Insignificance
He remembered how small the night sky used to make him feel. How insignificant. And so he’d gone and made a big deal of himself, figuring that someday he might look up at the vast sprawl of stars and feel undaunted by its splendour. It hadn’t worked.
Seems cheaper just to shout at the sky
“Why build the temple at all?” Clay ventured. “Seems cheaper just to shout at the sky.” Kallorek looked at him as though Clay had suggested putting out a fire by tossing a few logs on it. “Shout at the… What the fuck are you on about, Slowhand?” “Nothing. Never mind.”
A complete and utter mystery
Matrick was found dead the next morning. Two physicians were summoned to the scene. The first declared that the king had drunk himself to death, while the second insisted he’d been poisoned. Shortly after a breakfast prepared by Lilith’s personal chefs, the second physician fell ill and died. The first physician wisely ruled his associate’s death a complete and utter mystery.
Ironic sentence
In the end, it was being dead that saved Matrick’s life.
Banter, Ignorant boss
“And what are those things that look like dragons and sound like dragons?” he asked facetiously. “I believe they’re called dragons, boss.” “Thank you, Ashe.”
Epic Hero Entrance
They walk five abreast up the eastern slope of the hill upon which Kallorek has constructed his lavish citadel. The morning sun hurls their shadows out before them, hulking spectres of the men to whom they belong, or rather – as the guards who watch them approach will later reflect – harbingers of their dark intent, reaching like fingers that would soon become a fist. Among them is a renegade king, he who sired five royal heirs without ever unzipping his pants. A man to whom time has imparted great wisdom and an even greater waistline, whose thoughtless courage is rivalled only by his unquenchable thirst. At his shoulder walks a sorcerer, a cosmic conversationalist. Enemy of the incurable rot, absent chairman of combustive sciences at the university in Oddsford, and the only living soul above the age of eight to believe in owlbears. Look here at a warrior born, a scion of power and poverty whose purpose is manifold: to shatter shackles, to murder monarchs, and to demonstrate that even the forces of good must sometimes enlist the service of big, bad motherfuckers. His is an ancient soul destined to die young. And now comes the quiet one, the gentle giant, he who fights his battles with a shield. Stout as the tree that counts its age in aeons, constant as the star that marks true north and shines most brightly on the darkest nights. A step ahead of these four: our hero. He is the candle burnt down to the stump, the cutting blade grown dull with overuse. But see now the spark in his stride. Behold the glint of steel in his gaze. Who dares to stand between a man such as this and that which he holds dear? He will kill, if he must, to protect it. He will die, if that is what it takes. “Go get the boss,” says one guardsman to another. “This bunch looks like trouble.” And they do. They do look like trouble, at least until the wizard trips on the hem of his robe. He stumbles, cursing, and fouls the steps of the others as he falls face-first onto the mud-slick hillside.
Stories make sense of a senseless world
Even so, Clay had long suspected the story was just that: a story. A means of making sense of an all too senseless world. It couldn’t be true – not all of it, anyway. It was simply too incredible to believe. But then again, he supposed, a little embellishment was so often the difference between a good story and a great one.
Earning love from a father
What was it about fathers, Clay wondered, that compelled so many of them to test their children? To insist that a daughter, or a son, prove themselves worthy of a love their mother offered without condition?
Lunch with cannibals or for cannibals?
“Lunch with cannibals?” scoffed Matrick. “Over my dead body.” Clay clapped him on the shoulder as they headed out. “I think that’s the general idea,” he said.
Love grants you immortality of a kind
And so it goes, thought Clay. Life was funny, and fickle, and often cruel. Sometimes the unworthy went on living, while those who deserved better were lost. Or not lost, he considered, since they lingered on in the hearts of those who loved them, who love them still, their memory nurtured like a sprig of green in an otherwise desolate soul. Which was, he supposed, a kind of immortality, after all.
“What is grief if not love persevering” - Vision, WandaVision.
A mirror might reveal our weakness, it reflects only a fraction of our strength
The double was already moving to defend itself – because it was, after all, a mirror of the man with whom it fought. But what does a mirror know? What can it show us of ourselves? Oh, it might reveal a few scars, and perhaps a glimpse – there, in the eyes – of our true nature. The spirit beneath the skin. Yet the deepest scars are often hidden, and though a mirror might reveal our weakness, it reflects only a fraction of our strength.
