Sermon 8

The Apostates, rage-drunk, tore at the ash, slashed their arms, lapped up the blood. Amidst the mob was the Void Ghost, who wore the skin of a shamaness.

"You think yourself greater than Molag Bal?" she said.

"I am as he is. We proceeded from the same primordial darkness. But I am that darkness, thus, I am his shadow."

The Apostates frothed to hear their god disparaged. They leapt at Kundali, intending to rip the egg-image of Ayem from her.

But Ayem spoke a syllable which was blasphemy to the Apostates. They whined, clutching their ears, writhing in the dust. Only the shamaness stood.

"Why do you hide?" she said.

"I do not hide; I am waiting to be remembered."

"But what will you do when you remember?"

And at this, Kundali began a song. Her mouth could not shape the words; first spoken beneath a black sun, on a blasted wasteland-world, yet the shamaness understood the intent, for it was the urge behind all religious endeavour.

"Uncanny the singing which comes from certain husks."

And with this parting puzzle, the shamaness vanished.

There was a blast from a warhorn then, into the Apostates' village spilled a battle host. Some were brass shell-men, oiled plates shifting in imitation of life. Others were Dwemer, beards braided, cornered spheres in hand. They destroyed the Apostates with solid sound, down to the smallest babe. For the Dwemer are too enlightened and see all existence as illusionary.

"There she is," said one. His robe hung with half-finished fancies, marking him as the Fourth Under-Inventor.

Shell-men cut Kundali down, and she fell at the Under-Inventor's feet, weeping in gratitude.

"Your ripples are quite disquieting," he said. "We felt them in the observation post. Our astro-sacristy shattered into atoms. I have never encountered such pure tone."

"What will you do with me?" said Kundali.

The man frowned. "I hear your voice even though it is irrelevant, why?"

And Ayem said, "Spare my false-mother, for she was not built to withstand truth."

The Fourth Under-Inventor could understand such natures.

"I apologize, but she holds a fragment of the truth, and our mosaic is not yet complete."

Shell-men seized Kundali and laid her flat, exposing her belly, pulsing with possibility.

"Bring the cornered spheres; we must make an incision before reality rights itself."

And the egg-image of Ayem spoke:

Truth is found,

In the offal of indecision.

In the Universe's stream,

Red and raw and wriggling.

If you stand with your feet planted,

In the ebb and flow of eons,

You will find,

Yourself.

But the Under-Inventor did not pause, for like all Dwemer he was pious and knew God, and was no longer puzzled by Her.

The flame of Kundali's self-hood flared, and she kicked and screamed, desperate to prolong her existence.

"But what would you do with it?" asked Ayem.

Kundali could not answer, even as the cornered spheres sliced into her, revealing all.

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.