#chalion

the mpreg horror really compelling to me... caz commits murder to save iselle and so he bears the consequence she would have borne had she married dy jironal, a parasitic tumor in his stomach containing the spirit of a man who hated and hurt him. excellent stuff

i do really enjoy when a guy who is constantly like Ughhhh my bones are creaking i'm so old im ailing im tired as fuck please let me go to bed gets to like aura farm a little (eg the fox recognizing him by name + the time dy jironal's lackeys tried to jump him). he's funny too im very charmed by his cutting little asides or running commentary

Lupe dy Cazaril & Betriz dy Ferrej 💝

Ayda Mensah wakes up to a surveillance drone hovering over her face.

A week after Kim Dokja's return, when he's able to stay awake for at least a couple of hours and doesn't fall asleep mid-blink or mid-sentence, Han Sooyung claims a whole afternoon visit to herself, by threats and rank bribery, and catches him on the specifics of his salvation.

He knew that he was in the right place when he saw the face of the red-haired woman waiting for him by the doors.

Verna dy Marray's chat with Marea, her ex-lover turned long-time friend, meandered its way to theology at some point, roughly three cocktails in.

It goes like this: first there is a gaggle of hopeful youkai by his window in the middle of the night, willow-like figures with long spindly fingers and thrilling, sad voices, and of course his grandmother bested each separately and wrote each name down - they're sisters, they sing, one echoing each other, sisters, sisters. 

Artemisia runs from Confessor Leander almost blindly, her mouth full of bloody terror, her good hand aching where her nails cut deep gouges into her flesh. 

Things Kim expected from Martinaise: precinct rivalry, subtle and overt humiliations of working with an unfamiliar partner, interference or indifference on all sides, slum miseries, failure. 

The three of them end up in The Honey Pot again once the dust settles after the Hanged Man case, Rune sleeps off his exhaustion, and Addam starts getting used to his new hand.

Rune collapses as though in slow motion just before Quinn barrels into me, taking me off my feet, and even over my joy and turmoil of seeing him again, alive and unharmed, I manage to catch Brand’s gaze. 

The summons from the capital came earlier than expected.

Give me my true eyes. I want to see. I have to know. Lord Bastard. Cursed be your name. Open my eyes.

- Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold

___

“No, in fact. One need not be good. Or even nice.” Umegat looked wry of a sudden. “Grant you, once one experiences…what one experiences, one’s tastes change. Material ambition seems immaterial. Greed, pride, vanity, wrath, just grow too dull to bother with.”   “Lust?”   Umegat brightened. “Lust, I’m happy to say, seems largely unaffected. Or perhaps I might grant, love. For the cruelty and selfishness that make lust vile become tedious. But personally, I think it is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one’s god.” Umegat emptied his cup. “The gods love their great-souled men and women as an artist loves fine marble, but the issue isn’t virtue. It is will. Which is chisel and hammer. Has anyone ever quoted you Ordol’s classic sermon of the cups?”  “That thing where the divine pours water all over everything? I first heard it when I was ten. I thought it was pretty entertaining when he got his shoes wet, but then, I was ten. I’m afraid our Temple divine at Cazaril tended to drone on.”  “Attend now, and you shall not be bored.” Umegat inverted his clay cup upon the cloth. “Men’s will is free. The gods may not invade it, any more than I may pour wine into this cup through its bottom.”   “No, don’t waste the wine!” Cazaril protested, as Umegat reached for the jug. “I’ve seen it demonstrated before.”  Umegat grinned, and desisted. “But have you really understood how powerless the gods are, when the lowest slave may exclude them from his heart? And if from his heart, then from the world as well, for the gods may not reach in except through living souls. If the gods could seize passage from anyone they wished, then men would be mere puppets. Only if they borrow or are given will from a willing creature, do they have a little channel through which to act. They can seep in through the minds of animals, sometimes, with effort. Plants…require much foresight. Or”—Umegat turned his cup upright again, and lifted the jug—“sometimes, a man may open himself to them, and let them pour through him into the world.” He filled his cup. “A saint is not a virtuous soul, but an empty one. He—or she—freely gives the gift of their will to their god. And in renouncing action, makes action possible.” He lifted his cup to his lips, stared disquietingly at Cazaril over the rim, and drank. He added, “Your divine should not have used water. It just doesn’t hold the attention properly. Wine. Or blood, in a pinch. Some liquid that matters.”