Chapter 12: Nature of Things
Grey walls, cold wind on his back, and Valens kept tailing Nomad, chest aching still. Their steps squelched in the puddle coating over the mossy ground. The sounds bounced back and back again. Nothing, it seemed, lived here deep in the ground. Nothing but bones and the poor moss, that is.
Nomad wasn’t certainly helping with that. Valens watched him gazing absently at the pommel of his sword. Questions there, questions here, and questions still. He was rather sick with them lately, but curious too. A delicate balance. Nothing quite as fascinating for a Magus.
“I could use some time after all of that,” Valens said, feeling the burn of his dwindled mana pool in his chest. “Set a fire perhaps? Some warmth would be nice.”
“Some warmth?” Nomad rasped with his gravelly voice, turning and giving him a glance that didn’t quite look right. “Folks tend to use fire for more grander things up there. For grave things. Their’s a sick way of punishing people. Some bloody deed, if you’d asked me.”
“I would, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Memories,” Nomad grunted and turned round, waving a hand at an invisible fly before his face. “What good they do, anyway? I have a couple of them. Some make me sick. Others remind me of times long past. I reckon you could do without them. Cast them away and you’re born anew. That’s a way to look at it.”
“You get them still, no?” Valens argued. “Everything’s a memory. There’s no escaping them to my knowledge.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Shackles and dead weight in your brain. That’s what they seem to be. Mines are a little rusty, a bit twisted, but you’re not supposed to remember the times of old. Back when you’re still alive, I mean. Makes it a whole bloody complicated.”
“You can remember?” Valens asked. He wasn’t sure about how the memories of an undead worked, but then, he wasn’t sure how they could still walk and talk, at all. Another mystery there.
Noted.
“Bits and pieces,” Nomad muttered, looking at his sword. “There’s a reason why they burn good men in the world above. Eternal rest, they call it. Every bit of your body returns to Mother Nature's embrace. Others, they bury deep in the ground. Not the Priests, though. Those bastards think they’re too good for that.”
Valens eyed Nomad, then glanced back the way they came. “That’s why we buried them? I thought—“