Jan 26, 2021 2:01:00 GMT -6
[attr="class","foreign"]
[attr="class","dust"]
ulla
[attr="class","sun"]The Hollow Lich
With the beating heart.
Journal Entry: Samuel Hawkins
I want to lie to you. I want to tell you that I have kept myself isolated, away from the world, that I have not interfered anywhere; but that would be a deceit.
Before my apprentice came into my life, I did not catalog nor take more than a vague mental account of how many times I cursed people- or rather, gave them ‘immortality’ in exchange for something. The deals I made for this curse ranged from servitude to whatever they offered, sometimes their children. I found it disgusting that some humans would offer up their offspring for a curse, and out of sympathy I would raise the children to adulthood then send them off. More or less, pets I kept until I released them back into the wild. Sometimes they kept in touch but sometimes they did not.
The event that my apprentice called ‘The Night of Dawn’, although the label was theatric, was more heartbreaking than Claudius cheating on me on our wedding night.
When my apprentice came into my life it was not long before Joan’s passing. 1431. That was the year… Her death was May thirtieth.
They are hard-working; they offered to compile a list of people I had given the lich curse to. Some died again, so they weren’t counted, but it took my apprentice five years to create it. I didn’t mind. I enjoyed the company and their companionship, I enjoyed getting to learn about them as individuals. Humans are truly strange and unique sometimes.
Three hundred and seventy-eight. Those were just the ones that my apprentice could find and the ones that lived. That did not account for the ones who died or the ones I forgot. By the time my apprentice came into my life, I had lived and walked this earth for seven-hundred and nine years. I was close to celebrating my seven-hundred-and-tenth birthday. There were probably thousands of people I had given the curse to… but Humans were all the same.
Greedy, self-centered, and self-serving. Not always but most often. They used me as a reliable whore in a tucked away brothel; quietly kept but not forgotten. They came, struck up a deal, but they never listened. They only ever wanted immortality to have it. They wanted it. They never needed it.
And I gave it to them.
Though they did not listen when I told them how time did not heal all wounds, how lonely it was and how vast the regrets I carried grew, or how undying would not bring them happiness and joy as they thought it would- they ignored me. To Humans, ‘immortality’ is a solution, perhaps the ‘end of the line’. Some humans marry each other and I like watching the monogamy of their relationships… but they often think their relationship problems will dissolve or fizzle out like a drying spark once they wed. They are wrong. And then they are surprised that these problems persist.
They treat the immortality I give them the same. Not always, mind you; sometimes I offered it to those in peril. Humans…are strange. One moment they are fragile, the next vicious. Friend and foe. They were desperate sometimes for “immortality” but never desperate enough to grasp or understand it’s weight or its gravity upon them, upon the world, upon the universe.
Then it happened. My apprentice, eager to please me when I had long lost the aptitude to even enjoy or experience what emotion he sought to gain from me, brought me reports even though it took him two decades. On all of the liches, we had cataloged. They were thorough and beautifully detailed but there was a problem. There was a catch to the reports he gave me which were ones that listed Liches of my making, who were killing “varying degrees that were not associated with self-preservation”. They were not killing to defense themselves… they were actively doing it offensively. My stomach turned but I opened the report and began to read.
Two-hundred-and-eight-five liches, born by my hand, had spent years being deplorable. When I received these reports, I was distraught and saddened, and these were only the ones that my apprentice could hunt down their exact location. Them looking for the others wasn't my concern- it was the context of the reports. They varied by severity but some of them were more heinous than others.
Several dozen liches of my brood- of my making, of my cursing- were animal abusers in a sexual nature. Dozens more were stealing or embezzling, swindling people of their money. At least a hundred had committed, attempted, or showed signs of willing cannibalism. Every one of them was harming their community, the towns and small villages they lived in, in some way. Every single one of them was a killer. Each one had killed at the minimum, seven people.
That means that I, by extension, by creating these liches- no, these monsters- had killed one-thousand,nine-hundred, ninety-five humans. I had given these humans undeath… I struck deals with them, with my constant ask that they be productive members of society and they all agreed. They agreed to me before the curse that they would help advance things, help humans learn, help make science better and the curing of diseases more accurate. That they would even abolish poverty and starvation in some areas, or weed out corruption and injustice. They vowed- no, they promised me- that they would be helpful to their communities on the contingency that I gave them the curse they wanted so bad but couldn't be bothered to read the fine print.
