The Summoner's Companion Chapter 5

Dark.

Light, voices, pain.

Dark.

Too bright, too loud, pain.

Dark.

Dim, amber light, the sunset through a window. Someone's crying. Numb.

Dark.

Tavros fell in and out of consciousness. Life was snapshots of people standing over him or otherwise bare ceilings, and empty darkness full of the fear of what had happened to him.

The first time he came too for more than a moment, he was lying in a bed in a room he didn't recognize. There was a chair near the bed, and Aradia was curled up in it asleep. He made a noise. It was supposed to be words but it was just a rasping sound. Aradia woke anyway, sat up immediately in a mild panic.

"I'll get Eridan!" She blurted, and dashed from the room. He was out again before she got back.

The next time he woke it was Kurloz standing watch. Tavros tried to ask what had happened, but Kurloz couldn't answer, even if he could understand Tavros's words. He just held Tavros's hand until he passed out again.

Finally, Tavros woke, and the world was in focus rather than spinning and blurring, and he knew this time he wasn't going to just pass out again.

Aradia and Eridan were standing near the foot of his bed, arguing.

"-going to get worse!" Aradia was scolding Eridan, who looked thinner and more miserable than usual.

"I don't care," He snapped, "He can do what he likes. I'm not leaving until Tavros wakes up."

"You're not going to be any good to him if your father strangles you before he-"

Tavros cut Aradia off with a groan. He'd been trying to say hello. They dropped their argument at once, hurrying to his side.

"You're awake!" Aradia gasped, her eyes wide and a little panicked.

"Please don't, run away again," Tavros said, his voice rough from disuse, "Where, am I?"

"You're in one of the guest rooms," Eridan supplied while Aradia looked mildly embarrassed, "You've been unconscious for... for about a month. Do you remember what happened to you?"

"The roof," Tavros said, shivering, "Vriska."

"I knew it," Aradia hissed, "She's claiming you jumped. Spun this whole ridiculous story about following you up to the roof. Said she tried to stop you but you were too quick for her. It's utter bull shit."

"Aradia!" Eridan said, scandalized.

"Well it is!" Aradia shouted, "She pushed him off because she wanted his spot and she's going to get away with it."

"There's nothing we can do about that," Eridan said grimly, "No one is going to take his word over hers. Let's just focus on getting him better, all right?"

"Guys?" Tavros said quietly, interrupting them, "Why can't I, feel my legs?"

Eridan and Aradia fell worryingly silent.

"I'll get the doctor," Aradia said, and hurried out.

"You fell really far, Tav," Eridan said slowly, "Feferi made sure you had the best healers. The... the best ones that would treat you, anyway. But there are some things healers can't fix..."

He kept talking, but Tavros wasn't listening anymore. All his attention was on the void below his waist. The eerie absence of feeling, like everything that had been there was just gone.

The doctor spoke to him for a bit. Spoke at him. The healer didn't seem happy to be there. From what Eridan had said, he was only there at all because Feferi had threatened him. The doctor said Tavros had damaged his spine, and would likely never walk again.

Tavros hadn't really reacted. He didn't know how. The world felt almost as numb and distant as his legs, like a story that had happened to someone else. Tavros wanted to wake up. He wanted everything to go back to normal. He wanted to run in the woods again. He wanted to go home.

It didn't really hit him until they brought in the wheelchair for the first time and put him in it. This was his life now, he realized. Anything that ever happened to him for the rest of his life would happen to him in this chair. He had cried then, and Aradia had held him while Kurloz kept the nurses at bay with silent menace.

A day passed in which he didn't speak much.

The Admiral came to visit him. The menace that had been in his attitude towards Tavros since the incident in the woods was gone. Tavros was no longer a threat. Dualscar expressed his sincere condolences for what had happened and told Tavros a ship had been arranged to see him home as soon as he was well enough to travel. Tavros had been confused for a moment, before he realized, as Dualscar must have, he was never going to be a summoner. Certainly not one in the imperial army. The empress had no use for crippled magicians.

Tavros was struck with a sudden feeling of being lost. Everything he'd ever wanted for his life, everything his father had ever wanted for him, every possible future he'd ever imagined for himself was suddenly impossible. He didn't know what was going to happen to him. He didn't know what to do.