The Benefits Of Immortality
“What’s the best part about being immortal?” he asked Kit. The ghoul spent a long moment considering. “Fearlessness,” he said at last. One of the little owlbears stirred awake. Moog laid the shell aside and hauled the cub into his lap, stroking the silky feathers between its saucer-shaped eyes. “How do you mean?” he asked. “You’d be surprised how many choices one makes due to the intrinsic nature of self-preservation,” Kit said. “When survival is no longer an issue, well, all bets are off, as they say. My first few years as an immortal were especially reckless. I took risks no mortal ever could. I leapt from the dizzying heights of waterfalls and strolled like a sightseer through the carnage of battlefields. I spat in the face of death, and death could do nothing but rage in impotence as I worked up another mouthful of phlegm. ” “And then of course there’s the travel element,” he remarked cheerily. “I’ve wandered the deep places of the world without fear of starving or falling prey to some awful monstrosity crawling around in the dark. And believe me, there are some awful monstrosities crawling around in the dark. I’ve explored the ocean depths without needing to come up for air. I’ve roamed coral labyrinths and walked the submerged streets of ancient Antica.” “I once explored the shores of a land to which no ship had ever sailed and met a tribe of blue-skinned barbarians who had never even heard of the Dominion – or of Grandual, even. They killed me, obviously, as barbarians tend to do with strangers in their midst, and offered my body as a sacrifice to their savage god. But when I refused to stay dead they decided to worship me instead.” “Sounds better than being a king,” said Matrick. Kit nodded. “It was – until a plague tore through the village and killed every man, woman, and child in the tribe. I was left alone to do whatever gods do once all who believe in them are dust.” “Such as?” Moog prompted. “I did a lot of hiking, actually. And swimming. And I whittled things out of wood, though I never really got good at it.” “And what about the worst thing?” Matrick asked. “What’s the downside to being an immortal?” The ghoul chuckled. “Well for a start it’s been hell on my complexion. I was a handsome devil once, though you’d hardly know it now.” He fell silent for a moment, gazing thoughtfully into the fire while his eyelids fluttered. “I suppose it gets a bit lonely sometimes,” he said after a while. “There are occasions on which I’ll laugh at some amusing memory only to remember that the person it concerns is a century dead. And companionship – let alone intimacy – can be a scarce commodity when you look as I do. Children scream at my approach. Men reach for swords to slay me, or torches to burn me, or holy symbols with which to smite me – it’s all very tiring, if I’m being honest. And it goes without saying that with the exception of a few blessedly twisted individuals, not many women look longingly at a bloodless ghoul. There’s only so far a rapier wit and extensive wine knowledge will get you when your… uh… apparatus is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.” He winked at Moog. “Though that problem has since been remedied by a certain wizard and his magnificent phallic phylactery.”
Matrick was a cutthroat murderer
Gabriel killed with flash and flourish, Ganelon with the instinct of a natural-born predator. When it came to fighting, Clay tried only to keep himself and his friends alive. And Moog? Well, the wizard was full of surprises, most of them more distracting than deadly. Matrick, on the other hand, was a cutthroat murderer.
THIS IS NOT A CHOICE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, BUT LIFE AND IMMORTALITY
Gabriel tore Vellichor from its scabbard and leveled it at the encroaching Horde. “This is not a choice between life and death, but life and immortality! Remain here and die in obscurity, or follow me now and live forever!”
You’re the last four people I’d ever kill.
Clay could bear the silence no longer and cleared his throat. “I love you guys,” he said, and gods-be-damned if his voice didn’t sell him out at the end and crack like a boy of twelve summers. Moog nearly choked on a sob himself. “I love you guys, too,” he said, unashamed by the tears rolling over his cheeks. “Me too,” Matty croaked. “I love you,” said Gabriel, matching gazes with each of them one by one. “All of you.” Ganelon remained silent, but when the rest of them looked his way he rolled his eyes and loosed a sympathetic growl. “Okay, fine. You’re the last four people I’d ever kill.”
Like a cup filled to the brim with blood
The mind, Clay had learned long ago, could witness only so much carnage before it ceased to comprehend. You saw it, still. You heard it raging like a rainstorm against a closed window, but it simply did not register. His capacity for slaughter was overflowing, like a cup filled to the brim with wine, or water. Or, more aptly, with blood.