alnahn’daskhora’shoreshik
Sermon Eighteen
ow Vivec felt that he had taught the Hortator as much as he could before the war with the Dwemer came.
²The warrior-poet decided he had to begin his Book of Hours at that point, because the world was about to bend with its age.
³Vivec entered the Mourning Hold and announced to Ayem that he was going to fight nine monsters that had escaped the Muatra.
⁴‘I will return,’ he said, ‘to deal the last blow to the grand architect of the Dwemer.’
⁵Ayem said, ‘Out of nine you will find only eight, though they be mighty. The last is already destroyed by your decision to create the Book of Hours.’
⁶Vivec understood that Ayem meant himself.
‘Why,’ she asked, ‘are you in doubt?’
⁷Vivec knew that his doubt made him the sword of the Triune and so he did not feel shame or fear. ⁸Instead, he explained and these are the words:
‘Can a member of the Invisible Gate become so archaic that its successor is not so much an improvement of the exact model, but rather a related model that is just needed more because of the currency of the world’s condition? ⁹As the Mother, you do not have to worry, unless things in the future are so strange that even Seht cannot understand. Neither does the Executioner or the Fool, but I am neither.
¹⁰‘These ideals are not going to change in nature, even though they may change in representation. But, even in the west, the Rainmaker vanishes. No one needs him anymore.
¹¹‘Can one oust the model not because the model is set according to an ideal but because it is tied to an ever-changing unconscious mortal agenda?’
¹²This is what was said to Ayem when Vivec was whole. The wise shall not mistake this.
¹³Ayem said, ‘This is why you were born of a netchiman’s wife and destined to merge with the simulacrum of your mother, gilled and blended in all the arts of the star-wounded East, ¹⁴under water and in fire and in metal and in ash, six times the wise, to became the union of male and female, the magic hermaphrodite, the martial axiom, the sex-death of language and unique in all the middle world.’
¹⁵Vivec knew then why he would record his Book of Hours.
This sermon is forbidden.
¹⁶In this world and others 1’8 less one (the victor) is the magical disk, hurled to reach heaven by violence.
This sermon is untrue.
¹⁷The ending of the world is ASV.