No, that's not it. The Dark One...oh fuck me, we'll get to that in a bit.
[Mat lets himself collapse into the nearest chair. He rakes his hands through his hair, trying to figure out how best to quickly and simply explain...everything he needs to.]
It's what the taint did, what it means now for men who can channel. Taints them...us...too. Men of my world can't channel without going mad. I've seen it. Once there's that...that first time it happens, s'like some path opens up and in a few months...
[He'll never forget the sight of Logain, laughing mindlessly in that cage. Even then, he'd known he was looking at his own future. Some part of him had been certain.]
In my world, everything is a cycle. Everything, everyone, lives and dies and then returns in another age. The Dark One and the Dragon and the great battle...they happen again and again. But the last Dragon - the most powerful of channelers - went bad. He was the first to go mad, and he broke the world.
[Oh blood and ashes, he hasn't even explained Aes Sedai yet. He's never stopped to think about just how much there is to the way his world works before. He's never had to explain all of this, everyone knows these things! Except not here.]
Women who are powerful in the one power, they train at the White Tower and become Aes Sedai. They...well, they're the ones really running things. No king or queen's word is stronger than an Aes Sedai's, and all of'em have an Aes Sedai in their court. A few months before I came here, an Aes Sedai came to my village, Lady Moiraine. Because the Dragon has been reborn, and all signs pointed to it being someone in my village. Someone around my age. And by the time I came here, Moiraine-Sedai was relatively certain it was me. We all were.
[Mat practically deflates once it's all out, sinking deeper into the chair, his face pale. He hasn't said it all out loud like this before, and now that he has...
no subject
[Mat lets himself collapse into the nearest chair. He rakes his hands through his hair, trying to figure out how best to quickly and simply explain...everything he needs to.]
It's what the taint did, what it means now for men who can channel. Taints them...us...too. Men of my world can't channel without going mad. I've seen it. Once there's that...that first time it happens, s'like some path opens up and in a few months...
[He'll never forget the sight of Logain, laughing mindlessly in that cage. Even then, he'd known he was looking at his own future. Some part of him had been certain.]
In my world, everything is a cycle. Everything, everyone, lives and dies and then returns in another age. The Dark One and the Dragon and the great battle...they happen again and again. But the last Dragon - the most powerful of channelers - went bad. He was the first to go mad, and he broke the world.
[Oh blood and ashes, he hasn't even explained Aes Sedai yet. He's never stopped to think about just how much there is to the way his world works before. He's never had to explain all of this, everyone knows these things! Except not here.]
Women who are powerful in the one power, they train at the White Tower and become Aes Sedai. They...well, they're the ones really running things. No king or queen's word is stronger than an Aes Sedai's, and all of'em have an Aes Sedai in their court. A few months before I came here, an Aes Sedai came to my village, Lady Moiraine. Because the Dragon has been reborn, and all signs pointed to it being someone in my village. Someone around my age. And by the time I came here, Moiraine-Sedai was relatively certain it was me. We all were.
[Mat practically deflates once it's all out, sinking deeper into the chair, his face pale. He hasn't said it all out loud like this before, and now that he has...
Blood and fucking ashes.]