"It's not hard to be better than Blackvayne," he said, dryly.  "A bar that low might not even exist since a snake could step over it with four feet to spare.  But... no one agrees with me."  He laughed.  The witches hadn't much entertained his ramblings, but there were still humans who read books - it's where he got them from, after all - and few seemed willing to buy the idea that the world was an inherently meaningless place with no creator, heading nowhere, for no reason.  The caveat that humans created their own meaning wasn't a<i>compelling argument</i>to anyone Geraint had ever met.  What was obvious to him was hidden from everyone else, which probably meant....<br/><br/>"Ignore me because I'm full of shit," he went on.  If everyone thought you were wrong, you probably were.  And in a practical sense, it didn't matter.  "And if Blackvayne sees it coming, well, we'll run if we can, fight if we must, and what will be, will be."<br/><br/>He looked around for clothes, found nothing his size, decided to just go outside and get some water before it froze - naked - and put his clothes to boil.  There was enough wood that he wasn't worried about a little cold, and while his human form wasn't as tough to the cold as his wolf form, he was hard as a coffin nail.<br/><br/>He said, "The trouble with relying on someone's ego is that I'm never quite sure when it's their ego and when it's my ego.  Shit.  We're all made of meat.  We all die if enough force is applied.  There's no reason to be unreasonably frightened of anything.  But there are plenty of good reasons to be... well, concerned, and one of them is my ego.  But you can't spend too much time second-guessing yourself.  You might as well do nothing at all.  We've got a plan, we should do it."