And they had lied to me. By killing these people, they had voided my goodwill and good-nature of assisting them by giving them what they wanted and pined for so desperately. I was, in a word, furious. These were the same humans that got their gift, lightly kept in touch or ignored me completely, then vanished and continued. I thought their death would kill them as “Humans” and solidify them as “Liches”... but they were only more “human” than before, with the newfound arrogance of cheating death and the greed of being “immortal” as if it had no price.
These liches were my hope that I, in some way, could be useful in my undeath to the world at large. To help it prosper even as my passion and warmer emotions withered and faded to time.
What had I done? Had I been tricked by Humans, to give them what they asked, just for them to break their word to me and turn on me? I gave them lichdom, was I truly blameless in their- their mindless slaughtering? How could I not be at fault for almost two-thousand human lives lost to beings I created? How could I ever be blameless?
What could I do? What should I do? What would I do?
I cannot turn back time, I cannot bring back lives lost without the curse in place beforehand… there seemed only one way to solve this.
I needed to hold myself accountable for these losses. I need to be responsible for the justice of their wasted lives.
On a humid and sweltering summer night, I shut my heart to my brood and solemnly told my apprentice that I had decided to kill them. All of them. They asked if it was something I had done before- I told them no.
I kept my distance from other undeath when I felt them, so I had no guidance. No advice. No counsel but my own; if killing myself would rid the world of my brood then I would have done it then and there but I had no proof and neither did my apprentice.
One of them was listed close by with a term I had never seen before- my apprentice had labeled them as an “angel of mercy”. It had to be explained to me; and when it was, my apprentice and I went to that lich first. He was once named ‘Samuel Hawkins’ but in our deal-making, since he had little to offer, I took his name, and gave him another. An angel of mercy was someone in the medical field, who killed their patients.
I didn’t want to believe it. I remembered Samuel Hawkins as a good man who wanted lichdom to become a doctor, to find a cure for his wife’s waning mental health so he could find peace in the knowledge and closure within it. I gave him the curse.
He became a doctor when I found him, following him to his home like a shadow. I questioned him. Why would he lie to me? His answer?
He had found the source but it was the hydra of his career, the bane of his doctorate- it resided profoundly in what is known now as an ‘asylum’ or a hospital specifically for those with illnesses of the mind and mental health. For every person he needed to cure, three more appeared. He had spent years trying to save and then it happened. The strong moral compass he once had cracked and shattered under the pressure and he began to do the only thing he thought he could- killing those who showed “signs of the illness” since science could not find a cure and there was no hope for them. He flipped between ‘signs of illness’ and people he just blatantly deemed as ‘too far gone’ to be helped.
I found out hundreds of years later, the illness was schizophrenia.
By the time I got to him, Samuel Hawkins had killed five hundred people. I killed him, I told my apprentice to make it look like an accident and I went home. I wept. I sobbed.
How was I not to blame? I took ‘Samuel Hawkins’ and gave him lichdom, and he became a doctor who killed those who looked to him for hope and healing.
I sobbed for hours until I lost my voice. My apprentice tried to reassure me that it wasn’t my fault but how was it not?
He had tried to help these people but his longevity made him jaded and cynical and he began killing them because he became too lost to his madness to think of it as ‘wrong’. He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was putting these people out of their misery by being the farmer who killed his injured horse.
The victim he killed before I got to him? A father of four, who had gone in with the first signs of what could have been the mental illness. I had seen his wife visit his room.
My brood had taken a father and a husband from this world with no remorse, on some… vapid, fictional witch hunt to rid the world of the illness. How was I any better? Had I not done the same with Claudius?
As I sit here in Lorsette, I have killed three-hundred-fifty-nine of the Liches my apprentice cataloged. Child molesters, rapists, cannibals, and murderers. This is what my giving them lichdom bought me. Regret and remorse for interfering with humans.
I was a coward; but when my apprentice offered to hunt them down after I killed several dozens myself, I accepted. My apprentice alerted me that more aware Liches had realized I was active, moving around, and they were watching my movements so I remained relatively still as my apprentice began to hunt them down like rats. Calling or contacting me after each one was handled. They keep a book of names and strike them off as they go and I do not hold it against them.
I know I have done the right thing by killing the Liches I have made, but at what cost? To what end? I cannot transverse these lands and just keep killing them, I would be no better than the murderers I kill. Am I not the kingsnake of snakes? I run myself ragged thinking of how these facts torture me so…
But nothing hurts like the fact that my well-meaning led to thousands of human lives lost when I was not keeping an eye on my makings.