The Admiral had the grace to simple leave when Tavros started crying again.

"Shouldn't you, have left by now?" Tavros asked, voice dull, the next time Eridan came to see him, "You, and Kurloz, and the Admiral. You should all, be on the front lines by now."

"I refused to leave," Eridan said, "My father was not pleased, but Feferi supported me. Delayed the expedition by imperial order. Now that you're... Now that I know you aren't dying, we'll be leaving in a few days. I wanted to put it off longer, but-"

"It's fine," Tavros said, "I understand. Try, to have a good time anyway."

"Unlikely," Eridan said with a grumble, "Vriska's coming. They gave your spot to her."

Tavros felt like screaming and breaking something, but he didn't have the energy. Besides, he should have expected it. It was always her spot.

"I'm feeding her to a summon the first chance I get," Eridan promised, and somehow Tavros didn't think he was joking.

"I won't, see you again, will I?" Tavros said, beginning to realize, "They're sending me, back home. And you'll be..."

"No, we'll still be friends," Eridan said firmly, "We'll write letters, and I'll visit you. I don't care if I have to run away and steal a boat. This isn't the end."

Tavros didn't believe him, but he appreciated it anyway. He guessed he should be grateful that he'd had such good friends even for a little while.

Tavros hadn't left the guest room since he'd woken up. He was still recovering, the doctor still coming in to check on him regularly. He fractured his arm as well as several ribs in the fall. He hadn't recognized himself the first time he saw himself naked after. He'd been so covered in bruises he was an entirely different color. They gave him the chair, and put him in it a few times a day to try and get him used to it. But he only rolled it into a corner and sat, staring. He hadn't yet been brave enough to try looking out the window. Eridan and Kurloz brought him books from the library, but studying seemed pointless now that he couldn't be a summoner. Why bother, when the simple fact was that he was no longer capable of even bending down to draw a summoning circle? He supposed he could drag himself out of his chair and crawl. But he'd never be able to keep from smudging his lines.

It was the day before the expedition was supposed to leave when Kurloz came to see him and found him in his chair, staring at the floor. Kurloz looked at the untouched books on the table, and he looked at Tavros. He made a sound, the first Tavros had ever heard him make, muffled behind his stitches. It sounded frustrated. He crossed the room in two long legged strides, bent down, and picked Tavros up out of his chair.

"S-stop!" Tavros said, surprised, "Put me, down!"

But Kurloz only shifted Tavros higher in his arms and started walking, leaving the guest room behind.

"What, are you doing?" Tavros asked, baffled, "Kurloz, I want to go back, to my chair."

Kurloz just stared ahead and kept walking. Tavros tried a few more times, but the older boy wasn't answering.

Tavros realized, his stomach twisting nauseatingly, that they were on the fourth floor. Kurloz was heading for the stairs to the tower.

"Kurloz..." Tavros said, fear growing, "Kurloz please take me back."

But Kurloz only headed up the tower stairs in perfect silence. As he crossed the tower room to the window, tears were filling Tavros's eyes.

"Please don't," He croaked, "Kurloz, please."

Kurloz hesitated for just a moment. Tavros felt the arms around him shift uncertainly. But then he opened the window, and stepped out with Tavros in his arms. Tavros sobbed.

He didn't know what to expect. Was Kurloz going to throw him off the roof? Finish the job Vriska started? Tavros had never understood Kurloz's motivations well, but this was beyond anything the older boy had ever done before.

He carried Tavros out onto the roof, striding confidently over the tiles, his balance seemingly unhindered by the weight of his burden or how much it shook. Tavros had heard disciples in the holy hoard were trained in strange skills like tight rope walking and acrobatics, which made their movements lithe and unpredictable in battle. But Kurloz was surely too young to have undergone such training. Then again, Tavros would also have said he was too young to have taken a vow of silence, but the stitches on his lips disagreed. Tavros had no idea who Kurloz was really, or what horrors he'd endured in the name of his faith.

