"Because I know you," Sev said. "I met you before. I adventured with you. We were friends."

Derivan shifted, and then gently put him down on the ground. Sev took a step forward, not yet completely understanding the memories he'd just unlocked, but working his way through them. There were so many things that were wrong with those memories...

...but there was one thing that was important, and that was the night he had spoken to Illyr in his own tent. They were curled up together, side by side, Illyr's head resting on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Illyr said. "I'm too old to be running to people in the middle of the night."

"Bah," Sev said with a laugh and a friendly nudge to Illyr's shoulder. "We all have our own shit to deal with basically all the time. Not your fault yours is worse than most people's. You got a nightmare, I'm here for you. What are friends for, right?"

"Right." Illyr sighed. "I never really understood that until you and the others."

"Not your fault either." Sev was silent for a moment. "But I'm here if you want to talk about it."

"I don't know." Illyr fidgeted, the normally stoic lizard apparently finding it difficult to find the words. It took a full three minutes before he spoke again. "I wasn't always Illyr."

"You've hinted at your mysterious past before," Sev said, with a hint of a smile, and Illyr grimaced.

"...Illyr is just a name I picked," he said. "My real name is Sylix. Illyr was my brother at the orphanage. He died. I killed him — it was an accident. I didn't know what I was doing, I swear. I was testing my illusions — it just happened — it wasn't supposed to kill him — you have to understand, I didn't know what I could do, I really didn't—"

The words came out in a rush, like he didn't want to say them and forced them out anyway; the lizardkin pulled away slightly and hugged his knees to his chest, looking for all the world like a child in need of comfort.

Sev hesitated slightly. He reached out, but Illyr — Sylix? — flinched away at the brush of his fingers, and he sighed and sat himself down in front of the lizardkin.

He was so young. Barely nineteen years old, and still haunted by the past.

"I believe you," Sev said simply.

"What?" Sylix looked up at him, red-rimmed eyes visible even through the scales.

"I believe you," Sev said again. "You wouldn't kill anyone on purpose. You wouldn't even hurt a fly. Is this why you're so afraid to use your illusions?"

"I... yes." Sylix looked down at the ground. "We were just playing. It wasn't supposed to be a dangerous illusion at all. Just, Illyr was so much younger than me, and he hadn't seen snow before, and I wanted him to see the snow... he got cold so fast and it didn't stop when I turned off the illusions..."

Sylix buried his face between his knees. "They can keep the illusions if they want to," he said quietly, half to himself. "Even if I turn it off, if they want to believe it enough... it keeps going. And I can't turn it off. And it didn't matter how many coats I put on him or how many illusions of fires I gave him, he just kept getting colder and colder, and I couldn't..."

Sev hugged his friend.

He didn't say anything. What could he say? He wouldn't believe 'it's not your fault'. A dozen platitudes wouldn't save his brother.

Sometimes, the best thing you could do was just be there for a friend.

"I think there's still some soup outside," Sev said. "Do you want to get some? Some warm soup will do you good, and then we can talk about it."

"Yeah... yeah, I think that's a good idea." Sylix managed a small smile. "Thanks—"

The memory cut off there. Sev had the strange feeling that there was something off with the memory, but the major details were correct; Illyr-or-Sylix had lived a life as an orphan in an orphanage, with only his younger brother as a companion — and then, when trying to show his brother the magic of winter, he'd accidentally killed him.

A skill that could continue even after you turned it off was cruel.

"What are you talking about?" Illyr's voice was cold. He sounded so different from the Illyr in his memories; this version of him was older by almost ten years, it looked like. He seemed colder. He seemed like someone who had never made any friends, who had to come to terms with what had happened to his brother by himself.

Sev didn't even know what he was supposed to call him. Sylix? Illyr?

"We were friends," Sev said. He didn't even know if this was the best thing to say — Sylix looked like he was getting increasingly angry, but he'd already started down this path. He could only hope what he had to say would calm him down. "We met when you were trying to find a job in the Elyran Guild, but no one would take you in. I said I'd let you join me. There was a fight that day between an orc and a lizardkin, and you split them up with barely any effort."

"I recall the fight," Sylix said, his voice still cold. "But I did not meet you."

