The Wings of War Boxset: Books 1-4 (The Wings of War, #1-4)

by Bryce O'Connor

“You asked why those people aren’t more generous? It’s because they’ve no need to be. Whether because they were raised in such a manner, or because they are greedy by nature, or because they simply don’t care, I couldn’t tell you. But where what you give is never enough, people like that”—he waved a hand at the extravagant foursome before they disappeared into a perfumery—“are completely at peace with giving less, if anything at all. They’ve no drive to be more than what they are, and if they do do more, it is only because they’ve found a way to make it improve their own lives.”

“The desire for change is enacted by change, not by a lack of it. When things shift, there is a natural outcry, a desire for a shift back. Sometimes this is a positive reaction, sometimes not. Regardless, once that shift becomes the new normal, that desire to effect dissipates and is eventually forgotten.”

“God,” Kal mumbled, falling heavily back into his seat. “Laor save us all. That beast—” “Is not for us to judge,” Talo finished for him. His eyes never left the pit, watching the atherian get to his feet over the body of his first victory. “There’s little of Laor’s light in that one, I grant you, but I think we would have been deluding ourselves if we expected otherwise. Consider why he is doing this before you condemn him for doing it. For a man like that, there is little but the belief that there is no other way.” As some of us know better than others, he finished the thought privately.

It defies all reason, the way winter can be so quiet. When the winds die and nothing is left of the storm but still-falling snow, sound seems to vanish altogether from the world. What remains is not true silence, per se—there is an inexplicable heaviness to the air, a denseness that bears down upon the ears—but it is as close as one can come in all the noise and vigor that is life.

“There are words that describe those of our faith well, or so we like to imagine. Kind, gentle, compassionate, supportive. These are warm words, words of hope and light and ardor. These are words meant to instill and support peace, to cultivate a love for Laor in all His magnificence, and to breed respect among men for all other men. No one, though, pauses to consider the other words that fit the Laorin just as well. Words such as powerful. As hard. As cunning. Words such as fearsome.”

I know they have families. I know they have children. If that were enough to stop death—even enough to stop cruelty—then the world would have no use for people like me.

“Raz gave my love a mercy I would not have been able to, a mercy none of us would have been able to. He took Talo’s pain away in a moment, even though the act took a great toll on him. I watched a man end the life of his friend, and it was the single greatest act of kindness I have ever witnessed. I don’t think Raz could have sacrificed more than he did in that moment, to save Talo a slow, miserable death.”

“It is the naïve conscience that considers terror a product only of the material world. If you are of such a mind, take pause and consider this: if terror thrives in the plane of man, by what word would you thus describe the twisted product of said horrors after their corruption by the cruelest enemy of a fragile imagination: one’s own mind?”

Life is not a spectrum that can be measured and weighed. It’s a damn ocean, sometimes calm and pleasant, sometimes black and churning, but in either case at no point do we have any idea what lies more than a few feet beneath the surface.”

“Goodnight,” Raz told her, settling down himself. “Wake me if you need me.”

When he began to feel true fear start to bubble up in the crew at his back, Raz decided it was about time to even the battlefield. With a whoosh of wind his sunset-red wings extended out to either side of him, their twenty-foot wingspan blocking the entire front bow of the Sylgid. His neck crest flared over his head, and with a deep breath he leaned out over the hull of the frigate, Ahna pointed right at the approaching ship. Then Raz roared, pouring every ounce of hunger and defiance he could muster into the scream. The sound pitched over the empty churn of the Dramion, vibrating in the wood beneath his feet. It seemed to shake the air, shivering over the Percian sails as it washed over the boat and the pirates lined up eagerly along its sides. It reverberated, rippling across the water, making it seem like the shallow waves lapping at their hulls were a product of Raz’s own power.

“Raz…” the scarred woman said, blinking around at the carnage. “Raz, this is… this is…” “Why they call me ‘Monster,’” Raz finished for her with a grunt, grimacing at the scene. “Vile, isn’t it?” Lysa didn’t seem to have an answer for him, her eyes fixed in disgusted awe upon the bisected corpse of the man who had been the pirates’ captain.

“The filth he started to believe in… He would always tell me of the ‘value’ of the enslaved, how those who didn’t work were nothing but a burden on modern society. He used to argue that a life of servitude was better than a life of nothingness.