Finally Kurloz stopped on a wide section of flat roof. He set Tavros down gently on the tiles, a hand on his shoulder to keep him steady. Then he dug in his coat and pulled out a piece of chalk, pressing it into Tavros's hand. Tavros nearly dropped it he was shaking so badly. Was Kurloz trying to make him reenact the whole horrible event? Tavros could barely see straight. The sky above him and the closeness of the drop he knew lay just beyond the edge of the roof had his head spinning. He was too scared to move. When he just sat there staring at Kurloz, the older boy knelt and took Tavros's hand, the chalk still held in it, and brought it to the roof tiles. He paused for a moment to see if Tavros would take over, but Tavros was still too scared and confused. Kurloz closed his eyes for a moment in frustration, and then began moving Tavros's hand, pushing it around to make a small, shaky circle. He let go then, hoping Tavros would take over.

"You, want me to do the sigils?" Tavros asked, baffled and teary eyed, "Kurloz, I can't, I can't do anything, anymore, why are you making me-"

Kurloz made another sound, angry and frustrated behind his stitches. For the first time Tavros could tell Kurloz wished he could speak. He took Tavros's hand again and began guiding him in drawing the sigils, forcing him to move the chalk. Gradually, Tavros began to understand what Kurloz was setting up to summon.

"A class one, fairy bull?" Tavros said, confused, "Why? They're, useless. They're just for, carrying messages, and stuff."

Kurloz shook his head and just kept moving Tavros's hand. When the circle was finished he let go again and looked at Tavros expectantly. Tavros considered refusing, but he had a feeling Kurloz would just keep forcing him. Fine, if it meant so much to Kurloz, he'd prove how useless he was. He half expected the magic not to respond to him at all when he called. But it did, just as easily as it ever had, even if singing was harder when he felt like this. Bronze colored light bubbled and splashed over the edges of the small circle, building up in the center. He was surprised to see it was still positively charged, even with how he was feeling right now.

Shaping the little bull was almost effortless. It hadn't been difficult for him even before he'd come here. Now he could have done it in his sleep. The construct filled with energy, solidified, and the summon floated off of the roof tiles, wings fluttering like a hummingbird's.

Kurloz took the chalk from Tavros's hands then, and, to Tavros's great confusion, held it out to the summon, who took it between their hooves carefully. Kurloz looked at Tavros expectantly then, an encouraging smile behind his stitches.

"I don't, understand," Tavros said, answering Kurloz's smile with a look of miserable confusion. Kurloz shook his head and stood up. As Tavros watched, he spun quickly around the roof, twirling carelessly as if he was on solid ground, gesturing out the shape of another, larger circle.

"But, Kurloz, I can't-" Tavros started to answer, then paused, looking at the fairy bull holding the chalk. Could that work?

Tavros bit his lip thoughtfully, not sure he wanted to get his hopes up, then gave the order. The bull fairy flew out of its own circle and dragged the chalk across the tiles.

"Mm, no, over a bit," Tavros muttered, making corrections to his orders as he struggled to get the bull to draw a circle. It seemed more inclined to straight lines. He wasn't sure how to communicate curves through his chant. But it was, in a sense, working. And he could tell if he refined the process a bit more, he could make it work better. He'd just never used summons for anything this delicate before. He wasn't sure anyone ever had. He'd seen them used for heavy lifting and other brute force work by civilians, but they were primarily tools of war after all.

Slowly, laboriously, with much going back and redrawing, Tavros guided the fairy bull around the roof leaving an, if not perfect, adequate summoning circle in its wake.

"I don't think, I can make it do the sigils," Tavros said as the fairy bull returned to its smaller circle, "I, just don't have that much control over it."

Kurloz nodded, and took the chalk from the bull. He began writing out the sigils himself, working in a complex, labyrinthine formula Tavros hadn't seen before. He didn't write in the straightforward, blocky sentences Tavros used, but a curving script that doubled back on itself into dense nigh unreadable tangles of complex commands.

When he was done, he came to Tavros's side and put a hand on his shoulder. He gestured to the circle, offering it to Tavros, but Tavros had no idea what he was trying to summon. He tried anyway, pushing his energy into the tangle of sigils and beginning to build up the power. To his surprise, Kurloz began to do it as well, their energy mingling and flowing as they worked in tandem. Tavros hadn't even known it was possible for two summoners to work on the same circle. Certainly it wasn't as easy as working alone. Keeping his energy balanced with Kurloz's, trying not to let the pressure of the other boy's working distract him. And as rich, plum colored magic began rolling around the circle in slowly building waves, he found himself at a loss for what to do to build the construct. He began to chant, setting up a simple base, and Kurloz beside him began to move, swaying and gesturing in the strange way that was his own silent version of the chant. Tavros felt Kurloz's energy guiding his own, putting him in the right places to build his lines, and slowly Tavros began to recognize the shape they were making and needed less guidance, feeling a strange, breathtaking rush every time one of their lines met perfectly. They built a cage of gold together and watched it fill with magic, and Tavros couldn't help a smile of delight as it solidified and took on life.

