The flames were still rising when he got there.
He should have realised what Warlic was going to do earlier. He'd known him long enough, knew him well enough, that he should have seen the signs. But he hadn't and now...
...now he was watching the tent burn.
Something felt like it broke as he watched the flames grow higher. At the end of the day, it wasn't like this should cut off his communication with Warlic. They were roommates after all, and it wasn't like Warlic's tent was the way that he got home. There was the whole 'line across the tower' issue but there were ways to bypass that.
This shouldn't cut off the Blue Mage from him but... but it did. Because this was a clear and blatant sign that Warlic didn't want anyone trying to communicate with him, didn't want anyone even seeing him, let along talking with him.
Warlic was severing every tie he had with the world outside of his tower, and he was doing it with flame.
That hurt. It hurt a lot.
He could help. He knew that he could. He might not necessarily know exactly what Warlic was going through but he knew enough. He knew magic, knew unpredictable magic, knew how to control unpredictable magic as much as it could be controlled.
But Warlic didn't want his help. Warlic hadn't even wanted to come and say goodbye before completely shutting himself away from the world.
There was a crack among the crackling and something collapsed. Something half-bounced, half-rolled out of the burning wreckage of the tent, coming to rest not far from his feet and still glowing hot. It was the golden globe that had always been there at the top of Warlic's tent, the rings that circled it now somewhat warped and dented.
He crouched down and picked it up, the metal warm but not scalding against his hands. It had always reminded him of Zargon, really, the orb with its circling rings. They surrounded it the exact same way that the rings had surrounded the long ago planet. He had always wondered if the design on it was a sign of some surviving pre-reset memories shining through.
He lifted his head and watched the flames, fingers curled around the metal. Eventually, after a long, long while, the flames dropped to a smoulder and then died.
The tent, and thus both Warlic's metaphorical and literal connections to the outside world, was nothing more than a charred mess.
"And so, you leave me alone again..." he whispered to the empty night air, eyes dropping to the orb in his hands again. Warlic was probably the only being on this planet that properly understood him – now more than ever, with the burden of the unstable magic from the merge on his back.
First, he'd left him alone after the Reset, through no fault of his own really. None of them had known that he would keep his memories. Warlic wasn't the only one who'd left him that day.
And then the ice. Jaania's ice. That had kind of sort of been Warlic's fault, maybe, but it hadn't been his choice.
But now? Now was completely and utterly Warlic's choice. And he had left. Left him alone. Again. Through his own thoughts and actions and knowledge, he had left him alone.
His shoulders shook and he didn't know if it was anger or betrayal or sadness. Maybe a mix of the three. The shaking travelled from his shoulders to his arms to his hands. His grip on the globe shuddered.
Thud.
The golden metal had slipped from his grasp and hit the ground. He looked down at it and started to take an unsteady step backwards.
Then another.
Then another.
Warlic wanted to lock himself up and not have any help? Wanted to work through this all on his own and turn his back to everyone and everything while he struggled through it?
Fine.
Fine.
Cysero could turn his back as well.
He turned around and the next step wasn't backwards but forwards. And then it wasn't unsteady, and it wasn't a step.
Then he was running. Running as fast and as hard as he could away from the tent and back towards Falconreach. Away from the wreckage of the tent and a stinging, sinking sense of betrayal.
A friend of mine drew angsty fanart about Warlic cutting himself off from the outside world and I responded by writing an angsty story about Cysero reacting to Warlic cutting himself off from the outside world.