Earwa > The Almanac: PON Edition

ARC: TTT Chapter 16

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TheCulminatingApe:

--- Quote from: TheCulminatingApe on March 19, 2019, 09:06:22 pm ---
--- Quote ---”...We dwarf the worldborn.  They are less than children to us.  No matter what we encounter, be it their philosophy, their medicine, their poetry, or even their faith, we see so much deeper, and our strength is that much greater.
So you assumed taking up the Water would be no different, that becoming one of the Indara-Kishauri would make you godlike in comparison.  And since the Cishaurim themselves scarcely understand the metaphysics of their practice, there was nothing you could learn that would contradict this assumption.  You couldn't know that the Psukhe was a metaphysic of the heart, not the intellect.  Of passion...
So you let them blind you, only to find your powers proportionate to your vestigial passions.  What you thought to be the Shortest Path was in fact a dead end”.
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---”These words you speak,” Moenghus said from the black “wicked, corrupted, perverted... why would you use them when you know they are nothing more than mechanisms of control?”
--- End quote ---
 

Kellhus ignores him and continues.


--- Quote --- “In this world,” Moenghus said, “there's nothing more precious than our blood – as you have no doubt surmised  But the children we bear by worldborn women lack the breadth of our abilities.  Maithanet is not Dunyain.  He could do no more than prepare the way”.
Her name arose like a pang from the darkness: Esmenet

--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---

Moenghus lacks passion, but Kellhus clearly does not.  Does he really love Esmenet as he later claims in TAE?

TheCulminatingApe:

--- Quote from: TheCulminatingApe on March 19, 2019, 09:07:00 pm ---
--- Quote ---“The skin-spies – what have they told you? What is the No-God?”
Though walled in by the flesh of his face, Moenghus seemed to scrutinise him.  “They do not know.  But then, none in this world know what they worship”.
“What are the possibilities you've considered?”

--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---

Does anybody know what the No-God is?  We never get confirmation at any point in either series as far I remember.

TheCulminatingApe:

--- Quote from: TheCulminatingApe on March 19, 2019, 09:07:00 pm ---
--- Quote ---”These voices”, Moenghus said with slow deliberation, “what do they say of me?”
His father, Kellhus realised had finally grasped the principles of this encounter.  Moenghus had assumed that his son would be the one requiring instruction.  He had not foreseen it as possible, let alone inevitable, that the Thousandfold Thought would outgrow the soul of its incubation – and discard it.
“They warn me”, Kellhus said, “that you are Dunyain still”.
One of the captive skin-spies convulsed against its chains, vomited threads of spittle into the pit below.
“I see.  And this is why I am to die?”
Kellhus looked to the haloes about his hands. “The crimes you've committed, Father... the sins... When you learn of the damnation that awaits you, when you come to believe, you will be no different from the inchoroi.  As Dunyain, you will be compelled to master the consequences of your wickedness.  Like the Consult, you will come to see tyranny in what is holy... And you will war as they war”.
Kellhus fell back into himself, opened his deeper soul to the details of his father's nearly naked form, assessing, appraising.  The strength of limbs.  The speed of reflexes.
Must move quickly
“To shut the World against the Outside”, the pale lips said.  “To seal it through the extermination of mankind...”
“As Ishual is shut against the Wilderness”, Kellhus replied.

For the Dunyain it was axiomatic: what was compliant had to be isolated from was unruly and intractable. Kellhus had seen it many times, wandering the labyrinth of possibilities that was the Thousandfold Thought:  The Warrior-Prophet's assassination.  The rise of Anasurimbor Moenghus to take his place.  The apocalyptic conspiracies.  The counterfeit war against Golgotterath.  The accumulation of premeditated disasters.  The sacrifice of whole nations to the gluttony of the Sranc.  The Three Seas cashing into char and ruin.
The Gods baying like wolves at a silent gate.
Perhaps his father had yet to apprehend this.  Perhaps he simply couldn't see past the arrival of his son.  Or perhaps all this – the accusations of madness, the concern over his unanticipated turn – was imply a ruse.  Either way, it was irrelevant.
“You are Dunyain still, Father”.
“As are-”
The eyeless face, once perfectly obdurate and inscrutable, suddenly twitched in the ghost of a grimace.  Kellhus pulled his knife from his father's chest, retreated several steps.  He watched his father probe the wound with his fingers, a weeping perforation just beneath his rib cage.
“I am more”, the Warrior-Prophet said.
--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---

Kellhus' actions and words imply he has planned for this all along.  Moenghus is just a location on his path - something to be mined for information and then got rid of.

TheCulminatingApe:

--- Quote from: TheCulminatingApe on March 19, 2019, 09:06:22 pm ---Esmi and Akka sit in the hills.  She wonders what they are to do. As soon as Kellhus sees them, he'll know.
Then... Kidruhil.  Conphas has arrived with the Imperial Army.  Cnaiur has told Akka

--- Quote ---”He told me”, Achamian said, his voice so hollow, so dismayed, that her skin prickled in terror.  “And he told me to warn the Great Names...  H-he didn't want any harm to befall the Holy War- for Proyas' sake as much as anything else, I think... B-but... after he left, all I could think about was... was...”...
--- End quote ---

Akka has to stop the Nansur.  Esmi is Kellhus' wife – he remembers what they did to Serwe.

--- End quote ---

The Cnaiur and Proyas 'father-son' relationship never really goes anywhere, does it?  A wasted plot arc?

TheCulminatingApe:

--- Quote from: TheCulminatingApe on March 19, 2019, 09:07:29 pm ---Moeghus staggers back against the walls.  Snakes appear and curl about his throat.

Kellhus calls out

--- Quote ---With three voices he sang, one untteral pitched to the world and two inutterals directed to the ground.  What had been an ancient Cant of Calling became something far, far more... A Cant of Tranposing.
--- End quote ---

As he teleports away he sees Serwe leap out of the darkness.


--- End quote ---

We see what can be done with a second inutteral. 
A big deal has been made in earlier Chapters about the Cants of Compulsion.  What therefore can Kellhus do to these?  Something far, far more... does this foreshadow the (click to show/hide)head-swapping in TAE?

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