A tale of mothers, sons, and heroes.
After a long, disconcerting pause, the blue-clad woman concedes Wormwood a nod.
Indiscernibly younger―a decade? Two decades? Humans age so slowly, the raven could never tell―Cedric's mother looks different.
Slightly taller and leaner, of course, with her dark auburn hair curling in loose ringlets still down to her waist; harsher around the edges, with fewer lines on her round face. But there is something else, the aura of her past just behind her, commanding respect; that evil gleam in her eye―the one Cedric wishes he had inherited―that she is still not wont to keep hidden.
Winifred the Wise snaps her fingers at the thick end of her wand, puts the tip to her mouth and inhales. The thick end lights up like a pipe's chamber, and the foxfire gleams on the bare rocks.
"I can tell you have many questions for me." The sorceress smirks, blowing a perfect circle of light blue smoke at Wormwood. He suppresses a cough. "You may start with one."
Where am I, what are you doing here, and where is here are only the first few that press at the raven's throat.
"Do you know where Cedric is?" is what comes out of his mouth instead, in a tone less light and casual than he would have liked. Winifred the Wise smirks at him. A shark's smile.
"So eager. Soon enough, you will see," she says, her voice loud and clear across the muffled rustle of water. As she looks up, perusing the sky for something, she continues, "You were very easy to bring here. You wanted to reach something, you weren't just flapping about."
"Yes, because I'm looking for―"
"Not the same can be said for my son―he is around here somewhere; I've been trying to anchor him for a while now. What a stubborn child."
"Maybe he isn't keen to be back on this forsaken rock," Wormwood suggests, piqued. Yet somehow, he's sure they aren't really in their homeland up North. The foxfire is a dead giveaway, really. He heaves a sigh. "Look, Ma'am, the situation is chaos out there. I don't think I have much time―who are you, really? An apparition? What am I doing here?"
"Patience," the young Winifred admonishes, shifty eyes still searching intently. "I am no more than an Imago, a projection left behind by my caster. From here, I've been watching over her spell, that so long has lain dormant in the blood of her son."
In his… blood? Her words bring a chill up Wormwood's back. "Where would here be, exactly?"
"We are on the very threshold of the Netherworld, in the place where the child had his first brush with it."
"Brush with what?"
"With Death, dear."
The Imago ignores his subsequent groan of vexation, distracted by the sprout of sparkles out of the lit end of her wand.
"Oh, finally," she pipes up, exhaling all the smoke in a blue cloud, and yanking down her wand as though she were whipping a draft horse.
Wormwood's ears perk at the distant whistle of something falling from the sky.
"Whoops, crash landing," she says, conversationally. "Be a dear and catch him, will you?"
Wormwood hates to obey her, but he still squints upwards and moves into the falling thing's trajectory. Cedric lands in his arms with a soft flump. On contact, he gasps awake and squints up at him, as though he had the midday sun in his face.
"Wormy...? What―where..." he slurs, lifting both hands to rub his eyes.
Wormwood notices his sleeves before anything else: intact, not a single rip in them. He feels his arms almost give out from relief, and holds a little tighter. He's alright. I got him. He's alright.
Cedric seems in good shape, in fact: normal pale and not brink-of-death pale, robe all in one piece―no wound in his chest. It brings a sigh of relief that tastes saline at the back of Wormwood's throat, and he has to force himself to keep his composure and set Cedric down to his feet. Eyes darting behind his unblemished fingers, Cedric takes in their surroundings. He hides a cringe in his palms.
"Oh," he whines, "but why are we here, of all places...?"
The raven clears the thickness from his throat. "Your dear mother will tell us, hopefully."
"My...?" Cedric whips around, and bumps back into Wormwood in surprise. "Mummy?! What are you doing here?! And why are you so... young?"
Winifred doesn't answer. On her face, she has that same guileless wide-eyed look of pure astonishment that Cedric too gets sometimes, staring dumbfounded at her adult son.
"Oh, my... that spell has lain dormant for a lot longer than expected," she murmurs, looking him up and down, her long nose wrinkled. Winifred's face a bit slimmer in her just-fading youth, the resemblance between them is almost uncanny. "My, what happened to my cute little boy?"
