Dark Age Quotes

"Maybe I can one day forgive you for doin’ what needs doin’. But I can’t give you permission to abandon my boy."

"Distance has sanitized war nearly as much as Stoneside’s fucking ramblings. It has made it easy…romantic. I have no interest in sanitization nor romance. I apply scientific methods to produce psychological trauma in our enemies in order to create psychological casualties. To end their willingness to fight and shorten this war. That is my purpose."

"They are meditation totems. Each is for a human who preyed upon my prejudices. Daedra seemed harmless, kind, stupid. She brought my men figs and bread every day for a week, until her figs were laced with a nerve agent. A hundred and four men died because I could not see her for what she was."

"how can you understand a man at war with himself?"

"An idealist. Don’t fret, it’s a temporary condition."

"when I think of that distant look in Atlas’s eyes as I choked him out, that look that reminded me of Cassius when he went to face the Raa, I understand what they both knew—how foolish all this rage is."

"Caesar was a clod. But he got one thing right: war gives the right to the conquerors to impose any condition they please upon the vanquished."

"All of a man’s affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils. For order, I impaled soldiers. For liberty, you drowned cities. The victor writes history with the blood of the vanquished. I wonder, in the end, which of us will turn out the hero? Don’t you?"

"Cities and Thrones and Powers Stand in Time’s eye, Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die: But, as new buds put forth To glad new men, Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth, The Cities rise again."

"that is why I make—to see the life that grows around the dead stone I stack. For what is a building without its audience? What is a city without its people?"

"Tigresses don’t need nursemaids. Neither should we."

"My son, you are of the gens Julii. Your ancestors looked to the night sky when there was nothing but drips of light in the darkness. Roads they built to stitch that light together. You are also of the gens Barca, guardians of the human race. You will be hated and you will hate. You will love and be loved. You will fall and you will rise. Never will you know peace, but you will know joy. You may even sail the dark seas in ships and lie beside nymphs in alien woods. You are your father’s son. Forever my boy. Forever our Ulysses."

"You are a clever Homo bellicus, Mr. Horn, as I am an efficient Homo logicus. But do not compare yourself with the best of the Homo aureate. My dominus’s designs are painted on a horizon we will only see in time. My science is logic, his is illogic—humanity."

"Me? A Gorgon? Don’t make me laugh. This dog don’t collar."

"There was one mightier ’fore Allmother’s reign Allfather, King of Stains, was his name. For him, Old Kuthul rose against Sunborn Till in Ladon was he felled, for kin to mourn To the fires his people and the Volk were sent But not all to ash and bone must we lament From sun to dust did the moons and dragons chase The brood of Kuthul, who hid in darkest space, Five ages passed of shadow and ice Entombed in floating caverns, hunted like rabid mice Blossoms of blood and thrones of flesh were grown As brother ate brother; sister ate sister for a savior, Allfather groaned Then came the Outlander to answer his plea Mighty were the Lords of Ink, mightier was He. Whores of their children, shards of their thrones Made He, who crowned Himself with their bones And fashioned Dark Wind of those not destroyed To serve, to anoint, to proclaim: He Who Walks the Void."

"I have lived three lives,” Volsung rumbles through that titanic helmet. “The last is that of Volsung Fá. The second that of Pale Horse, slaveknight to the Warlord of Ash. The first that of Vagnar Hefga, first broodmate to Alia Volarus, the Snowsparrow, Queen of the Valkyrie, broodfather to the god Ragnar Volarus and greedy little Sefi."

"She would have you give up war. She would have you forsake the Wind for roofs. Your stone and bone heritage for the soft silk of heatlanders. She would let their cities suck you dry. She would have you live in their world. I would have them live in ours."

"Remind them the Allfather’s truth: the world is yours, if you can take it."

"Worthy."

"If there are gods, they are in brighter worlds than these."

"Ye labour for your fall With your own hands! Not by surprise Nor yet by stealth, but with clear eyes, Knowing the thing ye do."

"I look into their faces. Not a man or woman amongst them expects to survive the hour. But as the waiting has ended, so too has the fear. Not one quibbles or shies from duty. I could not be prouder."

"in the kingdom of death, amidst ramparts of bodies and wind all of screams, there is a king, and his name is not Lune. It is Reaper."

"I spot the signs of his advance from the far side of the Triumphia. It is like the coming of a tiger through tall grass. First a rippling in the distance that seems like the wind. Then a tunneling force. An outward swaying of riders. The starting of horses. Men disappear from saddles. Sunbloods collapse sideways with horrible wounds. And then, like the tiger’s tail, the curved slingBlade rises above the stalks as he threshes all in his path. He kills with impossible aggression."

"as he falls, his Red acrobatics shine. No one falls like the Reaper."