Gardens of the Moon
- Tattersail's survivor's guilt after the Enfilade at Pale, especially over her inability to protect the soldiers who sought shelter behind her from the flood of magical destruction unleashed by Anomander Rake and Tayschrenn.Those men and women had been running to her, looking for protection against the horrors of the plain below. It had been a desperate act, a fatal one, but she understood it. She was one of their own. In past battles they'd fought like rabid dogs to keep enemy legions from killing her. This time, it was a mage war. Her territory. Favours were traded in the 2nd. It's what kept everyone alive, and it was what had made the 2nd a legion of legend. Those soldiers had expectations, and they had the right to them. They'd come to her for salvation. And they died for it.And if I had sacrificed myself then? Cast my Warren's defences on to them instead of shielding my own hide? She'd been surviving on instinct back then, and her instincts had had nothing to do with altruism. Those kind of people didn't live long in war.
Deadhouse Gates
- The way Felisin is broken by the time her escape from Skullcup succeeds:The clouds over the straits promised rain, but Felisin knew every promise was a lie - salvation was for others.
Memories of Ice
- The prologue shows the war of the (soon to be T'lan) Imass against the Jaghut as the genocide it is. The particular event (or the sequence in which it is the last) is referred to as the Pogrom of the Rotted Flower, evoking the language of massacres of Jews in Eastern Europe. A Jaghut mother - not a Tyrant, and who had actually participated along with Imass in the chaining of Raest - and her two young children are hunted through a swampish landscape created by the destruction of Jaghut magic, which had kept their homelands covered in ice.And with them - with this meagre, tattered family - the last of the Jaghut would vanish from this continent.
- The mother's heartbreaking interaction with a renegade Imass, Kilava Onass, who spirits the children away:
Kilava: No bargains, Jaghut? You always seek bargains to spare the lives of your children. Have you broken the kin-threads with these two, then? They seem young for that.The mother: Bargains are pointless. Your kind never agree to them.Kilava: No, yet your kind still try.The mother: I shall not. Kill us, then. Swiftly.Kilava: I have enough Jaghut blood on my hands. I leave you to the Kron clan that will find you tomorrow.The mother: To me, it matters naught which of you kills us, only that you kill us.- And, underlining the pathetic absurdity of the Imass cause, when the Kron clan find and murder the resigned, worn out mother:
Six long, fluted heads of flint punched through the skin covering the Jaghut's chest. She staggered, then folded to the ground in a clatter of shafts.Thus ended the thirty-third Jaghut War. - The completely avoidable way in which the decimation of the Bridgeburners ends during the Battle of Coral. The last squads still fighting have encountered Lady Envy, who has just blasted her way through the heartlands of the Pannion Domin to get to Coral, and would be both willing and able to protect them from the Pannion legions. They don't know this, however, and she in turn overestimates their ability to defend themselves from the attacks. When a group of Urdomen corners them, Envy asks them if the fight will "take long". Picker answers with a resigned "no, it won't", which Envy misunderstands to mean that the Bridgeburners, as elite soldiers, will make short work of the Urdomen. By the time she realises her mistake a few seconds later and annihilates the attackers, most of the Bridgeburners are dead or fatally wounded.
House of Chains
- Tavore's murder of Felisin. The scene is told entirely from the latter's perspective, mere minutes after she is finally freed of the possession of the Whirlwind Goddess. Quiet, traumatised, her desire for revenge gone, filled with the pain and betrayal of Tavore's destruction of her childhood, she reaches out to Tavore to forgive her... and Tavore stabs her to death, not knowing who she is behind the armour of Sha'ik Reborn.
- And one of Felisin's last thoughts before she dies:
I just wanted to know, Tavore, why you did it. And why you did not love me, when I loved you. I - I think that's what I wanted to know.
