A/N: I actually have written part of the next chapter for Master of Wood, Water and Hill but, well... random inspiration.

Here's hoping this doesn't distract me from fulfilling the wishes of my readers as laid out in my profile poll.

Regardles, this is, obviously, a Baldur's Gate story, though it's more accurate to say it's a story set on Toril, with everything that implies. Meaning the Forgotten Realms lore as well as Spelljammer, insofar as I decide to include elements from the latter.

The Forgotten Realms lore writers messed up the timeline somewhat to the point where Gorion's Ward would be 9 or 10 years old at the start of the game (1368 DR) instead of the 20 stated in the game narration. So I've moved the Time of Troubles back a decade. Which should hardly be noticed.

As will become obvious quite fast, I'm exploring a character type totally different from my other protagonists, at least until he manages to live up to the story title, whenever the time comes for that...

And just to get it out of the way, Imoen won't be a romance option for Gorion's Ward.

Not that the protagonist is even capable of that sort of relationship as he is right now anyway, age notwithstanding.

Finally, the verses are adapted from "Atalanta in Calydon" by Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Hope you enjoy!

Prologue: The Seven Stages of Sociopathy

"-. .-"

Age: 0

His first memory was of floating in warm, comforting blackness.

His second memory was of being unceremoniously pushed out of weightless/sleeping/tranquil and dropping into stretched/rough/dry as his eyes were bombarded with bright/haze/painful.

The window-shaking volume at which he expressed his displeasure didn't actually manage to secure a spot among his early recollections, which was probably for the best.

Being unaccustomed to light was similarly fortuitous, as it caused him to keep his eyes shut for a long time, rather than lay open eyes upon tired-stout-smiling or large-hairy-laughing. His first memories of Mother and Not-Father would have been far less innocent than the recall of warm, happy but bitter-sweet voices if he'd been able to look at them from the start. He always did see too much of transience and how to speed it up, once his sight got accustomed to not-first-home.

Not that it allowed his recollection of his birth to be a particularly happy one even then, considering that he'd just lived through the murder of his safety and tranquillity.

Years later, he would be able to put a name to his emotion at the time and recognise it as indignation.

Age: 1

The woman was half-of-half and half-of-like-not-father. She was tall, thin, built in every way that seemed physically perfect, dressed in dusk and shawls and blood. She had both hands above his face, poised to sink daggers into both his eyes. Death-touched blades, razor-sharp, black as the obsidian they were made of and jaggedly vicious enough that he could only see them as beautiful. She would stab down as soon as her chanting was finished, and her face would be even more radiant in exultation then, delighting in the most complex premeditated death that he had even discerned when witnessing someone about to kill someone else. A rare thing, given the care and shelter provided byMother and Not-Father(but call me father anyway, little one, whenever you figure out how to do anything but blubber, and I may just stop snickering at your attempts to intimidate me with that long stare of yours).

Shelter. He hadn't had that since many cries, gasps, long silences and wails ago. The tall, dark ceiling of whatever place they were in now didn't count. Wails that came as much from the discomfort of the separation, rush and running as from being denied a clear view of lash, lunge, strike, stab, slay, flash, fire that he himself only ever managed to imagine, small, weak and sloppy like a snail as he was. But imagine and fantasize he did, each time he was faced with something that could bring an end, like blades and cloth and drink and words.

Frequent were flashes that revealed the path to the end of everything and anything, but as many as they were they were fleeting and quick. But sometimes they lasted long enough for him to notice the difference between what he could know and think during the flashes and what he could know and think outside the flashes. Or, rather, didn't and couldn't.

This was more than a flash, he supposed. It was long and intense, enough that he couldn't help but criticise the entire thing, as if his mind was clearer and faster the longer the murder went on. As far as ways to force a death, it was slow, loud, wordy and overly complicated. He'd already come up with over a dozen different ways to finish the job, and twice as many to force the end on the woman herself. Knife width, length and weight: estimated. Woman's height, poise and distance: measured. Bare patches and weak seams in her garments: identified. Even her body bared every weak point to his sight, and the red beneath her skin guided his view to each and every surface vein, though he didn't have it in him to look at those. The big, fleshy thing behind her heaving chest pouches was more interesting.

It was dreadfully out of position and inefficient compared to how the woman looked on the outside. The pump would have worked better in the centre of her chest and if her air bags were symmetrically placed, even if both of the bottom thirds would have had to be a bit smaller. At least she'd have both thirds instead of just one.

On the other hand, stabbing it would be harder, what with the middle chest bone being right on top of the flesh pump than-

Roaring thunder, fire, smoke and shouts from all corners. Death practically filled the dimness with loud, wonderful suddenness as wood, metal, fire and all sorts of power cascaded into that place from the doors that had just been shattered in.

The next hundred heartbeats were of screams, shouts, outrage, self-righteousness, death, death and more death, both delivered and evaded by but half a handful of little and not so little bodies of flesh and same-as-him-but-not-really-as-much-overall. It was during the worst of it that Not-Father appeared, tall, robed and beardy as ever, but different, less and more than usual. Death surrounded and followed him, arresting infant eyes as he petrified and shattered the woman that fancied herself good at killing babies, bairns and toddlers but really wasn't.

"Oh, thank Mystra," Not-Father's words barely strung together but his voice hadn't been slain yet. "You're alright, Cyrus. You're still alright."

The longest and most intense flash of self-awareness visited Cyrus then, and he couldn't help but stare and blink at Not-Father as his mind instantly filled with the knowledge of what the not-quite-close-to-death man had done in the days since Cyrus was pried from the dusty remains of his disintegrated mother.

The one-year-old looked at Gorion as if he'd seen him for the first time, but he didn't see him at all. For one instant, his mind saw only the swift, premeditated, decisive, completely thorough, utterly unforgiving and maximally efficient method in which the man had galvanised his whatever-they-were into coming to help him track down and murder each and every one of the people there.

The moment passed, Gorion and his cohort ran amidst shaky, noisy chaos, and Cyrus's mind begun to settle back into safe mindlessness, save for one emotion that remained and would return every time he laid eyes on his Father.

It could not be anything but admiration.

Age: 2

"Home..."

Father made a strange, half-laughing, half-sobbing sound and hugged him closer, saying things to the others about words and firsts and how his son hadn't uttered a single thing for months since the kidnapping and how this was proof that a permanent change in residences was the best idea after all, to say nothing of the safety of Candlekeep's walls, but Cyrus didn't pay attention. Part of it was the strangeness of the place that was supposed to keep them now. Large, hard and grey. He wanted back to warm, cosy and honey-colored, even if Mother wasn't there anymore. But at the same time the hard, cold grey called to him like old-home never had.

It lasted barely an instant before that feeling was drowned out by instinct, mind-whirls and thoughts of how easy it would be for someone to die if they were not careful to stay away from ledges or not bash too hard head-first into the wall. Or be pushed.