Cedric's shoulder drop a little. "Oh, I―well, it's... a long story," he mumbles, clearly hurt. Wormwood tenses, but the sorcerer glances back up at him, and the urge to maim is diverted by the crease of worry between Cedric's brows. "Wormy, what are we doing here? Weren't we battling some overgrown bramble?"
"You've been gored through the chest, and trapped," Wormwood fills him in, willing his voice steady. Cedric just blinks at him, patting the untarnished front of his clothing, somewhat absently. He brushes his left temple, looking puzzled.
"Why don't I recall… wait. Am I dead?" He gulps, and whatever little colour he had in his face drains away. "Oh no, are you dead?"
"Not yet. We are just on the threshold, whatever that is," Wormwood says, glaring at the sorceress.
"But how…?"
"The Amulet of Avalor burned the bramble down. We freed you, but you wouldn't wake… Sofia thought it might be enchanted sleep rather than blood-loss, so she suggested I play your Prince―then I was flying and―"
"Wait, wait, what is Sofia doing out there?!" Cedric gasps. "You let her see―you made her fight?! And what―wait, you what?"
Wormwood gestures helplessly, flustered. "It was an emergency! I had to try something!"
"Wormy, not in front of the Princess!"
"Now, that's a lot of fuss to intermingle a drop of blood," the Imago's voice interjects, between perplexed and intrigued. They turn to her, startled, and a shared glance is enough to confirm they both forgot she was there.
"A drop of blood... is that how we were brought here? Wait..." Cedric starts. Then he shuts his eyes, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, realisation dropping on him like the World on Atlas' shoulders. "Don't tell me. There was another spell on me."
"There he is, my bright witchlet," Winifred smiles her odd smile. Cedric shudders. "You're right, but tell me, why wait so long? And why wait to be in the midst of battle? Any good old fasting or ice-bath would have worked, really."
Cedric's hands leave his face, descending in a stiff flutter of half-formed gestures. He stares at his mother's Imago and his chin juts out, the tendons of his neck strained in tension, and he takes in a very, very deep breath.
"Because, Mother―I Did. Not. Know," he spells out, clawing the air in exasperation. "Neither you or Father bothered to tell me I've been walking around for decades with suspended spells on myself! What is it this time? Another Protection Charm? Did you―I mean, did Mother also think I couldn't survive my own incompetence?"
Winifred's eyes gleam. "Oh! I see why it activated so late... of course, Goodwyn would do that. The soft-hearted fool, always disapproving of my methods."
Wormwood and Cedric exchange another glance: Goodwyn the Great is and was always many things. Gifted, yes; strict, enough; callous, definitely. But soft-hearted, of all things―
"So you had this Protection Charm on, preventing you from bleeding, yes?" Winifred's Imago asks, sounding intrigued. "How were you able to break it?"
"I was the one to break it," Wormwood mutters, and he can't keep the loathing out of his voice. The sorceress snorts. "I created this abomination of a climber, and got it addicted to Cedric's magic. I―" He inhales to continue, but Cedric elbows him in the ribs. "It was an accident."
"A little bird, messing up Goodwyn's spells." Winifred starts to giggle, then breaks into a full-blown evil cackle, almost tearing up. They stand and stare, rubbing their goosebumps. "Well, these are the things that happen when you give your animals human forms, sometimes. They can end up a tad over-powered."
"Actually, I did that myself as well," the raven clips, and this time he doesn't try to give the specifics. "Wishing Well, magic loop, dying island. A mess."
"Huge mess," Cedric echoes.
The sorceress blinks at them.
"This is all highly unorthodox," she says. "But you show great enterprising spirit, I like it."
"Yes, alright," Cedric interjects, hands to his temples once again. "Imago, answer me: when was this spell cast, exactly? What was Mother's purpose with it?"
At once, the air shifts, light shifting colder and wind pulling at their clothes like an insistent hand. The smell changes too, although Wormwood couldn't place how.
