Children of Fallen Gods

“You were the one who wanted to save the world,” he said, quietly. “I just wanted to save you.”

“Home. The word caught and settled, deep in my chest. But home wasn’t Korvius, or the Towers, or even a cottage in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by flowers. Home was a pair of mismatched eyes, an accented voice, and a heartbeat that followed the same cadence as mine. And I was so, so homesick.”

“It began with a whisper and it will end with a scream. What comes between is a dance of fate’s tangled threads.”

“Maybe one day you’ll stand where I do. You’ll cut away every weakness. You’ll make every sacrifice. And then the world will look at you and sneer at your inhumanity, as if you didn’t just become everything they told you to be.”

“It is a privilege to do nothing, Max. So many people do not have that gift.”

“But isn’t having built something worth more than the fear of it being destroyed?”

“You make me selfish. You make me want. And nothing has ever been enough, except for you.”

“Destroying is easy. Creating is hard.”

“of course you will want to make a better world than they did. You will build upon what they gave you. You will draw from their strengths and confront their mistakes. You will make something better, because that is what you do. You dream, Max. And I love that in you.”

“Reshaye?” he said, quietly. “That’s what she calls herself?” “She?” Max said. “Does it mean something?” I murmured. A wince flickered across the man’s face. “It means, ‘No one.”

“No war can be fought with clean hands,” he said. “Not even the ones waged for the right reasons. Not even the ones you win.”

“The temples were beautiful,” Caduan said, quietly. And he paused, as if remembering, a mournful smile at his lips. Then he looked back at the fire, and it was gone. “But when the humans came, they crumbled just as easily as the brothels. And the scholars and the whores ended up in the same graves.”

“Home was a pair of mismatched eyes, an accented voice, and a heartbeat that followed the same cadence as mine. And I was so, so homesick.”

“Power is sitting here alone in a room with four people who want to kill me, and knowing I’ll walk out alive.”

“No one deserves to be put on a pedestal. They won’t climb down to save you, and if you’re looking up at them, you’re not looking ahead at what’s coming for you.”

“Sometimes, in moments like this, there was so much I wanted to say to Max that the prospect of forcing all of that emotion into mere syllables seemed laughable. I had spent my entire life being ripped from what I loved. My heart never could grow roots, because every few years they would be hacked away. You learn to live without them. You learn to find love where it doesn’t exist, like in the superficial kindnesses of a cruel man. You learn to accept the loss as a part of you, and pretend you don’t mourn every severed connection.I had forgotten that it was possible for the roots of someone’s affection to run so deep, so solid. I could build a life in the branches of this tree. I could cradle a generation’s future nestled in its leaves.”

“Max had never been a cynic. He was a wounded optimist trying desperately to return to his natural state.”

“A story is the thing that proves something existed between life and death.”

“Humans will follow a sweet lie to the ends of the earth. They will die for it, and they will kill for it.”

“Sometimes I wish you had known me, the way I used to be. Sometimes I wish that was the version of myself I could give you. A better version. One that wasn’t so…” Broken.”

“Apologies imply that you have accepted some form of responsibility. It implies that you have remorse, and plan to do better.”

“People like me have always had to fight,” I said. “It’s easy to abandon the dream of easy victory when it was never an option at all.”

“Sometimes, in moments like this, there was so much I wanted to say to Max that the prospect of forcing all of that emotion into mere syllables seemed laughable. I had spent my entire life being ripped from what I loved. My heart never could grow roots, because every few years they would be hacked away. You learn to live without them. You learn to find love where it doesn’t exist, like in the superficial kindnesses of a cruel man. You learn to accept the loss as a part of you, and pretend you don’t mourn every severed connection. I had forgotten that it was possible for the roots of someone’s affection to run so deep, so solid. I could build a life in the branches of this tree. I could cradle a generation’s future nestled in its leaves. But I still had so many scars. And it’s hard to dream when you’re surrounded by the ashes of loss. Hard not to wonder if whatever scraps you have left over are even worth offering someone who deserves so much. I squeezed my eyes shut. They prickled. “I love you,” I choked out. Love. The word was all I had. Still, it didn’t feel like enough.”

“Always, you listen to words that are not belonging of you. I want…” He stumbled, struggling. “I want to give you, to speak of you, in your words. Your… voice.”

“Hold onto your humanity. And if anyone tells you to be ashamed of it, if anyone tells you that it’s weakness that you know the value of a human life, then they’re fucking lost, Moth.”

“I am victory. I am vengeance. And now, I am nowhere. But soon, I will be with you.”

“Sometimes I hear the human’s voices. They ask me, Who are you? And I tell them, I am Aefe, Teirness of the House of Obsidian. I am Aefe. I am Aefe. I am Aefe. But the time rolls by.And when I have lost everything else that makes me who I am, what does a name mean, anyway? One day there is nothing left of my body. I am nothing but raw energy, and they force me into bodies and minds, they trap me in rooms of white and white and white. I am nothing but loss and anger and the overwhelming feeling that perhaps, long ago, I was something else. When I meet another human, and their gaze turns to me and asks, Who are you? Now I say, I am no one. And it is true.”

“It began with a whisper and it will end with a scream. What comes between is still to be seen.”

“Sometimes, you need to act on nothing but gut feeling. And sometimes, no matter what you do, you lose the battle. Healing is more difficult than killing in every way. But that’s how it always is. I’ve walked both roads. Destroying is easy. Creating is hard.”

“Creating is harder than destroying. In the end it’s always worth it.”