In the same night, he had confronted a mage of the rarest kind. He'd done battle against magics that most would never see in their entire life. And then he'd been plunged into the suffocating world of divinity, pulled apart by the smallest thread that Ingolsol had attached to him.
Such things were the tools of madness. Such things were not what progress was meant to look like, not according to the teachings of Claudia. Progress was a process of careful struggle. To be greeted by the most extreme of extremes the second a sword was put in his hand – it was unnatural. It should have been devastating.
He knew nought of knighthood, truly. He'd never been amongst the true military, sve for Lombard. He had never even set foot in a city. And yet he'd seen such extremes. He had no foundation for which to explain what had happened to him, no course through which to integrate it. His life seemed like a terrible mistake.
