Of all the different varieties of silithids they had to deal with, the reavers were the worst when it came to corpse cleanup. The large beetles that apparently were called colossi were heavier, but due to their stench none of the sabres, hippogriffs or chimaera would come near them. Burning their corpses was simply enough, and beyond that nobody had to deal with them.
The reavers, however, proved to be a delicacy for the mounts and animal warriors of the Sentinels, and even the dark trolls and some of the furbolgs would line up for portions of the bugmeat as well. Given that rations and supplies always had to be conserved on the warpath, Commander Lamia had ordered all the large, meaty reavers to be hauled back to the temporary camp the military column had set up beside the second group of mounds they'd assaulted so as to provide free food for a good number of the riding animals and irregular soldiers alike.
It was grueling work. Navarion had dug trenches during his time in the Argent Crusade, and thus was no stranger to the manual labor involved in the military campaigns of other nations. Lumber and ore had to be harvested in the move, makeshift war mills and barracks had to be constructed without proper professional supervision and ramparts had to be built straight into the ground. None of that was necessary when fighting alongside the night elves; their priestesses and Druids could work in tandem to direct the wisps and commune with nature, shaping the soil to fit their needs and growing their war structures from scratch. Truly, he'd become spoiled by serving as an irregular soldier in the Sentinel Army.
Hauling the reavers took courage even after they died. Wasps were smaller and lighter but much creepier; they didn't provide much meat, however, and could simply be cut to pieces to ensure they were dead before being disposed of. Reavers had to be dragged by a team of soldiers back to the feeding area, but their bodies weren't supposed to be damaged so as to preserve the meat. Their legs had a tendency to curl up into the air in an unnerving way not unlike nerubians, and their nervous system causes those various appendages to twitch even in death. Because many of the smarter ones could play dead, it made dragging their huge, heavy bodies back to the feeding area a task in and of itself. Most of the younger recruits were in edge.
Voodoo told him which ones were still alive, and Navarion did his part by running up and down the rows of fallen reavers before the cleanup crews got to them, sensing which ones were still alive and impaling their heads via his sickle. They'd often thrash violently when he did, giving everyone under the age of one thousand a good jump but earning him a great deal of thanks from the tired privates tasked by Lamia to drag the corpses back. Acting like royalty, the sabres and hippogriffs did surprisingly little to help, instead choosing to sit and wait for their meals to be dragged over to them. A few chimaera used their lightning breath to fry the reaver meat inside of the carapaces, but a few incidents caused that process to be quashed early on. And so Navarion continued to run up and down the rows of dead reavers, eventually growing tired of asking the spirits which ones were alive every time and merely stabbing all of them in the brain, already dead or not.
By the time he'd finished his part of the cleanup at the second set of mounds, he'd grown tired physically but not magically. Seeing no reason to skimp while technically on the battlefield, he left Thresha and Calil to drag bug corpses themselves and took Soraya's permission to go to the healer's tents. After thanking him and then lambasing him and then thanking him again for painfully pushing her to make herself known to the Marshall of the entire Sentinel Army, the captain readily accepted any requests he had, showing her gratitude through action rather than words.
Although the skirmishes at the first two clusters of silithid mounds had gone well, there were a few injuries. Even without any intelligent qiraji to direct them, the insectoids did have a sort of natural order to their attacks and a handful of sentinels did suffer nicks and scratches. Zorena didn't even notice Navarion join her in the healer's tent at the center of all the other tents that had been set up as a makeshift camp for the day, when the night elves - still the overwhelming majority of the Sentinel forces despite all the mercenaries from other races - were at their least energetic. By the time all those who needed healing had been patched up and sent back to their tents for the day, Navarion had managed to sit down first at one of the few chairs amid the empty sleeping bags on the tent floor and went unnoticed even as Zorena sat next to him.
"You aren't very percepti-"
"Help!" the bovine healer yelped at first, panicking as she realized she wasn't alone. When she turned and saw who it was, she scolded him via her expression alone for having snuck up on her. "Oh...winds at my back, please don't do that!"
"Sorry, I thought it would be funny," he chuckled while passing her a cup of water.
"Well, maybe it was a little, but let someone else be the punch line next time." Taking a big sip, she relaxed back into her chair next to him and enjoyed the quiet before both of them turned in for a good day's sleep. Out of nowhere, she turned to him and pulled him out of the pleasant, sinking numbness that came after a pitched battle. "I saw Astra give you something before we call left," she piped up wryly, as if she knew some great big secret.
