This Is How You Lose the Time War

“One spared life might be worth more to the other side than all the blood that stained Red’s hands today. A fugitive becomes a queen or a scientist, or, worse, a poet.”

This quote demonstrates the impact one life can have on the course of history. By stating a poet is the worst of all, the authors show the power of poetry and literature to make meaningful change.

“It’s so easy to crush a planet that you may overlook the value of a whisper to a snowbank.”

Even the smallest actions can have great consequences. Because the efforts involved to enact mighty change, such as destroying a planet, is so extreme, it’s easy to overlook the power in the smaller changes that can also have on impact on the world.

“At the labyrinth’s heart there is a cavern, and soon into that cavern will come a gust of wind, and if that wind whistles over the right fluted bones, one pilgrim will hear the cry as an omen that will drive him to renounce all worldly goods and retreat to build a hermitage on a distant mountain slope, so that hermitage will exist in two hundred years to shelter a woman fleeing with a child in a storm, and so it goes. Start a stone rolling, so in three centuries you’ll have an avalanche.”

The way events can ripple in time is shown through this oddly specific cascade of events Red plans to start by collecting bones in a cave. When she isn’t able to achieve her seemingly insignificant task, the timeline of that strand is completely altered.