For the first time, he wished that hadn't started back up again. The stone sense was an altogether more wholesome feeling, somehow. It felt… unpleasant to have it drowned out this way, and he wished it would return. Nothing new in terms of methods to push people and things into the next great adventure was being revealed to him anyway. He wanted that new sensation back, almost as much as Father wanted Mother back.

Longing.

He didn't like it.

Age: 4

There was no blood on his hands. Or anywhere else on him really. That felt… wrong, somehow, what with the eldest and most disagreeable of Reevor's cats lying scattered all over the floor of the storehouse, its blood splattered and seeping into wood boards and walls. And several of the crates piled alongside them. Cyrus felt strangely deprived of the full experience of his first live kill, and it was doubly strange that the cut and bites on his wrist and hand from the cat's unwarranted attack had disappeared between one ripped limb and the next.

"-yrus! CYRUS!" A linen towel suddenly fell on top of his hands and different hands were shaking him by the shoulders. "Son, answer me this instant!"

The boy blinked up at his father, still taller than him by a fair margin despite having bent nearly half-way at the waist. "Yes?" He asked politely.

Gorion opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times, not saying anything. Then he looked around at the mess and proceeded to stare at Cyrus for a long while. The boy hoped he'd pass muster. Gorion had educated him to always do his best not to make a mess of himself, especially not so near his bedtime so he'd done his best not to. "Son, what happened here?"

Cyrus blinked again. Didn't he already know? Gorion had brought him out of the main keep for a while, to get some sun and fresh afternoon air. Neither of them expected or planned for Cyrus to be commandeered by Reevor the storehouse keeper, but the dwarf loudly proclaimed that it was unseemly for a dwarf lad to be cooped up with dusty books all day and not even know he had kin in the same walls. Cyrus didn't care one way or the other where he spent his time as long as his father wasn't out of his sight for too long, and Reevor did seem to know new stories, and his gravelly, booming voice wasn't all that unpleasant once he got used to it. Things turned… unusual only when Reevor brought him to the storehouse on a trip to bring some whatever they were to the inn only to be faced with the sight of half a dozen rats scurrying about while the cats did precisely nothing.

Reevor had been incensed. After he ushered him towards the nearest of the useless cats he loudly commanded that Cyrus stand back and 'watch the deserters' and let him handle this, at which point the dwarf unfastened his handaxe and proceeded to engage the enemy with a truly inspired level of what could only be termed bombastic fervour. It had been interesting to watch actual life-and-death combat instead of hearing about it in bedtime fairy tales.

Cyrus related all this to his father while staring pensively at his beard. He hoped he'd have one at least as long when he was older. "It was oddly calming to watch, even if mister Reevor's technique wasn't suited to smaller enemies." The boy related. He'd gotten some good ideas to make the rat-clearing process swifter, involving less boisterous swings of the hatchet, among other things. He was sure he could improve the efficiency of the rat eradication process by at least 30%. "There was even a rhythm to the whole thing, or at least there was an attempt at it." He shrugged and looked up at his father. "I'm not sure why, but the way I was tapping in tune with that rhythm must have annoyed the cat on the same crate because it attacked me."

"Attacked!" Reevor burst from where he hovered near the door. A fair bit of gore covered him and his breaths were short. Had he run out to get Gorion? "That hadn' nae been an attack! She was playin'!" His eyes switched between him and the… cat all around him. Cyrus wondered if the blood all over Reevor was from the rats, the cat or both.

"Playing?" Cyrus frowned in confusion. "Cats use their claws and bites when they play?"

"Yes!" Reevor yelled in something like outraged disbelief. At least that's what Cyrus assumed it was, from comparing it to prior displays he'd observed on other people. And sensed, when he was close enough to them. "Moradin blast it, old man, what've ya been teachin'im if he doesn't even know that!? What are ya raisin'im on that he'd…"

The discussion devolved into something or other but Cyrus wasn't paying attention. He was distracted by something, or rather the lack of something. He stood still for a moment trying to figure out what it was, then his eyes snapped up to Gorion so fast that the old man started in place. Cyrus slowly blinked, then turned and pinned a long stare on the axe that the still ranting Reevor had re-strapped to his thigh. At this point his mind would be flitting all over the place with assessments, calculations and ideas for how to use the implement in order to enable the quickest, most efficient death possible on everyone and everything in the immediate vicinity.

Nothing.

For the first time since he'd first opened his eyes, Cyrus experienced nothing of the sort.

"Don' ya be getting' any ideas 'bout my Joy, brat!" Reevor suddenly yelled, turning to hide his axe from his direct sight. "This here's a man's weapon! Not fit for a lad who can't tell playing from fighting! 'Specially not one that reacts like… this!"

There were some more words exchanged but Cyrus didn't listen to them, and he paid just as little attention to the enforced trip back up to his room. He was more focused on trying to puzzle out what this sudden inner silence was. As if some ever-present drive had been satisfied for the first time. There was no sense of fulfilment, not really, but the lack of desire to know how to inflict death all over…

"Cyrus. Son." The dwarf boy looked up from where he'd been sat on the side of his bed. Gorion was looking at him with an odd expression, possibly worry given the similarity to the look he'd had every once in a while between the lady-that-couldn't-kill-infants and arriving at new-home. "What are you thi-" The man cut himself off and treated the infant dwarf to an even longer, tense gaze. "What are you feeling right now?"

He wondered if this was a question with only one correct answer. He didn't much care at that specific moment. Or any other moment really. He only had the truth to give. "Nothing." No desire to look for ways that everything in sight could be used to bring about end. No facts and instincts for how to swing and thrust and twist a blade just so. No points and lines that spelled out death everywhere he looked.

There was just calm inside. And silence.

And just like that, he realised that "nothing" wasn't entirely accurate. There most definitely was something there.

It was a heady, welcome feeling.

He thought it was called peace.

Age: 4 plus 11 Months and 29 Days

Sixty-three even steps of flat ground in a straight line save for the puddle at step forty-one and the larger one at fifty-five which were easy to step over and around, forty-five degree left turn followed by another thirty steps, then turn right for another eighteen then right a second time, two short stairs, shoulder-push the inn's self-shutting back door inward, walk forward across flat boards for another eight steps, turn right 40 degrees and go through the other door, descend twelve steps down to the basement, forward eight more steps then around the untapped wine barrels and he could finally set the case of twelve nectar bottles on top of the last one he'd carried in, then turn around and trace the path to the storehouse in reverse and repeat.