Caught off guard to the point of hiccuping and choking on air, it took Navarion a moment and a few pats in the back from Zorena before he could speak coherently. "You...ack...you're monitoring me?" he coughed in shock, completely unready for the topic.
"Oh you don't have to worry, I don't talk. Besides, I think it's great now that you and Zhenya seem to have moved on from each other-"
"Zhenya and I got back together weeks ago!" he managed to blurt out in between residual coughs.
Confusion preceded disappointment which preceded suspicion which preceded irritation. The flux of emotions woven into Zorena's expression would have been an interesting case study in method acting had it all not been directed at him. Dread gripped him as he already saw the blame and disapproval headed his way.
"But I saw you...she...and she...no..." Zorena's brows furrowed in an irate manner, sending him on a guilt trip without even really trying. "How is this possible? Zhenya's behavior hasn't changed one bit since Astra told me you and her had split up-"
"Wait, how does Astra even know about that?"
"-and she's still living it up at the cafes and the barracks, even dancing with other men sometimes-"
"What?! I mean..."
"-and if you're anything like your father, I know you wouldn't accept that."
"...I mean, it was probably just a group dance."
"Not really, Navarion. Not that your behavior has changed much either - even I had assumed that you're still single."
Frowning and looking away for a moment, he tried to process the fast exchange in what little amount of time he had before the silence became awkward. Too much information came flying at him at one time. The stink bugs, he could deal with; this news just made him want to vomit. "This...it...argh. Yes, Zhenya and I are together and have been for more than a month."
Pensive and thoughtful, Zorena just looked at him for a moment, tapping a furry finger on her snout. "Neither of you act like it. Especially her. Look, I'm not your mother, but I'm old enough to give you the advice she's supposed to have given you," Zorena started, ignoring the quick flash of anger across his eyebrows at the slight against his mother. "I read people well. Even if you can listen to the spirits, I'm a lot older than you, and I know bad news when I see it. Zhenya is bad news. She's the kind of woman your mother should have warned you about."
"She's different when we're alone," he tried to counter, truly believing his words but finding himself pulled by a force he couldn't describe to speak without the certainty he felt inside.
"Everybody is different in private. Look, I'm telling you what I know from experience, you can accept it or reject it. But I know women like Zhenya and I know how I saw her dancing with those other men even the night before after we exterminated the first wave of silithids," Zorena continued, pushing further despite Navarion's guttural growl at the mention of Zhenya spending time around other men when he made a point not to even accept Tammie's thumb war challenges for fear of losing himself and flirting without thinking. "And that's entirely separate from you leading Astra on and giving her false hope. You even have me fooled."
At that, the strength and resolve returned to him. During his childhood he had only seen Zorena once or twice, but he knew of her from their family's vast social network. Like his siblings, he grew up viewing a large number of people who weren't blood relatives as more or less being like family members and Zorena was included in that. But all that conditioning didn't prevent the resentment toward her from bubbling up. That resentment of her words mixed with his resentment of himself for having let things slide so far, creating a volatile mix.
"I did notlead anybody on," he retorted, at least halfway believing his own words. He felt that his tone had been tempered, but the way that Zorena shrank from him insinuated that perhaps he'd lost control of his voice and expression, and a second source of guilt crept in as well. Facepalming for a second, he patted her hand to reassure her that things would be fine but he felt the tension in the top of her hand. "I'm sorry for that, alright?"
"Okay...okay...I believe you," she claimed, but the fact that she even brought up belief or disbelief in his words was telling.
"I didn't want it to happen this way. Astra and I are good friends and I wanted to keep things that way. I didn't know that she would...get so attached..."
"How could you not know, Navarion? She's sent you signals and you're the type of man who picks up on that, unlike your father. Every step of the way you should have been up front with her that you only wanted friendship. To not do so means to lead her on."
"How? How can that make any sense if the opportunity to clarify that to her never came up? What should I say - oh hey, we're all at the tea house and by the way I only want to be friends!" he burst out while shrugging in an exaggerated why, trying his hardest to evoke how futile he felt it all was.
