The Zombie Knight Saga 176 Clxxvi. | 'Descend, And Have Care...'

The first part of the fall was a bit rough. Hector hadn't quite nailed the correct trajectory when he'd jumped in, so he soon ended up hitting the wall and bouncing off of it. He ping-ponged back and forth for a while before finally managing to correct his angle of descent with iron. He armored up during that time as well, finding it better to sc.r.a.pe against the wall with metal than with bare flesh.

Once that was done, though, the journey became quite peaceful. And long. It was a strange feeling, to be sure. As he got accustomed to the sensation and relaxed a bit more, his senses began to blend together, which eventually became disorienting as well. At times, he wasn't even sure if he was falling. It almost felt as if he were simply suspended in midair, instead.

'That's not too surprising,' said Garovel privately after Hector had told him about it. 'The human body is in no way adapted to falling such a great distance. That, and I've heard gravity can get pretty screwy in these holes, too. I'm sure your brain doesn't appreciate that very much, either.'

It was true that he felt a little woozy at times. He tried to maintain his focus, though. A question. He had to think of a question. 'Ah... oh, uh. By the way, um... you mentioned it before, didn't you?'

'...What? Mentioned what before?'

'Uh... ah...'

'You okay there, buddy?'

'Y-yeah, I think so. Sorry.'

'Want me to knock you out and just wake you up when we get there?'

'N-no, that's okay. This is... this is good training. I think.'

'Hmm. If you say so.'

'But you DID mention something before...'

Garovel laughed. 'Yes, Hector. I have mentioned lots of things before.'

'No. I mean. But. Yeah.'

Garovel laughed harder. 'This is more fun than I expected. I like disoriented Hector.'

'Ah... er...' Dammit, there was something. He was trying to remember. 'You mentioned something about these giant holes, didn't you?'

'Mm, sure?'

'Agh...'

'C'mon, buddy, you can do it.'

'Something, uh...' Hector remembered. 'Names! They have names!'

'Oh, right, yeah. What about them?'

s.h.i.+t, what about them? 'What, uh...? Ugh...'

'Oh, are you trying to ask what the name of this hole is?'

'Yeah! That's it!'

'Well, I don't actually know, sadly. I'd never even heard of Warrenhold before Voreese told us about it, and I definitely didn't know that it had a path to the Undercrust in it, much less the path's name.'

'Oh.'

'We can ask Voreese next time we see her. Or we could just name it ourselves. We could call it the Warrenhole. Heh.'

'Wow...'

'A thousand troa says that that's what Voreese calls it.'

'You don't have any money to bet with, Garovel.'

'I'll just use yours.'

'Why would I take a bet against my own money?'

'Look, stop being logical. I thought you were disoriented.'

'I think it's pa.s.sed now.'

'Well, s.h.i.+t.'

'Speaking of owing me stuff, though, I haven't forgotten our last wager.'

'Hey, I wouldn't have owed you anything. Voreese is DEFINITELY going to call it Warrenhole.'

'Garovel.'

'What?'

'You're trying to change the subject.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Bulls.h.i.+t. We had a wager, and you lost.'

'That's funny. I remember you disqualifying yourself by cheating.'

'No way. I won fair and square, and we both know it. Now you have to tell me something significant about your past.'

'Eh, I dunno. I mean, given the circ.u.mstances and my overall generosity as a person, I think we can probably just consider it a draw.'

Hector couldn't help laughing. 'You're so full of s.h.i.+t.'

'Tell you what. I'll tell you something significant about my past, if you do what you promised, too.'

'It WASN'T a draw, Garovel.'

'It kinda was, though.'

Hector wasn't going to budge on this. 'You tried to redefine the definition of your second guess after the fact. That doesn't count as a draw at all.'

'That's YOUR interpretation. My interpretation was you tried to cheat by pretending my second guess was wrong.'

'You're unbelievable.'

'You're just scared of having to pay Lynn a compliment.'

'Of course I--agh! Whatever.'

'Just one compliment! It'd be easy! Here, I'll even help you prepare. You can tell her her eye patch looks nice.'

'What the f.u.c.k kinda compliment is that?'

'The easy kind. And I'm saying that's okay.'

'It sounds sarcastic.'

'Well, don't say it in a sarcastic tone, then.'

'I'm not gonna say it at all! I won the wager, jacka.s.s!'

'Just because you keep saying that doesn't make it true.'

'I hate you.'

'I hate you, too, buddy.'

Hector gave a mental sigh. 'Fine. If you really don't wanna tell me about yourself that badly, then I'm not gonna force it out of you.'

'Oh, you mean like you've BEEN doing? I've been feeling a lot of hostility, y'know.'

