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February 1 - February 17, 2025
Tigzikk was considered the learned one in the group on account of his being able to cuss in three languages. Downright scholarly, that was.
“Your bond to me grants two primary classes of ability,” Wyndle said. “The first, manipulation of friction, you’ve already—don’t yawn at me!—discovered. We have been using that well for many weeks now, and it is time for you to learn the second, the power of Growth. You aren’t ready for what was once known as Regrowth, the healing of—” Lift pressed her hand against the seeds, then summoned her awesomeness.
She wasn’t sure how she did it. She just did. It had started right around when Wyndle had first appeared. He hadn’t talked then. She kind of missed those days.
“Well done,” Wyndle said. “We’ll make an Edgedancer out of you yet.”
She wasn’t quite so awesome when she was hungry.
Same girl, same.
“Why don’t they notice you?” Lift whispered. She’d never asked him, despite their months together. “Is it ’cuz only the pure in heart can see you?” “You’re not serious.” “Sure. That’d fit into legends and stories and stuff.” “Oh, the theory itself isn’t ridiculous,” Wyndle said, speaking out of a bit of vine near her, the various cords of green moving like lips. “Merely the idea that you consider yourself to be pure in heart.” “I’m pure,” Lift whispered, grunting as she climbed. “I’m a child and stuff. I’m so storming pure I practically belch rainbows.”
“Edgedancer,” Lift said. “I don’t know what that is.” “They were once a glorious order,” Darkness said, avoiding bystanders. Everyone ignored them, focused instead on Gawx. “Where you blunder, they were elegant things of beauty. They could ride the thinnest rope at speed, dance across rooftops, move through a battlefield like a ribbon on the wind.”
She was supposed to stay the same, and the world was supposed to change around her.
She hit harder than would have been safe for most people. Fortunately, she was awesome.
“Did you know we were considering bonding this nice cobbler man instead of you? A very kindly man who took care of children. I could have lived quietly, helping him, making shoes. I could have done an entire display of shoes!”
I will remember those who have been forgotten. She’d sworn that oath as she’d saved Gawx’s life. The right Words, important Words.
“It’s worse when they think they’re your friend. Gawx, the viziers. They make assumptions. They think they know you, then start to expect things of you. Then you have to be the person everyone thinks you are, not the person you actually are.”
“It’s just…what’s the challenge of eating a lunch someone gives you?” “I’m certain you will survive the indignity, mistress.”
“Pity can be a powerful tool. Anytime you can make someone else feel something, you’ve got power over them.”
She hadn’t dreamed, thankfully. She hated dreams. They either showed her a life she couldn’t have, or a life that terrified her. What was the good of either one?
“Mistress, please don’t get yourself killed. It would be traumatic. Why, I think it would take me months and months to get over it!” “That’s faster than I’d get over it.”
“So, we came all this way,” Wyndle said, “and tracked the most dangerous man we’ve ever met, merely so you could steal his breakfast. We didn’t come here to do…to do anything more, then?”
“People get such a small amount of time. So many I’ve known say it—as soon as you feel you’re getting a handle on things, the day is done, the night falls, and the light goes out.”
“Your Pancakefulness.”
“But you,” the thing said, “did not come for a contest, did you? We watch the others. The assassin. The surgeon. The liar. The highprince. But not you. The others all ignore you…and that, I hazard to predict, is a mistake.”
Nale, madman, Herald of Justice, is not one to leave business unfinished.”
If you ever encounter another of the Sleepless, tell them you’ve spoken with Arclo. I’m certain it will gain you sympathy.”
When one achieves immortality, one must find purpose beyond the struggle to live, as old Axies always said.”
“You think you can fight me, child?” he growled, holding his Blade against her rod. “I who have lived immortal lives? I who have slain demigods and survived Desolations? I am the Herald of Justice.” “I will listen,” Lift shouted, “to those who have been ignored!”
