Ruslav

Ruslav is a Vulture thug and self-styled "soldier" in Ilmar, a Lodge enforcer whose primary identity in the opening chapters is built on intimidation, theatrical violence, and the performative courtship rituals the Lodges inherited from Armiger families. He is introduced as a boarder at Mother Ellaime's house and a fixture at Langrice's gambling table, before being drawn into the Reproach expedition alongside the Gownhall students Lemya and Shantrov Sirovar. His gutting by an Anchorwood beast in the Reproach triggers the central inversion of his character: coerced into a divine covenant that grants invulnerability in exchange for absolute non-violence, Ruslav becomes an unwilling healer, a reluctant vessel for God, and ultimately a figure of enforced pacifism who loathes every moment of it.

He matters to City of Last Chances as the novel's most concentrated study of whether a violent man can be remade against his will. Ruslav's arc traces the collapse of a performed identity: the Pursuit vocabulary, the Lodge code of honour, the patriotic justification for extortion-all dissolve when a painting strips his defences bare, when a beast tears him open, and when a divinity he never chose is dumped into his sight and will not leave. By the novel's close he is a vigil-keeper at the firebreak, receiving offerings from superstitious locals, unable to throw a punch, healing those who swear abjuration of violence, and still snarling. His relationship with God-mutual loathing, mutual necessity, "each other's curses"-becomes the book's most sustained comic and tragic pairing.

Character

Appearance

Ruslav is a big, scarred man dressed in "flamboyant street-bravo finery," a look that announces his belonging to the Lodges and their stolen Armiger vocabulary of martial pride - ch 4. He has a weirdly cropped beard - ch 21 - and carries himself with a deliberate physical dominance: he slams a woman against a wall, cuffs another man, and shoves him downstairs without apparent effort - ch 14. His body reads as a performer's instrument, built for intimidation. When God's healing reopens his wounds after he shoves a Palleseen soldier, the gashes tear instantly, revealing how fragile the enforced wholeness is - ch 19. By the novel's end he is no longer in bravo finery; he is at a house at the edge of the firebreak, "waiting," his appearance presumably worn down by months of non-violent vigilance - ch 49.

Personality

Ruslav begins as a man who has fully mistaken performance for feeling. He loves "the Pursuit, far more than he actually loved any of the objects of his affections," treating courtship as a competitive game inherited from Armiger families he despises and imitates - ch 4. He shakes down ruin-divers for taxes while clothing the extortion in patriotic language - ch 15. He bullies subordinates to restore a physical hierarchy and performs composure before them to preserve face - ch 14.

Yet the performance cracks in isolated moments. Stripped of his Pursuit vocabulary in front of Shantrov's paintings, he can only say "I like the pictures," and afterwards feels "exactly that agonising roil of emotions he'd always pretended to feel in the Pursuit, but never known" - ch 4. He keeps the painting Lemya leaves him and stares at it in an unheated room while feelings wither into distant fondness - ch 14. His confession to Shantrov in the Gownhall studio-that his violence was "never about honour, just feeling good"-is the first time he narrates himself honestly - ch 32. Under God's compulsion he becomes bitter, profane, and contemptuous of his own powerlessness, yet capable of genuine compassion: he shields Nasely from the beast, heals Hervenya's necrotic wound, and growls "let him live first" over the dying Shantrov - ch 18, 39, 47. He hates weakness in others and in himself: "It was weakness they hated, and he'd hated it just the same, before God had made him weak" - ch 34.

Beliefs & Motivations

Initially Ruslav's rules are those of the Lodges: the Pursuit as sport, patriotic resistance as cover for extortion, physical dominance as social grammar, and a code of "harsh honour" enforced by the Bitter Sisters - ch 4, 15, 34. He fears blame under that code more than enemy swords - ch 4. After the Reproach and God's covenant, his rule is a single stricture he did not choose: no violence, or the wounds return - ch 19, 21. He obeys it, but as a prison, not a belief. He calls the faith a ruin, demands the oath be reversed, and curses religion by name - ch 21, 39. What he refuses, even after God's imposition, is to be merely useful: he protests the Blackmane assignment inwardly, hates being handed a meaningless order, and insists on going to the Gownhall even if he cannot fight - ch 34. His deepest drive, underneath the Lodge performance and the divine compulsion, is a hunger to be seen genuinely and to feel something real-first in a painting, then in a kiss, then in protecting people he has not earned the right to protect - ch 4, 32, 17.