'My apologies,' said Hector dryly. 'I don't know what came over me. I'm sure it would've been a boring story, anyway.'

'Oh s.h.i.+t. Really? You're doing this, now?'

'Doing what? It's just--now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not even sure why I decided to bet for it in the first place. I mean, if you had anything interesting to say about your past, you probably would've told it to me a long time ago.'

'This isn't gonna work, Hector.'

'What isn't?'

'First of all, I know that YOU know that I have tons of interesting stories left to tell. I'm three thousand years old. You can't possibly believe I'm out of material, already.'

'Whatever you say, Garovel.'

The reaper snorted a laugh. 'You sack of a c.r.a.p! Stop trying to p.i.s.s me off!'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'f.u.c.kin' liar.'

'It's alright, Garovel. You don't need to be ashamed of your boring history. I understand. '

'Wow.'

Hector laughed but decided to change tactics. With how stubborn the reaper was being, he was getting the impression that they were wading into sensitive territory here. 'Do you really not want to tell me, though? I mean, you know, it actually IS okay, if you don't want to. Seriously.'

The reaper made no response.

'...Garovel?'

'Um. Well. It's not that I don't want to tell you anything at all about my past. Because--and I'm being serious here--there's plenty to tell. Obviously, I could pick a story from almost any point in my life, and you'd probably be fine with it. But... I've been thinking for a while now that there is... one story in particular that I'd like to tell you, even though it's not one I like to tell.'

'...So that's why you've seemed so reluctant about this.'

'I planned on telling it to you, sooner or later. It's just easier to put these sorts of things off.'

'Why don't you like telling it?'

'There are a few reasons. It's quite personal, for one. And for another, it could be bad if other people found out about it. There's sensitive information in it. But mostly... I think... the main reason I don't like telling it is simply because... it doesn't paint me in a very flattering light.'

'Oh...'

'While it did happen a very, VERY long time ago, I won't blame you if you think less of me after I tell it to you.'

Suddenly, Hector wasn't so sure he wanted to hear it anymore. 'Uh... s.h.i.+t, Garovel. It's really that bad?'

'I would say yes. But then again, I don't really know. I'm not sure what you'll think.'

'O-okay. Um.' He tried to prepare himself. 'I'll try to keep an open mind, then.'

'Alright, then. Here goes.' Garovel paused, perhaps to gather his thoughts. 'It's a story from when I was still alive. It took place on the continent now known as Exoltha.'

'Ah--sorry to interrupt so soon into it, but, uh... I seem to recall you telling me that you weren't sure what your homeland was called nowadays.'

'Hmm, did I?'

'Yeah. It was back when you first told me about the Lyzakks. Your native people, you said. And then later, you told Ibai that you grew up on Exoltha. Or the Dáinnbolg, is what I think you called it. Either way, I'm pretty sure everyone knows about the dead continent nowadays.'

'How strange,' said Garovel.

'Right? It's almost like you were lying or something.'

'You're probably just remembering wrong.'

'Don't think I am.'

'Oh yeah? What makes you so confident, huh? Your memory's not that good.'

'Maybe not like yours, but I can remember stuff. Sometimes.'

'Yeah, when it's inconvenient for me, apparently.'

'Why did you lie?'

'Well, technically, I didn't.'

'Technically, you said you didn't know something that you actually did know. That's a lie, Garovel.'

'No, see, while Chergoa and I did grow up on Exoltha, the small region of it where we lived was eventually broken off from the rest of the continent and therefore isn't a part of it anymore. It became a group of islands and drifted rather far away.'

'Drifted? Islands don't float, do they? I mean, they're made of rock.'

'Islands DO drift, though admittedly not as quickly as these did. And you're right, islands normally do not float, but these ones do, because they're man-made. And I genuinely do not know what they're called nowadays, either.'

'Hmm.'

'So you see, I didn't actually lie.'

'...Right. You just left a ton of stuff out.'

'Well, it wasn't especially important at the time and would've needlessly complicated the conversation, okay? And as you already know, I don't particularly like talking about this part of my past very much. Now will you stop breaking my b.a.l.l.s and let me continue on with my story?'

'Go ahead.'

'Alright. So I was still alive and in the flesh. Living on Exoltha. And no, before you ask another pedantic question, we didn't actually call it Exoltha in those days.'

'I wasn't gonna ask that.'

'Mm. Regardless, for ease of storytelling, I'm just gonna keep referring to it as Exoltha, okay? Okay. Anyway, it began, like many stories, with war--'

'I'd still like to know more about those man-made islands, by the way.'

'Stop interrupting, dammit.'

