Kapitel 20: Uncompromising (II)
A while later the ancient wizard succeeded in calming himself enough to string words together once more. "You should mind who you say that to, young one." His tone was truly warm when speaking to him for the first time ever. "People might take it in ways you didn't intend."
"Ah, that's right," Cyrus realized. "People actually proposition each other and engage in physical intercourse of their own initiative and consent, don't they."
Gorion's soul-light did something truly… odd behind Cyrus, making the dwarf think he'd likely missed one of his Father's rare moments of open-mouthed stupefaction.
As for the ancient wizard, he merely produced a strange, half-laugh-half-sigh and let his head hang for a moment. "Or you can just say thing like that and not have to worry about people wanting anything to do with you at all."
There was silence. Cyrus wondered if it was one of those awkward ones. His emotional frame of reference still wasn't very good.
Gorion dropped the silencing ward, which didn't reveal much noise but seemed to act as a signal for the others to go back to their business. Not that they managed, but at least they pretended to try.
"Right then," Khelben Arunsun sighed and seemed to sit much more at ease. His eyes were actually softer than they'd ever been in the boy's memory and his tone warm. "I'll let your father teach you Analyse Dweomer I think." His lips curled into a small, contemplative smile. "I expect you to have chosen a properly useful spell when I come back in a month to work on it with you."
The next day when Khelben Blackstaff was ready to leave and making his goodbyes to them at the gate he did not settle for the terse or rote goodbyes of usual. He gazed down at Cyrus' short form for a while before turning to Gorion, earnest both within and without. "There once used to be friendship between us."
Gorion's eyes closed for a few moments and he sought Cyrus' hand without realizing it. The boy reached out to grab it. He had enough of a frame of reference for that much.
The monk rallied something inside and opened his eyes to meet those of the other man. "Was there? Truly? I apparently did not even know who you were until three years ago, when you-" he bit back what he wanted to say.
"When I decided to murder your son." The old wizard said quietly. Contritely. No, beyond even that. Cyrus noticed something besides colourless void in the background of the new star. "Words cannot describe how wretched I am." It was a sickly sort of green streaked with black thorns and grasping feelers reminiscent of Cyrus' own greatest sin of the past. "No words can express how wretched I feel now."
"Only now?" Gorion challenged just as tensely.
Arunsun did not say anything to that. The black-brambled and torn-skewered green background seemed to spread farther around his self-light. Oddly, it seemed to render the shine more intense. The scarlet of determination further reaching than otherwise. "Can there truly be no friendship between us again?" The older but younger-looking man pled.
The two men fell silent for a long time.
Cyrus was somewhat surprised to hear his father break it. "Do you even know what friendship is, Khelben?" It was the first time Cyrus heard his Father call the man by his first name. "Are you even willing to share anything real about yourself? To give?" Two bright soul-lights of different colours seemed to push on one another. "What about what I should give. Do you think I have it in me to care about your wish for friendship between us now? Do you even know what happens every time I look at your face?" The man was putting visible effort into keeping a level voice. "Every time you are in my sight I am pulled back to the sight of your self-absorbed, self-righteous self of years past deciding that my son needs to die. Every time I see you in my mind's eye plotting the murder of a 9-year-old boy while utterly convinced of your self-granted authority as a judge and executioner." Each word was like a physical blow, so it wracked Arunsun's soul-light all throughout. "Each time I recall how I had never before felt so helpless." Blackstaff's guilt enveloped the star entirely and it seemed like the ancient man had just taken the first step on the path back to grey/dark/clotted. "Each time I recall how I had never before felt such hatred."
The guilt reached the point where it choked more than fuelled the light and Cyrus Anwar suddenly gripped his father's holding hand, bringing his words to a stop.
But only for a moment.
"There will be no 'again,'" Gorion said flatly. The answer made the green-tinted guilt writhe and funnel further outwards and forward, as if wrapping around the newborn soul-sun twice over. "For the simple reason that there was no true friendship between us the first time."
"There was…" The Archmage leaned on the Blackstaff he held in his hand. Gorion's insulted glare made him amend quickly though. "There was on my part, please believe that. Older or younger, the Khelben Arunsun you knew was real. His thoughts, his beliefs, his words, they were real."
"A statement easy to interpret in all manner of ways," Gorion shot back. "After all, we were only ever privy to your words, and real does not mean honest."
"I was going to steal the Scepter of the Sorcerer Kings."
It was a good thing Gorion had preemptively cast a silencing ward around them because the shock and outrage on his face was beyond blatant at hearing that non-sequitur, even in spite of how completely that sudden statement had arrested all his movement. The man was so sincerely and angrily stunned by the audacity of stealing that object that even Cyrus found it in himself to wonder what it was to engender such an emotional response.