It was a massive skeleton, its head alone larger than Tavros, bent with its knuckles brushing the rooftop. Tavros had no idea what class it was, let alone its title, if it had ever been summoned before at all. Kurloz was smiling, looking up at it, and squeezed Tavros's shoulder in approval. Then he made a short series of gestures and the huge, silent skeleton turned and strode off into the sky. Tavros watched it, walking on air with wide, easy strides, until it vanished into the sun. Kurloz cut off the energy of the summon, banishing it though it had already vanished from sight.

Tavros realized, abruptly, that for a little while at least, he'd forgotten to be afraid. Now that the distraction was gone, he felt the fear creeping back. He kept his eyes off the edge of the roof. But for a moment, he hadn't been afraid. He realized what Kurloz had been trying to show him. He wasn't worthless. His future wasn't gone. He could still summon. He might need to do things a little differently, might need help sometimes. But he could do it. His life wasn't over. A wild hope bloomed inside his chest. He could still do this.

"Can we, go back inside now?" Tavros asked, and Kurloz nodded, sending a wave of relief through Tavros.

Kurloz scooped him up, and Tavros closed his eyes until he heard the window shut behind them and knew they were back inside the tower. Rather than going back down the stairs, however, Kurloz set him down again. Tavros waited curiously as Kurloz picked up something he'd tucked in a dusty corner of the room, and brought it over, placing it in Tavros's lap. Tavros ran his fingers over it in surprise. It was the ugly, leather bound book of named summons Dualscar had used to test him. Kurloz must have taken it from the room that day when he'd been cleaning up. Kurloz put a hand on it and gave Tavros a steady, serious look. Tavros felt the hope in his chest solidify into icy determination. Kurloz was right. No one, especially the admiral, was going to take him seriously again. Not until he proved himself. He nodded, holding the book to his chest tightly, and Kurloz scooped him up and carried him back to his chair.

Tavros hid the book in his room and, the first time a nurse stopped in to see him, he asked for a small chalkboard and a long stick. The puzzled nurse delivered them and Tavros got to work at once. He only had tonight to do this. He would not be sent away. He would not be forgotten.

He tied his chalk to the long stick, and practiced drawing sigils on the floor from his chair with it. It was not easy, but it was easier than trying to convince a summon to do it. But he would learn to do that as well. The next time the nurse came by he startled her severely, as he'd summoned a pair of class two plague rats. Not pretty to look at, but far more dexterous hands than the fairy bull.

"Sorry, miss," He said to the nurse, "Just, keeping up with my studies."

The nurse looked confused, put up her hands up as if to say it was none of her business, and backed out.

"Just don't hurt yourself," She said, and left.

Tavros spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out how to guide the rats. The sigils were too clumsy. They were meant for direct orders, not this kind of nuanced work. He fought not to let the frustration slow him down as he tried again. He found himself thinking about Kurloz and his way of chanting through hand gestures. If orders could be given voicelessly, then did it really matter if he voiced the commands? It must be more about will and intention, he decided, than what was actually spoken. So, he just needed to find a way to make his will clearer to the summons, a way to make them understand what he wanted without him needing to translate it into the clunky and confusing language of magic. Perhaps if he'd been older, had a better understanding of magical vocabulary, it would be easier to state things that way, but for now he needed a more direct route.