He actually longed for the days immediately following his decision to start going about… everything with his eyes closed as much as possible. At least then counting the steps was more than a habit he indulged in a vain attempt to distract himself. He could find his way blindly around most places these days as long as he didn't rush, and sometimes even then given the whispers and lines that now filled the darkness under his shut eyelids wherever there was an object or a wall. Even unfamiliar areas were navigable if he was careful, not that there were many of those left, and he could even detect new or moving objects like people that weren't a normal part of Candlekeep's layout. Visitors of all sorts and stripes. Especially people. All thanks to the uncanny awareness he had at all times of where their hearts were. Along with their main veins and arteries. And eyes, and joints, and tendons. Anything and everything that could allow him to put an end to them, especially the elements that would make it all neat and efficient if struck, cut or pierced just so. It wasn't even due to having improved hearing or anything like that, though his five senses had definitely sharpened as a result of the increased reliance on them. No, after a while of managing to keep his eyes closed and, therefore, himself unencumbered by the perception and drive to inflict death, whatever it was about him that drove him to seek, acknowledge and bring about death seemingly decided that his attempt at finding some sort of peace from it just would not do. So one day he started to become aware of… death candidates even without looking at them.

He hadn't told Gorion yet. He hadn't explained his seemingly spontaneous decision to forgo sight either. He'd never brought up the promise of death he saw in everyone and everything for that matter. There never seemed to be a point to it. His father was busy enough anyway, what with the misgivings he had to deal from other people, not all of whom dismissed him as merely strange. Cyrus just wished his solution had worked for more than a month. Longed for the peace of those two weeks.

Longing. He liked the feeling less and less every time it came over him, but he was also grateful it existed, in those very rare moments when he felt anything at all. It was the whole reason he'd figured out that his drive to inflict death could be directed, or at least partially satisfied even if his waking eyes never stopped showing him the path to its successful delivery upon all and sundry. It had come to him one night, while lying on the roof of the stables, staring at the sky – the only thing that didn't seem to have a death waiting for it, or at least none that he could inflict – when he was trying to make sense of his life and how little of it was actually life. He internally wished there was a way to inflict on his lack of peace the same thing that whatever-he-was seemed to be trying to persuade him to inflict on everyone and everything else. He wished there was a way to take a hold of that unwelcome constant in his life, the death seeking drive that coloured everything in his life and, at least for a while, have it dead.

The solution had surged into his mind immediately upon forming that thought. That if his eyes were to blame for his inability to find peace in absence of murder, then he shouldn't use them anymore. Over a dozen different ways to kill his eyes flashed through his mind, each with varying levels of effectiveness, efficiency and pain. He found it rather silly to get only notions so drastic, when there was a much easier way to go about the idea. That is to say, just keeping his eyes shut as much as possible.

At least whatever-he-was-inside certainly adapted quickly to enforced blindness, sharpening and coordinating his other senses until he could go about his life almost as easily and comfortably as before, lack of color notwithstanding.

Now he supposed he shouldn't have left the caveat of "at least for a while" in that wish. Maybe then his uneasy peace would have lasted more than two weeks after he got a hang of functional wilful blindness. It was a minor consolation that the dwarven awareness of Stone and Shape he'd only felt that one time when he first saw Candlekeep's walls managed to emerged from the fugue of his mind and stay with him since his first days of darkness. But even that consolation was offset by the reason why that was now a fact. That the Path to Certain Death had judged that very trait a proper tool in murdering that peace of mind he'd diligently sought. It was that innate dwarven situational awareness that it perverted into his newfound ability to perceive death-dealing possibilities sightlessly. He supposed it was a blessing he didn't outright lose the innate sense instead of just… growing a death-seeking infection on it. And through it. And under it.

Reevor was waiting for him at the storehouse entrance, having brought out the last couple of cider crates. "Already back, are'ya?" He asked gruffly. "Still goin' 'round with yer eyes shut, I see." He handed him one of the cider crates while he picked up the last four, two stacked on top of each arm and led the way back to the inn cellar. "Really wonderin' what goes on in tha' head of yers sometimes, boy. But I s'pose 's'not my place to question it."

Unlike Winthrop the innkeeper who could never set aside his curiosity, comments and practical jokes, Reevor really meant that he said. His was a turbid existence, a way of life that didn't include many concerns beyond his storehouse, good ale and an otherwise easy day-to-day life. His views were hard to twist, emotions hard to bend, let alone crack or ground to powder. Mostly because he didn't care much about others' opinions or expectations of him, since there weren't many. His role was clearly defined and he revelled in the straightforwardness of managing the keep's food and drink stores and not having to worry about anything else besides, other than alleviating his boredom and indulging in a good ale every other hour.

Not that any of that made much difference to Cyrus, considering what he'd done to the man's composure the first time they spent time together. Reevor's initial ease of mind around Cyrus had been well and truly killed that day, even though the older dwarf did his best to dismiss the event as evidence of a budding battlerager. His emotions only seemed clearer now, easier to pick apart with each passing day, especially since Cyrus started going around without seeing. They came to him in beams and arcs, eddies, currents and motes and flickers. Boisterousness and determined deliberation in regards to Cyrus himself, with an ever present underlying current of wariness/confusion/worry, both about and for him. The feelings bared themselves and their vulnerabilities, like everything else that could be used towards the purpose he had grown used to denying himself. Emotions were, after all, perfectly capable of inflicting death if guided and struck in the proper way.

Capable of even driving a person to inflict death upon themselves.

Cyrus turned his mind away from that line of thought. Longing made itself felt once more as he wished he could claim to have done it due to some internal decision.

Sadly, that was not the case.

The reason for his distraction were the two men looking down at him from one of the only two balconies that Candlekeep boasted. The one just outside of the quarters belonging to the Keeper of the Tomes. The Keeper next to which Gorion stood. Cyrus allowed himself to actually use his eyes to look at them, though it wasn't his eyes, exactly, that revealed most of what he perceived even then. His father was a seething mass of frustration, outrage and weary resignation that was nevertheless drowned out by protective fury on Cyrus' behalf. All of that masked by a veneer of respectful disagreement on the topic at hand. All of it perceived by the infant dwarf due to those emotions' intrinsic causal relation with the feelings and intentions of the other man, intentions of the type that never seemed capable of staying concealed or posing any mystery to Cyrus, even when he was the target. Especially when he was the target.

As he averted and re-closed his eyes and followed Reevor, the boy wondered why his father would be in any way surprised, let alone so emotionally unprepared as to only barely keep his full reactions to himself.

So Ulraunt wanted him dead.

It was hardly something new.

Age 5

That very night, Cyrus got up at precisely midnight of 2 Myrtul, 1353 DR. He would have done it sooner but he knew his father often stayed up late to read or write by magelight. Especially when preparing for some event or other. Like the birth anniversary of his son which happened to be on that precise day.

Cyrus had counted out the seconds, minutes and hours since his father put him to bed that evening, just to be sure the coast would be clear. Not that he intended to skulk around the halls of the keep, but the man's room was right next to his. Being aware of whether or not those nearby were asleep or otherwise disabled – a state that made murder/death/kill so much easier to inflict, therefore a priority to his death-seeing sixth sense – also helped.

