The curse of mortality. You spend the first portion of your life learning, growing stronger, more capable. And then, through no fault of your own, your body begins to fail. You regress. Strong limbs become feeble, keen senses grow dull, hardy constitutions deteriorate. Beauty withers. Organs quit. You remember yourself in your prime, and wonder where that person went. As your wisdom and experience are peaking, your traitorous body becomes a prison.

Ew, sicko. I was practicing Edomic." "Sure you were," Jason said. "You're just too embarrassed to admit you were playing hide-and-seek all alone. Rachel hiding, nobody seeking.

I was vanquished by a deer!' A giant magical flying deer with fangs,' Seth said, parroting a description Gavin had shared earlier. That sounds a little better,' Warren conceded. 'Seth is in charge of my tombstone.

The comforts of life as a fugitive," Drake sighed. "Stumbling about in the dark without mounts.

It was one thing to snuggle a little when the world seemed about to end, and quite another to explain to her parents that she wanted to date an ancient magical horse.

...Why are all these masks winking?" Jason pointed around the room with his fork. The loremaster dabbed at his mouth with a frilled purple napkin. "One eye is open to all truth, the other closed to all deception.

Sometimes the best offense was avoiding self-destruction.