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And as you cross this lake, their noise comes all
once and overwhelmingly, sounding like nothing less than the vast ocean’s roar—a collective hum, breathed out by the mouths of thousands, indistinct and infinite. An infinity in which you now
the dancers’ feet stamping into the boards of the stage as might a brigade of fearsome riders across a dust-beaten land, and you see with clarity the rider at the head of this royal charge—a
the skin of the man’s children stitched to his back, to wear for the remainder of his days as he was made to walk the roads of the country loudly extolling his ruler’s virtues.
What the acutal fluck
and your brothers pressed your faces to the window, but for years after that day, you would imagine them, always with a different face, for in truth they could have been anyone.
You thought she was teaching you not to be rude, as was lola’s job. But not this time. This time, she was teaching you how to survive.
Most of the sunbaked corpses
Oh dear god
“The left arm represents your pride. Your warrior’s heart. If you dishonored your position—if you abandoned your post or fled from battle—cutting off this arm would tell everyone you met, at a mere glance, that you were a coward.”
Yes, if they liked you, it was almost a mercy.” Her smile colder as she added, “But they rarely liked you.”
with eyes that bounced light like polished knives.
WHOOO i love that description
We just made him do it.
And when later I was discovered, like the discarded toy I was, a guard sympathetic to my state brought me to my lover, who with trembling hands held me to their breast before I then breathed my last, and returned to the Sleeping Sea, wingless, and free. The satiated emperor sat back down
"heroes" is playing at the perfect time my god
while the flesh box gurgled behind Him.
..excuse me
And what a dream it was.
The way this author perfectly sprinkles in horrific things at the right time
“I will!” He swore to His ancestry. “I will find my due reward!” And on a ship borne on a wave so tall that even the stars moved out of the way did He make His approach of the new land, following the constellation of the tiger and the cherry bough, which leapt ahead of Him in a silver streak, charting the path ahead, the starlight of such brightness that not even the shadow of Death dared approach this vessel.
This paragraph is especially reminiscent of The Starless Sea
None of us lived beyond the end of this great project. Those of us who did not die in the construction and the tunneling were killed to protect
what was down there. Our bones became a part of the edifice of this mighty prison. Our skin dispersed into the air. Our blood in the water that poured down each step.
the slit begging to be filled.
Daddy
It was like we could hear the world again. Others turned and twisted in their restlessness and coiled into themselves like fists. Like every part of our bodies was activated.
We heard them before we saw them.
Thats what the world said
She rested her hands on the edge of the wall and blandly counted in her head the number of hollow-eyed warriors below whose red armor made the western road a river of blood.
and I realized that I was standing beside the bravest person I would ever know in this life and I craved to be held by her.
though I cannot deny that the title is accurate, especially on a night like tonight, where time is short and my mission is urgent.
...that's loaded....
And then the egg timer snapped.
Its giving the Ekko and Jinx fight scene
Brztztztztztztztztztztztztztztztztztztzt— “Oh!” your lola gasped, startled. Water boiled over the rim of the pot. “It’s time!”
I was not a coward! I was not going to die for that fool of a commander!
This is so genuis whattt! Like we're seamlessly getting evryone's perspective in such an intelligent way. Oh. My. God. Brilliant.
Araya was a soaked demon that hummed a tuneless note as she slashed left and slashed right.
her mouth filled with dirt as the other horses stampeded into the courtyard and crunched her head beneath their hooves,
Bone slid into brain and in that bright firework behind his jellied eyes Vogo was propelled out of his body,
Holy fuck
as if two hands had shoved him off the edge of the last precipice of this world, his spirit crashing through the heavenly bands, the banners of color and sound that lay like sediment between these choruses, until he dropped into the churning waters of the Sleeping Sea,
WHEWWWWWWW
where upon the cold detonation of its surface he scattered, like pieces of a dropped porcelain plate, into the hours that bind our days,
OKAY IT KEEPS GOINGGG
and I thought about my mother who jumped from a cliff when I was little, and I wondered if this was what she saw when she ended things, as I ended things, what remained of Vogo gone far away, and yet not far at all, as the crisscrossing waves closed over these pieces of him like linens folded by a pair of loving hands.
Like oh my GOD
“The old men would have you believe it shook out one way. That the road was but pain and glory. Sometimes, perhaps, life whittles itself down to these essences. Sometimes there is nothing we can do but sit in it.” She took a long drag and blew gray smoke up into the ceiling, where it lived like an opaque and swirling cloud of shape and texture. “But listen well when I tell you that your father, and your granjo, are wrong.” What were they wrong about? you asked. She shrugged. “This is a love story to its blade-dented bone.”
Clutching my chest
Now it seemed that prayer, prayer to the world, the spirits the world cradled, and to the Sleeping Sea that dwelt beneath it all, was all he had to stop himself from losing his mind.
“If we don’t invade K_______, the enemy will.”
?
glad to give our eyes to these humans of high skill,
This amused the ape greatly.
I heard it—the pop of his bones as my father was trampled underneath their wretched hooves.
who once carved his father’s name into the flesh of a weeping man’s back for the crime of a disrespectful expression,
...WHAT
and we made him remember—his eyes welling with tears as the voices in his head, from another life lived heedlessly not long ago, came surging forth from the dark cracks of his mind, as they had done for the past six months, with the empress’s help. We made him smell the burnt flesh. We made him feel the slickness of our blood.
Picture Mylo! Claggor! Vander! Mom! Dad! Me!
BUT WHAT WOULD FORGIVENESS DO FOR US, FOR ME, WHEN HE SLIT MY FUCKING THROAT?
and we, the people, the ones this bastard had struck down and burned and shot, we swirled around that pretty little skull of his and we clawed at the walls and we wailed and we said do you remember us, you demon, do you remember spilling our blood at your taloned feet and now here you are DOING IT AGAIN,
This is literature
“There you are, Serro,”
Ily
We circled his thoughts and made him twitch. We made him suffer as he made us suffer.
the boy
Once the bag was secure in the hold, the driver looked down at Keema, his eyes behind the dark slits of his mask in new appraisal of him. And it was then that a kind of messaging passed between them; in their locked and silent gaze a tightening of the first knot of trust; a contract, signed by a nod of the driver’s head, before Keema closed the flap, and returned to the soldier’s side.
“It’s Jun, by the way.”
“My name,” the driver said. “It’s Jun.”
“This one apologizes,” it said on the tail end of a light giggle. “It simply desires to know its traveling companion.”
What was uncommon, but not entirely rare, was that both of the lovers were male.
Fucking knew it