Once the last second of the countdown passed, he shucked off the blankets and soundlessly rolled off the bed, landing in a crouch that allowed him to reach under the bed for the gardening pick he'd snuck in earlier, when he made the standard trip to his room to change after doing the weeding in the vegetable patch. It wasn't a particularly sturdy implement but it would easily bear the weight of a small dwarf just turning five. Not as easily as it could be used to kill one, or anyone else, but close enough.

The window in his room wasn't particularly close to the floor but the desk Gorion tutored him at was conveniently placed right underneath it. It was easy to hop on. Cyrus didn't even need to use the chair, despite the desk being half again as tall as his very little, infant dwarven self. He would have probably managed to jump the full two meters to the window, but that wouldn't have meshed with the little problem of the thing being locked.

Fortunately, the fastener was easy enough to undo, once he piled enough books under his feet to reach it. The window would have made that bothersome creak but he made sure to pull it open full-way in one, quick movement that mostly prevented that. From there, another hop and he was standing on the windowsill, looking down at the keep grounds.

Immediately his mind blossomed with the knowledge of how easy that position, that height could be used to bring about his own death, down to the smallest, seemingly most insignificant detail. Everything from the distance to the lower level terrace to the coastal wind and distractions caused by the new view were considered and accounted for by his death-seeing eyes. His ever-discerning death perception was indiscriminate like that.

With practiced difficulty, he pushed that to the side and stared over both the inner wall and outer wall of Candlekeep at the Sea of Swords. That late at night the sea was nothing but a blanket of blackness speckled with glimmers of white, scattered reflections of Selûne's light. That thought made him shift his sight to stare up at the moon and the Tears of Selûne that trailed in its wake.

Having seen him spend so much time staring at the sky, both during the day and after sunset, Gorion seemed to have decided that his son liked the sky and its bodies – not technically untrue, though the cause and nature of the interest were misunderstood entirely – so had told him many stories of them. Stories which he insisted were all true, even if details were glossed over or scarce regarding certain parts. It was still hard, though, to reconcile the moon's role as Selûne's avatar with the alleged reality of the Tears being just floating rocks, castles and caves. Rocks, castles and caves that had been broken off of the main moon by a misaimed shot from a magic-fueled weapon created by dragonkind to destroy the King-Killer Star. An attempt which failed, apparently, meaning that all dragons in Faerun still lived under the looming spectre of inevitable madness that would descend on them due to the continent-wide Dracorage Mythal… whenever the King-Killer Star made its appearance in the Toril night sky again.

So much dread, destruction and indiscriminate killing tied to a measly, reddish comet.

Pulling his mind off that tangent, Cyrus grabbed a tight hold of the window frame and, with his pick in the other hand, leaned out to inspect the wall face for the best spot to carve a handhold.

Here he goes.

The first time he swung the pick, it glanced off the tough grey stone. The same happened the second time. And the third. And the fifth. At the tenth, Cyrus couldn't help but acknowledge the futility, but he needed to get up there. He had to kill the distance between his window and Ulraunt's balcony. He needed the pick to be sharper.

Some unquantifiable feeling bloomed out of him through his fingers and over and through his smuggled tool the moment he made the eleventh swing.

The pick buried itself in the rock all the way to the hilt.

Cyrus blinked, pulled it out and gave the still normal-looking pick a long stare, then did the same to the wall. Then he very lightly struck the nearest potential handhold – the pick tip went in nearly a third of the way – and pulled.

A nice, deep groove was left in the wall. Cyrus ignored the stone chips and dust that fell into the night as he widened the etching with the other side of the pick, then paused to inspect his handiwork. It was almost perfect. Just wide enough to fit his toes, let alone hands – even with room to spare for future growth – and long enough to accommodate a full grip, yet not deep or dangerously enough placed to compromise the structural integrity of the wall rock. Not that one or two nicks would be able to actually do that to rocks as thick as he was tall, but it was the principle of the thing. Gorion brought them to live in Candlekeep because of the safety of the walls, Cyrus knew. Cyrus was fairly certain his father would be upset if anything compromised that. The boy himself never experienced that particular emotion, or most others for that matter, but he felt them in Gorion and everyone else often enough so he knew what they were and what they were for.

Besides being used in dealing out death by murdering that not-at-all-elusive thing called will to live, at any rate.

Climbing up to the level immediately above him was fairly easy after that. All he had to do was identify the spots most likely to fail him in whatever way (thus ensuring a fall that would surely end in death) and choose any spot other than them to carve next. Easy.

There was the matter of avoiding the lines that would cause the stone to fall apart – or at least the outer-most layers – if traced with any sharp objects, but it was only moderately harder, so still doable.

Nick by nick, he made a path and followed it all the way up to the crenellation on Candlekeep's top level. Then he had to climb some more and then do the same sideways, since said balcony was only several meters-wide and set in the middle of the wall, as opposed to Cyrus' room which was precisely in the corner.

Finally, nearly two hours since slipping out his window, he was there.

The grounds and panorama looked ever bigger from that vantage. Cyrus hadn't expected one floor level to make that much of a difference, but it was marked. He could actually see the farthest parts of the sea-jutting cliff face on which Candlekeep stood. He also had a better view of the watchers patrolling the walls, although the one on the left-most tower from him seemed to be dozing. Cyrus took some time to take in the effect that sleep had on not only the man's likelihood of suffering a sooner death due to being unwary, but the heightened effect his lapse had on the likelihood of everyone else in the keep suffering the same. Even that mere, unrealised possibility had a clear, definite impact on the likelihood of death, for him and everyone else.

Such a tiny thing…

Cyrus looked down at the grounds through the space between the balusters. Could such a small difference…?

With only a moment's consideration, he set the pick down and hopped to stand on top of the railing. It was thinner, much thinner than his foot soles, but he managed to balance easily enough. Once stood there, he stared down, going ramrod straight from foot to neck, utterly still and quiet. He got his answer and it was yes. Even that tiny difference in height markedly shifted the death paths, the available methods, even the effects of the death-enabling elements that existed independent from him. More height for dying faster on impact, stronger wind for dying more slowly, even a failure at attempted death if a sudden gale pushed hard enough that one struck the wall and windowsill on the way down. It might even be enough for the eventual death to take a particularly drawn-out and painful nature if the freak occurrence broke the fall enough that one didn't immediately die upon hitting the lower terrace.

Hardly something that could have happened if the main keep was the same length and width at the top as it was at the bottom. Instead, the keep's walls grew closer and closer together every other level, providing floors three and five with open-air terraces for better defence in case of siege, especially versus airborne foes. The balconies on the sixth level were the only elements truly meant purely for the commodity of the keep's master and special guests.

Falling off the balcony. It could happen in so many different ways. Willing and not. It could end in even more ways. For a few minutes, whatever-he-was played out several versions of that precise string of events with Ulraunt as the actor.

How puzzling. He certainly hadn't come up with the thought to accomplish anything like that.

May as well go about why he had come.

