Light Bringer Quotes

"Civilization is based on exchange and social contracts. I was taught that the lowColors exchanged liberty for security and stability. We have failed to provide security. We have failed to provide stability. We have failed you. The contract is broken. Take your due."

"What a waste of talent. Honestly, it’s like a bad joke. We might be the best three razormasters to share a room in the last sixty years, and it’s a prison! And not one of us was taken in a straight fight."

"My goodmen, it’s uncivilized to do anything but laugh in the face of death. Why do you think I’m always so jaunty these days?"

"I am sorry that he was aboard. He wept when he thought you died on Io, and I know you had your differences, but he was the only Gold of the Core who gained my trust, and my mother’s, and even, I think, Helios’s. He honored his word and was truly a noble man. Had I to grant the credit for that, it would not be to Octavia.” He touches Cassius’s knee. “I mourn the loss of his light."

"Thanks to Ares, I learned the truth, that Gold control is an illusion comprising fear, guilt, and distrust."

"It’s easy to make Da shiny in death. But we forget Da was a mess of a man. More broken than any of us. That’s why he chose Athena here. Why he chose Dancer, Harmony, Darrow.” He pokes the helmet at me. “He took the broken people because he knew he could reforge them stronger."

"I am the kneeling son. I am the broken daughter. I am the widow and her trembling fist. I am the sum of the tyrants’ debris. I am the whipped, the bent, the broken, the enslaved. I am the meek, the gentle, the humble, and all their silent rage. By taking your voice, Gold has given me mine. I am you. I am we. I am Ares, breaker of chains."

"He was a dreamer, Da, but he wasn’t an idealist. Naw. He woulda chosen a sweeter god to play if he was. Ares is the bloody truth behind the shine of the Golds. He is the shadow of their glory, and that shadow belongs to us. It is the trauma that made us mad enough to not just go along. Da chose you all for different reasons. Dancer was a builder, like Athena here. She’s showed me what she’s done these last years—the network she’s built.” He casts her a look of unreserved admiration. “You, Darrow, he chose to be his breaker. But you’re more than that. He told me that before he died. You could be both, if only he could keep you on the right path. He died too soon, I think. Left us to our own wicked devices. We weren’t ready, but we did what we could."

"We’d have you be our Virginia Augustus, Diomedes,” Aurae says. “Not a ‘kept Gold.’ A visionary. A champion for the downtrodden."

"Look me in the eye, Diomedes, and tell me I should serve you.” She raises her eyebrows. “Tell me you matter more because of the sigils on your hands. Tell me I am less than you."

"What do I say? I say give Truffle Pig her shot. She’s earned it."

"The ranks are best treated like mushrooms: spoiled with shit and kept in the dark."

"Darrow saw something in Ragnar. A latent goodness. A potential to lead. I don’t know. Whatever it was, he put his life in Ragnar’s hands long before that famous razor. It was the best bet he ever made."

"I read on our journey from Mars, as we hid in wait in the asteroids. Alexander of Macedon. Caesar of Rome. Genghis of Mongolia. Ayaz of the Turks. These are the names that were hailed before Gold fell on Earth. Silenius au Lune, Akari au Raa, Lorn au Arcos, the Reaper. These are the names hailed today. Butchers of millions. Human history is proof of one thing: violence builds empires. Violence is worshiped, respected, heeded. Why are we monsters for embracing this truth? Why am I a villain? Every great people has done it!"

"If you are raised in a house that is square, what shape do you think you will build your house when you are grown?"

"In a world of chaos, where it is all against all, strength is not measured in the power of a body nor the numbers of your host. Strength is measured only in what the heart can bear to attain its goal.” He peers around at his jarls. “What we are willing to sacrifice is the test of our worth. I have sacrificed everything!"

"You have killed in battle, it is true. But there is another kind of killing. A difficult but necessary kind. The killing of a captive or a foe who is at your mercy. There is no honor in it. That is the point: to take an honorless, necessary action. One that helps your people, but blackens your heart. Your sacrifice to your people is bearing the guilt of what must be done."

"I admired you in your early years, Slave King."

"I know nature cannot be changed. The strong will always prosper. The mighty will always conquer."

"And now you are dead. The rest is all theater. I’ll chew your meat slow."

"You will not be the first Willow branch I have broken. I have your measure. You are not as fast as they claim. You are not as strong as my weakest Kinshield. The Morning Star has fallen from the sky. Fear not. Tonight, I will give you wings."

"The path directs itself to the Vale.” The words escape my mouth before I realize I’ve recalled them. “Same as our breath rejoins the deepmine wind."

"All my life I’ve had the Helldiver’s mentality: smashing through obstacles fast enough will gain the laurel for my clan. But now, after breaking a million drills and myself, I can see the flaws in that mentality. I’m done forcing my way through rock like a hungry claw until I break. Now I know to shift around obstacles, flow through gaps, like those same deepmine winds that the path referenced, the same winds that filled the old tunnels around Lykos."

"When I die, whenever that day comes, I will hear the wind that howls like a wolf and know I am home."

"I ain’t friends with rats who jump ship after they dined on all the cheese."