It’s Not Fair
The swamp air was filled with the constant buzzing of insects, and nearby a crocodile hissed. It was getting harder and harder for Whispers to concentrate on his thoughts. It seemed every year he added to his age, it grew more and more difficult. When he was younger, although jumbled, he could still make out a significant number of words the voices were saying. But now, it was like a loud and consistent white noise. He didn't know whether to contribute it to his age or the events surrounding him these days.
War was everywhere. Every other step he took, he had to be careful not to step on the corpse of a soldier, or remains of someone far longer dead. He thought escaping to the swamps would help, but it didn't. The voices almost even sounded louder here.
Indeed, the voices were louder wherever there was death. The more piled bodies, the more frantic the voices.
He just wanted peace. He wanted to be able to think clearly for once. Something he'd never been able to do, even as a hatchling.
He wanted to die.
I should've died. I should've just died. It's not fair.
As a hatchling, he had expressed his frustration and fear to the then shaman of the tribe. The voices were so loud. Always screaming; sad, angry, helpless, hopeless screams of despair from everywhere and nowhere.
The shaman was a wise woman, and she told him that he had been given a gift. One that the Hist had bestowed upon him for a reason. One that would help him, and perhaps others.
He had listened to her then. He looked up to her. Everyone did. It was expected that she knew the truth. That the Hist spoke through her to her people. To dispute her teachings would be disrespectful and shameful. He drank up her words as she had wiped the tears from his cheek with her withered hands.
What a crock of shit.
He had survived this long with a head full of tangled briars and vines tied into knots. But he was reaching his wit's end. If this was a "gift", the Hist could take it back.
He was so angry when he met Lyris. She told him how he had died, how he was sacrificed, but was now doomed to be a slave to Molag Bal unless he escaped.
He didn't want to escape.
He hadn't realized at first, but when he woke up in Coldharbour, the voices were gone. It was as if they had never been there at all. Despite how terrible Coldharbour was, it seemed preferable to his living existence on Nirn. But he found himself following her and dooming himself back to the land of the living.
It really wasn't fair. He was 84 years old. He didn't have a whole lot of years to go anyway. And it saved him the trouble of ending his own life.
So why did I go back?
He knew the answer, though it hurt to admit it or even acknowledge it. Argonians are supposed to go back to the Hist when they died. They return to that from which they came from.
But more than that.
When he awoke in Coldharbour, she wasn't by his side.
My love.
He would go living a hundred more lives on Nirn if it meant being with her again in the end. In Coldharbour, he would never see her again. Never hear her voice. Never be able to touch and kiss her again.
It's not fair.