Once the first four hours slowly passed by, Tanathal could not help but find himself impressed by how dogged and determined this paladin was to stay silent as the stone that made up the walls. Though undead, he could still feel a twinge of ever-observant curiosity race through his frozen bones like a corrupting jolt of burning fel energy.
All Eve did was stand there, either looking to him or the phylactery with that stern and tetchy gaze of hers that felt as icy and unforgiving as the frostbitten sting of Northrend's coldest, darkest recesses. The lich could sense something that provoked her to give off such a malignant glare, and surely it was not purely out of common contempt for the undead. If his hunch was correct, this paladin was hiding something. Perhaps she had lost a dear one to the Scourge or Forsaken? It wouldn't really surprise the lich too much if that was the case.
Still unable to do physically anything, the main thrill to be had was the scarce few times when she walked around. Her footsteps, complimented by the armored boots she wore around her thin, but firmly muscular legs, left small echoes in their wake that drifted around the room like wailing spirits for but a few seconds before dying down into nothing once more, which lasted for more hours that rolled by like a sputtering goblin trike.
Simple silence, as dead as night. As dead as a corpse.
But while this dead stillness might have driven a mere mortal to madness within the day, Tanathal found it to be somewhat amusing. And being in the position he was, it gave him time to do what all liches did best in quiet times such as these. Think. Think and plot, which seemed to be a trait his kind excelled at doing in any given situation.
While he did this in front of Eve, his activity was suddenly interrupted as the paladin did something that perplexed him greatly. Without a word, she gave a final look to him with those amber eyes before leaving the room. Now apparently by himself, Tanathal took this time to solely think about his predicament as opposed to the future, quite confused as to why she left before realizing the most likely reason. Of course, not being an undead death knight meant that she, a living human, needed to rest every once in a while.
Tanathal accepted this fact wholly when she did not return after a short while of waiting, and so retreated back into the welcoming safety of his conniving mind.
Exactly six hours (or so Tanathal estimated) later did Eve return. Lifting his crowned head of bone the absolute second the familiar sound of clinking, armored footsteps echoed from the catacomb-formed hall, a few scant moments later the female paladin's shape entered the prison. In one of her hands and held close to her face, as the lich witnessed, was a small and open book. Though he could not see the title from where he laid, he knew it was no tome filled with preaching lessons, lore and uses on the Holy Light. It was some form of novel, and by the look on her face, she was engrossed in the story it told.
She continued to pace forward, when she stopped under where the lich hung. After several minutes had passed by, Eve finally closed the book after memorizing what page she was on and pocketed it on a pair of straps by her belt's side.
"Good morning," she spoke as she looked up to hum, though the words in her voice were more tasteless and bitter than cheerful and welcoming as they would typically convey to the receiver of them. Tanathal heard her well, but his attention was currently more enclosed on the book she had, like a cat eyeing a mouse it was about to pounce upon and snatch up in its white fangs.
"What was that you were reading?" he asked her, still staring at the book hooked to her side. Eve's brow curled in a brief instant before looking to the object .
"This? Just a common book," she informed him. "I like to read in my spare time, as do most other people."
"Good to know." Silence came between them like a cloud of encroaching mist, and it blanketed the two completely. That is, until the lich spoke again. "What was it about?"
"Oh... just things you Scourge wouldn't understand," she wryly spoke. "Friendship, love... those kinds of things."
"Friendship? Love? Hah!" The boom of Tanathal's unkempt laugh shot out through the chamber and called about like the ring of a church bell for almost a minute. Eve was visibly startled by this burst emotion from the lich, but her composure still held.
"You find this amusing?" she asked him, folding her plated arms over her chest.
"I find it entertaining," said Tanathal, "at just how vexingly little you know of the Scourge. Of us and who, and what, we are. Of what our purpose was before your kind slew the Lich King. Those who chose to fight were killed as a result for their transgressions against us and were meant to be raised into undeath as mindless slaves for their impudence unless they showed promise otherwise. But those who willingly submitted to the Scourge were given the most glorious immortality imaginable, and were blessed with keeping their minds intact. We kept all of our feelings; our goodness, hate, remorse, anger, guilt, happiness, and yes, even love."
Eve looked unconvinced. "I've slain enough of your kind to know you think. But even so, how can an undead creature, whose entire purpose is to cause death, misery, and strife all in the name of a foul and unquestionably terrible force, feel that?"
"Because, naïve one, the soul is where all passions and emotions originate from. The mind and heart are merely conduits for it. Even you know that my very own rests within the phylactery behind you, sealed away and safe from the outside world. How easily you could strike it with that sword of yours, and in the process of destroying it, set my soul loose; killing me forever."
Eve bit her lower lip with her teeth as she heard him speak until a droplet of blood as red as her hair seeped through her warm, pricked flesh and into her mouth, filling it with a metallic taste. "I'll admit, a thought like that does seem rather tantalizing. But I was informed of a bargain you made with your captors that prevents me from enacting such an action, no matter how tempting it is. And so, as I have been ordered by Highlord Tirion Fordring, I am not to touch it. Only watch over it."
As Eve looked back to the the vessel that contained the lich's essence, Tanathal could see something about her mien that stole away and consumed his thoughts like a rampant, ever-hungry void lord. It was just a glint - a tiny, minuscule, barely-considerable glimmer - of interest in her young amber eyes. It was nothing more than what a child would show if they found themselves curious at the bigger mysteries of the world, and hoping one day for this knowledge to be imparted to them. It was an expression he himself once showed that eventually and inevitably led to what he was today. Had he still had lips to cover his fleshless mouth, Tanathal would had been smiling wickedly.
"Has something caught your attention?" he asked.
"No. I am just confused," she replied, frowning. "Why would a loathsome creature like you choose to give up your sacred life for the sake of accumulating power? To give up all you had the chance to achieve and leave behind everything and everyone you've ever cared about for the sole purpose of gaining a cursed and undead existence?"
"I have attained far more as what you would called a damned apparition than my mortal coils would ever have allowed me to achieve," he rebutted, but in a civil tone. "And also, as a paladin of the Holy Light, should you truly be attempting to reason such a question with a being like me?"
Eve sighed, their conversation ending with the next sentence she mumbled. "I suppose you are right in that aspect."
For a while after that, quiet came in between the lich and the human as their discussion came to a close. By then, Tanathal had the beginnings of a grand plan finally formulated within his cold and calculating mind. He wanted to break loose from his prison. He would find a way to escape his bindings and return to his frozen place of rebirth known as Northrend.
And the tool that he decided that same day he would use to remove these chains and locks was in the form of that paladin.