Well, this was it.
Cyrus had always supposed he'd be one of those people who faced the possibility of death as an intellectual curiosity and little more. He'd learned to cultivate a certain detachment from it—everyone who fought battles like the Inquisition's on a regular basis had to. But his had been even older than that, shaped into him in part because he'd seldom valued anything so much as to fear losing it. Certainly not his life.
But now—now his hands were trembling where he pressed them into the fabric of his tunic, down at his legs to try and hide the fact. From his audience, from himself—it wasn't clear. And the trembling moved up into his chest, settling there as a constriction, a tightness that wouldn't let his breath move quite the way it usually did, wouldn't let up on his heart. He tried not to let the fear manifest in any obvious way, but no doubt they could see it regardless. Or just read it off the stiff way he held himself, loose-limbed ease chased away by a foreign rigidity.
Whatever happened today... it was already done, really. He just had to gather the courage to face it. To face himself, in a mirror he'd not be able to look away from.
Wetting his lips with his tongue, he took a deep breath, pushing past the ache in his lungs and facing the assembled. Harellan would be doing most of the magic, and he already knew what it involved, but he'd suggested the presence of two others improved their chances of holding the spell steady, so Cyrus had asked Stellulam and Astraia to help him. Few of the Inquisition's other mages had the balance of power and control required between them, and honestly he wouldn't have felt comfortable asking any of them for something so... personal.
He didn't even really feel comfortable asking the two of them, exactly, but he had. Leon was there because a Seeker was necessary. He was probably the one person who'd be in the room who could directly guide the spirit once it was found without risking drawing it to himself instead of its intended target. He was also here for one very important secondary purpose, something Cyrus would have to ask him about in a moment.
For now, though... “I don't foresee any complications with your part of the process." He said this to all of them, but looked at Astraia in particular when he did. He knew she wasn't confident in her control yet, but he wasn't worried about it, and he thought it might help her to know that. “Mostly it will only be following Harellan's instructions. Stellulam's Anchor will help destabilize the Veil, and then the two of you will need to hold open the tear long enough to draw the spirit through. Harellan and Leon will see to that." He wasn't particularly worried about that part either.
All of it had been done successfully by generation upon generation of Seekers, after all. The only difference between those times and this one was him. And that was where it all had the potential to fall apart. Catastrophically enough that he'd insisted on carrying the whole thing out rather far from Skyhold, in the small cavern usually used for Astraia's training. It would fence him in if the worst occurred, giving them an opportunity to do what must be done.
Astraia was obviously nervous, and obviously trying to hide it. Deception wasn't her strong suit. That said, she'd said she still felt nervous when using her magic to heal people, and that skill came most naturally to her. She'd been practicing her role with Stellulam as much as she could. It wasn't like they could destabilize the Veil on a daily basis and be safe about it, but there were other ways to practice.
She nodded to indicate her own readiness, choosing to keep herself silenced for the moment.
Stellulam was a bit more demonstrative, not unexpectedly, of course. Stepping up to him, she arched both brows and placed her bare hands at either side of his face. "And then you'll meet whatever spirit comes through the Veil, and you will be fine," she said, her tone a low murmur. The reassurance was meant only for him, even if perhaps it carried just enough for the others to hear. "I believe in you, Cyrus. We all do, or we wouldn't be here." With a last soft smile, she dropped her hands and stepped back, nodding to Astraia so they could go prepare for their part of the task alongside where Harellan was already preparing.
That left him momentarily alone with Leon, whose health was continuing to improve after his own brush with death. His arms were crossed loosely over his chest, and he tilted his head at Cyrus with a certain sense of knowing to him. "Something on your mind?" he asked. His tone suggested that the question was a formality—he knew there was, and what he really wanted to know was what.
It wasn't exactly an easy request to make, and it would probably be more difficult to agree to. But Cyrus needed the guarantee, and there was no one else here he was comfortable asking it from. He didn't trust Harellan enough. Didn't know Astraia well enough, and Stellulam... he just couldn't put this on her shoulders. “I've not... been a mage for a while now." He swallowed, the cartilage in his throat working. “But I suspect that if I am possessed, it will be because that's no longer true. If that happens..."
Mages were all taught the danger of possession. Even in Tevinter, where deals with demons were not so frowned upon as in other parts of the world. But none were taught the lesson more harshly than somniari, because of the damage they could do if they dropped their guards for even a moment. “If it even looks like it's happening—I need you to promise you'll kill me. If you hesitate even a moment, it might be enough to—" He couldn't finish the thought, but he trusted that Leon was smart enough to figure it out.
“You're the only person I can ask for this. Please."
Leon looked immediately like he'd swallowed something sour; a line appeared above his nose and he grimaced tightly. "That's..." he seemed about to protest, but then lapsed into silence, studying Cyrus intently for a moment. Several heartbeats later, he sighed. "I doubt very much that any such thing will be necessary, but if it will reassure you to know, then yes. If the worst happens, I promise you I won't let you hurt anyone." He didn't say the words, but the tone of the proclamation left no doubt: if what that took was ending Cyrus's life, the commander would do it.
It did reassure him to know. Not only that Leon would in fact do it, but that there was someone he could rely on for this. It wasn't the kind of burden that just any friend or family member could bear. Wasn't one that most of them should bear. But maybe more necessary than Cyrus would have thought before. “Thank you."
There wasn't time to say much more; by design Cyrus had made sure all of the preparations were taken care of in advance of the event itself. All the less time to be in this limbo state, between where he'd been this morning and that indeterminate future. The one where he was more—or nothing at all.
Harellan stood, indicating that the preparations were complete, and Cyrus let out a breath he hadn't quite realized he was holding, crossing to where the other three were and dropping into a crosslegged position. Leon remembered little of what had happened to him when he'd been through this, and Cyrus had a sneaking suspicion that this was because it involved falling unconscious at some point, something he'd much prefer to take sitting down, so to speak. “Let's get this over with, then."
He couldn't stand the waiting much longer either way.
His uncle didn't seem to lack for confidence that this would go well. Of everyone Cyrus had consulted on the matter, he in fact seemed to be the most strongly in favor of attempting it, though it was hard to imagine why he cared so much about this. Not that it mattered now. As soon as Cyrus settled in his spot and met eyes with him, Harellan nodded, withdrawing a short blade from his belt and laying it across his wrist. The blade flashed; a thin line of blood trickled onto the runes Harellan had drawn into the snow.
He couldn't feel the Veil grow thinner—that sensitivity had waned to nothing when his magic had. But it wasn't hard to imagine what it would feel like if he could, and soon there was a visual cue as well: a patch of air roughly the side of Skyhold's main entrance began to shimmer like they were under the desert sun, warping and distorting his perception of what lay beyond. The tear was unstable, and Harellan turned to Stellulam and Astraia. "Go ahead—try to hold it at this size."
An echoing crack signaled Stellulam's use of her mark, and the edges of the distortion took on the same sickly green light as a rift, save that it was a little cleaner, bereft of the traces of murky black that always drifted in those. She physically held her hands toward the tear, face pulled into a grim cast of effort.
Astraia took up a balanced stance, her staff held firmly in both hands. Magic energy flowed from the end of it in waves. It was directed at stabilizing and helping keep open the tear that Stellulam and Harellan were forcing, and for the moment was more than adequate.
When the tear was comfortably stable, Leon stepped towards it, a thin haze of light limning his body. He stared directly into the distortion, which now shifted and occasionally imparted glimpses of the fade beyond, the world overlaying the world. For what seemed like interminable minutes, he simply stared hard into the distortion, as though searching for something that could not be seen. But he must have found it, because he stepped back and to the side a moment later, leaving nothing between the tear and Cyrus himself but a few feet of empty space.
