Section I: The First Day of School
1 New Rules
2 Circles of Power And Regret
3 Entrance Exam
4 What We Do Best
5 Placement And Displacement
6 Not A Popularity Contest
7 The Fool’s Opening Move
8 Tour
9 Ludus Magnus
10 The Gates of Perdition
11 Borderlands
12 Hero-In-Training
13 Just The Start
Section II: Rigors of Academic Life
14 Blood Pedigree
15 The Truth Will Hurt
16 Breakfast Special
17 Friends and Enemies
18 The Unprepared Test
19 Team Scarab’s First Match
20 Little White Lie
21 Unexpected Rendezvous
22 A Problem Never Meant to be Solved
23 Shopping For Trouble
Section III: Adversaries
24 First Step on a Crooked Path
25 Stones That Weep
26 The Battle of Ultima Thule
27 A Wrong Turn
28 Shadow Legion
29 Deception By Moonlight
30 Captain
31 What Mattered to Eliot
32 Boy Trouble
33 Three Words That Changed Her Life
34 Outsider
Section IV: Freshman Midterms
35 Father–Daughter Chat
36 Cramming For The Midterm
37 Pre-Test Jitters
38 Midterm Maze
39 Two Against One
40 Grudge Match
41 Expelled
42 Consequences Be Damned
43 A Match
44 Infiltration
45 Shadows, Honey, and Blood
46 Conclusion Most Dire
47 Tipped Balance
Section V: The Semester of Fire And Blood
48 When There Were Still Lots of Options
49 Electives
50 No Match for his Charm and Intellect
51 No More Just Friends
52 Audition of Stars
53 Challenge
54 Music to End the World if Thou Desire
55 Underestimation of his Cunning
56 Two More Pieces in Play
57 How to Foil a Death Trap
Section VI: Ditching
58 Performance
59 Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect
60 The Trouble With Truancy
61 What Little Girls Are Made of
62 Collateral Damage
63 Wolf Under the Waves
64 First Time in the Headmistress’s Office
65 A Very Long Distance Call
66 One Thing Almost Everyone had Forgotten
67 The Biggest Lie of His Life
68 Not a Time to Be Coy
69 Betrayal At The Gates of Perdition
Section VII: War is Hell
70 Missteps in the Blasted Lands
71 The Heroic Stand of Amanda Lane
72 The Tower Grave
73 Dux Bellorum
74 Underlying Darkness
75 Broken Hearts of Hell
76 Last Moments Together
77 Tide of Battle
78 Just the two of them
79 One in a Million
80 The Last Moment When Everything was Still Possible
81 Infernal Lord
Section VIII: Graduation
82 Second Time in the Headmistress’s Office
83 Last-Minute Details for Armageddon
84 Cycle of Violence
85 Ceremonies
86 All that Lives Must Die
87 Patched
88 The Storm that None Survive
89 No Rest for the Wicked
90 The Long Walk Home
Reader’s Guide
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ALL THAT LIVES MUST DIE
Copyright © 2010 by Eric Nylund
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2010 by Eric Nylund
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-2304-0
First Edition: July 2010
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Syne, the passion of my life and the one woman
I’d go to Hell and battle the Legions of the Damned for
&
For Kai, your father promises he will never make you
go to the Paxington Institute (unless you want to)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My gratitude to the following people for their help, confidence, and being some of the best friends a writer could have: Richard Curtis, Tom Doherty, Alexis Ortega, Eric Raab, and John Sutherland.
EDITOR’S NOTE
We at Tor have received numerous requests to publish the many-volume set of Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, as well as the notorious Golden’s Guide to Extraordinary Books and, of course, the apocalyptically difficult to obtain and decipher Mythica Improbiba. At this time, however, the rights for these rare books (and others within All That Lives Must Die) reside with academic institutes, religious organizations, and private collectors. While excerpts have been graciously provided for Mr. Nylund’s footnotes, the remaining bodies of these works are fated to remain in obscurity (and please, please stop sending me e-mail and letters about this).
ERIC RAAB
Editor, Tor Books
New York
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
HAMLET
Ay, madam, it is common.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet (act 1, scene 2)
ALL THAT LIVES MUST DIE
Prologue
WHAT I DID OVER MY SUMMER VACATION
by Fiona Paige Post
This summer, my brother and I joined the League of Immortals. One minute, I’m a homeschooled hermit; the next, I’m a fledgling goddess-in-training and the newest member of the Order of the Celestial Rose.
You’d think, being an actual goddess, I’d end up with killer Botticelli hair. No luck there, I’m afraid.
Let me start at the beginning.
Gods and fallen angels exist.
And they don’t get along.
Despite this, sixteen years ago—Atropos, the Eldest Fate, and Lucifer, Prince of Darkness, fell in love.
They’re my mother and
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