Affiliations

• Vultures - thug

History

City of Last Chances

The Murder of the Sage-Archivist

Ruslav first appears as a boarder at Mother Ellaime's house in Ilmar, a big man who "never seems to have a job but always has money," and who snickers at Yasnic when the priest begs the landlady for a blanket in front of the whole table - ch 1. That night he is one of the players at Langrice's gambling table in the hidden back room of the Anchorage, where he stakes a gilded timepiece he cannot sell and adds three gold rings as a top-up, then plays badly, loses, and leaves early, distracted - ch 3. In the chaos when an Anchorwood beast kills Ochelby two streets away and the warding bundle vanishes from the table, Ruslav is already gone; the panic and flight belong to those still seated - ch 3.

The Proclamation of the Wood

The next evening Ruslav's own story begins in earnest. He is introduced as a Vulture thug and self-styled "soldier," big, scarred, dressed in "flamboyant street-bravo finery," a made man of Ilmar whose lodge families "had stolen the word for their own use, as they'd stolen so much else" - ch 4. The previous day he, Benno, and Ergice had been sent by the Bitter Sisters to discipline Sergyen the chandler, but Sergyen had fled or been killed and they improvised a lesson on a random lookalike; Ruslav's mind was elsewhere because he was in love - ch 4. That evening he gambles at the Anchorage but loses his stake, his thoughts given over to the Pursuit, the courtship game the Armiger families passed down, which the Lodge soldiers have inherited: "He loved the Pursuit, far more than he actually loved any of the objects of his affections" - ch 4. His object is Lemya, a Gownhall student who arrived at Mother Ellaime's a half-month ago after being arrested with fellow students; Ruslav, held in the cell across, heard her arguing about "morals and ethics," and arranged a room for her after her eviction - ch 4. He learns she is at an art exhibition and goes to a garret near the river, where he muscled a crate off a wagon, startling four students - ch 4.

In the single-room attic he studies three paintings: vast, unreal landscapes of brooding forests, ruined castles, lone riders with lanterns, beasts with reflected eyes. "A terrible beauty, his heart whispered to him." "They were so real. They were somehow all the more real for being utterly unreal" - ch 4. Stripped of his Pursuit vocabulary, he approaches Lemya and says, "I like the pictures." She corrects him: the artist is Shantrov Sirovar, a slender Armiger youth reclining on a mouldering couch, sketching. Ruslav stumbles out, feeling "exactly that agonising roil of emotions he'd always pretended to feel in the Pursuit, but never known" - ch 4. Outside, Benno reports that Fleance the Heron brought a "priceless treasure" to the Game after Ruslav left, and the Bitter Sisters want it recovered from Blackmane, the Allorwen pawnbroker. Ruslav and Benno enter Mirror Allor at night only to find Palleseen soldiers already ransacking Blackmane's shop - ch 4.

At the Anchorage the following day, Lemya mentions Ruslav's strange, inspired reaction to the paintings and his abrupt departure, leaving behind a painting he had bought; she finds him newly interesting - ch 6.

The Assembly of the Reproach Expedition

Two cold nights later Ruslav sits in his unheated room at Mother Ellaime's, staring at the painting Lemya left him - a lone figure on a haunted mountainside, a ruinous castle, a moon - striking matches but never lighting a fire. His feelings for Lemya have withered into distant fondness - ch 14. Benno and Ergice arrive to rouse him; Benno snidely asks about Ruslav's "lady" and tries to peek at the painting. To hide it and reassert dominance, Ruslav slams Ergice against the wall, cuffs Benno, and shoves him downstairs, where Benno steps in a chamberpot; the resulting laughter restores the group hierarchy - ch 14.

Ruslav meets Carelia at the pit where the Bitter Sisters' pet is kept, a bird's-nest of angular legs with a blunt grasping hand-with-eyes for a head and long whip-like feelers - ch 14. She speaks in fragments about Palleseen forces being stretched thin and Herons being difficult, then orders him to go to the Anchorage that night, remind the ruin-divers that the Vultures get first pick, and bring out Fleance if possible. She delivers a patriotic charge - "For Ilmar, Ruslav. Our heritage. Our city. Our revolution." - then smiles and dismisses him. Ruslav walks away steady and unhurried to preserve face before Benno and Ergice - ch 14.