The young dwarf tipped his heels deeper back so that he'd fall back on the balcony and not to his death – if he fell at all – and shut his eyes. He thought of Gorion's storm of emotions earlier in the day. He thought of Ulraunt's constant wish that Cyrus be made dead, even as there never seemed to be any wish to murder/death/kill him himself. He wondered at what could have caused that desire to be stronger than usual that day, and why it rattled Gorion at all, let alone to the extent it did, or if it was something else. It was all one, big, confusing mystery. Big and unsettling enough, if only for his father, for Cyrus to take a deep breath and, for the first time in his life, take whatever-he-was by the horns.

I want this mystery to die.

Right. This. Instant.

Suddenly he could see even without lifting his eyelids. The night peeled back as if sliding in reverse, a drawn-out process that somehow happened in a single flash, between one thought and the start of the next.

"It is still going at it, I see," Ulraunt drawled as Gorion emerged from the doorway to join him, as he'd commanded. "I do not know if I should be appalled at the way it so brazenly revels in its unnatural nature, or relieved that it is not intelligent enough to think of concealing it."

Gorion's look said much less than he felt. "I fail to see what you are speaking of."

The Keeper of the Tomes scoffed. "Always you insist on this wordplay when we both know what our words mean."

"Do we?" Gorion turned away from him to look instead at the grounds below. Cyrus's attention shifted to match and settled on the image of himself making his way to the storehouse where Reevor was waiting. "It seems more like we are rehashing old arguments that never result in anything. As we do every year on this particular date."

"Merely because I refuse to give up hope that you will finally see reason," Ulraunt said with forced neutrality.

Gorion said nothing. Cyrus stared at the tumult of feeling that shone from him to eyes that weren't eyes.

"You cannot claim ignorance this time, old friend!" Ulraunt growled when Gorion wouldn't speak. "Not after having glimpsed its true nature! And do not pretend not to know what I mean, or that you buy into the delusion that Reevor has decided to take shelter in!"

Cyrus wondered why Ulraunt could possibly assume Gorion didn't realize everything he said already. It's not like any of that had been a secret.

His father seemed to agree. "You need not worry that I am misinterpreting the situation. The child hardly attempted to lie about it or otherwise conceal anything." 'The child' because Ulraunt seemed to devolve into total revulsion whenever his actual name was mentioned. Gods forbid it be acknowledged that Cyrus was a person. Those were Gorion's feelings on the matter at least.

Cyrus didn't exactly blame Ulraunt for his observations though. He wondered about them himself often enough.

Ulraunt growled and glared at the small dwarfish figure trailing in Reevor's wake. "You do not put nearly as much stock in Alaundo's prophecies as you should, Gorion, despite what you claim. Each year it seems to be less and less."

"Or perhaps I put exactly as much stock as needed and choose not to overburden myself or anyone else with more."

"For Oghma's sake! Listen to yourself!" Cyrus was as confused by that outburst as Gorion was, though the latter definitely didn't show it. "What will it take to get you to see reason? Why oh why do you insist on hanging onto your irrational attachment to that spawn! Or do you feel that you deserve the punishment? For your failure to protect your wife perhaps? Not once but twice! Is that what this is to you, penance? To bear the presence of the spawn of the one that raped your wife and whose sycophants killed her soon after!?"

Gorion turned to Ulraunt with a glare so livid and incandescent that the other man winced and actually looked regretful at his outburst. Gorion's visage was the same Cyrus had seen long ago, when those two knives were hanging above him, just before Gorion confirmed for himself that his wife's son was still alive and unharmed. "I trust…" the old sage said slowly, "that I do not have to point out just how untenably you erred with that outburst, Ulraunt." Cyrus stared at the sight of Gorion's frigid tone utterly murdering Ulraunt's self-righteousness with such finality that he did not need to look twice to know that their decades-old friendship, if it could really be called that anymore, had just been killed as collateral just as totally. "Though I suppose it is good to see you following Cyrus' example and being straightforward and honest with me. It will save us both the trouble of ever having to speak to each other again."

Seemingly unable or unwilling to have that man in his sight for a moment longer, Gorion glared at Ulraunt and turned to leave, ignoring the way the other man reddened from both embarrassment and outrage at being so closely likened to the singular target of his loathing.

But the keeper of the tomes was proud and would not be left without the last word. "That child will be the death of you, mark my words!" He pointed at Cyrus just as he disappeared into the inn's backroom and Gorion into the library. "He is unnatural!"

The vision dissipated, leaving Cyrus standing motionless on top of the still lethally-thin and balance-threatening railing amidst the whistling of unfaltering nightly sea breeze. The young dwarf didn't typically feel much of anything inside, but that vision did make him wonder why Ulraunt felt so very driven to throw Cyrus' unnaturalness in Gorion's face the way he did. Seemed to periodically do, if Gorion's initial remark was any indication. It wasn't like it was a secret that Cyrus was anything but normal. The only normal things about him were his stature and his hair color, honey brown like that of his mother as Gorion had fondly told him at one point, before the cat. And perhaps the fact that his inner organs were the same as every other dwarf's. Though that was strange to Cyrus himself, if not everyone else, considering how inefficient the setup was in several ways, as he'd noted for not-good-child-killer-woman, way back when.

Everything else was most assuredly not normal about him though. He was too steady, too quick, alternatively too focused and too scatter-minded, too quiet, too strange, too creepy even, depending on who was talking about him. "For a dwarf lad" needn't necessarily be tacked on the end of the description, though it certainly wasn't ever out of place. Even having only just started actual tutoring, Cyrus had spent enough time around Gorion, Hull, Winthrop and Reevor to know that he was developing too quickly, both physically and mentally. Far too quickly for a dwarf and even somewhat quicker than was normal for humans, if that was possible. He remembered things after hearing or reading them only once, took in everything in his line of sight instead of noticing only bits and pieces, picked up skills and recognized the habits of others with ease.

The only exceptions were his dreams. He never remembered his dreams, or even having dreams.

Which was probably for the best.

In contrast to all that, Gorion seemed positively ordinary what with his only claim to unusualness being that he'd been married to a dwarf.

The way Cyrus could read whole pages at a glance drew him a fair few odd looks from the other readers in the library as well, which was part of the reason why Gorion ordered him to keep his reading, all his reading, to when he was in private, at least until Tethoril managed to wring from him the agreement that he could act as a tutor as well. Soon followed by Parda. The two seemed fascinated by his memory and general ability to assimilate all sorts of information, especially regarding lore and culture. They also seemed to completely lack the contempt that Ulraunt felt for him. If they felt anything at all, it was delight.

