Sublime

chastened

Now he knows how to kill a god. You don’t kill them with a magic spear or a legendary sword. You just wait. You chop down trees. You burn wood, and let the fumes into the sky. You poison the oceans. You have to be patient. But eventually you do away with them.

decorous.

Reminding myself that these “servants” might be better born than myself, I treated them all with great courtesy and later wondered if that might not be the secret of the harmonious household, that all servants or royalty, be treated with the same courtesy.

Lancelot smiles. The trick with killing dragons is to find a chink in the armour. A loose scale to work your sword under. Get some leverage and prize it up. Colonel Nashorn has plenty of loose scales.

The central pillar which has sustained the storied house of our imagination ever since has been the idea of the civilized knight amid the savage enchantments; the adventures of a man still sane in a world gone mad.