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Gorthas left him, semi-conscious, in the cage. His breath was out of his control, seizing him in wracking, gasping sobs. There was no position in which he could be comfortable. His head swam with fever, and the pain kept him from sleep.
He curled on his side, arms stretched as far as he could extend them, as if he might push the searing pain away. The world began to swirl around him in loops and dizzying drops, like a bird - arrow-shot - wheeling out of the sky. In his fevered mind he heard footsteps approaching from the clouds. At each footfall another step of a spiraling staircase twined downward, constructing itself a path to where he lay.
Then, suddenly, the world inverted and the staircase was below him. He felt the stomach-churning vertigo of looking down from a fathomless height and realized he was at the top of the tower at Dragon Keep. Fear overwhelmed him, and shame. He looked for his Lord, but could only see black shadows dancing in corners and moonlight from the window illuminating the amulet that lay on the floor at the center of the room.
“Pick it up.” A whisper and a memory. He clenched his teeth, knowing that the voice would win and he would take the amulet between his hands. The voice could make him grasp it, could make him leave his home forever.
"It belonged to Karadur," Tenjiro's voice said. “He made it, and it is part of him. It knows his mind, even still. What do you think it means, that it burns you when you pick it up? You are anathema to him."
Azil felt a touch stroke his face and forced back the fever delusions. He opened his eyes. Tenjiro crouched outside the cage, reaching in through the bars to cup a hand around Azil's upturned cheek. This, he thought, seemed real.
He closed his eyes again, willing himself to silence and finding strength in that sliver of resistance. But Tenjiro's touch left his face, grabbing instead at his hand in a perverse mockery of gentleness. Azil could not help the choked scream that was wrenched from him as Tenjiro clasped the twisted flesh that hung from the end of his arm. He cupped it between his palms. When Azil tried to pull away, recoiling instinctively from the pain that even this light touch brought, Tenjiro clamped down. Azil wailed, but he lacked the strength to fight against Tenjiro's grip.
“We are cursed, Azil. We betrayed him together, you and I. If he were to lay eyes on you, he would burn you from the inside, with only a thought."
Azil kept his eyes shut, biting hard into his lip to try and stop the weak screams that were escaping from his throat.
"You've seen him conjure his magic fire. And now you've felt the heat of his wrath. The Dragon cannot forgive. You can never go back, Azil. You must stay here with me." His touch returned to Azil's cheek, one hand caressing while the other held its grip on his mangled fingers. "You will grow to love me as you loved him," Tenjiro whispered. "Are we not of the same blood? Am I not like him in countenance? And you and I are sinners together, Azil. We are sinners together."
Azil shivered, tears leaking between his eyelids and freezing on his cheek before they could fall upon the ice. He thought that Tenjiro was probably right. He, better than anyone alive, knew the way Dragon’s rage could flare. He knew the look of true dragonfire and now he knew its burn. Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked at Tenjiro. But what he saw was not the bars of ice nor the cold, scarred face that he expected. He saw his Lord, his Dragon, face flushed and smiling.
“Sing something.” His voice was rich and deep, warm with affection. Azil felt dizzy with the blood rushing to his head at the heady sound. He drew a shaky, reverent breath. Tenjiro had shown him these illusions before. Each time, Azil grounded himself in the cold of the ice and clamped his teeth together to be sure he wouldn’t slip. But he let himself look, and remember. “Azil. Sing,” the apparition commanded. He touched Azil’s shoulder. “No one can match the beauty of your voice. Sing The Red Boar of Aidu.” Tenjiro must have been listening very closely for years, for he always made the illusions say the right words. Azil shook his head vaguely, rolling his cheek against the ice.
“Damn you, Azil,” Tenjiro snarled, throwing his hand away. He gasped as another lancing pain whited out his vision. Tenjiro grabbed Azil’s hair through the bars of the cage, pulling his head up. “Sleep well, singer,” he hissed into Azil’s ear, slamming his head down into the ice with all the muscles of his arm and shoulder. The darkness swarmed up around Azil, and he let it come.