"That was going to be my next move after checking on the Tethyr situation three years ago." The Archmage barrelled forward, pushed forward by the guilt and mindset he'd decided to live by from now on, for as long as he could. "I would have stolen it without the knowledge of the other Harpers, used it for…" His words tapered off at the betrayed and livid glare of Gorion. Livid glare that merely depleted into an overwhelmed weariness that killed almost the entirety of Father's soul brightness. "I suppose it does not matter now," Arunsun finished heavily.
"Go." Gorion uttered in a voice completely devoid of life, not bearing to even look at the other man. "Just… Just go."
But Cyrus would not have a beautiful, newborn light snuffed out in its infancy. Not like his was, if he ever had any glow of his own at all. "You'll be able to talk about this with more level hearts in a month."
The reminder buoyed Arunsun's soul with a three-fold flame of blue, lavender and gold and Cyrus finally knew the look of that thing called hope. It emerged from among the other rays and countered the erosive impact of the sickly guilt like the most wondrous solar flare.
Gorion's red anger and the signs of emerging misery were a sharp contrast to that but Cyrus didn't regret speaking up. And he wasn't sure it was because he couldn't feel much about anything this time.
Khelben Blackstaff looked sadly at the small dwarf, his face a picture of pained regret and indescribable shame that nearly blotted out every speck of light within him for several agonizingly long moments. "I am sorry." Moments that just extended into infinity as Cyrus watched. "I am so sorry for everything." But he did not outright ask for forgiveness from him because he felt as undeserving of it as of Gorion's. Felt he lacked the right.
"I forgive you," the boy said even as Gorion gave a start at his easy answer but Cyrus wanted that all-snuffing darkness gone as fast as possible, though the truth wanted out as well. "But forgiveness doesn't really make a difference to the one asking, does it? They still bear responsibility for the consequences." Cyrus looked at the ancient wizard while the latter and Father stared at him strangely. He was long past the point where he found it unusual. "I didn't really feel much of anything over it, as you well know." That only seemed to make both stars dim even further. "But I do understand what I'm saying by my answer."
Unfortunately, as had become par for the course in Cyrus' life, his attempt at making things easier on people only made them feel worse.
Wondering why he never managed to say the right thing except by accident and resisting the unfamiliar urge to scowl, the boy turned to behold his father. "He's honestly regretful, father." He paused, then continued more quietly. It was never easy to translate what he saw in words but he was well practiced now. "And his change is true. There is only one thing there that could push him back into what he was before, although in a clotted mass of different colours, and it's guilt." He gripped his father's hand more tightly for a moment in emphasis. "I know that every history and story alike usually has the repentant one undertake a series of trials before they are reformed on the side of good, but such things are not necessary here." He turned to look with narrow eyes at the nearly entirely dark-covered sun and all but glared at it until the shame obligingly begun breaking down. Only then did he look at his Father again. "He is already good."
Gorion stared.
A father stared at his son like he did not know how to process anything anymore, though even that passed. "Are you asking me to forgive as well, then?"
"Yes, father." Cyrus somehow smiled then, even if it barely qualified. "It won't help him much, his regret is too much for it to be settled at that, but it will help you." He looked between Gorion's eyes and the dim soul and back. "Ultimately it's all about discarding the control one allows anger and resentment to hold over their soul, isn't it?"
Gorion's self-light wavered spastically between dimly hopeful, hopefully bright, darkly lightless and several hundred other shades before the light began to once again resume, like they'd been doing for all those three years, eating and burning the grasping tendrils of betrayed/angry/hurt/ I expected so much better, fool that I was. "The second time in your life that you ever ask anything of anyone and it is for…" Gorion's face spoke of the sort of spellbound wonder Cyrus never knew how to interpret properly, but he at least knew enough to be sure that it was more memorable than anything Blackstaff had ever shown.
The men didn't say anything else to each other that day, but the implication that Gorion would at least make an attempt at establishing a new rapport beyond their grudging arrangement of alternating tutorship was more than clear.
And for the first time in his life, Cyrus Anwar knew true, unvarnished relief.
"-. .-"
Well, relief was definitely not what he was feeling now.
He'd been preparing for some discussion or other with his half-brother. That was how things usually went in his life in those rare cases when he spoke up without prompting.
He hadn't expected Sarevok Anchev to suddenly charge at him with an enraged bellow. Charge through the night's darkness with speed belying his massive suit of plate mail armour, fast enough to send air rushing in a funnel as he brought his weapon – Chaosrend – sweeping in a wide arc meant to cut him in half at the waist.
This would be the point where Cyrus suddenly brought out his trump card, that mighty spell or other that his second most revered teacher in magic had taught and shown him enough times for him to cast it instantly at will.
Unfortunately, the spell Cyrus had chosen besides Analyze Dweomer had been Control Water.
He'd had a great time with that spell too. Or allowed Imoen to have a great time with it those times when they used his previously-created climbing holds to sneak out of Candlekeep and have fun along the seashore. Even exhausting all the Bhaal essence willing to pour out of his body at any given time to supercharge that spell did little harm to the water. The sea was deathless after all, and any other aftereffects were easily washed away. There were a few rumours about murderfish from the deviants sentenced to dive for shellfish after harming books accidentally but investigations into those accounts were deemed inconclusive.
