S.G. Night > Quotes

“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, Dissension: the Second Act of Penance

“Please. Don’t try and play games with me. It’s belittling. I’m not stupid — I can spot a wolf in sheep’s clothing when I see one - and your claws are showing.” -Enoch Michelson”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“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

“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

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Death. How may I be of service this evening?” - Racath Thanjel”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“Mother of heaven…” Rachel breathed as she crouched next to Notak in the darkness of their roost across the street. “You said this place was guarded, not that it was entrenched. Faul, that’s not a warehouse, that’s a garrison that likes to hold crates in its spare time!”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“If you’ll excuse me, I have better things to do than watch you die.” - Rachel Vaveran”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“Look, you don’t have to believe me,” Nelle told him. “Hell, you can even try and resist fate if you want. But God has a plan for you, Racath Thanjel. Fate has a plan for you. Sooner or later your own choices will bring you into that plan.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“She was always like that — it’s what I remember most about her. There was always something…wrong with Rachel. She was always permeated with some terrible resentment, like a cloak she wore around herself. In a way, it was fascinating. Beautiful…but terrifying. Make no mistake: I have seen greater power than hers, before and since. But hers…hers was different. And I feel no shame in admitting that I was always afraid of Rachel Vaveran.

-The Penitent God”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“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

“P-please…I beg you, don’t do this…you c-can’t, you can’t do this to me…”
“Yes, I can.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“Westward Trade doesn’t have stalls, sire.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“I am owed a debt of Human blood. Your share is overdue. God made me your creditor, Hammon. You are mine to do with as I please. Tonight, I am judge. I am jury. I am executioner.” - Rachel Vaveran”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“I see you are still unnerved by my presence,” the Curator noted. He was still smiling. “My apologies.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“All that was left now was for him to get out, and for Rachel to kill Hammon.
She would have fun with that, Notak was sure of it. He was glad to let her have that little savage pleasure. He had no objection with her taking the blood onto her hands this time. Or any time. There was always plenty of blood to go around. And he didn’t want any more of it than was absolutely necessary.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“The Arkûl don’t come down this road, Human. No one does. There’s no one to hear you scream. No one except for me.” - Rachel Vaveran”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“You’d be surprised how much you can learn from men selling maps in the dark corners of the world." -Enoch Michelson”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“I clench my teeth and push forward. My pen grinds out the first and eldest word: an Ink-borne lance of black fire, scratched into a sheet of ice.

-The Penitent God”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“It will be a battle, then. A siege. A hundred-thousand Ink-borne arrows, flying forth from my flaming pen to assault the walls of tyrannical Cold that hold this man in awful rapture.
It will be campaign for my friend’s very soul. A war of Ice, Ink, and Ember.
So be it.
My pen scratches the icy parchment once more. A second Ember joins the first.
The War begins.

-The Penitent God”
― S.G. Night

“My palm connected with the final looking-glass. A wave of brittle fractures rippled outward from the place my sanguine hand had struck. It shattered. I watched the pieces of my former life--the reflection of this monster I'd become—fall about my feet in a hailstorm of blood, tears, and broken mirrors. My attrition was complete. And now dissension boiled in my veins. I would find my penance. Even if God could not forgive me, even if she could not forgive me...maybe I could at least find the power to forgive myself.”
― S.G. Night, Dissension: the Second Act of Penance

“If he’d judged Felsted correctly, he was the kind of man who checked all the locks in his house every night. Twice. Probably for fun.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“He and Alexis had met on his first day in Velik Tor. He had been eleven, she ten. They had bonded almost instantly, and had been like brother and sister ever since. They were, after all, the only family they really had.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“I owe nothing to anyone, I swear it! Who hired you? I can pay, just tell me who hired—”
“God hired me!” Rachel’s rebuke was like the crack of a toxic whip. Like poisoned thunder. “Humanity owes my kind a debt of flesh for every drop of blood we shed for you. For every one of us that died to save you.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“That brought Rachel up short. Getting any sort of response out of Notak was hard enough. She could count one hand the times she had ever seen him actually hurt by something. It was like seeing a mountain cry. Something you really didn’t want to see.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“Hmm,” Joseph shrugged. “Good point. Who needs a caravan guard when you’ve got a Genshwin?”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“Racath’s eyebrows drew together. “Terms?”
“Yes, terms,” Briz’nar replied, a forked tongue dancing behind its sharkish teeth. “Conditions for the riots to cease. The rabble must have some sort of price if they are sending one of your kind to do the bargaining. What is it, then? Coin? Food? Perhaps a much needed bath?” Some of the Arkûl chuckled.
Racath rolled his eyes. “I’m not here to negotiate with anyone!” he answered incredulously. “The only terms I have are that you die, this Bridge is destroyed, and the Dominion never even thinks about looking at the Burrows ever again.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“Someone’s life is always in danger. That’s the nature of tyranny." -Mrak”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“I am Notak,” he answered in his dry, normal voice. “I kill Demons.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“You had your chance. But that’s over now. No more antidotes. No more schedules. No more sickly-sweet order. No more cheating death. Your time has come, Felsted, and I am your angel. Follow me into the dark.” - Racath Thanjel”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance

“Enoch…knows things.”
― S.G. Night, Attrition: the First Act of Penance