Ashes of Man (The Sun Eater, #5)

by Christopher Ruocchio

The ugliness of the world does not fade, nor are fear and grief made less by time, nor is any suffering forgotten. We are only made stronger by its blows.

So often we don’t see the truth because we won’t look low enough.

Only the past is written.

All things are always in motion. That is why it is the highest good and cause of civilization to preserve—to conserve—what is good.

My old memories are—will ever be—imperfect.

We have need of heroes, however broken, however terrible, however insufficient they may be. And we have need of more than one hero, for heroes do break, you know.

“Monsters don’t have doubts.”

Some ask nothing of us, and so we are nothing to them. But there are those women who ask all of us. Those are the ones worth giving all for.”

One cannot step in the same river twice, and home is not home when you return, for you are not yourself. The man you were yesterday died yesterday, and is only a piece of the man of today, as you will be tomorrow.

But there is little right in all the universe, and none which we do not fight for and make for ourselves.

The dead become ever closer companions as we grow old ourselves and nearer eternity. And afterlife or no, they live on in us. Perhaps that is why it seems we have ghosts. Because we carry them in ourselves.

“Some men love a thing so much they hide it away, others love a thing so much they boast of it at every opportunity.”

The rain makes for a change.

It was as if some half-forgotten memory stirred, as if I saw by that sense other than sight the shadow that reached out for us, the shadow we were rushing to meet. Perhaps you sense it, too, dear Reader.

“I read,” I said, and shrugged. “People always accuse me of wasting my time, but they don’t complain when I have their answers.”

“The world’s changed,” I allowed, and glanced back to where Prince Rafael Hatim sat with Garan Peake and the others. “But men have not. Nor will.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “We keep making the same choices. The same mistakes. So the same wisdom will ever serve us.”

“How can we ever hope to prevail against such demons, I ask you?” “By being demons ourselves, sire,” I said.

“Angels are only demons that kept their oaths . . . and still serve good and truth.”

What good was it serving good and truth, if I must lie even to her?

“No rest for the wicked, Demon in White.”

We believe war is waged by heroes and brave men, and it is so. But war is waged as much—and more—by those not brave at all.

It is one thing to read of horrors in the dusty quiet of a library cell. Quite another to meet them in the bright light of day.

The ugliness of the world does not fade and pass away. Have I told you that? That fear and grief are not made less by time? All life is tragedy, for all life must end—and so no life grows stronger by its ending.

When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe than ours . . .

It was as though the clear, golden sun of Earth fell upon my face, and I learned—discovered—that life was still precious and sweet.

“Against such demons as these, all men are brothers.”

“Keep your distance, sir. Your cowardice might be catching.

The cosmos is not cold or indifferent because we are not indifferent, and we are a part of that cosmos, of that grand order which has dropped from the hand of He who created it. Every decision creates its ripples, every moment burns its mark on time, every action leads us ever nearer to that last day, that final last battle and the answer to that last question: Darkness? Or light?

the landscape which arises after cataclysm and carnage is always a new world, and undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns unchanged.

“Hadrian!”

An abyss vast and empty as all the plains of Eue howled dark through my soul.

Time runs down, and what once was never comes again. Never, never, never, never. Never.

I felt the dead wind in my hair, and smelled the foul burning of the ashes of man.

knew . . . I knew when I started this account I must return to this, my blackest day. I thought I would be ready, thought that after all these years and centuries, after so many false starts,

Evil occurs because we are insufficient to challenge it. Too weak to stop it at the gates, too blind to see it bubbling within.

“There is much light you cannot see.”