alnahn’asca’shoreshik
Sermon Twelve
s the Hortator pondered the first lesson of ruling kings, Vivec wandered into the Mourning Hold and found that Ayem was with a pair of lovers.
²Seht had divided himself again. Vivec then leapt through into their likenesses to observe, but he gained no secrets that he did not already know.
³He left a few of his own behind to make the journey worthwhile.
⁴Then Vivec left the capital of Veloth and wandered far into the ash. ⁵He found a span of badlands to practice his giant-form. ⁶He made of his feet a less dense material than the divine to keep from falling waist-deep into the earth. ⁷At this point the First Corner of the House of Troubles, the Prince Molag Bal, made his presence known.
⁸Vivec looked on the King of Rape and said:
‘How very beautiful you are, that you do not join us.’
⁹And Molag Bal crushed the warrior-poet’s feet, which were not invulnerable, and had legions cleave them off. ¹⁰Mighty fires from the Beginning Place were brought like nets to hold Vivec and he let them.
¹¹‘I would prefer,’ he said, ‘some kind of ceremony if we are to be married.’
¹²And the legions that took the feet were summoned again and ordered to begin a banquet. ¹³Pomegranates sprang from the badlands and tents were raised. ¹⁴A throng of Velothi mystics came, reading the passages of the severed feet on the ground and weeping until the scriptures were wet.
¹⁵‘We must love each other briefly,’ Vivec said, ‘if at all. ¹⁶I am needed to counsel the Hortator in more important matters because the Dwemeri high priests stir up trouble. You may have my head for an hour.’
¹⁷Molag Bal rose up and extended six arms to show his worth. ¹⁸They were decorated in runes of seduction and its reverse. They were decorated in the annotated calendars of longer worlds. ¹⁹When he spoke, mating monsters fell out.
‘Where must it go?’ he said.
²⁰‘I told you,’ Vivec said, ‘I am meant to be the teacher of the king of the earth. AE ALTADOON GHARTOK PADHOME.’
²¹With these magic words, the King of Rape added another: [CHIM], which is the secret syllable of royalty.
²²Vivec had what he needed from the Daedroth and so married him that day. ²³In the hour that Bal had his head, the King of Rape asked for proof of love.
²⁴Vivec spoke two poems to show him such, but only the first is known.
I’m not sure just how much glass it took to make your hair
Twice as much, I am sure, as the oceans have to share
²⁵Hell, my sweet, is a fiction written by those who tell the truth
My mouth is skilled at lying and its alibi a tooth
²⁶The sons and daughters of Vivec and Molag Bal number in the thousands. The name of the mightiest is a string of power:
GULGA MOR JIL HYAET AE HOOM.
²⁷The ending of the words is ASV.