A Sellsword's Wrath (The Seven Virtues #2)

by Jacob Peppers

The greatest truths were not learned, they were felt. They were not understood—they were lived.

The greatest lies are the ones we tell ourselves, after all, the strongest chains the ones we fashion link by link with each passing moment and the most impenetrable cage is the one that we build around ourselves, never seeing it for fear of opening our eyes.”

A simple man looks out around himself and sees a simple world. A complex man, a complex one. So it is that we fashion our own lives, our own realities, build them up brick by brick or straw by straw, and what strength they have is a strength that we have given them in the making.”

“Without sadness,” The Virtue said, “there is no joy. Without pain and suffering, there can be no relief, no true pleasure. It is not their end that defines humans, Kevlane. It never has been. It is their journey. Beauty is found among the dross, is created among the dross. And not just beauty but power. When a starving mother gives up what little food she has to nurture and feed her child, that is beauty, Kevlane. True beauty, is not found in appearance but in purpose. There is beauty in sadness, as there must be. Beauty in pain and, yes, even in death, for death is not the story, nor is it even the ending of the story. Death is only the proof that the story was. The journey, the life, the pain, the heartache and heart break, these are the story. A man is not defined by the substance or the manner of his death but by the chronicles of his life. Even anger has its beauty for just anger is the blaze of a flame in the darkness, the flowering of petals in the desert. Life is beauty, Kevlane. You did not understand this then, and you do not understand it now. To want something you cannot have, to need it, is not suffering; it is to be human.

Beauty is created among the dross. Things must die so that others may grow. People are not their own stories, they are all one story. And the story is never truly over.