Live to fight on other days.

Some nights, valor and cold purpose aren't enough.

The city guardsmen were like the keres, doom-bringers of merciless vengeance.

Nothing powers hate better than embarrassment.

But we're dying here.

Wisdom, Niko thought as he leaned his cheek against his long-handled rake, cannot be had without price. And that price is blood. The sound of it in your veins. The pound of it in your head. The volume of it in a human body; the sickness when you've spilled it.

Here and now was always where Tempus was, not off somewhere in the realm of Greater Good or Mortal Soul or Eternal Consequence. He'd lost the ability to determine greater good, if there was one; his mortal soul he'd given up on long ago. And as for eternal consequence - he was its embodiment.