Cyrus didn't reveal the reason for how his mind worked, since he'd never been asked. Young children weren't expected to actually know why and how they did most things, apparently. Which was strange in his opinion, though he supposed his answer to being asked would have been even stranger. How would he be able to explain that he assimilated information because it was necessary in order to gain the ability to kill with words? To strike and slay emotions in descending order of brightness until there was nothing left but bleak/dark/nothing –

Cyrus would have fallen off the railing if not for his unnatural ability to sense his own impending death. As it was, he gained a split-second forewarning so he wasn't startled into freefall when the spell of Sending sounded in his ears. "Cyrus! Where are you, child!?"

Gorion.

Distressed. Panicked.

At least insofar as Cyrus could tell from the voice, in absence of the nearby presence to shine true feelings right at him. "On the balcony."

Barely five minutes of quiet stargazing and Cyrus already could hear doors being flung open, running feet, Ulraunt's at once confused and outraged sleepy protests which Gorion ignored in his rush. Rush that came to a stumbling halt the moment the old sage barrelled through the balcony doors only to have his breath-shuddering relief at seeing Cyrus alive and in one piece devolve into mind-shattering terror at where and how he was standing on the banister. Teetering forward as if getting ready to leap off.

In point of fact, Cyrus did almost lose his balance when that maelstrom of feeling and impressions breached the range of his awareness. He was, ironically enough, grounded only by the familiar contempt/disdain/loathing pouring forth from Ulraunt, even if there was a fair bit of shock and blaring alarm mixed with it now, none of it for him.

"Child…" Gorion wheezed, one part from the sprint and five parts from fear. For him. "What are you doing up there?" He took a breath and thought better of approaching more than he already had. "How did you get up there?"

"I climbed out the window and scaled the walls," that was the answer to the question, right?

Silence.

"Why?" Gorion asked, with enough voiced confusion to keep his distressed, alarmed worry out of his tone.

"I wanted to know why the Tome Keeper wanted me dead harder than usual earlier." Cyrus didn't imagine the sharp gasp that his father gave, or the spike of ill feeling just inside the door. "Or why you seemed to be so much more surprised and conflicted by it than normal."

"Where… Child, where did you hear about that?" Gorion asked in a sickly voice.

"I didn't," Cyrus shrugged, looking up from the ground and towards the sky. A cloud had come between him and the moon, but that was okay. Dwarves could see in the dark. And even so, there was still plenty of starlight and the sky was quiet.

He liked the quiet. Gave him something to focus on other than his inner lack of quiet.

"How, then?" Gorion took another, cautious step forward. "Why do you think the tome keeper… that Ulraunt…"

"I always know when someone wants me dead." The Sea of Swords glimmered in spite of the lone cloud obstructing the moon. "Or anyone else dead, if they're close enough. Or if they've killed someone and how, or how they plan to kill someone or something, as long as they're within ten or so feet. More if the death is meant for me." A range that steadily grew as he did. There didn't seem to be any death for the sea though, just like the sky. At least none that he could inflict.

Not as he was at the moment.

"Always?" Gorion asked hoarsely. "What do you mean always? And anyone… And you… are you saying…"

Cyrus twisted his foot to spread his toes over the banister and turned around until he could lay his other foot back on it and re-secure himself. He only somewhat lost balance, but Gorion lunged forward with a cry anyway, though he didn't make it even half-way the rest of the distance. Ulraunt's balcony was fairly spacious. "Is it strange?" He asked his frozen father, whose face was covered in some raw emotion the boy wasn't sure he'd seen or even sensed in him before. "Someone's always wanted to kill me, since before I was even born. It's hardly something new or unusual." He gave his wide-eyed father an uncertain look, because this talk was starting to leave him confused as well. "I thought you knew…? You're the one who killed most of them."

"The one who…" Gorion repeated faintly. "Cyrus… what do you remember?"

The boy blinked. What kind of answer… "Everything?"

The white-haired man made a choked, sobbing noise and his eyes shone wetly even without the moon. "Child… what… what is your oldest memory?"

The boy wondered what that had to do with anything but answered anyway. "Darkness." He shrugged and wished he'd worn his shirt instead of just his pants. It was getting chilly. The sensation disappeared as soon as he thought about it. "Wet, warm, comforting darkness." He eyed the sky up above Candlekeep's bell tower. "It was quiet and peaceful then." For longer than even his two, precious, fleeting months. "Then I was hurled out and landed on something dry and coarse." He stretched his arms wide and cracked his neck. The clouds seemed to be moving on. "It wasn't pleasant." He lowered his eyes back down to meet his father's again. His father who was staring at him with confused dismay, horrified amazement, soul-crushing distress and everything in between. "I remember you were there though. And mother."

A strangled, grieved sound escaped the old man at that point and his arms were half-raised, reaching in either a plea or to ward off further truths. Or both. Cyrus frankly couldn't tell. "Then you also remember her… and her murder… the temple…"

"There was a woman who intended to kill me and a number of others." The boy shrugged. He seemed to be doing a lot of that. He looked at his father and the sickly glow of horror – on his behalf – that had dominated his self-light throughout that whole talk. "She wasn't very good at it." Cyrus couldn't help but feel he wanted that ugly shade utterly dead and gone, and whatever-he-was pointed out just the tool to accomplish that. "You were better." The nameless color twisted and shuddered under the choking grip of some other emotion and the boy decided he wasn't trying hard enough. "You still are."

Gorion flinched in place as if he'd been stabbed and the horror in him died as promised to Cyrus by whatever-he-was-inside, leaving behind only a heavy, choking, suffocating, viscous-colored corpse known as misery.

The small dwarf stared, unfeeling, as the new growth gradually blotted out everything else until his father was nothing but a constricted, choking mass of something Cyrus would only months later identify as self-loathing. He stared for a long time, because his father could find no words to express himself for that long a time, because there was nothing that could be expressed in mere words.

How very effective his killing blow was, Cyrus thought morbidly. Exceeded only by the collateral damage inflicted upon everything else his father felt. He hadn't even intended it that way, he just wanted that ugly hue to die and fade away so that all the other colours could shine through more clearly. Could warm him more deeply, since the only times he actually felt anything was when others were close enough for him to feel something of what they felt. His determined, diligent, stubbornly hopeful father chief among them. He'd put a name to most every feeling except love, so he'd reached the conclusion that he just couldn't feel that at all, even as experienced by others, though he thought he might at least know what it looked like. Now it seemed there was something else he couldn't feel, no matter how clearly he saw it. "There's something wrong with me, isn't there father?"

Gorion choked on a sob and brought up a hand to cover his mouth, and while he couldn't look away from his step-son he also couldn't find it in himself to say anything. The churning, pus-like misery boiled, then drained into a deep, dark vacuum that seemed to suck in all light, and Cyrus knew he was witnessing the deepest depths of despair for the first time.

He wanted it dead and gone more than he'd ever wanted anything, but for the first time ever whatever-he-was didn't have any solution to offer. All Cyrus could do then was stare into that abyss and wonder if the abyss would stare back.

It didn't.

Cyrus wasn't sure why he felt like that only confirmed that something was wrong with him, but it did.

