Nightmare Fuel / Second Apocalypse

• Seswatha's memories of the Apocalypse are literally nightmare fuel — the Mandate sorcerers dream it every night so they can never forget what it is they fight against. For example, Achamian once dreams of the fall of the city of Sauglish. Grown men are dashing their babies' skulls against the street so the Sranc can't rape them to death and then rape the corpses. The Apocalypse is thirty-two years of tear-jerker: Achamian virtually never refers to it without calling it "heartbreaking." Oh, and the No-God? His very existence is such that babies can't be born alive if he is. The eleven years of the No-God's existence were called "the Years of the Crib" because all babies were stillborn.
• The epilogue of the second book, where the Inchoroi appear onstage, is the single most horrendous scene in this whole series, and that says a lot.
• The experiments of the Dûnyain upon human captives. To learn how to manipulate people by reading their facial expressions, their young are taught "neuropuncture". In this process, living captives are strapped down and their faces dissected, so teenagers can experiment with their facial muscles. While they're still conscious.
• The Decapitants entry in the glossary for The Unholy Consult adds an extra layer to Kellhus’ characterisation which is especially terrifying. Whilst Kellhus and his baggage train are travelling across the plains of Mengedda during the Unification Wars, a drover called Pim is on lookout duty at night when he stumbles across Kellhus constantly removing his head and replacing it with either of the Decapitants... and he’s laughing whilst he does it. The sight drives the poor man insane.

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