"Oh, at last!" the Imago's voice grows as the echo inside a cave, and her eyes take a diffused blue glow. "You ask the right question."
"Drat, did I activate…?" Cedric groans in an undertone. Wormwood hesitates.
In her best, most stentorian narrator's voice, the Imago intones, "Once upon a time, there was a little boy who loved the windy shores near his home."
"Yes," Wormwood deadpans, "yes, you did."
The Imago starts weaving the story into being, unravelling it like yarn from a basket. She puffs from her wand and the shivering air fills with smoke and the glow of foxfire. Their eyes water slightly as the strong chlorine smell mixes with the ocean's salt. Once they get used to it, they start to see the ghostly figures that appear at the wave of her hand, thicker wisps of blue with washed out touches of colour. Many are birds, crows and ravens and seagulls, flutter of feathers giving body to the noise in Wormwood's ears.
Winifred has a great collection of stories, they know. Stories of war and magic and love and more war. The one of how she conquered a rival clan with a single flick of her wand. The strange tales from lands far away across the ocean, that the Talking Dragons had told her around the campfire. How Goodwyn could ask her hand in marriage only after defeating her in a duel. As fledglings, all of those stories had left them wondering how much truth there was to them, but kept their attention nevertheless.
This is a different story: this one has undeniably happened and, as the figure of a child appears out of the eerie magic smoke, the reality of it weights in the pit of the raven's stomach like a stone.
The child has the kind of features humans would say need to be grown into, even if they never did. Pale and feeble in his knee-pants and shirtsleeves, with a fluffy thatch of black hair, and pasty round cheeks blotched red from exertion.
"Cedric," Wormwood breathes, and the adult one at his side starts a little.
"The boy had heard that, if you lean close enough, the sea will tell you things. Secret, powerful things only the wisest of our kind can learn. And he, already set to the quest for power, wished to confirm it for himself."
In a strange haze, they watch the small figure leap fearlessly from stone to stone, peering in the wet crevices for actinia and goose barnacles and magic whispers.
"But," the Imago says darkly, and the sky above them looms grey and daunting, "the sea is always hungry, and it lays traps of rock to fill its belly. The little boy had his head in the clouds, and his eye always too far from where his foot fell."
The child, inevitably, leans into the hole, the deep one with a bucketful of ocean at the bottom, gurgling and rustling like a hungry gorge, a throat of stone ready to swallow. He is held up by luck and precarious balance, his little toes on one edge and his hands on the other, peering in. The tide is low, and the rough inner walls are covered in dark seaweed, each day dried up and reborn within the rising waters. He listens.
"It's crumbling," Wormwood says in alarm, eyeing the limestone under the boy's curled fingers, his careless unsteady grip. The rock cracks and chips away. Wormwood takes a step forward, as though he could grab the child and catch him before he falls in. He snaps at Winifred, "How can you stand this?"
Cedric holds him back by his sleeve. "You can't stop it," he hisses. The knuckles buried in Wormwood's sleeve are bone-white, but Cedric's voice is firm, and a crease of disgust hardens his thinned mouth. "It's the past. He's going to fall."
It all happens in a moment. The rock gives, the child gasps and falls in, scraping into the sides all the way down. There is a crack, and a feeble cry. The adult Cedric at Wormwood's side reflexively grabs his elbow, sucking in a hiss.
"The sea is always going to swallow," the Imago states, her voice a pitiless knell. "And the tide is always going to rise."
The fallen child holds still, sitting in shock until the saltwater turns his wounds the dull white of bleached bones. Then, he starts to break into sobs, then to wail, a heart-wrenching lilting sound―Wormwood cannot stand it, his ears lowering until they flatten to the sides of his head.
The raven's hands ache to reach in and pull the boy out―it would take so little, a bit more than the length of his arm, and he could pull him out, like a root from the soil, and he would be safe. He wonders if the real Winifred could bear to watch her precious son give in to panic as the water rises around his trapped form.
"I am always going to fall," Cedric whispers, voice suddenly higher, cracking.
