Theron goes very quiet, his expression closing off. He holds Kirill's gaze for a moment, hurt and anger briefly visible before fading into something more guarded, more cautious.

"All right," he says finally, very quietly. "I'll try."

He looks away, jaw tight, and says nothing more.

"Tell me how you fought an archmage but this time in lots of details, starting with your day-before spell preparations."

Theron takes a breath, visibly bracing himself, and speaks carefully, forcing himself to be detailed, meticulous, slow.

"I woke before dawn," he says quietly, eyes fixed somewhere distant, voice even. "My spellbook was laid out on the table. I'd prepared the night before, marking pages I knew I'd need. First was defensive magic—wards against fire, lightning, and scrying, since I'd faced this archmage before. I prepared spells to dispel enchantments, break wards, and silence him before he could speak. And I memorized offensive spells too, ones to pierce magical shields."

He pauses, searching inward again, eyebrows drawing together. "But when I say all that...there's nothing behind it. I can't see the book, or the pages, or even recall how they looked. It's just a list. It's not real."

Kirill ignores that. "More detailed than that. Name the spells. Night-before spells are the ones that last long enough you don't need to cast them day of, so you have more spells saved for the day of the fight."

Theron hesitates, feeling a sharp pressure—like standing at the edge of something important, something dangerous. He focuses harder, trying to find details that he knows aren't there.

"All right," he says quietly, forcing calm into his voice. "The night before, I prepared spells like Stoneskin, Mage Armor—wards that last hours, at least half a day. Mind Blank, to keep my thoughts shielded. Contingency, so if my defenses failed, another spell—Dimension Door—would trigger automatically."

He pauses abruptly, heart pounding faster, confused by the vivid precision suddenly spilling out of him. He looks up at Kirill, voice tight. "I didn't—didn't know any of that a minute ago. It just—appeared. I didn't even think about it; it was just there."

He swallows, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. "Kirill, it's like—it's like I'm not really remembering, just...answering. Like some part of me thinks if you ask a question, there has to be an answer, so it...makes one."

"Great. Those are your night-before spells? Then what are your morning-of spells?"

Theron opens his mouth, then hesitates again. He wants to resist this time, wants to push back against the automatic flow—but there's an insistent pull, a reflex, something deeper and harder to ignore than Kirill's sharp stare.

"Shield," he says, reluctantly, almost softly. "Mirror Image, to confuse enemy spells and attacks. Spell Turning, to reflect magic back at the caster. True Seeing, so no illusions could deceive me."

Each spell emerges effortlessly, one after another, precise and confident. Theron clenches his fists, feeling oddly sick, a tension tightening in his chest.

He shakes his head, voice strained. "Kirill, it's—I can keep listing them all day, as many as you ask for, but none of them are mine. It's like there's an endless list in my head, just waiting. I don't—I don't even understand how I'm choosing them. I'm not choosing them."

Theron stops, breathing shallowly, eyes widening slightly in realization. "Kirill—it's like I'm reading someone else's thoughts."

"Well, try reading Razmir's. What's he doing to prepare for the fight?"

Theron freezes, breath catching sharply in his throat. "Razmir," he whispers, fear flickering across his face as the name hangs in the air. "That's—I don't know if it'll work like that."

Drinking game, every time the summoned hero informs you that he doesn't know if what he's saying is real- no, that'd kill even Kirill. "Try it."

Theron closes his eyes, bracing himself, reaching out mentally—outward, rather than inward, for the first time.

Almost immediately, something shifts. He feels a surge of information, clearer and colder than anything he's experienced so far. He speaks slowly, carefully, each word feeling as though it echoes from somewhere else.

"Razmir doesn't fear mundane weapons, but he fears betrayal," Theron says quietly. "He'll shield himself against scrying, teleportation, assassination. He'll have Contingency spells linked to powerful healing magic—Heal, Regeneration. He'll ward himself with Mind Blank, Death Ward, Greater Spell Immunity."

Theron opens his eyes, looking startled by the stream of knowledge that just emerged, unbidden, from within him. A faint tremor creeps into his voice. "Kirill, that felt different. Colder. Clearer. Not just—lists. It felt like seeing through someone else's eyes. It felt—real."

...which is no information at all about whether it's real, but he can't quite bring himself to crush the kid's obvious delight. "Fascinating. Try...Meera, a washerwoman in Gralton. What's she thinking about."