"There are opportunities, there are always opportunities!" she shot back, becoming a little bit heated herself. "You have to try to understand what it feels like for people who feel trapped and unable to express themselves!"
Bothered in a slightly different way by how involved Zorena had become in his private life, Navarion calmed down a bit and licked the inside of his cheek while pondering her attitude. "The whole point about this is that I feel trapped and unable to express myself properly to Astra," he replied, his tone calm in a way that visibly bothered Zorena for reasons he didn't understand. "I know how that feels."
All maturity drained out of the ageing tauren matron in reaction to his comment. Crossing her ankles and shifting to a more defensive posture, she nearly huffed - nearly - as she smoothed out her unnecessary surgical apron and picked at a seam that wasn't there. "That's difficult for me to accept from someone like you," she murmured, affected by the conversation despite it not being about her outwardly. "I would have hoped your parents had raised you to be more perceptive."
"Stop talking about my mom and dad," he practically ordered her, throwing politeness out the window. "I don't understand why you keep bringing them into this; they were friends with you a long time ago when you served in the same war, and they were good times from what I heard. You're acting like...like..."
Spirits whispered to Navarion as he cheated once more, finally paying attention to his voodoo after it had been nagging at him for much of the conversation. Frozen in place, he studied the doe eyed tauren's face hard, noticing every detail of her movement as her eyes flinched, pricking up the skin at the beginning of her snout. One finger twitched as she tried to hold a poker face and keep inside whatever she knew he had witnessed, trying in futility to hide inside of herself. Even via normal, non magical observation, he could tell that Zorena felt torn between standing up and bolting out the tent flap and burying her face in her hands. Realization dawned on him in the most bizarre way he could have expected, and suddenly he both understood and sympathized with her attitude and involvement in his affairs just a little bit more.
When he noticed her breathing had become more rapid, he placed his hand over hers to both steady and comfort her, taking in what he had felt from her after some difficulty. She closed her eyes and he knew she wished she could turn invisible. He also knew that she would both revile and revel in comfort from another living being at that moment and leaned a little closer to her.
"Zorena...you...and my dad?" he asked in disbelief. His parents were head over heels in love with each other, and neither of them ever spoke of past relationships.
But Zorena shook her head, denying the extent that Navarion thought things had gone. "He never knew how I felt. I never told him because I was...trapped. I'd didn't feel able." Pause and silence punctuated her words, and her constant poking into his business made a whole lot more sense. "I felt uncertain, because I knew he and I could never have reproduced, and it was scary to imagine feeling that way for someone so...different. I bided my time and waited, hoping for the opportunity to come. When he finally told all our friends back on Draenor about meeting your mom, and how serious they had become...it hurt. I got over it, but it hurt for a while. But I had to just smile and congratulate him, because he found somebody that made him happy even if that somebody wasn't me. That's alright; that's life and it wasn't the first or last time, as tends to happen normally."
She stopped, but he could already sense what she wanted to say next and gave her a little push to help her along; she was still like family to him, and thus deserved his empathy even when frustrating him. "And you feel like you're seeing it happen all over again, with my dad all over again..."
"I see him in you. Even if you're more wild than he was and you haven't suffered the trauma he did, anyone who knows you both will see Khujand in you. And when Astra first told me she also knew you, and started talking about you...I saw myself. Myself pining over someone who isn't as pure as your father was. No offense, but you aren't innocent."
"I know...believe me, I know," he sighed regretfully. "That's part of why I try to push Astra away. Guys like me aren't any good for ladies like her. I'm corrupt, as corrupt as Zhenya. That's who I belong to; somebody just as tarnished and frayed as I, constantly fighting and upsetting each other. That's who I am, and who she is; just as Astra is somebody totally different, but perfectly herself."
Whether it was to seek comfort or indulge in something long since buried and forgotten, Zorena squeezed his hand for a moment as every muscle in her body clenched. After a while she opened her eyes and looked a little more controlled, but he felt guilty for whatever he had triggered in her regardless.
"People can change, Navarion. I've seen them change. Your parents both changed things for each other, and they're all the happier for it." Nodding to him as if signaling that she felt better after the confession, she moved to stand and he helped her up. "But promise me that you'll at least pray for guidance as to what the best choice for you is."
Head hung low as they both walked out the exit flap for their respective tents, he rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. "I haven't been praying for a long time," he confessed himself, rather shyly.
