was liable to get him cut off from the hope-light to an extent he wasn't willing to allow. Then he started contributing to the ideas, then a year had passed and he'd gone even further until the two were engaged in an ever-evolving contest of one-upmanship in terms of how outrageous the next stunt would be, and whether or not it would score more points by being shouted from rooftops or kept secret. They usually pulled pranks off in sets of two like that, each a dare from the other.

Cyrus was unquestionably superior in execution and challenging Imoen to do prior stunts better and more efficiently, but he never came even remotely close to the imagination and audacity of her dares. Not that he tried, since that would demand the sort of emotional investment he was incapable of. He vastly outdid her in terms of diligence and attention span though, and after a year of being her partner in crime and only doing what he was suggested, he decided that perhaps it was time to take the initiative for once.

Which was why when Khelben Arunsun visited the Library Fortress during the month of Flamerule in the year 1357, Cyrus jumped him as soon as he undid his cloak clasp, stole the cloak and ran away.

He'd remember the chase for as long as he lived, not for how it underwent but more for what followed after the charge through, over and around people, puddles, mudpits and buildings.

He led the Watchers on a nearly literal stampede around the entirety of the Candlekeep grounds. Three times. It probably would have gone on for longer, seeing as Gorion was still frozen next to the famous guest and literally unsure of what to think of his son acting out on his own that way, if not for what next happened.

The Blackstaff caught Cyrus by the scruff with a magehand and the boy almost killed Imoen in response.

He hadn't even seen her huddled and laughing to herself from behind the inner gatehouse corner tower. The whole point of the second part of the prank was to find her hiding place before he was caught by whoever reached him first. A tall order when she constantly changed hiding places.

So when Khelben Arunsun's magehand grabbed him, Cyrus's mind nearly blanked, threw out all awareness of how far he'd run, how fast his heart raced, how many people were after him, how many were ahead of him, how filthy the cloak had become along with the rest of him, all in favour of scrambling for something, anything that would allow him to keep looking for her. He didn't even register the indignation that surged from somewhere deep, not immediately, or how it wasn't really indignation so much as a throwback to the only time in his life when he had felt indignant, during the second of his earliest recollections.

No, he entirely forgot to check his thoughts, so for the first time in a long time what came to his mind was dangerously less than specific.

I want the spell dead and off of me!

The surroundings disappeared between one moment and the next, and he could see behind him without eyes a spectral hand made of weaved strands of bronze and moonlight. Strands that he only had to wrench apart – it didn't matter which or how or when or what order – threads that he had to grab – whatever-he-was poured out and latched on with grasping, slithering feelers – and pull every which way with all his might.

His first mistake was assuming the strands he saw weren't tied to or sourced from others he didn't.

His second mistake was acting it all out.

The world exploded in a cacophony of colours and everything that could be heard in the world was heard within the walls of Candlekeep all at once.

Cyrus fell to the ground and stumbled in a daze, sight swinging to and from two different states like a half-bent pendulum that was showered with flares, blasts and currents of light on and on, regardless of state, regardless of what layer of reality it sensed. Cries, shouts and curses of everything from shock and alarm to pain and terror carried through and over the sourceless wind spout and dust devil, some piking or cutting off abruptly, few even degenerating into croaks and bleats and other sounds of beasts big and small. Light of all hues he'd ever seen blared all over the space around him, along with an equal number of shades previously unseen entirely. Then stone somewhere cracked, wood broke and splintered, solids of all sorts warped together and apart, and a flare of agony cracked a star of light so distinctive and brilliant that Cyrus saw almost nothing at all, for a moment.

And it wasn't owed to the lights and flashed going off everywhere, but due to the sight of a causelessly crumbling construction scaffold that had been erected along the west wall in preparation of approaching Midsummer decorations. Because Candlekeep did have them, however understated. A scaffold that was now broken and falling in a heap after the nails holding it firmly together had all decided to burst out every which way. Half-a-foot-long nails, every which way. Three of which were responsible for Imoen shaking and gasping wetly from where she was spread across the grassy soil fifteen feet from where Cyrus had just staggered to stand.

The young dwarven boy found himself unable to do anything but stare at the two iron spikes sticking out of her stomach and the third one in her chest. He could only stare, open-mouthed, for a second.

A second during which he might have in any other situation been able to notice that he'd poured out, spread out enough of whatever-he-was to render himself totally, blissfully silent within. But he couldn't and didn't.

He likewise failed to register the moment when he felt, for the first time, something truly, entirely of himself.

Thus it came to pass that the first free emotion Cyrus felt on his own was terror.

