Quotes

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Prophet's Words:

“We all have our temptations. But our ability to rise above them - to serve an ideal, rather than the dictates of selfish instinct - is what defines us as a species.” - BSR


Toshida turned on him. "Will you teach me my own religion now? I was raised in the Church; I think I know the Prophet's teachings well enough."
"You may know them," Tarrant said coldly. "But you clearly don't understand them." - WTNF


Hunter's Notes:

"There are no innocents." - BSR


“You will trust me, priest.” His voice was a mere whisper, but the power behind it was deafening. Ripples of earth-fae carried the words deep into Damien’s brain, adhered their meaning to his flesh. “Not because you want to. Or because it comes easily to you. Because you have no choice.” - BSR


Damien's Dreams:

"You don't remember?"
"I don't ... not him ... I remember you. You came for me." His tone was one of amazement as he whispered, "Through ..."
"Yeah," he said quickly. Not anxious to rehash it. "Through all that." - CoS


"I'll go alone."
"Like hell you will." Damien reached down to catch up the canteen. Tarrant was moving quickly; he had to jog to catch up with him. "Who'll get you out of trouble next time if I'm not there?" - CoS



And so it begins...

She wondered why she was afraid to go home.

She was within sight of the castle now, and its proximity should have calmed her. She loved the traditional building which her husband had designed, and all the men and women who lived inside it. The seat of the Neocounty of Merentha was a gleaming, ivory-colored monument to the Revivalist dream: all the elements of Gothic perpendicular architecture that seemed so oppressive elsewhere - at the royal seat, for instance - were here combined by that unerring aesthetic sense that was her husband’s strongest attribute, to create a building that was at once a soaring display of stone arches and finials, and a very real, very comfortable home.

For a moment she reined up her unhorse, commanding it to stillness, and tried to focus on the source of her anxiety. As ever, the effort was doomed to failure. She wished she had her husband’s skill to name and analyze such feelings. He would have taken one look at the building and said there, you see? The demonlings are out early tonight, it’s their presence you sense. Or, the currents are unsteady tonight, of course you’re nervous. Or some other explanation, equally dependent upon his special vision, that would render up the source of her discomfort in small, comprehensible packets of knowledge, so that it might be dealt with and then discarded.

The sun had set. Maybe that was it. The piercing white sun which bathed the land in sanity was gone, and the Core had followed it into its westerly grave. Only a few stars remained, and soon they too would be swallowed up by darkness. Things were abroad now that hid from the light of day, maverick human fears that had taken on a life of their own and coursed the night in search of a bodily home. She looked up at the sky and shivered.

Even Erna’s moons were missing now, two having already set and one, the smallest, yet to rise. Soon there would be as much darkness as the Earthlike world could ever know. A true night, her husband would have called it. A very rare, very special occurrence, for a world near the heart of the galaxy.

A night of power.

She kneed her unhorse gently into motion again and tried to lose herself in memories of her family, as a means of combatting the uneasiness that had been grow¬ing in her since she left the Bellamy household nearly an hour earlier. Her daughter Alix, barely five, had already mastered the rudiments of riding, and delighted in bare-backing the castle’s miniature unhorses whenever her parents would let her. Tory, nine, had clearly inherited his father’s insatiable curiosity, and could be found at any given moment in the place he least belonged, doing something that was only marginally allowable. Eric, the oldest, proud master of eleven years of lifely experience, was already practicing his charm on all the household staff. He alone had inherited his father’s manner, which would serve him well when he received his lands and title; the Neocount had charmed many an enemy into martial impotence with the force of his presence alone.