The two of them stood in the narrow walkway between the extremely crowded tent camp surrounding by the handful of day shift sentries, looking at each other in mutual loss. "It's never too late to start," she told him as they parted ways.
No words of goodbye were needed for the family like connection they had. In such a somber moment, it felt more appropriate to say nothing anyway as they left one another to their own devices. Zorena quickly disappeared among the densely packed tents and most likely collapsed on her cot among the other female healers after having expended her mana reserves. Navarion wandered toward the canteen; he felt the hankering for something warm and heavy like milk to help him relax his mind enough to sleep after such an exchange.
Ambling among the tents in a sort of trance, he tried his hardest not to think of the soap opera that had become his life before he sought to sleep. Perhaps the warm milk or a heavy meat bun would be enough to help him sink into the sleeping cot quickly and easily. Anything to take his mind off of the heavier topics he had to face.
Fate wouldn't be so kind to him that day, as he found out before he even entered the tent containing the dispensary for snacks and basic provisions.
"Can you believe how those draenei women dance?" the voice of a youngish night elf male asked rhetorically to a group of at least two other people from inside the canteen. Passing around the back of it and trying to squeeze in the space between it and the next tent over, Navarion was perfectly in earshot to spy on the guy talk taking place in the wee hours of the morning. "The way that one with the golden eyes arches her back..."
"That one is a rare treasure indeed," a second youngblood replied, though it was difficult to tell the two voices apart.
Encouraged by the response, the first one continued his lecherous rant. "She's like a pole dancer, I tell you. When you dance behind her, it's like you're just waiting for her to lift her tail..."
More muffled laughter rang out, and Navarion found himself inside of the canteen tent but didn't remember the one or two seconds it would have taken him to walk inside. The canteen attendant was also a make night elf like the three young men, but looked like he was trying his best to ignore the explicit conversation. The three youngbloods didn't even notice him as he walked in and continued their comments as if they had no shame. Guilt from multiple sources mixed into Navarion's jealousy and anger in a primitive, illogical but very biological manner. Images of Zhenya dancing far too close to other men refused to vacate themselves from his mind, fighting for his attention against the look on Zorena's face just moments before and Astariel's bracelet as it burned into the hide of his wrist.
"And the way her neck tendril drooped over her shoulder...you know, I heard if you pet it just right..."
The laughter from the young man and at least one of his friends echoed so severely in Navarion's ears that he felt real, literal, physical pain in his temples. Heart pounding so hard it made him feel dizzy to deny his fists the release they cried out for, he had no choice but to grind his teeth before speaking.
"That's no way to talk about a lady," he barely managed to utter, so hard did his molar teeth clamp down onto each other.
Not even taking the time to look at him, the ringleader waved his hand in a way that was probably an attempt to show he wasn't serious but instead came off as disrespect in the half elf, half troll's mind. "Chill, we're just having some fun."
The hand gesture pushed Navarion over the edge, but this time he didn't black out. Grabbing the man by his longish hair, Navarion yanked back and watched the guy's two friends stand up before punching him beneath the elbow in a way his mother had taught him would make someone's arm go limp for hours. By the time the ringleader had already crumpled to the floor in a screaming heap, Navarion's foot had already connected with the second creep's head, leaving the guy conscious but unable to stand up or see straight. The blade of Navarion's foot throbbed as he set it back down, but the third of the youngbloods who hadn't been particularly enthused about the exchange had already ditched his friends and disappeared among the tents, letting out a distress signal soon after.
Before he could behave even more rashly and stomp on either of them, the canteen attendant, obviously much older than them all given his slow speech and posture, had already moved forward to protect the downed creeps. Kneeling over them, he used himself as a shield and raised his hands in surrender.
"You could end up getting court martialed," the attendant warned calmly. "Whatever girlfriend drama you have isn't worth it, trust me."
The distress signal rang out even louder and was met by a few others, filling Navarion with panic as he considered the attendant's words. The two of them stood there for a moment, listening to the sudden clamor of dozens of blades being drawn and armor clinking in a way that was entirely disproportionate to a few of the soldiers brawling.
When the cries of the furbolgs met the buzzing of insectoid wings, they both knew something was awry.
"The day shift guards..." the attendant murmured right before being knocked down.