Wormwood glances back at him, the object of his worry shifting. Hearing his own voice, left in a hole to cry all night, Cedric's face went ashen. The tremble in his hands has spread to his whole body, his eyes welling up in tears.
"Stop it!" Wormwood snaps at the sorceress, stepping between Cedric's frozen figure and the blue ghosts of three decades past. He feels it keenly, a realisation as sharp as a talon: something of him has chipped off that day, and it stayed there, abandoned at the bottom of the sea. He unclasps Cedric's ice-cold hands from his cape, and holds them tight in his own. "What is the purpose of this?"
"Reminiscence," the Imago answers. Her plump, ring-loaded hand points back to the edge. "Observe."
"Observe what?" Wormwood asks, in his voice the same snarl he directed to the Well. "There is nothing to see here, except you torturing your son for no reason―"
"The ravens," Cedric murmurs, transfixed. Wormwood looks down at him, hovering closer as a tear rolls down his cheek, his eyes trained to a point above the raven's shoulder. "The ravens were there."
"Ravens are practical creatures," Winifred says. A flock of great black birds chases away most of the competition from the seastack, sharp claws ripping white feathers, sharp bills calling in joy and delight. "If there is going to be a feast, they'll all gather for it."
"A feast," Cedric echoes, his voice a crestfallen tremble of breath against the raven's neck.
Wormwood's stomach twists into knots, clenched so tight there is barely space for air. He can't refute the Imago's words, cannot deny the ravens' intent, because the voices of his kind are loud and clear around them, unmistakeable.
We have to wait for the tide: it will float it out for us, a harsh voice says, belonging to a smallish female with a scar across her eye. By then, the rocks will have cut it right up for us! And the others respond with equal, gruesome enthusiasm. Wormwood shudders.
"I'm sorry," he murmurs, apologising for what happened before his birth, apologising on behalf of the whole of the species he knows nothing of, for the whole of nature and its cruel laws. "I'm sorry they weren't there to help you, instead."
He holds onto Cedric's hands, so small in his, tense and blue-nailed with fright. He wants to wrap around him until he's hidden, shielded from those past horrors, and tell him, I won't let any more pieces be chipped off. I'll do anything to keep you safe.
Nodding to the vision, Cedric whispers, "But they did. Look."
The flock doesn't get to sate its hunger: in their hopeful wake, they make noise to keep their rivals away from the loot, and their cries finally catch an observant ear. Winifred the Wise―so young she is just identical to her Imago―comes running to collect her son.
As the sorceress carefully levitates the fainted child out of the rock, the scarred female raven looks ready to wage war on mankind.
Yet, when she flies close enough, the she-raven appears to recognise the human woman. She lets the matter go, wings tense with contempt. Distantly, Wormwood notices her undamaged eye is bright green.
"Your mother and I had history, Wormwood," the Imago says. "I lent her my rock-ravens on more than one occasion, to fatten up her little army. She kept a large turf and cultivated a conquering streak, and didn't much trust her own kind, old Artemisia."
I saved one of yours, human, the scarred she-raven―my mother, Wormwood thinks, stunned―says haughtily. See you save one of mine one of these days.
Wormwood's head is spinning. He doesn't know anymore if he's holding Cedric's hands to comfort him, or to keep himself on his feet.
"This is when it came to me: it was a sign," the sorceress says, softly and coldly, letting the vision fade into thin air as she opens her hands. "If I could bind another life to my son's, he would be steadied, strengthened, ready for the future I envisioned for him. It was all for good, in the end."
Wormwood stares at the figures' outlines, growing faint with each moment past. The fierce physiognomy of his mother, her wing-strokes proud and strong. And the thin pitiful figure of the half-drowned child, sprawled on the rock like a stringless doll, his left arm bent at an angle human arms aren't supposed to reach. The colour bleeds out of his hair, and runs down his face on the stone, like black tears. Then, he disappears with the rest of the vision, blown away in a gust of wind, no trace left of him.
"How was any of this for good?" Wormwood asks harshly, his chest so tight his own ribcage squeezes the breath out of him.
