In a life spanning centuries or even millennia, an Immortal is going to pass through some personal difficulties. Parking tickets, lovers with angry husbands, gambling debts, being burned at the stake. Garrick didn't take that last one very well, but when you're accused of being a witch in 1665 England, what's a poor stonecutter to do? Duncan tried to rescue him, but it just didn't work out and Garrick went to the stake.
Years later, Duncan is having visions and nightmares involving a Dark Presence. His personality takes a downhill slide, and he asks Garrick, who just happens to be in town for a showing of his gargoyle statuary, for advice because Garrick has been insane for years and would know all about the process.
Dr. Anne, of course, tries to get him to seek Professional Help. Garrick just says it's something he'll have to work through, something about it being an Immortal Thang and he'll have to learn *not* to fight it or it'll never go away.
Anne gives Duncan a bottle of pills and he takes the whole bottle and settles down for a long nap. That's when the Dark Presence appears again. Duncan tries to avoid fighting, but it's Garrick this time ... not just an apparition sent by Garrick, who's not only insane, but a telepath. Duncan rouses to the truth just in time to behead Garrick.
Dr Anne, proving once again her perspicacity, empathy and sincere loving attachment to Our Hero, calls it all off.
Questions:
1. It has been said that Dr Anne showed questionable medical judgment by giving a man teetering on the thin edge of sanity a bottle of pills. Is this a departure from her usual competence and good sense?
2. Duncan stumbles about this episode, growing more and more grubby and less and less coherent. Duncan seems prone to these little difficulties ... being possessed, being attacked by telepathy, being selected as an Immortal Champion before being attacked by Ahriman. Do these occurrences denote any sort of personality defect in the Immortal Boy Scout?
3. Garrick would seem to have a good case against Duncan as a friend who abandoned him to the flames. Immortals willingly go to the hangman or suffer death by gunshot, or even, perhaps, an icepick in the ear. Death by fire was not a *pleasant* death, but it would be a strictly temporary death, so why 300 years of blame?
4. Does Garrick's advice to Duncan (don't fight it or it'll never go away) seem familiar in some way? A precursor, perhaps, of Things To Come?