cina’shoreshik
Sermon Four
he simulacrum of the netchiman’s wife who carried the egg of Vivec within it went back to looking for the lands of the Indoril.
²Along the journey many more spirits came to see it and offer instructions to its son-daughter, the future glorious invisible warrior-poet of Vvardenfell, Vivec.
³A troupe of spirits called the Lobbyists for the Coincidence Guild appeared. ⁴Vivec understood the challenge immediately and said:
‘The popular notion of God kills happenstance.’
⁵The head of the Lobbyists, whose name is forgotten, tried to defend the concept’s existence. ⁶He said, ‘Saying something at the same time can be magical.’
⁷Vivec knew that to retain his divinity that he must make a strong argument against luck. ⁸He said:
‘Is not the sudden revelation of corresponding conditions and disparate elements that gel at the moment of the coincidence one of the prerequisites to being, in fact, coincidental? ⁹Synchronicity comes out of repeated coincidences at the lowest level. ¹⁰Further examination shows it is the utter power of the sheer number of coincidences that leads one to the idea that synchronicity is guided by something more than chance. ¹¹Therefore, synchronicity ends up invalidating the concept of the coincidental, even though they are the symptomatic signs that bring it to the surface.’
¹²Thus was coincidence destroyed in the land of the Velothi.
¹³Then an Old Bone of the earth rose up before the simulacrum of the netchiman’s wife and said, ¹⁴‘If you are to be born a ruling king of the world you must confuse it with new words. Set me into pondering.’
¹⁵‘Very well,’ Vivec said, ‘Let me talk to you of the world, which I share with mystery and love. Who is her capital? Have you taken the scenic route of her cameo? ¹⁶I have-- lightly, in secret, missing candles because they’re on the untrue side, and run my hand along the edge of a shadow made from one hundred and three divisions of warmth, and left no proof.’
¹⁷At this the Old Bone folded unto itself twenty times until it became akin to milk, which Vivec drank, becoming a ruling king of the world.
¹⁸Finally the Chancellor of Exactitude appeared, and he was perfect to look upon from every angle. ¹⁹Vivec understood the challenge immediately and said:
‘Certitude is for the puzzle-box logicians and girls of white glamour who harbor it on their own time. I am a letter written in uncertainty.’
²⁰The Chancellor bowed his head and smiled fifty different and perfect ways all at once. ²¹He pulled the astrolabe of the universe from his robe and broke it in half, handing both halves to the egg-image of Vivec.
²²Vivec laughed and said, ‘Yes, I know. The slave labor of the senses is as selfish as polar ice, and worsens when energies are spent on a life others regard as fortunate. ²³To be a ruling king I will have to suffer much that cannot be suffered, and to weigh matters that no astrolabe or compass can measure.’
²⁴The ending of the words is ASV.