Arya has spoken with me. She sought me out, seemingly confused about why I had been angry with her, and why I had not acted as she had. Anger is not something I feel often, but it had still lingered with me, as well as the overwhelming sense of frustration over the whole situation, and she let me vent my feelings and was calm in the face of them.
She made me question the circumstances, in the aftermath of that, with her moderate words, and left within me a greater sense of failure for what they had imparted.
It could all have been over. Done. Idris could have been saved, the Three once more ascended, if I had just attacked Ularan with her. Jergal had told us, after all, that a god of death could put to rest a soul like the dragon's.
I had always believed that the most important thing to do was to uphold my agreements, but that assertion had never before been brought into question when pitted against circumstances like these. I had been looking towards Ularan for answers for so long now, knowing him far more learned and informed about critical things than I, with my few years, had managed to gather. I had, I realised, been looking towards him as someone who would not turn away from my differences, for in his own way he held something similar. His word, too, seemed to mean something to him in a way that it did not to others. I had even been tentatively looking towards Naralis for the same, as both of them held a calm about them that felt more normal than the expressiveness of Siax and Idris. A tentative connection that might flourish over time.
I think, in my own way, that yearning for connection has muddied my thinking. In my life it has been rare that I felt such a yearning for connection, not to this extent, but in the past I had been doing my duty on the mountains and that had felt enough. Now I am surrounded with the dead and they are not mine to give rest to. It has been so long since I felt the rightness of laying the dead to rest, and perhaps that has made me weaker to the urge for companionship that fitted me better.
Perhaps there might also be a part, well hidden, that fears the cessation of my life. I had never truly thought so, but I have seen it in so many others that it is possible. If I had done as Arya had hoped, and we had, as one, turned on Ularan in those moments, I would not be writing now. And yet sitting here feels like a failure rather than a relief.
I do not wish to turn on Ularan, or Naralis, or indeed anyone in the group under other circumstances. I do not wish to pit myself against an elven empire, or religious factions, or gods. I just want the world to work as it should.
But one does not come without the other, it seems.
There is also the thought, sitting here, that taking the shards and ascending that way, it may not be what is best for the world either. I truly wish I could speak more to Jergal, and to Naralis who was there before. I do not know what is right to do for the world and its function. There are so many competing scraps of information, and none of them are fit to give a clear path. True, Jergal offered the quick way of ascending, and the nature of rebirth after death feels right to me, even for a world, but the world existed before Jergal came here, with its own gods before others like him came. Ularan's plans are devastating in their own ways to the world we currently live in, and I do not know how free-thinking Naralis is with Ularan's power over him, but he seemed fervent. The lizardfolk too, they remembered a time when the world was different, memories past from generation to generation.
Which version is right? Which version would be better?
Jergal said that Ularan's plans would not succeed, and he said it without question, without doubt. But he came with others, already so much more powerful than those here, that he may not conceive of a time when he would not hold such power, and may have been dismissing it out of hand because of that.
He also said that we should live our most vibrant lives, and that assertion makes me question other things. Why would that be important to him? Is it because it makes the soul more vibrant in turn? More useful? Is it because he, in some way, misses having such a vibrant life, for he is said to have become bored of his current existence, and that did seem to be the case in my interactions with him. Or is it because he scribes all lives, and he prefers to write the stories of people that are interesting?
Jergal dismisses Ularan's life as pointless, and so it cannot be the vibrancy that is the draw, no matter what he said. Ularan is more driven than many I have seen. He has been struggling for centuries, perhaps even millennia, to achieve his goals. And so it is perhaps not the vibrancy that is important to Jergal, but to strive in a way that makes sense to him. He called Ularan's actions pointless, and dismissed him. He was once 'a useful tool' but no longer.
There is too much I do not know.
I had hoped, coming to Uthtower, that at last I would get answers to the many questions I had, and yet Jergal's conversation with us has rendered many of those questions pointless, only to bring other ones to the fore that are not easily answered.
Naralis still lays unmoving after Ularan crafted him a new body. That act alone makes me question, now that I have had some time to myself to set my thoughts upon paper, once again whether Arya's plan would have worked at all. The sheer scale of the power required to create something like that from nothing but a circle, power, and blood, it is intimidating in its scope, especially as it is unlike the ways I can bring back the dead. Arya knows magic though and yet she still asserted that we could have defeated Ularan after seeing that.
I look at that body on the floor, the shell not yet awakened with Naralis at its helm, and I cannot help but come back to it. Something about that form bothers me. I had seen Naralis's body outside, skinned and strung up, and yet at the same time this body is here, whole, when the other is still outside.
Ularan did not seem overjoyed to have returned Naralis to life. It seemed almost minorly defeated. As if it was something that he felt he had to do, but it did not meet his wishes or expectations. I think back to his expression and tone when he had completed the spell, and subtle as it was, the disappointment in it tells a tale.
Whatever it is he did to bring Naralis back, it isn't complete.