Tucking the rats into his bag, he rolled his chair out of the guest room and down the hall. He was on the fourth floor, but the library was on the first and second. He'd need to get himself and his chair down two flights of stairs. He couldn't imagine how he'd get back up again. He sat at the top of the stairs for a long moment, stymied. It was early evening now. Everyone was probably on their way to dinner. The nurse wouldn't be in to check on him for a while. Slowly, thoughtfully, he rolled his chair back to his room, and got the rats to work on another circle. Soft green light like moss on stone rolled through the room as he carefully scrawled the last sigil in with his stick. He shaped it into a predator cat, double mouthed and grinning. A fairly powerful summon, but just a warmup for what he would do tonight. Mustering all his confidence, Tavros called the lion over to stand in front of his chair and, with some difficulty and some complaints from his damaged ribs, he dragged himself onto its back, clinging to its fur to keep himself in place, an endeavor made even more difficult by the strange, stretched out sensation of managing three summons at once. It was not something he'd be able to do for long, but the rats required relatively little power and he wouldn't need the cat to do much. He could manage this.

He nearly fell more than once as the cat padded down the stairs with him on its back. He steered it towards the library, ribs aching painfully and eager to keep working. He was afraid if he took too long he was certain to be caught by a house servant and sent back to his room, if not reported to the Admiral.

But they reached the library without incident, and the cat brought Tavros to the seat beneath the window where he'd spent so many afternoons with his friends. It was winter outside that window now. He climbed off and pulled out the chalkboard with the rat's circles on it, and realized he had no idea what he was looking for. What could he send them to find? He barely understood what it was he needed. He needed to be closer to his summons, to make them understand his will without his having to put it in words. But what kind of book would have something like that? Frustrated, he sent them out looking for books on alternative command tactics in general. He wished suddenly, deeply, that he knew other magic besides just summoning. Divining magic in particular would be invaluable right now. Or even the kind of practical telepathy that would let him move objects. He told himself quite firmly that, once he had done this, he would stop limiting himself to only one type of magic.

The rats, predictably, brought back a stack of mostly useless books. Tavros was losing time and hope. Tavros wished his father were here. No one had been able to manipulate summons like him. If he didn't know how to do what Tavros was trying, then he certainly would know where to start looking. Tavros felt a terrible rush of homesickness. Did his father even know what had happened to him yet? He was being such an idiot, even trying this. He should just go home. They were right. It was where he belonged, now more than ever.

Tears welled in his eyes and spilled onto the summoning circle. He quickly scrubbed them from his cheeks and focused, afraid they might smudge the bindings. A couple of plague rats couldn't do much damage if they went rogue but he'd rather not have to deal with that kind of trouble when he was already so short on time. He reached for his chalk at once- and then paused, confused. His tears had not smudged the summoning. In fact they hadn't even touched it. They were floating, round and weightless, above the circle, caught in the point from which the magic flowed from the demon plane to the summoned constructs. The rats froze where they'd been scurrying back and forth with books. They turned suddenly and came back to Tavros unbidden, crawling into his lap where the chalkboard was sitting. Confused, Tavros let them, wanting to see what would happen. They climbed onto the chalkboard, back into their summoning circles. First one, then the other, they pressed their noses to the floating orbs of Tavros's tears and let it wash over their fur, sink into them. He saw a shudder go through them. Then they turned their faces up to him, and Tavros sensed something had changed. There was something more behind their eyes than the vacancy that was normal for summons that were, after all, just moving energy constructs, not living things. The awareness he saw there now was not malicious, merely patient. Waiting. Waiting for orders? Tavros, biting his lip and barely daring to hope, willed one of the rats to turn in a circle. It did so, without a second's hesitation. He'd stumbled into exactly what he was looking for somehow. Many summons required a piece of the summoner in order to bring their energies into alignment. How else could the summoner give them orders? These rats had only needed a bit of saliva. It only made sense really that a bigger piece of Tavros would lead to a bigger connection. He was sure he would have found exactly that in these books if he'd known where to look for it. He wondered how close he could get, and how much it scaled with the power of the summon. If tears were all it took to connect with a class two like these rats, how much of himself would something like the predator cat require? Anything above a class five needed blood to even summon in the first place. What would he have to give something like that to make it bind to him?

There were a thousand questions he wanted answers too, but he would worry about those later. For now he had a mission. He sent the rats out for a few more books while he was here anyway, then climbed back onto the cat and hurried out of the library. Dinner would be ending soon if it hadn't already. If he didn't want to get caught he needed to move quickly.

