What does it mean to be human?

Much has happened in the last two weeks. I’ve learned so much and yet have only more questions. Just two weeks ago we were in Wei Jang, staying in the House of Earthly Delights.
 
I finally learned the truth of the clockwork heart I received so long ago from the emissary at Runestone. It allows me to control an extension of myself – a shade – that can move on my orders separate of myself.
 
I earned money with Grimaldus fighting bandits and for once had the pleasure of an easy fight with no politics or waffling or worries involved. Just simple and straight forward. We make a good team I found.
 
I have only more questions about my origins however, as I discovered that the hunger that overtakes me and forces me to consume once living flesh – as fresh as possible – is possibly a second soul exerting control over my dominant self as apparently I am two souled. I always thought it strange that Eusif was able to pull me out of a pile of corpses, that I had somehow survived while still so young when so many older and wiser than I did not. Apparently this was well-reasoned since according to my new information I actually died and a second soul – the soul of a valkerie – was shoved into me to bring me back to life.
 
Whether my dominant personality is my own or the valkeries remains to be seen, although Dekar insists that it is me that is the dominant one and the valkerie attempting to gain control as my ‘darker’ self. Yes, I told him everything. I grow tired of secrets the older I get.
 
Ha. I am but 19 and yet feel so much older. Although to be fair I’ve seen more battles than many, faced more monsters and “world-enders” than most, and taken more shit than I ever would have wanted to before.
 
Sometimes I wonder whether I am meant to continue on like this forever or will their ever be an end in sight.
 
I dreamed once, so long ago it seems now, of becoming an advisor and confidant – a trusted sorceress – to Damian then Scroggin now Von Carstein. I wanted to have power and I wanted to be important. Working for Damian as he became the new Lord Carstein seemed the intelligent, common-sense option.
 
Then I chose something for myself. For the first time I could remember I did something that I wanted to do in that moment. Not for the long term, not for power, not for any sort of political gain, just for me.
 
I chose Dekar. And that has changed me.
 
Those dreams of being powerful and politically vital are now long gone. I don’t know if I will ever be able to return to them, particularly with what Inara has mentioned in passing. I don’t know if I want to.
 
I have been loved now. Not for my powers or my politics or my religion or my body, but for me.
 
And I am now cursed. For I love back.
 
I love my friends. My elf who despises my necromancy but tolerates it for my sake, my grumpy warrior priest, my goblin mad genius, my dearly departed dwarf, and my human friend now perhaps lost to us. And I care deeply for my new friends – the cursed one, the avenger, the chosen one.
 
And I love my beloved. My dragon blooded wild lover who is gentle and kind, yet so broken at times.
 
Like me.
 
It terrifies me sometimes. This love. It eats me up and burns me from the inside out until I think I could burn the world down around me for them and damn the consequences.
 
Love is terrifying in its power.
 
I am still not sure what I will do should it be taken from me.
 
Imagine if you will being frozen. Ice crusted your eyelashes and hair, the cold seeping into your very veins. In time you learn to live with it, to be numb. Then one day the ice begins to soften. First your hair and eyelashes and bits of your skin begin to warm, then your fingertips and nose, then your hands and toes and feet. Slowly but surely you begin to come back to life. But it burns as you do so.
 
I burn now, although my flesh is no longer frozen, and I wonder whether that is my magic reacting to danger or my own will at the thought of losing what I now have.
 
It strikes me still sometimes that my first loves – my parents and siblings – are trapped forever on Lathas. Latria is cursed. And it is not something my magic alone, my intellect alone, friends and lover helping alike be damned – it cannot be done! Not now at least. Not yet.
 
It writhes within me, like a nest of serpents, eating me up from the inside that I am not enough. Despite all that I have done and all I have seen, I am not yet strong enough.
 
The wheel is broken. And I am not yet strong enough to fix it.
 
I am soothed by my friends, my lover, by the lighthearted moments and little snatches of happiness I steal for myself.
 
But it always comes back.
 
Always.
 
I am not strong enough.
 
Not to save the souls of my people, not to save Henry who loved my beloved so well, not to end Secilia’s suffering at the hands of her patron, and not to fix what is broken.
 