And all of that was rather irrelevant to the current situation.
His would be killer moved so quickly that Cyrus would barely have had enough time to draw his longsword from the scabbard on his back. It was a good thing the dwarf hadn't planned to even try.
Instead, Cyrus lunged in the same direction Chaosrend was traveling in and sent Sightless thrusting right at the rage-filled man's face.
The outcome would have been encouraging if the situation had been any less dire. Driven by some well-honed instinct or just noticing the Silent Image in time, the man jerked in the opposite direction before the illusion-covered blade went through his left eye. The greatsword's tip instead cut a groove from the corner of his eye across his temple and glanced off the side of the helmet, though not before cutting off one of the teeth framing the face.
The silent image covering the weapon dispelled just as the other warrior turned his unexpected dodge into a roll – impressive, given the sheer weight that armour must have had – and leapt once again to his feet. Cyrus knew he would have failed to deflect the next lunge of the man but Sightless had chosen well in draining the man's haste enhancement so now the dwarf could actually follow his movements. Parry the swing, deflect the following thrust, feint against his own feint and counter with a neck chop while being ready to disengage if –
The clearing lit up all at once with the light of an elemental invocation, sound of chants and the magical discharge and glimmering sound notes of a still spell – Gorion, Spell Turning – firing just in time to return a hail of multiple fire arrows back where they came from. The old sage immediately followed by sending a Greater Shadow Tentacle at one of the two henchmen running at him from the clearing side opposite from where Cyrus was.
There was one instant of confusion as the man – Eagus – was grappled and fell to the ground. The enemy wizard – Semaj – fired a spell trigger – Improved Invisibility, Haste, Minor Globe of Invulnerability – barely in time to render his reflected spell harmless. Sarevok didn't pause but Cyrus expected him this time and blocked the downward chop. The force of it drove him to one knee – peak human strength, enchanted bracers to push him beyond superhuman limits – and the following kick would have knocked out a tooth and likely stunned him at best if the dwarf hadn't used his own considerable might to push against the ground the instant the momentum behind the sword ended. He blocked the weakened kick with one of his own and nearly got beheaded for his trouble moments later when the priestess caught him with a blindness spell while Gorion was distracted blasting the nearest ogre back into the forest.
Instead the dwarf ducked his half-brother's next swing, deflected another and, when the blow proved expectedly too strong to let him keep proper hold of Sightless' hilt, he hurled both swords aside with all the might he could muster one-handed to throw the man's weapon arm wide. Unfortunately, the glowing-eyed man had come close enough by then to try and headbutt him. Not so unfortunately, having one hand forcefully freed meant that Cyrus could snap his fingers in the man's face.
What would normally have been a small flame fit to light a candle turned instead into a two-foot-thick funnel of fire when Prestidigitation was combined with that interesting feat of metamagic known as spell empowerment.
A funnel of fire that blew into and around Sarevok Anchev's face.
He fell back with a howl.
It was quite unfortunate for them, Cyrus thought, that he was actually better at fighting while blinded.
The moment loomed around him as he hung between falling and not falling backwards from the abrupt disengagement. Sarevok Anchev, startled and temporarily blinded and dazed but undamaged due to the near total spell and elemental resistance conferred upon him by his Bhaaltaint-channeling armour. The invisible – not to Death's eyes he isn't - Semaj in the last moment of calling extra monsters, Gorion – outraged and insulted, they thought a mere fire arrow spell would be any good against either of them – uttering the last syllable of Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, finger pointed at the twin-axe wielding mercenary – Kamon.
Options weren't many. Not given the nature of the single outcome that Cyrus was willing to accept. Gorion's odds of death if Cyrus engaged Sarevok exclusively: certain – it shall be a waste of your life. Sarevok's skill with the blade wasn't really beyond Thearabho's but the dwarf hadn't had time to practice and retrain the skill to account for his lower stature. With Sarevok being physically superior in all ways except speed and balance, and being several times over more seasoned besides, the outcome of a protracted battle was assured. Odds of failure if he fought in defence of Father: certain. Odds if he charged for one of the mercenary henchmen: certain. Odds if they tried to focus on the main threat – certain. Certain.
Certain, certain, certain, certain-
UNNACEPTABLE.
The two enhanced magic stones he'd been palm-spinning up until he was attacked lay quiet and useless on the ground.
The moment passed.
Telekinesis.
Cyrus Anwar turned his stagger into a looping spin, caught the stone he'd created earlier on and whirled around nearly 360 degrees, then lashed out.
He was never planning to rely on the Bhaal taint to help him figure out how to save a life anyway.
The smooth, round rock flew quicker than the eye could see, smashed into the priestess's mouth just as she was chanting the last syllable of a Pain Symbol and trailed bits of bone and bloodspray as it came out the other side.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein