alnahn’sahna’shoreshik
Sermon Seventeen
am an atlas of smoke.’
With this, Vivec became greater than he had been.
²These were the days of Resdaynia, when Chimer and Dwemer lived under the wise and benevolent rule of the
ASV
and their champion the Hortator.
³‘Seek me without effort for I take many shapes.’
⁴The Hortator was still trying to subdue the heavens with an axe. ⁵He was thrown out of the library of the sun by the power of Magnus. ⁶Vivec found him in a grub field outside of the swamps of the Deshaan Plain. ⁷They walked for a span in silence, for Nerevar had been humbled and Vivec still had mercy in his hand.
⁸Soon they were walking across the eastern sea to the land of snakes and snow demons. ⁹Vivec wanted to show the Hortator the fighting styles of foreign tongues. ¹⁰They learned the idiom stroke from the pillow book of the Tsaesci king. It is shaped like the insight of this page. ¹¹The Tsaesci serpents vowed to have their vengeance on the west at least three times.
¹²They walked farther and saw the spiked waters at the edge of the map. ¹³Here the spirit of limitation gifted them with a spoke and bade them find the rest of the wheel.
¹⁴The Hortator said, ‘The edge of the world is made of swords.’
Vivec corrected him. ‘They are the bottom row of the world’s teeth.’
¹⁵They walked to the north to the Elder Wood and found nothing but frozen bearded kings.
¹⁶They came to the west where the black men dwelt. ¹⁷For a year they studied under their sword saints and then for another Vivec taught them the virtue of the little reward. ¹⁸Vivec chose a king for a wife and made another race of monsters which ended up destroying the west completely. ¹⁹To a warrior chief Vivec said:
‘We must not act and speak as if asleep.’
²⁰Nerevar wondered if there was anything to learn in the south but Vivec remained silent and only led them back to Red Mountain.
²¹‘Here,’ Vivec said, ‘is the last of the last. Within it the Sharmat waits.’
²²But they both knew that the time was not ready to contest the Sharmat and so they engaged in combat with each other. ²³Vivec marked the Hortator in this way for all of the Velothi to see. ²⁴He sealed the wound with the blessing of Ayem-Azura. ²⁵At the end of the battle, the Hortator found that he had gathered seven more spokes. ²⁶He attempted to attach them and form a staff but Vivec would not let him, saying, ‘It is not the time for that.’
²⁷Nerevar said, ‘Where did I find these?’
Vivec said that they had collected them from around the world, though some had come invisibly. ²⁸‘I am the wheel,’ he said, and took that shape. Before the emptiness at the center could live too long, Nerevar put in the spokes.
²⁹The ending of the words is ASV.