" Zelda had a sudden impression that the palace was alive, an inhuman giant buried to its neck in the city, waiting for her with many blank eyes. Those emerald columns were its teeth. It waited for each new wave of lords and ate them each in turn, sucked their brains through small holes drilled in their skulls....What did the palace care for whose flag it flew, whose head sat on the shoulders of the statue on it's throne? It was patient, and hungry. It laughed in architecture. "

― Max Gladstone , Last Exit