“We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And, indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again."~Fiddler, pg. 558”

“Fiddler briefly wondered about those three dragons - where they had gone, what tasks awaited them - then he shrugged. Their appearance, their departure and, in between and most importantly, their indifference to the four mortals below was a sobering reminder that the world was far bigger than that defined by their own lives, their own desires and goals. The seemingly headlong plunge this journey had become was in truth but the smallest succession of steps, of no greater import than the struggles of a termite.The worlds live on, beyond us, countless unravelling tales.In his mind's eye he saw his horizons stretch out on all sides, and as they grew ever vaster he in turn saw himself as ever smaller, ever more insignificant.We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again ...”

“There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail - should we fall - we will know that we have lived.”

“Oh yes, I have learned much from Tremorlor, and so assume a like strategy. Silence, a faint mocking smile suggesting I know more than I do, an air of mystery, yes, and fell knowledge. None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions!”

“None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering, all wondering, at my secret wellspring of wisdom...' Let's kill him,' Crokus muttered, 'if only to put him out of our misery.”

“Tis the grand stupidity of our kind, dear Cutter, to see all the errors of our ways, yet find in ourselves the inability to do anything about them. We sit, dumbfounded by despair, and for all our ingenuity, our perceptivity, for all our extraordinary capacity to see the truth of things, we hunker down like snails in a flood, sucked tight to our precious pebble, fearing the moment is is dislodged beneath us. Until that terrible calamity, we do nothing but cling."Can you even imagine a world where all crimes are punished? Where justice is truly blind and holds out no hands happy to yield to the weight of coin and influence? Where one takes responsibility for his or her mistakes, acts of negligence, the deadly consequences of indifference or laziness? Nay, instead we slip and duck, dance and dodge, dance the dodge slip duck dance, feet ablur. Ourselves transformed into shadows that flit in chaotic discord. We are indeed masters of evasion--no doubt originally a survival trait, at least in the physical sense, but to have such instincts applied to the soul is perhaps our most egregious crime against morality. What we will do so that we may continue living with ourselves. In this we might assert that a survival trait can ultimately prove its own antithesis, and in the cancelling out thereof, why, we are left with the blank, dull, vacuous expression that Kruppe sees before him."~Kruppe,”

“Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearthhas ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memoriesagainst dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue mythoughts as I open the Book of the Fallenand breathe deep the scent of history?Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all.”