'Sorry. It's just, I mean, this was like three thousand years ago, right? So who made them? A servant?'

'Yes. Now do you wanna hear this story or not?'

'Of course I do.'

'Then shut up for a minute.'

'...Fine.' If Hector was being completely honest, though, a part of him would've liked to keep stalling. He might've kept trying, if the reaper hadn't started to sound sincerely annoyed.

Garovel took a moment before continuing. 'So there was a war. But that wasn't such a rare thing. My people were a brutal sort. We fought all the time, often amongst ourselves. It's hard to truly articulate how different life was, compared to civilization as you know it today, but that was one of the biggest things. Bloodshed was as common a thing to us as eating or sleeping.'

Hector just listened.

'Part of the reason for that may have been because reapers were a well-known part of our culture, and there was a prevailing idea among the Lyzakks that death wasn't really the end. It was easier--mentally, that is--to risk our lives in deadly combat, because we knew that we could live on after our mortal end. At the time, we believed it was a measure of our courage and dutifulness in life. If we lived a "worthy" life in other words, then we would get to come back as a reaper and watch over our brethren.

'And I was certainly no exception. I believed that wholeheartedly. It wasn't until much, much later, after I'd already become a reaper myself, that I began to realize it was simply a hereditary, luck-of-the-draw type thing. That was quite the horrific revelation, let me tell you. Thinking that you'd lived a good and worthy life and that all of your fellow reapers were the same--that was a comforting belief. Until it was gone, that is. I'd never felt so deluded and ashamed of myself as I did then.

'But I'm getting ahead of myself, I suppose. That's not even part of this story, really. This is just about what I did during the war.'

Hector thought of a question and decided to interrupt. 'Did this war have a name?'

'Not one that many have heard of, I should think. But in Mohssian, it would've translated to "the Thousand Books War."'

'It was a war over books?' said Hector.

'More or less. See, my people weren't very, uh, shall we say, "literarily inclined." We had a habit of going around and destroying places where any sort of writing was being kept.'

'Why?'

'It may be hard to believe by today's standards, but writing was a very controversial development in our culture. The idea was that writing things down made you "careless of mind," because if you wrote something down, then you wouldn't have to remember it. And that was considered a trick of sorcerers and saboteurs in an effort to weaken our culture and our people.

'We did, however, write things down in stone. Even long before I was born, that was a revered tradition. Which, I freely admit, was maybe a bit hypocritical of us, but the difference, at least in our minds, was that because stone made the task so much more difficult, it couldn't be "abused" for trivial matters. You would only bother with the arduous task of writing something in stone if it was something that you really, REALLY wanted to write down.'
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'Huh...'

'But anyway,' said Garovel, 'it wasn't what you might call a "good war." Or--okay, maybe that sounds like an oxymoron and simply an impossibility--and maybe it is. War is obviously terrible. But what I mean is, it wasn't a war that we had a good reason for fighting. We were the aggressors, and we were trying to destroy all these libraries before they could "sow disorder" or "stir dark sentiments" among our people. That was basically the extent of our justification for it. And even though I believed it at the time and for many years thereafter, when I look back on it now... well. I'm ashamed of myself, to say the least.'

Hector wasn't sure what to say.

'...But perhaps that doesn't really give you a complete pictures of things,' said Garovel. 'I'll put it more bluntly. Over the course of the war, I burned down seven different libraries and slaughtered dozens of innocent people in the process.'

Now Hector really didn't know what to say.

'Of course, they didn't seem so innocent to me at the time, nor was I acting alone, but that doesn't absolve me of my crimes, I think.'

'It... it was three thousand years ago, Garovel.'

'That doesn't absolve me, either, Hector.'

'I... I don't... uh...'

'It's okay. You don't have to say anything. And you don't have to overlook it, either. It's a part of my past, and even though that's not who I am anymore, I wanted you to know about it.'

He felt like he had to say something, but he didn't know what. Garovel had really killed people? Innocents?

He was having a hard time with that. He didn't want to believe it. But then again, life was different three thousand years ago. And it was a different culture. And... and...

'...Why did you tell me that?' said Hector.

The reaper took his time answering. 'I... don't want to hide the truth from you. Even when it's terrible.'

'But that's...' Hector sighed in his own mind. A part of him--a rather strong part of him--wished that Garovel hadn't told him. He didn't want to think of Garovel as having done something like that. 'Did you... did you really kill innocent people? Like, non-combatants who couldn't fight back?'

'...Yes.'

Somehow, that one word hurt Hector more than he thought it would. It was so difficult to understand, to consolidate with everything he had already known about Garovel. This was someone who had resurrected him for the expressed purpose of rescuing innocent people, and yet...? Now Garovel was saying...?

