Chapter 25 preamble

I saw Obard's sword fall with my own eyes.Unprepared to see my friend fall to the sword, my heart twitched again. The sight of my friends collapsing mingled and hit me, deeply pricking the most sensitive part of my heart, making me feel as uncomfortable as a needle pricking fire.I know that I can build a wall of anger to hold them back, let it blind my eyes and my heart.But I'm not sure if it's worth it. This puts me in a dilemma. Tarasher's death was Tarasher's business.It's obvious, I know, but I have to keep reminding myself it's true.The world was not my stage, not something that existed abstractly in Drizzt Do'Urden's consciousness, nor changed by my pleasure or pain.

Bruno's death was a bigger blow to Bruno than it was to me, and so was Zach Nafein and others.Leaving that fact aside, all that's left is my own empathy, my own perception of those things, my own pain and confusion.I think we can see the world through our own eyes. The sympathy and empathy that emerges between us often becomes the standard by which we judge friends and foes as the lines blur, and these are more sublime than our own desires.But at the end of the day, for each of us, we tend to take ourselves too seriously, even when witnessing something that is important to someone else.

Undoubtedly, this is a cognitive selfishness, but I don't deny the truth, and neither do others.We also feel great pain when we lose someone we love, and when parents see their children suffer, I believe, they suffer even more than their children. Now that I accept this selfishness, I ask myself if Tarasher's sacrifice was a warning or a test.I opened up my heart and it fell apart.Am I going to be the same again, alleviating pain by walling it off in a wall of anger?Perhaps this sudden accident is also a spiritual test, testing whether I can continue to fight all the pain with faith, belief and hope under the weight of fate.

I think all of us are making choices all the time.Every day, every ten days, when we face adversity, we often have two paths to choose from.Either actively change with firm belief and full of hope, or self-defeating and passively muddling along, these two situations are the natural reactions of our mind and body.Individuals and groups close themselves in the face of pain and fear, putting temporary relief of pain above faith at the expense of freedom. Is this what I've done since Bruno died?Is the state of being a hunter merely a response to avoiding pain? During my time in Silvermoon, I had the opportunity to study the history of the area and learn about the deeds of many prominent people and groups from the wars.In those days, when Silvermoon City was forced to defend against foreign invasion, she abandoned her enlightened creed, which did far more damage to her reputation than the foreign invasion— Historians have had a dismal assessment of that history.

If anyone pays attention to Drizzt Do'Urden, how similar that history is to his actions. There is a small pond next to the cave where Talasher and Innovindi lived, and Innovindi and I stayed there for a long time.When I saw my reflection in the pond, I thought strangely of Artemis Entreri. When I entered the state of the hunter, I behaved almost exactly like the warrior whose mind is closed and always on the alert.When I kill my enemies, whether individually or collectively, I never base my standards on right and wrong, good and evil, but only out of anger.My behavior is more like those creatures I first encountered in the tunnels of Mithril Hall. justice.

It's pain and anger. I lost myself. I saw Innovindy go away crying, still weeping again for the loss of dear Tarasher.She hadn't gotten over her grief, she acknowledged them, she made them a part of her being, she controlled them.Therefore, grief cannot control her. Do I have the strength to do the same? I hope so, and now I know that I can only be redeemed if I go beyond the pain. — Drizzt Do'Urden