ARC: TWP Chapter 16

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TheCulminatingApe

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« on: October 14, 2018, 07:21:14 pm »
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Men never resemble one another so much as when asleep or dead.
- OPPARITHA, ON THE CARNAL

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The arrogance of the Inrithi waxed bright in the days following Anwurat.  Though the sober-minded demanded they press the attack, the great majority clamoured for respite.  They thought the Fanim doomed just as they thought them doomed after Mengedda.  But while the Men of the Tusk tarried, the Padirajah plotted.  He would make the world his shield.
- DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, THE COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR
Sez who?
Seswatha, that's who.

TheCulminatingApe

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« Reply #1 on: October 23, 2018, 07:44:10 pm »
Achamian dreams of Golgotterath, then wakes to the Scarlet Spires.

Kellhus and Serwe come to get Esmenet.  She runs
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...Toward them.  No, not them - toward him.

Kellhus tells her they they are her family and her home.
He starts teaching her to read.

There is a seamless transition form the torture of Seswatha in the Dreams to the torture of Achamian in the here and now. 

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"There's much certainty here"...
Eleazaras tells him.  Previous chapters shave implied that it is the doubters who will be saved, and Achamian is all about scepticism.

He is within an Uroborian Circle.  Any Cant will cause him great pain.  He does one anyway - to knock himself unconscious?

Akka has killed two Scarlet Spires, and his capture required the involvement of the Spires in the battle, resulting in the death of six more.

Proyas has camped near the city of Ammegnotis.  Many people come to be blessed by Kellhus, who no longer rebukes them.

Esmi wonders if she is leaving Akka behind.  Serwe comes to her in the night and begs her not to take Kellhus.
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Plese, Esmi!  Y-you're so beautiful... Almost as beautiful as me! But you're smart too!  You speak to him the way other men speak to him!  I've heard you!"

Esmi finds herself
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...exulting in the thought of Serwe's fear...
... Why did you lie with Akka?  Why?

She watches Serwe sleeping.
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How could such beauty dwell in a slumbering face?  For a time, Esmenet pondered what it was she thought she saw.  There was a peculiar sense of sneakiness, the thrill of one-sided witness so familiar to children.  This was what made Esmenet grin.  But there was far more: the aura of dormant life, the premonition of death, the wonder of seeing the unruly carnival of human expression enclosed in the stillness of a single point.  There was  sense of truth, a recognition that all faces held this one point in common.  This, Esmenet knew, was her face, as it was Achamian's, or even Kellhus'.  But more than anything, there was a glorious vulnerability.  The sleeping throat, the Nilnameshi proverb went, was easily cut.
Was this not love?  To be watched while you slept...

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Even before Achamian had left for the Library, she'd wondered what it was Kellhus saw in Serwe.  Certainly it had to be more than her beauty - which was, Esmenet often thought, nothing short of otherwordly.  Kellhus saw hearts, not skin, no matter how smooth or marble white.  And Serwe's heart had seemed so flawed.  Joyous and open certainly, but also vain, petulant, peevish, and wanton.
But now Esmenet wondered whether these very flaws held the secret of her heart's perfection.  For she'd glimpsed that perfection while watching her sleep.  For an instant, she'd glimpsed what only Kellhus could see...  The beauty of frailty.  The splendour of imperfection.
She had witnessed, she realised.  Witnessed truth.

'Sarcellus' turns up.  He threatens her, she screams.  She tells Kellhus about the Consult coming to her in Sumna and never telling Akka.

He tells her she judged Akka against Sarcellus and found him wanting.
But she loved Akka for his weaknesses.  Note loved, and not love.

She is
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Despicable, selfish, hateful...
Polluted.
But Kellhus could see... He'd always seen.
"Don't look at me!", she cried.
Look at me...
"But I do, Esmi.  I do look.  And what I see fills me with wonder".
And these narcotic words, so warm and so close - so very close! - stilled her.  Her pillow ached against her cheek, and the hard earth beneath her mat bruised, but all was warm and safe.  He blew out his lantern, then quietly withdrew from her tent.  The warm memory of his fingers continued to comb her hair.

She is reading the Tusk and gets to part about the damnation of whores.  Kellhus scratches out the words with a knife.  He is a prophet.  She can see the halos about his hands.

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Throughout her entire life, she'd looked upon things and people that stood apart.  She was Esmenet, and that was her bowl, the Emperor's silver, the Shriah's man, the God's ground, and so on.  She stood here, and those things there.  No longer.  Everything, it seemed, radiated the warmth of his skin.  The ground beneath her bare feet.  The mat beneath hr buttocks.  And for a mad instant, she was certain that if she raised her fingers to her cheek, she would feel the soft curls of a flaxen beard, that if she turned to her left, she would see Esmenet hovering motionless over her rice bowl.
Somehow, everything had become here, and everything here had become him.
Kellhus!
She breathed in.  Her heart battered her breast.
He scraped the passage clean!
In a single exhalation, it seemed, a lifetime of condemnation slipped from her, and she felt shriven, truly shriven.  One breath and she was absolved!  She experienced a kind lucidity, as though her thought had been cleansed like water strained through bright white cloth.  She thought she should cry, but the sunlight was too sharp, the air too clear for weeping.
Everything was so certain.
He scarped the passage clean!.
Then she thought of Achamian.

Cnaiur walks through the city.  he thinks everybody is laughing at him
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Weeper!  Faggot weeper!...
...You beat me,
old Bannut, his father's brother, cried, for fucking him the way you fucked his father.
A man grabs at him and tells him he is the first disciple of Kellhus - the man who delivered him to 'us'.  Cnaiur had somehow forgotten about the Dunyain.
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He remembered running as hard as he could, away from the black paths worn through the grasses, away from the yaksh and his father's all-knowing wrath.  He found a clutch of sumacs and cleared a hollow in their hidden heart.  The weave of green grasses through grey.  The smell of earth, of beetles crawling through damp and dark grottoes.  The smell of solitude and secrecy, under the sky but sheltered from the wind.  he pulled the broken pieces from his belt and spread them in breathless wonder.  He reassembled them.  She was so sad.  And so beautiful.  Impossibly beautiful.
Someone.  he was forgetting to hate someone.
Broken pieces of what?  And who is sad and beautiful?  Is the beetle an Ajokli reference?
Sez who?
Seswatha, that's who.