"Well," the sorceress explains, like it should be obvious, "without a first brush with the Threshold, compatibility with Familiar Magic cannot be assessed."
"Familiar Magic?!" Cedric scoffs, his voice rising sudden, so thin and brittle and incredulous. He lets go of Wormwood's hands to gesture, addressing the whole setting in his disbelief, the whole world. "Is that what this is all about?"
Wormwood rakes his brain for what he knows, picked up over the years in sparse footnote mentions. It's not much. Familiar Magic is an ancient, nearly forgotten art, practiced back in the day when those born or trained in magic still risked the stake. It's not the sort of thing the Hexley Hall folks dabble in: with its long history, and its raw and ambiguous nature, Familiar magic is believed to stand just at the hem of the Dark Arts' shadowy cloak.
"Ma'am," Wormwood attempts, "see reason."
"She cannot," Cedric snaps, nearly beyond himself with exasperation. "That isn't Mother. She is a shadow of the past, left over by the spell Mother set in place when… when she wasn't thinking straight! She's not real." He walks up to the sorceress and, with forceful certainty, puts his arm through her. The image of her wavers, incorporeal as a ghost. Cedric's voice a little more shrill, he says, "See? We don't have to listen to her."
"Glad Goodwyn hasn't whipped all the fight out of you, child," the Imago sneers. "You might not want to listen, but given the circumstances, I'd argue this is the only chance of survival you have."
"But I can't just... make a pact like it's nothing," Cedric all but shouts, frayed. "What do you take me for, Mother, a witch?"
"A warlock, dear. You two barely even need the pact, really," she says. "You are more than compatible, you are suitable. The first suitable pair discovered in over a century, actually."
"We... we are?" Cedric gestures from himself to Wormwood like the air between them is made of threads, pulling him into the we, into the suitable pair, into the new knowledge he can't resist. "How can you be so sure?"
"Do you think you're here by chance, child? By chance, that a common raven lasted you three decades and then some? That you've been carrying your Threshold mark for so long?" Cedric reflexively runs a hand through his white fringe. The Imago nods. "Witch-streaks, for the witch-boy."
Wormwood's mind is afloat with sparse notions. A Familiar is an animal companion. A Familiar can use magic, shift shape to act as aid or messenger; can displace magic energy, move it back and forth between the pair, pouring it like water from an ewer. A Familiar feeds on the blood of their witch.
Or warlock, he thinks, chilled over from head to toe. He'd rather be hit by the bramble's ram a thousand times more. He'd rather―
Doubt crawls into his thoughts like an itch. Would… being a Familiar be any different from what he has been doing until now? If he could pour magic energy, would it be enough to save Cedric? They are compatible, Winifred says, suitable even. Something rare, something special. Maybe they could ask some questions about it, at least, he wants to suggest.
"No, absolutely not―this is all nonsense," Cedric mutters before he can get a word in, his stubborn frown like a barred door. "Witches and warlocks are born. Mother, the years I've worked for my training―I'm not like Father, nothing of what I have was gifted to me. And I certainly won't make pacts for it. To the end of my days," he declares, straightening up until his stance matches his mother's, pointing his thumb to his chest, "I am a sorcerer."
"Dearest," Winifred says, almost sweetly, and in the glint of her eye Wormwood can tell this simple projection of the past has found a glimpse of herself in her adult son. "If that's the case, I have to tell you, the end of your days is going to come sooner than you think."
She draws her arm in a wide gesture, and reality lifts, and crashes, and submerges.
No, Wormwood thinks, watching Cedric sway on his feet, hold out an imaginary wand, as if he could stop it from happening . As though a wave of dirt had washed over him, Cedric's appearance on the Threshold shifts to match the harsh truth. No―not again.
The moment he saw Cedric get hit, his own heart seized up like it had been gored. That terrible sound that came out of him―full of pain and incomprehension, like another piece of him had come off, lost forever at the bottom of the sea―echoed inside him as a ringing emptiness. And he could do nothing but stand, and scream.