He waits for the cold clarity, the rush of answers he felt with Razmir—but this time, there's only emptiness. A blank, endless silence.

He shakes his head slowly, opening his eyes with a troubled frown. "Nothing. I can't—I don't feel anything at all. Just empty."

He meets Kirill's curious gaze, uncertainty flickering clearly across his face. "With Razmir, it felt different. Like the knowledge was there waiting, real and immediate. But this...there's nothing. Just silence. Like Meera doesn't exist until you ask me about her."

He pauses, a sudden chill settling over him as he considers what that might mean. "Kirill, I'm starting to think the answers I'm finding depend on who you ask me about—and why. Like I'm only able to 'see' things that matter to you, or matter to someone. Everything else is just—empty space."

He snorts sharply, exasperated. "Well, I don't think that's the explanation, because Meera matters to me a good bit more than most people. She's the best lay I've ever had. Three kids, and they're probably mine."

Theron winces slightly at Kirill's bluntness, momentarily taken aback. "Then—I don't know," he says, frustrated. "Maybe it's not about mattering to you personally. Maybe it's something else. Razmir was vivid, immediate, detailed—because he's important to this kingdom's survival. He's tied to my purpose here. But Meera—"

He stops, a sudden understanding flickering across his face, an unsettling thought taking hold. "Kirill, maybe it’s not about real people or real memories at all. Maybe I'm not reading minds, or memories. Maybe I'm—constructing answers from context. Razmir matters to the survival of Daggermark, so when you asked, the details were there, ready, vivid. But Meera—you never mentioned her before now, so there was nothing to build from."

"Doesn't explain where you got all those spells. Most of them I'd even heard of."

Theron shakes his head slowly, uncertainty clear on his face. "I'm not sure either. Maybe—maybe whatever created me knew them. Or maybe they're spells someone like Razmir would know, and I just...guessed them from context." He pauses, uncomfortable with his own explanation. "It's all guesses, Kirill. I'm trying to make sense of it, too."

The problem is that he's not a very good guesser, but Kirill doesn't want to tell him that, because he's also astoundingly impressionable. "Well. I think you have access to quite a lot of information, when you think about it in the right way, and I don't know where you're getting it, but some of it is right, which is useful for ...any situation where being right half the time is useful. There are some of those, I'm just not immediately thinking of any that also help fight an archmage."

Theron nods slowly, thoughtful. "Half-right isn't great for battle plans, but it might work for something more—flexible. Like information, or messages. Something where accuracy matters less than patterns, or connections."

He pauses, his expression sharpening with a new thought. "Kirill, what about ciphers? Codes. If there's something hidden in Razmir's messages, or in your spies' reports—maybe I can find it. Maybe that's exactly the kind of puzzle my mind could handle."

" - all right, you know, with that you might genuinely be on to something. Razmir's people do pass ciphered messages. I'll see if I can get us a hold of some." He pauses and takes in the boy. Either the boy is swaying with exhaustion or Kirill is swaying from drink. Or both. "...in the morning."

Theron nods slowly, shoulders relaxing with quiet relief. "Morning, then." He hesitates, glancing down briefly before looking back at Kirill. "And—Kirill? Thanks. For not giving up on me yet."

Kirill wakes up with a headache. Long ago he thought of this as the headache you wake up from drinking too much, but these days he knows better; it's the headache you wake up with from drinking too little, which is to say that gin will fix it. The kid is still asleep. He thinks about leaving a note, decides that in the absence of a note the kid will probably not wander off or anything, and heads on to Rhonthe's office to ask for some of Razmir's coded messages.

The headache is gone by the time he gets back to his room. The kid is awake. 

Theron is sitting cross-legged on the floor by the window, gazing intently at nothing in particular. When Kirill comes in, Theron looks up immediately, alert and curious.

"Did you get them?" he asks quietly, but there's a tight eagerness in his voice, as if he'd been thinking of nothing else since he woke.

He sets the sheafs of parchment down on the table. "We've intercepted plenty of their communications. Nothing the King's spies have been able to crack." He was going to give more guidance than that but the kid is clearly chomping at the bit. "Take a crack, I guess."

Theron picks up the parchments carefully, eyes moving swiftly across the scrambled letters. He frowns at the text, brows furrowing in concentration. "This isn't just substitution," he murmurs, more to himself than to Kirill. "Look how evenly distributed the letters are. That's deliberate—it suggests something polyalphabetic. Vigenère, perhaps, or something similar."