Ok.
So the head on the pole scene. Human hell is a lake of fire as we well know, and this is what kellhus sees, the sons, crocodilian in a lake of fire imbibing souls.

Then he FLIPS it to other skies other sons, and here it is a sky of fire that feeds and sustains the equally ravenous sons.

He comes to the shore that is here, always here, gazes without sight across waters that are fire, and sees the Sons swimming, lolling and bloated and bestial, raising babes as wineskins, and drinking deep their shrieks.

So he seizes the lake and the thousand babes and the void and the massing-descending Sons and the lamentations-that-are-honey, and he rips them about the pole, transforms here into here, this-place-inside-where-you-sitnow, where he has always hidden, always watched, where Other Sons, recline, drinking from bowls that are skies, savouring the moaning broth of the Countless, bloating for the sake of bloat, slaking hungers like chasms, pits that eternity had rendered Holy …

Now. Look at what the boatmans songs tell us about the sky of fire and the no men fear of damnation.

O’ Siöl! What love hath thou remaining? What fury hath thou loosed? What destruction? We who know the ground, plot in its bones, Prepare to grapple the endless, Eating Sky!

Facing the sun, there Imimorûl dug a great well, And bid his children enter. In the bone of the world, there he conjured song and light, And his children feared no more the starving Sky.

 Here! Here Imimorûl drew down the face of the mountain, Bid us seize the halls of the House Primordial—here! Here lies a home that cleaves the tempest asunder, A home that breaks the shining beak of the dawn.

And the rest of the song repeatedly refers to the sky as the "Starving" as does I think the black cauldron soul occasionally refer to the Sky as the Starving.

This makes sense if the nonmen view hell as a sky of fire, rather than a lake, and the "principle" of the denizens of hell is one of Starving, a starving that seeks their souls out to munch upon for eternity.

Nameless gods howling like wolves at a silent gate or some such similar quote. And my long unfulfilled promise to examine the boding text of the wolf gate in cil aujis. Is reminded.

The nonmen seek to barricade themselves away in oblivion, both the figurative we know so well and in the literal delving that drives them into a subterranean existence of hiding.

And note the idea here that immorul invents sorcery in the passage, and this is seen as a source of Salvation, a way to fight back against the denizens of hell a way to tear the tempest asunder, a way to no longer fear damnation of the starving Sky.






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I've flip-flopped on the mundane/sorcerous singing. I don't believe the metagnosis can, by it's very nature, escape whatever trigger the agonic collar has, since to my understanding it's simply the addition of a second inutteral.

Only thing I can think is that Kellhus designed a spell specifically to break a collar, and taught it to Serwa as a contingency. An inutteral that masks the others maybe.

Math thesis point spell used to overcome the barriers should be effective against other Emilidis manufactured artifacts such as the agonic collar.


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But the plate had changed all too quickly. To realize that the Cishaurim were but a mask for a far more ancient foe. To come so very close, only to discover their sublime deceptions subverted by something deeper. Something new. The Dûnyain. There was more to this than a son hunting for his father—far more. Their devious methods and disconcerting abilities aside, these Dûnyain were Anasûrimbor. Even without the Mandate prophecies, enmity was a fact of their accursed blood. Who was this Moënghus? And if his son could seize the armed might of the Three Seas in a single year, what had he accomplished in thirty? What awaited the Holy War in Shimeh?

It is possible I am totally misreading this, but can you clarify the various subjects in this passage? It seems as though Aurang is talking about discovering an ancient foe, and context suggests the dunyain are that foe, as he's discovered moenghus, but he describes the dunyain as something new which quite naturally means he is not talking about the dunyain as the ancient foe,

And the use of ancient is interesting, because he has just made a context of his life far surpassing the mere millennia on earwa, so it doesn't seem that he would append the label ancient to the anasurimbor either they're new relative to his immortal frame.

So, in referring to the discovery of an "ancient foe" is Aurang referring to the dunyain, to the anasurimbor, or to a third party?


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just want to throw in these from the false sun first:

Now that he had seen.

“Very well,” Shaeönanra conceded, bowing in the shallow, cursive way of the Umeri. He turned to the attendant. “Summon our…” He paused as if at the humour of the word Onkhis had delivered to him. “Our guest.”

A flush of horror. Shaeönanra tensed against the sudden loosening in his bowel, not quite believing that the Inchoroi had dared name it aloud. Xir’kirimakra. The Inverse Fire. For a heartbeat he found his Voice divided between mere fear and what mattered. What? Did Aurang seek to seduce the Sohonc Archideme? Could he not see that Titirga was not one to suffer rivals, that Shaeönanra himself would be doomed were he to embrace their Holy Consult?

But these were vain questions. They fell away as quickly as Onkhis offered them up, so flimsy were the concerns that moved them. All that mattered, the Ground’s only consequential thing, was what he had seen…

Damnation.

Is the text of the novel complete and being revised or is it still in progress?


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Are you deliberately trying to trick and lie to readers when you write these sections? T

These sections are default consumed by readers as non-diagetic adjuncts to the text--as is the convention within the genre--is there something obvious readers universally missed if the sections actually are diagetic to the text?
 
If these sections are diagetic to the text, how do they differ from the explicitly diagetic and similarly functioning, _Compendium of the First Holy War_ extracts?

our imperfect recollection of the text may in and of itself be very interesting.

just FYI, RSB, the haloed hands around the skin spy are one of the most contentious topics of debate over the years and are often used by many/most readers as the ultimate evidence that Serwe's POVs are worthless! For many readers, this event "proves" that she is nothing more than a WOMAN who doesn't know anything and is just a stupid deluded ignorant primitive idiot--"hahah what a moron!" sort of thing.

So we are all extremely curious about this particular event.