He had the cat by pass his room on the fourth floor entirely and instead sent it up the stairs to the tower. He would rather brave more stairs now than risk getting caught climbing them later. By the time the cat reached the tower room his torso felt like one big bruise, throbbing painfully, and it was difficult to breathe. Too much activity already today, but there was more to come. At least for now he could rest a little while. He pulled himself into a corner and pulled out the book of named summons, beginning to form his plan.

He took his time planning. He could have spent days on it, if he'd had the time. He knew how dangerous this was, and he was very carefully not thinking about how easily it could end in his death, or even the deaths of everyone here. There was only room in his head for the confidence he told himself he had. He could do this. He had to do this, or else he would never be a summoner. That day in the summoning chamber came back to him like the shadow of a nightmare, making him shudder. He remembered Dualscar's words, echoing in the back of his head, cool and dismissive, as clearly as he could remember the million eyes of the thing he'd nearly summoned staring out at him from a hole to another plane. But he was going to prove the Admiral wrong. He would be a summoner, just as great as his father. But he wouldn't be summoning anything as nightmarish as what Dualscar had shown him. This book was full of summons, some impossibly huge and powerful, others smaller and stranger. He didn't need to summon the strongest demon. As long as it was named it would prove his strength.

He chose one near the center of the book. Though it was difficult to always tell with the strange way the book worded things, it appeared to be one of the weakest. A small spirit newly formed when it was named, with a talent for stealth and obfuscation. He could handle that, he knew he could.

The books he'd had the rats grab in the library were all on circle binding and safety measures to keep powerful summons in check. He couldn't risk this thing getting loose if he wasn't strong enough to control it. He skimmed through them, carefully planning out the sigils and reinforcements he would use. He only wished he could use the summoning circle downstairs with its electrum and silver. That would have made things far easier. But he couldn't risk sneaking down all the way to the basement. He was sure to be caught if he tried.

Around midnight, he began work laying out the circle. From his place in the corner, he guided the rats to do his drawing. It was much easier now that he could simply will them, but it still took some getting used to, and with this he could afford to make no mistakes. He would go back and redo his lines as many times as he needed to in order for this to be perfect.

The moon was shining, full and bright, through the tower window by the time he finished laying out his circle. It was huge, filling the round room almost completely, and densely packed with bindings and reinforcements in two different rings. He'd never written something this complex and it filled him with pride to look at it. He was a summoner, and he was a good one. Now he just had to prove it to everyone else.

He sent the rats down to the summoning chamber to steal the components he'd need. They were rare and expensive and for a moment he almost faltered thinking of the price. But he'd come too far to stop now. He had to charge ahead. The rats made several trips, bringing him black sapphires and the preserved mane of the warhorse of a forgotten king. A branch from an apple tree growing from the grave of star-crossed lovers. A pewter cup filled with rainwater, into which he dropped a moonstone. The strange items piled up, preserved flowers from exotic locales, the bowstrings of soldiers who'd died ignoble deaths. Gradually the rats filled up the center of the circle with shards of blue lightning glass and a china teacup that had last held deadly poison. Tavros looked at the collection of catalysts and realized this was it. There was no going back now. Everything was ready and it was time to begin. He wondered if he should stop. Maybe he should get help, wait for another day to do this. But there wouldn't be another day, he reminded himself. Eridan and Kurloz and the Admiral would all leave tomorrow. And he would be sent back to the farm long before they returned. It was now or never at all.

Tavros crawled to the edge of the circle and, heart racing, he carefully wrote the last piece of script into the circle. The name of the summon, there next to his own. It was long and winding and strange, as all of them had been, but the part he could understand read 'Equius.'

Tavros took a deep breath, heart racing, and began the summoning.

The light burst out from the circle at once, fierce and bright and overwhelming. Unlike the oozing sludge of the one he'd nearly summoned before, this energy crashed and foamed like waves or horse's hooves. Tavros hesitated for a moment, surprised, but he kept going, corralling the wild, powerful energy back towards the center of the circle, back towards the construct he was building on the frame of components there. He was building a shape, but he could feel it stretching and warping already. Most summons were like liquid, taking the shape of whatever they were poured in to. But this already had a shape and refused to be changed. The energy was singing around him, leaping out of the circle like sparks making delicate music that reminded him of stars falling.