The boy dropped from the banister and walked towards his father until he was within arm's distance. The man barely acknowledged the fact that he was no longer in mortal peril. "You know what it is."

Gorion took a shuddering breath, then another and scraped together whatever composure he could from the shreds that hadn't been swallowed by the dark pit behind his eyes. "Yes."

The boy allowed himself a moment to wonder whether or not he should demand to know but realized he didn't care one way or the other. "Will it get worse if I know?"

Gorion's hand dropped and his barely restrained breakdown made way for the beginnings of a soul-deep pain so cutting that even the despair inside him started to crack, not that the jagged colours looked any better. "I do not know, son. I don't know."

The young dwarf just nodded. "Do you think I should know?" He paused, seeing the pain of uncertainty tighten around his father's eyes as everything else threatened to pour out. "Do you want me to know?"

His father shook his head. "No… no, I do not."

Cyrus nodded again. What else was there to do? "There are people outside Candlekeep who want me dead." Gorion flinched again and his face crumpled further than it already was. Cyrus didn't think it was possible. "Far away. Too far away for me to tell distance, direction or anything else." He switched his eyes to look at Ulraunt, who'd just exited his quarters in his night robe and was staring at him in a way he hadn't before. "And at least one person from inside these walls wants the same." Nothing on the outside, but the Tome Keeper's emotions certainly were as bare to the boy's second sight as ever, though there seemed to be a lot less loathing and a lot more pensive disdain now, strangely.

But Cyrus didn't care about that or him any more than he cared about anything else, so he looked at his father again. "Would the world be better off with me dead?"

Gorion released a keening cry of anguish and sank to his knees, pulled his son into his arms and clung to him as his tears finally spilled out. "Stop… please, stop."

Even though he was wrapped in robes now and his face held against his father's chest, everything else kept its piercing, ethereal clarity. Emotions churning in synch with a trembling, aged heart. "So you're not sure of that either-"

"No!" Gorion held him tighter. "Stop… stop. Don't… d-don't say t-these things, you don't need to… there's not… you're a boy. A little boy! Of four. You're four. You're just a boy, why would you ask these things!? You don't… you're not… you're not… you're not…!"

Not what?

But Gorion didn't know what to really say, or even what he wanted to say. The little he managed to string together seemed to be as much to try and persuade Cyrus as it was to convince himself of whatever there wasn't to persuade himself of.

And Cyrus had actually just turned five but he had been told to stop speaking so he did. Kept silent for a long time as his weeping father held him. Clung to him while unaware and uncaring that the Tome Keeper watched the whole thing.

It was only much later, when Gorion's helpless grief and strength were both spent, that Ulraunt spoke up, startling the older man into twisting around and somehow also into silence at the same time.

"Before the beginning of strife
There came to the making of man
Time with a gift of tears,
Grief with a glass that ran,
Pleasure with pain for leaven,
Summer with flowers that fell,
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And Madness risen from hell,
Strength without hands to smite,
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And Life, the shadow of death."

Gorion clung to Cyrus throughout, as though trying to keep him hidden and shielded from the words that Ulraunt uttered. Words that Gorion recognized, though Cyrus had never heard them spoken before, not even by the Candlekeep chanters during their occasional recitals. Not even the day-long ones.

It was just the latest in a long list of failures, and no one was keeping track whose failures they were anymore.

What an odd way for the two men to interpret it, Cyrus thought to himself as Gorion stiffly pulled away and wiped his face clean of tears as best he could, though he kept a firm, immovable grip on his hand even after he climbed to stand once again.

But Ulraunt was still talking.

"Against winds of the north and the south
He stalked and prowled as unto strife;
He breathed upon his mouth,
He filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech he wrought
For the veils of the soul therein,
A time for labour and thought,
A time to serve and to sin."

That was when the boy was arrested by the way the pit of despair that had devoured everything worthwhile Gorion had ever felt suddenly shuddered and tightened. It remained, as powerful and all-reaching as before, but a steely light known as defiance shone all around it now, as the man at once cut off the other man. Retaliated with verse of his own.

"And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of the years,
And froth and drift of the sea;
And dust of the labouring earth;
And bodies of things to be
In the houses of death and of birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after
And death beneath and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a span
With travail and heavy sorrow,
The holy spirit of man."

Ulraunt opened his mouth but Gorion glared at him with… something coloured a brilliant, beautiful shade that Cyrus was unfamiliar with and had never seen in nature, but could feel regardless, even if just by proximity.

He thought it might be faith.

"They gave him light in his ways,
And love, and a space for delight,
And beauty and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night."

The two wizened men glared at each other with equal contempt, even if Ulraunt's wasn't all aimed at his now lost and unrecoverable friend. Or not even most of it, given what words he said next.

"His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth,
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap,
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep."

The certainty that that would be the end of the two men's exchange fell like a blanket of chilling snow over the three occupants of the Candlekeep balcony. Or perhaps the shivers came about due to the frigid staredown that the two monks had engaged in and didn't seem to have any inclination of backing out of.

Cyrus supposed he should use that time to puzzle out what that poetry (chant?) meant and how it referred to him, beyond what he'd already gleaned, but he didn't care about it enough to bother, the same as he didn't care about much of anything.

As always, he only ran on curiosity and whatever parts of it meshed with whatever-he-was. "You're a strange one," he told the Keeper of Tomes at Candlekeep.

Silence.

"Well?" Ulraunt sneered. "Spit it out boy!"

Gorion's grip on his hand tightened but Cyrus continued regardless. "You want me dead." He said it as easily and levelly as he generally said everything else. Why Ulraunt reacted so violently on the inside, with a mix of incredulity, outrage, spite and bullheaded conviction, Cyrus had no idea. He was only stating facts. "But at the same time you don't want to kill me."

Ulraunt still took it as a question or a challenge, as grownups seemed wont to. "Get back to me on that in a few years, if you somehow manage to live that long." He turned to leave. "Or, better, don't and learn the meaning of the word 'delegation' yourself, if that even has a place in your twisted worldview." He stopped in the entrance and looked back over his shoulder, first at Cyrus and then at Gorion. "You both can stay in Candlekeep for however long it takes. But mark my words, that child will be the death of you."

"He is already many things to me," Gorion said lowly, and that unnameable shade behind his words seemed to grow stronger, for a moment. "Death is not one of them."

That seemed to be the end of it, at least the part of… whatever that was that was consigned to the balcony.

After a while, Gorion led Cyrus back inside – the boy felt Ulraunt's burning gaze on his back all the way to the stairs – and back down to their floor.

The man tugged him back, though, when he made to break off and head for his own chambers. "You're…" Gorion took a deep breath and tried to speak less hoarsely. He didn't manage it. "You're sleeping with me tonight."

"Alright."

Something in Gorion's bereaved gaze only faltered further at his mechanical compliance, but the man didn't comment on it, nor did he say anything else by the time he'd prepared the bed and sat Cyrus on the edge of it.

