Awesome / The Arts of Dark and Light

• Caitlys getting dangerous when a renegade priest has taken Marcus hostage with a dagger to his throat. Since she is a fairly powerful sorceress, the spell she uses doesn't so much kill the villain as it destroys him.
• In the prequels, Witchking Mauragh has a villainous one when he singlehandedly obliterates his fallen fortress to provide his beloved companion with a worthy funeral pyre and protection from elvish necromancers.
  No grave, my beloved. No tomb. None shall disturb your ashes.
• King Mhael's speech in Summa Elvetica may be a Blasphemous Boast, but it is still epic, revealing both the tragic hubris and the legitimate pride of the elven nations.
  Elfdom fears neither man nor angel. Nor judgment.
• Marcus' defeat of Vestremer in the ambush battle after the legion he has newly been promoted to command is cut off behind enemy lines, through a combination of deft maneuvering and superior planning. Some parts of it are risky, but it works, resulting in victory with minimal losses and respect from the enemy.
• Bereth's joyous POV description of flying in the second book. In a fantasy setting, it captures the fantastic sense of wonder of the elven magic, while to a modern audience used to airplanes, it becomes a case of Mundane Made Awesome.
• Bereth's life-and-death fight with the goblin in the forest, after her reconnaissance warhawk is shot down. Though she's a veteran pilot, this is her first real battle on the ground, and it's handled fairly realistically. Bereth comes across as far more heroic specifically because she is not presented as some sort of action hero, but a rather normal person who takes it as the serious and horrible thing it is, yet perseveres.
• The monk Herwaldus facing down a monstrous master demon with nothing but his courage and his faith to protect him. As other events soberly demonstrate, there is absolutely nothing to guarantee that God (who works in mysterious ways, after all) will save him from a Fate Worse than Death at its hands, merely because He can. Herwaldus, however, acts without fear anyway, secure in his belief that whatever happens to himself, his Lord's will shall be done.

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