"A sense of inevitability fuels a lot of it," Ignatius muses, not very surprised by what Yuya says, based on what he knows of the child. "If the Courts don't take control, someone else will. That mortals will do the same things to each other, even if we leave them be. It's not as if I never understood that it was cruel, before now..."

The feeling that evil would happen regardless, that it was simply the way the world was... that had shaped his outlook from a young age. That, and it had never seemed to be his job to decide these things.

"Perhaps we are driven by pessimism, as a species. We assume the worst, so we might as well be the worst. All we have ever known is conflict."