Cedric folds over, running shaky fingers over his arms, his middle, his chest. "Ow," he gasps, coughing, hands clutching at his ragged clothing. "Oh―it burns―"
"Your heart has been pierced," Winifred says bluntly, "the climber has gorged itself with your blood and power. You are weak, and your time here cannot last forever. You have to make a choice, and we both know you want to survive. It's who you are."
Wormwood takes a step towards him, but at the sight of his hands Cedric nearly lets out a cry―and then another, when he looks up at his face. Too busy catching him in case he fell over, and consciously restarting his own breathing through the chokehold of anxiety, Wormwood hadn't noticed that his own appearance has shifted.
"My, W-wormy, you look awful," Cedric squeaks, even through the pain of his own wounds, on his face there is the same childlike anguish as when the raven mangled his wings in the wheel of a carriage, all those years ago. "What happened out there?"
He hesitantly brushes the raven's ruined face, near his split lip, and Wormwood is undone, unmade by that misplaced concern.
Wormwood starts, "We fought―" But Cedric grimaces, his jaw clenched in pain. "And it's killing you… all because of me."
"This… isn't your doing," the sorcerer rasps, faltering. "Don't―"
Though his whole body feels like it has been chewed up and spat out, Wormwood drops to his knees to break his fall. Cedric's breathing is so rapid and shallow, a sparrow's heartbeat in the raven's helpless hands, feeble as though he were a step from crossing over.
"What… what must I do to stop this…?" he asks the sorceress, in a fearful whisper.
Winifred's Imago opens her arms. "It all depends what you are willing to do."
"Anything." A hand fists in his cloak, tugging at him with its nervous force.
"Wait, listen to me, listen―" Cedric strains to say, but he can barely hold his head up, slumping against his arm. In a voice like a death rattle, he coughs out a few words and a little blood. "W-we don't know how it works, we―"
"I'll do anything," the raven presses, propping up the dying sorcerer, stubbornly turned to the Imago. "Just... just hurry."
"Very well," Winifred says, pleased. Sort of relieved, really, as though the whole ordeal was taking longer than expected. "The initiation of a Familiar starts with the first feeding."
Cedric goes still against him. "Wormwood," he says, sort of threateningly.
The raven knows what he must do, but he doesn't want to think of it, not with the memories of the carrion birds ready to feast on Cedric's lifeless body still seared in his eyes―he doesn't want to think of what Cedric will think of him.
"I'm sorry," he mutters, swallowing the emptiness in his throat. If it means saving his life, Wormwood can live with never being forgiven. He closes his eyes, steeling himself. "I'm sorry everything here is out for your blood."
"Magic is part of nature, and its laws cannot be escaped, for they are as old and cruel as life itself," Winifred drawls. "Through this, the Familiar will be able to pour back what he has only been taking."
Wormwood breathes out, relief washing over him. He feels something unsaid hang, like a hidden threat, something he should ask about. But he needs only to tug the collar of Cedric's shirt down a little, and reveal the wound. It looks painful, blood and swelling and angry red skin, but it will pass soon, something tells him. The sorcerer's hand closes forcefully around his wrist, his hint of resistance halting him as though he wielded the power of Supreme Strength.
"Let me," Wormwood croaks. Cedric is like an armful of knives in his hands, shaking in tension and exhaustion. Voice low, he begs, "Please, you'll die if you don't let me do this."
"No, you idiot―don't you see?! You'll be the one to die," Cedric rebuts, hurtfully blunt in his haste, making no effort to contain the hysterical edge in his voice. "She'd have me use you as a... failsafe―if you pour back enough energy to save me, it will kill you!"
Wormwood can only shake his head, a smile tugging at his split lip. At his words, the raven's whole life has fell into place before him. There was an enchantment over him: they have been linked since before Wormwood's egg could even touch the downy lining of Artemisia's nest. All that he felt, it had reason, it had purpose. And he knows what his purpose is. It feels empty, and peaceful. A graveside of feeling.
Then, two hands slap hard on his cheeks, tilting his head until they're eye-level.
"You said you wanted to be at my side," Cedric reminds him, the keen rosewood of his eyes burning again with that chilling anger, his frown dark and tense, damp with sweat. "Were you lying? Were you tricking me?"
