[ amos had held up a vial of awful black sludge and said: it can be rough at first, but it doesn't have to be for long. you'll come out of it feeling better once you've accepted it. he'd made it sound so necessary, so reasonable. at first, anyway.

rand shudders.

ernesto's lapse in composure says just as much as his words do in this moment. he can't even begin to imagine the hopelessness, the agony. and if they'd all seen what looked like the death of their homes before that...how much harder would it be to resist? ]

And they're still trying to take people to their side. There was a man there when I woke up. He said he'd been through all of this before.

[ and he would've made rand drink the stuff, too, if he could've. he would've had the opportunity, if moiraine hadn't found them. and while he hadn't made the experience sound like it'd be a good one, rand never would've imagined something quite this awful. how much pain, how many reminders of his failings, would it take before something in him broke so irreparably that he'd inflict the experience on someone else? ]