Only then did he try to compose himself again, and when he failed he asked his son what he dreaded to ask anyway. "Son… what are you feeling right now?" There was something like longing in his voice but different. A faint, smudged, fading shade of the different. Unlike any other of the many times when his father asked that same question, right after he did something he'd never done before.

Even smothered, beaten nearly to death as the flicker of feeling was, Cyrus still thought it might be that elusive thing called hope.

The boy wondered if he'd know the right thing to say if he could actually feel the same way his father felt. Since he didn't, he only had the truth to give, as usual. "Nothing." The faith managed to endure, somehow, but the defiance sputtered out, leaving the black pit of despair to engulf everything again. It was almost enough to make the boy consider lying in the future, but his father had explicitly told him not to lie to him, ever, so he didn't and wouldn't.

Even when the result was his father's knees giving out.

Even when the result was a weeping, despairing man that always strove to do his best only to find out that his best might not be enough.

The black void of hopelessness swallowed every shred of faith Gorion had left, and Cyrus realized with startling clarity that it wasn't Gorion's faith in him that disappeared, but his faith in himself.

Unconsciously, despite the bleak/dark/nothing he had inside, despite that the only thing he felt at that moment – far from any sort of peace – was called apathy, his hand reached out.

Gorion embraced him with a wretched, soul-crushing sound, pulled him close and held him tight.

Held him and wept for half the night.

Cyrus stayed up for just as long, listening and feeling as his father mourned for his son, mourned his wife, mourned his life and mourned the last hope that had just died, never speaking a word even once. He'd lost all ability or will to even try. The boy waited to see if he'd at any point manage to feel anything that wasn't apathy or bleak/dark/nothing.

He didn't.

Yes. No peace for him this time either, unlike the last occasion when he'd been asked what he felt and answered with nothing.

It was near dawn that Gorion was finally out of tears, but even so he clung to Cyrus just as fiercely. Desperately. "I… I-I don't know what to do, son…" he whispered brokenly, more to himself than anyone else. "I don't know what to do for you."

It wasn't a question, but people were expected to speak up even when they weren't specifically asked something, weren't they? That was the impression he kept getting lately. "That's okay," he murmured in his father's night robe. He wondered if this latest truth would work out any better than the others. "I don't know what to do for me either."

It didn't.

Gorion first froze, unsure if his son really had just spoken, and when Cyrus continued the man started in place. A yellow flare of sharp fear burst out through the empty pit within, though it lasted but half a blink before the self-loathing emerged again, showing that it hadn't been left behind on the balcony after all. The man hadn't expected his son to still be awake. "Oh child…" he murmured tiredly.

But even still he didn't release his child. He held him while he got into bed, while he pulled the duvet over the both of them, and while he faintly murmured his last words before exhaustion claimed him. "I won't let him have you…" And Cyrus knew, without a shred of doubt, that it wasn't Ulraunt his father was talking about. "I won't let him have you."

Defiant steel and scarlet-coloured conviction breached and covered the surface of the black, then the man was asleep at last.

Yet of hope there was no more to be had.

Age 5 (and a half, and best you not be forgetting it!)

But months after, just when Father seemed on the verge of joining his son in being bleak/dark/nothing, hope returned.

It dropped into their lives from the back of a cart.

It barrelled into the quiet of the fortress library like an iridescent rainbow comet coloured the sound of merry laughter, a hurricane of light and chaos that didn't seek anyone out but swept all along its trail regardless. It made him watch and wait and watch some more as it jumped from Winthrop's supply wagon and barrelled onto and across the grounds, through monks and healers and guards and tutors. Hope was pink and silver sunlight that dodged guards wound up by sticky fingers. It was green-backlit wrinkled noses at Winthrop's long-suffering cajoling to 'sit still and learn your letters, young lady!' Hope ran, hid, jumped and ran some more each time the innkeeper tried to reel it in with chores after helping itself to things not of itself 'so it's time for some time out, ya little devil you!' Hope snuck from nook to nook through light and dark alike, it peered around corners whether or not it bothered to hide. It popped out from the most unlikely places, a shout in its throat and a grin on its lips even though it never managed to startle him or in any way sneak up on him even once.

Hope was bright and immaculate no matter that it came from squalor. It was vibrant and colourful despite not having mother or father. Hope talked and asked incessant questions all the time. It whirled and glimmered and hopped and dashed, never stopping and never tiring. And whether or not it achieved anything it set out to do, if it even bothered to try for anything at all, each following day the bright star rose and ran, laughed, peered, jumped and swept across the grounds all over again.

As he watched hope drift towards him from the bar across the main inn hall, Gorion's Ward felt that he could finally claim to know what his mother and father had hoped for him when they gave him the name they did.

Cyrus Anwar.

Far-Sighted Mind Most Luminous.

He was nothing of that, save perhaps the blind ashes of a sight never clear.

Hope was everything else.

"You stare." Hope was blunt, but her light reached him then and bathed him all throughout, and for the first time in his life he felt like he could understand and feel irony.

"Do I?" He shouldn't have cared one way or the other, but the bleak/dark/nothing was a different kind of nothing when there was so much light to fill and blot it out.

"Of course what you're doing's called staring!" Hope gasped in disbelief. "You live with your nose in books and you don't even know that?" The star she was inside didn't change in hue or texture at all when she spoke. It never did, whether or not she lied at all. "Well don't you be worrying none!" Hope proclaimed with a hand on her hip and a high-pointed finger, eyes seeing the sky despite the wood and second floor above. "This rudeness won't be lasting long, mark my words! For I've your measure now and I'm-"

"Magnificent."

Hope gaped and stared like he'd grown quite used to stare at her, but he was only speaking the truth as his father always expected him to do, whether or not he was there to see and gaze in bemused wonder like he was doing now from across the table.

But Hope was still there, speechlessly open-mouthed, so maybe he should be more clear. "You are magnificent."

The rainbow-like iridescence fluttered comically behind her silence, and Cyrus almost started at the notion of actually feeling something, let alone actual cheer.

Something besides morbid curiosity as to what the next step should be in the ever-evolving plan to bring an end to everything.

"Goodness!" Hope gasped dramatically, shifting to put her other hand on her hip and point with the other one. At him this time. "So you've heard of me after all!" She crowed triumphantly, heedless of the turned heads and looks of all sorts that her commotion was drawing from everywhere. "Yes, you've heard well! That's me alright! Imoen the Magnificent, and don't you forget it!"

Hope was life speckled with sameness and memories of little bodies of flesh and same-as-him-but-not-really-as-much-overall. But where his sameness was bleak/dark/nothing, hers may as well not have been there at all.

For all that they churned and rushed around and around the brilliant star she was inside, the specks and smokemist did nothing and were nothing because there was no room for shadow in her spirit.

Cyrus watched and knew the meaning and feel of fascination.