I have regrets… and this is one of them.
I want to lie to you. I want to tell you that I have kept myself isolated, away from the world, that I have not interfered anywhere; but that would be a deceit.
Before my apprentice came into my life, I did not catalog nor take more than a vague mental account of how many times I cursed people- or rather, gave them ‘immortality’ in exchange for something. The deals I made for this curse ranged from servitude to whatever they offered, sometimes their children. I found it disgusting that some humans would offer up their offspring for a curse, and out of sympathy I would raise the children to adulthood then send them off. More or less, pets I kept until I released them back into the wild. Sometimes they kept in touch but sometimes they did not.
The event that my apprentice called ‘The Night of Dawn’, although the label was theatric, was more heartbreaking than Claudius cheating on me on our wedding night.
When my apprentice came into my life it was not long before Joan’s passing. 1431. That was the year… Her death was May thirtieth.
They are hard-working; they offered to compile a list of people I had given the lich curse to. Some died again, so they weren’t counted, but it took my apprentice five years to create it. I didn’t mind. I enjoyed the company and their companionship, I enjoyed getting to learn about them as individuals. Humans are truly strange and unique sometimes.
Three hundred and seventy-eight. Those were just the ones that my apprentice could find and the ones that lived. That did not account for the ones who died or the ones I forgot. By the time my apprentice came into my life, I had lived and walked this earth for seven-hundred and nine years. I was close to celebrating my seven-hundred-and-tenth birthday. There were probably thousands of people I had given the curse to… but Humans were all the same.
Greedy, self-centered, and self-serving. Not always but most often. They used me as a reliable whore in a tucked away brothel; quietly kept but not forgotten. They came, struck up a deal, but they never listened. They only ever wanted immortality to have it. They wanted it. They never needed it.
And I gave it to them.
Though they did not listen when I told them how time did not heal all wounds, how lonely it was and how vast the regrets I carried grew, or how undying would not bring them happiness and joy as they thought it would- they ignored me. To Humans, ‘immortality’ is a solution, perhaps the ‘end of the line’. Some humans marry each other and I like watching the monogamy of their relationships… but they often think their relationship problems will dissolve or fizzle out like a drying spark once they wed. They are wrong. And then they are surprised that these problems persist.
They treat the immortality I give them the same. Not always, mind you; sometimes I offered it to those in peril. Humans…are strange. One moment they are fragile, the next vicious. Friend and foe. They were desperate sometimes for “immortality” but never desperate enough to grasp or understand it’s weight or its gravity upon them, upon the world, upon the universe.
Then it happened. My apprentice, eager to please me when I had long lost the aptitude to even enjoy or experience what emotion he sought to gain from me, brought me reports even though it took him two decades. On all of the liches, we had cataloged. They were thorough and beautifully detailed but there was a problem. There was a catch to the reports he gave me which were ones that listed Liches of my making, who were killing “varying degrees that were not associated with self-preservation”. They were not killing to defense themselves… they were actively doing it offensively. My stomach turned but I opened the report and began to read.
Two-hundred-and-eight-five liches, born by my hand, had spent years being deplorable. When I received these reports, I was distraught and saddened, and these were only the ones that my apprentice could hunt down their exact location. Them looking for the others wasn't my concern- it was the context of the reports. They varied by severity but some of them were more heinous than others.
Several dozen liches of my brood- of my making, of my cursing- were animal abusers in a sexual nature. Dozens more were stealing or embezzling, swindling people of their money. At least a hundred had committed, attempted, or showed signs of willing cannibalism. Every one of them was harming their community, the towns and small villages they lived in, in some way. Every single one of them was a killer. Each one had killed at the minimum, seven people.
That means that I, by extension, by creating these liches- no, these monsters- had killed one-thousand,nine-hundred, ninety-five humans. I had given these humans undeath… I struck deals with them, with my constant ask that they be productive members of society and they all agreed. They agreed to me before the curse that they would help advance things, help humans learn, help make science better and the curing of diseases more accurate. That they would even abolish poverty and starvation in some areas, or weed out corruption and injustice. They vowed- no, they promised me- that they would be helpful to their communities on the contingency that I gave them the curse they wanted so bad but couldn't be bothered to read the fine print.
