dnd: an appeal

[sword_logic]

A soft press of presence at the gates to the Shattered Keep draws his attention, and he almost ignores it – almost – but a strange flickering snap of threads out of place reveals the presence of much, much more magic than any Faithful or denizen of his should possess.

Cyric curls a wraithlike avatar out of the shadows that coat the Keep and dresses it in a face his visitor will recognize: pale but not pallid, handsomely sharp but not gaunt, attractively flecked with scars that precious few others would remember. A serviceable facsimile. She doesn't notice him slink up through her flickering shadow.

“To what,” Cyric purrs from over her shoulder, “do I owe the pleasure, my dear Lady?”

Mystra turns, much more sharply and with much less composure than normal. The winds that scream through Pandemonium ruffle nary a perfect, void-black strand of her hair, and somehow that’s the biggest insult of all.

Cyric rakes sharp eyes over her avatar – so similar, like his, to the woman he used to know; funny, how they do this to each other – and he picks out the tense press of warp and weft against her skin, the sallow blueish tinge of her cheeks, her tired eyes, and gifts her a knifelike smile.

She’s silent. Cyric waits patiently. Let her squirm under the pressure of whatever it is that’s brought her to his gates.

He spreads his consciousness out in the meantime, pushing divinity through all the careful hooks he’s sunk into the world: a sliver somewhere north of Arabel laps up a murmured prayer from a ruthless cleric, bathing in his long shadow; a Faithful aasimar dies with his name on her lips and a Harper’s sword rearranging her bowels; a section of the Keep flickers and changes on a distant whim, stones turning to translucent glass.

“I come to you, Patron of Murder,” Mystra says finally says, voice thrumming even above the shrieking wind, “because I need someone to die.”

Cyric laughs. It feels like knives in his throat.

“Back to the old Mystra, then?” he jeers. “Looking for any possible way to get your dirty work done, Balance or no?”

Mystra’s eyes are tight, and the lightning in them flickers with something a little strange, a little hollow.

"I have not forgotten my place," she says firmly, almost like she’s reassuring herself, and then, entirely at odds with her bearing, she lays a gentle hand on the side of his face.

Fire rips along the threads that link all the thousands of avatars he has lurking throughout the realms, and with a wash of pain unlike anything he has ever felt, he finds himself deliriously present in every place his domain touches: draped across the back of his cleric, breathing in his Faithful’s final exhale, splintering along each changing fragment of his Keep.

“You—” Her touch burns more and more the longer she rests her hand against his cheek. He curls a hand over her wrist in warning, and it feels like shards of glass drive through his skin. “What have you done to me?”

“Listen,” Mystra says, lowering her voice, and with a ripple of her magic the winds still around them. “Cyric, someone needs to die. Will you do it?”

Mystra is nearly blinding like this, so radiant it’s sickening. Blue-white fire leaks past the blurry edges of her avatar in uneven, oozing prominences, like she can’t contain it. Like something is—

“What’s wrong with you?” he snarls. Her hand is incendiary against his skin. She still hasn’t let go; his consciousnesses are still forcibly knit together with her burning threads. It’s more excruciating than anything he has ever felt.

She smiles sadly. It’s a smile he recognizes. Anger and something else, both bright and sharp-edged, flash through him at the realization that he still remembers these things.

Mystra says, “I need you to kill me.”

Cyric laughs, and laughs, and laughs. Mystra’s hand slips down to rest on the side of his neck as he tips his head back to howl with mirthless irony, and it feels like her touch sears him straight down to the bone.

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i might do something more with this later! for now, i just wanted to post something and feel accomplished about it. i have many thoughts about cyric, mystra, shar, and the spellplague. (obviously.)