#ruthan gudd

[whiskeyjack-bridgeburner]

'You missed the point,' Ruthan cut in.

'I now think you all did. She said to look across, into the eyes of the Crippled God. To look, and to feel. But you couldn't do it, Kindly, could you? Could you, Fist Sort? Lostara? Any of you?' 'And what of you?' Kindly snapped. 'Not a chance.' 'So she knocked us all down - what was the point of that?' 'Why shouldn't she?' Ruthan Gudd retorted. 'You ask for more from her. And then I nailed her to a damned tree with that madness about serving her. She struck back, and that, friends, was the most human moment from the Adjunct I've yet seen.' He faced them. 'Until then, I was undecided. Would I stay on? Would I ride out, away from all this? And if I left, well, it's not as though anyone could stop me, is it?' 'But,' said Faradan Sort, 'here you are.' 'Yes. I'm with her now for as long as she needs me.' Fist Kindly raised one hand, as if to strike Ruthan Gudd. 'But why?' 'You still don't get it. None of you. Listen. We don't dare look across into the eyes of a suffering god. But, Kindly, she dares. You asked for more from her - gods below, what more can she give? She'll feel all the compassion none of you can afford to feel. Behind that cold iron, she will feel what we can't.' His eyes went flat on Kindly. 'And you asked for more.' The Crippled God The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson

[figmentsoutoffundamentals]

"You will, Skanarow. I'm not letting you die, do you understand me?" "There's no way out, and you know it, my love. You know it -- you can't hide what I see in your eyes." He said nothing, because there was nothing to say. "You'll forget me, won't you? Eventually. Like... all the rest?" "Don't say that, Skanarow -- it's the wrong thing to think. For people... like me... it's not forgetting that is our curse. It's remembering."

Ruthan Gudd and Skanarow -- The Crippled God

[jentruth]

Maybe one day you humans will finally understand that, and do away with all your mad ambitions, your insipid self-delusional megalomania. You weren’t shat out by some god on high. You weren’t painted in the flesh of the divine – at least, not any more than anyone or anything else. What’s with you all, anyway? You jam a stick up your own arse then preen at how tall and straight you’re standing. Soldier, you think you put your crawling days behind the day you left your mother’s tit? Take it from me – you’re still crawling, lad. Probably always will.

Ruthan Gudd, Steven Erikson's The Crippled God

[jentruth]

"It was all a mistake, wasn’t it?" "Everything is, soldier, sooner or later."

Bottle and Ruthan Gudd, Steven Erikson's The Crippled God

[figmentsoutoffundamentals]

_Hear that? All here now, Fallen One. I didn't think you could get this far. I really didn't. How long have you been building this tale, this relentless book of yours? Is everyone in place? Are you ready for your final, doomed attempt to win for yourself... whatever it is you wish to win? See the gods assembling against you. See the gates your poison has frayed, ready to break asunder and unleash devastation. See the ones who stepped up to clear this path ahead. So many have died. Some died well. Others died badly. You took them all. Accepted their flaws -- the weak ones, the fatal ones. Accepted them and blessed them. And you weren't nice about it either, were you? But then, how could you be?_ He knew then, with abject despair, that he would never comprehend the full extent of the Crippled God's preparations. How long ago had it all begun? On what distant land? By whose unwitting mortal hand? _I'll never know. No one will. Win or fail, no one will. In this, he is as unwitnessed as we are. Adjunct, I am beginning to understand you, but that changes nothing, does it? The book shall be a cipher. For all time. A cipher._

Ruthan Gudd -- The Crippled God