The Academy’s Deceased Ate It All

"Each Seven Calamity differs in degree, but every one of us harbors a longing for life — and beyond that, every one of us carries a desire greater even than that longing."

Minerva eased back against the sofa and began to speak.

It was the same thing Sbeungali had told me once before, and what Minerva herself had hinted at to me as well.

Each of the Seven Calamities has a single purpose.

And every one of them lives only to see that purpose through.

"Margo. His purpose was survival. To be precise, he sought to evade every death that could ever come for him. That, tangled together with his longing for life, drove him — in a way bordering on the pitiful — to live solely for the preservation of himself."

…When I thought about it, there had been plenty of things about Margo's behavior that hadn't added up.

For someone supposedly cautious and timid, he'd thrown himself at me half out of his mind, just because of the single fact that "I could kill him."

Looking back on it now, if he'd been more careful and more composed, the one to end up dead would've been me, not him.