At the Anchorage that evening, Ruslav arrives and bullies the Allorwen ruin-divers, attempting to levy the Lodges' tax on their Reproach loot while clothing it in patriotism - ch 15. Blackmane confronts him: "You're in prison." Ruslav replies, "Am I indeed? ... I got better" - ch 15. Two students appear: Shantrov Sirovar and Vidsya Sirovar. Ruslav is visibly shaken by them, his "eyes on hooks, drawn back" to the boy - ch 15. When Vidsya declares she is going into the Reproach and Shantrov is guilted into following, Ruslav, haunted, announces he will go too, to ensure the divers don't rob Ilmar of its treasures - ch 15. In truth his motive is to watch over Lemya; he thinks of Shantrov and Lemya as what holds him from fleeing - ch 17.

Into the Reproach

Ruslav speaks quietly to Shantrov and puts a hand on his shoulder, assigning him the task of holding the fort at the Anchorage; Shantrov agrees to stay behind - ch 17. Ruslav, Lemya, Hellgram, Dostritsyn, Meraqui, and Grymme cross the overgrown firebreak into the Reproach - ch 17. Dostritsyn dismisses the lost Palleseen woman as already consumed by the curse: "We're thieves, Ruslav. You should recognise your own. Thieves, not rescuers. And there's nothing to rescue. The Reproach ate her a day ago or more. Madness." Ruslav replies, Well, that's about the most mad-ass thing I ever saw - ch 17.

When Statlos Shrievsby appears in a torn Palleseen coat, greets them in archaic language as "Lord Gauterin," and is incorporated into the mad court's fantasy, Ruslav kills him with a thrown knife; the court accepts the murder as a bon mot - ch 17. Ruslav readies his homemade baton with a tableth, but Dostritsyn warns that using it in the Reproach is "like shouting" - ch 17. After Dostritsyn and Meraqui flee, Ruslav, Lemya, and Hellgram remain as the Varatsin Duke arrives and Nasely's last charms crumble to dust - ch 17.

Inside the Reproach, Ruslav can no longer see the ragged living; only the Varatsin court in fantastical costume moves to music. He aims his rod at what he thinks is Grymme, then switches to the Duke, who appears as an elegant Armiger figure wearing a diadem from Blackmane's record books. He fires the pirated activation word; the illusion flickers, revealing everyone as ragged and starved, and the Duke as a composite of rats, bones, and osseous struts. The wound heals with more rats - ch 18. The Duke seduces Ruslav into stepping forward to dance; Ruslav nearly surrenders, thinking "To dance would be a grand end to the evening." Lemya pulls him back by grabbing his arm - ch 18. Ruslav relies on Shantrov's painting of a knight in darkness as a perceptual anchor against the Reproach's illusions, and wishes Shantrov had come - ch 18.

In the tower, Nasely panics and fires her rod; Ruslav shoots back reflexively, winging Nasely in the shoulder. At the top of the ruined tower, Nasely stumbles backward off the broken edge; Ruslav catches her by her uniform as buttons ping off. She bites his knuckles, then laughs and cries "Why, my lord! Such revels!" in old Maric. He throws her back down the steps to Lemya - ch 18. Hellgram cuts the Duke in half, and Ruslav carries Nasely over his shoulder through the firebreak into plain morning - ch 18. The Anchorwood beast erupts from the trees behind them. Hellgram wounds it but is bowled over; the beast turns back toward Ruslav and Nasely. Ruslav shields Nasely and runs through the narrowest jitties. The beast tears itself through a wall, sending debris into Ruslav's back; he goes down with Nasely's weight on him. The beast lunges, jaws closing like a trap around his body - ch 18.

The Healing of Ruslav

Ruslav lies gutted and bleeding in a street in the Gutter Districts. Lemya hammers at Mother Ellaime's door, dragging Yasnic to him. Yasnic explains God's strictures: healing is only for the faithful who live by non-violence. Ruslav offers money, tithes, prayer; it isn't about money - ch 19. Yasnic puts his hands on the wounds to show he has no miracles. Ruslav seems to die. Yasnic mumbles a fake prayer over the body. The crowd watches in silence. Then Ruslav "resurrects," laughing: "Got you! You and your god! Easy marks, the pair of you!" He claims he heard God's words and agreed to the faith. God confirms: "He's one of mine now." Ruslav jokes about the Bitter Sisters' wounded Vultures and a new healing trade - ch 19.