How can the wheel turn while it is so broken?
It must be fixed.
 
I ponder my humanity.
 
Was I ever actually human?
 
I think whatever made me human died long ago in that pile of corpses. Along with my family.
 
I have been a tool, a machine, for so long that I forgot what it was to desire anything other than power. Until I met an elf, a dwarf, a dragon-blooded man, a goblin, and two human men.
 
Then I craved them. Their love, their presence, their joy.
I wanted to steal all the moments that they had and give them to them, piece by piece, reveling in their happiness and the knowledge that I gave it to them – protected them.
That covetousness, that desire to protect and possess at the same time, that burns me.
 
And it makes me feel human.
 
But I’d give it up in an instant if I thought it would give me even the slightest chance to save them.
 
I don’t really think I’ve ever been human. Maybe that’s what is confusing me so.
 
I am not learning how to be human. I’m learning how to be a person.
 
And what that – thing? Woman? Pretender? – said about me being called Hrist?
It doesn’t matter one damn bit what I once was. Honestly it doesn’t matter what I am now.
What matters is that I am a person.
 
I think that is why it is so easy for me to think about giving up my humanity then, since I never felt like much of a human to begin with.
 
Ah that’s right.
 
I forgot to mention that while in Wei Jang I was called into the presence of Lady Anna Bathory – the wife of my Lord – after a frankly annoying competition. She wished to offer me the blood kiss – becoming a vampire – and gave me a few days to think it over.
 
It wasn’t much of a choice although the honor and shock of the offer was very surprising. I never thought to be recognized by someone so high up in my order. That stopped being my plan months ago, although it feels much longer.
My plan is now to right as much of the world as I can and – as always – to do my best to end the curse upon my family. I want to fix the broken wheel as my Lord…as Shard once strove to do.
 
This world is broken and I want to fix it. Not for fame or glory but because it doesn’t seem like anyone else is going to.
And in order to do that I need power.
 
So to accept the blood kiss seems like no choice at all. I’ve never been overly attached to my humanity and I’ve learned recently that I’ve never actually been human to begin with. So to give up that humanity in exchange for power to help those I love and to affect real change is really more a blessing than a choice.
 
The only one I worried for was Dekar.
I didn’t want my beloved to be put off by me, but he didn’t express any concerns other than wanting me to wait before blood bonding him.
 
Which, if it would cause him to be trapped or harmed I do not want, despite the covetousness I sometimes feel for him.
Although my first instinct was to use it on him to protect him from the mind magics that these greater dragons seem to be able to exert over their younger kind. And we will most likely be facing that dragon some day soon.
 
If only for it to get it’s “mother” back. Which apparently is what Grimaldus’ mace is made of.
 
Hence our quick exit from Wei Jang. As to avoid Vignir’s horde’s of pigeons. And other people searching for us.
We fled to Loec using a teleportation circle. I agreed to accept the blood kiss and took on a carriage contract so that we may always have transportation in this area.
 
And I spent one last day in the sun.
 
Which apparently was an invitation for Hasim to teach us all how to get high. An experience I shall not soon forget I can assure you.
 
However, the pleasure of actual rest and relaxation was short lived as an actual envoy of Shard’s came to me. Lady San Marie. One of Shard’s chosen.
 
She came to me to offer HER blood kiss. A more potent one from an actual envoy and one that would allow me greater freedoms not constrained by the politics of Loec. In exchange for her blood kiss I had to kill Lord Commander Torgillius, a former paladin who fought against Shard and after losing was given the blood kiss as punishment. He now rules Rafulkarn and it’s hordes of undead. And now they threaten the living at the city of Dolenius and within its walls make dark mischief.
 
Inara’s friend Hatholdir the elf commander mentioned that the other planes sometimes felt like they were disturbing this one, like fingers dipping into a pool. And that whatever they are doing in Rafulkarn feels like another finger forming.
I don’t want that to happen.
 
So it serves both of our own interests’ for me to handle – along with my friends of course – what is at Rafulkarn. Perhaps it will change things for the better.
And I will receive the blood kiss from an unaffiliated and more powerful envoy.
 
This assignment hasn’t turned out how I thought it would however.
 
