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“As it stabs, you see Orym’s hand, which was reaching into his belt, and the blue sending stone goes ‘bump-bump-bump’ on the ground.”
“Orym? You there?”
A horrible ripping sound, with the sound of rushing dust and sand and wind in the background.
A voice, creepy, and menacing, unwelcome and unknown to Dorian creeps through the stone in his hand. “We’ve met before…”
A voice, hurt, and sad, and final, and so incredibly known to Dorian comes through. “Yeah.”
“Orym?” Cyrus looks up across the room as Dorian’s voice raises in panic.
Another sound, of sharp metal slicing through flesh and bone and organs, and hitting the ground on the other side. .
An exhale.
No inhale.
No inhale.
“Orym?” Panic turns into desperation.
The sound of roaring sand and wind.
Weapons swinging through the air, blows landing, the crackling of magic.
The horrible voice again, more distant this time. Slow, almost melodic, at odds with the chaos around it. “You carry the seed. Just not as strong as others.”
Something else hits the ground. It sounds a lot like a body. Dorian tries not to think about whose.
Another familiar voice crackles through, conjuring images of purple hair and yellow scarfs, full of hurt and anger and rage. “Leave. My. Friends. Alone!”
Wind.
Fighting.
Silence. The spell cuts off.
Silence. No one in the room speaks.
Silence. Dorian can’t quite remember how to breathe.
Silence. Dorian knows that he will never be able to breathe again, because the pit in his stomach won’t let him.
Hammering. Someone's pounding on the door.
Wait, no, that’s just his heartbeat.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Faster and faster.
There’s a noise, somewhere. Somewhere beyond the moment that Dorian is in, somewhere he can’t quite reach or hear or feel or experience.
The murmuring grows louder. He feels something wet on his cheek. He sees a blob, blue and almost familiar approaching.
A weight on his shoulder. All he can see is a blurry sea of blue in front of him.
There’s sound again, and it’s almost there. He can almost here it.
“Dorian. Dorian you have to take a breath, we can figure this out, okay. I promise, just breathe, okay?”
He’s not sure how, but suddenly a flood of air enters his lungs. Just as soon as it enters, he forces it out, making himself speak.
“Orym. He. It sounded like.”
The blob slowly comes into focus as his brother. “I know, Dorian, I heard.”
“I mean he gets knocked down, a lot, but that didn’t sound like down, Cyrus, that, that sounded like…”
He trails off, unable to even comprehend what the end of that sentence was going to be.
“I know. I know.”
Silence again.
Breathing, too quick.
“We have to do something.”
“I know.”
“We, we have to go.”
Dorian stands up from the chair he’s been sitting on. He starts rushing around the room trying to- he doesn't even know. Pack? He guesses.
“Dorian, stop, we need to figure this out first.”
“Figure what out? Our friends are having a rough fight, so we’re going to go help them, and then everything will be fine. And I have some heals stocked for today, so if anyone even is hurt, I’ll help patch them up, and everything will be fine.”
He knows it’s not true. He knows Cyrus knows it’s not true. It doesn’t matter.
“Dorian, we’re halfway across the world.”
Cyrus’s voice is kind, too kind, because Dorian knows that his voice would never be this kind if the situation wasn’t just as bad as he thought it was. Cyrus would have a joke, or make fun of Dorian for overreacting, or gently tease him for his (apparently painfully obvious) crush on Orym and how he was being too overprotective. But he didn’t.
Dorian puts a hand against the wall, and leans into it, because he’s not incredibly certain of his legs continued ability to keep his body upright.
“Okay. Okay, so we go talk to the others, and we make a plan, and we go help them.”
Cyrus starts to say something, then stops.
Dorian knows what he was about to say. He doesn’t want to know the answer. Somewhere, some distant part of him knows that it is impossible to get there (where exactly? Dorian sure as hell doesn’t know) in time.
Cyrus doesn’t make him get closer to the distant part. Instead, he just says “Okay.” And then he leaves the room to go get the others.
Alone, Dorian starts to think over the message, replaying every second in his head.
Dorian thinks of who the voice could have been. He thinks that Orym might have finally found the person he was looking for, the justice he was seeking, and how he didn’t get it.
He thinks about how he would feel, lying on a battlefield, sword going through his chest.
He thinks about what he would have thought of. He thinks about who Orym thought of. He thinks about the soft smile and sad eyes that Orym always had when he talked about Will.
Then he wonders.
He wonders if Orym is with Will. He wonders if Orym is with Will, if it’s selfish of him to even want him back.
He wonders, who else hit the ground, he wonders if FCG maybe has enough magic to make everything okay.
He wonders if the stone was activated on purpose, or if it was just knocked from Orym’s pocket and turned on.
He wonders if, maybe, just this once, the rules of magic won’t apply, and he’ll be able to talk to Orym again today.
Alone, Dorian walks over to the sending stone that tumbled out of his hand in shock.
He tries to activate it, and it doesn’t light up. He knew it wouldn’t light up. But he tries anyway.
“Orym? I know that you probably can’t hear this. But please tell me I’m wrong. That this was a normal fight, and I’m being crazy.”
Expecting the silence on the other end doesn’t make it any easier to hear.