It was perhaps the height of irony that he couldn't even then be said to have felt anything for himself.

But he was beyond the reach of such a thing as irony, or any other feeling or even capacity for reasoning, besides what was needed to stagger forward, charge forward blindly – literally – heedless of the wild surges everywhere. He barely noticed the way his arm skin cracked under alternate heat/cold, or the blindness that descended on him – he'd never seen with just his eyes and he could go around blind anyway – and the way space warped and made him trip on a previously non-existent pit. Somewhere somewhen Gorion was shouting and calling for him and voices were chanting spell words or trying, but they didn't matter either. Not with Imoen's self-light sputtering and quickly sinking into itself, as if about to permanently wink out.

He didn't even care that he had no idea what he'd do even if he did reach her, but it almost ended up not mattering.

Five paces from her, wild magic blasted into and through him, then decided it was there to stay and latched on and together, forming into a net that instantly arrested all movement and forced him into total stillness. And because he was charging at his fastest, that meant he wound up falling face-first in an immobile, statue-like heap just half a meter away from her.

The way the terror inside him bowled and shifted from a torrid yellow to a flame-red fury might have had him amazed at finally being able to feel freely on any other day. But fury was fury at being robbed of what was his, and in the moment when he looked at magic and saw what it was doing, saw it working to bring him only pain and ruin, he felt, for a fleeting instant, hatred.

Hatred and the utter certainty that he needed to know how to kill it.

For the second time that day, his mind fell inward and outward and all he could see was blackness weaved through with bundled strands of light. Frayed strands that were knotted, cross-streaked, straining and coursing with light, pouring power or choking it with a sort of chaotic unwellness that tore, quivered and flowed from one shape to the next like boiling quicksilver coloured everything and everything else. The young boy might have felt fascinated by it all on any other day, if he could feel anything at all, but not enough of the moment had yet passed to take away the hatred. He almost gave himself to whatever-he-was, nearly told it to grab and rip and tear, but then remembered that this was exactly what he'd done before and it had only caused more of the same. He needed to see further.

The bleak/dark/nothing rushed out of him almost entirely, and he might have thought of looking within to see if it was hiding anything but whatever-he-was managed to meld with whatever-he-wasn't and revealed every single strand running through every figment of air and space, the brilliantly vibrant and the shadow-woven alike. All-pervading and unquestionably alive, even if in a way different from everyone and everything else.

The Weave of Magic.

Mystra's and Shar's both.

DIE.

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Hope was glass on verge of cracking, greyed-out, still and silent image of same-as-him-but-really-much-more-overall.

(What in the Nine Hells just happened!?)

(Sorcery! Wild sorcery! Wild sorcery inside these hallowed walls!)

(He inflicted a zone of dead magic! Is there no end to that boy's unnaturalness!?)

Hope was miracle unmoving, still alive in spite of how Cyrus had utterly killed all odds of her salvation, even after he reached her, grasped her and wrapped her nearly faded self-light in his bleak-dark-nothing that it might freeze solid entirely, that it might stop, stop, stop, STOP DYING BECAUSE I SAID SO!

(We have to move her! She needs magic and there's none to be reached!)

(We can't move her! She'll die if we do!)

Hope was debt owed to a stranger who took the certainty of death by the throat and, with just a few short words spoken from just beyond the edge of the dead magic, broke that certainty utterly.

(I Wish That All of Mystra's Weave within a Hundred Meters of My Position Be Restored Right This Instant to How It Was One Hour Ago!)

Hope was light silenced by stillness and the sleep of thrown-hurt-skewered that had barely been saved from the edge of the hereafter by the thing Cyrus had done his all to kill.

(Cast your spells on her now, quickly! And see if anything can be done for the young man over there!)

Cyrus willed the light to stay motionless, glass-like and undiminishing until the priests managed to knit her body of flesh back together, all the while carefully not looking or thinking of the motionless shell of the youngest Watcher who'd been brought low by a nail through the eye just a few feet away.

(How did he do that? He saved her life!)

(No, he only stopped her death.)

Ulraunt was right, Cyrus had only gone and stopped her death, and he'd almost not had enough whatever-he-was for even that. For seizing that moment between life and not-life-anymore and deciding that it would last as long as it took to preserve the chance of getting her healed in time for it to make a difference.

Somehow.

(Kid, kid, KID! You can let go now, the healers've got her, she'll be fine!)

Only after did he falter and slant, almost collapsed if not for Hull catching and carrying him off.

Yet of hope for Davros there had been none to be had.