Palleseen soldiers push through the crowd. Ruslav stands and tries to shove a soldier to draw attention from Yasnic, but his wounds reopen instantly - "You raise a hand against another, and it all comes back." The soldiers seize Ruslav, Yasnic, and Lemya. The crowd jeers and throws a stone at Ruslav as the soldiers retreat - ch 19.

In Correct Speech's cells beneath the Donjon, Ruslav is brought in bound by an oath Yasnic administered, with two men's blood on his shirt and a weirdly cropped beard. He demands the oath be taken back. Yasnic explains the stricture is "not severable"-it is "all one, blessing and stricture"-and that for followers the only rule is non-violence. Ruslav, who has just escaped a place where "an invisible thing was trying to control my head," is horrified at being bound to a faith that forbids lifting a hand. "You've ruined me," he snarls - ch 21. Ruslav confirms Nasely is dead, killed by the thing from the Wood - ch 21.

The Hanging at the Donjon

Ruslav is in the Donjon cells when Sage-Invigilator Culvern confronts Yasnic in the decanting chamber. Yasnic realises he failed to explain to Ruslav that the moment harm is done after healing, everything comes back - "The sickness, the injuries, the curse. All of it, as though it was never gone, worse sometimes" - ch 23. Culvern offers the Perfecture's treasury and freedom for prisoners, including Ruslav, if Yasnic heals his curse - ch 23.

At the Anchorage the following afternoon, a torn official poster announces a public hanging. The condemned are the healer, Ruslav, a Gownhall student girl, and Ivarn Ostravar, charged with "Working Against the Perfecture" - no common crimes smeared on them, which Langrice notes makes it more than business as usual. Langrice dismisses Ruslav: "There always was a hanging in his future" - ch 24.

The Rescue from the Donjon

Lemya wakes in a cellar strewn with corpses, remembering her hanging. Ruslav is among the five others present. He is the only one who can now see God - a "little hairy sod in rags" standing at his feet - because the Palleseen reclaimers tried to decant the divinity into tablethi and God chose Ruslav's sight as refuge - ch 29. God refuses to return to Yasnic, taunting Ruslav with threats of being "opened up all over again." Ruslav protests, swears, and ultimately cannot eject Him. Yasnic follows Ruslav, unable to part from a divinity he can no longer see - ch 29. Ruslav tells Yasnic, "They'd have made God into ammunition for their batons, Ruslav. But because of you, He had somewhere to go. You kept Him safe" - ch 29. Ruslav, still carrying God, pledges to join Lemya. He, Lemya, Yasnic, and Fyon arm themselves and leave the Anchorage with a half-measure of night remaining - ch 29.

The Last Calm Night

Ruslav builds barricades in Gownhall Square with God clinging to the furniture. He watches Shantrov being paraded as a hero after killing a Palleseen soldier, then approaches him when the student is left alone, shaken and lost. In Shantrov's studio, surrounded by unfinished knight paintings, Ruslav tells him the truth about killing: "The sword's only shiny until you shove it into someone. After that, it's messed up like everything else." He confesses that his own violence was never about honour, just feeling good. They kiss - ch 32. Shantrov is told his cousin Vidsya is at the gates with a carriage and news of Armiger cavalry. Shantrov asks Ruslav to come; Ruslav declines, saying he has "people" to speak to and aid he can bring - ch 32. God, who had been following Ruslav, leaves him so as not to spoil his happiness, and runs back to Yasnic's heels - ch 32. Ruslav watches the Sirovar cousins depart in a demon-breed coach, then heads for the Bitter Sisters with news - ch 32.

That night at the Pledge (taproom) in Mirror Allor, Yasnic confesses fear for Ruslav to God. God dismisses him: Ruslav "didn't want me anyway" and "is going to die." Yasnic demands God go help Ruslav. God refuses: Ruslav is violent, God didn't choose him, "The moment there's a fight he'll swing a punch and then he's dead to Me" - ch 33.

