1
" Why don't you just do it, then?" Racath hissed. "Just kill me. I dare you."
Now, I assume you know what this is. You've seen this before in other stories - the part where the disgruntled villain stands over the hero. He is triumphant, the hero now at his mercy. But when commanded to slay him, he hesitates. He lowers his sword. And he says: "I cannot."
If you are to take away but one thing from the words I have spoken, let it be this: there is a world of difference between "I Cannot" and "I will not".
"I cannot" is a surrender. It implies a lack of options. Someone who says such a thing does so only because they have no other choice. They do not WISH to relent - in fact, they usually want to obey their mandate and destroy the hero at their feet. But they cannot, because the guilt is too unbearable. But that does not make him a better man; all that a man who says "I cannot" has done, is given in to the compulsion to repent.
Allow me to make myself perfectly clear - I HAD other options. Easy options. Simple options. I could have killed Racath Thanjel that day. I could have killed him and all the others, too. I could have left them dead and bloody on that grassy hill, and gone trotting back to the Imperator's lap. I could have shrugged off the attrition that had dogged my every step, thought better of my disenssion, given up on all hope of absolution and accepted my damnation. And I could have spent the rest of eternity destroying God's green earth at Lavethion's side.
I could have. It would have been so easy. So simple. So wrong. And I didn't want to.
And so I took a sickened step away. Stabbed Osveta into the grass. Shook my head. And said: "I won't. "
― S.G. Night ,
4
" Oh, God in heaven, kill me now…” Rachel groaned. “I hate going to see Mrak. I always feel awkward going back to Velik Tor. After being a Scorpion for so long, after everything Oron’s told us about Mrak’s past…” she shook her head darkly. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to resist the temptation to perforate his bowels.”
Notak looked back down at the letter. “Post script,” he read aloud. “Rachel, please leave Mrak alive and unharmed. We still need him, unfortunately, no matter how tempting it is to perforate his bowels.”
“You made that up, he did not say that!”
Notak handed her the letter, pointing. “Right there at the bottom.”
Rachel squinted at the writing. “Faul. "
― S.G. Night , Attrition: the First Act of Penance (Three Acts of Penance, #1)
5
" It’s difficult to explain…you see, I have met her, and so I know that same powerful aspect in her eyes that Racath saw that night. But it is not easily put into words, not so easily described to someone who hasn’t seen it. It was just…something.
Liken it to meeting a star. You do not know the star, have never spoken to it before, nor have you ever picked it out of the sparkle of its sisters in the night sky. But the star knows you. It has spent your whole life watching you from the sky. You can keep no secrets from it. It knows every thought in your mind, every move you have ever made, every flaw you have hidden, every pain you have felt. Like the millennia it spent before you were born were years in waiting. Waiting for you and only you, like you are what gives it purpose. Like watching over you is the dedication of its entire life. So it knows you better than you know yourself.
And while the star is bright, a twinkling gem that brims with youth and beauty, there is an intangible wisdom to it. It is undeniably experienced. But not old. It may have lived for a thousand of years before you were born, counting every second until you were brought into the world. But, for a star, a thousand years is still very, very young. Young enough to kiss.
That feeling, that meeting with a star, is what pierced Racath’s heart when Nelle looked into his eyes. She was starlight, nightfire on an ebon velvet sky. Rapture. "
― S.G. Night , Attrition: the First Act of Penance (Three Acts of Penance, #1)
6
" If you were to look on him fleetingly, to spare him only a passing glance, you would see only a man. If you looked a moment longer, you might get the feeling that there was something about him, something distinctly different. You might notice something peculiar about his eyes, might spot something strange about the tattoos running the length of his arms. Something out of place, something you cannot quite put your finger on….But to you, he still would be just a man.
But a clever eye…a clever eye could see him for what he truly is.
A clever eye would notice how his pupils taper at their tops and bottoms. A clever eye would see that his irises are no natural color. A clever eye would see that the patterns coiled on his arms, like blackened tongues of roiling flame, are not sunken into his skin like a tattoo’s Ink, but gently beveled at their edges — a part of his flesh. A clever eye could tell that, no, he is not just a man. Not just a Human.
He is a Majiski — one of my people.
-The Penitent God "
― S.G. Night , Attrition: the First Act of Penance (Three Acts of Penance, #1)
14
" Rachel snorted derisively. “You don’t seriously buy into all her prophetess hocus-pocus, do you?”
“I do, actually,” Notak said, frowning. “She is the augur, Rachel.”
“She’s exasperating!”
“She is eccentric,” Notak corrected. “And you would be too if you had lived the life she had.”
“She’s a whore!” Rachel spat, ignoring him.
Notak looked at her, plainly puzzled. “I am fairly certain that she is a virgin, actually. "
― S.G. Night , Attrition: the First Act of Penance (Three Acts of Penance, #1)
