“You ate my dog, you undead freak!”Hey! Watch the slander. I hear the acceptable term is ‘corporeallychallenged’ now. No need to be rude.”

“Since the fall of Man and the return of Magery and our older ways, most disputes were settled in a civilized manner: sword to the face, mace to the neck, acceptable societal situational handlers”

“Sometimes life just did things, he felt, and they didn't have to make sense. It helped when they did, and often the sense of a thing was just around a corner, but that didn't mean you ever got to see it.”

“Carrot followed me to the couch. We sat down and settled in. The couch was our center, somehow. Whatever, it didn’t matter why or how, the couch simply managed to be where we decided big stuff. This time “big stuff” would just include defeating impossibly powerful imaginary creatures that used to live in my head.”

“The potential, for anything, was overwhelming to a degree that bothered him. It wasn’t, he thought, the idea of power. It certainly wasn’t that nervous feeling T.C. would get in the pit of his stomach when he knew he had an incredible opportunity in front of him, that amazing brief pause before an act of creation. This was something else. Something to fear and respect.”

“He felt like his own heart might stop beating just from acknowledging the concept. The sadness, the sorrow, and the loss, they were living things, funnily enough.”

“He didn't want to get his hopes up, but he also refused to be a pessimist about this moment. Everything could go either way.”