No crash or clang rang out as the tent collapsed inward on them. No real sound was heard at all other than the buzz of wings and the tearing of tent fabric. Light flashed through the silk tent cloth as the two of them frantically tried to free themselves, and Navarion just barely made out the civilian attendant stabbing a silithid worker in the compound eye with a kitchen knife. Unarmed and off guard, the shadow hunter leapt forward on his one good foot and hit the silithid in the forehead with an awkward palm strike hard enough to stun it. One solid push of the knife even deeper into its head and it dropped.
"Look out!"
Shoving the attendant to the ground in the nick of time, Navarion unsheathed his pistol and fired at a dive bombing silithid wasp at point blank range, just narrowly moving out of the way of the crashing corpse himself. Most of the tents were intact but a few had been knocked over during the sneak attack on the camp, and silithid workers - rarely ever seen in combat - fumbled to bite at the terrified, half asleep soldiers inside. Those who killed the worker castes were quickly dive bombed by the wasps in a bizarre tandem attack consisting of silithid soldiers and, technically, civilians. Never had this been heard of before, and it indicated either a new strategy for the bug people or simple desperation at a lack of numbers, their typical and sole tactic.
"Reload my gun!" Navarion ordered the attendant, shoving the pistol to the man's chest and turning so the ammo bag he always carried on his belt night and day faced the scared man.
Doing as he was told, the civilian worked slowly but handled the pistol and gunpowder surprisingly well. In the meantime, Navarion cast his heal spell on his foot, wasting a bit of mana on a nagging irritation rather than a real injury but knowing that they couldn't take any risks in such a situation. Before he could take the lead and try to help who he could, the attendant handed him another kitchen knife.
"It's better than nothing!" the older gentleman yelled over the battle cries and insectoid screeches.
The moment they stepped away from the tent, both of the disabled creeps beneath the tent were dive bombed by wasps right through the fabric, screaming as they were stabbed in ways that were probably fatal. Guilt over beating them up at the worst possible time could wait; the distraction their writhing bodies provided gave Navarion the perfect opportunity to quickly stab both wasps in the crevice where their heads met their necks and snip whatever important parts were inside. Channeling his mother, he made a sincerely hard battlefield decision to leave the two dying creeps; they'd been dive bombed at full force and probably had wounds beneath the tent fabric so horrific that his intermediate level healing would only prolong their suffering.
Leading the way again, both he and the attendant were delighted to find that while many of the regular soldiers scrambled to find their weapons, the irregulars - mostly mercenaries who had more combat experience under their belts - were quickly dispatching the wasps as they came. The workers were more of an annoyance unless they found someone trapped beneath a tent pole, which they unfortunately did in a few cases. The disgusting and cowardly nature of the silithids enraged the able bodied soldiers, and ululating broke out from the older women as they led the charge. When the wasps tried to soar to regroup and gain their bearings, they were met by archers so accurate that they could anticipate which way the silithids would fly and shot at open air, knowing the surprised bugs who had thought they'd have the advantage would unwittingly move right into arrow fire. When the wasps tried to dive once more, they were hit sideways by glaives tossed in such a coordinated fashion that the night elves (even most of the mercenaries were still Kaldorei) didn't even need to speak or give orders.
Wasps fell from the sky living but crippled as they swarmed around a black and dark green glow near the outskirts of the camp, where a few dead day shift sentries lied at the spot where they'd failed in their duties. Workers scampered away to be cut down by the less experienced greenhorns who could use the practice, but the wasps and a few reavers seemed determined to attack a caster of fel magic who caused the entire swarm a mountain of pain. Once on the ground, the wasps lost almost all mobility and became sitting ducks for the enraged sentinels. Their target tossed curse spells left and right, wracking the insectoids' bodies with pain but drawing too much aggro onto himself all at once. A grunt of pain and anger rang out, the warped voice that of the reformed satyr shadow dancer as he tried to tank the brunt of the swarm despite not wearing any armor.
Firing and reloading from a distance, Navarion tried to pick off as many of the airborne wasps as he could, leaving those who the satyr had cursed to be exterminated by the youngbloods. Although satyrs were normally stereotyped as being cowardly, this reformed one held his own and didn't even call out for help, as if trying to prove some sort of a point while also pulling aggro off of the others.
By the time the last of the wasps fell, so had he and Navarion along with Pontus who appeared out of nowhere and that archer from months ago who knew how to heal rushed to the furry red man's side.
