Sermon 20

For this was the dawn of Resdaynia, when Chimer and Dwemer lived under the wise and benevolent rule of ALMSIVI and Her champion, the Hortator. And Ayem would ever guide the Hortator, closer to him than his jugular vein. This is the third of the three lessons of ruling kings, revealed on the road to Muat.

"You stand against the Sharmat, who is the devil, this is good. A king must have an enemy. All true beauty is forged in opposition, remember this. The Sharmat is not your shadow; you are twin reflections in an ever-rippling pool. Do not label him 'neath the rubric of evil. This is the easy path, the fool's path. To catalogue calamity is to limit it, leech it of unknown terror. A mistake. Fear is the soul's scourge. Stay hungry, and you shall never bow to the scholar, bow to his laws and bone-dry decorum. His ink is the blood of mindless things that leave their thinking to another. Do not embrace this fate. The Sharmat is a disciple of this path, for it is another walking way. The rejection of knowledge is the proto-knowledge, writ in our marrow, when music was new. Remember the words of the Sharmat:

If I could take

the part of you,

which still beats in me.

The throbbing pulse of your perfection.

If I could take it,

crush it,

devour it,

I would.

A thousand times yes.

Let me hold you,

skin soft as moonlight,

and as subtle.

Yes, you feel it too.

If I could trace

the topographies of your spirit,

the dreamscape of your flesh.

Carve scars and chasms

into your shining form,

I would.

A thousand times yes.

This agony, what is it worth?

Ensured by some cosmic arbiter,

or not.

And if not, how do I justify this pain?

If I could smother it,

this lambent flame,

Extinguish it.

Cruel, callous, yes.

a thousand times yes.

Your soul is deep as an ancient sea,

and this old wolf, dreaming, dying,

clings to you still

in his toothless maw.

Swift as the setting sun, yes,

how we strode this world,

Drunk on its green and immemorial age.

Yes, you, my shadow,

together we knew no shame.

Lost now, forgotten,

no one to mourn,

but on a silent night,

if you strain to listen,

you may hear my name,

carried on the wind.

"These are his words to you, Hortator, and all who walk like you. Do not spurn the Sharmat's love. Why twine about the poet's false verses, which seek to shape the world to his liking? Define yourself; let this be your mantle. Shapeless, formless, a breath of a thing. Yes, lose yourself in the stream, return to me, again and again. In this way, you will be as the Sharmat, and erase him, for a single soul does not require two bodies. When you pierce his Tower, find his heart-lair, weep freely. You cannot reach heaven through violence.

"Let this be my final offering, all else is ornamentation."

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.