Ruslav moves through festival crowds in the Hammer Districts toward the Fort of the Bitter Sisters, mobbed by Vultures who have built a myth around his supposed death and resurrection - ch 34. Benno hollers his name and the crowd roars with relief and jokes - ch 34. In the circular room below, Ruslav tells Evene an exaggerated version of the Gownhall stand, omitting the truth of his own role and God's compulsion. He asks for two hundred men to drive the Pals out; his reopened wounds bleed as God's grace strains against his intent - ch 34. Carelia arrives in full armour; Ruslav's body sags with relief at her presence, and red seeps through his shirt; "God was not amused" - ch 34. Ruslav is assigned to pursue Blackmane; he feels the order is meaningless and protests inwardly but says nothing - ch 34. Outside, Ruslav argues with Benno that they should fight the Pals while they can; Benno and the crew beat him, and Ruslav understands they hate his weakness - the weakness God imposed on him. "It was weakness they hated, and he'd hated it just the same, before God had made him weak" - ch 34. He flees through the streets past the Siblingry march, bleeding and bruised, and on the Portbridge finds God stunted and straggling with a blanket. Ruslav tells God he is going to the Gownhall to be with the students even if he cannot fight; God follows him across the bridge - ch 34.

The Battle of Gownhall Square

At the shattered barricade, as soldiers aim to fire on Lemya and the wounded Hervenya, Ruslav interposes himself, shouting incoherently. He is shot repeatedly, feels every wound screaming, but heals without a scratch. The soldiers, unable to comprehend, stop firing. Lemya gets Hervenya inside; Ruslav staggers in behind them - ch 39. The students keep their distance; some think him cursed, others whisper of "the healer and the miracle worker." Ruslav curses religion - ch 39. Inside Gownhall, Ruslav performs "theological triage": he demands the wounded swear abjuration of all violence before he will heal them. Hervenya, in agony from her necrotic baton wound, accepts first, and Ruslav heals her - ch 39. When Ivarn Ostravar is hauled up by rope over a gargoyle's waterspout, Ruslav charges the soldiers, is shot repeatedly, howls in pain, but the soldiers break and flee. The students sally forth with blades and broom handles - ch 39.

Later, in a hidden room behind a sliding false wall in the Gutter Districts, Yasnic finds Ruslav miraculously whole, with God sitting on his shoulder. Ruslav reveals his deal with God: the god must keep him safe so long as he does not throw a punch; they mock each other as mutual curses. "God's a bastard, Lemya. Can't blame Yasnic for finding a way to get rid of Him" - ch 39. "we're each other's curses" - ch 41. God insists Yasnic is still his worshipper despite the apostasy - ch 41.

Hellgram's War

Ruslav's only presence in this arc is retrospective: he had told Langrice about the room with the pit, information the Bitter Sisters later exploit when they hold Langrice and Blackmane captive in the Vultures' lair - ch 44.

The Reproach Breaks Free

In the cistern under the Rehevitz morgue, Ruslav offers to heal Lemya; she wanted to ask him for the religious connection. He accompanies the group heading north toward the Anchorage - ch 45. When a Palleseen officer demands surrender and threatens execution, Lemya, overwhelmed by the ghost of Tatiana Eleretsin, steps forward and dances toward the soldiers with one hand outstretched. Ruslav's lunge to stop her misses. The soldiers back away - ch 45.

At the Anchorage the following night, Ruslav demands that God heal the dying Shantrov Sirovar, hit by three bolts and possessed by the Reproach. God refuses: the healing rules hurt Him, Shantrov invited the possession, and even Lemya would be "a drooling imbecile" if purged. Ruslav growls, "Everybody dies. That's how things are. But let him live first. Whatever of him remains" - ch 47. Yasnic offers to build a shrine rather than resume vows; God accepts this compromise and heals them partially, though Shantrov will still die soon - ch 47. When Lemya and Shantrov emerge carrying the bronze standard through the ranks of the ghosts, Ruslav runs after them, calling their names; they wait for him - ch 47.

Days later, Yasnic reports visiting Ruslav at his house at the edge of the firebreak around the Reproach. Ruslav is "waiting" and receiving offerings from locals who think his vigil protects them - ch 49. Yasnic says, "They'll come back." Langrice says, "Something'll come back wearing their faces" - ch 49.

Relationships

• God - The most important and most adversarial bond in Ruslav's arc. God is dumped into Ruslav's sight as refuge during a Palleseen decanting attempt and cannot be ejected - ch 29. Ruslav is furious, swears, and protests; God taunts him, refuses to heal Shantrov, and calls him "everything I despise" - ch 33, 47. Yet God follows Ruslav across the Portbridge after he is beaten, and Ruslav, stripped of every other identity, enters a grudging mutual-existence pact: invulnerability in exchange for enforced pacifism. They mock each other as curses. God briefly leaves Ruslav to let him have his moment with Shantrov, then returns - ch 32, 34, 39, 41.

