As Roran watched, the man's arms, neck, and chest shriveled, and his bones appeared in sharp relief-from the bowlike curve of his collarbones to the hollow saddle of his hips, where his stomach hung like an empty waterskin. His lips puckered and drew back farther than they were intended to over his yellow teeth, baring them in a grisly snarl, while his eyeballs deflated as if they were engorged ticks being squished empty of blood, and the surrounding flesh sank inward.

Sometimes the clouds weren__ weightless. Sometimes their bellies got dark and full. It was life. It happened. It didn__ mean it wasn__ scary, or that I wasn__ still afraid, but now I knew that as long as I was standing under it with Braden beside me when those clouds broke, I__ be alright.

...evil fascinates and repels us - it's a terrible beauty that enthralls us the more we stare into it...

...it begins with isolation - demons always inhabit desolate places...

...nobody ever takes from the desert anything but aridity and monsters...

None of us are just black or white, or never wrong and always right. No one. No one exists without polarities. Everybody has good and bad forces working with them, against them, and within them.