asca’shoreshik
Sermon Two
he netchiman’s wife who carried the egg of Vivec within her went looking for the lands of the Indoril.
²Along the journey many spirits came to see her and offer instructions to her son-daughter, the future glorious invisible warrior-poet of Vvardenfell, Vivec.
³The first spirit threw his arms about her and hugged his knowledge in tight. ⁴The netchiman’s wife became soaked in the Incalculable Effort. ⁵The egg was delighted and did somersaults inside her, bowing to the five corners of the world and saying:
‘Thus whoever performs this holy act shall be proud and mighty among the rest!’
⁶The second spirit was too aloof and acted above his station so much that he was driven off by a headache spell. ⁷The third spirit, At-Hatoor, came down to the netchiman’s wife while she relaxed for a while under an Emperor Parasol. ⁸His garments were made from implications of meaning, and the egg looked at them three times. ⁹The first time Vivec said:
‘Ha, it means nothing!’
After looking a second time he said:
‘Hmm, there might be something there after all.’
¹⁰Finally, giving At-Hatoor’s garments a sidelong glance, he said:
‘Amazing, the ability to infer significance in something devoid of detail!’
‘There is a proverb,’ At-Hatoor said, and then he left.
¹¹The fourth spirit came with the fifth, for they were cousins. ¹²They could ghost touch and probed inside the egg to find its core. ¹³Some say Vivec at this point was shaped like a star with its penumbra broken off; others, that it looked like a revival of vanished forms.
¹⁴‘From my side of the family,’ the first cousin said, ‘I bring you a series of calamities that will bring about the end of the universe.’
¹⁵‘And from my side,’ the second cousin said, ‘I bring you all the primordial marriages that must happen within them, each one.’
¹⁶At this the egg laughed. ‘I am given too much to bear so young. I must have been born before.’
¹⁷And then the sixth spirit appeared, the Black Hands Mephala, who taught the Velothi at the beginning of days all the arts of sex and murder. ¹⁸Its burning heart melted the eyes of the netchiman’s wife and took the egg from her belly with six cutting strokes. ¹⁹The egg-image, however, could see into what it had been before in ancient times, when the earth still cooled, and was not blinded.
²⁰It joined with the Daedroth and took its former secrets, leaving a few behind to keep the web of the world from disentangling. ²¹Then the Black Hands Mephala put the egg back into the netchiman’s wife and blew on her with magic breath until the hole closed up. ²²But the Daedroth did not give her back her eyes, saying:
‘God hath three keys; of birth, of machines, and of the words between.’
²³Within this Sermon the wise may find one half of these keys.
²⁴The ending of the words is ASV.