Splayed out across the ground, the satyr pursed his lips and stared at the trees, turning his head away from his devastating wounds. To describe them as grevious would have been an understatement, and the fel energy that surrounded his corrupt kind had already faded away. Navarion and the archer both looked to Pontus, the resident restoration Druid, for guidance. When the ancient man gave no response, the hearts of both secondary healers sank.
Gradually but not slowly, the red fur of the satyr turned brittle and fell of as if his body was balding. The horns which signified his people's pact with devils grew even more brittle, ossified and fell off completely, and more onlookers gathered around to watch. It didn't take long to figure out what was happening, and by the time the old hooves craked to reveal transformed elven feet beneath, the whole area had fallen silent.
Removing his cowl to cover the dignity of the night elf that was formerly a satyr, Pontus knelt closer to look the dying man in the eye. Healthily glowing amber eyes met flickering ones as they gave each other the same look old friends gave one another upon meeting again after a very long time apart.
"Nature as forgiven you," Pontus murmured, placing a comforting hand on the dying, transformed night elf's shoulder.
Nodding in affirmation, the man turned and continued to watch the tall Azsharan pines sway in the light breeze until the glow of his eyes died out. Out of respect, most of the sentinels in the area backed off to tend to the wounded and haul off the silithid corpses for animal feed, leaving Pontus and a few other Druids to join the priestesses in performing the last rites for the fallen.
Perhaps he should have joined the other healers, mending the wounds and searching for his friends after a dastardly sneak attack. Instead, Navarion found himself hanging behind as the makeshift funeral took place. As was the custom when allies fell on the field of battle, the bodies were only moved insofar as was necessary to clean up the camp. All seven of them were lain next to one another close to where the former satyr had made his last stand of redemption, and the practice he'd witnessed before of praying for the balance to accept the bodies back into nature completed without disruption. Per night elven custom, there were no tears and little was said as possible as everyone dispersed.
The sneak attack had been warded off and the entire column suffered minimal casualties in the process. Cleanup had been quick, and hippogriff scouts sighted the direction from whence the silithids had come. After a rousing pep talk, Commander Lamia ordered only a half day of rest before the moved out again to strike decisively at the remaining mounds on the north coast in preparation for a final cleanup sweep on their long journey back to the city. All was well. Nothing was amiss.
But for a long time, Navarion sat near the flower patches where the seven bodies had been reabsorbed into the soil. Nothing remained of their fallen comrades, no trace at all as the footsteps of everyone leaving the spot echoed in the wind. An hour ago, all of them were there, alive and well...and now they were gone. Like so many comrades he'd watched die over the years. Comrades to whom he had been much closer and known so well. And yet he remained paralyzed at that spot until Pontus, noticing his lethargy, sat next to him.
Wise and patient but a man of little words, Pontus watched the flower patch alongside Navarion for a good while. There the two of them sat while the others either returned to sleep or joined the doubled up day shift sentries outside the ring of tents. The Druid exuded a serene calm that could only come from one who had seen nearly as many summers as Navarion's ancient mother, but even that natural sort of calmness failed to penetrate the shadow hunter's shell.
"When it's our time...we have no choice in the matter," Pontus told him quietly, perfectly reading into his troubled mind. "Such is the life every one of us here has chosen."
The old man's voice carried across the wind as if a part of it, and the truth of his words reached Navarion's mind even if his calmness hadn't. Sighing heavily, Navarion agreed after finding no retort or refutation.
"I wonder if I'll be forgiven for all I've done," he replied just as quietly, watching the way the flowers wafted back and forth in the breeze.
A rhetorical question that Pontus had probably heard a hundred times before. Smiling as he stood, he lingered for a moment before taking his leave. "Live every day of your life as if it were your last before the final judgment," he advised the preoccupied younger man before leaving.
No sleep was possible that day before the column rolled out again. Not in his state. For all the times he'd already pondered the prospects of dying on the battlefield and being left as a patch of flowers by comrades who had no choice but to move on, this time had been particularly hard for him. What made it all the more confounding was that he didn't even really know those who had fallen and held no attachment to them. Chalking his apprehension up to complications from his emotional state, he spent hours at that spot before finally finding something useful to do until they moved on once more, doing anything to numb his mind from all that weighed it down.