It didn't take long for Cyrus to understand why. Almost as soon as Leon had stepped back, something followed him out. He had the vague impression of a blue-purple light, and a humanoid shape, and then a hand reaching towards him. The light filled his vision, whiting out the field of his perception so abruptly it was painful. For a moment, it felt as though someone had cleaved into his skull with an axe, and then all was blissfully quiet, his consciousness gone before his body had even fallen backwards onto the ground.
Cyrus cracked his eyes open, and found himself somewhere completely different.
The smell hit him first, the familiar bouquet that belonged to nearly every place that had ever become his, however temporary: the thick scent of parchment mingled with the sharper note of ink, cedar and wood varnish, the pungent blend of dried alchemical reagents, and fresh air, filtering in from somewhere. It was hard to say where, for the room he stood in was quite the grand library, shelves ordered neatly and extending almost all the way to the vaulted ceiling. It reminded him of what he imagined the Shattered Library would have been, were it still whole, though he lacked the image to compare it to. He'd not been able to dream in Arlathan, after all.
Shafts of light pierced the space, lighting up the dust motes in the air and painting the entire chamber in a mellow golden color that suggested sunset, though he had the sense that the time of day could just as easily have been sunrise, and that it didn't matter anyway.
Curious, he peered at the nearest shelf, unsurprised to find the titles familiar, and traced his fingers along the spines as he started forward, his footsteps noiseless against the plush carpet runner on the floor. Indigo, with silver accents. Something about the scent was still bothering him—there was something additional to it, but he couldn't place what it was. Couldn't even decide what type of thing it might be.
At the end of the stack, he came to a familiar-looking desk, papers strewn across the surface in just the way he was wont to do in the middle of a project. Cyrus smoothed his fingertips over a bent corner, sliding into the chair at the desk as though it were the most natural, habitual thing in the world. He tilted his head down at the handwriting, blinking a few times to be sure of what he saw. Some of it was his, but... slightly different somehow. A little neater, a little less haphazard. Like he'd made the notes for someone else to read as well. Other pages were in a different hand entirely, and his own had made notes in the margins. An active conversation, then. Debate, even. Who...?
As if summoned by the mere thought of someone else, a pair of hands came to rest on his shoulders, before the person to whom they belonged leaned forward and down, sliding their fingers over his chest and settling their chin on his shoulder. He stiffened a moment, but found himself relaxing again almost immediately. The fingers of his right hand twitched; he felt the sudden desire to... card them through someone's hair. It felt—
"I thought I might find you up here." He could hear the words, but as with the scent, he could not recognize any characteristics of the tone of them. Not even as little as the gender of the speaker. "The others are waiting for you, you know."
Cyrus shifted his head, peering over and down at the same time, but just as he suspected, he looked at the person without seeing them. Or saw them without noticing them. No details presented themselves to his mind, even at the same time as he was nearly overrun by a strange sentiment. A quietude, one that sat in his chest with unfamiliar ease. “What others?" He took one of their hands in his own. Smaller, he thought, but he couldn't focus enough to tell by how much. The will to do it kept slipping away, like water, sliding back into the warm pool of contentment right at the center of him.
They smiled at him, and the one thing that came through clearly was the feeling in it. A feeling he'd seen in others before, but never directed at himself. "All of them, of course. Our friends and family. Your students. They're waiting for you downstairs. Well. Waiting for us, now."
He almost wanted to ask why 'they' were all waiting for him, but he knew there was no answer. His aspirations were too vague of late. His brows furrowed, and he forced himself to concentrate. The scene shimmered, and he grimaced. “Please. Stop."
The figure wavered, too, and then they were a soft blue, still no more determinately anything else. The spirit took a step away, releasing him from its hold. "Why?" It sounded genuinely puzzled. Spirits were simple in certain ways. "Is this not what you want?"
Abandoning the chair, Cyrus stood. Understanding exactly what he was looking at made the traces of the fade all the more obvious. The sunshine was weaker now, greyed out and indistinct, and the smell had faded to something more like a memory. Or a wish. “Not like this." Not with a faceless spirit-puppet in one role and an incomplete version of himself in the other.