It is a creation, then. A body made from nothing to house the consciousness, but one that falls short of what it should have been. We saw Gallio in Leilon, and he was a construct that perfectly emulated [wizard], having his personality and knowledge. If Ularan had created something similar, but with an attempt at tying Naralis's spirit to it, as Idris had seen, then would it truly have been fully Naralis there, especially since Ularan cannot speak with his God any more? He has not given his shard to the construct, we saw that in the Astral Plane, so it stands to reason that it would largely be Ularan's memory of Naralis that influenced it, but with his own values and aims at the base for that creation, no matter if Naralis's spirit is tied to it.
It puts suspicion on what Naralis's true aims and beliefs might have been if the base of the creation is of Ularan, rather than his fallen God.
Ularan's story started with Naralis, and of him seeing his god fall. He told us that Naralis had come back one day with a wound that would not heal, corrupted with blackness. He said that then Jergal came and killed Naralis, and thus started Ularan's drive to stop the elder death god.
But as I think back on it now, he spoke of it too quickly. He spoke of it with the brevity of a man that harbours unquiet thoughts. Ones filled with guilt. Why would he feel guilt over it, especially after all this time? The thought will not leave me, in the same way the body of Naralis bothers me to a greater degree of disquiet. Why would Ularan feel guilt?
Unless Ularan was the reason for Naralis's death.
It makes sense. People are people, and they war and they have disagreements, they vie for power and prestige. Ularan had been Naralis's cleric, and it stands to reason that he would try and find ways of dealing with opposing forces, even of another god. But what if Naralis got in the way unexpectedly. What if he took a blow, or took on a wound to try and ease the suffering of another, one that could not be healed because Ularan had set circumstances in motion to try and take out another, maybe even one of the elven gods?
People do not like shouldering guilt, and Jergal, from all I have seen, is unlikely to have killed anyone, especially a god whom he had taken the time to thank for his work. No, I think it was that Ularan had some hope to try and mitigate his error, that huge error in judgement that had his god fall foul in his plans, and Jergal coming to help Naralis pass on at the moment of his death stopped any hope of that. It is easier for people to blame, and so Jergal became Ularan's enemy, and Ularan likely made his plans to regain his god and to rectify the situation somehow.
But it has been thousands of years now, and although he had regained his God's shard, he has been unable to bring him back fully. Naralis acts like a follower, a cleric to Ularan, not the other way around, and so Ularan now has no intention of letting Naralis once more ascend. He even told us he didn't care who became the next death god, so long as Jergal was stopped. So it truly isn't about Naralis any more, and after centuries being trapped with a body that is fueled by Ularan's own wishes and drives, we will never know what Naralis himself may have wanted. Whatever it is that will wake in that form on the floor across from me, it is a thing twisted from the path Naralis might have wanted; too influenced by Ularan to be himself.
I had thought Naralis's drive to help Ularan had been one of utter belief in his cause, but it seems likely that it is Ularan's wishes that have caused that.
Naralis said that he had slaughtered thousands, likely one of the elven empires, something that had caused Naralis to have become so corrupted by those deaths. Why would an elven god have done such a thing when it was said that he was a god that eased the passing of those suffering? He had said that he did not feel pride at the action, but that he had done so to forward Ularan's plans. But did he really have much of a choice if Ularan's very mind and drive was influencing him that much?
It seems like all of this was never truly about Jergal at all, and while it might have started out being about Naralis, it certainly isn't now.
Does Ularan even remember what the true wishes of his God were? Does he truly remember a time when Naralis might have contradicted him or questioned his motives or actions, if all he's been surrounding himself with was this facsimile that is created with his own goals and beliefs?
To use someone like that, to take them from their own path and twist them in this way, it is deeply wrong in my eyes, far more so because Naralis was Ularan's God, one who trusted him with the lives of his followers.
There is much about Ularan's plans that sat poorly with me, but ones that I would have endured to uphold my agreement with the Three. But I find that it is the fate of Naralis that bothers me enough to heed Arya's words more closely.
Would I too, if I were to ascend with the Three to see to the dead in the world, become a corrupted force like Naralis, if I were to go along with his plans? Naralis's condition shows that such a sacrifice, while powerful, has an effect, and it would change me for having been party to it, in ways that do not sit well with me. Would I care about someone like Naralis's path if I had fueled the ascension by the slaughter of thousands in Merdelain? I don't know that I would, for I am already one step away from the rest of humanity as it is.
I want to care for the dead, to give them rest and ease their passing, much as I am told Naralis once did.
So it comes to this: I cannot side with Ularan if I wish to do what is best for the dead. My agreement with the Three was made because I thought it was what was best for the dead, and I am their agent, rather than anything else. I have autonomy within that.
I will never know what is right for the world at large; whether the world needs the cycle of death and rebirth, or if it would be fine without it. I can only make decisions with what I do know.
Perhaps there is still time to correct our course.
'Be the scythe', Bane told me, and so I can only try, and at least in the trying I can stay true to my own path.