The predator cat and then both rats flickered out one at a time, Tavros no longer able to maintain them as he poured his energy into the circle. No, more than poured. It was like he no longer controlled it, like it was being drained out of him into a sucking void. He let it go, because he knew he was close. He could see something rising in the center of the circle, wrapping his flimsy construct around itself like a cloak. It was, for a flickering moment, too vast to comprehend. A massive shadow stretching across the world, smother everything in empty darkness. There were eyes in that emptiness, blue and piercing, and they pinned Tavros with a sharpness and a clarity like being shot with an arrow made of ice. The thing in the circle surged forward all at once.

Tavros cried out as it slammed against the reinforced barriers, falling back onto his hands at the force of the impact. The barriers were as strong as he could make them, but he could feel them collapsing like wet cardboard under the sheer overwhelming force of the thing he had summoned. It bore down on him like an anvil, like the world on the shoulders of Atlas, and Tavros knew he was not strong enough to hold it up. Panic frayed the edges of his vision and his ribs were a siren of pain. He had made a mistake. He'd worked so hard to convince himself he could do this he hadn't considered what would happen if he couldn't. Now, looking into that thing's cold blue eyes, he knew exactly what would happen. Everyone would die. Eridan, the Princess, Kurloz, Aradia. This place would become a silent crater, just a void where life used to be.

He pushed back, an ant trying to hold up a lion, doing everything he could to slow the demon's advance. His will was a thin bronze shield under the weight of a mountain coming down, but he held it up regardless. He couldn't let it happen. He couldn't let all the people who'd ever cared about him die because he was too stubborn to accept what had happened to him. He scrambled for some solution, any way to stop what he'd done. He couldn't shut down the summon if he tried. It wasn't running under his power anymore. As soon as the demon had begun to materialize it had taken the reigns. If only he could reach it, he thought, sobbing as his will began to give way under the torrential force of the demon's power, which howled like a nightmare wind through the tower, shattering windows and tearing the stone and slats from the walls to open them up to the cold midnight air. If only he could speak to it, make it understand why he needed this, why the people here were so important. He remembered the rats, the gift of his tears. But no amount of tears would satisfy something like this. What could he give to it that would be enough? Blood? His legs? He laughed, a little hysterical. Why not? He wasn't using them anymore! If it would stop this, the demon could have them! The demon could have all of him if it meant everyone here would be safe! Tavros, still pushing back against a force as inexorable as gravity, dragged himself forward on his hands, across the circle and into its center, his heart full of fear and desperate hope. As the blue black void engulfed him, everything he'd wanted filled him up and overflowed. He'd wanted so badly to be a summoner. Not even one as good as his father. But just to achieve it, to prove to himself and to everyone that he was not useless, not a failure. He'd wanted friends, and he'd found them, and now he wanted almost nothing as much as he wanted to know they were safe. He wanted the demon to understand him, to hear his desperate fear and relent. He wanted to run again. He wanted a future. He wanted to be happy. He was crying, the tears running fat down his cheeks and lifting off of his skin to float in the strange, roaring void that was the eye of the demon's storm. The blue eyes were watching him, and Tavros held out his arms to them and closed his eyes tightly, shaking and scared but ready to let it end if it meant no one else would suffer for his mistake. He should have died falling from that roof.

The darkness settled around him and for a moment there was stillness and Tavros opened his eyes in confusion. Had it gone away?

It rushed in at once, and the pain was searing, worse than the first time he'd woken up after falling. Every nerve in his body was burning and he wanted to die rather than keep feeling it another second. He could feel a cold hand wrapped around his heart, clutching it as though to tear it out of his chest. But instead it seemed to melt, diffusing into him, cold as ice water, numbing the pain like hypothermia. Thoughts rushed through his head that were not his own, memories of a strange place he'd never seen, an ever shifting endless landscape that he ached to be part of. Confusion and fear and anger. Memories of crying out in his loudest voice and being unheard. A desperate desire to be understood. The burning receded into a painful memory. He was in the tower again, what was left of it, a more natural darkness crowding the edges of his vision as unconsciousness claimed him. Someone was standing over him, someone tall and strange. Someone with blue eyes.

"The bond has been forged, human," Said a voice, low and rumbling like thunder, "Pray that it is not broken."

Dark.

But no pain.

And a sense that, in spite of everything, he would never be alone again.