Quoted By:
<span class="mu-i">Tier dives like a hunting moth from above, twisting through the maze-like alleyways, herding, guiding, and as he leads his prey into an ambush in a dead-end twist of the road, he strikes. Someone might comment that diving from ambush is no glory, but any cynic nay-sayer would fall quiet in the face of a victory in six-on-one odds. Seven fighters enter this little dark alley.
One fighter walks out, victory worn like a cloak.
--
Eight-Fingers springs a trap, and the GreyRats find themselves beset by wagons, rolling stalls, ambushers from high above that pelt them with a barrage of rocks and darts and fade. But they're stern types, veterans of a hundred little backalley brawls and tavern throwdowns and they don't scatter or shudder or fall - and even Abnegation coming in like fury, feet first, fighting, doesn't make them bend or break. They square up, they form up and they lash back: hard.
But they're still trapped, bogged down by the ambush. Their well-tested mobility spent on chasing false leads and now-blocked roads, they won't make it more than one tile this turn.
--
Sundancer pulls of a rescue mission mission as Abnegation finds themselves trapped up against the wall by a surprisingly competent gaggle of Slicerats, knives out, wide-grins, but a thrown rope and a shouted encouragement to get out lets the pair escape, haunted by a flurry of thrown knives and shouted invectives.
--
Mock has a casual conversation with an Animist, who offers a few words on the nature of that which should not be.
Animants. That Which Is Animated. The Hungering Curse. Loved child, many names, and the reason the Animantic Arts has such a bad rep, all around the vast wide world. See, with some care, you can slice parts of a self into its component constituents. A little love, a little courage, the things that make a human *human*. And with even greater care, you can take what's there to put it here. But the old law was laid down by the wise ones in Sareth, and it is the bloodied witty wisdom that every animist with ambitions learned:
To Exceed is to Change.
A stone does not feel.
A stone *cannot* feel.
A stone is a stone is a stone.
But the hunger, the amibition, love, affability, mere malice and harrowing hate, all those are human traits, all those intents and secrets and such, well, an animist can slice it out of one and put it in another. So why not put hunger in a rock? Why not take your cold, and off-load it into the ground beneath your feet? We know the law is that that which is not is not. So if someone sells all their hunger, they do not eat. If someone barters away all their rage, they do not ravage. But it never just disappears.
If only it was so easy.
But no, the things leave a trace. And a stone that hungers is no longer simply a stone. It is a fractious rock with the burgeoning sensation of ideas. And thus, the second law:
If It *Wants*, It *Wills*</span>
