Elric of Melniboné

If your people spent less time maintaining their own devalued myths about themselves and more upon studying the world as it is I think your city would have a greater chance of surviving. As it is, the place is crumbling beneath the weight of its own degraded fictions. The legends which offer a race their sense of pride and history eventually become putrid.

And I have warned you.” Elric’s lids fell over his terrible eyes, as if he closed a door on a realm of Chaos, yet still Lord Gho took a step backward. Elric’s voice was a cold whisper. “By all the power I command, I will be revenged upon you. Nothing will stop that vengeance. Not all your wealth. Not death itself.

May Arioch and all the Dukes of Hell torment you for eternity,” growled Yyrkoon.

Slain upon the sea and his body taken by the waves. That was not a good portent

Potions and petty spells would ensure that no-one slept

The burning ships sent strange shadows dancing against the dank walls of the sea-caverns

Why should their pain produce such marvellous beauty? he wonders. Or is all beauty created through pain? Is that the secret of great art, both human and Melnibonean?

He serves Chaos as I serve Law,” she said to herself. “And who is to say which of us is the worse enslaved?

The worm is so proud to be king of the dunghill,

What a shame those who could conceive of such beauty would go to such evil lengths to own it…

Varadia knows now that power is never discovered in retreat. All one can hope to do by retreating is to let one power destroy another or hide as one hides from a storm one cannot control, until the force has passed. One cannot gain anything, save one’s own self. And ultimately one must always confront the evil that would destroy one.

Justice was not obtained, he believed, by administration but by experience. One must know what it was to suffer humiliation and powerlessness; at least to some degree, before one could entirely appreciate its effect. One must give up power if one was to achieve true justice. This was not the logic of Empire, but it was the logic of one who truly loved the world and desired to see an age dawn when all people would be free to pursue their ambitions in dignity and self-respect.

Elric shook his head. “I think you give me too much credit for intelligence.

And there are times, Prince Elric, I’ll admit, when a decent piece of steel has a certain advantage over a neatly turned phrase!

Elric knew. The sword told him, without words of any sort. Stormbringer needed to fight, for that was its reason for existence. Stormbringer needed to kill, for that was its source of energy, the lives and the souls of men, demons—even gods.

They blinded themselves to the obvious. That is the great triumph of mindless need over intelligence and the human spirit.

You are not. You believe that sword to be part of your identity but it is not. It is your nemesis. It is the part of you which represents your weakness, not your strength.

Inside the temple, Richard found a life waiting for him, all ready to be worn and lived, and inside that life, another. Each life he tried on, he slipped into, and it pulled him further in, further away from the world he came from; one by one, existence following existence, rivers of dreams and fields of stars, a hawk with a sparrow clutched in its talons flies low above the grass, and here are tiny intricate people waiting for him to fill their heads with life, and thousands of years pass and he is engaged in strange work of great importance and sharp beauty, and he is loved, and he is honoured, and then a pull, a sharp tug and it’s…

And upon those three lies was Elric’s destiny to be built, for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.