That was how Gershul got inside of your head. He promised you great things, cherished things you'd long since thought lost, and all you had to do was one little thing. One little favor. Skandra had seen it all before, and he wasn't charmed by Gershul's talk of this or that or the other thing. His father's madness had steadily worsened since time out of mind, and now it was finally reaching the point of no return. You could hold things in your hand for only so long, no matter what those things were. Once they were gone, they were gone. While it didn't make it any easier to think about what you'd lost, it damn sure made one thing abundantly clear. There was no safety, there was no promise of a happy future, and there was no going back. Your grief and your memory were the only things you had left of that person when they were gone. Which one you let consume you was up to you, always, but you couldn't go back.
"Gerhsul can't destroy the damned world," Skandra snapped irritably. "I've seen the World Tree, too, Aeotha. I was there when Olas saw it. I thought I killed him, but there's no substitute for double-checking, now is there? It's way too big for him to destroy it. Besides, do you think an axe would even work on a tree like that? Probably has the power of the ancients or something; it's protected by fire. Who knows."
Gershul deserved to die. Skandra knew he'd thought that, as recently as a few moments ago, but now he wondered. Skandra had made widows out of plenty of women. Did that mean he deserved to die, too? Or like Gershul... did it depend entirely on who you asked? Skandra didn't want to think that his entire life could be judged and weighed in the way that Gershul's life could be judged and weighed. But why not? There were only two sides to every story, regardless of what people said - for instance, someone who was neutral wasn't telling a side of the story, they were sitting on their hands and waiting for something to change without their involvement. Those people were fucking scum.
"Shantar might be willing to play his advocate," Skandra shook his foot in the dense silver sand, and came up with nothing. "But I know what Gershul's game really is. He never makes good on his word. And if he gives you a promise, that's the best way to know that he's lying through his damn teeth. What would you give up? What did he give up? He killed more than one friend of mine. He killed my wife. All this moaning and complaining about his family, but all the family he's ever had, he's treated like garbage. Maybe he deserves to die and maybe he doesn't, but for sure we'll never know. I'm still gonna kill him. A bunch of fucking nonsense."
He didn't realize how angry he was, until he said it out loud.