Read "Destiny Times Three" by Fritz Leiber online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, Doth womanish and fearful mankind live! _The Duchess of Malfi_, John Webster.
With bent shoulders, sunken head, paralyzed arm still dangling at his side, Thorn crouched uncomfortably in his lightless cell, as if the whole actual weight of the Black Star -- up to the cold, cloud-piercing pinnacle where "they" held council -- were upon him. His mind was tired to the breaking point, oppressed by the twisted, tyrannous world into which he had blundered, by the aching body not his own, by the brain which refused to think his thoughts in the way he wanted to think them.