"And that was the end of me" Ukor said in a rough and intimidating voice as Avere slowly awoke, realizing that he had been buried under a mountain of coins at least a foot deep, all seemingly having been thrown onto him by the wolf-like beast in front of him, something that instantly lessened his mood of the creature called Ukor.
...why was he this... racist right now...?
...Avere just needed some time to readjust, and the fact the lycanthrope was flipping coins onto him had not helped that simple fact in any way, resulting in him instinctively insulting the man in his thoughts, which then resulted in him feeling bad for being racist in there.
Still, Avere freed himself from the rattling coins belonging to countless different civilizations, not all useless and worthless in this endless place, worth less than even the rotting pictures in the distance, especially some of the coins that had started rotting.
The lycanthrope, his fur wet and damp, but dark and with thick hair that stood up in some places, his hunched back imposing and revealing a shoulder that seemed a bit too wide to come from natural causes like his species, quickly continued talking, still flipping coins towards Avere, though he was now using less force than before, so much that he felt like he could just catch the coins if eh really wanted to.
His eyes darted around, is snout moving weirdly and starting to turn into something that he had never seen before, though Avere did have to acknowledge that talking with such a wolf-like snout was probably not the simplest of talks as he had now begun to hear a slight lisp, as well as a more pronounced and richer aspect to the deeper words.
"Isn't it ironic?" he said, silently, brooding anger hiding between the surface as he turned around and looked to the side of the altar he was standing above, the right of Avere, a few statues, mainly made of gold, in the back, cleverly hidden between countless now rotten paintings and banners, all without meaning in here as Avere had already realized when he had arrived here for the very first time.
"We strive for wealth like this out entire lives, but in the end, it is nothing, the metal either spoils or gets lost in the dirt where it'll become part of the root system of some tree, the bills will become food for larvae and insects, the paintings people put years of their life into will lose their colour, their fragrance, will become just like the bills, thousands of which could've never bought one of them before..."
He threw his snout back, producing a sound similar to an "ooooo" as he seemed to take a small break, his voice having been filled with barely hidden danger and hatred for not anyone else but himself, up until now, before continuing.
"The elixirs we pay for that are supposed to save our lives eventually will just rot away, the lid never even removed to take the tiniest sip, simply because of the worth we put onto the subjects, the statues might seem eternal at first, living for thousands of years, but in the end they will also turn to nothing but dust...." his anger seemed to lift slightly, as if he was remembering something hidden a bit deeper...
"When I died, other than the girl, Lila, that you had met before, I had not had the time to think, I didn't feel betrayed, I had felt that something was wrong, sure, but I had been so ignorant I had just been ignoring my very own instincts..." he looked down.
"I thought I was like a gem, like diamond..." he looked up, his eyes glinting with hatred.
"Diamonds are eternal, they are practically indestructible, they are beautiful, everyone loves them, but in the end they will just get lost through the cracks one day, no matter how careful people are with them, they will change form, they will grow, they will shrink, and I had neglected to even imagine my own death." he sighed once more, now looking at Avere, as if expecting something.
Avere didn't know what to say, he just felt lost, it had simply happened too fast, as if the man didn't want him here, though he could very much understand that.
"I'll be honest" he stood up higher, reaching fifteen foot in high, bigger than Avere had thought he could be, though Avere himself was also smaller than normal right now, mayhaps in the form of some child, and looked down upon him, now yellow eyes burning with intensity.
"I don't want you here, I don't like you, I don't care about you, so just take it, take what I thought I had to put my life in danger for" he threw a small statue towards Avere who caught it almost instinctively, a statue called the dust collector as he now knew, though he felt a bit of fear at the name when he finally understood that dust was everything, that he would eventually be nothing more than dust, that every piece of treasure in here might as well already be dust.
Ukor, the giant, slumped down onto the altar, now serving as what seemed to be his seat, perhaps the only thing he had been able to do for however long he had been stuck here, or perhaps just his frustration with how easily he had lost his life, because of not his own greed, but because of his own desire to not lose everything.
He hadn't died because of his own greed, no, he had died of the greed of other's.
He breathed once before he opened his maw once more, "I have to tell you my life's lesson, kid, so listen up, since I don't care about leading you to that result, I'll just tell you straight away."
Avere listened intently, already feeling something change in the surroundings, as if he was soon to be called away once more, as he had previously been when Lila had said her goodbyes to him, or rather, her two byes...
"I wasted my life for other's greed, for my own arrogance I fought everyone, I advise you, don't listen to others all the time, oftentimes they are wrong, and don't... take stupid contracts, if you have to join a guild or something, just found your own..." Avere almost believed to see sadness in his eyes, but alas, the very next second, after he blinked once, he was already gone.
Yet, for Ukor, that was not it, as he was ready to lie down upon a mountain of gold, not really having anything else to do, he heard something... new...