And they had lied to me. By killing these people, they had voided my goodwill and good-nature of assisting them by giving them what they wanted and pined for so desperately. I was, in a word, furious. These were the same humans that got their gift, lightly kept in touch or ignored me completely, then vanished and continued. I thought their death would kill them as “Humans” and solidify them as “Liches”... but they were only more “human” than before, with the newfound arrogance of cheating death and the greed of being “immortal” as if it had no price.
These liches were my hope that I, in some way, could be useful in my undeath to the world at large. To help it prosper even as my passion and warmer emotions withered and faded to time.
What had I done? Had I been tricked by Humans, to give them what they asked, just for them to break their word to me and turn on me? I gave them lichdom, was I truly blameless in their- their mindless slaughtering? How could I not be at fault for almost two-thousand human lives lost to beings I created? How could I ever be blameless?
What could I do? What should I do? What would I do?
I cannot turn back time, I cannot bring back lives lost without the curse in place beforehand… there seemed only one way to solve this.
I needed to hold myself accountable for these losses. I need to be responsible for the justice of their wasted lives.
On a humid and sweltering summer night, I shut my heart to my brood and solemnly told my apprentice that I had decided to kill them. All of them. They asked if it was something I had done before- I told them no.
I kept my distance from other undeath when I felt them, so I had no guidance. No advice. No counsel but my own; if killing myself would rid the world of my brood then I would have done it then and there but I had no proof and neither did my apprentice.
One of them was listed close by with a term I had never seen before- my apprentice had labeled them as an “angel of mercy”. It had to be explained to me; and when it was, my apprentice and I went to that lich first. He was once named ‘Samuel Hawkins’ but in our deal-making, since he had little to offer, I took his name, and gave him another. An angel of mercy was someone in the medical field, who killed their patients.
I didn’t want to believe it. I remembered Samuel Hawkins as a good man who wanted lichdom to become a doctor, to find a cure for his wife’s waning mental health so he could find peace in the knowledge and closure within it. I gave him the curse.
He became a doctor when I found him, following him to his home like a shadow. I questioned him. Why would he lie to me? His answer?
He had found the source but it was the hydra of his career, the bane of his doctorate- it resided profoundly in what is known now as an ‘asylum’ or a hospital specifically for those with illnesses of the mind and mental health. For every person he needed to cure, three more appeared. He had spent years trying to save and then it happened. The strong moral compass he once had cracked and shattered under the pressure and he began to do the only thing he thought he could- killing those who showed “signs of the illness” since science could not find a cure and there was no hope for them. He flipped between ‘signs of illness’ and people he just blatantly deemed as ‘too far gone’ to be helped.
I found out hundreds of years later, the illness was schizophrenia.
By the time I got to him, Samuel Hawkins had killed five hundred people. I killed him, I told my apprentice to make it look like an accident and I went home. I wept. I sobbed.
How was I not to blame? I took ‘Samuel Hawkins’ and gave him lichdom, and he became a doctor who killed those who looked to him for hope and healing.
I sobbed for hours until I lost my voice. My apprentice tried to reassure me that it wasn’t my fault but how was it not?
He had tried to help these people but his longevity made him jaded and cynical and he began killing them because he became too lost to his madness to think of it as ‘wrong’. He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was putting these people out of their misery by being the farmer who killed his injured horse.
The victim he killed before I got to him? A father of four, who had gone in with the first signs of what could have been the mental illness. I had seen his wife visit his room.
My brood had taken a father and a husband from this world with no remorse, on some… vapid, fictional witch hunt to rid the world of the illness. How was I any better? Had I not done the same with Claudius?
As I sit here in Lorsette, I have killed three-hundred-fifty-nine of the Liches my apprentice cataloged. Child molesters, rapists, cannibals, and murderers. This is what my giving them lichdom bought me. Regret and remorse for interfering with humans.
I was a coward; but when my apprentice offered to hunt them down after I killed several dozens myself, I accepted. My apprentice alerted me that more aware Liches had realized I was active, moving around, and they were watching my movements so I remained relatively still as my apprentice began to hunt them down like rats. Calling or contacting me after each one was handled. They keep a book of names and strike them off as they go and I do not hold it against them.
I know I have done the right thing by killing the Liches I have made, but at what cost? To what end? I cannot transverse these lands and just keep killing them, I would be no better than the murderers I kill. Am I not the kingsnake of snakes? I run myself ragged thinking of how these facts torture me so…
But nothing hurts like the fact that my well-meaning led to thousands of human lives lost when I was not keeping an eye on my makings.
I have regrets… and this is one of them.
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