"Of course not, but―"
"Then don't do this!"
"It's the only chance we have," Wormwood repeats. "And after I do this, I would have to go on sucking life out of you, like a dirty parasite, no better than my mother who was ready to―isn't it better if it... just ends for me, after all I've done?"
"The relationship between a warlock and his Familiar is more on the symbiotic side, rather than parasitic," the Imago notes. "It's a waste of potential, Son, that you'll lose him so soon… but given the circumstances, at least he'll go fulfilling a Familiar's highest duty."
Cedric glares.
"He will not," he spits through his teeth, with surprising force for a man at the end of his tether. "Dying is not Wormwood's duty! He's a living creature, he is my raven."
"He's never been just a raven. You both were always destined for this. It was meant to―"
"You hush, projection!" Cedric shouts, and the grasp of his hands on Wormwood remains impossibly, painfully firm. His voice breaking, roughed up by exhaustion, he snarls, "He is mine, you hear me? He won't be taken from me―I won't allow it."
"Please," the raven whispers. An ache is spreading through him, half sweet and half desperate; Cedric looks up at him that way that reminds him of soil and paintings and the smell of home, with that scorching intensity in his gaze. "You have to live on, and fulfil your dreams―whatever you wish to do, whomever you wish to reconnect with―" his voice dies a moment. "L-let me fix the mess I've put you in. Please."
Cedric clutches at his shoulders, shaking his head.
"This mess is bigger than the two of us. This mess was set in place before you were even born," he says angrily, yielding to the raven's hand tugging his tattered shirt open. He's straining to keep upright, leaning heavily against him, fighting to speak, "Wormy, aren't you supposed to have a survival instinct...? Isn't your life the thing you cherish most?"
And the raven cannot speak, and he hopes the tender cage of his arms conveys it enough. How wide, how freeing, to discover that he cherishes something even more than his own life; how open his chest feels, letting all the air and wind through. It's like flying again, just one more time.
"My life was already at its end," he says, and it feels like absolution. This is the chance he had been waiting for: the ultimate, only atonement that will make up for all the pain and grief he has caused. "Now it's my chance to do something good with the time I've borrowed."
As Wormwood dips his head to the wound, Cedric gives a small gasp. "Y-you've already fought for me, you don't have to atone anymore... we've just started getting along again―you've just told me you wanted to be at my side―"
The blood is warm and coppery on his tongue, just as he remembers from his scavenging days. He threads carefully on the edges of torn skin, that grow smooth and whole under his touch. Cedric shivers all over, pulling on him slightly, a bitter tear sliding down the corner of his eye.
He hisses, "Why must good always be sacrifice, for you heroes?"
Wormwood feels like he has been drinking for a long time, maybe all his life, a milking foal that knows nothing but the living warmth of his chest. His own wounds have stopped aching, his heavy bones have grown weary. Adding consequences has changed nothing: the world is still victory, or death.
He's tired, so tired.
"I'm no hero," Wormwood slurs into his sternum, eyelashes brushing his rekindled heartbeat.
A shock of pain courses through his chest and down right arm, as though they were being clenched in a vise-like grip. He lets out a muffled groan, but holds his ground, and the throbbing pain ebbs away in a bit. Only distantly, he notes it is Cedric now the one holding him up.
Relieved, he sighs, "I just want this nightmare to end."
"It won't end," Cedric chokes, pushing words out of his clenched jaw, "old friend, don't―it will never end, if you leave me out there all alone."
The raven cannot see clearly anymore. The sorceress' Imago is doing something, completing the spell at the blurred edges of his vision. In his eyes, there's only Cedric, the rosy glow of his healed skin, the tears falling as rain on his face, and the wiry, nervous strength of his arms around him.
"It's enough," Cedric stutters, his grip shaking, the greenish light surrounding them once again. "It's enough now. Please."
Goodbye, old friend, he wants to say. But he has no strength left to speak. As night falling over a long, long day, his eyes slide shut.
Guest Star, Artemisia the Raven