He said it as a fact, too. Sev remembered that day so clearly, all of a sudden — everything up to inviting Illyr to join him, and the faces of two other people he no longer recognized but was pretty sure were also his friends...

The timeline didn't add up. He couldn't have done this. He remembered where he was on that day — he was halfway hiking through the Outskirts.

Why did he also remember this?

Because you've done it all before.

The answer was a startling whisper in his own mind.

"You didn't," Sev agreed, his mouth dry. "But we did meet in another time. Another place."

"I don't believe you."

"You don't have to." Sev didn't fully understand where he was going with this — but something in him resonated. Small memories surfaced, things he'd never actually done, moments that he'd never actually had.

Aneryn, too, the shadow elemental that died in the shade of a tree just across from the Festival. Xothok, the bandit that led the team against him.

Misa. Vex.

He'd met them all before.

"Put me in that illusion." The words escaped him before he understood them. Sylix paused, startled, and then his eyes narrowed in a mixture of anger and confusion and some indiscernible, third thing; something like fear and panic rolled together into one.

"You don't know what you're asking me to do." Sylix's voice was tight, controlled.

"Elyra wants you to capture me, right?" Sev kept his gaze and his words even. "I won't die. I can heal myself."

"You'll never feel warm again."

"I will. Because I know how that illusion works, Sylix, and I know how to break out of it."

Sev told himself he wasn't nervous.

They'd worked on controlling it. They'd worked on understanding exactly what it was that made Sylix's illusions tick, back when he'd finally told them what happened; he was afraid to use his most powerful illusions because of the way they stuck to their victims. It seemed that even this version of him — the one that had been picked up by Elyra, that used his skills for Elyra's benefit and leveraged his illusions for the sole purpose of carrying out their orders —

He was still afraid.

Elyra had never done anything to help him with his skills. [Winter Fantasy], the illusion that had killed his brother — they no doubt thought it would be an asset to them. But Sev had seen what Sylix was capable of when he really understood his own illusions, and what they'd seen just now — the warping buildings that threatened to crush them — that was nowhere near his limit.

He hadn't grown. He'd been stuck, and the only thing Elyra offered him was acceptance. They were the only people that wanted him; of course he'd gone with them.

Sev felt the air turn cold. He saw the shimmer in the sky as clouds began to form, and snowflakes dance across the wind. A thin layer of snow began to build up on the streets, along with the phantom lights of Christmas...

An old Earth tradition. Sylix's strongest illusions drew upon their victims to give them what they wanted. For Sev, it was a small piece of home he no longer remembered.

"Are you happy now?" Sylix asked, his voice bitter. "Is this the point you wanted to prove?"

It was cold. Sev drew his robes around himself, shivering, and cast a small divine spell of warmth; it curled down around him and vanished, just as it did the first time he'd tried that, back when they were friends.

"I wanted to prove that you can be more than a soldier," Sev said quietly. "And that you are not a killer."

That had been Sylix's main contention — that his skills were only good for killing; that his illusions could no real good. It made sense that he had ended up as a soldier, even if he hated every second of it. It was the only place that would accept him.

Sev took one last glance at the winter wonderland that surrounded him. It was genuinely beautiful. Butterflies made of snow-crystal fluttered around in the sky; shadows stood behind windows, having warm Christmas dinners. He knew those things were true, because the illusion delivered that information to him, giving him a feeling of warmth and comfort that was easy to get lost in even as his real body began to freeze.

He was standing knee-deep in snow.

But he wasn't, really.

The key to [Winter Fantasy] — and any one of Sylix's more advanced illusions — was that they weren't really meant as combat illusions at all; they would be rather cruel, if that were the case. Sylix had created it because he had wanted to create art, to bring a moment of joy to his brother, and poor Illyr had been drawn in so deeply that he had wanted it to last forever.

Most of Sylix's victims did, really. But they weren't meant to.

Because when Sylix had made that illusion for the first time, he'd had one image fixed in his mind, and they'd never completed it.

Sev reached down to the ground, packing the snow into a snowball. He threw it towards Illyr without much fanfare at all, and watched as the ball of snow hit him in the head.

"Boop," he said simply.

The illusion faded away, and Sylix stared at him, his mouth agape.