"It's so strong." The spirit apparently took his reason at face value, for it did not argue. Its features were still blurry, shifting every time he looked back at it. Sometimes it wore his sister's face for the blink of an eye, or the face of one of his friends, but never well. As though none of the guises were quite the one it wanted. "But it's very vague, isn't it?"
Cyrus dropped his eyes, biting his tongue. “It's what's left, I suppose." The strongest thing left, or at least the most corruptible one. He'd let go of his bitterness and his resentment as well as he could, and he could recognize that the traces of them were weaker in him than they used to be. There were plenty of other negative things still to be found, if it went digging: suspicion, loneliness, lingering despair. But this—this he wanted. And he wasn't sure what kind of want it was.
"It's lovely," the spirit assured him. Now that it no longer wore the guise of part of the dream, much of the warmth in its expression was gone, but not all of it. "Not easy to get, though. Not for you."
“And that's why it's you and not someone else."
The spirit inclined its head. "No one needs me for the easy things." It stepped forward, reaching a hand up to touch his brow. "And I think you're going to need all the help you can get."
He felt himself leaving the fade in a much gentler way than he'd entered it, like a slow succumb to sleep rather than an abrupt loss of consciousness. When Cyrus next opened his eyes, it was to find Harellan looking down at him, though he could sense the others nearby.
"I do believe it worked." The elf observed this with poorly-contained interest. "Try giving us a light, perhaps?"
Cyrus grunted, pushing himself into a seated position. He could probably make a remark about rushing here, but the truth was the words had jolted him like a bolt of lightning, and he wanted desperately to know whether his uncle was right.
The spell was old to his hands and his mind, and with nothing more than the barest whisper of thought, a melon-sized sphere of light erupted from his palm, streaking up towards the stone-rimmed circle of sky overhead. Grinning for what felt like the first time in years, Cyrus closed his fist over, and the orb exploded, showering the clearing in harmless sparks. Apparently control was going to take a bit more practice yet. He couldn't bring himself to care.
It was back.
He was whole again.
Cyrus had always supposed he'd be one of those people who faced the possibility of death as an intellectual curiosity and little more. He'd learned to cultivate a certain detachment from it—everyone who fought battles like the Inquisition's on a regular basis had to. But his had been even older than that, shaped into him in part because he'd seldom valued anything so much as to fear losing it. Certainly not his life.
But now—now his hands were trembling where he pressed them into the fabric of his tunic, down at his legs to try and hide the fact. From his audience, from himself—it wasn't clear. And the trembling moved up into his chest, settling there as a constriction, a tightness that wouldn't let his breath move quite the way it usually did, wouldn't let up on his heart. He tried not to let the fear manifest in any obvious way, but no doubt they could see it regardless. Or just read it off the stiff way he held himself, loose-limbed ease chased away by a foreign rigidity.
Whatever happened today... it was already done, really. He just had to gather the courage to face it. To face himself, in a mirror he'd not be able to look away from.
Wetting his lips with his tongue, he took a deep breath, pushing past the ache in his lungs and facing the assembled. Harellan would be doing most of the magic, and he already knew what it involved, but he'd suggested the presence of two others improved their chances of holding the spell steady, so Cyrus had asked Stellulam and Astraia to help him. Few of the Inquisition's other mages had the balance of power and control required between them, and honestly he wouldn't have felt comfortable asking any of them for something so... personal.
He didn't even really feel comfortable asking the two of them, exactly, but he had. Leon was there because a Seeker was necessary. He was probably the one person who'd be in the room who could directly guide the spirit once it was found without risking drawing it to himself instead of its intended target. He was also here for one very important secondary purpose, something Cyrus would have to ask him about in a moment.
For now, though... “I don't foresee any complications with your part of the process." He said this to all of them, but looked at Astraia in particular when he did. He knew she wasn't confident in her control yet, but he wasn't worried about it, and he thought it might help her to know that. “Mostly it will only be following Harellan's instructions. Stellulam's Anchor will help destabilize the Veil, and then the two of you will need to hold open the tear long enough to draw the spirit through. Harellan and Leon will see to that." He wasn't particularly worried about that part either.
