Battle Ground

The real battle for your own soul isn't about falling from a great height; it's about descending, or not, one choice at a time.

When a group comes together around something they love,” I said, “it changes things. It changes how they see one another. It becomes a community. Something greater than the sum of its parts.

I am Harry, son of Malcolm," I shouted back. "I have battled dark sorcerers and black knights! I have fought men and beasts in numbers too great for counting, invaded the heart of Winter, confronted necromancers and the living dead, vampires and ghouls and demons in their hordes endless! I have matched wits with the six Queens of Faerie and prevailed, and thwarted the combined will of the White Council! When they came for my child, I smote the Red Court of Vampires, and laid them in ruin for all the world to see. I am Harry, son of Malcolm, and I have entered the vaults of Tartarus, and stolen its treasures beneath the gaze of Hades himself! And I'm about to add giant slaying to my résumé.

Speak for yourself,” Murphy said. “I just gave my last grenade to a Valkyrie and ordered her to blow up a kraken. I’m having a ball.

Everyone,” she said, “thinks that hate and love are somehow opposite forces. They are not. They are the same force, facing opposite directions.” She glanced aside at me. “Love is a fire, my Knight. Love turned the wrong way has killed as many as hate. Reason, young wizard, is the opposite of hate, not love.

We’ve got a goddamned wizard! Fuck those guys!

War leaves you precious little time to be human. It’s one of the more horrible realities about it.

You!” I said, relishing the moment. “Shall not! Pass!

Death isn’t when your body stops working. It’s when there’s no more future. When you can’t see past right now, because you stopped believing in tomorrow.

The hour when you sit up in bed, sweating from nightmares. The hour when you awaken for no reason but to fear the future. The hour when you stare at the clock, willing yourself to sleep, knowing it isn’t going to happen, and weariness and despair beat upon the doors to the vaults of your mind with leaden clubs. That’s when an apocalypse begins: the witching hour.

When it gets here, we’ll run out and dance in it,” I said. “Why?” Maggie asked. “If we don’t, life has just as much rain,” I said, “but way less dancing.

Lightning struck, a hawk cried in fury, and then a goddamned grizzly bear fell out of the night sky and onto Ethniu’s head. Don’t care how Titanic you are. No one expects an orbital-drop grizzly.

Good man,” I said. “You’re handling this well.” “I am not,” Bradley said without slowing his steps. “I am not.” “Then you are freaking out in the most useful way possible,” I said. “Keep it up.

Harry, I must say,” Toot-Toot said, dropping his voice to a stage sotto voce, “that’s frozen pizza. What are you doing?” “It’s symbolic pizza,” I said. “Symbolic pizza sucks!” Toot shouted. “None of it is good for you,” Lacuna insisted. “Guys!” I said. “The pizza—all the pizza—is in danger!” That got their attention. Toot-Toot whirled to face me in horror. “What?!” Lacuna’s face suffused with joy. “What!?” I gave them the kindergarten-level, probably cheaply animated rundown on who Ethniu was. “And now,” I concluded, “she’s coming here to kill all the people.” “Uh-huh,” Toot said, nodding, listening, completely supportive. “And me,” I said. “Uh-huh,” Toot said, brightly, waiting. “And all the pizza shops,” I said. “Oh no!” Toot wailed. He buzzed in a vertical circle. “Oh no, oh no, oh no!

Some things should hurt. Some things should leave you with scars. Some things should haunt your nightmares. Some things should be burned into memory. Because that was the only way to make sure that they would be fought. It was the only way to face them. It was the only way to cast down the future agents of death and havoc before they could bring things to this. The words never again mean more to some people than others.

Doesn’t matter where you go in the world—if you’re good at your job, people who are good enough at theirs to see it will respect you for it.

Nothing you ever do can change the past. Can’t live your life looking backwards or you’ll spend it walking in circles.

I might be the dumb kid with the sledgehammer from his father’s toolshed, compared to the sword-saint samurai who were the Senior Council—but I had discovered, in my time, that no matter how skilled and elegant a foe might be, a sledgehammer to the skull is a sledgehammer to the skull.

Do you remember the hardest lesson of power?” “Knowing when not to use it?

I couldn’t ever remember actually doing more than waving at this guy as I went past. I was pretty sure I hadn’t ever introduced my dog. How did he know Mouse’s name? Damned pooch is more a of people person than I’ll ever be.

Everyone thinks that hate and love are somehow opposite forces. They are not. They are the same force, facing opposite directions... Love turned the wrong way has killed as many as hate.

Good, because your mother says you’re not getting out of helping in the kitchen just because you’re a faerie princess now. She got you those long kitchen gloves so that you can still wash dishes.

I hate that you're here with me,” I said. "I know." "And I'm glad that you're here with me.” "I know.

There are a lot of ways to get ready for trouble. You get ready to fight. That’s one of them. But it’s even more important that you build something worth fighting for.

Eventually, it’s better to go forward into it and have things settled than to huddle in terror for one second longer.

I wonder what it says about me that pizza has been one of the better long-term investments in my career.

An old hatred. The hardest kind to resist.

You can't fix tomorrow until it gets here.” “Which is weird, because you can screw it up from decades away.

dredged up a quote from someone I rarely agreed with about anything. “What’s the point of free will, if not to spit in the eye of destiny?

My scrotum attempted to travel back in time.