Lore:Inspiral: Difference between revisions

Here is what is taught to the [[Hive]], from the basest of Thralls newly made: that what can be destroyed, must be destroyed. What cannot be destroyed will surpass infinity. Therefore, is it not best to destroy? Only by testing can the truth be found. Only in destruction can the invincible surpass the mortal. Commit the violence, and know you are part of that greatest ambition, to create some ultimacy, which perfects the universe. That which is built on your sacrifice, with your bones as the foundation and your blood as the mortar, is yet part of you. In this way is transcendence achieved.

I tell you this in a duelist's regard: I made that heresy. Is it not just? It was my hand that fashioned the Hive from the marrow of their predecessors, and it was my voice that whispered this in time. That as much as the Hive were uplifted by the [[worms]], so too were those worms uplifted by the Hive.

I'm excited about it, genuinely. I still hear from our parents, from our great-parents, distantly in my night-trances. And there are those nectar-made moments—you know the ones, when you turn your thoughts to the [[Darkness]] and just listen, and the long sum of Qugu history graven there reflects dark-comforting advice.

I have not wanted to look back at that time, but lately it has become prudent to examine what is and is not known of the [[Darkness]]. I know Darkness. I have been trying to distinguish the Darkness from the framework the [[Hive]] use to shape it for long and long, but they are deeply intertwined. The [[The Witness|Voice in the Darkness]] answers some things, but not all.

I think: [[The Great Disaster]]. What did we know? Was there anything besides terror and the swords of the [[Hive]]?

…I digress. There were times, deep in that dark pit, when I thought: Ah, Sai means to break left. And then she would, knives like lightning, as true as if she herself had told me she would. Or: Ah, there is [[Omar]], beside me, and though he was not, his presence rang comforting in my ears like struck metal.

anomaly Zero = infinite|[[The Witness|witness]];

Function: winnow. Function: simplify. Function: flatten.

We were in the [[Black Garden|Garden]], and I was going to die, and then I didn't. I watched my [[Guardian]] speak to himself, and not himself: a [[The Witness|being]] that wore his shape, spoke with his voice, and offered him salvation. Salvation in the form of forgetting. I didn't know [[Darkness]] could do that. I don't think any of us really understood it.

I am diminished. I know this. It behooves a Queen to be honest with herself, even if such truths are hidden from advisors and subjects. Leaving the [[Distributary]] was not a mistake—and, in fact, it was the only possibility, for the expanding wake of the [[Collapse]] must someday find that safe haven too—but there are days I regret it.

I know one other thing from the [[The Witness|Witness]], garnered in those bare moments I touched it. Not a why or a how, no home or treasures to point at weakness. Only this:

There is a conflict in me, O [[The Witness|Witness]], that unsettles your weapon, my self. Why is it that you allow flawed understandings of your great work to persist in all those who serve you, even in your Disciples? Every one of us seems to have some different conception of your Final Shape.

Is it a simple answer? Perhaps none who serve you have the capacity to grasp your vision. And so, rather than waste more of your time and attention on explaining something they will never hold, it is enough that they act as you will. The [[Savathun|Witch]] and her Hive carving single-mindedness out of the cloth of the universe, that whispering [[Nezarec|Nightmare]] seeking the fullest gamut of existence, the [[Rhulk|Upender]] destroying all differentiation. Shadows on the wall.

A dream of a friendly conversation with someone impossible to see, cloaked in shadows. It leaves behind an impossible data fragment to mark its passing.