All of it had been done successfully by generation upon generation of Seekers, after all. The only difference between those times and this one was him. And that was where it all had the potential to fall apart. Catastrophically enough that he'd insisted on carrying the whole thing out rather far from Skyhold, in the small cavern usually used for Astraia's training. It would fence him in if the worst occurred, giving them an opportunity to do what must be done.
Astraia was obviously nervous, and obviously trying to hide it. Deception wasn't her strong suit. That said, she'd said she still felt nervous when using her magic to heal people, and that skill came most naturally to her. She'd been practicing her role with Stellulam as much as she could. It wasn't like they could destabilize the Veil on a daily basis and be safe about it, but there were other ways to practice.
She nodded to indicate her own readiness, choosing to keep herself silenced for the moment.
Stellulam was a bit more demonstrative, not unexpectedly, of course. Stepping up to him, she arched both brows and placed her bare hands at either side of his face. "And then you'll meet whatever spirit comes through the Veil, and you will be fine," she said, her tone a low murmur. The reassurance was meant only for him, even if perhaps it carried just enough for the others to hear. "I believe in you, Cyrus. We all do, or we wouldn't be here." With a last soft smile, she dropped her hands and stepped back, nodding to Astraia so they could go prepare for their part of the task alongside where Harellan was already preparing.
That left him momentarily alone with Leon, whose health was continuing to improve after his own brush with death. His arms were crossed loosely over his chest, and he tilted his head at Cyrus with a certain sense of knowing to him. "Something on your mind?" he asked. His tone suggested that the question was a formality—he knew there was, and what he really wanted to know was what.
It wasn't exactly an easy request to make, and it would probably be more difficult to agree to. But Cyrus needed the guarantee, and there was no one else here he was comfortable asking it from. He didn't trust Harellan enough. Didn't know Astraia well enough, and Stellulam... he just couldn't put this on her shoulders. “I've not... been a mage for a while now." He swallowed, the cartilage in his throat working. “But I suspect that if I am possessed, it will be because that's no longer true. If that happens..."
Mages were all taught the danger of possession. Even in Tevinter, where deals with demons were not so frowned upon as in other parts of the world. But none were taught the lesson more harshly than somniari, because of the damage they could do if they dropped their guards for even a moment. “If it even looks like it's happening—I need you to promise you'll kill me. If you hesitate even a moment, it might be enough to—" He couldn't finish the thought, but he trusted that Leon was smart enough to figure it out.
“You're the only person I can ask for this. Please."
Leon looked immediately like he'd swallowed something sour; a line appeared above his nose and he grimaced tightly. "That's..." he seemed about to protest, but then lapsed into silence, studying Cyrus intently for a moment. Several heartbeats later, he sighed. "I doubt very much that any such thing will be necessary, but if it will reassure you to know, then yes. If the worst happens, I promise you I won't let you hurt anyone." He didn't say the words, but the tone of the proclamation left no doubt: if what that took was ending Cyrus's life, the commander would do it.
It did reassure him to know. Not only that Leon would in fact do it, but that there was someone he could rely on for this. It wasn't the kind of burden that just any friend or family member could bear. Wasn't one that most of them should bear. But maybe more necessary than Cyrus would have thought before. “Thank you."
There wasn't time to say much more; by design Cyrus had made sure all of the preparations were taken care of in advance of the event itself. All the less time to be in this limbo state, between where he'd been this morning and that indeterminate future. The one where he was more—or nothing at all.
Harellan stood, indicating that the preparations were complete, and Cyrus let out a breath he hadn't quite realized he was holding, crossing to where the other three were and dropping into a crosslegged position. Leon remembered little of what had happened to him when he'd been through this, and Cyrus had a sneaking suspicion that this was because it involved falling unconscious at some point, something he'd much prefer to take sitting down, so to speak. “Let's get this over with, then."
