Today I made as much progress as I was expecting to, maybe a bit less but not by much.

One thing I love about Azrezel is the fact that I can just sit next to him, that wasn’t something I could really do with Talus. We can sit and work in peace and quiet, not even needing to speak to understand each other. At first, we tended to get in each other's way, but now we work together smoothly, like. I spent way too long trying to come up with a good simile for this but I can’t really think of things that work together smoothly.

I was talking to him today and the subject of our parents came up. I told him how my mother held a position very similar to my own when she was still around, and how my father was probably an old folk hero. I was surprised that Azrezel had heard of Eric and had actually met him when he was really young. He told me many stories about the man that I hadn't heard before, many of which probably exaggerated to a degree, but he also told me stories that I remember being told by my father about himself and his friends. Like the time he lead three separate revolutions at the same time, none of them had anything to do with each other except for involving him, but because he got put in a position of command in all three he united the disparate revolutionaries and overcome their individual foes one by one.

The more I hear about him the more sure I am that the legend of a man, Eric, and my father are one and the same. Sometimes I wish he was still alive, but then I remember that he wouldn’t be happy if he were still alive.

Azrezel also told me about his parents. I got the feeling that his father was distant and harsh in everything but passing down the art of necromancy. All his life he knew his mother only as one of his father’s failed experiments in creating sentient undead, a fact that haunted his old man.

Azrezel’s mother died in after a spell backfired on her in the worst way shortly after he was born. The only saving grace was that the disease spawned from her failure wasn’t infectious.

His death was spectacular if nothing else. He fought the Origin that killed him to a standstill, he kept a being of pure magic with centuries, potentially millennia, of experience on him at bay for a time. But in a fight with no casualties, a necromancer will lose to attrition, the power of the undead isn’t in their individual strength but in their ability to be mass produced in the middle of combat. Azrezel told me how close to the end his father simply told him to run away, and faced his death head-on, injuring the great creator enough to let him escape.

And now he is here, with me, carrying on his father’s legacy. Attempting to replicate the successes of his father so he can improve on them.

During my downtime, I talked to Whisper’s replacement. The plant variant dragonewt was a good conversationalist, and my plants like him, though not quite to the level the liked Whisperer. But I still feel vaguely uncomfortable around him, though now I think I know why. He admires me in a way that I don’t think I deserve, but I’m getting used to it more and more.

Anyway, Good Night Diary.