All That Is Evil Is Not Dark/Chapter 11

"I am sorry, Delnar, I just cannot go on..." Myr sighed. "We have seen no sign of them. We have to rest. If I die from overexertion I am just as dead, and they can still resurrect me as an undead then, too."

Delnar assented. "Alright, but just for a moment. I guess I forget what it is like to have to eat, drink and rest. I wish I could still do those things."

"Have you tried?" Myr asked. "Why do you believe you cannot?"

"Well, I can sleep, more or less, but the dreams that come in the sleep of undeath are terrible, so I stopped."

"That may be because of where you were, though. My own dreams were very troubled in that place."

"I suppose so."

"What about eating and drinking?"

"I haven't tried. They don't eat or drink so they don’t keep anything around."

"The Brilhado must eat."

"Yes, but during the daylight hours they go their own way. I suspect they eat then and not among us. Would you want to eat amongst decay and death?"

"I suppose not..." Myr paused. "Yet legends speak of undead who eat corpses. Ghouls. So you must have some capacity for it."

"Undead are not all the same."

"No. Still. Can you feel, smell, see, and hear?"

"Yes, though touch and smell are slightly diminished. I suspect that both are a blessing. Feeling oneself in a state of decay and smelling oneself that way would be most unpleasant."

"To whom? Most undead are not sentient, not aware. I doubt it something they developed through evolution. It seems much more likely your brain's own defenses sort through the inputs. I suspect you could taste as well, assuming you don't allow your organs to atrophy to nonexistence. Clearly you breathe, because you talk."

"Yes, but I don’t feel a need to breathe."

"I suspect if you ate you would need to breathe. Digestion requires air."

"Does it really?"

"That’s what I have been told," Myr responded and then paused considerately. "It must have been terrible for you in that place, being a knight in life."

"It was less then ideal."

"Of course, you must have been more resistant to the Uncreator then I was... I am base, as a knight you are pure."

"I think Tralin's magic protected me from him somewhat, but I felt his influence; it would have been very easy to make concessions and then fall into his evil."

"If Tralin could deceive him then can't he stop him?"

"I don't for a minute believe Tralin did anything to the Uncreator. No, his magic was on me. He made me unnoticeable, unintrusive. You did not notice me as I approached you at first, either. So the Uncreator was not fully aware of me, and he did not try to be because I was beneath his notice anyway, I think, another member of the mindless automata."

"You are hardly a mindless automaton."

"No, but I felt myself becoming one. I felt the bloodlust growing as well. I felt his corruption like and infection within."

"Can Tralin help you more, you think?"

"He can help me to die. Once we are sure Draynor knows what’s going on, he can send me to my death in peace."

"Oh. You no longer fear death?"

"I did not fear it to begin with. Fearing death is not why I became an undead, though I can see why you asked. Over the centuries, many who chose to become undead sought to cheat death."

"Why did you become undead, then? Vengeance?"

"Yes and no. I became undead to finish my service and my oath to Draynor."

"Are you alright? You seem more distressed than normal."

"You can tell that? How can you bear to even look at me?"

"I see a noble spirit who is overcoming his situation. You are worthy of being respected, Delnar. You were First Knight of your order and you would not even let death keep you from your purpose. I cannot say as much, though I can relate to it."

"How so?"

"I was a common thief. Or maybe a not so common one. I don't know, but I had even killed in the heat of a robbery. I had not wanted to, but my own life was at risk. He was not the mark, but rather another thief and he jumped me. Still, I was not particularly moral; in a year I went through more money then some went through in their lives, yet I still considered myself the poor and downtrodden. The wealthy had it all, yet I likely went through more wealth than them and still I took. I had plenty of malice for the Devourer to use in my soul. Yet I struggled to overcome my station and when the church found me, I latched onto a way off the streets. I already worshiped the Shadow Lord because he was the natural ally of thieves."

"I am not immune to evil thoughts, you know, Myr. I had my fair share of them. I engaged in enough malice for a dozen men when I watched your people kill mine in Neld. I felt hatred and disgust and I dehumanized them because of their ethnicity. I completely neglected any sense of honor I had in favor of expediency." To Myr's considerable surprise the undead began to sob; even more surprising to him was the fact that his dead flesh seemed to still produce tears.

"You must have cried a lot in order to still maintain the ability."

"I have rarely stopped crying silently during my journey."

"So then you felt him. But you felt guilty, right? In all of this? So guilty you sobbed openly?" Myr moved over and without thought his pastoral instincts came to the fore and he placed his arm around the death knight's shoulder.

"You are touching me. Does it not bother you to be so near rot and decay, so near your own mortality?"

"I don’t believe you represent my death; rather, you represent my salvation. You took me from that place: whatever other motive may have been involved, how can I be other then grateful to you?"

"I still could kill you. You are forgetting I am undead and that is unwise; I may carry disease and I certainly carry the infection of undeath."

"Let me worry about that for now, alright..."

"To take your own assessment, you are a very strange man, Myr of Stone Deep, citizen of Vandar..."

"Thanks."