Part XX: Umbra Hungers

By Eno Dralam, Wielder of Umbra

There is a certain taste to blood that you never really think about until you’ve drooled it out for so long that you almost forget its there at all until something shocks you back into realizing the grave nature of your state. I sat there with a spear in my gut and I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed and who came for me was not who I prayed to; it was someone different entirely, but welcome nonetheless. The man who came for me, he was something different than a man, but I do not know what, nor do I care, I only care that he was the one who saved me from the brink of death even as I recited poems and sang hymns to Vehk in hopes he’d hear me just once and give to me the strength I needed, but he did not. This stranger did though. He cared. He cared enough to tend to my wounds with magicks most powerful and beyond description and he spoke in a jovial tone despite the place we were and the field of bodies of all shapes and sizes that surrounded us. He only laughed at such things and told me it did not matter, because they were insignificant—they had a role to play and they had played it, but he saw something in me, something I do not know, but he saw it and that is why saved me from the brink of death.

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He offered to me a sword blacker than the hearts of the priests of this profane city beneath the world and he told me that if I took it, it would be my undoing and that I would ultimately die to this sword and I dismissed him as a fool, but I did take that sword. I took that sword and I felt its tug immediately, the sort of tug like a woman’s charm, but colder—but meaner—but better. It took hold of me even faster than she did, all those years ago at Eight Plates, but I do not care about that woman anymore. She is dead and gone and it doesn’t matter how she died, only that she did. She’s never coming back and that’s okay. I don’t need her anymore. I don’t need anyone anymore: I have Umbra.

Umbra has given me what it was I always needed; it has given me freedom.

It has freed me of the greatest curse of all: Humanity.

I used to feel things. Love. Anger. Hatred. Now I feel only a hunger that permeates every fiber of my being, but it is a hunger as welcome as that man, and I feel it. It is the hunger of a thousand year famine within me and it is a hunger not for things of mortal make, but of the only things mortals possess that is greater than they: their souls, but no souls are enough to sate this craving. Whether it is one or a thousand, the hunger will not stop nor will it calm—it will rage within me for as long as I carry this blade with me, but there is no price too great to pay for justice and with this blade, I shall have justice.

The hunger grows and with it, I must resume my feasting on the priests of this place.

-Eno Dralam, Wielder of Umbra