Red: The Heroic Rescue

...most men and women will yield to the strong currents sucking them into the seas of ruin. Only the strongest in mind and spirit will swim against that current.

We've stepped off the cliff and are falling into madness.

Your lives have always been about the Great Romance, and in the days to come you will understand that like never before. Your love will be tested. Others will join you. Some will leave the circle. Some will die. All of you will suffer. The Horde will hate you because their hearts have been stolen and their eyes have been blinded by the Shataiki. But if you keep your eyes on me until the end...the lake will seem tame compared to what awaits us.

The Great Romance is for you. If only one of you would have followed me, the heavens would not have been able to contain my cries of joy.

Elyon was restoring the Great Romance. Teeleh had stolen his first love, but now Justin had reclaimed her. The price had been his own life. He'd taken her disease on himself and he'd drowned with it, inviting them to embrace his invitation to the Romance by following him into the lake to drown with him. To live as his bride!

We call our religion the Great Romance, but really it feels more like a list of rules than anything similar to the Great Romance we once had. But now I think the knowledge of Elyon is starting to work its way into me again--in both realities...If Elyon's real there, surely God must be real here.

They were truly new people. No longer Forest People, certainly not the Horde. They were outcasts. They were the chosen. Those who had died. Those who lived.

They all seemed to function in it, but to say they controlled it would be wrong...The chaos controlled them.

He didn't think of the rot as a disease. His mind was sharp, but he'd been swallowed by lies that had long ago persuaded him that this was the way all good men should look and move and feel. Pain was natural. The smell of rotting flesh was more a scent of wholesome humanity than a stench.

- It's their way. They don't understand suffering like we do. They live with it every day. - It's not their way. It's the way of Teeleh.

He felt like he was looking at a whole new world. Not only was he a new person, drowned in magic, but the thousands he faced were different.

He felt like he was looking at a whole new world. Not only was he a new person, drowned in magic, but the thousands he faced were different. The disease hung on them like dried dung.

There was no life above the surface anyway.