The Dark Defiles

There should have been a better farewell. But in the end, there never is. And we take what meagre scraps we can find.

What others believe is not my concern, unless they attempt to force it on me.

The city you speak of will be built—will stand in all its undeserved serenity—on the bones of a billion unjust, unremembered deaths. Its foundation stones are mortared with the blood of ten thousand suffering generations that no one there recalls or cares about. Its citizens live out their safe, butterfly lives in covered gardens and brilliant halls without the slightest idea or interest in how they came to have it all. She comes abruptly back to the here and now. Turns and flashes him a hard little smile. Do you really think that you could stand to live among such people?

DISAPPOINTMENT IS A SLOW POISON.

Worse fates than being forced into a place where your choice of acts is limited to those where your soul burns brightest.

We’re all bound for the Sky Road, sooner or later. How we walk it depends on how we walked in the world beneath. So you don’t sit on your arse whining and waiting for your death to come find you. You go looking for it. Track the fucker down, force the issue. You walk, Archidi, you find the strength to walk, and you keep walking till you drop. Now some men don’t have that strength, so you have to lend it to them.

I am home, you soggy-faced, entitled little prick, he barely stopped himself saying. You think it took northern sorcery to make me the way I am now? You think it took a war? Those things were tonic compared to what came before. Desperation and deception were waiting for me at the nursery door, took me by either hand as I walked out into my youth, have been my constant companions since.

The eyes are dim, but a single bright glimmer tracks down one weathered cheek. Ringil— Gil shakes his head. 's okay. Thanks for the krin. Going to be a big help. He slings the Ravensfriend up and over his shoulder, walks away from the god and down the slope towards the waiting dwenda. After all, he calls back. Worse fates than being forced into a place where your choice of acts is limited to those where your soul burns brightest.

We're all small and harmless once, Archidi. But we all grow up. And some of us grow up needing killing.

Rumor ran in the slum streets of Trelayne like sewage in the gutters, mingled and colorful in its contents, but mostly shit.

We live in bloodbath times... and looks like tonight is bath night.

I said—do you want to kill a fucking dragon?” More yells, and more punch behind them this time. Egar eased up out of his crouch and filled his lungs. “I can’t hear you! Do you—or do you not—want to kill—a motherfucking dragon?

Your helmet is red hot,” Ringil told him. And watched as the man screamed, dropped his ax and grabbed his helm with both hands, screamed again as his fingers touched the metal and melted from the heat, went to his knees still screaming. The skirmish ranger spasmed to the cobbles and thrashed and rolled and arched in agony, scream on scream on scream, until it was done, and finally lay there twitching, eyes poached white in their sockets. Faint steam curled out of the wrenched gape of his mouth, like a soul departing. The cost of it all came and took Gil like a kick in the guts. It was a major effort not to flinch, not to sag in the wake of the forces that had passed through him, not to sit down right there on the cobbled street. He lifted the Ravensfriend instead, trembling fingers clenched once more around the grip. He pointed with the blade at the staring privateers. The voice that grated up out of him seemed to belong to another creature entirely. “Who’s next?” it asked them. They broke and ran. Luckily.

We look back and see a path we have taken through life. It's tempting to think that the path was always there, laid out with purpose and waiting only for us to walk it.

He storms down in savage joy, to meet all the waiting blades and hate.

Ringil, preparing to hand out some straightforward reassurance, felt mischief sparkle through him instead. It was the call of impending risk, he knew, the itch to action—and a long building irritation with Nyanar that finally flared to life. He put on a breezy grin. “But my lord Nyanar! That’s what gives life its savor, is it not? Where would we be if the future were always known?

Has to be an easier way to do this shit.