He couldn't stand the waiting much longer either way.
His uncle didn't seem to lack for confidence that this would go well. Of everyone Cyrus had consulted on the matter, he in fact seemed to be the most strongly in favor of attempting it, though it was hard to imagine why he cared so much about this. Not that it mattered now. As soon as Cyrus settled in his spot and met eyes with him, Harellan nodded, withdrawing a short blade from his belt and laying it across his wrist. The blade flashed; a thin line of blood trickled onto the runes Harellan had drawn into the snow.
He couldn't feel the Veil grow thinner—that sensitivity had waned to nothing when his magic had. But it wasn't hard to imagine what it would feel like if he could, and soon there was a visual cue as well: a patch of air roughly the side of Skyhold's main entrance began to shimmer like they were under the desert sun, warping and distorting his perception of what lay beyond. The tear was unstable, and Harellan turned to Stellulam and Astraia. "Go ahead—try to hold it at this size."
An echoing crack signaled Stellulam's use of her mark, and the edges of the distortion took on the same sickly green light as a rift, save that it was a little cleaner, bereft of the traces of murky black that always drifted in those. She physically held her hands toward the tear, face pulled into a grim cast of effort.
Astraia took up a balanced stance, her staff held firmly in both hands. Magic energy flowed from the end of it in waves. It was directed at stabilizing and helping keep open the tear that Stellulam and Harellan were forcing, and for the moment was more than adequate.
When the tear was comfortably stable, Leon stepped towards it, a thin haze of light limning his body. He stared directly into the distortion, which now shifted and occasionally imparted glimpses of the fade beyond, the world overlaying the world. For what seemed like interminable minutes, he simply stared hard into the distortion, as though searching for something that could not be seen. But he must have found it, because he stepped back and to the side a moment later, leaving nothing between the tear and Cyrus himself but a few feet of empty space.
It didn't take long for Cyrus to understand why. Almost as soon as Leon had stepped back, something followed him out. He had the vague impression of a blue-purple light, and a humanoid shape, and then a hand reaching towards him. The light filled his vision, whiting out the field of his perception so abruptly it was painful. For a moment, it felt as though someone had cleaved into his skull with an axe, and then all was blissfully quiet, his consciousness gone before his body had even fallen backwards onto the ground.
Cyrus cracked his eyes open, and found himself somewhere completely different.
The smell hit him first, the familiar bouquet that belonged to nearly every place that had ever become his, however temporary: the thick scent of parchment mingled with the sharper note of ink, cedar and wood varnish, the pungent blend of dried alchemical reagents, and fresh air, filtering in from somewhere. It was hard to say where, for the room he stood in was quite the grand library, shelves ordered neatly and extending almost all the way to the vaulted ceiling. It reminded him of what he imagined the Shattered Library would have been, were it still whole, though he lacked the image to compare it to. He'd not been able to dream in Arlathan, after all.
Shafts of light pierced the space, lighting up the dust motes in the air and painting the entire chamber in a mellow golden color that suggested sunset, though he had the sense that the time of day could just as easily have been sunrise, and that it didn't matter anyway.
Curious, he peered at the nearest shelf, unsurprised to find the titles familiar, and traced his fingers along the spines as he started forward, his footsteps noiseless against the plush carpet runner on the floor. Indigo, with silver accents. Something about the scent was still bothering him—there was something additional to it, but he couldn't place what it was. Couldn't even decide what type of thing it might be.
At the end of the stack, he came to a familiar-looking desk, papers strewn across the surface in just the way he was wont to do in the middle of a project. Cyrus smoothed his fingertips over a bent corner, sliding into the chair at the desk as though it were the most natural, habitual thing in the world. He tilted his head down at the handwriting, blinking a few times to be sure of what he saw. Some of it was his, but... slightly different somehow. A little neater, a little less haphazard. Like he'd made the notes for someone else to read as well. Other pages were in a different hand entirely, and his own had made notes in the margins. An active conversation, then. Debate, even. Who...?
