Life and Death... Sometimes I believe I think too much. Far too much for a plain rogue who used to be a street rat.

But after advancing through the mountains, taking kicks from centaurs along the way, and getting to the dig - there were too many things, so fast, that now bear some reflection.

I watched volunteers trek through the mountains in a frightened huddle; like a herd of bos. Perhaps unkind of me to think so, but I watched one snap in fear and run off to gods know where. And part of me could not help but feel contempt for the coward, and immediately following, shame for such a thought. I think my heart has perhaps hardened a bit from how I first felt here. I understand that mans fear; but I know there is no room for such in this world, in the things we adventurers face.

I remember trying to get down to the western dig in a violent haze, blades slashing and tendrils slipping along the ground like poisonous vipers. I remember dodging around everyone elses movements, avoiding the tendrils myself. I remember sliding down into the dig, spotting red splashes and thinking nothing of it at first.

And then everything crystallized in a moment of clarity and I saw the emotions flickering across Brou's face. I saw the stark fear in the faces of the remaining diggers as others came down to dispatch the demons. And I saw the torn remains of the body on the ground.

I couldn't think immediately why the body, the sight of that body, evoked a well of sorrow in my heart. It was just a body. How many times had I seen someones remains rain down from the sky when they took an ill planned trip through a cannon? Bodies were torn, and then they came back.

But this one wouldn't.

Whoever that man was, he wouldn't come back. He wouldn't jump up at a monument ready to go. His family wouldn't need to set a place for him at the dinner table anymore. Death had claimed him in an instant, and it was not to be undone.

Which made the translations that Quarrus read out in the other dig site all the more terrible. Death, held at bay by the Seals in the throne room. A weapon, and adventurers failed in detonating it. That dark, metallic hand reaching out ready to claim us all like that poor digger.

Some of us though are so numb to death anymore. Myself included in that. A trip to a monument is a simple inconvenience, not the end of a lifes journey.
Maybe it isn't supposed to be that way though.
Maybe we are the unnatural ones, holding back Death. holding him at bay with childish hands that don't want to face the end.
Maybe the darkness in me, the fear, wants to think so, wants to give up.
Or maybe...I just think too much.