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The tomb is a restful place. Patient and all-embracing, it can even fit itself around a god, when the time is right. It strips all things away. It withers. All that he had been before had gently come away, and he found a quiet pleasure in it. In withering. What a pleasant word. To wither. And so, indeed, he did. His power could not be sundered completely, and his faithful lay their old bones down around him, and his name was very nearly forgotten. Indeed, the very notion that he might need that name, or any, dimmed as time trundled past. He might stay at rest for good, here where Helm had bade him go, for his bargain with the Dead Three. That heavy-handed attempt at punishment was no surprise to him. Helm could not see the whole board, the significance of his gamble. His power would not go quietly into the hands of those would-be schemers. It would test them. And in the meantime, well… The tomb is a restful place.
Withers, as he came to call himself, rested idly for the first time in millennia. And at last, as he was resting, something happened that he did not anticipate. His weariness gave way to something new. He grew bored, his mind pressing against the confines of his sarcophagus, his ears straining to hear the world outside. Memory, too, hounded him. You might have slain these upstarts. Helm had been bitter as bark tea about that, unable to understand Death's way in his eternal vigilance. The protector cannot be idle, just as Withers could never have raised his scythe to part those meddlesome three from their meat. He could only set their feet on that dusty road that would, in time, return them to him. Until then, he had the grandeur of his thoughts, and the close darkness of the grave. That had been enough for a lifetime, for several, but now at last, he felt a familiar restlessness.
Lying there, he busied his mind with a lanceboard, contemplating the gambits, the sacrifices, the cunning of the game. Here in the temple of his mind, he could illustrate the very world. The steady march towards fate, one piece falling into place after the other, only victors remaining, and only until the wheel turned around again, grinding all to dust beneath it. He could very nearly hear it, that grinding. Stone rasping against stone, wearing away in the teeth of time and age. The sarcophagus opened, a question bubbling up into the wan light of the breathing world.
What is the worth of a single mortal life?
Even at rest, the camp was a far cry from the tomb. There was a fire burning at its heart, a purpose driving it on, tearing it down, building it new. Withers followed the spinning of the wheel, watching the thread of his old gambit. From time to time, he smoothed that thread with good counsel, or with striking the names of the dead from the archive. The companions, mighty though they were, seemed never to think that he could just as easily add a name there, or three. And so he did not. He merely followed. The board was set long ago, and this time, he was not called to move the pieces. His old eyes lit upon a lanceboard, and the precocious wizard studying it.
"Fancy a game?" Withers smiled at the invitation. It wasn't just a game, of course. Ambition and curiosity both ran deep in Gale Dekarios, sometimes too deeply for his own wellbeing.
"Reset the board," he said. "I will play against thee." He humbled the wizard, first in three moves, again in five, in ten.
"Why can't I beat you?" Gale looked almost childlike in his dismay, as Withers could no longer remember being.
"I will not let thee," Withers said, putting him in check once again. The Wizard of Waterdeep would have to realize on his own, that it was by no fault but raw ambition. Withers could only watch. Gale pondered the board, a plea in his eyes.
"Not even once?"
"No." That answer was not enough to stop Gale's efforts to eke out a victory, even calling upon allies. A wise course, and once Withers humored him by playing two boards at once, young Astarion behind the other. Two lanceboards, and still only one victor. The camp moved on, and in times of idleness, there were more games as word of Withers' prodigious knack for them spread. But in play, he could never be overcome, not even when all the camp, nearly down to the dog, set themselves against him. That hounding boredom began to stalk him afresh. Even at rest, even tasked as he was with the protection of these destined souls, he can but win at lanceboard. He taught the rules to little Arabella, and hoped, remembered again that loss was a lesson, and he was a destined teacher.
When the end came, it was as it ought. Names struck, names rewritten, and the Dead Three humbled in one way or another. Bent, in their arrogance, and stamped out. They had not learned the lesson, and thus, could not recover themselves. They could not return to a defeat in five moves, when before it had been three. Withers remained. But for once, he felt no longer the dreary resignation of knowing all the while the path of the pieces on the board. It had been a magnificent game, one of many, with many more to follow. And that, too, had been a lesson. To see the beauty of the pattern, the clever maneuvering of pawns and castles, as only the living could provide. He would not return so hastily to the restful tomb, nor subside as he had into weariness and ennui. For he had seen it answered again and again, the value of a single mortal life, and knew it was more than a pittance of coin. But now it was time for his teachers to rest awhile, and thus, Withers found himself with a great deal of work to do. In his quiet resting place, the heavy lid of the sarcophagus slid closed, but there was no sleeper there.