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Patience is the better part of valor. And obedience the better part of humanity.
But Eo’s kindness, her laughter, her fierce will, is the best that can come from a home such as ours.
Few men truly like seeing beauty burn.
How much hate they create between people who should be kin.
“Reds up here have to get paid,” Dancer explains when we are alone. “Not much. But they’re given money and enough treats to make them dependent. What money they have, they spend on goods they’re made to think they need.”
“Power isn’t real. It’s just a word.”
If he is the rose, I am the thorns.
You’re not fighting against them, no matter what Harmony says. You’re fighting for Eo’s dream, for your family that is still alive, your people.”
“See. That’s what I don’t get. If I am a good man, then why do I want to do bad things?”
The rules and manners and morals of society are pulled away. All it takes is a stone room and two people needing the same scarce thing.
I am Darwin’s scythe. Nature scraping away the chaff.
The Peerless Scarred know that dark deeds are carried through life. They cannot be outrun. They must be worn if one is to rule. This is their first lesson. Or was it that the weak do not deserve life?
Because they believe civilization weakens natural selection. They do nature’s work so that we do not become a soft race.
But the game isn’t like that, because life isn’t like that. Gods don’t come down in life to mete out justice. The powerful do it. That’s what they are teaching us, not only the pain in gaining power, but the desperation that comes from not having it,
What we must study is humanity. In order to rule, ours must be the study of political, psychological, and behavioral science—how desperate human beings react to one another, how packs form, how armies function, how things fall apart and why. You could learn this nowhere else but here.”
I am the Reaper and death is my shadow.
“No one grasps the game, because no one knows the rules. No one follows the same set of rules. It is like life. Some think honor universal. Some think laws binding. Others know better. But in the end, don’t those who rise by poison die by poison?” I shrug. “In the storybooks. In life there’s no one left to poison them, often.”
Breathe the anger out. Breathe it out and move.
Funny thing, watching gods realize they’ve been mortal all along.