As if summoned by the mere thought of someone else, a pair of hands came to rest on his shoulders, before the person to whom they belonged leaned forward and down, sliding their fingers over his chest and settling their chin on his shoulder. He stiffened a moment, but found himself relaxing again almost immediately. The fingers of his right hand twitched; he felt the sudden desire to... card them through someone's hair. It felt—
"I thought I might find you up here." He could hear the words, but as with the scent, he could not recognize any characteristics of the tone of them. Not even as little as the gender of the speaker. "The others are waiting for you, you know."
Cyrus shifted his head, peering over and down at the same time, but just as he suspected, he looked at the person without seeing them. Or saw them without noticing them. No details presented themselves to his mind, even at the same time as he was nearly overrun by a strange sentiment. A quietude, one that sat in his chest with unfamiliar ease. “What others?" He took one of their hands in his own. Smaller, he thought, but he couldn't focus enough to tell by how much. The will to do it kept slipping away, like water, sliding back into the warm pool of contentment right at the center of him.
They smiled at him, and the one thing that came through clearly was the feeling in it. A feeling he'd seen in others before, but never directed at himself. "All of them, of course. Our friends and family. Your students. They're waiting for you downstairs. Well. Waiting for us, now."
He almost wanted to ask why 'they' were all waiting for him, but he knew there was no answer. His aspirations were too vague of late. His brows furrowed, and he forced himself to concentrate. The scene shimmered, and he grimaced. “Please. Stop."
The figure wavered, too, and then they were a soft blue, still no more determinately anything else. The spirit took a step away, releasing him from its hold. "Why?" It sounded genuinely puzzled. Spirits were simple in certain ways. "Is this not what you want?"
Abandoning the chair, Cyrus stood. Understanding exactly what he was looking at made the traces of the fade all the more obvious. The sunshine was weaker now, greyed out and indistinct, and the smell had faded to something more like a memory. Or a wish. “Not like this." Not with a faceless spirit-puppet in one role and an incomplete version of himself in the other.
"It's so strong." The spirit apparently took his reason at face value, for it did not argue. Its features were still blurry, shifting every time he looked back at it. Sometimes it wore his sister's face for the blink of an eye, or the face of one of his friends, but never well. As though none of the guises were quite the one it wanted. "But it's very vague, isn't it?"
Cyrus dropped his eyes, biting his tongue. “It's what's left, I suppose." The strongest thing left, or at least the most corruptible one. He'd let go of his bitterness and his resentment as well as he could, and he could recognize that the traces of them were weaker in him than they used to be. There were plenty of other negative things still to be found, if it went digging: suspicion, loneliness, lingering despair. But this—this he wanted. And he wasn't sure what kind of want it was.
"It's lovely," the spirit assured him. Now that it no longer wore the guise of part of the dream, much of the warmth in its expression was gone, but not all of it. "Not easy to get, though. Not for you."
“And that's why it's you and not someone else."
The spirit inclined its head. "No one needs me for the easy things." It stepped forward, reaching a hand up to touch his brow. "And I think you're going to need all the help you can get."
He felt himself leaving the fade in a much gentler way than he'd entered it, like a slow succumb to sleep rather than an abrupt loss of consciousness. When Cyrus next opened his eyes, it was to find Harellan looking down at him, though he could sense the others nearby.
"I do believe it worked." The elf observed this with poorly-contained interest. "Try giving us a light, perhaps?"
Cyrus grunted, pushing himself into a seated position. He could probably make a remark about rushing here, but the truth was the words had jolted him like a bolt of lightning, and he wanted desperately to know whether his uncle was right.
The spell was old to his hands and his mind, and with nothing more than the barest whisper of thought, a melon-sized sphere of light erupted from his palm, streaking up towards the stone-rimmed circle of sky overhead. Grinning for what felt like the first time in years, Cyrus closed his fist over, and the orb exploded, showering the clearing in harmless sparks. Apparently control was going to take a bit more practice yet. He couldn't bring himself to care.
It was back.
He was whole again.