A title as meaningless as the woman bearing it. The Empress—just another face she’d seen somewhere before, a mask behind which someone hid from morta… - Steven Erikson

Is that all we mortals are? The victims of tortured irony to amuse an insane murder of gods?

A murder of crows, a murder of gods-I like that, lass.

Nimander wondered if he had discovered the face of the one true god. Naught else but time, this ever changing and yet changeless tyrant against whom no creature could win. Before whom even trees, stone and air must one day bow. There would be a last dawn, a last sunset, each kneeling in final surrender. Yes, time was indeed god, playing the same games with lowly insects as it did with mountains and the fools who would carve fastnesses into them. At peace with every scale, pleased by the rapid patter of a rat’s heart and the slow sighing of devouring wind against stone. Content with a star’s burgeoning light and the swift death of a raindrop on a desert floor.

Children were meant to be gifts. The physical manifestation of love between a man and a woman. And for that love all manner of sacrifice could be borne.