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It’s so much harder to stay alive. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to live. It means you’re brave.”
arquebuses—they were more or less just faster, more lethal crossbows.
“The Monkey Warlord Liu Gurubai controls the core of the army. Yang Souji commands the Iron Wolves. Ma Lien led the second-largest contingent, the bandit troops, before he died. Zhuden was his second-in-command.
War didn’t end, not so cleanly—it just kept building up in little hurts that piled on one another until they exploded afresh into raw new wounds.
“He got plucky,” Daji said. “I turned him to mincemeat and sent him back to Vaisra in a dumpling basket.” Jiang arched an eyebrow. “Darling, fucking what?”
The point of revenge wasn’t to heal. The point was that the exhilaration, however temporary, drowned out the hurt.
Human bodies were so breakable, she marveled. So soft. Just meat on bones.
Play the part, she thought. That, too, was Daji’s advice. You only have to wear this skin long enough for it to become a piece of you.
logic didn’t matter in this ritual. Fury and resentment did.
She could achieve so much with a simple show of strength. All she had to do was become the symbolic embodiment of power and liberation, and she could kill a man by pointing. She could make these people do anything.
It felt bizarre to picture the Trifecta as young children. In Rin’s mind, they had sprung fully formed into the world, powerful and godly. She’d rarely considered that there was a time when they were mere mortals just like she had once been. Young. Terrified. Weak.
Let this be the ultimate test. Let this prove that even the most legendary shamans in Nikara history could not stand up to the machines of the Divine Architect.
She wanted to stand still and watch, to marvel at destruction that for once was not her own doing.
This chick is fucking delusional it is all her fault and i hate her
Death was easy; she’d come close so many times now that she knew dying was like falling backward into a black pit of comforting nothingness. Death made the pain go away. But hers only intensified.
she should have known better than to put her fate in the hands of people more powerful than she. She should have learned, many times over, that everyone she pledged her faith to would inevitably use and abuse her.
time moves in a circle. There are never any new stories, just old ones told again and again as this universe moves through its cycles of civilization and crumbles into despair.
She’d never taken a moment to consider that unlike her, he hadn’t chosen his pain as tribute. He couldn’t derive satisfaction from it like she could, because for him, it wasn’t the necessary price of a way out. For him, it was only torture.
Lianhua was a willowy, wide-eyed girl from Dog Province who bore a series of terrible scars on both arms, her collarbones, and down her back as far as Rin could see. She did not explain them, and nobody was bold enough to ask.
Merchi, a tall and rangy man a few years older than Rin, was the only experienced soldier among their ranks.
How on earth did you explain the cosmos while appearing sane?
“You might have given us clearer instructions than get high and summon a god.”
What I can’t have, he can’t have.
Nikara history was crammed with fools who imagined themselves kings. When their luck bled out, they died like anyone else.
amateurs obsessed over strategy, and professionals obsessed over logistics.
By midmorning she wanted to curl up and cry, I don’t want this, I can’t do this; wanted to hand off her responsibilities to an adult. But you waged this war, Altan reminded her. You wanted to be in charge. And now you are. Don’t fuck it up.
Deep-seated problems couldn’t be fixed with temporary solutions.
She blinked. This couldn’t be right. She was in her hometown, speaking to troops who had followed her to hell and back and villagers who had turned the fields scarlet for her. For her. They thought her divine. They adored her. She’d razed the Mugenese for them; she’d conquered Arlong for them.
Bitch literally fuck off all the way off
“Fuck the Hesperians!” Another shout, a different voice. “Feed us first!”
Now she was simply pissed, furious that her own people would act like such a brainless, petulant mob.
“Why does everyone think this war is over?” Rin’s fingers clawed in frustration. “Am I the only one with eyes?” Was this how mothers felt when their children threw tantrums? The sheer fucking ingratitude.
No wonder Petra thought the Nikara were inferior. Rin saw it now. No wonder the Trifecta had ruled like they did, with abundant blood and ruthless iron. How else did you stoke the masses, except through fear?
“It’s hard to prioritize the enemy that you can’t see.”
“We’re about to have the world we fought for. Can’t you see it? It’s so close, it’s just over the horizon. We’ll have an independent south, we’ll have a world free from war, and all you have to do is say the word.” But that wasn’t the world she’d fought for, Rin thought. The world she’d fought for was one where she, and only she, was in charge.
“Cooperation isn’t bowing.”
Since the moment they’d been anchored he’d always kept it open, had let her abuse his mind to funnel as much fire as she desired. He’d never closed it off. She’d almost forgotten that he could.
He didn’t get to withhold her power like a condescending parent, dangling her toys just out of reach.
Dying was easy. Living was so much harder—that was the most important lesson Altan had ever taught her.
Rin was a monster, a murderer, a destroyer of worlds.
She was a goddess. She was a monster. She’d nearly destroyed this country. And then she’d given it one last, gasping chance to live.
