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February 12 - July 20, 2024
“There will be no war,” Lord Worthington spoke. His voice rang with a quiet crispness that silenced the table. “We live in an age of industry. We manufacture vessels to traverse the seas and airships to roam the skies. With our manipulation of noxious vapors, and your country’s recovered skills of alchemy and the mystic arts? What new hideous weapons could this age create?” He shook his head, as if clearing away nightmarish conjurations. “No, this world cannot afford war. That is why I have aided your king on the coming summit of nations. The only way forward is peace, or we shall surely
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What new hideous weapons could this age create?” He shook his head, as if clearing away nightmarish conjurations. “No, this world cannot afford war. That is why I have aided your king on the coming summit of nations. The only way forward is peace, or we shall surely perish.”
“The world sits at a precipice. Our ability to create has exceeded our ability to understand. We play with forces that could destroy us. This is the task the Brotherhood must take up. To recover the most sacred wisdom of the ancients, to create a greater tomorrow.
That was the thing a lot of people didn’t understand. Magic abhorred imbalance. And always exacted a price.
“Unlike the young,” Khalid continued, “I know the difference between what I want, what I need, and what might just kill me.
“A fool’s heart is forever at the tip of his tongue,”
“Rich people always have enemies. Usually, that’s how they became rich.”
Someone playing at forces he didn’t understand, Fatma thought. One of the greatest problems in their age. And it rarely ended … without consequence.
“People find all sorts of ways to make their logic work,”
“Before God, our blood means nothing. Virtue is in deeds, not the skin.”
“Rich people are strange,” Hadia whispered. That was ever the truth.
“As my mother says, it’s always the wicked who have lots of money.
This new world has failed you. This claimed ‘modernity’ has left you unfulfilled—like a man adrift in an ocean without a drop of water to drink.”
“This imposter,” Hadia said. “He’s good at that. Using people. What he was saying Sunday night, about how things are. He wasn’t lying. He was just twisting it, picking at all our raw places. He knew how to turn that crowd against us, and how we’d react.”
“Usually the secrets we keep deep down, ain’t meant to hurt other people,” he said. “Not saying they won’t, but not through intentions. Those deep secrets, we hide away because we’re afraid what other people might think. How they might judge us, if they knew. And nobody’s judgment we scared of more than the one we give our hearts to. Besides, everybody got secrets. Even you, I’m betting.”
“Winds often blow against the way ships want!”
“It is a terrible thing, this politics of being perceived as respectable. To be forced to view your frailties through the eyes of others. A terrible thing.”
Bartering with beings who counted centuries of experience almost always put you on the losing end.
“No one who lives here is stupid or gullible. They’re just tired of the exploitation. Tired of being ignored. Desperate ears will listen to anyone offering up others to blame.
“Indeed, each one says: ‘My faith is right, and those who believe in another faith believe in falsehood, and are the enemies of God. As my own faith appears true to me, so does another one find his own faith true; but truth is one!’”
