Sitting in the camp in the ruins beneath the top layers of the Shattered Lands, Tiaumil looked down at the book on his lap. Within it lay fears and living nightmares each time he opened it, ones that were all too easily realised now that he was there; once more in the Shadowfell.
He had never wanted to return here. He had done everything he could, once upon a time, to escape it. Every skill learned, every spell and scrap of knowledge plumbed, but nothing had worked. Not until he had traded his soul and his servitude to a patron that had granted him that wish. The Shadowfell wasn't easy to escape, even when you knew the exits, even when you knew the spells, and sitting there near their campfire with the spellbook of Ularan Mortus in hand, there was a part of him that still feared that.
Looking around at his travelling companions, he didn't think they truly realised what they were in for, in a place like Merdelain. All of them but Arya had always lived on Faerûn, and so none of them could truly imagine the insidious threat that the land itself caused. Oh, he had tried to warn them, in comments here and there, but the Shadowfell was like a slow drip of pain and hopelessness that slowly filled a person over time. He had already seen the start of it in Siax. Tempers would shorten, depression would set in, fears would escalate, retaliations and cruelties would seem more normal, more justified. Siax had already pressed a dagger to Effie's throat when a stern comment would have done just as well.
He looked down at his own hands, laying on that book, his own tome resting against his hip, waiting for pages to be transcribed upon it, the pen tucked neatly in the groove made for it. Centuries he'd used that pen to perform his task for Jergal. Centuries he'd used the pen to stem his own cravings so as to not succumb to his very nature. It had been almost easy to hold back those thoughts, the need, and focus only on the pain, the work, of using it. But the Shadowfell breathed around him once more, so familiar, and he knew that he was perhaps the most likely to succumb to being what he had spent centuries trying to forget.
Or perhaps he would be the most resistant, knowing what to look out for, having been brought up with that knowledge from birth. Who could tell?
He didn't think that his patron was deliberately cruel in his decision-making sending him in particular back here, but perhaps lacking in the empathy to choose another if Tiaumil was best skilled for the job. Jergal wouldn't lose out, of course, no matter what struggles Tiaumil went through in his task. In the end, he would get his soul, but that was also the reason that he'd agreed. Even if he should perish there in the Shadowfell, the God of the End of All Things would collect. He would not be left in this place, to be consumed or enslaved by others after death.
It didn't make it pleasant though. There was little about Merdelain that was pleasant. Knowledge, perhaps, was the only thing that it was good for in his eyes, and if he could help his patron end Merdelain for good? Well, that had been the other reason he'd agreed, the other reason he'd chosen that God in particular when he'd made his deal. What this place had twisted the elves into compared to what they had been in ancient history, it should not exist. If Tiaumil could help his patron end Merdelain as a whole, that was a task he could get behind, especially when he could already see the start of the fall of the elves happen in front of him as Siax absented himself from the rest of the group.
Taking a breath and letting it out steadily to center himself, he opened Ularan's book once more. Knowledge didn't transcribe itself, after all, and he would need to rest if he was to keep his mood temperate. That, above all, was going to be necessary for all of them.