ARC: TWP Chapter 20

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TheCulminatingApe

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« on: November 04, 2018, 07:43:17 pm »
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The vulgar think the God by analogy to man and so worship Him in the form of the Gods.  The learned think think the God by analogy to principles and so worship Him in the form of Love or Truth.  But the wise think the God not at all.  They know thought, which is finite, can only do violence to the God, who is infinite.
It is enough, they say that the God thinks them.
- MEMGOWA, THE BOOK OF DIVINE ACTS

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...for the sin of the idolater is not that he worships stone, but that he worships one stone over others.
- 8:9:4 THE WITNESS OF FANE
Sez who?
Seswatha, that's who.

TheCulminatingApe

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« Reply #1 on: November 23, 2018, 07:50:06 pm »
The Holy Way lays siege to Caraskand.  They can scale the walls, but are always thrown back.  Meanwhile disease rages through the troops.
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...Cumor, Proyas, Chepheramunni, and Skaiyelt all succumbed within days of one another.  At times, it seemed the sick outnumbered the healthy...

Athjeari brings 'news of doom'.  The Padirajah is on his way.

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A great fear seized the surviving leaders of the Holy War.  Caraskand continued to rebuke them.. Akkeagni oppressed them with misery and death, and the Padirajah himself marched upon them with yet another heathen host.
They were far from home, among hostile lands and wicked peoples, and the God had turned his face from them. They were desperate.
And for such men questions of why, sooner or later became questions of who...

'Sarcellus' approaches Conphas.
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Conphas had never trusted Shrial Knights.  Too much devotion.  Too much renunciation... Self-sacrifice, he'd always thought, was more madness than foolishness.
He'd come to this conclusion in his adolescence, after perceiving just how often - and how happily - others injured or destroyed themselves in the name of faith or sentiment.  It was as though, he realised, everyone took instructions from a voice he couldn't hear - a voice from nowhere.  They committed suicide when dishonoured, sold themselves into slavery to feed their children.  They acted as though the world possessed fates worse than death or enslavement, as though they couldn't live with themselves if harm befell others...
Wrack his intellect as he might, Conphas could neither fathom the sense nor imagine the sensation.  Of course there was the God, the Scriptures, and all that rubbish.  That voice he could understand.  The threat of eternal damnation could wring reason out of the most ludicrous sacrifice.  That voice came from somewhere.  But this other voice...

Again, Conphas comes across as devoid of empathy - a worldborn Dunyain?

Sarcellus tell him that 'we' share his feelings about Kellhus.

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.."But he saved the Holy War," he said.  "Your life... My life..."

The Consult need Conphas to preserve the Holy War, once they have killed Kellhus.

Serwe is in labour. Esmenet reflects on the passage through the desert, and their arrival in Enathpaneah.
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...For a time, it seemed they alone survived, that all mankind and not just the Holy War had perished.  They alone spoke.  They alone gazed and understood that they gazed.  They alone loved, across all lands and all waters, to the world's very pale.  It seemed all passion, all knowing, was here, ringing in one penultimate note. It wasn't like a flower.  It wasn't like a child's careless laugh.
They has become the measure... Absolute. Unconditioned.
When they made love in the river, it seemed they sanctified the sea.

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...Without knowing, Esmenet had lived her entire life for him - for Anasurimbor Kellhus.
Grief for his compassion.  Delusion for his revelation.  Sin so he might forgive.  Degradation so he might raise her high.  He was the origin.  He was the destination.  He was the from where and the to which, and he was here!

The baby is born.  Kellhus calls out in mock surprise.
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For an instant, just and instant, Esmenet thought she'd heard the voice of someone hated.

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Men, Kellhus had once told her, were like coins: they had two sides.  Where one side of them saw, the other side of them was seen, and though all men were both at once, men could only truly know the side of themselves that saw and the side of others that was seen - they could only truly the inner half of themselves and the outer half of others...
...The measure of wisdom, Kellhus had said, was found in the distance between these two selves.
Only afterwards had she thought of Kellhus in these terms.  With a kind of surpriseless shock, she realised that not once - not once! - had she glimpsed shortcomings in his words or actions.  And this, she understood, was why he seemed limitless, like the ground, which extended from the small circle about her feet to the great circle about the sky.  He had become her horizon.
For Kellhus, there was no distance between seeing and being seen.  He alone was whole.  And what was more, he somehow stood from without and saw from within.  He made whole...

He knows the Great Names are becoming scared of him.

She is the 'begetting fire'

Akka is in a villa near Iothiah.  Xinemus is suffering, but Akka seems to be losing his compassion.

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...Had this been the gift of the Scarlet Spires?  Had they burned some lesson into him?
Or had they simply beaten him numb?
Whatever the answer, he would see them burn - especially Iyokus.  He would show them the wages of his newfound certainty.
Perhaps that had been their gift.  Hatred.

Conphas summons the Great Names - to discuss the False Prophet.
Sez who?
Seswatha, that's who.