Secilia has become more and more desperate to gather powers against her patron and I can’t help but feel for her. Dekar has learned that Henry and all others who die are trapped in torment and hunted in some sort of fugue plane. Rowan is apparently the chosen one. Hasim learned that his wife is not in peaceful repose but also trapped in torment. And Inara learned that one of her friends Gerard fell from his Paladin oath and now serves the same patron as Secilia.
 
Which makes me highly suspicious of what this being’s next move is, as this seems to be a fairly recent development.
This Gerard led us back to his camp in between Rafulkarn and Dolenius, where Hatholdir – apparently another friend of Inara – is leader of his hell knights.
 
We are now on a mission within a mission – as it always seems to go – to retake and rebuild a bridge. Only now we are learning that there is politics involved in all of this and that Dolenius most likely doesn’t want us to succeed, as then they can get Loec involved who will “solve” all of their problems for them.
 
We had some undead – with some odd variants – fight us along the way but nothing of note until Dekar decided to go out into a snow storm. And apparently found a large woman. I am annoyed now that he did not think to bring me with him, although that is probably the lost opportunity talking as opposed to anything else.
It would have been nice to see a woman as tall or taller than him…
And learning it was Valeria…It was a bit jarring. Her story mirrors mine in some uncomfortable parallels. I feel for her. Maybe one day I will unfortunately mirror her more. And be alone.
 
The next day brought us to the bridge and our first encounter with the hordes of Rafulkarn. They were manageable but only due to our usage of tactics and management of resources. I did feel fairly useless overall as I didn’t get any sort of damage out with the crossbow. The only thing I can say is that I helped heal people afterwards and I didn’t get in the way during the fight.
Considering that the one who called me Hrist disappeared after I denied her, I think me remaining out of easy reach was perhaps the right call.
 
She tried to pretend to be San Marie and when she revealed herself had eyes that matched mine and claimed “sisterly love” before trying to shake me from our post. It was interesting to have it confirmed, in a different way of course, that the valkeries were trapped as punishment and were never to remember their original lives. Odd that she seems to have “remembered” hers though. Also odd that she called us Eusif’s “daughters.” He was our teacher not our father, so I assume she is referring to the fact of our “creation.” Seemingly Eusif “created” all of the two souled variants. An interesting idea to be sure.
 
Although in the end I don’t particularly give a fuck. It won’t change my goals or the person I have become.
 
I was annoyed that she brought up “destiny” though. I can’t stand that vulgar word. It ruins more people and lives than almost any other I’ve ever read about.
So. Fuck destiny.
 
She was quite pretentious too, asking if I thought I was special, trying to make it seem like I thought I “deserved” things or thought I could change things by being different. It made me laugh. I change things because I strive for it and work at it when no one else can be bothered. And me, a monster? I already am one. But I’m a person too and that’s the important thing.
After the fight though I’ve had some leisure to think. She was sad when I turned down her offer. Sad because I could not remember or sad because I wanted nothing to do with her, I don’t know. I doubt I ever will.
 
I also realized another thing after the fight: Gerard is very odd.
 
I took watch with him the night before the fight. I was worried about him being on watch by himself, of what trouble he might get into, or more accurately what his patron could do with unsupervised time with him. He said some odd things though.
The odd story of the moon goddess, it has stayed with me.
But my resolve that night when I talked to Gerard has stayed too. Every person should be able to make their own life, their own destiny, without being told it must be a certain way.
 
I am tired of being punished for things that I am not responsible for, of being told to be grateful for the plate of shit I’ve been handed, to go ahead and eat up and be happy with my lot in life – in what our world is like now.
He asked me if it’s worth it and I told him is anything worth it, but I used that to cover up my own vulnerability. My friends are worth it. People are worth it.
 
I look for no reprieves. I know I will not get them. My goals - to fix this broken wheel, to change this world for the better one piece at a time - they are not restful or easy goals. They may not even be possible in the end. There is always something more that needs doing, that must be done.
 
It will never end.
 
Gerard told me I could leave. It was kind of him in a way, if naïve. I will never have a normal life. But it was nice of him to say I could have one.
 
I haven’t been able to have a normal life sine Eusif pulled me from a pile of corpses and brought me back to life.