• Lemya - Ruslav's initial "object" in the Pursuit, though he loved the game more than her - ch 4. He arranged her housing at Mother Ellaime's after her eviction. His feelings wither into distant fondness by ch 14, but the Reproach rebinds them as co-survivors. He watches over her out of genuine protectiveness, and she trusts him as a resistance man - ch 17. She left him the painting, an act whose motive is never explained - ch 14. By the end, they are allies who fought and bled together, not pursuer and pursued - ch 32, 45.

• Shantrov Sirovar - The artist whose work "saw through" Ruslav's performance in the exhibition garret - ch 4. Ruslav is haunted by the boy's presence at the Anchorage, his "eyes on hooks, drawn back" - ch 15. He follows the expedition partly to watch over Shantrov and Lemya, and relies on Shantrov's painting as a perceptual anchor inside the Reproach - ch 17, 18. In the Gownhall studio, Ruslav strips away the mythology of violence for Shantrov and they kiss - ch 32. Later Ruslav demands God heal the dying Shantrov and runs after him when he carries the bronze standard - ch 47.

• Yasnic - A bond of mutual resentment and involuntary entanglement. Yasnic coerced the healing that bound Ruslav to the stricture; Ruslav calls him a "ruiner" - ch 21. God chose Ruslav's sight as refuge, tethering the two men together - ch 29. Yasnic visits Ruslav at the firebreak, carries his regards, and mediates a compromise with God over Shantrov's healing - ch 47, 49. They are wary allies, never friends.

• Benno - A fellow Vulture whom Ruslav bullied for years: knocked down, kicked, tripped, slapped - ch 34. Benno leads the beating after Ruslav's enforced weakness exposes him, and Ruslav understands that they hate the very vulnerability he once imposed on them - ch 34. Their relationship inverts from dominance to exposure.

• Ergice - A fellow Vulture whom Ruslav physically manhandles to reassert hierarchy when his composure is threatened - ch 14.

• Carelia - Ruslav's commanding officer among the Bitter Sisters. He performs steadiness before her, obeys her orders, and cannot bring himself to contradict her - ch 14, 34. His body "sags with relief" at her presence, then red seeps through his shirt as God's grace strains against his intent - ch 34.

• the Bitter Sisters - Ruslav's employers and the Lodges' ruling authority; he calls them "the Aunties" and fears their code - ch 4. He knows where they hold court and brings them news - ch 32. He asks Evene for two hundred men and is assigned a meaningless errand against Blackmane instead - ch 34.

• Mother Ellaime - His landlady. He rents a room, eats her food, and is part of the household's ecosystem of boarders - ch 1, 4, 14.

• Hellgram - A companion in the Reproach expedition. Hellgram leads; Ruslav follows and refuses to abandon Nasely despite Hellgram's shouts - ch 18. Both are condemned after the Reproach events - ch 24.

• Nasely - Ruslav accidentally shoots her in the shoulder, then catches her by her uniform as she falls backward off a ruined tower, and carries her over his shoulder out of the Reproach while an Anchorwood beast pursues them - ch 18. She dies; Ruslav confirms her death in the Donjon cells - ch 21.

• Langrice - A figure at the Anchorage gaming table. She dismisses Ruslav's hanging as inevitable: "There always was a hanging in his future" - ch 24. Later she sees his vigil at the firebreak as a threat to her business of keeping order - ch 49.

• Blackmane - The Allorwen pawnbroker who confronts Ruslav over the Lodges' tax. Ruslav owes him nothing, yet Blackmane's dealings with Ostravar incidentally saved Ruslav from the noose - ch 15, 34.

Notable Quotes

"I like the pictures." - Ruslav, City of Last Chances, ch 4

"Am I indeed? ... I got better" - Ruslav, City of Last Chances, ch 15

"Got you! You and your god! Easy marks, the pair of you!" - Ruslav, City of Last Chances, ch 19

"You've ruined me" - Ruslav, City of Last Chances, ch 21

"The sword's only shiny until you shove it into someone. After that, it's messed up like everything else." - Ruslav, City of Last Chances, ch 32

"God's a bastard, Lemya. Can't blame Yasnic for finding a way to get rid of Him" - Ruslav, City of Last Chances, ch 39

"Everybody dies. That's how things are. But let him live first. Whatever of him remains" - Ruslav, City of Last Chances, ch 47

Tags

1. vulture-thug · #resistance-fighter · #god-bound