Agh.

It was one thing for Garovel to have fought and killed people in a war. Other warriors. That was what Hector had been thinking the reaper was going to say. Even that thought had made him uncomfortable, but now, he felt like he would've understood that a lot better, at least. When you were in a war, you were fighting for your own survival as much as you were to achieve victory for your side. It wasn't pleasant to think about, maybe, but it was understandable.

Killing non-combatants was beyond that, though, Hector felt. That was significantly more awful.

There arrived a very long silence as Hector deliberated over what to say. He knew that he wanted to say something, and perhaps Garovel could somehow tell, because the reaper was giving him plenty of time to think.

Would more context help, Hector wondered? He wasn't so sure that it would. And it wasn't like Garovel hadn't provided any, already. A culture where bloodshed was common as eating and sleeping, the reaper had said.

Hector was grasping. 'Was it... like, ah... w-were you following orders? Or I mean, was it, uh, peer pressure or something?'

'...I suppose I could make those arguments,' said Garovel very calmly and slowly. 'And there would even be truth in them. Certainly, if I had refused to follow orders, I would have been flogged and possibly executed. And there was definitely an element of peer pressure to it as well. Every culture has peer pressure, to some extent, else it wouldn't really function as a culture.

'But if I am being entirely honest with both myself and with you, then, no. I believed quite strongly in what I was doing. I truly thought that those innocent people were simply not innocent. I thought they were evil and traitorous.'

Hector frowned inside his helmet. 'I don't suppose... there's any chance they actually were evil and traitorous, is there?'

The reaper gave a weak laugh. 'You're really trying to give me the benefit of the doubt, aren't you?'

'I just... I don't know.'

'Well. Contrary to what I may have said in the past, I am not omniscient. So maybe they were traitorous in some capacity. Maybe they were even evil, by some strange definition. But the fact of the matter was that I didn't have any good justification for believing so. And yet I did.'

Hector didn't have anything to say.

Garovel wasn't done, though. 'The killings were horrible enough, obviously, but I also don't want to understate the seriousness of burning down those libraries. These days, the whole world is a library, thanks to technology, so the loss of one is not nearly as much of a tragedy. In those days, though? I'm certain I helped destroy knowledge that could not have been found anywhere else. Probably even knowledge that remains lost even to this day. There's no way to tell. And when I imagine the potential rippling effect of that lost knowledge throughout history... it makes me wonder how many other innocent people might have been saved.'

'That's... that's unknowable, Garovel. You shouldn't think like that.'

It was the reaper's turn not to say anything.

And there was more silence. Hector wanted to say something, but this was all a lot to take in, and he didn't want to say something he didn't mean. He especially didn't want to say something that he knew was wrong, because even if it sounded good, it probably wouldn't help.

Garovel had just bent over backwards to tell him the truth. Hector didn't want to betray that effort by lying to him.

At length, however, Hector thought of something he wanted to ask. '...When did you change? And how?'

'My views didn't change until about a hundred years after I became a reaper,' said Garovel. 'That was when I decided to start traveling. As for "how"... well. There wasn't any singular cause, I'd say. It was more a c.u.mulative effect. I was slow to change my mind--as you might expect from someone who'd lived that way his entire life.'

'...Is that why you decided to start taking servants? To make up for... all of that?'

The reaper paused again. 'Yes. That would be fair to say.'

'I... see.'

'It's also why I would like to turn Warrenhold into a place of safeguarding knowledge, if possible. Maybe it's too little, too late, but I'd still like to try, nonetheless.'

Hector didn't know what to say.

Garovel left it at that for a while, and Hector just allowed his thoughts to swirl in his mind, not really holding onto or trying to unpack any of them. He felt like he understood Garovel much better now, and yet he didn't know what to make of that understanding.

He didn't feel like he disliked Garovel any more, though. And that was strange. Because he should have, shouldn't he? Was his friends.h.i.+p with Garovel making him completely overlook this?

That didn't seem right...

But maybe there was more to it than just that. It was so long ago, and Garovel obviously regretted it. And Hector didn't know any of the people whom Garovel had killed, so...

Ugh.

Hector felt intensely uncomfortable with himself. He didn't think any less of Garovel. But he might've thought less of himself.

Maybe he was just thinking that way because it was familiar, though. Easier.

Agh. So confusing. He couldn't tell if he was being honest with himself about any of this. He only knew that it felt very strange and that he didn't like it.

In time, Garovel spoke up again. 'I can sense the bottom. You should try to protect your Scarf, if you can. Don't want to get blood all over it.'

Hector removed it and boxed it in iron.

Then he blacked out.